Claimed Mate by Roxie Ray
Cal
Iwaited for Maren outside the kitchen after breakfast. It was the witch, however, who met me, coffee cup still in hand and a particular confidence in her step. I raised a brow. “Can I help you?”
“Maren’s still on clean-up duty, but she can practically feel you lurking out here impatiently,” Corin sniffed, mirroring my expression. “So I offered to walk you down to Meyers’ house so you’ll stop looming over the poor girl.”
My shoulders stiffened. “I don’t loom,” I argued, instinctively starting to fold my arms over my chest. As soon as I realized, I dropped my hands back to my sides.
Corin didn’t bother to hide her snicker. “Okay, Broody McFrownyface.” My wolf growled; the back of my neck prickled like phantom hackles starting to stir. “Do you want me to show you or not? You aren’t going to be able to sniff him out.”
“Fae magic?”
She hummed and nodded. “You’ve been paying attention! Good boy.” Corin flickered her slender fingers, dark nails gleaming in the light. I followed her despite myself. “We can’t have wolves sniffing us out. Thankfully, Meyers appreciated the risk presented to the community upon taking him in, and agreed to the precaution.”
I eyed the back of her head with a scowl. “Exactly how long have you been here?” I realized I knew relatively little about witches, including how long they lived. Corin looked like we could have gone to high school together, but was that just some sort of glamor? Shit.
The woman glanced over her shoulder and winked. “Wouldn’t you like to know?”
It did absolutely nothing to reassure me. As I inhaled, the scent of pine greeted me. Though Corin had introduced this as a farming community, I was starting to realize it stretched well beyond the little clearing towards the woods. We’d gone well past the tree line into a hearty, thriving forest; this was the sort of thing a city wolf dreamed off. I could hear a dozen different birdsongs; the smell of mushrooms and leaf litter tickled my nose, hidden beneath the delicious aroma of northern pine. I wondered what it would be like to run through these old trees as a wolf; I wondered, too, if my dad ran here. If he did so often. What it would be like, to actually run with my father.
“What are you doing here?”
A gruff voice snapped me out of my reverie and I scowled. “Good to see you too, dad.” This was not the man I remembered, and this was nothing like what I imagined meeting him again would be like.
Corin’s mouth twisted into an unreadable expression as she turned to face me. She clapped a hand over my shoulder and leaned in. “Good luck with the old man. I’ll be back later,” she muttered, giving me a squeeze before striding back into the woods. I watched her go before dragging my attention back to my father.
He wasn’t even looking at me. Instead, he was fiddling with something in his hands, brows knit in concentration. Was he whittling? My wolf growled, his ears flattening against the side of his head. I couldn’t argue; what the fuck was wrong with this guy? I hadn’t seen him in over a decade, and he couldn’t even look up at me? “Too busy to say hi?” I barked, struggling to keep my anger in check. My wolf tensed and bristled; I could feel my muscles started to bunch.
“Go back to the community, Calum.”
Calum? I couldn’t stop myself.
I stormed onto the porch and grabbed the second chair, flinging it against the cabin’s exterior. That got my father’s attention, but I couldn’t even relish his look of shock. “What the hell is wrong with you!?” I demanded, rigid with emotion. “I’ve been looking for you since you disappeared! Mom has been looking for you! She’s supposed to be your mate, Dad, and, what, you just left her?”
He opened his mouth to protest and I jabbed a finger in his direction. “No. I tried to talk to you earlier and you fucked off. You had your chance to say something,” I snarled. “She has spent every spare dollar she’s had on fucking detectives and trackers and who knows what else because she wasn’t convinced you were gone, and this is how you repay her? By fucking hiding in the woods with a bunch of fairies? You know she was fucking attacked? They hurt her so bad, she couldn’t even shift to heal. If you’d just fucking come back, no one would have fucked with her.”
David snapped his mouth shut and stared me down for a moment. “Go away,” he growled.
“No!” I snapped, rooted to the cabin’s porch.
“Calum…”
I bared my teeth. “You are literally going to have to drag me off this porch and all the way back to the community if you want me to go, and even then, I’m just going to walk right back here.”
“Seriously, Cal…”
“Corin will take me. She likes me.” I was pretty sure that was an abject lie, but the expression she’d given my father suggested she might be willing to make him uncomfortable. She liked me more than she liked him, and that was an advantage I was willing to leverage.
My gamble paid off. With a great, dramatic sigh, my father got to his feet, setting down the knife and block of wood on the arm of his chair. “Fine. If it’ll get you to stop hounding me, you can come inside,” he groused, stepping around me to open the door, and led me into his home.
I don’t knowwhat I was expecting. Maybe a little more of a bachelor’s pad, even if my father was a grown man. Instead, the cabin looked neat. So neat it bordered on sterile, as if no one actually lived in this place. It certainly didn’t smell like anything, much less a wolf, and it made me wonder what the hell the fae were capable of if they could completely mask something like that.
David stopped in the middle of the room and turned, not offering me a seat, or anything else. “You want answers, boy? I’ll—”
“Boy?” I bared my teeth again and he shot me a stern look, a whisper of gold in his dark yes.
“You had your turn to speak,” he snarled back, his upper lip curling. “You’re in my house, abusing my hospitality. So you’re going to be quiet and listen.”
He paused for a beat, and when I kept my mouth shut, he continued.
“I knew something was wrong with the pack when Jeff came back after a run all moon-eyed. He wasn’t out with his mate; Lisa hadn’t even gone on that run. He stunk, and not like any wolf I’d ever met. It was some sort of weird magic. It was a fae. I almost couldn’t believe Jeff would step out on his mate, but you know how Lisa is. I figured they must have fallen out in a bad way.” He gave me a knowing look, and I had to admit, that was something I could agree with. Lisa Burns was a piece of work. “I didn’t agree with him, especially because Lisa was pregnant, but it wasn’t affecting the pack, and if a fae girl was going to make my best friend happier than the bitch who kept trying to make our pack runs an ‘invite only’ event, who was I to argue?”
My father took a breath, as if he was trying to keep his thoughts organized. “But then the fae got pregnant. She tried to take off. When Jeff caught her, he got some sort of truth out of her. All she wanted was an Alpha wolf, any would do. Had nothing to do with him, not really, except he was the one fool enough to fall for her.” His lip curled. I instinctively thought of Danny, imagining how I’d feel if he’d gotten dumped after someone got their thrills from seducing a lone wolf. “He said she used magic to seduce him; I dunno how true or not true that was, but magic or not, he was seduced, and the fae was pregnant. And even though the fae tricked him, Jeff couldn’t possibly let her run off with his child. It would be a wolf, and it would still be his offspring. He couldn’t abandon his unborn child. Especially not if it meant giving his kid over to some scheming fae.
“We trapped her. That was mostly Jeff’s idea, but it was a two-man job. He held her, until the baby was born, and we got a local witch to place wards. They used Jeff’s blood to bind the spells. It was just me and him who knew about Liv, what she was. Eventually Lisa figured it out, but that wasn’t for a while. Back then, Jeff was convinced he could just raise her as a wolf, and if he never told her, it wouldn’t matter. She’d be a wolf. Lisa had…lost her pregnancy and gone into isolation.” My dad paused then, making a face. I found myself wondering if Liv knew that part. If that was part of Maren’s story. It certainly explained why Liv’s parents had always seemed at arm’s length whenever I’d go over for dinner or spend the afternoon in her backyard, but still.
David cleared his throat and continued. “The longer it went on, the more uncomfortable I got. Didn’t think it was safe to raise a fae. Didn’t think it was fair to Lisa, either, no matter how much I didn’t like the woman. But Jeff swore up and down she’d agreed, and it was fine, and if Liv was raised by wolves, she’d only ever be a wolf.” My father shrugged one shoulder.
“And he was my alpha. And for a while, it was okay. But then you both grew up into teenagers, and you hadn’t shifted yet. Your mother and I had no worry about you, but her? I thought maybe her fae blood was stronger than the wolf side. Maybe Jeff’s stupid plan had been wrong. If she couldn’t shift, the pack would ask questions. Maybe the spells were weakening. Maybe the Unseelie would come looking for her. All I could see was danger for the pack, so I confronted him.” He grimaced. “You know the rest.”
I paused for a second and shook my head. “No, I don’t think I do, given you’ve been here for, what? The last fifteen years?”
“No, not exactly. I figured if I played dead, then Jeff Burns’ stupid pride would be just fine, and he’d leave you and your mother alone.” His mouth twisted a little more and he shook his head. “I’d been on my own for a while when a Seelie fae found me and told me to come to this place. I didn’t have a good reason to believe him, but I did. He has that effect on people. So I’ve been the groundskeeper here for about five years.”
I stared at him, almost unable to believe what I was hearing. “And…what? You never thought to call? Fucking write?” When David didn’t come up with an answer, I couldn’t stop myself. “Are you kidding me? I dropped out of school to get a job. Mom worked literally any shift she could to make sure she kept a roof over my head. You know I don’t think she’s ever spent a single fucking cent on herself? Apparently, she’s still been spending it on you! After all this time! And you couldn’t be bothered!”
“Calum.”
“No, no. No.”
I couldn’t take it anymore. I didn’t want to hear anything else. I didn’t want to know what he’d been doing or how fucking idealistic it was here. I spun on my heel and crashed out the front door, letting the screen slam behind me. Of course it was the fucking Burns, wasn’t it? My father wasn’t dead, but he certainly wasn’t the man I remembered. I ripped off one shoe and then the other as I stormed down the porch steps. My socks when flying off after. I wanted so badly to be angry with Liv, even if she’d been a baby when all this started. Hadn’t asked for this any more than I had.
My wolf whined and writhed; I couldn’t think anymore. I tugged my shirt over my head; that was as far as I got before I started to shift, growling softly as my joints started to pop. It wasn’t foreign but it still hurt every single time, my bones rearranging themselves, the scrape of tendon over cartilage, the push and pull until human became wolf. The earth was a welcome feeling under my paws and I took off, not bothering to look back at the pile of clothes I’d left or if my father had even looked out front.
I just needed to be alone. I needed the quiet only the forest could offer.
