Page 25 of Alpha’s Secret Baby Girl (Nightfall Island Alphas #1)

After Gwen told Rafael about the vision she had of his father, he took her home, made sure she was comfortable, and promised her, “I’ll find a way to take this thing down without making you fight.”

She was too shaken and exhausted then to realize what he was really saying.

“I’m not going to let it kill you, too.” Since then two days ago, she hadn’t seen him for more than a few minutes.

When she tried to get him to slow down to talk, he refused to meet her eye and only said he was busy. Her worry grew.

Which was why she’d come back to his office, where he had briefly told her he was going that morning right before he skipped breakfast. She was going to make him stop now.

They were going to talk. She was going to march into his office and say, “Rafael, I had a vision that the demon killed Lianne.” And that would slow him down enough so that they could start actually discussing what was happening and get on the same page.

With a grunt, she shoved the door to his office open. “Rafael, I—”

The man standing at his desk was not, in fact, Rafael.

Michael looked up. He looked more like their mother than Rafael did.

He still had the same dark brown hair, but Michael’s eyes were green behind his glasses.

He was taller by far than his brother, and even when he was young, Gwen couldn’t recall a time when she hadn’t seen him in a suit.

“Rafael is with the special ops on a border hunt,” Michael said, straightening his tie. “One of the other packs reported a demon attack, and they’re hoping to find evidence of where it went.”

The demon hunts again. Gwen dragged her hands through her hair, catching on a few knots. The physical reminder that she wasn’t keeping up her grooming habits made her wince. The stress was getting to them all.

“I need to talk to him,” she said, though she didn’t add why. Perhaps if she had Michael pass along the message or even text Rafael…

But that seemed cruel. It would put him in a state of panic that he couldn’t fix until they were able to actually talk, and besides that, if he was close to the demon, a distraction could get him killed.

She kicked the floor and pressed her hands over her face, trying to straighten out her thoughts.

“He’s been acting more obsessed than usual,” Michael said, his voice careful. “Ever since he called the doctor here after one of your training sessions.”

Gwen dropped her hands again. “He didn’t tell you?”

Michael shook his head. Gwen hesitated. Was there a reason Rafael didn’t tell him? Or rather, what was the reason? She wasn’t sure that Rafael would want her to tell Michael what she saw if he hadn’t done it himself. Or maybe he would, because he couldn’t bring himself to say the words.

Goddess, life was confusing.

“I had a vision about how your father and mother died,” Gwen said, making up her mind. She explained as concisely as possible, sticking to the facts. She didn’t tell him about how Rafael had reacted, nor the questions he’d asked afterward.

When she was done, Michael took off his glasses and pulled a handkerchief—an honest-to-goodness handkerchief complete with embroidered pine needles—to clean them. When he put the glasses back on, he gave one curt nod. “That explains it, then.”

“Explains what? He’s been avoiding me. He’s—”

“Not avoiding you,” Michael corrected gently.

Gwen frowned. “Not sure what else to call it. He’s never home. When he is, he barely speaks to me.”

“He’s not avoiding you,” Michael said, more firmly this time.

“If he were avoiding you, you wouldn’t see him at all.

You have to understand, Rafael wasn’t allowed to display emotion.

He had it worse than I did, because most times, Randall couldn’t be bothered with me.

But he was always under the microscope, not only from our father but the whole pack.

When he’s hurt, the only way he knows to deal with it is to outsource that pain. ”

Gwen inhaled sharply.

Michael grimaced and ran a hand through his dark hair.

“No, that’s not right. What I mean is that he looks to fix other people’s pain.

Other people’s problems. It’s as though he thinks by making their pain go away, some of his will, too.

It’s one of the reasons he’s worked so hard to turn the pack around. ”

“I don’t understand where you’re going with this,” Gwen said. Her fingers itched to pull out her phone and demand that Rafael return. But what if he’d been separated from the special ops, the demon was stalking him, and he had to hide?

Or, more likely, he’d left his phone behind when he shifted to do the patrol.

“We never got anything close to closure with our parents. Our father remained a bastard to the end, and our mother never broke free of him,” Michael told her.

“That pain lingers. So Rafael has been fixing things among the pack, righting past wrongs, as a way to try to make up for… well, for being Randall’s son but also for not being able to save our mother. ”

“And now that he knows that the demon killed them… the only way he can deal with this fresh grief is to try to stop it from hurting anyone else and to avenge your parents,” Gwen murmured, her shoulders slumping as understanding dawned.

“There’s going to be guilt, too. If I know my brother, he’s wondering if there was more to our father than he allowed himself to see.

He’s thinking, ‘Maybe I could have saved both of them from him.’ And he’s going to be thinking about himself, and that stupid move he pulled with you when you came back. ”

Gwen frowned deeply at him.

Michael offered a small smile and a shrug. “When he forced you to marry him. He’s going to be thinking about that, comparing it to Randall’s behavior, and wondering if maybe he should have given him a chance, now that he knows he died trying to protect the pack.”

“I… can understand the difficulties in that,” Gwen admitted. “Even if I don’t think Randall deserves it.”

Michael shrugged, but it didn’t seem dismissive—more that he understood that feeling, too, but there wasn’t much he could say about it. “He never got over you, you know. He never stopped blaming himself for you leaving.”

Gwen let out a soft breath. She believed it. If he had told her that before she came to the island, maybe she wouldn’t have. Now, though? After everything she had seen and experienced here? She really did believe it.

“Come to bed, my love. You need your rest.”

Her heart skipped a beat just at the memory of his sleepy, warm voice.

Ever since he said it, she wanted him to say it again.

He hadn’t. She knew why he hadn’t. She hadn’t given him much in return to show her feelings for him.

Sex could very well only be sex. He didn’t know how deeply her feelings for him still ran.

If you asked her, “Do you love Rafael Buchanan?” before her return to the lying, she would have looked you straight in the eye and said, “No fucking way.” It would have been a lie.

And it was only now that she finally, finally, allowed herself to admit that.

She loved him. She had never stopped loving him, even when the pain was at its worst.

“I need to go to him. I need to talk with him. Now,” she said. A horrible feeling knotted in the pit of her stomach. All of a sudden, she just knew she had to be with him right at this moment. She seized Michael’s arm. “I need to go to him right now!”

Michael seemed startled by the intensity of her proclamation but nodded.

They headed down to the car. As they drove, Michael called Joshua to tell him that they were leaving the town and to stay to take care of things, while Gwen texted Kira, who was with Lianne, to let her know she would be gone longer than anticipated.

When Michael hung up, he glanced at Gwen. “He’s not going to be happy that I brought you out of the protected area.”

Gwen thought about her vision of the barrier breach, the demon’s attack on Lianne, and how it lorded over her, laughing as the pack crumbled around her. “Sometimes happiness is not the point. Sometimes we just have to do what we have to do.”

It took them an hour to find Rafael and the special ops team.

Her fingers drummed impatiently on the door of the car.

She had just started to think that Rafael wasn’t going to be on the road at all when they turned a corner and came upon a tense stand-off.

Michael pulled the car to a stop and got out, gesturing for Gwen to stay inside.

Not likely. Rafael and the special ops team stood only half a dozen feet from the Alpha of another town on the island.

She couldn’t remember the Alpha’s name, only that there had been a rivalry between him and Randall, and that rivalry leaked through to the packs.

The unnamed Alpha had a dozen or so wolves with him, some shifted, others waiting for the word.

“What’s this, then?” the Alpha asked, narrowing his eyes at Gwen. “Did you send for your mate to come back you up?”

Rafael turned. His eyes met Gwen’s, and they narrowed. “Go back to town.”

One of the special ops stopped her from getting any closer. She glared at him briefly. “Rafael, I need to talk to you.”

“I’m a bit busy.”

“Trying to invade our territory,” the other Alpha spat.

Rafael turned back to him. His shoulders bunched with tension. “As I have explained, we need to do a sweep of your territory to ensure there are no demons—”

“And as I’ve explained, we have already done it. There aren’t any demons in my territory.”

Rafael growled.

Michael pushed himself through the special ops team to stand near his brother.

“Well, it sounds as though this is heading for disaster. Hi, I’m Michael Buchanan.

I believe we met once when I was six.” Michael held his hand to the other Alpha.

Gwen couldn’t see his face, but he sounded like he was smiling.

“Please forgive my brother’s insistence.

The demon has directly threatened his mate and child, so he’s not thinking as diplomatically as perhaps he should. ”

The other Alpha’s tension seemed to ease slightly. “A member of our pack was killed.”

“I know. The demon does seem to want us at each other’s throats.

” Michael put a hand on Rafael’s shoulder.

He murmured something in his brother’s ear.

Rafael first tensed, but after a moment, gave a stiff nod and turned on his heel.

He walked back through the special ops and reached for Gwen.

He tugged her into the backseat of the car and let out a ragged breath.

“You shouldn’t be here,” he murmured.

Gwen cupped his face in her hands. “I have to be here. I know that what I saw frightened you, but you can’t let that make you keep me at arm’s length. It’s like you said. We’re fighting a demon, and we need my magic. If Kira and Chelsey could access magic like me, we’d need them, too.”

Rafael’s shoulders sagged. “You can’t control your magic.”

“But I can access it. Some level of it has to be instinctual, like when I used magic to fight off the demon at the beach,” she said hopefully. Then there were her visions.

Her visions.

“You need to stay in town where it’s safe,” Rafael insisted.

“I’m not sure…” Gwen tapered off. Now didn’t seem like the time to tell him everything.

“The protections around town might be weakening. If your mother had to do magic to keep them from failing, then we can’t rely on them alone.

Just like you can’t have all the weight of responsibility on your shoulders. ”

Rafael’s jaw tightened.

She pointed out the window to where Michael was speaking with the other Alpha. “You weren’t getting anywhere. Now look, Michael has got him nodding. I know it’s hard, when you’ve taken on the weight of so much.”

Rafael slumped against her. His face buried into her neck. “I’m just so afraid that I’m not strong enough.”

“You don’t have to be strong enough, my love,” she whispered. “You have to be connected.”

His hands moved to her hips. “My love?” he repeated.

Gwen grinned, but before she could say anything more, his phone started to beep wildly. Rafael stiffened and jerked back. He pulled it from his pocket and swore.

“What is it?” she demanded.

“There’s been another demon sighting. Inside the town,” he said.

Gwen’s heart seized. Inside the town? But that meant…

“Lianne!”