Page 7 of Ronen (Sweet Alps Legacy #1)

“If we can get it all worked out, yes,” Matty said. “Besides, Becca batted her eyes and said please, and I can’t resist her big, brown eyes and she knows it. Especially with her being pregnant. She knew I was going to say yes before she even asked.”

I snorted, “And she knows you can’t tell Rory no, either.”

“Well,” Papa set his empty mug down, “I, for one, am thrilled you’re planning to be home. And I know Rory will be thrilled to have you home also. I think with both you and Patrick gone, she was feeling a bit off kilter. Especially with the baby coming now.”

“She’s not exactly what I would call maternal,” Dad commented dryly. “I mean neither was Quinn and that worked out okay, so I’m sure she’ll be fine. ”

Matty reached over and tried to ruffle my hair, but I ducked away from him. “Plus, I miss this dork.”

“I missed you a little, too,” I teased him, smoothing my hair down, after he had managed to get one swipe in. “Dad’s right though; Rory will be happy to have you home. I know she missed seeing Patrick at Christmas.”

Patrick and Rory were twins and were the second oldest of our cousins. Matty was the oldest and me the youngest, with four additional cousins sprinkled in between us.

Patrick had followed in our Uncle Quinn’s–his omega dad–footsteps and fallen in love with baking at a young age. He had spent the last several years in Paris, first studying at the famous Le Cordon Bleu, and most recently working as a pastry chef at the Ritz Paris.

“Speaking of Patrick,” Papa said, “your grandmother has planned to have a video call at dinner with both Patrick and Remy tonight.”

“It will be after midnight there,” I commented, easily converting the time difference.

Matty shrugged, “Eh, they’ll both be up, especially if Remy is dancing tonight. They are young omegas, in Paris, living their dreams. Trust me, those two run on very little sleep. They made me feel old when I saw them.”

Remy was another cousin, who was dancing as a prima ballerina in the Paris ballet.

Giving him a look, my voice serious, I told him, “That’s because you are old.”

“Fuck you,” he shot back, laughter in his voice.

“Thirty-five is super old.”

“Hey, I’m not thirty-five yet!”

“Close enough,” I snickered.

Papa pushed away from the table, taking his cup and rinsing it in the sink. “We’d better get going, we don’t want to be late. Are you boys driving with us, or on your own?”

“Matty better drive with you,” I stood up, and stretched. “That silly car of his isn’t made for snow.”

Matty rolled his eyes at me. “My car does just fine, thank you very much, and she’s so pretty when she does it. Besides, the roads are clear. But I will drive myself, since I have papers to grade tonight. I’ll need to head home probably before you two will want to leave.”

We all headed outside to our vehicles, and I noticed the ghost standing next to my Jeep. Throwing up a hand in a halting motion, I said, “No.”

My family, long used to the fact that I could see and talk to ghosts, kept walking.

“Anyone of interest?” Dad asked, opening the car door for Papa.

“Just William,” I told them, seeing Dad’s face turn into a mask of tightness. “So definitely not anyone of importance.”

“I need to speak to you,” William told me, though his icy blue eyes–the Sinclair eyes–were glued to my dad.

They really did look remarkably alike, especially as dad aged. Though in truth, William was forever younger–since he had died at fifty–than dad was.

“And,” opening my car door, I slid into my seat, jamming my key into the ignition.

I had forgotten my remote start again. “I have nothing to say to you. Go haunt someone else. Better yet, go into the light. Why are you still hanging around here? No one wants to speak to you. I asked the entire family. It was a resounding no. Might have been a couple of fuck no’s thrown in. ”

“Ronen, please,” William pleaded.

Instead of acknowledging him, I slammed the door, only to have him materialize in my passenger seat. Ignoring him, I turned on my classic hair band playlist and let the sounds of Def Leppard drown him out.

Thank the Goddess it was an extremely short drive to my grandmother’s house. About one and a half songs worth. Usually, the pulsing beat made my heart happy, but tonight it was just making my head hurt more than it already was from lack of sleep.

“Something’s coming!” William yelled over the lyrics about sugar, to which I was singing along at the top of my lungs. Loudly and off-key. “Something is coming for you!”

Slamming my Jeep to a halt in my grandmother’s circular drive in front of the five-story mansion she had called home since she was eighteen, I turned the music down and glared at him.

“Elaborate,” I demanded, crossing my arms over my chest defiantly, though the dreams that had been causing me to lose sleep sat in the back of my mind.

William shook his head full of thick, gray hair. “Something evil.”

“Ohhh, spooky,” I gave him my best jazz hands. “I’m going to need more than that.”

Matty was standing in front of my Jeep, giving me the are you okay look.

Holding my hands up in a I don’t know gesture, I rolled my eyes, then tossed a thumb at my seemingly empty seat.

My parents paused on the walkway outside the front door, and I waved at them to go inside, then I did the same to Matty. “I’ll be in in a minute. He’s being extra obstinate tonight. ”

“You sure?” Matty called, and I nodded, giving him a shoo/go motion.

He did what I asked, but with reluctance, I could tell.

Turning in my seat to face William, I waved my hand at him. “Well, come on, give me the scary details. Don’t just leave me hanging with an ominous warning about nothing.”

Instead of looking at me, he was staring up at the brick house, and I wondered if he ever regretted how he had spent his time here on earth. Ever regretted how he had treated his wife and children.

Doubtful, knowing what I knew of him.

“William?” Saying his name, I urged him to continue. The sooner he said what he thought he needed to, the sooner he would vanish once more.

“Hmm?” Slowly, he turned to look at me. “Oh, yes. I can’t explain what it feels like on this side of the veil, and I don’t have details yet, but I can see danger around you, Ronen. Something is coming. Something bad. And, I think–”

Whatever he was going to say was interrupted by the creak of metal as my passenger door was yanked open.

My grandmother, Mary, stood there, one hand braced on her ornately carved cane, the other planted on her hip. Her once blonde hair was now all white and cut in a stylish bob that framed her still pretty face.

Behind her towered her sons, all four of them–my dad and my uncles Lachlan, Brendan, and Finn.

If I had to guess, I would say they had been trying to stop their mother from whatever fuckery she was about to get up to.

She might be eighty-seven–having barely been nineteen when she had delivered her quads–but she was a feisty octogenarian, and still very much the matriarch of our family .

“William Sinclair,” she hissed, her voice sharp enough even I straightened in my seat.

She stared at the empty space of my passenger seat, her brown eyes narrowed.

“You listen to me, and you listen good. You are not welcome here. No one, and I do mean no one, has a damn thing to say to you. Over fifty years later and we are still trying to undo the psychological damage you did to our boys. Stop pestering my grandson!”

William–poor, dumb William–started to say, “He’s my grand–” even though no one but me could hear him.

Holding a hand up to indicate he should stop talking now, I warned him, “Don’t say it.”

Grandma Mary turned her look on me, leaning in a little. Very slowly, she demanded, “What did he say?”

“Mom, let’s just go inside,” my Uncle Lachlan–the oldest of the quads–urged, “you’re not even wearing a coat.”

Grandma looked over her shoulder at him, and even though I couldn’t see her face, all my uncles took a step back.

Turning back to me, she smoothed down her pink sweater with one hand and gave me a warm look. “Ronen, sweetheart, what was that man saying?”

Rubbing my forehead, where a headache was brewing, I blew out a breath. “I believe he was going to say that I’m his grandson too, or something to that effect.”

“Oh really?” She straightened to her full height, which, to be fair, wasn’t that much. It still seemed to push the boundaries of physics to me that my tiny grandmother had given birth to not one, but four, hulking alpha wolves.

Poking at the thin air over the seat, she miraculously landed a blow in the middle of William’s chest. Her finger went right through him, but still, it was impressive as fuck .

“You listen and you listen good, William. Sharing blood doesn’t make you a grandfather.

DNA means shit in this family. Because you know what?

Even if you had still been alive when he was born, you would have been a shit grandfather.

Like you were a shit father. And kind of a shit husband.

I used to chalk it up to the massive age-gap between us, but I think it really was just your personality.

Ronen had a wonderful grandfather and is better off for it.

Leave this boy alone! Leave my sons alone.

Stop trying to get Ronen to relay whatever messages you want to give them.

No one cares about your redemption tour from the grave. Too little, too late.”

She leaned in a little closer to the seat, her voice lowering menacingly, in a tone I had never heard my grandmother use.

“If I find out you haven’t stopped, when I die, I will make your afterlife a living hell.

You’ll wish you had gone into the light, or down to the depths of hell where you belong, when you had the chance! ”

“Okay,” my dad grasped her lightly by the arm, pulling her away from the open doorway. “Well, that was something, Mom, but let’s let the expert ghost whisperer handle it from here.”

“I mean it, William!” Grandma called, even while she was being manhandled back into the house. “You’ll see a side of me you never even dreamed existed!”

Pinching the bridge of my nose, I blew out another breath of hot air, feeling exhausted to my bones.

How the fuck was this my life?

“Just go away, William,” whispering, I closed my eyes, leaning my head back on my seat. “Please. Let me have some peace. ”

When I opened my eyes, it was to discover the seat next to me was blessedly empty. But his warning words hung over me like a black cloud.

Something is coming.