Page 23

WINTER

The mug holding my coffee feels so cold against my hands. Perhaps it is matching the numbing cold that has engulfed me and made it hard to breathe.

I gaze at the brown liquid, my wolf’s pain radiating all the way from my consciousness to the heart that’s beating painfully in my chest.

Speaking makes me feel like I’ll break.

Admitting my mistakes feels like I’m getting a slap in the face.

The words, “You were wrong about him,” engrave every inch of my mind, and trying to seem okay only crushes me further.

“Winter,” Luka’s voice, soft to a fault, washes over me. His hand reaches out against mine, and he rubs my knuckles tenderly.

I don’t want that.

I don’t want to sit in this small cafe, broken and getting consoled.

I promised myself I'd never cry over a man. I’d never cry over him.

“Everything will be okay. We’ll help you find a new job. My sister’s boyfriend works for a great company downtown. I can recommend you, and you’ll get the job in no time,” Julie offers with a concerned smile.

The minute I got in the elevator, going up to Deacon's office with my resignation letter, I knew it would be difficult.

So, I dropped the letter and called my friends, and ten minutes later, here we are in our favorite cafe.

I told my friends I was resigning and that I can’t work for Deacon anymore. They didn’t ask questions.

Looking at them now, those hot tears I’ve been holding for so long spill like flash floods.

“I let him mark me,” and the mark throbs so much more than it did when we were in Deacon’s house. “Beneath this scarf…is his mark on me. Funny thing is I was the one who asked for it. I-I begged him. Can you believe that? I begged that son of a bitch to put his fangs on me when…he already had his Luna waiting for him back home.”

If Julie and Luka are surprised by the news, they don’t show it.

They don’t judge me, but they should.

I fell for Deacon’s charm twice. The first time I was a child, the second time…I'm an adult. What does fall for the same trick twice say about me?

“Imagine the surprise of seeing him…being kissed by another woman. And worse, imagine the woman introducing herself as his Luna while I stood there in his house with his children and his mark on me. How could I have been so stupid? How could I… I let him break me a second time?”

I should also mention that the woman in question was my best friend. The woman barely acknowledged my presence as she explained to my children that she was Deacon’s Luna, and I was the…other woman.

“My boys…Adrian and Ash wanted him to become their new daddy, you know? I couldn't even… I couldn’t even look at them in the face when they asked me if Deacon’s Luna has kids, too. They were so disappointed, Julie. They…I made my boys like Deacon, and now they are paying for it.”

“No,” Julie’s hand joins Luka’s, and together, my friends console me, “This is not on you. This is on him, you hear me? You moved on from him, and you can do it again, Winter.”

Last time, I didn’t have his mark on me. I wasn’t chained to him last time!

Pulling my hands away from them and wiping my tears, I whisper in exhaustion, “I need time…to think and regroup. I left Addie and Ash with Isabel, and they weren’t too happy because they knew something was wrong with me. So, I have to…I have to be with my boys. Thank you for this. I needed this.”

“You don’t have to thank us, Win. We’ll always be here for you. If I had known that the bastard had some other woman waiting for him on the other side of the world while he fooled around with you, I would have punched him in the face without caring if he fired me or not.”

I’d love to punch Deacon in the face, too.

“No. You are not punching your boss, and you are not losing your job because of me. I’ll be fine, okay?”

I’ll recover like I always do, but this heartbreak? It feels so much worse than last time.

Luka and Julie bid me goodbye, and I sat in my car and tried to find the urge to drive to my kids and be okay.

My mark throbs and I recall the feel of Deacon licking it last night while I reveled in his scent and touch.

How good it felt last night, and how very stupid I was for thinking he was mine.

How long has he been with Crystal? Since I left?

Did he make her Luna as soon as I left?

Do they have children?

Did he…did he mark her? I didn’t check her neck. I should have checked her neck.

So many questions haunt and rack my mind that by the time I drive and reach home, I don’t stop to ask myself why I can’t hear my babies laughing and screaming like they always do. I swear, most times, you can almost hear them just from the driveway. Today, there’s more silence than I can stomach, and that makes panic and dread intermingle in my blood as I open the door and step into the foyer.

“Ash? Addie?”

My voice is an echo in my own ears.

“Adrian? Baby?”

Each step I take past my foyer to my living room steals the little oxygen nestled in my lungs.

I know what my wolf is thinking. I can practically hear her fears.

What if Deacon took Ash and Addie? What if he finally realized that they were his kids and came after them?

I nearly choke on nothing but saliva in my throat when I enter the living room.

“Winter!” Isabel’s almost relieved voice beckons to me.

“Mommy!” Ash screams for me.

Adrian looks terrified to death.

I narrow my eyes into slits at the sight in front of me.

Isabel protectively hides my boys behind her, and they are all nestled in the corner of my living room, without a doubt, spooked by the figure of a man standing in the middle of the room.

I have no clue who this guy is.

Not from his back that’s hidden with a black hoodie to his dark faded jeans that look like they’ve undergone a thousand washings.

I’d be calm if I thought it was Deacon in my living room or Luka, but this new guy doesn’t look like Deacon or Luka or any other guy I know from the neighborhood or the office.

He’s lean, less built, and more importantly, he is in my home, unannounced and unwelcomed.

“He barged right in. He kept saying he knows you. That he— he can’t leave without speaking to you,” Isabel explains, and I almost want to thank her for her bravery.

“Everything is okay. Everything is going to be okay,” I assure Adrian and Ash.

Isabel nods at my words as if she trusts me.

My words somehow trigger some sort of reflex action in the Hoodie guy because he takes a step toward my kids, and I lose it immediately.

“You hurt my kids and I won't hesitate to rip you apart. Who are you and what are you doing in my house?” I demand, my voice slightly trembling with a mixture of fear and fury.

The guy stands straight like he's listened to every word I've said and decided to heed to it.

The hoodie guy decides to turn around, and I freeze when I catch a glimpse of his face.

My throat constricts.

My heart leaps in my throat like I’ve severed an artery.

“Winter,” his deep, gravelly voice booms in my entire living room. My purse, my phone, and everything I had in my hands fall to the floor as I approach the man who shouldn’t be…here. It’s impossible.

Gnashing scars rest on his face, but that can’t hide the familiarity in those eyes.

Those scars aren’t hiding the fact that my older brother is standing in front of me.

“J—Jake? Jacob?”

It’s impossible.

I’m… I’m seeing things. I have to be.

To ascertain my claims, I reach out to him, my hands shaking.

Our hands touch. His rough, calloused hand touches my shaking one.

“It’s me, Winter. I’m back, kiddo.”

Kiddo? He used that nickname on me when we were kids. It's been seven years since…

“How?” I shake my head, tears streaming down my cheeks, “The fire…the fire…they said you were all dead. There were…there were bones of you, mom, and dad. You died! You were dead. You…all of you left me. Jake, you …you left me!”

“You two know each other?” Isabel asks, and my boys hold her hands tightly, not believing for a second that they are safe.

My throat dries up as I nod to Isabel’s question. I can’t believe it. I just…how?

“Yes,” I whisper, trying to muffle a sob so that my babies don’t get the wrong idea.

Isabel picks up on the tension because she offers a small, relieved smile and says, “Who wants to play video games in Mommy’s room while we eat ice cream?”

Addie and Ash look at me and then at Isabel. They are not too sure whether to leave with Isabel or leave me with a man they barely know.

“Alright then. We’ll give you two some space to talk.”

Jacob and I watch Isabel and the boys as they disappear from our sight.

The pain from seven years ago hits my chest a hundredfold as I stare at my brother again. I saw the remains. I received condolences from my pack because the family I knew was dead.

I’m frantic, I’m dehydrated from all the crying since last night, and my mind still doesn’t come to terms with the reality in front of me.

“I never had a choice, Win. He didn’t give me a choice,” Jacob says in a cryptic tone.

Seven years later, we’ve both changed.

I have kids.

My brother? The Goddess wasn’t merciful to him. He has red scars on his face, most of them running from his forehead all the way down to his upper lip.

The brother I knew has grown into a man. His hair is longer and requires a trim, an ungroomed stubble peppers his chin, and in his eyes, gone is the light that I used to find comfort in and get annoyed by all at the same time.

“Mom? Dad? Are they…are they alive, too?”

I can only hope.

“No. He made sure to kill them, too.”

“Jake, I don’t understand. He who? Who is he?”

“The fire, Win. It was a trap. They locked us in, and made sure that we couldn’t get out. They poured wolfsbane around the house to weaken us, Winter. Mom, Dad, me… we couldn’t shift. Mom was the first one to perish in the fire. She screamed for my help, for Dad’s help, but we couldn’t do anything. I…I couldn’t do anything. Dad saw mom die, and he gave up.”

There’s no putting a stop to the hot rivulet of tears cascading down my cheeks. I sob even harder than I did that night because listening to how they actually died brings in the mental image of how they suffered.

My mother was a good woman. She did not deserve that kind of death, and the fact that she got killed just like I told the pack seven years ago makes me angrier and more vengeful.

Maybe I should have fought harder for my parents’ justice. I should have fought to avenge the cruel way my parents were taken from me.

“I told Dad we had to leave, but he gave up. I remember screaming his name, and then I remember the smoke choking me and taking my air away. The fire…I can still feel it.”

I pat his shoulder, but that will not erase everything he went through. I want to say a lot to him and apologize for not being there to help him get out of the fire. Apologize for the gnawing scars on his face and probably on the parts of his body that I can’t see.

But at the end of the day, nausea for what he went through strangles me. Tears choke my throbbing throat. It’s hard to even speak.

Disgust and white-hot anger for the people who did that to him, to our family blaze like an eternal inferno inside of me.

All the pain. All the anguish I feel is somehow sated by the fact that my brother is here. Those monsters didn't take him away from me.

He’s here now, and that's all that matters.

My brother is alive.

“The next time I woke up, I was alone. The person who had rescued me told me Mom and Dad were already dead and buried, and you had disappeared. Winter, he tore our family apart, and there was nothing I could do about it.”

I should ask who rescued him.

I should ask how he found us and where he's been all this time but I focus on the one thing burning the tip of my tongue.

But my main concern is the mastermind of the fire. Who was that cruel to take away the only people I loved away from me? Who could have been that cruel to murder such innocent people in such a barbaric way, like using wolfsbane to make sure they never shifted and really died in that fire?

“Who? Jake, who was responsible for the fire? Who are you referring to as “he’?”

Pain radiating from his face alone, my brother looks at me, his gaze hard and so convinced of the words spilling out of his mouth.

“Deacon Cross.”

My feet stagger backward as I shake my head with a “no” so sure I heard him wrong.

“Deacon? It wasn't him. He couldn't have started the fire.”

“You are defending him?”

Aggression leaks into Jake's voice, and I cover my wobbling lips, pressing back the sob of surprise.

“No. He couldn't have started the fire because he was with me that night! He was with me, Jake. He was your best friend. He would never—”

“Never do what, Winter? Stay with you in the woods so he could have an alibi? Have enough power to send people to our house to torch us up?”

It doesn't make sense. Deacon is a lot of things, but I saw the surprise in his face that night when I found my parents murdered.

“Why? Why would he…if he did what you are accusing him of? Why would he do that?”

Jake runs his hand in his hair, chuckling like crazy before his dead, cold eyes find mine.

“Did he tell you he found out you were his mate first? Did he tell you he wanted you to be his as soon as you turned eighteen, but Mom and Dad refused, saying you needed to find love on your own? I also warned him to never lay a finger on you. Being the Alpha's son by then, I guess he took me, Mom, and Dad as threats. He tried to eliminate us to get you for himself.”

That doesn't make any sense at all.

I want to hate Deacon. I want to blame him for everything wrong that has happened in my life. But this? This doesn't sound like him.

“Jake, I don't—”

Jacob steps forward, the space between us being as narrow as a thread. To another person, he would be scary. To me he is the same brother who taught me how to climb a tree, ride a bike, and everything I needed to know about my future wolf.

“Seven years later, and you still put Deacon Cross on a pedestal, Winter. You don't believe me? Ask him. Go to him and ask him what happened that night. If your so-called mate fails to look you in the eye when he tells you his version of the truth, you'll know he is lying. Then, you'll know the father of your kids is nothing more than a killer.”