Page 47 of The Pack Next Door (The Wolfverse #4)

Mads

“Briar!” She was walking away. That thought was like a thin whine in my head, cutting through all the bullshit, and that had me moving.

“Briar, babe…” I threw myself off the deck and marched beside her, but she didn’t even spare me a second look.

Her car, that’s what she was focussed on and I quickly saw why.

Packed and ready to go. “You’re leaving? ”

“It’s for the best.”

She went to wrench her door open, but my hand was on it, closing it again without thought. That was a mistake. My mate taking a step backwards, the burnt smell of her scent transmuting into something else…

Fear?

I snatched my hand back as if the car was made of molten metal, staring at her.

“For the best? Look, I didn’t say anything before, but I’m not staying here.”

I’d practised this so many times in my head, but in no scenario had she watched me act like a damn feral wolf on the footy field. My eyes sought hers, my fingers itching to tip her chin my way.

But I’d lost that right.

Never had it, that was the problem. I’d let Gideon, my family’s, bullshit get in the way of everything that mattered, and that ended today.

“Wherever you are, that’s where I want to be, Briar.” I dared a smile. “If the city is that?—”

“It’s taken until now for me to understand the pack that rejected me,” she said, pulling the car door open in a circumspect way that made my heart ache. “They didn’t want to hurt me, but they couldn’t work out a way to do that, so they just let things happen.”

The sound of the car engine starting had me staring at the bonnet, then her, unable to put two and two together.

Not wanting to.

“That’s me now. I knew there was no future for us, but I let myself get close anyway. I shouldn’t have, and for that I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. We—” I said.

“Agreed whatever… this is, it was only temporary, until I left town,” she said as the window was wound down.

“Well, I’m going…” My mate looked around her as if seeing the house she was born in for the first time.

“I’m going home, alone.” She stared into my eyes then, meaningfully, as if trying to ensure I understood.

“Your place is here and mine is in the city. Have a nice life, Maddox.”

My birth name hit me like a slap to the face, and perhaps that’s why I stumbled backwards. Just in time to see her back her car out of the driveway, leaving me staring after her, unable to work out how the hell I got here.

But I knew.

Turning on my heel, I stormed back to the house to find the bullshit was still raging.

“Running after an omega,” Mum tutted. “Gods, Maddox, I thought I taught you?—”

“Don’t you think you’ve said enough?”

Yelling at my mother wasn’t exactly my proudest moment, but if there was any other way to stop the torrent of bullshit, I would’ve taken it.

It wasn’t my mother’s fault that my omega had just taken off like her arse was on fire; it was mine.

I was the one that acted like a damn savage on the field.

My hand rubbed at my forehead, remembering every hit, every body slam.

I was the one that showed Briar exactly who I was trained to be.

But not who I really was.

I’d fought my family every damn day and finally being vindicated wasn’t the amazing moment I thought it would be.

Scanning the deck, I realised that this, all of this, wasn’t important.

Just Briar. The wolf settled then, no longer pushing hard to take control, because we were in complete accord.

With a shake of my head, I clicked my fingers.

“Keys,” I demanded, staring at Gideon. “Keys, now.”

“You’re going after her?” Jace looked too pale as he stared down the road. “I’m in.”

Finally, my pack was starting to get it.

“What?” And there was Mum, going spouting off again. “But the last alpha trial is in a few days!”

“Don’t care,” I growled. My wolf was one hundred percent done.

Staying in this pack was something I had to fight him about every damn day.

He didn’t understand the dynamic, the way everything was said, and yet none of it was honestly how people felt.

Being in this pack was killing him. Well, that ended now.

“Give me the fucking keys, Gideon, or I swear?—”

“You’ll do what?” My brother was spoiling for a fight, which just had me smiling bitterly. Usually that was me, but he never rose to the bait. “Beat the shit out of me?”

Well, if he was going to co-opt my role in the pack, I’d take his. Don’t engage, just focus on what was important, and that was Briar.

“I’m going, Gideon.” Gods, it felt so good to say that.

“I’ll run all the way to the city in fur and rock up to Briar’s place stark naked, if that’s what it takes.

” Jace’s snort of shock had me smiling. “But I’d rather not be arrested for public indecency, so gimme the fucking keys.

Better yet.” My head tilted to one side. “Come with us.”

“Gideon.” Mum grabbed at my brother’s arm, clinging like a vine, and wasn’t that familiar. I’d come across a clip talking about emotional incest and sometimes I wondered what the fuck was going on between the two of them. “You can’t go. Who’ll protect me if you leave?”

“Your mates.” I thought I said that, but Jace did in a voice as flat and dead as my own. “There’s three of them sleeping off their beers inside, but you’re hardly likely to get assaulted in Moon River.”

“He’ll send me back to Glen Hallow.” Mum didn’t say a word to either of us, focussed entirely on Gideon.

“That… Omega Hart. He never could handle competition. It’s why he blocked our attempts to move town all these years.

If I go back…” Gideon went milk pale, swallowing hard, and it was then I worked out what the fuck was going on. “You know what will happen to me.”

He looked down at her hand, and I was pretty sure I knew what he was seeing. A ring of black bruises around her wrist, turning purple, then a sickly green as they healed. I knew that because I never forgot that moment either.

“I do.” The look my mother gave me then, it was as if her mask slipped and something fucking ugly peeked past it. “This is how you’ve kept him in line all this time?”

Gideon was bigger and stronger than me, than almost every other alpha I knew, so we deferred to him more often than not, but apparently he had an Achilles heel the competitors in the trials could never exploit. I grinned, the air playing over my fangs as I turned back to my brother.

“Nothing is what’s going to happen to Mum if she goes back to Glen Hallow. The ruling pack fucking sucks. It’s no place to be vulnerable, to need help.” I blinked, a memory coming back unbidden. “But they aren’t arseholes enough to hurt a damn omega.”

“What?”

Jace prowled forward, his eyes blazing silver, and I let out a long sigh.

Sometimes it felt like being in this family was a burden I had carried since the moment I was born.

I tried to point out the bullshit, the hereditary crap everyone seemed determined to pass on, and somehow that made me the bad guy.

“Gideon, don’t listen?—”

Did he hear the fearful tremor in Mum’s voice? The first real note of emotion, I realised.

“We swore to protect Mum.” My arms crossed my chest. “Well, you have to know I wasn’t about to sit around and wait until I was grown to strike back against a man who’d hurt my own mother. I’d do what the dads wouldn’t.”

“Jace, darling?—”

Shit, she was looking wider for support, but for once my brothers listened to me.

“I marched up to the alpha residence,” I said, able to see it clearly.

“All of fourteen years old and hadn’t even shifted yet, I demanded to see the alphas.

The enforcers gave me an audience for the sport of it.

Stumbling into their living room, I had the attention of every damn person there when I told them what I’d do to the man that hurt my mother. ”

Gods, that day was seared on my brain. It was a core memory I could never suppress.

“You did what?”

Gideon barely breathed that out.

I swallowed hard, staring in through the door from the deck to the house, as if that would rouse my drunken fathers from the couch. “They told me that the only alpha that hurt Mum was Ned.”

“What…?”

Everyone kept saying that dumb fucking word, and why was that?

My own fathers told me my brothers knew all about this and were determined to keep the peace.

The ruling pack’s words rang in my head.

That Ned had come home from the pub drunk and Mum started railing at him for the life they lived, the weakest pack in town.

That she was made for more than this. On and on she went, even after Ned told her to shut up, getting in his face when he tried to walk away.

His hands had shot out and with all the power of his body, he’d gripped her wrists tightly and then gave her a shake to shut her up.

I’d taken a swing at Ned the minute I got home, all that rage and fear giving me some power, but he’d met it easily.

Sober now, all the dads stepped forward, making clear what a mistake it would be to continue down this path.

Mum said she’d forgiven Ned, and I needed to as well.

I’d asked her, begged her, to leave with me and my brothers.

Somehow, we’d find a way to provide for and protect her.

She’d dismissed the idea as ridiculous, just like she always did when I came up with a solution, right up until the point I’d said I’d tell my brothers the truth.

“Mum said you knew.” The wolf and I watched our brothers’ faces for every expression. “She said that they told you what Ned did, and he apologised.”

“No…” Gideon shook his head back and forth almost convulsively. “No. No.”

“Never said a word about that to me.” Jace was always Mr. Smiley, but there was none of that now. Something very hard and very angry rose as he stared at our mother. “Not one. Just rabbited on about getting out of Glen Hallow.”

“Your father was under a lot of stress,” Mum snapped.

“And that’s your problem, not ours.”

Why the hell had that only occurred to me now? It was like I was holding my breath under water for so long, my lungs burning with the effort. But air was right there, if I just allowed myself to bob up and take a breath.

I did that right now.

My house keys were in my hands in seconds and I threw them at my mother. She made a small cry as if in pain, even though they landed at her feet.

“You wanted a place here? As far as I’m concerned, the house is yours.

” Was that a gleam in her eyes? “You just have to suck up to Omega Hart for long enough to get permission to move in. Me?” My arms were thrown wide as I stepped towards the door.

“I’m fucking done with all of this bullshit.

You can either come with me to find Briar?—”

“I’m in.” I’d waited my whole fucking life for Jace to look at me like this, and it was a strange kind of pleasure.

It hurt as much as it pleased me. What would it’ve been like, to have this kind of understanding before now?

“One hundred percent.” The look he shot Mum was one of disgust. “Should’ve been from the start. ”

“Finally getting your head out of your arse, brother?” He shot me a wry smile before punching my arm. “Good to have you with me, because I think it’s gonna take all of us to make clear we’re the alphas for Briar.”

That’s when we all turned to stare at Gideon.

“I’ll notify the Hart pack that we are withdrawing our application for transfer to Moon River.

” Gideon could be a cold prick, but Mum had never been on the receiving end of it.

Her face crumpled, her hands shaking as she reached for him.

He brushed past, completely unperturbed, to slap the car keys into my hands.

“Because we are done here.” His smile was tentative.

The muscles in his face, they didn’t seem to know how to work properly.

“I fucked up. I fucked everything up, but…” He stared off down the road our mate had taken out of town.

“The only alpha trial I care about is getting back our omega.” Gideon’s eyes met mine.

“Making it up to her… and to you, brother.”

He offered me his hand and I shook it, unable to believe what I was hearing. Didn’t stop me from running upstairs, shoving whatever I needed into my suitcases. Rolling them downstairs, I found that we had an audience as we carried our bags outside.

“This is a mistake,” Ned growled, his eyes still bloodshot.

“Nope—” I went to reply, but Gideon was there before me, pushing in between us. The dads were forced to crane their neck to look up into his eyes.

“The only mistake we made was listening to the four of you.” He shoved his house keys into Ned’s hands. “Not one I’ll make again.” He turned to Jace and me. “Everyone ready?” I shook my head with a rueful smile at his bossy bullshit. “So what do we do next, Mads?”

Drive for hours in shifts, someone sleeping and someone sitting beside the driver, getting closer and closer to the city.

Then someone navigating when we hit the city, all our eyes going wide at the sight of so many buildings, people, cars.

No time for rubbernecking, though. We pulled up at the first petrol station, and while filling the car up, we worked out what to do next.

“We don’t know where Briar lives.” Jace’s finger moved across his screen, scrolling and scrolling as he tried to find her address.

“But we do know where Omega Core’s warehouse is.” The two of them stared at me. “She’s gotta turn up to work sometime, right? Or her employees will.”

With a nod, we paid for the petrol and grabbed a bunch of service station flowers and a box of chocolates.

Wasn’t enough, but maybe it would go some way towards re-opening the conversation.

That in mind, we got into the car, pulled up the address on the GPS, and made our way through the city streets.