Page 64 of The Pack Next Door (The Wolfverse #4)

Gideon

The day of the launch

I had to remind myself that everything was fine.

Everyone on Briar’s team, my brothers included, had worked like Trojans to ensure it all came together.

We’d had meeting after meeting, were introduced to project management software, and I loved the way it mapped out the entirety of what we were trying to achieve.

Each time another part was checked off, it felt like we were putting another brick down, building something huge.

But if you build something, someone can always come along and try to destroy it.

The dark fear kept me up the night before the launch, allowing me very little sleep. I’d lain there in the massive bed in Briar’s apartment, listening to my mate’s and my brothers’ long, slow breaths while my mind raced, trying to identify anything we’d missed.

We hadn’t.

“Ready?” Briar said when we arrived at the church. I was already out of the car, opening her door for her. All of the adrenaline that was coursing through my veins needed to be directed somewhere, and right now, this was it.

“More than ready,” I assured her, then looked up to see Mads arrive with the truck full of all the stock. “Jace?”

“Already on it.” He placed a little kiss on Briar’s nose. “We’ve got the heavy stuff. You go in with Em and start working out how you want this to look.”

According to the carefully designed diagram we’d created, I wanted to insist, but that wasn’t how this worked. Not for the first time, I cursed the fact that my mate was involved in a creative industry, because apparently that meant one hundred per cent more unpredictability.

Except fate had decided she was the one woman in the world for me.

Because this was her dream, I’d sat up late, looking at videos made by museum curators and gallery owners, discussing the way pieces could be displayed and protected in public spaces.

I was still learning, but it helped to know there was a logic to it.

Today would be the first time I got to put that to the test and so we walked towards the truck.

Boxes were unloaded, each item carefully unwrapped.

All hands were on deck as Briar and Emma focussed on displaying each pot.

Seb worked to clear the space of all debris, storing the boxes and bubble wrap in the back of the truck, while we did the heavy work.

I blinked when we got to the last box, feeling strangely hollow when it was done. What the hell did I do now?

“Food truck has arrived and they want to know where to set up?” Seb called out as he joined us inside the church. Briar looked up from a discussion she was having with Emma, a slight frown on her face.

“On it,” I said, because this I knew. Where to set up, how they would access power and water, it was all pre-planned so I left the church to deal with the food service.

Once they were ready to go, the first savoury scents of cooking food melding with the resin of the gum trees, I was free to walk back inside.

“Gideon?”

I turned to see the security team had arrived.

Brent was a retired police officer who now worked event security.

Most of what his team would be doing was managing the informal parking arrangements on church grounds.

He held out his hand and I shook it firmly as he glanced at the venue.

“It’s all looking good out here. People are going to start arriving in about an hour, right? ”

I went to agree, when the crunch of tyres on stone had us both turning to find the source. No one was supposed to… Claws felt like they were raking across my chest, leaving trails of white-hot pain in their wake.

“Who’s this?” Brent asked the question, not understanding how important the answer was. “Someone must’ve gotten the time wrong.”

“No.” I was moving forward. “Some people have the wrong place.”

I knew my fathers’ truck well. A massive beast of a machine, the thick tyres bit into the gravel, sending rocks flying as they drove into the carpark, ignoring the team’s attempt to set up temporary barriers.

And wasn’t that a metaphor for my parents’ entire existence.

“Found you, son.”

Ned dropped out of the passenger side seat and beer cans rolled free, clattering on the ground as he approached. Brent’s brows drew down. Perhaps because the stink of alcohol was detectable even at this distance. I closed the gap in a few strides, because this, this was my true purpose, I realised.

Mads and Jace could’ve handled the transport and moving of all the items on their own. I was an extra pair of hands, but not more useful than any other. Emma understood the protocols for a launch and it was Briar’s vision we all followed, but I…

I was the big dog in the car park, ready to protect them all from being touched by this shit.

“What the fuck are you doing here?” I snarled.

“Gideon…?” Had my mother’s voice always sounded like nails dragged down a chalk board? My head whipped around to see her rushing over, clutching her handbag close to her chest. “Darling boy.”

Tears filled her eyes as she stumbled over the gravel ground in her haste to get to me. She reached out to grip my arm and I jerked back before she could touch me, knowing somehow just how it would sting.

“Son.” Max tromped over, the keys to the car swinging from his finger. Thankfully he was sober, mostly. Greg was slumped, eyes closed, on the back seat. “This has all gone on for long enough. I know it's exciting that you’ve found your mate?—”

“That woman.” My mother’s face transformed. Tears evaporated in the face of her ire. She scowled at the church, and I was shocked when it didn’t immediately turn into a ball of flames. “She’s not your mate. Gideon?—”

Another attempt to touch me. A bid for attention, that’s what the beta relationship experts called it, and I made clear what I thought about that.

“Do not touch me.”

The wolf snarled that, no longer able to be held down.

He’d made clear to me over and over how wrong the family dynamic was, but I’d forced him into silence.

I wanted his power, his skills of observation, to be used in whatever way my family saw fit.

Well, no more. Black fur sprouted all along my arms, my hands going to claws.

“Oh…” Mum’s hand went to her mouth and she let out a shuddering breath. “Oh, did you see that? Ned?—”

“I know.” He shouldered forward, stepping between me and my mother. “Don’t talk to your mother like that.”

“Or what?”

It was then he realised the mistake he’d made. What made him value me more than my brothers was the height, the strength, he didn’t possess. Forced to crane his neck to stare into my eyes as I stepped up and met his challenge, he saw then the mistake he’d made.

“You did your best to train me to be the biggest, scariest prick in any situation,” I said and with a blink, I remembered every savage lesson he visited upon me. “Because you thought one day, you’d be able to use that to your advantage.”

“Gideon, mate—” Max started to say.

“Shut the fuck up.” My focus shifted back to Ned, and that sloppy smile, I knew it all too well.

There was something dangerous about all of my fathers, but none more than Ned.

A recklessness that Mads had inherited, but without an ounce of decency to moderate it.

“Now, this is this is going to go. None of you are going to ruin today for Briar.”

I couldn’t do this for myself, but for my mate? I’d choose her every damn day, and that would be put to the test today.

“Get the fuck back in your car and turn it around, driving anywhere other than the city, because that’s my territory now, and I will not tolerate any of you within it.”

“Everything alright, Gideon?”

Brent looked me and my parents over warily. Instincts honed on the force made clear that a situation was unfolding.

“Nothing I can’t handle,” I said with an appreciative nod. And I could. That came as a shock to realise. All of their training made me perfect for a role they never intended for me to fulfil. “Now, go?—”

“Where?” Max’s desperate tone was a revelation. “You think we wouldn’t be here if we had any other choice?”

“We’re your family, boy,” Ned snapped. “You’d be nothing without us.”

“I’d rather be nothing.” That hollowness inside me, it made sense now.

They’d created it, scooping out every part of my personality they saw as weak or irrelevant.

Five things you can see, I told myself. Four things you can hear.

But I didn’t need to deploy those coping skills, misusing them to stuff everything I felt down.

“Because I’m not your dog anymore. I gave you the keys to a home in the town you said you wanted to live in. Any debt between us has been settled.”

“Except that vicious little queen wouldn’t let us keep it.” It was then I saw behind the mask my mother wore. Something very ugly rose, showing her true face to the world. “Took far too much pride, kicking us out of ‘his’ town.”

If you’d asked me this morning if I could laugh at the idea of seeing my parents again, I’d have thought you were mad, but that’s just what I did.

It all played out in my head. Omega Hart declaring my parents verboten, no doubt because they’d overstepped, starting fomenting dissent.

Unwilling to just let sleeping dogs lie, they’d have sealed their own fate and come whining to me to fix it.

“So go back to Glen Hallow,” I said.

“That’s not happening either.”

Max had the grace to look embarrassed by that.

“Had words with the ruling pack before we left to see the alpha trials, I did.” Ned swayed a little on his feet. “Words you can’t come back from.”

“Work out a way.” This wasn’t a plea, but a command, and it felt so good to say. “Or don’t. I can’t find it in me to care either way. This…?” I flicked a finger between the lot of them and the car. “Isn’t my problem anymore.”

“We’re your parents,” Ned snapped.

That had me stepping forward, getting right into his face.

“Where was that parental bond when I found my mate?”

“She’s not your mate!” Mum fought her way past Max’s arms, trying to insert herself between us, but that would never happen. “This isn’t you, Gideon.” Her tone changed completely, becoming soft, pleading. “The boy I raised would never treat his mother like this.”

“And any mother who cared for her son would’ve been ecstatic about him finding the other half of his soul.

” I meant that to come out as a growl, but instead the words were torn from me.

Scars I thought long healed on my heart began to bleed freely.

“She would’ve done everything she could to ensure he was happily mated, living his own life.

Instead…” I shook my head. “Instead you just pushed and pushed and pushed, using me to get what you wanted.”

“Because you were the mate I was supposed to have!” There is a strange kind of pain, hearing something articulated that you knew on some subconscious level, but never actually said out loud.

Mum’s grip was like iron as she clamped down on my arm.

“When I carried you in my body, just below my heart, I knew. I’d have a son, a perfect son, who would be everything his fathers weren’t. ”

“Bloody hell, April…” Max cursed.

“I was forced to be your mother,” she ground out. “When I was born to be your mate.”

My stomach heaved as anger gave way to a violent wave of revulsion. Hands moved on automatic, plucking her from the ground, then deposited her at the feet of Max.

“Get her out of here.” My muscles swelled as my wolf pushed forward. This was the biggest threat we’d ever faced, and he would never allow me to fight it without his aid. “Get her the fuck out of here. Get her out of here NOW!”

Everyone stumbled back, and for a heartbeat I felt the instincts they’d beaten into me rise.

I would destroy them all. One shuddering breath, then another, it was all I could focus on, as my dads scrambled back.

My mother screamed something incomprehensible, but Max picked her up bodily, shoving her into the backseat of the car as Ned walked stiff-legged over to the passenger side door.

“You’ll regret this, son.”

Except I wouldn’t. As my breathing evened out, as the tension slowly ratcheted down, I felt it.

Relief.

That rushed in, filling the hollow in my chest, and created fertile ground where there was only desert before. That flickering flame of hope? It roared to life as Brent moved closer. We both watched the truck pull out abruptly, then go hurtling down the road.

“Well, that was some fucked up shit.” I couldn’t help but snort at that.

“Like I’ve seen some twisted shit on the force, but…

” He glanced up at me. “You handled that real well, mate. Wasn’t sure if I was gonna have to call an attempted murder in there for a second, but you sorted them out.

” A hand landed on my arm and gave it a squeeze.

“If you ever need to talk about it, I can recommend some people.”

“Only one that matters right now,” I croaked out. “You’ve got the car park sorted?”

“Trust us to handle this.” His head tilted towards the church. “You go and handle your girl.”

That, that was what I needed.

I was in the church in a few strides, only to find Briar chatting with Emma. I wound my way through the many plinths, careful not to nudge a one, before picking my mate up and carrying her over to where the pulpit would’ve been. Coloured light bathed her face as she looked up at me.

“Everything OK, Gideon?”

“Is now,” I replied. “Briar…?” Why was pissing my parents off so much easier than this. “I… After the launch, we…”

She smiled then, holding my palm against her face.

“Been waiting for you to ask, big guy.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

The skin around her eyes creased.

“Yeah, you did.” Her other hand covered my heart. “Right here and I heard it, loud and clear.”

I lifted her hand and pressed a kiss to her palm, treasuring the feel of her skin against mine.

“You keep doing that and my heart will answer yours every damn time.”