Page 148 of Claimed

“He raped Aphra Starling the day after he did that to me. Beat her up pretty badly. I took care of her. He’d muttered that it worked with Father twice. So that means he thinks the same as me… that my mother might have been Father’s cousin. Or… he knows it for a fact. I don’t know.”

“Fuck.”

“When he offered to pair me up with Mal and take me off the rotation, I knew I wouldn’t have to endure it from anybody but Mal and Mal was always nice to me so I thought maybe he wouldn’t have even made me do it or if he did, maybe he’d be gentler than some of the others. If Wy knew a guy liked a girl, he wouldn’t let him have her unless he paid dearly. The same if a girl liked a guy. He controlled the rotation like he controlled everything else around here – whatever way benefited him the most.”

Grey’s eyes rage with his anger as he says, “Based on what Joel says, that guy in our cell is in love with you, wife. He wanted more than an alliance with you. He wants you.”

“I just wanted to get Wyatt to stop destroying us. I never wanted to hurt anyone. I don’t love Malachi, Grey. But… could you ask Joel to let him out of the cell? He doesn’t belong there.”

Grey’s eyes work over me for a minute before he nods. “And I know you don’t love him,” he rasps then clears his throat. “And it’s obvious you’ve done whatever you can do to help yourpeople. Your people love you for it. The look of relief on their faces last night when you told them how it is with our pack – they trust you. You’ve taken the role of an alpha’s wife here. You give them hope and for the sick especially, hope makes a difference. Too bad your brother didn’t take the role of what an alpha is supposed to be to his pack seriously.”

“I hate him, Grey. I’ve thought for a long time that maybe it’d be better if he was dead, better for all of us, but now I don’t only think that it’d be better, I want toseeit. I want to watch the life leave his body the way it left Roger’s. Pain in his expression. I want him to hurt, and I want to know his hollow heart has stopped so I’ll know down to my soul that he won’t be able to hurt anybody anymore. I’m sure that makes me heartless, but–”

Grey grips me tighter. “Absolutely not. They say blood is thicker than water but not if blood treats you like what I saw. Not by a longshot.”

I sniffle. We’re surrounded by rubble and the dust is in my nose.

“No more secrets from your mate, wife.”

“No more secrets, Grey.”

“Even if you think something will piss me off.”

“Okay.”

I look up into his eyes and see understanding. He’s gotten a glimpse into my life through Ronnie’s magical gift, and this has helped him understand me better. “I left a loving home at six years old so technically I didn’t grow up with much love, encouragement or understanding. Father was gruff, self-absorbed. He didn’t know how to raise a little girl. He mostly ignored me. I thought he wasn’t all that much better than Wy at running a pack, but then again, he wasn’t trying to kill everyone.Father never sold the girls into sex trafficking. But honestly, I have no frame of reference for a healthy relationship.”

He tucks hair behind my ear. “Yet your whole pack loves you. Because of the care you give. I love you, Stace. I’m in awe of you. How good you are. How nurturing. You’ve had a shit life here, babe, but you’ve got the respect of your people because you’ve worked your ass off to look after everyone. And you’re done struggling. I promise you that. You’re gonna get to live a good life now. Believe it.”

I burrow deeper into him.

“And stop thinking about me rejecting you. Not gonna fucking happen. Don’t make me say it again, because it doesn’t even bear thinking about and if you keep thinking it that means I’m not a good mate, that I’m not showing you how much you mean to me.”

“Point taken.”

We sit still, holding one another, and I swear I’m feeling our still-deepening bond grow even stronger. We stay in the moment for a solid minute before the sounds of traffic has us separating. I dust myself off as Grey watches over the mounds of debris around us to see who’s pulling up.

39

Grey

While I don’t smell my baby growing inside her yet, I’m hopeful it’s happening, and though I know it’ll be healthy I feel like it’s under threat. I don’t fucking like it, don’t know how to fully decode this instinct, but I know what I know.

I planted as much seed in her as I could when she was in heat that night and everything about her smells right. She looks and smells like a healthy female covered by the scent of her mate.

Mase said he smelled his baby inside Amelia not long after her heat. So did Ty, inside Ivy. I don’t smell another being yet, but I sense something is changing and fully expect to scent my child within days. I don’t know if it’s that her brother is at large that has me feeling the threat or if it’s something deeper, but I do know I’ll do whatever it takes to get past this, with her safe, with our child growing strong.

Stacy’s body is the ideal place for this and she’s precisely the mother my children need.

Knowledge sinks in that I had the exact mother I needed.

Carrie, not Soleil.

Even though I can’t smell our baby yet, I want my mate away from this filthy, stinking junkyard as soon as possible. If it weren’t for the fact that there are innocents here right now, ill and recovering folks, I’m sure my rage would’ve brought down more than just the scrapyard office.

I’ve had it with the stench of this place, with the attitudes of most of the weak and beaten down males. I have no direct experience living under a tyrant of an alpha, being broken into submission like they are, and maybe it’s just not in my chemistry because of what I’m made of and where I come from, but it also makes no sense to me regardless of being alpha. We’ve got hundreds of betas in our pack, but they’re still males. They’re still protective. They have opinions and wants and needs. They get passionate about things and will stand up for what they believe in.

This pack still has sixty-some members and had over a hundred a year ago. Surely that number of people could’ve done something about Meadows. They could’ve reached out to the SCC. They could’ve reached out to another pack. If nothing else, the men could’ve practiced shifting in secret, gotten together, shifted all at once and went after that shithead. They may have lost a few men along the way, but he couldn’t have fought off ten or more able-bodied men at once.

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