Lone Wolf

  “We lost him.”

  Gabriel tried to digest that piece of news. He took a couple of deep breaths and tried counting to ten. But he couldn’t help himself. He launched himself on the man, slamming him down on the ground.

  “If my brother comes to any harm, and I mean so much as a hair out of place, you’ll all live to regret it.”

  “Now, now.” The infuriating man had the gall to laugh. “We have your mate. Wouldn’t want anything to happen to her.”

  “Kendrick won’t hurt Carrie.” Saying her name made the muscles in his neck strain. He never said it, thought it, or dreamed about it anymore. He couldn’t let himself. “Because then he gets nothing from me. But you make sure this is understood. Tristan gets hurt and I’ll bust through my father’s doors like hellfire and I’ll watch him burn to the ground. I imagine after almost thirty years with the man Carrie would understand.”

  He got off Kendrick’s henchman. “Now get out of here before I put you in the Atlantic with your throat ripped out. I’ve always wondered if sharks eat their own.”

  Gabriel stormed off toward the boat that would take him back to Westervelt. He hated his monthly visits to the mainland. Even the ones when Kendrick’s people didn’t show up made him want to toss his own distorted soul into the waiting waters.

  He closed his eyes and looked for her, knowing he couldn’t even think her actual name. Twice in one day would destroy him, cause his internal organs to start liquefying or something equally horrible. Searching for Carrie caused him pain.

  But at that moment he couldn’t stop himself. Her soul—filled with colors he hadn’t known existed until she gave them to him—had faded. He took two steps until he could lean against the wall of one of the warehouses that lined the street. What did that mean? He ran his hands through his hair. Did this indicate she’d approached death? No. He’d know if that were the case. If Carrie endured physical pain, he’d feel it.

  No; her soul fading had to do with him and her soul not wanting to be mated to him anymore.

  He ran for the boat.

  Tristan had gone missing and Carrie’s soul had faded from his. Why had he ever thought he could do anything to help? Maybe it all would have been better if he’d died the same day the other mates had perished. Killed himself and hoped Carrie could find a way to resist following.

  So many mistakes. So many lines drawn in the sand that he’d crossed over. Who the hell had he become?

  * * * *

  Thirty years after the destruction

  His brothers had all mated. Well, almost all of them. Rex hadn’t found his mate yet, but with the way things had started happening Gabriel would bet that the fates would deliver him a mate in no time at all. And his sister would show up too.

  He cleared his throat and watched Michael stare at his mate while she ran away from them. Trouble in paradise. The first few months of mating had to be tough on them. The old days of lovemaking and long runs through the woods were behind them. Now, they had to make do with the complication of the whole thing while fighting for their lives.

  Michael. His big brother who had taken care of him when it had only been the two of them against the world. They had plotted and planned for the day Tristan would finally take over. That had happened.

  A light dawned in his mind. Gabriel’s role had been made clear to him. He’d kept them all safe until they could find their other halves. Each woman had brought her gifts to the pack and now they were closer than ever to taking down Kendrick. After Kendrick’s destruction, when Westervelt could be properly re-formed, all would return to normal. They had strong mates who would weather their storms with them.

  Children had been born. Tristan and Cullen were fathers already. Theo’s wife expected a baby. In no time, Michael would have his new lady knocked up and breeding.

  There was a future to be had. And the last thing Gabriel could do for all of them was to end his father. Free Carrie. Send her on her way. Her soul had fled his body and he couldn’t blame it one bit.

  Carrie would live. Kendrick would die. All he had to do now was say good-bye and leave the pack forever. Tristan would never understand. Maybe someday, if the gods were kind, he’d get to tell him how truly sorry he felt. Or at least how apologetic he should feel.

  If he thought himself capable of feeling at all.

  Chapter 6

  Forty years after the destruction

  The human passing him on the street took a moment to stop and stare at him. Gabriel Kane made quick eye contact and the brown-eyed, black-haired female clutched her purse tighter before she moved on at a hurried pace. If she’d been a wolf he’d have assumed she sensed his dominance, but given her non-shifter status Gabe supposed it more likely he actually looked deranged.

  His mouth twitched and for a second he thought he might actually smile. When had he become frightening to humans? Before he could even process that thought, which at one time would have made him laugh aloud, he scowled, a familiar expression for the last nearly forty years.

  Gabe leaned back against the fence and stared up at the house. It hadn’t changed, not in the last thirty minutes that he’d been looming outside of it. He hadn’t exactly expected it to and yet he felt compelled to keep looming next to it like it might get up and walk away.

  The house had been painted white and had black wooden shutters. He’d seen a lot of similar designs during the 1920s. Tristan, now the Alpha of his former pack in Westervelt, was the architect, not him. He’d listened to him spend most of the 1960s droning on about the subject, which led him to believe the house would be called a Center Hall Colonial. The whole street held examples of the style in various renditions. He knew why his father had picked this place; all of his hideouts had the same quality as this one. Quiet neighborhoods two to three blocks from major roads where his entourage could easily escape if need be.

  Someone maintained his father’s lawn. He had a hard time imagining his father going out onto the grass and brandishing a lawn mower. In fact, the image presented was so disconcerting he threw it away fast before it could impose itself on his brain cells. Dad being domestic. He shuddered.

  So, his father employed people to upkeep the house and lawn or someone from inside the house came outside to mow it. Either way, it would give him an opportunity to get inside since he had total certainty he’d never make it through the front door by ringing the bell.

  His father wouldn’t open the door and say hey, come on inside, kill me.

  Of course, if Gabe had been a real man forty years ago he wouldn’t be in this situation. He would have killed the son of a bitch the second he’d had the chance instead of letting him go and watching as he took Gabriel’s love with him.

  A window shade moved slightly as someone inside the house brushed past it.

  Carrie.

  She moved around inside. He’d recognize her anywhere even though he hadn’t seen her in forty years. Gabe had barely allowed himself the pleasure of thinking about her. How could he when the barest passing dream of Carrie made him ache so completely he thought he might fall apart? But there she walked … still in his father’s care-cum-captivity. Alive as Kendrick had promised she’d be, just as long as Gabriel cooperated.

  He had done as he’d been told.

  Kendrick had kept Carrie alive.

  His mate lived when so many others had perished or vanished. The women of his pack. Well, former pack. Lost forever. Everything decimated. But not Carrie, because Gabriel played ball.

  But this couldn’t go on any longer.

  Are you there?

  He reached for his wolf and waited as the silence he never got used to stretched out into minutes.

  He threw out his cigarette. Dirty, human habit. He might not be able to get cancer like the humans but he still wished he’d never smoked. Of course, if he thought he would live past the end of the week he’d make an effort to quit. Dying at any moment made stopping a ridiculous notion. Why bother? He’d be done with cigarettes when the reaper came f
or him.

  Any day now.

  A van pulled up to the house with a bunch of men in it. His nose told him it contained five men but he counted only four exiting the vehicle. The four who were visible stumbled toward the house. Since he trusted his senses, he knew one of them had remained inside, in the driver’s seat. He sniffed the air again. Humans would think them drunk but Gabe knew better. They were made wolves. His father’s madness was displayed to the world via the abhorrent creatures Kendrick had dared to create. Nothing like playing with the gods.

  Gabe walked toward the van. If the creatures were real wolves they’d have smelled him, but Az, Gabriel’s brilliant science-minded brother, had determined the year before that the creatures could only scent a target if they’d been sent after that specific person. Otherwise they were basically dead men walking. Az knew this for sure since his wife had temporarily been a made wolf herself. His brothers had an unusual assortment of mates. Each woman had added to their lives in unforeseen ways that had ultimately kept the pack alive.

  Gabriel would never know what his mating Carrie would have brought to the pack. He’d been denied that chance.

  The made wolf who remained in the van sat in the driver’s seat staring straight ahead like a mechanical doll someone would have to turn on to work. His father had taken drug addicts, the mentally ill, and the enemies of his friends when he’d created his army of wolf creatures.

  The gods had given the shifters the gift of living as both man and wolf, of combining their strength and always being together as one. Well, the gods had bestowed that miracle on him and he’d managed to screw it up. The made wolves, the ones who shouldn’t be, they had no joy in the shift, no inner wolf to take the journey with. Just angst, pain, and … nothingness.

  A little nothingness didn’t sound so terrible to him at that very moment. But as, ironically, his father had once told him, he could fill up one of his hands with reality and the other with wishes and dreams that came through. One of them would fill up first and it never turned out to be wishes and dreams. They never accounted for much when all was said and done. Hard reality was where he had to exist.

  “Hiya.”

  He strode to the abomination in the driver’s seat and yanked him out the car. His brother Az always apologized to the pathetic creatures before he put them down. Gabriel had neither time for niceties nor any inclination to give them. The made wolf grunted for two seconds before Gabriel broke his neck. A crack sounded out, only to be absorbed into the noises of the busy street two blocks away.

  The dead made wolf slumped onto the steering wheel, his neck arched to the side in a manner that made him look like a crash-test dummy after one of those car commercials meant to make humans drive more slowly. Gabe stared down at him.

  When had he lost his compassion? Had it fled the day his wolf disappeared? Or had he never possessed any to begin with?

  A flicker of something moved through his mind and he pushed it aside. There would be a reckoning for him. He believed in an afterlife, had seen too much not to, and judgment would follow him wherever he went. For now, there was a job to complete and no time for nagging worries or mistakes he couldn’t undo.

  Besides, that creature had needed to die. He’d killed it for his own purpose, but that didn’t mean its death hadn’t been merciful, in a strange, screwed-up way.

  Gabriel picked up the dead body and rubbed it against himself, trying hard not to gag as the pungent smell assaulted his wolf nose. The creature had basically been the walking dead. He certainly reeked like a corpse.

  And now Gabriel had to make himself smell like one of them.

  He rubbed himself against the dead man until he could smell the stink of the unnatural creature on his own skin. It would have to do. Unless his father himself opened the door, no one would know him, and he should be able to pass himself off, at least temporarily, as a made wolf until he found Kendrick.

  With a hard shove, he pushed the dead body into the truck and closed the door. He hoped no one would notice until he’d well ensconced himself in the house. Not that luck had been on his side for four decades or so.

  Hunching over like he’d seen the made wolves do before he killed them, he limped toward the house. The movement constituted less walking and more running while letting his right leg drag behind him for an extra second with every step.

  “Well, this sucks.” He shook his head at the sound of his own voice. Did talking out loud to yourself signal insanity? If so, he’d definitely crossed into that realm.

  He trudged forward until he got to the front door. The other made wolves hadn’t rung the bell, just turned the knob and walked in. Dad clearly didn’t care one bit about security. Why should he? Every year he lived he became more and more convinced of his own invulnerability. Not surprising considering that no one had managed to kill him, although many had tried.

  That would end. Shortly.

  He tried the handle, twisting it and felt a pang of relief in his chest when it opened without issue. Getting stuck on the front step didn’t factor into his plan. Not that he’d spent all that much time coming up with this potentially disastrous turn of events.

  The door swung open into a long hallway. He looked right and left, taking a deep breath through his nose while he did and letting his senses fill in the blanks of his situation. There were thirty souls in the house but none of them in the center hall. His knees almost buckled and he had to grip the side of the door to stop from falling over.

  Carrie. He hadn’t anticipated how her scent would unnerve him. Flowers. She always brought the smell of roses with her everywhere she went, like she carried their essence in her blood. When they’d first made love and their souls had passed to each other, she’d been filled with color. The brightest, strongest reds, oranges, and yellows he’d ever seen. Gabe hadn’t known such shades existed.

  But when his wolf had left he had taken Carrie’s colors with him. And everything beautiful in the world had vanished.

  Every time he didn’t mention her, pretended to be unmated, neglected to inform his brother the Alpha that he had lost his wolf, he lied and betrayed the people he loved. They’d been searching for a sister they’d all forgotten until part of the spell had been undone. All except Gabriel. Angel, the sister only he knew about for forty years, had remained a vivid memory for him, the baby she’d been when she’d vanished. He could remember holding her when the sun set over the hills of Westervelt, of telling her how she’d grow to be royalty, and what that meant to the pack.

  He’d never uttered a word to tell them where she’d been sent or who she looked like.

  While he’d not helped his father’s men get onto the island, he would have if he’d been asked to. If he ever said no, his father would kill Carrie. Painfully. The one thing in the universe he couldn’t abide.

  The exhaustion of trying to keep the pack alive and not betray the promise of compliance he’d made to his father had eaten at him. Whatever soul he’d once had didn’t exist inside him anymore. Kendrick had to die and he had to take care of it before his meager amount of decency vanished completely.

  It might have taken him forty years to realize that the separation between Carrie and himself—the absolute destruction of their mating bond—would protect her from dying if he died, but better late than never.

  Gabriel sniffed the air again. Carrie’s scent was all over the building, but she stood about twelve hundred feet away from him. He’d guess somewhere near the kitchen since her aroma mixed with the grotesque smell of ruined milk and burned bacon. Another inhale told him Kendrick didn’t currently reside in the building.

  He’d hoped his dad would be home, but he’d have to make do. Gabriel would have to hide out and wait until the arrogant bastard returned. Ducking his head, he walked slowly in the opposite direction of Carrie’s scent. Killing Kendrick would be easy in comparison to facing Carrie again, in letting her see the disaster he’d become.

  With determined strides he moved down the hallway. He
’d find a closet and hide until he could end the never-ending torture that his life had become. Kendrick would face the abyss with him. Perhaps there would never be forgiveness for either of them.

  Gabriel rounded the corner, looking for the right spot. He didn’t want to stick himself in a closet where someone might find him by accident. Hell, if Cullen ever found out he’d hid like some kind of untrained pup in a coat closet waiting for Kendrick, he’d never live it down. The pack’s enforcer could have taken out the whole house all by himself, rescued his girl, and gotten home in time to scare the pack’s youth into submission. Well, he could have before the pack had been all but destroyed. These days Cullen spent all of his time putting out fires and handling crisis.

  “Hello, son.” Kendrick leaned against a wall staring straight at Gabriel like he’d been expecting him. Maybe he had.

  Gabriel had always been told he resembled his father the most out of all of his brothers, and although neither Kendrick nor Gabe had aged a day in forty years, he could finally see that everyone had been right. All of these years he’d been blind to it. Gabe was the spitting image of the worst being he’d ever had the unfortunate luck of knowing.

  They had the same shade of brown hair, the same dark eyes. Unlike Tristan, he hadn’t gotten their mother’s chin or hairline. All of it had come from Kendrick. Just like his dirty soul.

  “Kendrick.” Gabe had been prepared for the end, but not this fast and not so incomplete. Nothing like leaving lots of dirty business behind him. “Didn’t smell you.”

  “Were you under the impression, Gabriel, that the Westervelt pack was the only group with the tools to disguise smells? If you’ll recall, I used it way before you did.”

  Gabriel nodded. “That’s right. Just one of those things you seem to be able to do.”

  Kendrick shrugged. “I have a witch for a wife.”

  “You have what?” Gabriel sucked in his breath. “When the fuck did that happen?”

  “Not been around for a while, I see.” He waved his hand as if Gabe’s question held no merit.