“This isn’t my pack.” Was there a jackhammer in my head?
Silver flakes appeared in his blue eyes. “You are the son of the Alpha. It is your role in this pack.”
“Josef,” my mother interrupted. “Please don’t do this now. We almost lost Lucas tonight.”
My father bowed his head, slowly calming his wolf. “We will discuss this when your injuries have healed. I will post a guard outside your room tonight. The doctors said you should be able to go home tomorrow. Your mother will prepare your room and you will stay with us.”
I ran my fingers through my hair. Every conversation with him ended in a fight. “I’ll be fine at my house.”
“It was not a suggestion, Lucas,” he replied as he turned to the door. “Your mate is waiting to speak with you.”
My wolf stirred at the sharp words of my father. We’d done nothing but fight since I returned over a year ago. At the time, coming back to Italy had seemed like the right thing. Now, not so much.
Mom watched quietly as my father left the room. “He is worried. You could have been killed tonight.”
“But I wasn’t.”
She pursed her lips. “Lucas, you need to try harder to work things out with your father. He loves you but he doesn’t understand why you stay so far from your pack.”
“You know why I don’t go around the pack.”
She handed me a cup of water. “You are an adult now. Stephano forgave you years ago. It is time to let go of your deranged childhood notions and take your place in the pack.”
The ghosts of long-buried memories strained against walls that kept them confined in a rarely visited part of my mind. I’d worked hard to lock them away and now my mom was coaxing them to escape.
Thanks for being on my side, Mom.
“They weren’t notions.” I put the cup back onto the tray and watched her face. She didn’t believe me now any more than when I was ten years old.
“You were confused about your…your…desires.”
The walls quivered but the memories stayed inside. Even twenty years later her disregard for what had happened sent shockwaves through my stomach. How could a mother not believe her son?
“What happened had nothing to do with my desires.”
She crossed her arms. “Stephano has scars yet he has worked hard to remain a part of his pack.”
I had scars, too.
She crossed the room to the window. “Stephano could have asked the Alpha for your life, but he chose to forgive your indiscretions.”
“Just leave me alone, Mom. I don’t want to talk about this.”
Her shoulders heaved. “Your father deserves more from his son.” Tiny flickers of silver appeared in her eyes. “It is up to you to right the wrongs of the past with your father and your pack. Any other Alpha would have killed you for what happened, but Josef saw fit to let you live. You have no idea how trying that time was for him and the pack.”
She stormed out, leaving me with an even bigger headache. I should have kept my job with the Divine Council and stayed away from this place. Trying to rebuild the relationship with my father was not worth all this. It didn’t matter what I did. I was not my brother.
Tessa Del Vigglio burst through the door, practically knocking it from its hinges. The statuesque blond bombshell turned her wicked blue eyes in my direction.
“I thought you were working late and now I find out you were at that freak vampire’s house. What the hell is wrong with you?” she demanded, shaking a perfectly manicured red nail at my face.
“I’m doing fine, thanks for asking.”
“You’re an idiot. You were supposed to be with me, helping plan our mating ceremony. I’ve had it with you. My father is on his way to speak with the Alpha about your behavior. Do you have any idea how many wolves wanted me as their mate and your father declared I was chosen for you, to bear children for the future Alpha?” She threw her hands into the air in true drama queen fashion.
I gritted my teeth and looked out the barred window, so tired of this conversation. “I am not going to be the next Alpha.”
She wrinkled her nose. “Of course you aren’t. You don’t have the balls to lead and nobody would listen to you, anyway. I deserve so much better than a pathetic loser like you. If your father wasn’t the Alpha, I wouldn’t have given you a second glance and you would have been dead the day you returned to pack territory.”
And now that I had stepped foot back into pack territory, I was stuck. The son of an Alpha was not generally welcome in other pack territories. My mother had already lost one son and didn’t deserve to lose another.
“Tessa, we both know we are not mates, regardless of what my father may have said. If you wish to mate with another, I will gladly relinquish a challenge for you.”
She’d never looked at me with anything but disdain and money signs in her eyes. Now there were silver flecks in the icy blue depths. “You are too much of a coward to fight for the privilege of being with me.”
“Would you fight to be with me?”
She cackled. “I don’t have to fight for anyone.”
The bedside phone interrupted my “go to hell” response. Tessa snatched the receiver off its cradle and out of the grasp of my outstretched hand.
“Ciao,” she answered in feigned sweetness.
My werewolf ears picked up the voice of an American woman. “May I speak with Lucas, please?”
“Who is this?” Tessa snarled. The heavy scent of rage filled my room.
“Um, just a friend calling to make sure he’s all right.”
Tessa slammed the phone hard enough the bell cried.
I cursed and tried to grab the phone. My broken ribs voiced their disagreement and I fell back into the bed, gasping for breath.
“Who was that?” Tessa demanded.
“The most beautiful woman I’ve ever met. Her name is Breanna.”
All the color drained from her face. “You are a bastard. I wish you had died on that mountain road.”
“Sorry to disappoint you.”
Tessa threw the water pitcher across the room and slammed the door on the way out. My wolf rumbled. He’d always hated her.
With a lot of effort and discomfort, I managed to reach the phone.
My nurse, Anira, quietly entered the room and knelt to clean up the spilled water pitcher. “I’ll bring more water for you, Mr. Benelli. How are you feeling?”
“Better since she left.”
Anira laughed softly as she placed another pillow behind my head. “Are your stitches pulling? They may be ready to come out.” With my werewolf metabolism, even deep gashes like the one on my leg would heal within hours if properly attended.
“Whoever tied the tourniquet around your leg saved your life. When the femur broke, it ripped your femoral artery. With all the internal injuries you sustained and the blood loss from the artery, you would have bled to death before your body could heal itself.”
“Her name was Breanna.”
Anira looked over her shoulder at me. “The one in the helicopter?”
“Yes. I hoped she would come in.”
Anira