“I’m not pregnant, Siobhan.” I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand and wished I had a breath mint. A cough drop. Some damn thing to rinse the taste of puke from my mouth.
“Are you sick? You pick a hell of a time to come down with a virus. Have you passed it along to my grandson? He’s too little to be sick, you selfish twat.”
“I’m not sick.,” I spat into the bushes. “Do you happen to have a breath mint or some gum?”
She rummaged in her purse and came up with a stick of what smelled like spearmint chewing gum.
Grateful for the opportunity to clear the vile taste from my mouth, I hastily unwrapped the stick and shoved it in my mouth.
Siobhan wrinkled her delicate nose as surprise dawned in her eyes. Her expression turned suspicious.
“You’re not sick. You’re scared spitless. Of what?”
I chewed the gum and swallowed until the taste of bile was gone.
“Taking the pack bond.” I braced myself. Her hazel eyes narrowed. Here it came.
“It’s nothing to be scared of, you silly bitch. Didn’t Liam and Fee explain this to you?”
“I know all about pack bonds.” My chin jutted. God, this woman was infuriating. I tried so hard to like her because she was Murphy’s mother, but just couldn’t do it.
“Then you know they’re nothing to shiver and shake about. Nothing to puke about either,” she said, her tone derisive.
“Look, I have my reasons. Thanks for the gum.” I tried to walk past her, but she grabbed my elbow and spun me around to face her. She and I were nearly the same height, but she was strong and scrappy. Every goddamn member of Mac Tire was a fighter. Except for me. I hadn’t grown up brawling for fun. The Irish baffled me at the best of times. Just my luck, I’d fallen head over heels for an Irish bond mate.
“What are your reasons?” Her gaze was flat and unconvinced, as if I was full of shit and she just couldn’t wait to call me on it.
I spat out the gum and wished I had the guts to punch her.
“When I was a year and a half old, the red virus swept through my birth pack,” I said and she was thrown for a moment. She hadn’t expected to hear something like that. I half anticipated her to argue or ask me what the hell the red virus had to do with pack bonds. Only everything.
“Half my pack died and in desperation, my father, the Alpha, forged a pack bond with the ones left because he’d heard the pack bond promoted healing.”
Understanding flickered in the hazel depths of her eyes. Siobhan Carmichael was in her fifties, but thanks to Pack genetics could pass easily for early thirties. She was damn good looking. Like Murphy in female form. Her face always threw me. She looked so much like Murphy, I expected her to be like Murphy. Only she wasn’t.
“He gave it to the children too because some of us had the virus. I was sick and I was the fifteenth generation in the pack. I know that means shit to packs like Mac Tire who go back a thousand years, but it was pretty damn significant to us. Mayflower is the third oldest pack in America. I’m not such a provincial little nothing like you think, Siobhan. I have a pedigree, maybe not as much of one as you, but I’ve got one.”
“I haven’t got a pedigree. I come from a tiny pack in Northern Ireland that isn’t even in existence anymore. It only lasted three generations. Mine was the last and when I left to bond with Glenn, I pretty much sounded the death knell for the damn pack. When I bonded with him, my entire pack joined with Mac Tire. So you’ve got me beat, if you think how many generations you can count from the founding members of a pack mean anything. Go on with your story, damn you. Your idiot father gave children the pack bond. That’s not right. It wouldn’t make a damn bit of difference to children because the pack bond doesn’t activate until you shift after you take it.” Siobhan’s laugh was harsh and yet, was there a touch of sympathy in there somewhere?
I tried not to show her I was surprised at her confession. I’d figured her for the bluest of blue bloods. “They were desperate. But it does make a difference when the children grow up and shift for the first time with someone in the pack.”
“How the hell could that be?” She frowned. “By the time you grew up enough to shift, your father would have long since ceased being Alpha. Small packs keep the Alpha status longer, don’t they? But twenty years? Wasn’t there an entire generation between that lost an opportunity to have children?”
“He wasn’t Alpha by the time I shifted the first time. He just never dissolved the pack bond even when he stepped down,” I said.
Siobhan whispered in horror, “But that’s evil, Stanzie. Against Pack law.”
I nodded. Tell me about it. “Anyway, I never shifted with anyone from my pack. It’s a long story. I ran away with someone from a different pack and we joined Riverglow and my pack bond was never activated.”
“I don’t understand.” Of course she didn’t. What my father had done was monstrous and unheard of. He’d not only not dissolved the pack bond, he’d given it to children.
“You know my wolf wasn’t normal,” I said and her breath hissed between her teeth as she sucked in a mouthful of air.
She’d been so angry at me because I’d kept Murphy from returning to Mac Tire after we’d bonded. We’d worked on my wolf together. He’d been afraid to bring me and my wolf to his pack for fear of what my wolf might do in a big pack. Rules existed that she didn’t know and wouldn’t have followed or understood even if she had. Siobhan had been less than tolerant about the whole thing.
“The pack bond?” Siobhan guessed. “It interfered somehow with your wolf?”
“Yes,” I said. “It’s broken now and my father was exiled. So much for my pedigree. I come from a fucked-up pack and my family is the most fucked-up branch of it. The only time my wolf’s ever been normal was Paddy’s funeral. I haven’t shifted since and I’m afraid, that if I take another pack bond, she’ll be like she was. I know it’s irrational and I know I’m being ridiculous, but I can’t help how I feel.” Tears choked me and I bit my lip, miserably aware I was on the edge. “Now tell me how stupid I am. Go on, you know you want to.”
Siobhan stared at me for a long moment. “Fee knows the whole story, doesn’t she? Liam as well?”
I nodded. What the hell was she waiting for? I’d bared my throat and she had me down. All she had to do now was rip me to pieces. I’d given myself to her on a freaking platter.
Angry blotches appeared on Siobhan’s cheeks. “The idiots. What the fuck were they thinking? They weren’t, that’s the truth of it. Colm and Deirdre have no clue, do they?”
Was she angry at her children? Not me? What alternate universe had we been sucked into? “I don’t think so,” I managed to choke out. Goddamn tears. I always cried at the most inopportune moments.
“You wait here. Don’t you move and don’t you puke again, you poor thing.” Siobhan whirled and stormed down the gravel path toward the courtyard.
Poor thing? Huh?
Alarmed, I tried to call her back, but she ignored me. Over the past few months, she’d gotten very good at ignoring me. Unless she specifically wanted to skewer me with unkind words, she pretended I didn’t exist. Was she actually going to go rip Murphy and Fee new assholes? On my behalf? And I was stuck out in the cold and supposed to wait? The woman was diabolical even when she apparently wanted to help.
“Shit,” I muttered and kicked some loose gravel. I wrapped my arms around myself. Right on cue, a gust of cold autumn wind attacked. My hair blew into wild witch snarls as dead leaves rattled down the path around my boots.
A cold stone bench tucked into a hedge more brown than green provided scant protection, but I retreated to it anyway. The chill