Chapter 11

CHAPTER 11

K ira

It didn't go well.

I am where Colton has been a hundred times before, sitting behind bars, waiting for my aunt to post bail. It's not even the biggest bail, just two thousand or so. We got a lot more than that in the last haul, so it shouldn't be long before I see her or Colton. Probably Colton. He'll want to gloat.

Days pass. A lot of days. More days than Colton has ever spent in a cell, that's for sure. I think the police are feeling sorry for me. Sometimes they bring me takeaways from the local diner.

I'm numb.

Like a kenneled dog, I feel my will slipping away hour by hour. When I thought I was entirely human, I was stronger. I didn't need anybody. I could go out and take care of myself because this animal inside me was asleep. But it's different now. I crave companionship and leadership.

"How are you doing today, young lady?" A kindly officer is at my door with a grease-soaked bag that I already know contains a burger and some half cold fries.

Officer Brady is sixty-five years old. Old enough to retire, but the police pension won't cover his lifestyle, which in his case, is one official family, and one secret family. I can smell the scent of two women on him from time to time—a side effect from my shifting. My senses are much sharper than they used to be, which isn't really an advantage when you consider I'm stuck in a cell that hasn't been properly sterilized in years.

"I'm okay, thank you." I force a polite smile. I've been telling myself that I don't have to let this situation bring me down. I can keep myself in check and be a good person. I have to try.

He lets out a sad sigh, as if he doesn't want to say what he is about to say.

"Kira, you've got twenty-four hours before we formally charge you. We can't keep holding you like this."

"But you do it for Colton?"

"The longest Colton has ever been here is three days. You've been here for a week. I'm sorry, but we're not going to be able to hold off proceedings."

"Have you told Aunt Ruby?"

"She knows what's going on. She says she'll get the money when she can, but like I said, our hands are getting pretty tied here."

I know he's kind of, sort of, doing me a favor, and the last thing I want to do is piss off a cop who could quite easily send my casework through to the courts right this second if he wanted to.

"I'm sorry," I apologize, being obsequious. "I don't know what's keeping her. If I could pay you the money, I would."

"Not your fault, sweetheart," he says. "I'm sorry for what we're going to have to do, that's all."

I force a smile. "It's okay," I say. "It doesn't matter."

It doesn't matter because I don't matter.

It doesn't matter because ending up behind bars seems like something that was always going to happen to me. All my efforts to escape the life I was born into have failed, and I know why. Because fate. There's no escaping it.

Cain used to talk about it, but he didn't really understand. People with good fates don't understand what it means to be someone with bad fate. I was born to be trash, and I will die trash. It's time I accepted that. Fighting it has only ever caused me pain.

Giving up hope feels kind of good. It's like a tension I've been holding inside myself slips away, leaving me free.

I sit in the cell, my butt back against the wall, my feet kicking off the edge of the bed. I think about all of the terrible things that will no doubt befall me once I get into the system. I wonder how many wolves end up incarcerated. I wonder how many have been shot like dogs, like I almost was.

The creaking sound of the door to the cell block heralds bad news. I hear footsteps. I don't even bother to look up as they stop.

"Hello, little one," Cain Lupin drawls.

Piercing blue eyes nail me through the bars as I let out a whine of excitement and guilt. He found me! He found me, and he came for me! My inner animal is leaping up and down, bouncing with glee. My human body is trembling with shock. I never imagined he'd come for me. I thought for sure he would wipe his hands of me.

"Mighty nice of you to come pay this young lady's bail," the officer drawls as he unlocks the door.

"Yes," Cain agrees. "Yes. It is."

The next ten minutes are an absolute blur. I get processed out of jail in Cain's custody. Every breath I take is one dragged deeply into my lungs as I desperately inhale his scent. I didn't smell him at first. The stench of the cells was too much, and misery was choking up my senses.

"I am so sorry," I whimper as we step out of the jail together. "I didn't want to go. I had to…"

"It's okay," he says. "We're going to have a lot of very long talks, you and I. You don't need to explain yourself now."

"But I do. I was in jail…"

"And I'm not surprised," he says. "But save it until we are home."

"Home?"

"Denholm," he says. "Don't worry. The conclave is over."

"Oh. Did it go well?"

He gives me a dark look. "It did not. The conclave is supposed to be the lead up to a wedding between an alpha and his mate. Suffice to say, that did not take place."

"Ah." I feel indescribably guilty. "You wouldn't want to marry me. Look who I am."

Cain stops and gives me a stern glower. We are standing in the middle of a dusty, dried-up town that hasn't seen any infrastructure or building upgrades since the seventies. St. Infernus is one of hundreds of towns just like it dotted throughout the US, places that outlived their usefulness years ago. People born here are born obsolete, and they know it in their bones. Some of us try to run away, but places like these get into your marrow. You might leave them, but they never really leave you.

"You are my mate," he says, as though that simple statement encapsulates me and excuses everything I am not. "It is as simple as that. I will never abandon you. I will never let you go. And I will marry you."

"But I ran away to do crime."

"Yes," he says grimly. "We will deal with that."

That sentence makes me incredibly nervous. "I'm sorry," I stammer. "I had to come because of my aunt, and then my aunt wanted me to help, so I…"

"Am I your aunt?"

There's a moment in which I consider giggling because of the mental image that question conjures up, but I can tell he doesn't mean it in a funny way at all.

"No."

"I think I've been very clear with you from the beginning, Kira," he says. "You are my mate. You are mine. Nobody else has any claim to you whatsoever. I don't know what your aunt has meant to you in the past, but…"

"She raised me after my mother died giving birth to me. She's as close as I have to a mother. I owe her my life."

He frowns slightly. "I think I need to meet this aunt of yours."

I would do anything to not have these two worlds collide. He will see where I come from, and he will see what trash I am.

Cain

"Kira. Take me to your aunt."

She presses her lips together, and I can tell she is thinking of telling me no. Her refusal would be a mistake, but I give her the space to make that mistake if she wants to.

"I don't want to," she says. "She's not very nice, and she wouldn't be very nice to you."

"I'm not asking."

Her head goes down. Her shoulders roll forward. She looks so dejected. She is absolutely filthy, and I can tell that all she has endured here is abuse. Part of me wonders why she has come here at all. To flee from a situation where she was going to be one of the richest women in the world to go and suffer in filth makes no obvious sense. There has to be more to this.

"It's this way," she says.

We walk out of town, eventually finding a small farm holding with a very rundown house on it, and a pack of semi-feral strays defending the front yard. They rush up, barking their heads off and making a racket that stops immediately when I glance at them. Threatening flashing jaws close, and raucous yapping turns to the occasional whimper as they slink away.

"Wow," I hear Kira mumble under her breath. If she is impressed with how I handle the dogs, she will be even more impressed with the way I handle the family who chose to let her languish in that filthy jail cell.

An older woman who shares some features with my mate emerges from the house, wiping her hands on a dishcloth that I can smell from here. She looks at Kira and then at me.

"Did you take a plea deal? Turn your own family in?"

Her voice rasps with bitterness. She assumes I am some form of law enforcement. That's understandable. I am sure that my bearing suggests authority and displeasure.

"No, I didn't…" Kira starts to stammer excuses.

I step in front of her, both cutting her off and removing the line of sight from the she-wolf in front of us to her. I know who this woman is. The officer at the front desk was more than pleased to enlighten me as to the goings on. Ruby Smith is a con woman and criminal of renown in these parts, known for using her family to do her dirty work so she can pretend her hands are clean.

"I am Cain Lupin. Alpha of the Denholm pack."

Ruby's expression shifts unpleasantly. She is not impressed. She is also not afraid. I thought she might grovel when she heard that revelation.

If anything, I see a certain amount of disgust and rage on her face, swiftly hidden behind a saccharine smile. It is an expression clearly foreign to her features.

"What have you been doing, you slut?" Ruby hisses the question at Kira, as if she can speak through me.

She hasn't told her aunt about me, obviously. She's kept her mouth shut and kept her secrets to herself. The officer told me how stoic she had been, how she'd refused to tell on anybody, or explain how she'd broken into the house she was found in.

I am not pleased at her actions, but I am very proud of the way she has carried herself. There's a quiet dignity about Kira, even as she is now.

"I am your niece's mate, and you will respect the both of us."

"Colton! We've got intruders!"

"Aunt Ruby! No!" Kira steps out in front of me to try to head off the chaos that is unfolding, but of course, there's nothing she can do. Having set the dogs on us, she now sets her single wolf on us.

A young male bolts out the door, glossy in the hot sun. He's not dilute, I notice. Nor is there anything remotely domestic about him. He's full feral wolf, tongue lolling out between sharp teeth, pure murder in his eyes. He's actually a very impressive specimen. I can imagine this family were quite something in their heyday, before they succumbed to whatever misfortune has brought them into this disrepute.

I get to consider all of this before the wolf gets within shifting distance.

I don't move. I watch him come. I wonder if he will lose his nerve right before he reaches us. But as he draws closer, it becomes apparent that this is a young whelp who has never known the correction of a real alpha. He doesn't understand what he is supposed to fear. That could make him exceptionally dangerous.

He gathers himself and leaps at me. But the man standing before him is no longer there. His paws make contact with thin air. By the time he lands, I am already on top of him and in my alpha shape. My teeth sink into the back of his neck, gripping him by the scruff as I pin him to the ground. I am more than twice his size. I am not a lanky young creature used to skulking and committing crime. I am an alpha. Domination is in my blood.