Chapter 14: Gavin

Chapter 14: Gavin

I expected Catrina wouldn’t give me up without a fight, but I didn’t think she’d stalk our shared borders like she was planning an ambush. Aislin warned me I’d detect her when I did a patrol that night. Dreading what I’d find, my mood took a nosedive at the arrival of another scent. Seemed somebody else had found Catrina first, but more likely, it was the other way around; I smelled the runt and realized what it meant.

Billie had left the manor and was coming to Grandbay before Catrina caught her.

The fight raged through the forest as loudly as the night I’d fought the dragons. I recognized both Catrina and Billie instantly from their angry sounds, but the desperate determination in Billie’s voice was far more compelling than Catrina’s tantrum; it fed my anger even more to think of Catrina taking our break-up out on her. Whatever the reason the runt was here for, it wasn’t right to let her get maimed from it. Catrina needed to learn that I was done with her for good, so despite feeling raw from ending our five-year relationship, there was no hesitation in the decision to turn my teeth on the Hexen.

Arriving faster than anticipated, I slammed into Catrina and knocked us both to the ground. We scrambled for purchase against each other in a flurry of teeth and nails, and once I’d bitten her nose and forced her to withdraw, I glanced back to check on Billie—but she wasn’t behind me. She wasn’t anywhere in the darkness, only rustling leaves and foreboding silence cloaking the girl that had appeared in an instant and vanished just as fast. I knew she was still running from the phantom pains in my left hind leg. Distracted, Catrina took me by surprise with an attack on the side of my face. We descended into another rapid fight before splitting up, snarling at each other and bleeding.

Catrina’s wild blue gaze slid off of me and sunk into the bushes beside me. Billie’s scent emanated from that direction. She lunged, but when I darted forward to catch her, she abruptly changed footing and sped around me. She was diving into Grandbay territory in pursuit of Billie, as if I’d just let her.

But now she was trespassing. Now, David would have to answer for this.

I whipped my head back and howled with high-straining notes for my packmates and Dalesbloom to hear. Then I spun after Catrina, my feet tearing up plant life as I followed the trails she and Billie left behind. Blood burned through the air. My ears rang with deafening excitement and concentrated fury. The bushes snapped as Catrina plowed through them up ahead of me, and ahead of her, the whimpering, limping gait of the runt.

I wasn’t fast enough. Catrina struck Billie on the ankle she was already bleeding from, and they both crashed to the ground. I joined the fray a second later, forcefully detaching Catrina from Billie with a tight grip on the Hexen’s muzzle as Catrina thrashed away.

At various intervals, howls lit up the night: a chorus from Dalesbloom and a few scattered calls from Grandbay bouncing off of each other like echoes. Billie shuffled and let me know she was still there. I braced myself above Catrina and held her in place, knowing if I let her go, she’d only zero in on Billie again, grappling with the guilt—I still had feelings for Catrina. I didn’t want to do this! By the time she stopped struggling and fell still, we were both just waiting for the inevitable confrontation of our relationship. It would all be laid bare for everyone to see how we’d ruined it. I was glad I couldn’t see the expression on her face.

Within minutes, Aislin showed up holding a bag of clothes alongside Niko. The two wolves circled around me pinning Catrina, immediately understanding the scene with the context of Billie being injured nearby. I stood up and backed away from Catrina. As soon as she was free, she rolled to her feet and snarled as Aislin and Niko corralled her at a distance. The bag of clothes sat in the grass between where I caught my breath and where Billie trembled, feeling the throbs of pain we shared through our fated bond. I was drawn to her not with an impulse of anger, but empathy, wanting to wrap up her wounds and comfort her. My tenderness was jarringly overcome with embarrassment a moment later, disgusted that I let my guard down, and I launched into transformation to finally seek answers from the two girls at Grandbay’s border.

The darkness hid my body from all spectators. My skin was clammy with sweat by the time I was human, mosquitoes flocking to my sticky surfaces, agitating me more than the gashes everywhere Catrina had bitten me. I smacked the insects away as I sifted through the bag. A grey t-shirt and blue jeans would suffice. Catrina had fallen to the ground in transformation and I kept my eyes on her as I got dressed.

Behind her, shapes materialized into canine bodies out of the trees, some growling and barking as they surged around Catrina. Five Dalesbloom wolves I had hunted with before. I recognized each of them by the smell and shapes of their silhouettes, but behind them were two more bodies familiar by presence alone. The sleek onyx figure of Colt who carried a duffle bag of clothes walked a pace behind a wolf nearly twice as big as him with grey peppering his black fur on the face and legs, blue eyes hollow in the moonlight. David’s wolf, ever imposing, made the others fall silent.

My human vulnerability kept me a good distance from David and his wolves. I was softer in this form, unable to protect anyone except with my voice and words, and I was hardly charismatic enough to talk my way out of certain death if David willed it. My saving grace was that Catrina was now human too.

“Your girls are trespassing on Grandbay territory,” I said to David.

The wolf flashed his teeth and looked at Catrina, then past her, past me, at Billie’s wolf quaking with exhaustion and pain. His tail flicked.

“That little fucking bitch,” hissed Catrina, wiping blood off the cut on her nose. “She was running off to Grandbay. I stopped her.”

Billie uttered a high-pitched whine, but couldn’t defend herself in wolf form. Our bond imparted to me the anxiety she felt at transforming while wounded in front of everyone. I didn’t look at her, hoping to get everyone’s attention back on me. “It’s my business how I deal with trespassers; my borders aren’t yours to police, Catrina.”

“I wasn’t policing anything. I was minding my own business, Gavin, patrolling for my pack when she turned up, making a run for it. My predatory instincts kicked in.” She folded her arms but struggled to keep her cool with all the bloody wounds on her body. “It’s not a coincidence she’d show up here after yesterday, is it?”

I steeled myself against her daunting venom and stared her down. “That runt’s been nothing but trouble for me. Don’t think I have anything to do with your lack of control over her.”

“Of course it wasn’t your plan to catch your fated mate trespassing the day after you broke up me!” Catrina shouted.

My stomach plunged as she outed not only my fated bond to Billie, but also our break-up. All eyes were indefinitely on me now, all unspoken questions echoed by Catrina’s accusations, and I didn’t like it. David and Colt had begun transforming; behind me, so did Billie. The world was closing in on me with more human voices to feed the chorus.

“I can’t believe you’d defend her over me. I thought what we had was permanent, Gavin! But look at you, throwing me aside the instant Luna gives you some weak little mate, like that’ll fix all your problems instead of working through them with me. You’re so pathetic!” Catrina continued, flaying me with all the insults she’d held back yesterday.

Igniting my anger, I breathed in sharply and snapped back, “You’re the source of my problems, Catrina. You and David pressuring me to merge Grandbay into Dalesbloom—it’s not fucking happening anymore, not as long as you’ve decided to keep dragons in your territory!”

Now human, David staggered to his feet and ripped the clothes Colt offered out of his hands, dressing himself in a white dress shirt and grey jeans. “Am I hearing this correctly?” he drawled, buttoning up his shirt. “Gavin, if your qualms with me are that I haven’t gotten rid of the dragons fast enough, perhaps consider diplomacy before casting aside our packs’ futures.”

“That was just the tipping point,” I said to David. For the first time, my chest went cold with uncertainty—no, worse than that. Fear. I’d never stood up to David before. “You won’t force me to surrender my pack to you. Not when your vision for our pack involves working with dragon shifters and trafficking contraband through our home. Grandbay won’t be associated with your black market shit.”

He rolled up his sleeves and sneered. “Interesting that you, Mr. Steele, would choose of all things to be a champion of ethics. A month ago, you wouldn’t have batted an eye at the commerce that I’m generating for my pack. Now you stand on a pedestal and look down on the way Dalesbloom conducts its lucrative business deals. Has something happened recently that’s given you a bit of a complex?”

“Fuck you, David.” The dynamic between me and David had changed since my Moondream. We both knew it, and it was reflected down the chain to how Grandbay stood snarling and outnumbered by Dalesbloom. “You’ve been waiting for my final decision about merging our packs, so here it is. I’m not giving you Grandbay. I’m not inheriting our pack alongside Catrina. I’ll continue to lead Grandbay on my own, and as Alpha of the territory that your daughter has chased her packmate into, I’m forbidding her from entering Grandbay’s territory again.”

Catrina scoffed, baring her shoulder to me as she skulked over to Colt for clothes. David peered back at his children with displeasure. “You’re a fool, Gavin, all for a pathetic Moondream. But if you’re willing to sacrifice our alliance over that, then perhaps you never were strong enough to lead alongside my daughter in the first place. I’m not worried. Grandbay doesn’t possess the numbers to be a threat to us.” He turned his gaze back to me and curled his lip like the sight of me left a bad taste in his mouth. “You could have made this easy, painless. You should know by now that I am not a man to sit dormant before I’ve gotten everything I want, and as long as you stand between me and what I want, you are an obstacle. I spare no mercy for obstacles, Gavin.”

Sweat dragged down my brow. I could be damning my pack to an even worse fate than peaceful assimilation into Dalesbloom, but the steady growling from Aislin and Niko told me they supported our independence. I was doing the right thing.

David looked past me, like I no longer mattered to him. “Let’s make this quick then. My trespassing daughters will vacate your territory and you won’t be troubled by them again. Come along, Billie.”

I tensed at the darkness in his voice. David looked expectantly at Billie, and beside him Colt had a handful of clothes he was extending to the runt. But Billie, naked and clutching the backpack she’d brought with her, held her ground.

“No,” I said before I could even think of a proper reason. “Jesper stays here. If you can’t keep her under control, then I will.”

Colt and Billie exchanged worried glances. David, meanwhile, drilled into me with newfound annoyance. “She doesn’t belong to you.”

“She’s my fated mate. I’ll deal with her as I see fit,” I snarled angrily.

“You can’t afford another mouth to feed.” David crinkled his eyes and laughed. “Breaking our deal, dumping my daughter, and stealing the other one, all in one night? Gavin, my boy. You must be trying to piss me off.”

I raised my voice. “Get off my territory, Hexen.”

David grimaced. “You will suffer for your insolence, Gavin. I do not take this lightly.” He grabbed Colt’s shoulder and pulled him away while Catrina walked on his other side, lashing a final glare back at me. “We’ll see how long Grandbay lasts with its arms full of useless shifters,” David added.

I backed away from the Dalesbloom wolves, heart racing until they all melted into the darkness and disappeared, and I was left standing beside Billie, silent and bleeding. Looking down at her, she avoided my eyes—not in shame, but in a firm stare into the shadows where her family once stood. Her bare shoulder looked pale in the moonlight.

“Why are you here?” I demanded.

She inhaled sharply, like she’d just snapped awake. “I didn’t mean to come this way. I was running…” Billie tried to hold her voice steady. “I was running but there were too many dragons. This was the only safe way I could go.”

She was clearly trying to escape the Hexens. “You were running away?”

Billie nodded.

Some part of me still wanted nothing to do with her. David was right; she couldn’t hunt or serve my pack, and was hardly mate quality for me. She was a liability, another mouth to feed, another helpless body to protect, but what kind of hypocrite would I be if I turned her away after taking in the unicorn?

Besides, a different part of me did want her. I wanted to channel my frustrations into touching, squeezing, and fucking her. I hated to admit those urges were what compelled me to shove her backpack against her chest. “Get dressed,” I grunted. “We’ll fix your leg at the pack house.”

Billie walked back, surprised by my instructions. “Okay. Thank you.”

“Just hurry.” I didn’t want to be looking at her naked body any more than I already was. It was bad enough that my anger wasn’t the only thing of mine I couldn’t control.