Chapter 17

Castor

Night had long since fallen. It was apt. The heart that he’d only just discovered wasn’t some purely functional organ in his chest but was actually capable of feeling, now felt as if it had been ground to dust, and the darkness echoed the sense of bleakness that surrounded him.

Very little moonlight came through the thick curtains in the cabin’s living room. He’d faced far worse situations than this, the children in his pack were more threatening than the Nightfall alpha and his beautiful dark-haired mate. They both wore pensive expressions, which spoke to the fact that they cared about Briar May very much. The ex-alpha and his mate, both of them white haired, were equally tense and guarded. It seemed that the silver-white hair ran in the Nightfall genes, though Briar May’s was more white-blonde than silver. They had softer, honey brown eyes, unlike the wolves in his pack. Almost to a man, their eyes were gray or ice blue.

He’d caught a glimpse of the other Nightfall offspring when he’d been watching the pack to figure out how best to take his revenge. He knew there were twelve who belonged to Silas and Lilac Nightfall, but he hadn’t set eyes on most of them. Even now, the family was obviously doing their best to keep them and the rest of the pack hidden away.

He’d set everyone on edge with his presence.

Briar May was seated between her parents on the one large couch. Kieran and Zora took the other. That left him a recliner, which he fell into easy enough. In truth, his body was a mess of pain. His head thundered, his back felt like he’d been dragged fifty miles down asphalt roads, and the rest of his muscles boomed furiously, trying to outdo his back.

He remembered each blow he’d received in that cave, though he couldn’t truly piece together what happened immediately after he was cut down. It was all sketchy from there.

None of that mattered and nothing hurt like not knowing that Briar May was pregnant.

She hadn’t planned on telling him.

He knew that was because she truly believed in playing the heroine and sacrificing her own happiness so that he could find safety and freedom. But she was a smart woman, surely she knew that he would fight through an apocalypse, take down the whole world, come up against his pack however many times it took and come out the victor to protect her and the baby.

“Castor.” Kieran broke the silence. He took his mate’s hand. She squeezed back while looking askance at him. “This is an unusual circumstance. I can’t say that in our history we’ve ever had someone stolen from our pack.”

Then you’ve been very fortunate.

How might his own life have turned out differently if his mother hadn’t been taken by an enemy? If he and Pollux weren’t abducted with her and made to watch while she died?

“These are unprecedented circumstances indeed,” Silas added when his son left a gap in the conversation.

Briar May cleared her throat. “We’re not talking about what came before or how this all played out. We all know it. We came to discuss our mating. Or not mating.” She looked at her parents in turn.

She was freshly showered and glowing. Her pale cheeks finally had a spot of color. She was wearing a soft-looking green cotton sundress with a light brown cardigan buttoned up halfway overtop. The mossy green softened the browns in her eyes, she was painfully beautiful.

He didn’t deserve to even be sitting in the same room as her. He didn’t deserve this conversation. What he deserved was to be banished from here as the Nightfall Pack’s retribution for stealing their daughter. He deserved a punishment such as his father had meted out, only this time it would have been justified. He didn’t deserve their care. He knew they’d sent for a healer. He sensed sometimes, when he couldn’t bring himself out of the delirium, an older woman with skilled, kind hands. He didn’t deserve an ounce of respect. These people knew what he was. How could they even think about giving their soft, sweet, lovely daughter to him? How could they trust him with her entire life and her future, her heart and health and soul?

It wasn’t just her.

They were trying to figure out if they could trust him with a child.

Fuck, he couldn’t even fathom how it happened.

Biologically, sure. She was a virgin. It made sense she wasn’t taking any sort of herbs or birth control. He was thinking about trying to stay alive, trying to keep her safe. No. He hadn’t been. He was solely thinking about how fucking good she’d felt around his cock, crying out as she came, her walls milking him as he spilled his seed, deep inside her.

He looked up and caught the pack alpha’s eyes. Fuck, if it was him sitting there, he’d surge across the room and strangle the life out of him. But Kieran’s expression wasn’t vengeful, it wasn’t even mistrustful. He wasn’t just trying to moderate it for his sister. It appeared he’d already given the matter serious consideration. If that wasn’t true, he wouldn’t have contacted Agnar to parlay for his return. He’d already planned on their mating. He’d already decided.

Did that make him a hero with incredible faith and foresight, or did it make him the dumbest man alive?

“I’m going to put a question to both of you and I want an honest answer. Don’t think about what’s happened between our two packs or what’s coming. I just want to know what you feel. I believe that when you meet your mate, you know it. I spent a decade separated from the woman I love. I wouldn’t wish that kind of pain on anyone. It’s a slow death, and if I can spare either of you that pain, then I’d like to.”

Being an asshole wasn’t going to cut it, so Castor didn’t scoff. He knew pain. What was a little more?

Lie.

Losing this woman would kill him. There was no testing the pain because he’d already thought she was gone forever, and he’d pretty much welcomed the end at his father’s hand. He had nothing to live for and he had been prepared to die for her and her pack. It would have been a sweet execution, knowing she was safe.

The same way she’d live for him.

She hadn’t betrayed him up there in that room. He knew that. He wasn’t angry with her. Not when he’d understood perfectly from the start what she was trying to do.

He crossed his hands and tucked them in his lap, palms down as if he could hide the sins of his past or at least be less offensive to those present. He fixed his eyes on Briar May, who had done a remarkable job of looking anywhere and everywhere else since they’d sat down.

“If you don’t want me as your mate, then I’ll leave here and go right back to my pack. They might as well finish the job because I have nothing without you and… and the baby and that’s the truth.”

Briar May let out a cry that was half rage. She leapt off the couch and glowered at him. “That’s not fair! You can’t make me a murderer if I don’t choose to mate you.”

“But you do want to mate me, little wolf, and that’s the truth. You know we’re fated, and who am I to stand in the way of such things? I might be the least suited person for you. I might be a killer, a blood-stained bastard, and the hardest man, but I would never harm you. If fate has decided this, then—”

“Fate has decided nothing. Just because we might have—” She looked at her parents and flushed. “It might not be the right time.”

“Fair enough. But a promise is a promise. You want me to stay, you just have to say the word. Tell me to stay and lay down my old life. Stay and learn how to love, although I make no promises that I’m capable. Stay and learn kindness. Stay and be a part of your pack. Be a true family. Stay and raise our child. Stay and be everything to each other. All you have to do is say it, little wolf and I will obey your command.”

Briar May looked like she was going to burst into tears and at the same time charge across the room and shove him hard. A wicked tension crackled through the room. No one dared to move. Her parents were taken aback, but not appalled. Kieran was still clutching Zora’s hand.

“Your pack,” Briar May challenged, her voice heavy with emotion. “They’ll never stop coming for you. I can’t risk my pack and my family on one selfish decision. I can’t let Kieran let us have a life here, if it brings danger to all of us. As alpha, he has to put the pack first. I won’t break his heart. I won’t break anyone’s heart. My own happiness at the cost of even one person’s misery isn’t worth it.”

“Briar May.” Kieran stood and put his hand on his sister’s arm.

Castor resisted the wild animal urge to tear that hand away and break every bone in it. That was the crux of it, she was willing to forgo her own happiness because she was scared that his pack would renege on their agreement.

“I’m sure there are ways we could work this out. Castor’s pack are warriors. They live and die by a warrior’s code. They aren’t lawless bandits.” Dark brown eyes flicked to him. “Is that right?”

“Yes. There are things we hold absolutely sacred.”

“Like your word?” Briar May didn’t shoot that at him to be cruel.

She twisted her face to look up at her brother. The pain on her face made the hair stand up on the back of his neck. The urge to destroy something or someone just because she was hurting nearly overcame his control. His vision blinked in and out, but that was probably because while he was sitting here pretending like he didn’t feel a damn thing, his body was getting very near the edge of what it could take without needing to sleep for hours.

“Castor’s alpha gave his word. He said that he wouldn’t be harmed and look at him! They were set to kill him. I thought—” Her voice broke, and he lunged forward in the chair, but Kieran’s frown stopped him. Briar May trembled, but she got herself under control and finished her sentence. “I thought that he was going to die right in front of me.”

Her tears made it impossible for him to take a breath. He’d been out of it for most of those days. It was hell enduring and healing, but it was worse for her, having to witness every single minute.

“If we can’t trust their word, then we can’t trust them. We can’t trust that there would never be a war. That they’d never come for Castor and that he’d be taken away from here and harmed. We can’t trust that they would never come for that vengeance they didn’t get to carry out. Rome killed Castor’s twin brother. Their creed is an eye for an eye, and they won’t be satisfied until someone pays.”

“My alpha’s word is law.” Castor said.

“And look where it got you!” Briar May exclaimed.

“This wasn’t my alpha’s doing. It was my father.”

There was silence as Kieran and Silas looked at one another, appearing to silently communicate something.

Briar May spoke out, “I still think my plan is more logical. Is it what I want, in truth? No. But if we sent Castor away and told his pack that he died, it would stop. Or at least, he’d be safe.”

“No. No, I won’t do that.” He thought his life was a sort of hell before? He had no idea. Being parted from the woman he wanted as his mate and his child, that would surely be the worst hell anyone could ever devise. “If I’m here and something happened, if they came, I could help prepare this pack for defense. I know you don’t want war, but it might be inevitable. My father may not be alpha, but as the alpha’s right-hand man he always has his ear. He’s kept his position through numerous alphas, he can be very persuasive when he wants to be.”

Kieran shook his head. Zora stood up and came to his side. She wrapped her arms around him. The look they shared was so intimate that it stung him to the quick. “I thought that if I proposed a mating between our two packs, then it would settle things for good.”

“No.” Castor shook his head.

“No,” Briar May said at the same time.

The very slim, small hope in the room burst like a half-formed bubble blown into a strong wind. He wanted to stand up and reach out to Briar May with everything he had, but he ignored the pull.

“What would we have to do then, in order to keep our pack safe? Other than handing over Rome, because I won’t do that.” Kieran said as his eyes met his sister’s.

There was something in the look that Kieran and Briar May now shared that spoke of secrets that not even their parents knew. Castor picked up on it because he missed very little. Kieran turned his dark eyes back to Castor. “If our pack isn’t safe if you mate or if you don’t mate, then I don’t see what harm it could do in you staying here. If I give my consent and Briar May gives hers, then you’re welcome to stay here.” It was obvious that Kieran was deeply troubled by the admission that war was coming. “We’re all wolves. There are precious few of us left in the world. We don’t need to be fighting and killing each other.”

“A formal blood oath might help. Between you and Agnar, performed here and then performed on my pack’s territory. Agnar wants peace, he’s worked hard for it, though I suspect if my father continues to influence him, then perhaps that peace will not remain for long. Where our lands are, there has been little peace. It’s been that way for decades. Raids. Theft. Murder. Vengeance. Enslavement. All they know is war. Endless and endless war. They know revenge. They’ve been raised on blood and battle. Dying that way is sacred for them. My father is poison delivered on a silver tongue and Agnar heeds him because he speaks with the voice of the pack. They need to be shown a different way, they need to get rid of the old guard, people like my father. I believe Agnar is a good man, and he could continue to lead for years. He’s been unchallenged for three years. That’s the longest any alpha has ever led our pack. It’s not often that wisdom, leadership, and a good head come with the muscled fearlessness of a man who wants either power or the thrill and prestige of winning an alpha challenge. It’s a sort of sport for us.”

That made Briar May and Zora frown, but Silas, Lilac, and Kieran absorbed that information with silent nods. They clearly knew how so many of the packs still operated. They’d grown their numbers, expanded their wealth, influence, and land because they didn’t follow the old ways.

“If you proposed two matings, I think that peace could have a chance.” He knew that his idea was a risk. “I’m not trying to be heartless, and I have no interest in saving my own skin. This is only a proposal, and you can do with it what you will. One mating from our pack, myself and Briar May, with us living here. Another from your pack, mated to Agnar. He’s not so old yet. He’s a good man. He might not be kind, but he’s not unkind. As I said, he’s a thoughtful man who tries for wisdom before weapons. He’s had enough of the senseless bloodshed. He does have a vision for our pack, and he believes in it. Unlike most who challenge when they’re young and foolish and besotted with glory, Agnar was in his early forties when he challenged and became alpha. He wants change, but it’s slow. He had a mate, but she was murdered by another pack years ago leaving him with two children. He doesn’t let the pack see his love for them as a weakness, though some don’t understand.” Castor paused, Kieran’s expression was unreadable, but he appeared to be considering his words carefully. “My father turned to vengeance after my mother was murdered, I think her death killed whatever good was inside him. Agnar still has a sense of decency and honor. If he were to take a mate from your pack and she were to live there with him, there could be blood oaths taken as well, between alphas, that bind our packs. Because of the distance between us, you would never be called on to enter disputes or wars as an ally, but we would have some kind of alliance.”

“No woman from this pack could survive in such a harsh, dangerous environment,” Silas sputtered. He wasn’t angry, just winded by the unexpected blow.

“I’ll do it!” The door suddenly burst open and a windblown woman with her white-blonde hair whipped around her face, pulled out of a messy braid, her long simple dress tangled around her legs, tumbled into the room.

Two children, the alpha’s twins who had obviously been kept away from the cabin while he was in the room upstairs convalescing, barged in after her.

All three of them looked guilty and flustered, but the woman bore the most guilt. Her pale complexion turned a deep red.

“I’m sorry,” she stammered. She took hold of the twins’ hands immediately. “I know we were supposed to stay at your cabin…” She faced her parents and then Kieran and Zora. It only took Zora half a second to shake off the shock and rush over to her kids. She hugged them tight to her, but not like she had to protect them from the stranger in the room.

The kids looked at him with wide, frightened eyes. They certainly remembered the bad men from the woods who had taken their aunt and scared them senseless, and Castor was hit with a wave of guilt for having caused them to feel such terror.

From her appearance, it was clear that the woman was one of Briar May’s sisters. It was hard to keep all of them straight. What information he’d gathered while surveilling the pack just numbered a long list of names and ages, pulled from generally unwilling sources. They could only ask so many questions before people were suspicious. They were more forthcoming about the Ranger pack that had been sighted for a short while and then disappeared, which was how they’d tracked Pollux’s remains down and built a picture of his last few days.

“We wanted to hear what was happening. I- I should have told them no. I’m sorry. But I wanted to know what was happening. Everyone wants to know what’s going on.”

“Prairie Rose—” Lilac started, but the woman in question tilted her chin up stubbornly.

“I know I was wrong, but I’m here now and I’ve heard everything. I’m unmated. I’m forty-two years old. My chances of ever having a family are slim. I know we’re a family here. All of us. A pack. But a woman wants a family of her own. A home of her own with children and a mate to love and be loved by.”

“If you’re unhappy, we’ll find you a mate,” Silas reasoned. He begged her with his eyes not to do what she was proposing to do. He thought it would be throwing her life away.

Castor understood Silas’s fear and grief. It wasn’t misplaced. Their pack was a dangerous place, but it could be so much more. He’d made the men and women there out to be barbarians, but they lived and loved. They might be rough around the edges, but they had dreams and hopes just like everyone else. With Agnar making changes to their pack and trying to forge peace around them, maybe it wouldn’t always be that way.

“No. This needs to be done to save our pack. It needs to be done so that my sister can be happy.”

Prairie Rose rushed over to Briar May and wrapped her arms around her. They melted into each other, as close as twins. He and Pollux had shared that bond. The alpha’s twins probably had that same unspoken sort of way they communicated. More by feeling and intuition than with words.

“I can be happy if you don’t do this,” Briar May protested, half begging. “You don’t have to go there. Please don’t. I need you. I love you. It won’t be the same here without you. I’ll miss you so desperately. We’ve always been best friends as well as sisters. I can’t lose you.”

“You won’t lose me.” Prairie Rose caressed her sister’s hair tenderly. She looked far older in that moment. Wise and at peace. “We’ll talk every day. The pack comes before all of us, and I can do this. Please.” She looked at her parents. At her brother. At Zora and then eventually at Castor. He was half broken at the lights dancing in them. “It’s not a sacrifice. I’m not throwing my life away. Let me do this, I’ve always felt that my life had no real purpose, and this is something I can do to help the pack. We can’t live like this if I don’t, under a constant thundercloud. No one will be happy. No one will thrive.” She touched Briar May’s belly, pressing her palm down over her sister’s dress. “I love you, Briar May. I love this baby already.” She trapped him in her bold amber stare again. “So does he, and you love him, even if you don’t know it yet. You can’t live without him. He can’t live without you. And none of us can live without peace.”

“Prairie Rose.” Her mother’s lips trembled, and her eyes glistened with tears. Lilac wouldn’t dissuade her eldest daughter. She swept across the room like a spirit and threw herself over her girls. She didn’t flash him a look of hatred, but seeing her hurting over losing her daughter was worse than the whipping, the carving, the blows that he’d endured in the cave.

Of the three of them, only Prairie Rose wasn’t crying. “Please, Kieran,” she whispered, holding tight to her mom and sister. Zora clutched the twins in the doorway, who were shaking and confused. Castor doubled over, the weight of all their despair a crushing blow. The look Silas and Kieran shared was the worst of it. Unspeakable, unimaginable sorrow.

They looked defeated and they wore their doubt openly.

“Kieran.” Prairie Rose begged again. “This is a happy night. We’re going to have two matings and an alliance with another pack. Sacred blood oaths. Two families joined as one and many lives changed for the better. I know this, I can feel it. The only tears we can cry tonight are happy ones.”

Kieran finally gave that authoritative nod, just a single jerk of his chin.

The whole room might as well have been dealt a deathblow. Only Prairie Rose looked the least bit hopeful.