After Dawn, What Came Next

His wolf was active, pacing the boundaries of his mind. There wasn’t any more time left for goodbyes or thoughts of contemplation. The ancient power was with him today, coursing through his body and making the hairs at the nape of his neck stand at full attention. He drew a deep breath, trapping the pungent essence of wood smoke and musky scent of wolf into his lungs. Controlling the beast within him would be nothing short of a miracle. His wolf had yet to accept what his head already knew. Today was a good day to die. “I’ll see you soon, mom.” He whispered as he kissed the tips of his fingers and pressed them to the cool brass of her nameplate on the wall above his own.

Eloise stood in the doorway watching her husband make his rounds. He eyed every picture on the wall, sometimes snaking out a fingertip to straighten one that had gone awry. She said nothing and gave him his space. He thought by coming down here instead of tossing and turning restlessly in bed and alternately staring up at the ceiling, she might get some rest. While his intentions were good, spending his last night down here alone instead of in bed with her wasn’t happening.

She had worn those same shoes herself and they were not easy shoes to walk in. Leadership came with heavy responsibility and she had almost caved beneath the weight of it. She couldn’t quite regret the path she had walked or where that path had led. It had brought her here to him. Eloise didn’t waste time contemplating the would be fate of her pack. What would have happened if they had stayed in Texas or fallen under Seff’s rule. What was the point of such speculation? They were here. This was home now and had been for over twenty-five years. She was married to the man of her dreams and she had the one thing she had never had before. Love.

She had done what a good pack mistress was supposed to do and had delivered her pack into safety and prosperity. They were in good hands, in better hands than hers. They belonged to Nash and most importantly, to themselves. DNA and good breeding had made her former pack what they were, but now they served a higher calling than the double helix. Pack married for love. Children were conceived because they were wanted and not out of a sense of duty. And the results of such freedom abounded in the rooms over her head.

A fire blazed on the hearth. Nash took such comfort in the dancing of flames and the sweet, pungent scent of wood smoke. He was born of a time well before hers. He jokingly called himself an old goat. She had no trouble correcting him and reminding him that he was a man of extraordinary valor and good taste because he had the excellent sense of reason to marry her.

Even now, pacing around the room and rippling with pent up energy he was a breathtaking specimen of manhood. Well out of his prime, but still so capable of making her toes curl and her breath hitch in her throat with nothing more than just a glance from his golden-brown eyes. His hair was threaded with more silver than black these days. Laugh lines formed deep furrows in the corners of his mouth and eyes. Hard muscles no longer bulged with the strength and resiliency of youth, but were no less capable than those of a much younger man.

The smooth line of his chest had lost its hard edge, but the heart that beat beneath his ribs was brave and sure. Her fingers itched to trace the scars that he had earned so long ago. He wore the puckered silvery lines on his marred flesh with pride. He saw them as a testament to his character and his bravery. And indeed, they were.

It was fall and the days were growing shorter. The air still held a tinge of summer’s warmth and the first frost had yet to blanket the ground. At a little after six, the sky was just now beginning to grow pink at the edge of the horizon with dawn’s first light. Eloise dressed for warmth in a pair of denim jeans and sweater, as if it were just an ordinary day. She understood the necessity of standing back and doing nothing while the fates determined which destiny would win over the other.

Nash wore a pair of weathered, battle-scarred buckskins, hand stitched and interwoven with shiny beads at the seams. The leggings had been tucked away in a cedar chest at the foot of their bed for over two decades. He had worn them on their wedding day a lifetime ago.

The leather smelled of sweat and pungent wood oil. There were rusty blotches on the leather, spattered stains of old blood, the spilled blood of battles past. He had worn the leathers on the morning of his first contest for pack master and on every subsequent challenge of his rule ever since. He intended to wear them one last time today and it wasn’t only to fight, but to his pyre.

The thought of his intent terrified her. She understood the future could not take place until the past had been put behind them. Nash had been waiting for Mouse to set her mind to the challenge since she was old enough to shift. He had trained her to take his place. Marianne, Mouse, was wickedly smart, fast on her feet, and amazingly strong for a woman weighing less than a hundred and twenty pounds and barely clearing the five feet tall mark. In their world though, size didn’t matter for shit. Nash had infused in her his best qualities and unfortunately, the worst, as well.

Mouse was shrewd and coldly calculating when the occasion called for it. She could be brutal and ruthless without a moment’s worth of hesitation. Eloise had also seen Mouse’s softer side. The compassionate mother and loving wife Mouse had become. Her grandfather meant more to her than life itself in so many ways. When her own father hadn’t been there for her, Nash had. Maybe, her love and her memories of him would be enough to save his life. There would be no truce. At the critical moment, if Mouse faltered and Nash was forced to take her life in exchange of his own. Even if he won the contest, he wouldn’t lead the pack for long. Killing her would kill him.

There was no way out of what was to happen. There was but one option. Stand and fight. Ensure the future through his death so that the pack would flourish. Nash would never leave the pack to save his own skin. He would see this through and he would fail. Eloise twisted the emerald ring on her finger watching the firelight glitter off the facets in the stone. She was about to become a widow and as painful as that thought was she still hadn’t completely given up. There was still hope for a miracle. Something unseen that might still yet be brought to light. This was a new era and a new dawn. The old ways were slowly crumbling and decaying into the past. Maybe, there was a chance.

The sound of Eloise’s suppressed hitching breaths drew Nash’s attention away from the fire. The house around them was beginning to awaken. The pack would be in attendance to witness the final outcome of the fight. He hated that the children had to learn of the brutality of their world. His last thoughts would be of them. The last thing he would see would be their wide eyes rounded with horror and fear.

The children Eloise had brought with her from Texas had been cautious and hesitant. They had kept to themselves and it took a long time for them to trust. Refugees of war, the ragtag lot of them were the haunted, shattered ghosts of the children they might have been if not for the terror their eyes had seen. He regretted two things now, leaving Eloise and that the children had to be present on the bluffs. He wondered how many more things he would regret with his dying breath before it was drawn.

“It’s almost time,” Eloise said softly.

Nash nodded, not bothering with words. He could feel the sun creeping higher on the horizon deep within his bones. He extended his arm and tucked Eloise tightly against his side. The two of them had always fit so well together. He should have spent last night and the wee hours of this morning making love to her. He just couldn’t bring himself to admit, this was it and the finality of things to come.

He tensed at the sound of a car idling up the drive and sliding into park. At long last, his family was together again under one roof. He would have liked to spend some time catching up with his prodigal grandson, but circumstances waited for no one. Perhaps, Daniel had come home to see him off into the spirit world and perhaps not. Ultimately, it made little difference why Daniel had driven up from Texas. All that mattered was that he was here. Whether Daniel believed it or not, the pack had not been the same since his absence. They needed him here at home where he belonged.

Chapter 5

Daniel rubbed his eyes to clear the fog and slid the car into park. He had driven straight through to get here in time. Hopefully, in his old age, his grandfather wasn’t as punctual as he used to be and hadn’t gone out to the bluffs yet. Everyone had grown up with a steady diet of his grandfather’s predictions of the things to come. Daniel couldn’t believe it was actually happening. When Evan called to tell him the news, Daniel had asked him to repeat it. Twice.

Mouse was challenging her grandfather for leadership of the pack. Not a good thing. Daniel couldn’t wrap his head around Mouse being an adult and married with children, let alone willingly engaging in a fight to the death. The last time he had set eyes on her, she was still just a scrawny kid.

Time had gone on without him. The house was huge now. The cheery yellow siding had been replaced by a basic white out of necessity. Another story had been added and several wings stretched off the main floor. The wooden skeleton of yet another addition stretched off the garage and led to the back, where the kitchen was…at least where it used to be.

Daniel wiped his sweating palms on his thighs. He hadn’t stopped to think about it before now. Somehow, he just assumed coming home would be like picking up where he had left off. He would need a map and a compass to find his way though the house.

He had a half-sister he had never even met, little Claire. My God, Danni, his niece, his brother’s daughter, would be almost twenty-five by now, roughly the same age as his half-sister. His little nieces, Mouse’s kids, he had never even spoken to them ‘the twins’ as his father jokingly referred to them, over the phone. Would he even recognize them if he saw them? For that matter would he recognize his own brother and sister?

These people were strangers. He was a stranger. His mouth was suddenly dry with doubt. He was worse than a stranger. He was an interloper. Daniel jangled the keys in his palm. Damn, did he even belong here at all? Why had he even bothered to come back? Was it simply because Evan called and asked? Or that he had driven over twelve hours straight under the deluded idea that his family needed him? They didn’t need him. Everyone seemed to be doing just fine without him.

He should put the keys back in the ignition and get the hell out of here before somebody realized he had come home. Daniel had grandiose ideas in his head of walking through that front door and being welcomed with open arms. That probably wasn’t going to happen. If anything the pack would see him as an outlier, an impostor with a family resemblance. It was too late to make a graceful exit though. He had been spotted. The curtains in a second story window fluttered as they fell shut blocking him out.

He counted the windows just to make sure. With this many changes to the house he could be mistaken. Someone had been watching him from his old bedroom window and he was almost certain he had seen a flash of red hair.

A smile crept across his lips for a brief moment. Fallon, god how old was she now? Thirty something? She was a doctor, or so he had heard. He remembered her as she had been, as a little girl with the wildest tangle of curly red hair he had ever seen. Cute as a button, innocuously curious about everything, and trying so hard to fit in. Like a square peg into a round hole, Fallon had latched onto his sister like a leach. Maybe, it was because she had grown up as an only child and had no brothers and sisters of her own that she sought Mouse out with such veracity. He had tried to be an older brother to her. Unfortunately, the act was short lived. At nineteen and full of piss and vinegar he was hardly the older brother type or a role model for anybody.

To this day, Daniel still felt bad that he had been such a shit to his family and especially to Fallon. He was her first crush. He had such big visions of the world and his place in it. He hadn’t had time for anybody except for himself. Fallon followed him around like a lost puppy and at the time, he had seen her as nothing more than a nuisance, a shadow he didn’t want.

Damn had he been wrong about the world beyond the pack. He was just a little fish in a much bigger pond and a shark had almost swallowed him whole. Fallon had been on Mouse’s bandwagon to put him back together after the dark time, the time after Yessette. Those were horrible days filled with memories he would rather stay put behind him. Retreating to Texas and absorbing himself in the mundane tasks Catcher set him to complete was the only way he had survived them at all.

His eyes flicked to a window on the first floor. The bushes had been dug up and replaced with flowerbeds neatly bedded down with straw for winter. Fallon had perched in the window that night, her cheeks glistening with tears, to bid him goodbye. His time in the city had taught him a thing or two. From the suffering of loss he had learned compassion. Seeing her there, crying over his departure had broken loose a dam inside of him. He had marched across the yard and stumbled through the bushes and given Fallon her first kiss through a frozen pane of glass.

He knew a lot about wanting things and loving people you simply could not have. That night his heart broke for her and for himself. Perhaps, he had made Fallon such a trite offering to try to ease her pain, or quite possibly, his own. They were both older now. Life had happened and was going to keep right on happening. She was no longer a little girl and he no longer a self-centered shit.

He had known love and loss. Daniel wished for Fallon nothing but love and that she should never know a thing of the heartbreak of loss. She was most likely married with kids of her own by now. Undoubtedly, she had moved on as had he and her life had taken her wherever it would as his life had him. Whoever the lucky son of a bitch was that had won her heart. He had better be good to her. Daniel wasn’t a very good substitute for a big brother back then, but he intended to be one now. And he had no qualms about kicking some ass to ensure Fallon’s happiness.

Nope, there was no getting out of this now. He was in. For how long, he didn’t know, maybe for a day or two, maybe for the rest of his life. He was a drifter. A traveler with no permanent roots anywhere. He couldn’t go back and forward was nothing but mists and shadows with no particular destination. He didn’t know how he was going to answer the questions that undoubtedly would be asked or at least answer them honestly.

He was here for Mouse, for his grandfather, and for his family, if they’d let him be. But, he had come back because of the memory of a woman with pale hair the color of spun platinum. A woman he had once loved more than life itself. Yessette in her own way had died bravely out of sacrifice. Carter had been there. He had drawn the blade that had ended her life. On a snowy plane in the far north, he had put her down. So many things were sacrificed for the future. Her life had been one of many. Carter had told him she loved him as much as she was capable of and in the end, perhaps, she had offered up her life, for him and because of her love.

Today was a day of sacrifice. Two people would enter the challenge and only one would walk out alive. Daniel wouldn’t place a bet on who the victor would be even if he were a betting man. He didn’t want to see anyone die, not his little sister and not his grandfather. But, it was an unavoidable fact of pack life. He had come back to witness. Not only the fight, but to honor what it was they fought for. Everyone had battles. Yessette’s had been a battle for her sanity and her humanity. Daniel’s was for not his life as measured by breaths and heartbeats, but his life in terms of how he wanted to live it. Yessette had lost her fight. Daniel didn’t want to lose.

Even this early in the fall, it was as cold as a witch’s tit in a brass bra. No longer accustomed to the cool damp temperatures of an Indiana morning, he shivered and hunkered down into the collar of his sweatshirt. The heater had died somewhere north of the Mason-Dixon line. Not surprising. Even less of a shocker was that there wasn’t a thermostat to be found in the entire state. Replacement parts for the car were as rare as finding a gas station that actually sold gas. These days cars ran on electricity and most of the old gas stations had been outfitted with charging stations. You could drive over a hundred miles for less than two bucks. That was a far cry from the thirty-two dollars fifty nine cents he had paid for a gallon of unleaded gas.

Daniel shook his head at the shame of progress. Everything was clean and efficient, but there was nothing like the stain of motor oil beneath your fingernails, the rumble of a V8 engine thrumming through your bones, and the perfume of gasoline burning in your nostrils. He knew his older brother, Tristen, too well. There were a couple of classic old beauties parked behind the closed doors to the garage and probably a stockpile of spare parts too. It would be a way to rebuild a little of what had been lost. No matter if there were words between them left to say or explanations to be offered. At least his brother, his father, and he spoke a common language. The language of the combustion engine and it had never failed them yet.

Daniel inhaled a breath of cool air, trapping the essence of fall and wood smoke and the musky scent of pack and wolf deep inside his lungs. His skin prickled with the magic of the pack. The bristling unspent energy of anticipation and the unknown tingled up his spine. He was home again and it was a bittersweet thing. He was hardly the prodigal son returning humbled and contrite. He had nothing to apologize for. For all his many shortcomings and downfalls he was who he was and he had done the things he had done. He did not have to beg for forgiveness from anyone nor did he feel the slightest compulsion to explain his actions, why he had left twenty-five years ago and not returned until now, to anybody.

He hadn’t come here in search of a long lost home. He had no intentions of reopening old wounds and rehashing the past. What was done was done. His future might not be found amongst these walls or in the woods or even deep in the earth beneath his feet. It could be anywhere or nowhere. He had come to say goodbye to whoever wasn’t going to make it off the bluffs alive. To embrace his grandfather and tell him he finally understood…everything his mentor and surrogate father had been trying to tell him all those years long ago.

He had come to give Mouse a hug and to make sure she knew he didn’t blame her for doing what she thought was necessary to secure the pack. He had come to forgive his father for not being there and to thank him for his part in making sure he had a future at all. He had come to forge a peace with his brother. He was back to say hello to all the family he had never met. And he had returned to give a redheaded little girl’s pigtails on last tug before he had to give her up to the woman she had become.

Chapter 6

Tom glared doubtfully at Cat. The bluffs were cold and somewhat dark this early in the morning. The pink glow of first light stood out bright against the dark relief of skeletal balding limbs and tall bushy pine trees. The grass was crunchy and autumn dried beneath his boots. Gusts of air rolled and whistled down the sheer granite cliffs and outcroppings of stone to play havoc with unseen fingers riffling through his hair. At twenty-seven he shouldn’t be worried about getting into trouble. After all, Cat had made it her life’s ambition to land herself and anyone even loosely associated with her and her most recent scheme into the very jaws of trouble for as long as he could remember. “Are you sure this isn’t going to be like the time you started your meat is murder campaign?”