Seduced By My God-Father

chapter five

ROGER'S STRUGGLE:

He ran with them because it was the only thing that quieted his mind.

There was a version of Roger Stormclaw that other people had access to, the alpha, the decision-maker, the controlled and capable face of the Silverwood pack. There was another version that lived behind that, in the space between his public authority and the private hours of early morning when he ran the tree line alone and let himself exist without the performance of certainty.

Both versions had a problem, and the problem had arrived on a bus three weeks ago with a bag over one shoulder and exhausted eyes and the stubborn set of her jaw that had not changed in four years.

He had known she was grown. The reports he had received, not intrusive, just the baseline information that ensured her safety had been telling him for years that she was becoming something. He had processed that intellectually and kept it at a distance with the careful discipline of a man who knew exactly what he was and was not entitled to feel.

Then she had walked through his door and looked at him with those steady eyes and called him Alpha in a voice that held a very precise degree of challenge, and the distance had collapsed in an instant.

He ran harder.

The border incursion tonight was a reminder. Three Ashvale wolves, testing the line again, pulling back when they hit the patrol. No confrontation. Just pressure, steady and deliberate, the way water finds a crack and widens it over time.

His beta Soren fell in beside him as they circled back.

"Same three," Soren said. "I recognise the scent signatures now. They're rotating the same small group. Probing for a pattern in our patrols."

"Adjust the rotation," Roger said. "Different intervals. Different wolves."

"Already on it." Soren was quiet for a pace or two. "She's good, by the way. Sera. Settled back in faster than I expected."

Roger kept his face neutral.

"She always adapted well," he said.

"Her parents were the same way." A pause. Soren chose his next words carefully. "She's going to start asking questions, Roger. She's already asking questions."

"I know."

"The pack remembers things. People who were there that night." Another pause. "She deserves to know."

"I'm aware of what she deserves."

Soren, who had known him for twenty years and had thus developed significant immunity to his silences, pressed on. "And the other thing? The pull you're both radiating so loud the entire eastern patrol noticed this morning?"

Roger stopped.

Soren stopped beside him.

The forest was quiet around them, just the sound of their breathing and the distant creek.

"The entire eastern patrol," Roger repeated.

"Mate bonds are not subtle things," Soren said, not without sympathy. "Especially when both parties are trying to pretend they don't exist."

Roger pressed two fingers against the bridge of his nose.

"She's my god-daughter," he said.

"By choice and love," said Soren. "Not by blood. You know the distinction matters."

"She's thirteen years younger than me."

"Her parents were twelve years apart. Respectfully."

"Her parents didn't......" He stopped.

Soren waited.

"She came back here because I asked her to. Because I needed her where I could protect her. She didn't come back for...." He couldn't finish the sentence. He wasn't sure he could put the end of it into words without acknowledging what the end of it would be.

"No," said Soren. "She didn't. But the bond doesn't ask permission, and it doesn't care about the timing being inconvenient." He clapped a hand briefly on Roger's shoulder. "All I'm saying is that she's going to figure it out. She's already working it out. So at some point you'll have to decide whether you're going to let her make an informed choice, or keep making the choice on her behalf."

He walked on ahead.

Roger stood in the forest with the cold air and his own thoughts, and the pull that damned relentless pull, oriented itself like a compass needle toward the main house.

Toward the room where she was waiting.

He had told her to stay inside. She had sat back down. That small act of compliance, freely chosen, had done something catastrophic to the section of him that was supposed to be in charge of staying rational.

He walked back alone.

The house was quiet when he entered. He should have gone to bed.

He stood outside her door.

He could feel that she was awake, not asleep, not even close. Just sitting in there in the dark with her mother's box and her father's unanswered questions and that particular Sera moonveil brand of patient furious waiting that she had had since she was nine years old.

He pressed his palm flat against her door, just for a moment.

Then he stepped back, and went to his room, and lay in the dark for a long.