I nodded and smiled, forcing the act. With a huff of emotion, my father turned and descended the stairs, and I turned back to face the window and found myself walking toward it before I could stop myself. It was too dark, the rain too angry for me to see clearly outside. But I felt him. So close. He’s so close.
My hands were on the glass, palms flat against the chilled coldness.
Ever since I was young, with the protection of the wall, and always someone from the clan within a shout away—thanks to supernatural Lycan hearing—I’d never felt safer than I had walking or running through the woods. But because of my curious nature, coupled with my wolf side, and because being in those woods was the only time I’d fully experienced being alone, I’d found secret places. Tunnels within the mountains, overgrowth from the bushes and trees like little caverns to hide in.
I looked back at the staircase, my father and brothers having long since descended them. I could picture them now, my mother sitting at one end of the large banquet-style table—the one my father had carved by hand for her. My father would be seated at the other end, my brothers spread out on either side between our parents.
The table would be filled with food—savory dishes the staff had prepared, and sweets my mother had made by hand, especially now, given the fact that I knew she was so nervous.
I couldn’t remember a time since I’d been alive that my family had faced anything like this, anything as stressful or life changing.
Because of me. The weakest link, right?
They’d never made me feel less than. No, I felt that all on my own, because I was the one who’d brought this into our lives, even if I had no control over fate. But I felt like this situation had been my tipping point and showed me who I really was.
I need to stand on my own two feet. I need to start living.
I breathed out and faced the window again, staring out that stained glass, unable to see Luca, but I swore I could still feel him.
I knew what I had to do, and if my father and brothers wouldn’t loosen the leash, so to speak, I had to take matters into my own hands.
8
Luca
In the last week, I’d learned much about my little mate. Everything.
Ainslee.
Half Lycan. Half vampire.
She was but a mere twenty years old. And compared to my over four hundred years, I should have been hesitant to claim her. But I’d waited so long already.
The males in her family—in her clan—were overly protective. I growled at that, because I was here now. That was my job, to make sure she was safe, to watch over her. To love her with everything in me.
I didn’t know much about halflings, but Ren had told me what he knew.
Although they lived as long as a full-blooded Otherworld creature, they were as weak as a human. Their strengths and weaknesses weren’t known widely, but Ren cautioned me to go slow with her.
Replaying that conversation in my head caused me to pace again. I knew my brother spoke the truth and was telling me to try to rein in my beast because he wanted me to succeed in wooing and winning over my mate. But he’d never been pushed over the edge of madness. He’d never been more animal than man for more years than he could contemplate.
I ran a hand over my hair, my claws lightly scraping along my scalp, the feral intensity in me only increasing by the second. I breathed out, and I tugged on the short strands. I did the same, running my hand along my cheeks and jaw, my palm scraping over the beard that had been growing in over the last week of being in the Highlands—in this fucking forest. I couldn’t be bothered with my appearance. My issues were more pressing.
Hell, I hadn’t even left the forest since I’d taken one of our private jets and flown to Scotland. And as soon as I found out where Ainslee was being kept, I stayed as close as I could to her.
I paced. Back and forth. Back and forth.
The storm was unforgiving, pelting sharp stabs of water across my face, soaking my body. But I felt nothing but the burning need to go to my female, to get to her above all else.
And they kept her from me.
My Lycan was restless, my beast more at the surface than ever before. I was partially shifted, a continuous state of power and raw, animalistic need.
Our mate is so close. So close. Yet she’s forever far away. Guarded by the likes of them.
I swung my head back and forth, growling, snarling, showing each and every Lycan behind this gods-forsaken mystically protected wall that they were on my shit list.