After Dawn, What Came Next

“I’m not running.”

“No, you didn’t have to. I did. I ran from you before you got the chance to run from me.”

“Right into Catcher’s arms.”

“Yes. He’s a good man and you will always have his friendship, if you want it. Don’t hate him for what happened. Don’t hate me either. Most importantly, don’t hate yourself. I did what I set out to do. I gave you one night. That was all I wanted.”

“You fucked me out of your system then.”

Fallon sighed and flopped down on the edge of the bed. “I wish it were that simple. I needed to say goodbye to the little girl and put out the flame she had been kindling for so very long. I needed to extinguish it for good. I will always love you, Daniel. Always. But, you’re not what I need…what I deserve…what I want for my future.”

“And Catcher is?”

“Yes, he is.”

The truth stung. Daniel gripped the edge of the dresser. The antique wood groaned beneath his fingertips. He fucked up and now he was paying the price. Fallon was right in everything she said. He wasn’t good enough for her. He wasn’t…he simply wasn’t enough for a woman like her. It should be some consolation prize to him that she had the insight and honesty to confess her love. Anyone masochistic enough to love him deserved a medal of honor. He had lost her to Catcher, but he really couldn’t think of anyone he would rather admit defeat to. Catcher was a good man, the better man, certainly better than him. “Glad I could be of assistance,” he said, his voice dripping with sarcasm.

“Danny, don’t be like that,” Fallon sighed. She deserved Daniel’s scorn. The truth might hurt him, but it was killing her. For so long she had had a little girl’s sugarplum dreams of a happily ever after and the dream had soured into a woman’s worst nightmare. She loved two men, but only one could lay claim to her heart. Whatever there was to say between Daniel and she had been said. She stood to leave and his next question stopped her dead in her tracks.

“What if you’re pregnant?”

Fallon shook her head and refused to acknowledge the possibility of such an outcome. She would have no way of knowing which man had fathered her baby until after she delivered. There were ways to fix the problem. One little pill stashed away in the back of her nightstand could erase any shreds of doubt from her mind. But, the thought of a little life growing inside of her and that it could so easily be snuffed out left her rooted to the spot. It was possible.

“I have a right to know and you the responsibility of telling me. If you are pregnant and the child is mine, I have both the right and the responsibility due any father. I will not allow another man to raise my child.”

“I’d…we’d have to figure something out. I can’t end a life before it’s even begun, but I don’t know if I can live my life with you in it. Besides, I’m not pregnant. I can’t be.”

“Why not?”

“Fate isn’t that cruel.” Fallon wiped her sweating palms on the thighs of her borrowed sweatpants. To say it had been one hell of a night was an understatement of epic proportions. She wanted a hot shower and to climb into crisp, fresh sheets alone. Catcher was waiting for her on the other side of the locked door. She could hear him pacing the hallway. He would fight her demons for her. He would shelter her with his body. There wasn’t anything he wouldn’t do for her including stepping out of the way, if that’s what she asked him to do.

In the morning there would be plenty of demons to face. Her mom. Her dad. Catcher. Daniel. Hunter and Gina. Tracker. Mouse. Evan. Nash. Eloise. Hell, the whole damn pack. News traveled fast in the paranormal world and probably before dawn Alex would be pounding on her door with her fangs flashing demanding an explanation for her most recent bout of stupidity. “I don’t think there’s anything more for us to talk about and I really should go.”

“Fallon, are you in love with him?”

“Yes.”

Daniel smirked at her answer. She was so transparent and far too gullible to see the truth for what it was. Women accused men of thinking with the dangly parts between their legs and it was true, men did…to a degree. Women did far worse. They thought with their hearts and let their emotions be their compass.

Daniel had made the mistake once himself. Yessette had had him twisted around her little finger with nothing more than a promise and a kiss. One night in her bed and he had been convinced he loved her. Fuck, he had loved her…or rather…his version of her that his heart had created. It had been a very rose colored overshadowing of the real Yessette. And in the end when the blinders came off it hadn’t almost killed him, but the people he cared most about in the world. Standing in the ashes of the past, he could see that now. “You didn’t even know him before you slept with him. Me though, did you love me before last night?”

“You know I did.” Fallon wanted to storm across the room and smack that cocky smirk off Daniel’s face. She knew what he was getting at. Daniel was jaded and his past had really done a number on him. She could curse the blonde bitch responsible for stealing his innocence, but what was the point? Yessette was dead and probably roasting in the pits of hell. She only lived in Daniel’s mind, not a ghost, but as alive as she had ever been.

Daniel threw up his hands in bitter resignation. He would spare Fallon this if he could. But, some lessons you just had to learn on your own. “Don’t confuse lust with love, Fallon. Trust me. I know a thing or two about that. You might find Catcher is not the man you think he is.”

“Are you, Daniel? Are you the man I think you are?”

“You already know the answer to that. You know me where I live and breathe, Fallon. You know me as well as I know myself.”

Fallon nodded in agreement. She did. “Did you ever love me?”

“As much as I could, Fallon.”

“Too little and too late. Well, I guess were done here.” Fallon didn’t stop on her way to the door. She fumbled with the lock, unable to force it to turn. Daniel crossed the room and reached around her, flooding her senses with his closeness and his scent. He flicked the lock open and stood to the side. “I am sorry, Daniel.”

“Yeah, me too. I wish I could have been more. I wish I could be exactly what you need.”

Fallon reached up and cupped Daniel’s cheeks in her palms. She pressed a kiss to his lips and released him. “You can’t change who you are.”

“True that.” Daniel watched Fallon walk through the door, closing it behind her on her way out. He stood there in the pale wash of moonlight filtering through the curtains thinking about nothing and everything at the same time. He could hear the whispered lilt of Fallon’s soft voice and the boom of Catcher’s deep tenor as they spoke in the hallway. The rustling sounds of the pack were white noise around him. They were agitated, concerned, and restless sounds echoing the storm raging inside of him. He sighed and waited for Fallon and Catcher to retreat to the imaginary privacy of her room before he pulled on a jacket and escaped. No, he couldn’t change who he was. He wouldn’t even try.





























Chapter 61

Catcher thought his world was going to fall to pieces. He had only begun to put his life together when he felt it slip away. His wolf wanted to kick ass and ask questions later. Helpless to do anything but watch Fallon disappear behind that closed door with Daniel he bristled with a wolf’s agitation and a man’s heartbroken despair. Daniel was his friend…his only friend and Fallon was his love…his only love and the two of them were together alone leaving him in the hall balancing on the thin razors edge of male pride and a wolf’s possessiveness.

He could easily tear the door from its hinges and defend what he and his wolf considered theirs. He could snap Daniel’s neck before the man knew what hit him. His wolf demanded no less. Catcher gritted his teeth in fury and did what he could to tame his wild side. Killing Daniel wouldn’t change a thing. A woman’s heart loved whom it loved and death would not alter that love. A man’s heart could be fooled, but a woman’s? Never.

What rankled him…really stirred his fury to a boiling pitch was that Fallon had rushed out of the bedroom wearing nothing but a sheet and his scent to defend him. Defend him. He was the one who did the defending and the protecting. He didn’t need a female half his size fighting his battles for him. This was a different era than the one he had grown up in. The first thing the newly formed council had done was to abolish the old ways. There would be no more fights to the death for Pack Master, alpha male, or over the rights to a woman. Challenges sure, but no death.

He knew at least a hundred ways to make a man wish he were dead and a bare minimum of a hundred more to make a death look like an accident. He paced the hall ticking off the top ten on his fingers and was about to annex to his toes when his brother stepped into his path. Tracker said nothing. He simply stood there holding his ground and blocking the way with his carbon copy body and a grim expression of determination on his face. If anyone in this pack knew what he was capable of it was his brother, because he was capable of exactly the same thing.

Catcher was a storm about to hit land. A wise man would get the hell out of the way and let it hit. Nobody had ever accused him of being necessarily smart though. Tracker knew the look of a man on the verge of violence. He could smell his brother’s fury on the air. Tracker didn’t believe in interference, usually, but he wasn’t going to let Catcher get a crack at Daniel. The penalty for murder was the same for the pack as it was for the brotherhood. Before the council had passed the new laws Catcher could have gotten away with killing Daniel in a contest of bodies. Not now though. The penalty for death was justice on the razor’s edge of a swift sword. “If you’re going to fight Daniel, you’ll have to go through me to do it. Walk it off, brother.”

Marianne sent the girls back to their beds and eased the door closed behind her. Evan was on her heels as she beat feet down the hall to see what the most recent crisis was all about. She had felt the ripple of preternatural energy coursing along her skin. Usually, a calm wolf radiated no psychic signal. There was just a mild prickle of awareness that made you aware one of your kind was nearby. Being surrounded by pack twenty-four/seven you generally didn’t notice it at all. This energy was different, hot and scalding, and ripping with rage and danger. It was the energy of a wolf bent on defense and on killing.

Her feet hadn’t hit the landing when Evan shoved her to the side and bravely stepped in front of her. Marianne elbowed her way around him and cursed under her breath. She had crashed one hell of a party apparently. The hallway smelled of sex and of wolf. Catcher was dressed only in a pair of jeans and had the disheveled look of a male well loved. The door to Fallon’s room was wide open and Marianne could pretty much guess what had happened in there not too long ago and whom it had happened with.

The house around her was beginning to stir. She heard her grandfather’s heavy footsteps accompanied by the light, harried shuffling of Eloise’s slippers on the floor above. Her dad was behind her rushing up the stairs with Gina beside him. Tristen and Kacie had already beat her here and were standing at the far end of the hall, debating whether to intervene or not. Torr blocked the light from the fragile scones on the wall with his broad shoulders and towering height. The man was bristling with outrage and not quite sure who deserved an ass kicking first. Erica was with him hovering around him like a hummingbird and having no effect at all. But, there really wasn’t much to do to prevent an alpha male from defending his own.

Disturbed by the ruckus the cohabitants sharing the rooms on either side of the hall peeked out from their rooms and wisely poked their heads back inside, locking the doors. God, she wished it were that easy for her. This was a goat rope in the making and it was her job to sort out the goats. If leadership had its privileges she hadn’t seen a single damn one of them yet. It didn’t take a degree in rocket science to fill in the blanks and figure out what had happened and the parties involved.

Where in the hell was Cat when you needed her? Maybe, the kid had a poster already made up to cover this particular event. But, then again it seemed plenty of love had already been made and the war was yet to come. Marianne was torn between hauling Catcher out of the house by his hair and barging in on her brother to come to Fallon’s aid.

She reached up to tug on her braid before she realized it wasn’t there. Damn Daniel. Her brother should come with a warning label tattooed on his forehead. She knew…she knew when he had shown up on the doorstep some kind of trouble would follow him. She thought spending twenty-five years in Texas with nothing but scorched earth, scrub grass, and isolation would change him. It hadn’t. He was still the wind that blew and left desolation in its wake. Her brother was Coyote, reckless and sly. He was Kokopelli, the trickster god of her ancestors and he brought nothing but disaster with him.

Fallon had been in love with her brother for decades. Marianne had sub existed on the hope that one day when Daniel finally grew up that he and Fallon could start a life together. She had thought it was going to happen. That last night was the start of something and not its bitter conclusion. She should step back and let Catcher have a go at him. Daniel’s hard lessons in life hadn’t taught him a thing. Maybe a little blood and pain, a few broken bones, might do the trick. Somehow though, she doubted it. Daniel had never been one to learn anything the first time, no matter how unpleasant the experience.

She had been happy to see her brother and hopeful that their family could be whole again, but not at the expense of Fallon’s heart. Why had Evan bothered to call him? She knew why. He had thought he was bringing Daniel home to say goodbye to either her or her grandfather. No matter what his visions might have shown him. Evan hadn’t expected both of them to walk off the bluffs the morning of the challenge. She wondered if he regretted making that phone call now.

Evan was a believer in that everything happened for a reason. Marianne could see no reason behind this. Fallon was undoubtedly torn. Catcher had been caught up in a hailstorm. And Daniel…she didn’t want to think about what was going on in her brother’s head. The list of people wanting to beat the shit out of her brother was growing exponentially. She should just let them have at it. Maybe, add her own name to the list.

Let him clean up his mess himself. But, she had never done that. He had never had to clean up after himself. Tristen and she had tried to keep Daniel in one piece. Her grandfather had tried to make a man out of him. Her dad had risked his life to save his. Catcher had provided Daniel with both respite and purpose. Fallon had kept the home fires burning for him. Carter bore the guilt of things only Daniel was responsible for. Anyone who had ever loved Daniel or had the misfortune of daring to care had ended up battered and bruised on the rocks that were simply him.

The future wasn’t panning out the way Evan had envisioned it. But, then again, the future rarely did. There were too many variables and too many random elements to account for. He gently wrapped his arms around Mouse and guided her out of the foray. She was torn between rushing in to defend her brother, wanting to hate Fallon for what she had done while at the same time aching to comfort her, and going to Catcher out of pure empathy for what he was going through. She wanted to save the people she loved. In so many ways, she already had. She simply didn’t see it. Yet.

Catcher had thrown a wrench into the cogs of the wheel of the future. It wasn’t as if Daniel needed any help fucking things up. He usually did a pretty good job of that on his own. Fallon was a kite tossed about on the wind. Evan saw her fluttering first this way then that way on the currents of turbid air. Fallon was a healer. She was drawn to those in need of her care. Daniel had needed her, but she had failed to make him whole. Catcher needed her and she had managed to stitch him back together again.

The men in her life weren’t the only ones in need of healing. Fallon was aware of that need in herself. Sometimes, it was necessary to pull off a scab before a wound could heal completely. It hurt, but in the end it was ok. He wasn’t certain about how things were going to turn out, but he had the sense the wounds of the past, of Daniel’s past, of Catcher’s past, and of Fallon’s past would heal, now that the debridement was over.

Torr was ready to open up a can of whoop ass. The only thing stopping him from unleashing his rage was the knowledge that Fallon would throw herself in his path. His little girl had been damaged enough. Torr narrowed his eyes at Catcher and listed all the ways he could maim and dismember the male and he knew exactly what part he was going to start with first. As for Daniel a simple castration wouldn’t be revenge enough for what he had done to Fallon. Torr had stood on the sidelines and watched his daughter exist for two decades. He was proud of her accomplishments, but there had always been something missing in her life. He had watched her waiting by the window wasting away because of the love of a man who didn’t and would never deserve her.

Erica was the only reason that Daniel was walking upright and breathing without the aid of a respirator. Torr had wanted to beat the shit out of him last night when the little prick had tiptoed out of Fallon’s bedroom reeking of sex and his daughter. Torr had sewn plenty of wild oats back in the day. His reasons for it were his own. Perhaps, Fallon had her reasons for inviting Catcher into her bed. But, he doubted Fallon was out for nothing more than a good time.

The thought of Catcher bedding his daughter had him curling his lips over his teeth in a snarl. He was bristling and balancing his weight on the balls of his feet. Coiling his muscles to charge the man and unleash a fury that not even the fire and brimstone pits of hell could match. Catcher was a perfect specimen of manhood. Everything a wolf should be. Fallon could do far worse in her choice of mates. The idea of her with Daniel left him cold, but the idea of having Catcher as a son in law had him boiling over with rage. It was difficult to get over the old prejudices that Catcher was an omega and his daughter was damn near royalty. She was too good for the likes of an omega, a man without clear lineage…a mutt. Daniel, at least, knew who his parents were and could trace his family line back to the beginning of the species.

Catcher was already itching for a fight. Torr bristled with threat. Catcher was a little surprised the man didn’t piss on Fallon’s bed simply to warn him off. Catcher knew the look of disdain in Torr’s eyes and he knew it well. He had been viewed like that his entire life. As if he were less. As if he were nothing. Torr saw him as an omega, parentless, bred for one purpose only, and useless beyond that purpose. Torr was an alpha and had one of the purest bloodlines in the species. There was probably a bit of the same genetic material in Torr that had gone into making him. They could be brothers and wasn’t that a laughable thought?

Catcher was already calculating Torr’s greatest weakness and ways he could exploit it to bring the man to his knees. Torr was a good fighter. The man had killed his father and Seff was perhaps equal in skill to a lowly Omega like Catcher. At least, it would be a fair fight…but not that fair. Erica, his mate was human, and other than his daughter, she was his greatest weakness.