After Dawn, What Came Next

Fallon could have been the one, if he would have let her. Perhaps, the reason he hadn’t was because of his fear that he would do nothing but drag her down with him. Fallon deserved better than that. As for him, he deserved to suffer. Daniel thought the task of finding himself ended once the torture of puberty had finally ground to a halt. Nothing was farther from the truth. It seemed the older he got the less sure he was about anything.

He could beat feet for Texas and stay there amongst the rows of empty houses. Paint a few fences, plant some flowers, mow a little grass, and essentially live the rest of his life as a hermit. The refuge that had been his home for twenty-five years suddenly didn’t seem so appealing to him. Maybe, it was being back here, surrounded by the familiarity of home that had changed his mind.

He had a brother and a sister to get reacquainted with. Kids…it still got him somewhere deep in his chest when he thought of Danni, his niece, being an adult. She had been a little baby the last time he had saw her. One look at her cherubic face and chubby cheeks and he had known her name. Huntress Danielle, named after his father and oddly enough, after him, was too much of a mouthful for such a sweet looking infant. Calling her Danni had been his idea and by some miracle the nickname had stuck.

Daniel still couldn’t wrap his head around Mouse having a brood of her own. Mouse had barely started wearing training bras the last time he saw her and now she was the proud mama of two beautiful little girls. Mouse and Evan, he hadn’t seen that one coming. But, of course, Evan had been nothing but a curious and somewhat annoying little boy at the time.

Mouse and Evan and Tristen and Kacie weren’t the only ones that had been up to the devil’s business in the last twenty-five years. Daniel’s father and his wife Gina had made a little rug rat too. Claire, his half sister, hell he didn’t even know her. She seemed like a fine young woman and the service she had provided to the pack in discovering the start of the trail that had led to Phoenix and Danni, was something that would not be forgotten. Claire looked more like Gina than Daniel’s side of the family. Her hair, while dark, wasn’t quite the blackish brown of his. Her eyes were brown, but not the rich shade of his, more of a light brown with flecks of green and gold. Daniel could see hints of his father in Claire, but he could also see Gina’s influence in her as well. He hoped Claire didn’t inherit their father’s restless spirit, but had by the grace of God taken after Gina instead. He hoped she knew exactly where she belonged. There was nothing worse than not knowing. Having been there and done that, he ought to know.

Some well meaning soul had brought the boxes containing his former life down from the rafters in the garage. The boxes were covered in dust and dog eared at the corners. His entire life, well the life he had run from anyway, was small enough to fill three boxes. The pack had no concept of ownership. Everything belonged to everyone down to the last sheet of paper in the house. But, the stuff inside those boxes was so worthless nobody had considered wasting the time to sift through them for a better use than sitting around collecting dust for the last twenty-five years.

Daniel didn’t move off the bed to revisit the contents of the boxes. He needed no reminders to remember the shitty self-centered teenager he had been. His eyes flicked to the duffel bag sitting on the dresser. This was his life now. Condensed from three boxes to one duffel bag. Always ready to roll, that was his motto. But, where would he go? Everyone else had moved on. Mouse. Tristen. His dad. Time had kept right on moving forward without him. He was as dusty and useless as the boxes stacked in the corner, a relic of the past.

The lyrics of an old song he sometimes caught now and then on the radio came to mind. As the rotten teenager he had been, so full of angst and disdain for everything and everyone, he had listened to Pink Floyd. The ‘Floydian’ philosophy was one he had clung to back then. Daniel smirked to himself. How fitting the lyrics were. The words described him perfectly. Moving forward in reverse. Story of his life.

He should pitch the shrapnel of his former life into the recycling bin where it belonged. There could be a life for him here. He would have to build it out of the ashes of his own self-destruction. But, did he have it in him to forge bravely forward and work so hard to earn something that might only be a pipe dream?

At least he had spared Fallon from the worst parts of himself. There was that. He had done some good in his life to make up for the bad. He had swallowed his pride and worked side by side with Catcher to rescue Phoenix and Danni from the clutches of a madwoman. Didn’t that redeem him, at least in part?

Danni bit her bottom lip and balled her hand into a fist. After her failed appeal to her father she had no one else to turn to but her brother. Cat was always saying that if you believed in something enough you should fight for it. The twins were going to be tried. She had been assured it would be a ‘fair’ trial. Yeah, right. They were going to be executed. It wasn’t right. If anyone should decide the fate of the men, it should be Phoenix and her. After all, they were the ones that had been taken captive. For as much as she had suffered, she didn’t blame the twins. The men were just as much victims in this as Phoenix and she had been.

In a way, she was grateful that she wouldn’t be the one to decide the Steve and Paul’s fates. All she had to do was tell her side of the story and let the jury decide. In her opinion whatever jury the brothers could scrounge up would be biased. Those men were never going to walk away. Danni felt impotent and well, invisible. Nobody was going to listen to anything Phoenix or she had to say. There was the fact that since the twins were vampires, the brotherhood would be responsible for executing them. Their deaths would be fast and painless, which was a far better end than the pack’s version of justice. The pack executed slowly and painfully, with flesh torn from bone and blood soaked muzzles.

Her entire life she had overheard the hushed whispers of adults. Danni knew bits and pieces of her uncle’s past. Daniel had done terrible things. He risked the lives of the pack for a woman. Yet, though the pack was still wary of him. Here he was. Why was it that for all the things he had done he had been spared when the twins weren’t even going to have the chance? Justice was supposed to be blind, not dumb. With no one else to turn to and the brat pack divided. She thought Daniel might help her cause. Maybe. Maybe not. Gathering her courage and determined to win her uncle over to the cause, she knocked on the door.

Claire had been stewing for hours over a way to reach out to the brother she had never met. She feared for the twins locked in the brotherhood’s version of vampire jail. She feared for the brat pack and her friends. The seven of them had not come together since their return home. Cat was safely tucked away in the compound. Ray was lost to his pondering. Phoenix’s dad hadn’t let her out of his sight. God only knew were Tom was or what he was up to. Luckily, Danni had the same train of thought that she did and was about to knock on Daniel’s door.

Claire really didn’t know enough about her brother to fill a thimble. Mouse had given her a few hints about how to reach out to him. Tristen had simply rolled his eyes when she had asked and wished her luck. Daniel was the illusive legend. The cautionary tale whispered to disobedient children. The rumor nobody any longer remembered the whole truth about. Even her mother had clammed up when Claire had asked about Daniel. And as for her father, he pretended she hadn’t asked him at all. Daniel’s was a dark past and as far as she was concerned. It was time to shed some light on the darkness.

Daniel huffed and rolled his eyes at the sound of shuffling feet outside of his closed bedroom door. It seemed he wasn’t going to have to try very hard to reach out to his niece and his sister. They had come to him. He wondered which side of justice they had come to ask him to appeal for. Whether they wanted the twins dead or would ask for him to approach Mouse and the jury to spare their lives. There had been plenty of times he wished he could have gone to trial instead of the automatic forgiveness the pack had extended to him. His retreat to Texas, as much as it had been about getting his head together had been his own form of contrition. He had chosen exile rather than deal with the questions that would eventually come. Avoidance only went so far. For too long he had dodged his past. Finally he was going to have to face it. You could pack your shit away in boxes, but you couldn’t avoid the shit packed away in your own head forever. “Enter.”



































Chapter 89

It wasn’t difficult to find Carter. After all, the only thing Shayla had to do was follow the constant tug on the strings of her heart. Some things changed and others did not. The woods were a tangle of brambles and overgrown paths. Fallen leaves crunched beneath her feet with each step she took closer to him. For the moment, the bluffs were quiet. Tomorrow that would change. Even though Phoenix was her daughter. She didn’t relish witnessing the execution. The trial was for show. Everyone knew it. Nothing short of a miracle was going to save the twins’ lives. Maybe, that was why she had sought Carter out. She finally had need of the miracle he had promised her so long ago.

If anyone could appeal to the Great White Wolf, it was Carter. Guilt or innocence was just a matter of perception. How many times had someone been spared not because of lack of guilt or presentation of evidence, but rather because there was something within them worth saving?

Shayla couldn’t say for certain there was as much as one redeeming quality within the twins or the vampire child. She would like to think there was something worth preserving their lives for. Some purposefulness they possessed that in their outrage the brotherhood and the pack hadn’t foreseen. Her plan was simple. Ask Carter to vouch for the vampires and take them into his fold of misfits turned warriors.

Carter tilted his head toward the sound of her footsteps on the dried grass. He stood devastatingly handsome as ever still dressed in his combat leathers. His shoulders were squared and his posture stiff as if he had braced himself against her. He knew she would come. She always came to him whenever he was around. Shayla hated herself for the effect Carter had on her. It was hell to love two men, but to only be in love with one of them. Tracker had given her a life and it was a good one. Carter though, he was the wild fluttering of her heart and the sweet secret desire that represented the one thing she would always want and would never get.

Shayla approached Carter cautiously. The urge to rush into his arms and reclaim what had been lost for the last two decades was almost overwhelming. The kiss, that one kiss had almost been her undoing. She could trust her son to keep her deepest secret. R.J. understood what it was like to have such a deep desire and to want so very badly something you simply couldn’t have. The saddest part about wanting Carter so desperately was the simple fact that Tracker would let her go. In his eyes she was blameless and always would be. Tracker’s understanding was the full extent, the sum of his love and in so many ways she didn’t deserve it.

Shayla was a shadow emerging from the mists of twilight, part dream and part reality. Carter was an honorable man. Standing stoically with his feet planted, he watched her approach. She was nervous. Biting her lower lip and her eyes darting over the landscape before landing on him in a way that had him questioning his steely resolve. Carter had no doubt that at the time, with her pregnant and a little one clinging to her skirts, he had done the right thing in entrusting her to Tracker’s care.

Ray and Phoenix were grown. There wasn’t anything stopping Shayla and he from picking up where they had left off. Wouldn’t that make him a shit of a man? Stealing another man’s wife right from under his nose. Carter already had enough sins to atone for on Judgment Day. What would be the harm in adding one more to the already very, very long list? To think such a thing was a fool’s errand and the sum of the true weakness of his questionable character. Shayla would always be the one thing he had always wanted and would never get. It had already occurred to Carter. There was something stopping the both of them from condemning themselves. One thing that held Shayla fast to Tracker’s side and kept Carter from closing the distance between them. Duty. They both owed Tracker more than they could ever repay.

“I wanted to thank you for what you did for Phoenix and the others,” Shayla said. She avoided Carter’s arctic blue gaze, settling instead for staring over the edge of the bluffs at the town in the valley below.

“Don’t. If I had been doing my job in the first place there wouldn’t be anything for you to thank me for. Their suffering is my fault.” Carter reached out to capture a tendril of hair that had fallen free from Shayla’s ponytail and dropped his hand before he could compound the ache in his heart.

“There wasn’t anything you could have done. Phoenix…well, she is her father’s daughter. She’s stubborn to her core. Once she has made her mind up about something there is no stopping her.”

Carter chuckled. “Well, if that’s the case. I’d say she took after her mother more than her father.”

“Are you calling me stubborn?” Shayla asked as if she were offended by Carter’s insinuation. He raised a blond brow and pinned her with a look that said that was exactly what he was implying. Shayla returned his mocking expression with a slight smile on her lips. “Well, maybe I’m a little headstrong,” she conceded. He grinned and gestured with his thumb and index finger. She swatted him on the arm and chuckled in reply as he feigned injury and rubbed his bicep.

God, this…the two of them bantering back and forth was so familiar and comfortable as a worn pair of jeans. She cocked her head, watching the wind ripple though his hair tossing the blond curls to and fro. Quickly darting her eyes away, she sighed, “No, I think R.J. is more like me.”

Catching the train of Shayla’s thoughts, Carter nodded. “In ways, perhaps.”

“Carter, do you ever wonder….?”

Carter cut Shayla off before the words of her question could escape her lips. “Never.” He captured her chin and tilted her head up so that their eyes met. “You shouldn’t either. There is no what if, only what is, and what will be.” He released his grip and cursed under his breath. “After this fiasco of a trial I’m returning to the city as soon as possible.”

“Running away?”

“I prefer to call it an exercise in self-preservation.”

Shayla felt the sudden chill of the absence of Carter’s body blocking the wind. He paced restless steps of agitation. She had nothing to say to counter his statement. He still loved her and seeing the truth of it written in his expression hurt more than anything. She nodded. Carter was right in the summation of his abandonment of her. It was self-preservation as much for her as it was for him. Would he never stop looking out for her? Stop doing what was right just because it was right? She already knew the answer to her question. Of course, he wouldn’t. He was simply too good of a man and as such too good for his own good.

“You don’t agree with the trial?” she asked.

“Do you? Shayla, think about it. Somebody has to pay.”

“Sebastian already has.”

“I agree, but unfortunately the brotherhood and your pack don’t see it the same was as we do.” Carter moved to stand at Shayla’s side. Letting the wind careening from the sheer walls of shale and granite buffet his back to protect her from the chilly evening air. He was always protecting her, even if it was herself he was protecting her from. Carter couldn’t resist the impulse. Capturing the stray tendril of hair, he rubbed the silky strand between his fingertips. “There has been enough blood shed on this sacred ground. Pain better off left in the past and not brought into the present.”

Shayla rested her forehead on Carter’s broad chest. His leather jacket was slick and cool against her heated skin. “You’d spare them if you could.”

“Yes.” He wrapped an arm around Shayla’s shoulders and pulled her in line with his body. Dipping his head, he lowered his mouth to her ear to whisper so low his voice was scarcely audible over the wind. “It is a far worse punishment to live with the mistakes of your past day after day than to die a quick end.”

“Was letting me go a mistake?” Shayla closed her eyes and buried her face into the warmth of Carter’s arms around her. His breath was a tickle across her skin, soft and light as a caress. She clung to the hem of his jacket to keep herself from wrapping her fingers around his neck and dragging their mouths to one another in a desperate kiss.

“The best mistake I ever made. You are happy, Shayla and that is the only consolation I need.”

“Carter, will you give me one last kiss?”

“A kiss? Shayla, are you trying to kill me? I can only withstand so much.”

Shayla tilted her head up and caught the desperation in Carter’s eyes. He wanted so badly. Tracker for all his love for her had never had such hunger for her in his eyes. “The last time we kissed. That night you left. The kiss lasted…no, sustained us both for over two decades.”

“And this one will have to sustain me for an entire lifetime. Shayla, I will live a very, very long time. One kiss would never be enough.”

“But.”

Carter pressed a finger to Shayla’s soft lips. “The gift of your kiss would be so sweet. But, I can’t take what isn’t mine to take and you should not give so freely what is not yours to give. Tracker deserves better than that from the both of us. He gave you his love when I was too weak a man to do so. Go home. Go to him, Shayla. Live and love enough for the both of us.” Carter captured a crystalline tear from Shayla’s cheek and balanced the tender drop on the tip of his finger before bringing it to his lips. “Goodbye, Shayla.”

“Carter wait!” Shayla shouted into the dimming twilight. Carter was gone in a gust of cold air as if he had never been standing there with his arms wrapped around her and his face etched in regret and longing at all. He was right, so right about everything. His rightness though did nothing to ease the ache in her heart. Shayla stared down at the little town in the valley and at the tiny pin pricks of light piercing the darkness from the houses below. Wrapping her arms around her chest she snuffled back her tears. Carter was out there somewhere in the dark. So close but so far away from her, as always, with his guilt and self-imposed sacrifices as his only companion. “Goodbye, Carter.”

Tracker had thought long and hard about his decision. In fact, he had been contemplating it for over twenty years. With the kids grown and about to embark on lives of their own he had fulfilled his obligation to them. Shayla’s absence had given him the time he needed to find the courage to do what needed to be done. He was only one man and as such, could do only so much. Love wasn’t enough. Love had never been enough. The kids and a vow to Carter had bound Shayla and him together and now, even that had crumbled to dust.

He had been a master of self-deceit for far too long. He thought in time he would eventually earn Shayla’s absolute devotion. He had her devotion and her love as best she was able to give it, but her love was only half of what she was capable of giving. Carter had the missing portion of Shayla’s love that she was not able to give to him. For far too long she had lived and so had he as halves. Texas sounded like a pretty good place to hang his hat. Almost as far away from Shayla as he could get and still be in the continental United States.