“Yeah,” she stressed, “but you can’t fight all the shadows.”
“I know, but I promise you I’ll try my damned hardest.”
Cassie gasped. “Mommy! The wolf said a bad word.”
I couldn’t help but burst out laughing at that. Cassie looked stricken, a hand dramatically clasped over her mouth.
“Oh no!” Mason cried, making a big show just as much as she was. “Someone strike me down! I said a bad word!”
He made a show of dying, falling onto his back, his arms limply flung to the sides, and Cassie giggled, shrieking with glee as she crouched next to him. She shook him vigorously, and I couldn’t help bout of laughter as Mason suddenly scared her, sitting upright in a quick motion.
“Come on,” he laughed, coming back to where I sat. “No lucky clovers today.”
“Can we come back another time?” Cassie asked. “I want to look again.”
“Sure,” Mason said, and quickly added, “if your mom agrees.”
“You can look further if you come and eat this pastry Mason got you,” I teased her. “Or I might just have to finish it myself.”
I rustled the wrapper, enticing her, and Cassie bounded over to me, grabbing the chocolate pastry. Within seconds, she was tearing into it, as surely as Mason tore into his own. I looked between them, the similarities unsettling. I told myself it was just the confident way of eating when nobody had made them feel bad for it, but it was something else. A similar way to how their pinkies crooked, how they both chewed to the right side, and then the left, as if wanting the full flavor, and how they both sighed afterward.
Even the dusting of their hands was the same. Left hand higher, brushing their right, only to do it three times.
It unsettled me, and I knew I couldn’t deny them bonding, but seeing this… seeing so much of Mason in Cassie, seeing how he made her laugh after rejecting me, seeing what sort of a family we could have been… it was too much.
Without thinking, I tore off small pieces of my own snack and quickly chewed while Mason looked out over the town. From our vantage point in the meadow, all of Honeycreek lay behind us, and while I chose to keep my back to it, he didn’t.
An alpha looking out at his domain.
“I was the kid who was always dragged wherever his parents had to go,” Mason told me quietly after a moment. He turned to look at me out of the corner of his eye. Like this, the high, midday sun caught the blue of his eyes, turning them almost to ice. “No matter where they went. Hunts as wolves, conferences as adults, parties, work meetings… I was never the kid who got to hang out at the park on the weekend. No, it was right in my dad’s car, and off we’d go somewhere. Alwaysimportant, always the son of the most important man and woman in the room. Nobody ever asked whereIwanted to go. It was just… bags packed, loaded in the car, and going. Smile, dress nice, and greet people politely. Talk about being the future alpha, tell them what they want to hear, grow up too fast.”
I bit my lip as I listened, hearing the roughness of his voice.
“One time, my dad took me to a conference with the other alphas,” Mason went on. “We went to one of the bigger cities. I forget where, but it was a long drive. When I got there, I met up with all the other alpha kids, and then some others from lower-ranked members of their packs. I saw how some of the other alpha kids behaved—poised, collected—but there was one who looked as though he already carried the weight of his future role. We couldn’t have been more than thirteen. His father was unwell, and this kid knew he’d be the alpha soon enough. But there was a moment when he came over to me, and he said, ‘For just one afternoon, I want to be a child. I want to kick a ball, get dirt on my clothes, slouch, and sneak some food from the buffet’. It sounds stupid, I know, but we didn’t get to do a whole lot of that. We always had to be the perfect image. Be everything our fathers raised us to be.
“So, we snuck out of the conference, did whatever the hell we wanted—just for an afternoon. And when our fathers caught us, we were dragged away. My father shoved me into the car, drove back to Honeycreek in silence, and when we got home, he sat me down, told me to remember how an alpha’s son behaved. How analphabehaved. I never stepped out of line again. That’s why I asked Cassandra first what she wanted to do. I won’t take it for granted that she wants to go where we think.”
Part of me weakened, my heart softening. There was a deep, piercing ache in my chest. I couldn’t risk my daughtergrowing close to him, only to be hurt. But I had never thought of Mason as having feelings like this. I had always seen him as handsome, superficial, and only caring about his next tormenting session.
But…
But was I being proven wrong?
What if I let him into our lives again based on this moment of sincerity, only to have him destroy everything I had escaped to protest?
And then there was the bakery… He’d fought for me, acknowledged that his pack hadn’t always been what he wanted, but he was learning, as were they. Hope sparked in my chest, a flicker of it, and I was terrified. I wanted Cassie to have a dependable father more than anything. Was Mason that?
“What are you thinking?” Mason asked me gently. Out of the corner of my eye, I was aware of Cassie peering into my discarded pastry bag, pulling out the remainder of my food. I let her, too, fixated on how Mason looked at me.
“That…” I hesitated, unsure of whether to trust him with my thoughts. In the end, I did. He’d already hurt me. I was stronger now, and I could offer up this one thing. “That you seem different to the boy who watched me leave this town years ago.”
Mason only let out a quiet laugh. “I told you I’ve changed, Bryce.”
“I know,” I said.I just need to keep seeing it to make sure it's not a pretense. I need to protect our daughter. I want to tell you more than anything that she’s yours, but I never want you to know.The conflict warred in my mind, and I only nodded, and he let my gaze drop. I realized our time was coming to anend, and, for once, I wasn’t eager to get as far away from Mason as fast as I could.
“Do you… Do you want to walk us home?” I asked him. Mason only grinned at me.
“Yeah, I want to walk you home,” he murmured, glancing at Cassie. There was that furrow of his brow again, as if he questioned her every time he looked at her. I knew he wondered who her father was, but were they sensing one another? Their scents, their energies, the DNA of his that coursed through her.
