ONE
Luke
The ringing of my phone woke me. I fumbled for my cell, cursing the unknown number. The ringing stopped, only to immediately start again. Knowing he would keep calling, I answered.
I rubbed the sleep out of my eyes. “What now?”
“That’s no way to talk to your old man.” The voice on the other end was gravelly from a lifetime of heavy smoking. “Show some respect.”
“Respect is earned. And you haven’t.” I swung my legs over the side of the bed, knowing I’d get no more sleep. I put my cell on speaker and tossed it onto the nightstand before rummaging through my drawers for clothes.
His tone sharpened. “Just for that, I want more than last time. Five hundred ought to do me for a while.”
I yanked on my worn jeans and grabbed a T-shirt. “I don’t have it.”
“Well, find it.” A TV in the background told me nothing about where he was. Not that knowing where my birth father was would help. It wasn’t like I could make him leave.
“I can’t find what doesn’t exist. You’ve taken everything I have these last few months.”
“You’ve got yourself a nice setup there.” His voice lowered, threatening. “It would be a shame for you to lose it. Anything might happen. How long do you think those men you call brothers would stand by you if they knew what you’ve done?”
My chest tightened. I was one of six boys, all but one adopted by the couple I called Mom and Dad. Our parents were gone now, but the six of us had turned our family ranch into a dude ranch. My brothers and their mates were all I had left that mattered to me.
“I haven’t done anything,” I said, but even I didn’t believe my words.
A dark chuckle filled the room. “Keep telling yourself that. But you’ve been paying me to stay quiet for months now, which means you don’t want them to know about me.”
Flashes from my childhood filled my head. All the cons he’d pulled, often using me to do it. Pick-pocketing in cities when I was still young enough to pass for human. Until my wolf first appeared. Then he dumped me with a wolf shifter pack and disappeared.
Until six months ago.
“I told you, I don’t have any money to give you.” I scrubbed my hand over my face, racking my brain for a solution. “I have a few woodworking pieces in the gallery right now. If they sell, I can get you money then.”
“Better happen fast. I’m not a patient man.” He paused. “And Luke? Don’t go thinking you’re better than me. You’re still the same.” A dial tone followed his words.
I cursed, slamming my fist against the wall. Pain radiated up my arm, but I welcomed it. I deserved it. I paced the width of my bedroom before bending over the dresser, gripping the edgeuntil the wood dug into my palms. Determination to stop my father from messing with the ranch and my family filled me.
The ranch was my first actual home. The wolf pack he’d dumped me on didn’t want me. Not that I blamed them. They’d been forced to deal with a troubled teen who’d grown up running cons and stealing, and who had no control over his wolf. The alpha of the pack had eventually called my adoptive parents, having heard they adopted outside their shifter species.
I didn’t know why they agreed to take me in. But Dad came and picked me up within days of the call. I still remembered the drive to the ranch. I was seething in the passenger seat while Dad sat calmly behind the wheel. He didn’t speak until we were almost at the ranch.
“Words don’t always mean much, so I won’t tell you that you’re wanted here. But we’ll show you every day that you have a family now.”
It had taken me a while to believe him. And it had been Mom more than anyone who had proven it to me. No one had ever played a motherly role for me before, and it had been her warmth and love that had broken through my tangle of emotions first. Only then had I been able to let Dad and my brothers in.
Without my adoptive family, my life would have taken a far darker path. I owed them everything. Even if I had to pay off my father forever, I would keep his ugliness away from them. But I didn’t trust him to wait until I had more to give.
I grabbed my hat and strode out of the cottage I’d just moved into a month ago. My oldest brother Declan and his mate lived in the farmhouse, along with our housekeeper Mae. The rest of my brothers were in cottages sprinkled around the ranch, all but Mason and me with their mates.
My wolf perked up thinking about the women who had joined our family. He wanted to find our mate. The one fate hadmade just for us. The woman who would be our everything. He wanted what my brothers had found.
I didn’t.
I had nothing to offer a mate. Just a troubled past that refused to disappear. I didn’t doubt that my father would use a mate against me. He always said mates were a weakness. They made it easy to get under a shifter’s skin. It wouldn’t be fair to my mate to deal with my demons.
The light in Mason’s workshop was already on. He’d been working hard to upgrade our security systems since we’d discovered his former best friend, Vince, was behind the ongoing sabotage attempts affecting the ranch.
I knocked on the door, not waiting for him to answer before entering. Mason was studying the camera feeds on a collection of monitors. “You can’t watch those all the time.”
