“And she’s going to land on the damn front lawn,” Maverick finished, his jaw clenched.
“What can we do, Grandpa?” I asked, wishing more than anything that he could fix this like he fixed everything.
During my heat I’d impulsively said I didn’t care what my mother thought about my relationship with my pack, but Ialsohadn’t been thinking about the fact that she employed them at a job that I knew they liked.
My grandfather sighed. “I’ll try to get on the phone with her, but you know she hates being lied to, Lennon. You boys just try to keep your mouths shut and let Lennon do the talking, you hear me? My daughter inherited my unfortunate temper and she’s about twenty years from that calming down. She’s liable to fly you over the ocean in that helicopter of hers and drop you into it.”
After the call ended I stared out at the ocean which seemed calm now, but soon the sound of chopper blades would interrupt the peace we’d built in this house that had been mine for less than a week.
“Hey,” Zeke said, his hand massaging the back of my neck. “It’ll be okay.”
I just shook my head. “No, it won’t.”
They didn’t understand. This was my mother during an election year. The first election she was running in without my father to humanize her and bring her back down to earth again when she needed him to.
I had no idea which Athena Holloway was going to walk through the door in the next hour, but the sour pit in my stomach told me that no option was a good one.
We were national news during a time when I had promised her that I would be there to support her.
I’d broken that promise, and while I didn’t regret it, I knew that we as a pack were about to pay that price.
And an hour later as my mother stood in front of me, wearing a crisp dark blue suit and a thunderous expression, I saw that I’d been right.
She had walked out of the helicopter in a silent rage, flanked by Arthur McDaniels, Vincent Collier, and the rest of her Secret Service team who were waiting outside now as we sat waitingfor her to say something to break the tense silence that had permeated the living room over the last ten minutes since her arrival.
I sat on the sofa, my pack behind me—though I was sure none of them knew about the bonds now marking my body. None of the guys had bit me anywhere visible and the people in front of me took enough suppressants that they couldn’t smell popcorn burning let alone the change in my scent post-bonding.
And we weren’t going to tell them yet. That had been the one thing we’d quickly agreed on as we tried to plan for worst-case scenarios while waiting for Mother to arrive.
“Before I lose my mind, Lennon,” my mother finally started to speak, her voice terrifyingly even as she held her fists at her side. “I’d like for you to explain just what the hell is going on here.”
“What do I have to explain exactly?” I asked, tilting my chin up with defiance, glad I threw on a sweatshirt before she got here so she wouldn’t see Dallas’s bite on my collarbone.
My mother blinked at me like I was some kind of an imposter. I couldn’t recall a time, even during my teenage years, when I’devertalked to her like this.
“Maybe,” she said through pursed lips, her gray eyes flashing dangerously at me and then to the men standing just behind me. “The fact that there is a picture of you being carried out of a bathroom by one of your Secret Service agents while you grin at him like you’re in love with him and the fact that you are hiding in a love nest with said agent…s.”
She added the plural at the end as she realized that Maverick, Brooks, and Dallas were probably also a part of the equation.
“Seems like you understand what’s going on then,” I told her flippantly and I could feel all four alphas send a cautioning tug on their ends of the bond.
I sighed. “Mom, Ilikethem. Like how an omega likes an alpha? With scent matches and all that?”
“That’s ridiculous, Lennon, you don’t even know them! Besides, you’ve been on suppressants since you’ve met them, how can you know anything about scent matches,” my mother said with a shake of her head and a roll of her eyes, like I was sixteen and not a fully grown woman.
Irritation filled me at having my feelings written off so easily. This was her biggest issue. I loved her but she was so damned awkward when it came to talking about her feelings.
She tip-toed around the hard stuff like love and romance claiming that‘Dad was better at that sort of stuff anyway,’and now that he was gone it was like she couldn’t function and it had fallen onto me to fill that role.
I’d done it, becoming herde factofirst lady, taking care of Carter, taking on more appearances on the campaign trail than ever, and becoming her sounding board for whatever semblance of emotion she could muster up on any given day while she refused to get help for her grief.
And I was so damned tired of it.
“Mom, you’re notlisteningto me,” I said, standing up and cutting off whatever ramble she was about to go on about responsibility and how much work it was going to be to get the press to shut up about my mistake. “I love them. They’re my pack.”
Warmth filled my bonds, a stark contrast to the horror blooming on my mother’s face.
“No. Absolutely not,” she rasped as if I had reached out and smacked her across the face.
