The beta shifter rolled his eyes as he continued. “I think he was in love the moment he saw her, and that’s the only reason we kept going back. One night, he said he would finally introduce himself, but he couldn’t get up the nerve to go talk to her. After an hour, I just went over and asked her if she wanted a pop because Cole wanted to buy her one, but didn’t know what she’d like. She told me that she’d been wanting to talk to him too, but she’d been waiting for him to make the first move.” Erica saw the sparkle of amusement in his eyes. “I grabbed Cole’s sorry ass and dragged him over to Felicia and her friends so they could finally talk. The rest is history.”
Erica caught herself smiling at how Ronan talked about her parents. She lowered herself onto the cushion, and Ronan kept on with his story.
“We’ve been friends since… Shit, I don’t even know how long. We’ve always been together. Grade school, college, and now. I was his best man at the wedding, and the minute they found out Felicia was pregnant, they asked me to be your godfather. Of course, I accepted. By then, Cole was my alpha, and he appointed me as his beta. He can be a jackass sometimes, but he’s a damn good alpha.”
At that, her smile faded. It was because Cole was a damn good alpha that her parents had separated.
“How did …”
“They fall apart?” Ronan sighed and looked away. “I’ve got my theories. Everyone knew they loved each other. They were the mushiest couple I’d ever met. Always clinging to one another, always going out on dates, and making out in public. But then Cole was made alpha, and all that changed.”
A frown formed between Erica’s brows. “He wasn’t always an alpha?”
“Not always.” Ronan propped one of his legs up on the coffee table in front of him. “He’s got the dominance for it, of course. Maybe our former alpha saw that when he appointed Cole as his successor. That’s when things started to tank for him and your mom.”
She understood that much. What she couldn’t understand was how they went from being such a gushy couple to two people who were willing to separate over that sort of life change.
“I think,” he continued carefully, “it was a combination of things. Cole couldn’t manage his time well, and Felicia got too used to him not being around. They tried hard in the beginning. They really did. As much as Felicia hated it, I babysat you while they went out on dates to try and rekindle that flame. But being an alpha was changing Cole. Even I saw that. And being alone, having to take care of a baby all on her own, was changing your mom. They became two people who just didn’t know each other anymore. They weren’t the same two kids who fell in love at the skating rink. Felicia was getting too used to taking care of things by herself, and your father was getting in the way of the home she had made without him. She hated the pack and all shifters for what they had made her husband into, but it wasn’t our fault that he took to being alpha so well.”
The familiar lump in her throat threatened to break her calm composure, and Erica refused to let it. She looked to the tips of her shoes, fingers laced in front of her as she considered all that he said.
“I think the whole pack felt it when they severed the mating bond. Cole was never the same afterward. Never talked about you or Felicia for years. Even when I asked if he wanted to try and reconnect, he would cut me off. I think it was just too painful to think about, much less talk about.”
Ronan looked up and gave her a confident nod. “I think it’s great that you’re here. I don’t know if Cole would have had the courage to come find you himself. Your dad’s a brave man, a brave alpha. But some things, he just refuses to do sometimes. Too embarrassed or prideful, maybe. Just like when he couldn’t talk to Felicia at the skating rink.”
So, her parents did form the mating bond, and they did have to sever it in the end. Erica’s heart ached for them both. She wasn’t sure how she would take losing Dominic like that. For a moment, she thought she might have understood her mother’s pain.
The speculative comparisons of her situation to her parents’ hit her hard, but she wouldn’t let it show. Not in front of someone else who knew her, but might as well have been a perfect stranger. Would he have been less intimidating if he had been around for all her birthdays, Christmases, maybe even school recitals? Would he have babysat her when she was five, eight, or twelve years old? Would he have been like an uncle to her as well as a godfather?
Ronan stiffened, and his stare drifted as if something had caught his attention. He set his beer on the table and went straight to the back door that led out from the kitchen. “Stay there,” he ordered.
Fat chance of that. He might have been a beta, but if she heard trouble, there was no way she’d stay put. Whether she’d run or fight, she wasn’t totally sure. Either way, she hoped it was a false alarm. Maybe just the neighbor’s cat wandering around in the backyard. If it was, this gave her the perfect opportunity to slip away and continue wandering the house without supervision.
Erica stood from the sofa and made her way down the hall to snoop for anything that might add a little more to the tales Ronan had spun about her parents. The first door she opened was to the office. Cluttered with boxes of files that she imagined were work-related, she was ready to close the door and move on, but something stopped her. Curiosity prodded her to walk in and take a closer look, search for anything else to help complete this image Ronan had fashioned of Cole.
By her observation, Cole was a devoted alpha, a competent cop, a former die-hard lover, and a tragically wounded ex-husband who wanted to be the father who wasn’t needed anymore. He was bold and assertive when he needed to be, compassionate and willing to forgive and forget, but still holding on to the broken pieces of a heart that once held so much love for someone who’d pushed him away.
Erica wanted to find something else, anything to make him into the villain again, so she could praise her mother for the strength she’d had to walk away from a marriage that wasn’t worth fighting for.
She let her hands glide over the books on the shelves as she made her way toward his desk. Some were harmless crime novels or wartime fiction. Others made the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end, like the few books on nature photography. Did they share more than a few facial features?
The desk was covered in papers, reports, bills, and color-coded folders stacked atop a closed laptop that she could onlyguess were the applications for sanctuary that Dominic had told her about. What made the blood in her veins go cold was the old framed photograph propped up behind his computer mouse.
Inside a shiny golden frame was the exact same photo that Erica prized and had put on her mantel back home. It was the same one she had busted on the ground that morning. Her mother’s grinning face looked back at her again with a younger Erica in her arms, missing teeth and all, on the church steps.
Where had he gotten it? Did her mother send him a copy? Did he ask for it during one of their trips to Tolstone when she was little? With shaking hands, she picked it up and stared at the faces of two people she no longer knew. Her mother wasn’t the same strong woman who could do no wrong, and she wasn’t the naïve child anymore. She knew the truth.
A sound broke through her reverent silence. Growls and snarls. The ripping of cloth. All of it muffled by the walls between her and the backyard, and the baseball game still playing on the television.
She put the picture down and rushed back into the living room. The blinds over the window that looked out into the yard were closed, but she didn’t have to see what was going on to form a few guesses. It sounded like two huge dogs in the middle of a do-or-die fight. Yelps and barks froze her in place, her feet immobile as she listened, though the sound of her own heartbeat grew louder in her ears.
There must have been another shifter outside, but who would be stupid enough to fight a beta like Ronan?
Then, she wondered why anyone would be trespassing on his territory like this. Cole had explained in the squad car how Wyatt was out to betray Dominic and seize his place as Prime Alpha with the backing of some less respectable shifters. Was this one of Wyatt’s cronies? Were they after Erica and not Ronan? Thatwas why she was here after all, to be under his protection if Wyatt should try something underhanded.
Erica looked once more at the lonely shotgun on the mantel. She ran for it without a second thought. In Decatur, she had taken a few classes on firearms in the event that she ever decided to get one for herself. Those lessons, plus a few trips to the local gun range, finally came in handy.
She quickly loaded three slugs, though she knew it could handle more, and turned the safety off, but made sure not to let her finger get anywhere near the trigger until she was absolutely ready.
