“We already knew I was a shifter. That’s why she left me behind.” He shrugged. “I don’t blame her. Life with two grizzlies in the house was horrible. And dangerous.” That’s when he’d first started thinking about the military.
“Bullshit,” she snapped. “Any woman who leaves her kid like that is wrong. Just…wrong.”
She didn’t get it. “She was terrified for her life. With good reason.”
Alyssa nodded slowly. “Maybe. But even if that’s true, you’re not your father. That’s not who you are.”
“No. I’m in a more dangerous situation.” He gestured over her shoulder at the outside window. “Joey’s going to attack me soon. I give it a few days at most.”
“What?” The word was sharp and loud.
“I may not be able to read words, but faces are becoming clearer by the second. He thinks I’m an illiterate hick. He’s waiting for the right time to kill me, take over, and run the drugs himself.” Simon snorted. “He has an undergraduate degree in business. He thinks that’s all he needs to run an urban grizzly clan.” The boy’s idiocy would get him killed, but that didn’t mean there wouldn’t be collateral damage. He couldn’t save Vic. Vic was a hybrid and therefore in the thick of this. But Alyssa didn’t have to be. She was as vanilla as Betty Crocker.
“So you’ll take care of Joey,” she said.
He touched her cheek, loving the feel of every part of her skin. The feel, the color, the hills and valleys, and even the flaws. Because they were all her. “There’s always a Joey. Always a Nanook.”
“And you’ll always be Simon.” She pressed her hand to the back of his. Her words were gentle and there was such faith in her eyes that it cut at him. His mother had once looked at him that way. And then she’d grabbed his sister and taken off.
“You don’t know the monster I can become.”
She snorted. “You mean like ripping apart a grolar in front of me? Or shooting a drug dealer twice in the heart? Or how about when you spread me open on the bed and went in without a condom? Tell me, Simon, are you ever going to be worse than that?”
“My father was.”
“I’m not in a relationship with your father.” He felt the tension in her words. The implied question: Were they in a relationship?
“I don’t want that life for you,” he said, and he struggled to keep his tone level. “I don’t want you to be afraid of me. Or of the life I will lead as the Griz alpha.”
She tilted her head to the side. “I don’t remember giving you control over my life or my choices. You’re not my alpha.”
He looked at her and saw that she meant every word. She wanted to be with him. She trusted and believed in him despite everything she’d seen, everything he’d done. That simple faith cracked open every wall he’d erected in his life. Every barrier he put between himself and the rest of the world tumbled down. And all he was left with was a yearning that screamed through his body, that hollowed out his belly and ached in his throat.
He wanted her faith. He wanted her love. And he needed it with a hunger that didn’t understand boundaries or her choices. It was the kind of need that destroyed a living room. Or a family.
And so he brought out his last argument. The last barrier to a life she would end up hating.
“Have you thought about children?” he asked. “Shifter kids are hard to raise. They’re impulsive and wild, and that’s even if they don’t shift. If they do, well, many don’t survive the first change. There are instinctive needs and they hit at random when the hormones start flowing.”
“I live in gang territory in Detroit. Kids are always in danger. And dangerous to others.”
“How many friends have you lost?”
Her gaze skittered away. “Too many.”
“You want to risk that with your own kids?” He dropped his forehead to hers. “A shifter adolescent in gang territory Detroit. The complications of that are astronomical.” He shuddered at the very thought.
“Kids are always hard. One way or another.” She lifted up until they were nose to nose. “If we get there—when we get there—we’ll have decisions to make. Maybe we go live in the UP.”
“I’m alpha of the Griz. It’s the purpose I’ve been searching for since I left the military. I’m here until I’m killed.”
If she paled at his words, he didn’t see it. But he heard her breath catch and her heartbeat sped up. But she kept her body still and her eyes steady. “That’s bullshit, and you know it. Once things stabilize, you can go on vacations. Our kids can take weekends and run off their animal stuff. We can go to the UP and still manage things back here.”
She was seeing all the upsides. All the possibilities, and a logical man would acknowledge them. But even as he nodded, accepting her words, his mind replayed the day his mother had left. The fear in her eyes and the screams of his sister who didn’t want to go. His mother had been a strong woman, too. She’d loved his father and him, but the shifter life had driven her away to the point that she’d left the man she loved and her only son. She’d run away and he couldn’t blame her for it. It wasn’t her fault. It was the shifter’s fault, and he and his father both carried the gene.
“I’m afraid I will destroy you,” he whispered. “And that would destroy me.”
She cupped his cheeks in both her hands. She pulled his face up to hers and she pressed her lips to his. He clung to her then. Just his lips, but oh he reached for her with them, wanted to draw her close forever. But other than his mouth, he held himself back.
