Rogue Alpha (Jacky Leon Book 7), page 2
“I love you, and I’m sorry,” he said as I walked toward him. Sitting across from him, I let his apology sink in.
“Do you even know what you’re apologizing for?” I asked, trying not to smile.
“No, but I’m very willing to learn and do better,” he said politely. “You have the floor, Jacky Leon.”
“Carey’s birthday party.” I watched him go from poised and indulgent to confused. Once the confusion passed, his eyes went wide.
“What?” he growled, his head falling back. “What did I do? Actually, no. What did my son do? He promised me it was being worked on while I dealt with work.”
“He asked Dirk for help. Dirk, having no idea what to do, asked Oliver to work on it. Then I caught Oliver working on a Sunday because he’s busy with running Kick Shot and planning a birthday party at the same time.” I finally smiled. “You could have asked me.”
“I didn’t think about it.” He put a hand over his eyes, groaning. “I was thinking Landon and I could get it done, but work doesn’t give me much time to breathe, much less plan a birthday party. These are my only free hours all week. I even canceled on you last night because I asked some of my guys to work overtime and wanted to be on hand for them.”
“Her birthday is on Wednesday, Heath. There’s going to be a party. I’m taking over.” I lifted a hand before he could say anything. “I have time, and you need help. You could have asked. You know that.”
“I didn’t think to ask you because…” Heath dropped his hand and looked at me, his eyes still human. “I’m her dad and should be able to get it done. When I couldn’t do it myself, I figured her brother could lighten the load. I didn’t think he would ask Dirk who would then rope Oliver into it. You would have been the second person I asked if I thought it was getting out of hand.” He growled softly. “Damn son of mine didn’t tell me it was getting out of hand.”
“So, there was no other reason you didn’t ask me to help?”
“None at all,” he confirmed, and I couldn’t smell a lie.
I actively looked for one, and it wasn’t there. I had been a little offended not being asked to help with the party.
“I didn’t leave you out on purpose. I just…” He pointed to the stack of files on his desk. “This is what happens when a company closes up and leaves dozens of clients hanging. I stepped in without even so much as meeting with Tywin and had to do everything through lawyers, which has made all of this ten times more difficult. I would ask another Alpha if they know anything about what’s going on, but no one is speaking to me, and none of them stepped up to help. My personal company is lucrative but small. We aren’t equipped for all of this.”
“Heath…”
“Don’t say it.” He sighed, running a hand over the files. “I know I shot myself in the foot. I didn’t have to step in and deal with this. It’s not like I could hire all the werewolves that lost their jobs, but by taking these on, I could keep the pack from going bankrupt, if it’s not already. I don’t know how everyone is doing, but by doing this, I knew it would help them at least a little.”
Heath and I had spoken at length about what he could do to help them and why no one else was. There was a belief among the werewolves that weak packs needed to fail. If they couldn’t manage their finances, the pack fell apart. If the Alpha wasn’t strong enough, the pack fell apart. It was survival. Sure, some incidents, other packs stepped in. It had happened with the coup, which had come out of nowhere and jeopardized human lives as well, becoming a political nightmare for all werewolves.
The current issues in Dallas appeared to be clear mismanagement from the outside. There was nothing other packs would do for incompetence. The pack would eventually officially dissolve, and the werewolves would move to other packs or become lone wolves, living on their own until they found a new community they liked. In a few decades, a strong werewolf would try to reestablish a pack in Dallas, but it wouldn’t be this pack. It wouldn’t be Heath’s pack.
“Hey.” I reached out and held my hands open. He looked at them for a minute before taking them. “Let’s see what Oliver bought for the party and focus on something we can do. How does that sound?”
“That sounds better,” he agreed, lifting my hands to kiss my knuckles, then released them and stood. “What were you up to today?” he asked as we entered the hall.
“Oh, you know, reading another email from Hasan,” I answered, shrugging.
He hummed, nodding slowly as we walked out to my car. He looked at all the bags, and I caught fear in his scent and watched his internal war. Deal with a teenager’s birthday party or his lover’s father—he had options, but neither seemed particularly fun.
“How is he?” Heath finally asked, grabbing several of the bags from my trunk.
Oh, he’s picking both. Well, then.
“Singing the same tune. You’re going to betray me. You’ll always be there for the werewolves first. You’re going to break my heart. You can’t be trusted. All that.” I started grabbing some of the bags as well.
“I’m sorry. I knew when I started having feelings for you, if I acted on them, it could go poorly. I don’t regret us, but I knew your family would be against it.”
“I knew, too, as I realized just how important you were to me,” I reminded him. “We both went into this knowing how bad it could go. At least Hisao won’t show up. None of them will. Hasan doesn’t like us together, but he won’t hurt or kill you. He wouldn’t hurt me like that.” Not again. Not if he wants me in his life. “You can be trusted, though, right?” I asked, smiling as I closed my trunk. “You won’t shatter my heart all over the concrete, right?”
Heath’s scent filled the air, strong to the point of overwhelming as he leaned close to me, his lips close to mine. He was making sure I knew everything he felt—love, happiness, pain, frustration, and a touch of regret. He was a complicated man who felt so much at the same time. I could guess a few of the causes. I didn’t let the regret in his scent bother me. It was probably from the Dallas pack, or maybe because I wasn’t talking to my family much anymore.
“I have zero intention of breaking your heart,” he whispered seriously, whereas I had been joking around. His sudden intensity made my heart race. “Now or in the future. I have never considered it. I have considered other things forcing us apart, and that happening would not only break your heart, but I will not walk away from you. I will never do anything that could put us against each other.”
I couldn’t smell any hint of a lie, and my smile grew.
“I know,” I said softly, closing the space and kissing him. “I know, Heath.”
“I know you were joking, but…” He sighed, shaking his head and stepping around me to get all the party stuff inside. “I respect Hasan. The fact that he truly believes I’m out to get you…” His growl made the source of his frustration clear. “I have never, in my life, abused a woman’s trust to use her like that. Even if I hated her.”
I followed him, letting him get this off his chest. It happened every time my werecat father was brought up by me or anyone else. Heath took Hasan’s distrust personally.
“I have done nothing to the werecats. I wasn’t there for the last war. When you were with my pack, trying to help Carey, I protected you from my own wolves. I spoke out for you during your trial in front of the Tribunal. I helped you in Washington. I helped them find you and save you from his enemies. I love you, have been with you, nearly died for you, and he thinks I’m doing all that because I want information?” Heath snarled as he yanked his front door open and used his body to hold it open for me.
“I know,” I said as gently as I could as I walked in. The anger I had dismissed threatened to boil up and join his. It was there, burning through my veins, but I tried my best not to let it leak into my expressions. We didn’t both need to be pissed off while planning a birthday party.
“There are easier ways to get information,” Heath growled, letting the door slam shut after I was out of the way.
“There are,” I agreed, a small growl finding its way out.
“He can come here and talk to me—” Heath stopped suddenly, looking at me. “I’m not the reason you’re so pissed off, am I?”
I sighed, dropping the bags on his dining table, then crossed my arms, staring at them for a minute as he put down the ones he’d carried as well.
“No,” I answered once he was sitting. “It’s him. It’s the emails and the voicemails, and over the holidays, he sent a card that pretty much said the same thing.” I shook my head, feeling the burn of Hasan’s lack of trust in us or respect in my judgment. He not only didn’t trust Heath, my werewolf friend and lover. He didn’t trust me to pick a good man for those roles, regardless of species.
“I know why he’s this way. I expected this to go poorly, but part of me hoped he would see things my way. He’s always sent mixed signals, though. Telling me I shouldn’t have you around, but in the same breath saying our friendship is a good chance to show all the moon cursed there can be peace. His emails have made it clear friendship was all he had in mind. Friendship was the line I couldn’t cross. Sleeping with a werewolf… well, that’s too far.”
“He fought a war against us,” Heath said, nodding. “Werewolves are told young to avoid werecats because werecats are the enemy. Even if they’ve never met one, they know who our enemy is before they reach adulthood or in their first year as a werewolf. I just expected him not to… besmirch me in the process. Try to kill me, yes. He’s an intelligent, and from all appearances, honorable man. I am sleeping with his daughter.” He snorted. “It seems backward, doesn’t it? Kill me? Fine. Expected. Call me untrustworthy and underhanded, and we have a problem.”
And coming from you, it sounds completely normal.
“He’s fought three wars against werewolves,” I said, correcting Heath without thinking.
“Three?” Heath sat down and started pulling party things out of the bags. There was pretty much everything. Decorations, all horse themed or the colors to match, paper plates with horses running around the edges, plastic cups with the same decoration as the plates, and wrapping paper for anyone who might need it for gifts, though that seemed a bit late if it was for the party. I let myself be distracted organizing it. There was so much Hasan had told me over the years I had carefully kept to myself. It had never been mine to tell, like Heath hadn’t told me Landon was gay because it wasn’t his to say.
“Jacky? There have been three wars between werecats and werewolves?” He sat slowly. “Could there be more you don’t know about?”
“Probably not,” I said, putting my hands on the table and leaning over. “Heath, I’m sure Callahan and Corissa already know this, but you understand what you know about my family can’t be shared, right?” This information didn’t seem dangerous. I wasn’t telling him about Zuri’s witch nature. Hasan was old, and I was certain tons of people knew this already.
“Of course.”
“Hasan was Changed by the original werecat,” I explained. “He’s from… the beginning, I guess. He’s never keen to talk about it, and I don’t pry, but he and his mate both were. They were both…” I took a deep breath. I had learned this during my trip to Hasan’s territory last summer. While most of the trip was dedicated to meeting Zuri’s new mate and her son, I’d had a day with Subira, Hasan’s mate. She was motherly, beautiful, and the love she offered her children, me included, was genuine. I adored her but tried not to bring her up with the werewolves. She lived a very private life, and I respected that.
“Your mother, the half-witch, Subira,” Heath said softly. He’d heard a lot from the fae. Brion and Cassius had known so many family secrets and been casual with them. “She and Hasan were Changed by the original werecat?”
“Yeah.” I nodded. “There’s a lot there, but the point is, I’m asking a man who has fought against werewolves his entire life, countless centuries of war, to accept this. When he says there have been three wars, I believe him. He would know.” I drummed my fingers on the table. “I think he was Changed during the first one. I could ask him more, but that would require actually speaking to him.”
“You said you weren’t ready to reply to him a few months ago. I haven’t wanted to pry since he’s your family.” Heath was sorting things, moving decorations to one side of the table while watching me. “I’m assuming you haven’t.”
“Yeah, giving him the cold shoulder is easier. Only Zuri talks to me regularly.” I sighed as I grabbed a chair. “She updates me on everyone, if they’re safe, if there have been any problems. She’s told them everything, and only a couple have reached out to me. She won’t tell me. She just tells me to wait on their emails or calls. I got two emails and only made the terrible mistake of reading one so far.”
“Mischa.” Heath grimaced.
“Yeah,” I sighed. “I’m too afraid to open Davor’s. If Mischa’s email was vicious and mean, I’m afraid of what Davor has to say. Zuri has only mentioned one of my siblings, and it was recently. I think she’s at her wits’ end with Niko.”
“What’s going on with Niko?” Heath was suddenly alert, and his eyes went ice blue. It made sense Heath would be interested.
Niko was a werecat the werewolves called the Traitor. Not because he betrayed our family. He’d been born to werewolves, his father the Alpha of a small pack in Germany during the most recent of the werewolf and werecat wars, also the most devastating. He’d been raised in that pack. When his pack was attacked by their own kind for not helping the war effort, Hasan saved him. Niko had joined our family and became a werecat. He knew werewolves, though. There was still something werewolf about him, and he was always a bit of an outsider with the family. I knew my siblings loved him, but there was a separation there. He was, at his core, slightly different from our siblings. Kind of like me.
Heath had a lot of respect for Niko, which I was certain was rooted in Niko’s understanding of werewolves and how they think.
“She told me about a week ago. Niko is silent on the matter. He won’t discuss, join family calls, or answer her emails about it. He’ll talk about nearly anything else. He won’t ask about Dirk, but I don’t know if that’s because Dirk kept us a secret. He and Dirk have always had a complicated relationship, and you know how much Dirk doesn’t like to talk. Niko might be waiting to see how it plays out. He might not want to upset Hasan or the others if he’s in our corner, but he’s stonewalling Zuri, so she has no idea. I hope he’s on our side, but he…” I groaned. “I don’t like talking about my family as if they’re political parties.”
“He wouldn’t be the most helpful ally?” Heath said, chuckling. “Maybe it’s because of pack politics, but it doesn’t really bother me. In a group, I have to know who my strongest are and who I need to watch my back with. Mind you, I don’t know him as well as you do, but I like to think Niko’s rooting for us, but he might also know he’s not the best ally because of his background. They would write him off.”
“Because he used to live with werewolves. Because he spent most of his childhood being raised by them,” I agreed, having drawn the same conclusion. I picked up the stack of cute paper plates, staring at them for a minute, then dropped them. “I just wish it wasn’t like this. I thought… part of me hoped Hasan wouldn’t be so blind. Part of me figured my siblings would just want me happy, you know?” I ran a hand through my hair and shifted the conversation. It wasn’t like we hadn’t talked about all of this before. “Enough of my family. How are the werewolves? Have we heard anything?”
Heath growled.
3
CHAPTER THREE
The growl stunned me a little.
“I’m sorry.” He lifted a hand and shook his head. “That wasn’t to you. They ignore me, Jacky. You know that. Friends I had for centuries, people I worked with, a few I rose with through pack ranks. I don’t know if they want to ignore me or if Callahan ordered them to. If Callahan or Corissa passed down a decree, ordering werewolves to pretend I don’t exist, I’ve been officially excommunicated from the werewolf community. It’s their way of saying I’m not their problem. Any werewolf can take any action against me, and they won’t raise a single finger to help me, nor will they let others try. If a pack decides they don’t like me because of a petty spat a century ago, they now have the chance to kill me without anyone caring.
“It goes beyond that. Being excommunicated means they’re officially wiping their hands of me with the Tribunal. If Hasan sent Hisao here tomorrow, neither of them would blink an eye.” He groaned. “Normally, there’s a decree and the werewolf knows it’s coming. The wolf gets to read it, then run for their life. I haven’t been sent anything. Landon is my second and my son, and they don’t normally excommunicate entire families for the mistakes of one. If this is about me and you, Landon would be given a chance to remove himself from the situation. The reasonable explanation is they’re just ignoring me, which…”
“Hurts worse?”
“Yes. They’ve been avoiding me for over a year, but even then, some would send birthday messages or small gifts for Carey, holiday cards and the like. A simple, innocent way of keeping in touch when they couldn’t speak to me or tell me anything. They haven’t sent anything at all since last year when word of our relationship spread.”
“It only took one week,” I said, shaking my head at that. “It spread like wildfire. Even people outside of the moon cursed knew about it very quickly. You know, though, ignored is better than dead. After six months, they’ve had plenty of time to try to, but they haven’t. That’s something.”
“Agreed,” he said.
“We need to find those silver linings.”
“Can’t get complacent, either. I don’t like what’s happening in Dallas. It scares me. The pack is falling apart, but I’m not on the inside. A struggling pack will do anything to get themselves on the right track. An Alpha can get desperate.”
