Every Dawn Forever (10 page)

He tapped the card against his thumb absently.  “She doesn’t strike me as a Brittany.”

Orion nodded.  “She doesn’t think so either.  She was really upset when she saw that they had changed her first name.  She said that when the relo group had contacted her that they said they would only change her last name, which is her mother’s maiden name.  The wolf who mated with her never married her legally.”  Orion sighed.  “Apparently she was named after a friend of her mother’s who had been very kind to Syd when she was a kid, who died when she was ten, and she doesn’t want to change that part of herself.”

Sterling’s pulse picked up.  “She okay?”

“I don’t know.  She was pretty shaken.  She went for a walk.”

“By herself?”

“Yeah.”

He wanted to storm out into the woods and find her, but if she wanted to be alone then he doubted that she would appreciate the gesture.  Instead, he grabbed his keys from the bowl on the counter and headed towards the front door.

“Where you going?”  Orion called.

“To fix this,” he answered, closing the door behind him.

Two hours later, he sat at a back booth in a tiny dive bar on the outskirts of Newport, Kentucky, a half-empty bottle of beer in front of him.  He glanced up when someone slid into the empty side of the booth.

“Good to see you, Garrett,” Sterling said, reaching his hand across the worn tabletop to shake his hand.

“You haven’t called me in a long time, kid.”  Garrett leaned back and motioned to the bartender.  This dive was Garrett’s stomping ground.

“I haven’t needed a favor like this before, and I knew you were the only guy that could do it.”  It wasn’t a lie, either.  Garrett was one of those guys that could get anything done, legal or illegal.  Garrett was Sterling’s father Harley’s friend, back from the days before his dad had gotten tamed by their mother.  It had only taken two minutes of explanation to his dad before he gave him Garrett’s number.

“Well, as a favor to your dad I’m not going to charge you my rush processing fee.  The birth certificate, state ID, and social security card will pass muster for the DMV so she can get her license.  I used your address, as you requested, and the last name you picked.”

A plain brown envelope slid across the table and Sterling shook hands with Garrett again, slipping him a folded stack of bills rubber-banded together.  Sterling slid out of the booth.  “Can’t stay and chat?”

“I need to get back.  But thanks for everything.”

“My pleasure.  And tell your dad that we’re even for the Carney’s Point trip, okay?”

Sterling asked, “Do I even want to know?”

Garrett took a drink of the beer that a waitress set down in front of him.  “No, kid, you do not.”

Chuckling, Sterling walked out of the bar, got into his truck, and headed home.  When he walked in the front door, he caught Sydney’s naturally sweet scent and followed it to the family room, where she sat watching TV with Orion and Crux.  She smiled at him, but it wasn’t a real smile.  Not like she’d given him before.

Sitting on the coffee table, he handed her the envelope.

“What’s this?” she asked, sitting up straight.

“Open it, Little One,” he urged.

She opened the metal fastener that held the envelope closed and pulled out the documents.  Her eyes widened as she scanned the three items.  “Oh!  Are these real?  I can keep my name?”

“If it’s important to you, then it’s important to us,” he said.

She let Crux and Orion see the items, and then to Sterling’s surprise she launched herself into his arms.  Her arms wrapped around his neck and she kissed his cheek, burying her face in his neck for a long moment.  “Thank you, Sterling.  Thank you so much.”

“I’m glad you’re happy.”

She leaned back slightly.  “I know it’s silly, but I already felt like I lost everything that made me the person that I used to be.  I know I can’t ever be that girl again, but I didn’t want to lose her completely.”

“Not silly,” Sterling said, feeling a knot form in his throat the size of a fist.  The sheer joy on her face was enough to bring him to his knees, if he wasn’t already sitting down.

Orion asked, “Garrett?”

Sterling nodded.  Sydney smiled at him — a real smile this time — and sat back down on the couch, taking the ID and looking at it.  “Where did you get the last name from?”  She asked.

The name that he had chosen was Karlin.  “It means strength.  I thought it was fitting.”

She brushed a stray tear from her cheek and laughed lightly, looking at the documents.  “Sydney Karlin.  I like it.”

He was really, really glad.

Later, when Sydney had gone to bed and he and his brothers were in the kitchen raiding the fridge, Orion said, “I’m surprised you didn’t give her our last name.”

Sterling swallowed a bite of turkey sandwich and said, “I almost did.  But then I didn’t know how to explain at work why she had our last name.”

“Good point,” Orion nodded.

Crux said, “When she takes our last name, I want it to be because she loves us.”

Orion chuckled.  “You sound awfully sure that we can convince her to stay with us.”

Sterling said, “We’ve got six weeks left.  If we can’t make her believe she’s our woman in seven weeks than we don’t deserve her.”

They both nodded.  Sterling knew that they still had a ways to go.  Her affection earlier had caught him by surprise.  She was still very closed-off around them, and they weren’t trying to rush her into baring her soul or doing anything physical with them.  His beast was content to just be around her, because even it could understand that she was fragile and needed time to heal the wounds in her heart and soul.  They had time. 
Not a lot of time, but enough
, he thought,
to slowly break down her walls and show her that she can trust us to never hurt her or abandon her
.

* * * * *

Sunday evening, they walked to the home that Dante shared with his mate and brothers.  Sydney was excited to meet the other members of the
baro
.  Alyssa and her mates were standing in the kitchen when the group walked in through the sliding back door.  They paused and Orion introduced Sydney.  Crux saw that her hand was trembling when she shook Dante’s hand, then Cairo’s and Mason’s.  Alyssa said, “I’m going to give you a hug, Sydney, okay?”

Sydney nodded and Alyssa closed the distance between them, hugged her, and then laughed. “It’s nice to be around another wolf!  I’m so glad to meet you finally.  Would you like to help me and Mase finish up in the kitchen?  Dinner’s almost ready.”

Sydney agreed and, with a glance over her shoulder at them, followed Alyssa to the refrigerator while Crux and his brothers followed Dante and Cairo into the dining room.

Nyte, Azrael, and Fade were sitting on one side of the long table, talking quietly.  They all greeted each other.  “Where’s Sydney?”  Fade asked, hooking one arm over the back of the chair.

“Helping with dinner,” Orion said.

At first, Crux had wanted to just pull Sydney into the dining room with them, keep her safe and right within arms’ length.  But it was actually a good thing for her to interact with others.  She’d spent six years trapped with a man she didn’t love.  They didn’t want her to feel trapped with them.

Dante sat down at the head of the table and Cairo left the chair on his left empty and sat in the next one.  Orion sat down opposite from Nyte and his brothers and Sterling and Crux left a seat between them for Sydney.  Within a few minutes, Mason, Alyssa, and Sydney came into the dining room, each holding a platter or bowl.  Crux stood to pull the chair out for Sydney and she sat, after being introduced to Nyte and his brothers.

The platters and bowls were passed around and silence settled over the table while everyone started to eat.  After a few minutes, Dante asked about a phone call that Nyte had received earlier.

Nyte rubbed at his shoulder with one hand as if he were working out a knot of tension.  “There’s a gathering in October and our parents are strongly urging us to go.”

Alyssa looked up from her plate.  “What’s a gathering?”

Cairo said, “It’s a hyena thing.  Once every few years, some
baros
will get together and organize a meet-and-greet of all the unmated hyenas.  They’ll come from all over and spend a week in some secluded area, hoping to hook up and find their shared mate.”

Alyssa looked at Dante.  “I thought you guys told me that you hadn’t ever met any female hyenas in your age group?”

Mason shook his head.  “We haven’t, love, but that doesn’t mean that they’re not around.  There are
baros
all over the U.S. and Canada, some that are a hundred members or more.  So although fewer females are born than males, there are females out there and there must be enough that are of mating age for a gathering to be scheduled.  Where is it?”

Azrael took a drink of his beer and said, “Somewhere in the mountains in Pennsylvania.”

“You’re going, right?”  Orion asked.

“Yeah, but only under protest.  We went to one right after Fade turned eighteen and it was a complete bust.  No females whatsoever.  It was a total sausage-fest,” Nyte answered with a scowl.

Sydney chuckled, trying to hide it behind a cough.  Nyte looked at her for a long moment and Crux was about to tell him to back off when Nyte started to laugh and the others all joined in.  Sydney glanced at Crux with a small smile and he tweaked her chin.

Long after the meal was over, they were still sitting at the dining room table, talking and laughing about their childhoods.  Crux and his brothers had grown up in the same
baro
with Dante and Nyte’s clans. They were all cousins.  Their grandparents had nine children, who formed three clans and found mates.  Sitting next to Sydney while she talked to his extended family was one of the best things that had happened in a long time.

Walking home in the dark, Crux was surprised when she reached for his hand and held it.  Orion, on her other side, asked, “Did you have fun, sweetheart?”

Crux could hear the smile in her voice.  “I really did.  It was so nice to be around people and just relax and talk.  It was all so normal, but it still felt foreign to me.”

“Foreign how?”  Orion asked.

She didn’t say anything for a few moments, as if she were debating what to share.  Crux was about to tell her that she could tell them anything, but she spoke before he had the chance.

“I wasn’t really let out of the house much.  He would lock me up when he worked.  If he had people over, they were his friends and I wasn’t allowed to talk to them, just serve them and stay out of the way.”

He almost said he was sorry for what happened to her, but he stopped himself.  Repeating the same phrase again and again wouldn’t change anything about what had happened to her.  He lifted her hand to his mouth and pressed a quick kiss to the top.  “That’s in the past, Sydney.  You can talk to who you want, go where you want, do whatever you want and no one will stop you.  It’s your life.”

She stopped just outside the back door and looked up at him.  “It is, isn’t it?”

He nodded.  Sterling and Orion stood with them, all of them looking down at her in the darkness, the light from inside the house the only illumination.

Smiling, she went up on her toes and kissed each of them on the cheek before saying goodnight and walking into the house.

Normally they drove separately into work, but Monday, Sydney’s first day at work with them, they all decided to drive together in Crux’s SUV.  She sat in the front seat while he drove, his brothers in the back.  He could tell she was excited.

Orion asked, “Would you like to start off in the office with me, Syd?”

She looked back.  “If that’s what you’d like me to do.”

Crux said, “Baby, you can do anything you want.”

She glanced at Crux.  “I only had one part-time job in high school, waiting tables at a diner.”  She paused, and he could tell she wanted to say something.

They were still operating in a mostly hands-off mode with her, but he reached over and took her hand in his.  “What, baby?”

“I had plans to go to college, but I didn’t know what I was going to do.  I thought I had time to figure it all out.”

“You’re still young.  You can go to college if you want, or work somewhere.  Coming along with us to work is just a way for us to make sure you’re safe and for you to earn some money of your own.”  Orion said.

Her head snapped back and she released his hand.  “Do you think I’m not safe?”

Sterling growled and Orion shook his head.  “No, I didn’t mean that at all.  Of course you’re safe.  It’s just that,” he looked at Crux in the rearview, but Crux didn’t know how to say that they wanted to make sure she was safe because she was their mate and it was in their nature to want to protect her, without pushing things with her.

“Why?” she asked, and the raw openness of the word was so heavy that it hung in the air between them.

A few painfully quiet moments passed as Orion struggled with what to say.  Crux looked over at Sydney and saw that she now wore a deep frown.  He reached for her hand again, surprised when she pulled it away from him and crossed her arms over her chest.