White Knight (2 page)

Not an easy job when he was flailing, his grip on his own tangled, tattered emotions often slipping away and leaving him in darkness. It loomed in the distance more often now that Shay was gone. A living, shifting thing waiting to take him away again. To protect him from the pain and give control to his beast.

No. Not again. Never again.

He’d lost himself to his beast once. He wouldn’t do that again. Not while Shay needed him.

Knight sent a quick “where are you?” text to Bishop.

Instead of texting an answer, Bishop took his overprotective nature in hand and called. “Hey, what’s going on?”

“Are you busy?” Knight asked.

“Inspecting the new apartments with Jeremiah and the electrician. They should be move-in ready by the end of the week.”

“That’s good news.” With more than a hundred new loup joining their town in the last two months, they’d built apartments and homes with enough space to permanently house the newcomers. Newcomers who’d spent the last few weeks sleeping in spare rooms and on sofas all over town.

The human electrician had been a compromise, since no one in Cornerstone was qualified to wire up entire buildings with multiple apartments, and Bishop had spent the better part of the week overseeing the project.

“Yeah,” Bishop said. “It’ll be good to give everyone some stability.”

“You’re right, it will. And I’m sure your wife will be glad to have some of your attention back.”

Bishop’s sharp laughter bellowed over the phone. “Trust me, when Jillian wants my attention, she gets it.”

Knight heard the affection in his brother’s voice for the woman who’d stolen his heart. Maybe not in the ass-over-teakettle way that Rook had fallen for Brynn, but Bishop and Jillian had a fierce bond. They were both stronger together than apart, and as they eased into their roles, they would easily put any other Alpha couple to shame.

Both of Knight’s brothers were married and in love with their mates. He envied them their joy.

“Knight?”

“Huh?” Had Bishop been speaking?

“I asked you what was wrong. You sound off.”

“I’m fine. Rook just got some big news, though.”

“Big good?”

“Very good, I hope.”

“What’s going on?”

“Forget it. Call him, it’s not my place to tell.”

“Okay, I will. Are you sure—?”

“I’m
fine
.” Knight ended the call before he had to defend his tone of voice anymore. He couldn’t always control how he came across lately, and it bothered him, but there was nothing to be done. In truth, he’d been lucky to come out of his forced shift at all. The fact that his mind was mostly intact was a small miracle. He could deal with the occasional outburst.

His family might feel differently, but whatever. He was the one the hybrids had targeted. He was the grand prize for them. He welcomed another attempt at acquiring him.

Come and get me.

***

Familiar, high-pitched wailing roused Shay Butler from a restless, feverish dream full of dark shapes and whispers that always seemed to linger in her waking state. She pushed off of the thin cot that had been her bed for countless days now, its metal frame squealing as she stood, relieving it from her weight.

Less weight than from her life before this. The plain dresses she’d been given to wear had never fit well, but Shay felt it in the sharpness of her hip bones, in the aches of her knees and shoulders. Her hair was falling out more frequently. She wasn’t starving, but she wasn’t being given enough to eat. Not in order to maintain a loup garou’s metabolism.

The dim, single-room apartment gave her little light. All of the windows had been painted over and barred. She had managed to scratch away a bit of paint in one corner, which gave her a view of a brick wall. It was all the natural light she’d had in ages.

She switched on the table lamp and blinked hard against the yellow glare. It illuminated her prison, chasing out the real shadows and doing nothing for those lingering from her dreams. Beyond her cot was the crib and the source of the crying that had woken her. She stared at it, trying to remember what she was meant to do.

Stop the crying. Keep her calm.

Shay shuffled across the bare wood floor until she reached the scarred crib. Tiny fists jabbed up into the air. Tears streamed down red cheeks. Her thatch of black hair was sweaty and damp. Shay picked up the squalling creature and held her against her chest. The baby settled quickly, the cries becoming whimpers.

She slowly paced the sparse length of her prison. The corner farthest from the cot had a small stand with bottles, formula, and several jugs of water. Next to it was a tiny refrigerator, and beyond that the bathroom. No door, giving Shay no real privacy. Not that she had frequent visitors.

The hybrid sisters had broken into the McQueen house while the majority of the town was occupied by a fire. Shay had heard the commotion downstairs, heard Colin yelling. Then Winston. A woman had screamed in anger. And then a black-haired pixie of a teenager had turned the corner and jumped on Shay before she could defend herself. Bit her neck. Drank enough blood to make her pass out.

She’d woken up alone in this room.

Hours had passed. She had raged, pounded the walls, tried to find a way out, and failed. Failed because of her lack of strength. They had attached a leather collar around her neck, the soft material woven through with thin chains of silver. None of the silver directly touched her skin, but she couldn’t remove it and the proximity prevented her from shifting.

At her kidnapping, she had been a month from her quarterly. Every one-hundred-one days, a loup garou endured a biologically forced shift that lasted from sunset to sunrise. The loup often became violent, so they were caged for the night. Without the quarterly, a loup garou could go mad.

My time is soon. Too soon.

She’d tried to explain the quarterly to Allison and Desiree separately, because the pair never came together. Neither of them understood. They’d never felt the power of the quarterly shift. They didn’t care. All they wanted was for Shay to look after the baby. Nothing more, nothing less.

A baby with no name.

Who are your parents, little one?

The child had no answers, only a vaguely familiar scent Shay’s addled mind could never place.

Her beast, long quiet these last few days, stirred from the deep place she’d gone to hide from the silver. They both knew her quarterly was close. If she wasn’t allowed to shift . . . Shay wasn’t certain what would happen. Physical pain. Emotional stress. Madness. She could potentially hurt the baby she’d been told to look after.

Maybe the hybrids would understand that. If she explained the collar would make her attack the baby, maybe they would listen and release her. She wanted to go home so badly her chest ached with it.

Oh Knight, I miss you. I miss you so much.

The baby’s tears had stopped, but Shay’s had only just begun.

Inside of the large, three-story McQueen house was the only place that Knight received any measure of privacy, and he often found it in the conservatory off the rear of the house. Luke and Tanner backed off, one of the two usually taking a break to sleep or eat, or do whatever it was that robots did when not guarding their charge.

Okay, so the robot thing was a little mean. They were overdoing it a bit with the protecting, but Knight wouldn’t fault them for being overzealous. Hell, they might be the only reason he didn’t end up kidnapped and held prisoner as a baby-making machine.

Except no one could be certain what the two hybrids wanted now. It had been exactly thirty-two days since the last attack, and no one could come up with a good reason for kidnapping Shay. The fact that she was their half-sister didn’t explain the risk they’d taken in attacking Cornerstone directly.

“I’ll get you back, love,” he said to a potted yellow rose bush. The conservatory was Bishop’s hobby, and he kept a variety of roses alive year-round to honor their late mother. Roses had been Andrea McQueen’s favorite flower.

Deliberately heavy footsteps outside the half-closed door announced the new arrival before he had a chance to knock. His elder brother, Bishop, stepped inside, filling the small room with an air of stability and strength that only the Alpha could exude. Their father had done the same thing, and no one could say that Bishop was not his father’s son.

He closed the door, which set Knight on alert. He hadn’t spoken to Bishop since their brief phone call a few hours ago, and despite the neutral expression, Bishop’s eyes were shining with pride. The pride of an uncle-to-be.

Pride Knight hoped to feel himself one day. All he felt right now was numb. And dark.

“I thought talking to the plants was my job,” Bishop said.

“You talk to your plants?”

“Sometimes.”

“Promise me if they ever answer you, you’ll go see Dr. Mike immediately.”

“Smartass.”

Knight shrugged one shoulder. “You’re the one who talks to plants on the regular.”

“Yeah, well, whenever I talk to Jillian she tries to give me advice. I love her, but sometimes I just want to vent, you know? Advice-free zone.”

The visit came into perfect focus for Knight. And he wasn’t biting. “So should I leave you with your roses so you can vent or chat, or do whatever you need to do?”

Bishop plunked himself down in one of the two armchairs in the room. “I’m not kicking you out.”

“You came to check up on me.” Off Bishop’s surprised eyebrow-arch, Knight added, “I know you well enough to read between the lines. I’m fine.”

“Sit down.”

The hard, don’t-ignore-me voice of the Alpha put Knight’s ass in the other armchair.

Bishop leaned forward, elbows braced on his knees, his expression daring Knight to move or speak. “For weeks all any of us got out of you was ‘I’m fine’ and you weren’t. I don’t want to hear you say that ever again, do you understand?” The entire speech came out with all of the inflection of an essay recitation, but even when he was quiet, Bishop was firm. Like their father, he didn’t have to yell to get his point across.

“I understand.” Knight didn’t like it, but he got it. The order was born from fear, and Knight didn’t want to be the source of fear for his brothers ever again. Not like before.

Twenty-four hours out of his mind from a forced shift, unable to tell friend from foe, had been more terrifying for his family than for Knight. He didn’t remember much from that time. Only the rage and hunger. And Shay. Even when he couldn’t hear her, he’d felt her close by. She’d pulled him out of the darkness.

He never got the chance to tell her that he’d brought some of that darkness back with him.

Bishop leaned back in his chair, relaxing a bit, an expectant look on his face. “And?”

Knight grunted. The trouble with their relationship was a lack of interpersonal communication skills. Knight never had a problem talking things out with Rook. Bishop had always been different. Seven years older, he’d often come across more as a second parent than a big brother—not only to Knight, but to Rook as well, who’d only been an infant when their mother was killed. Knight vaguely remembered her. Sometimes he was positive he only recalled seeing her in photos.

He would do everything in his power to make sure his siblings’ children grew up knowing both of their parents.

“Knight? You with me?”

He blinked Bishop into focus, surprised to find him squatting in front of his chair, close without invading Knight’s personal space. “What?”

“You went away for a bit.”

“Sorry, I got lost in thought.”

“You get lost a lot lately.”

Ever since the forced shift. Worse since Shay’s kidnapping.

Why can’t I say that out loud? Why can’t I confide this to my brother when he’s practically begging me to talk to him?

Oh yeah. I’m sick and tired of being the fucking weak one in this family.

“I’ve got a lot of crap in my head to sort through, don’t I?” Knight asked.

“Such as?”

“Are you being deliberately obtuse?”

“Yes.”

Knight frowned. “Why?”

“So you’ll say it out loud.”

Something ugly rolled in his gut. “Say what?”

Bishop watched him steadily for what felt like forever. Knight refused to blink. “So you’ll say whatever it is you’re thinking about when you go away.”

He had to give Bishop something, or he’d never leave. “I was thinking about Mom.” The scent of roses in the room seemed to intensify, but it was only his imagination.

“Because of the baby news?”

“Yeah. I was there when Rook found out. Brynn was worried about being a good mother, because she never knew hers. I keep thinking that Rook was three months old when our mother was killed. He doesn’t have a single memory of her.” Knight tapped Bishop’s shin with his boot. “And don’t you start getting morose and blaming yourself for her death. You nearly died, too.”

Bishop’s answer was to stand and wander over to a potted white rose bush. “Believe it or not, I’m starting to let go of the guilt I used to feel over that night.”

The admission shocked Knight into a rudely blunt “Finally?”

“I know I deserve that. I’ve carried it around for twenty-two years. It isn’t easy to stop feeling responsible.”

Knight risked opening his empathy to his brother’s emotions. He was pleased to sense a measure of concern tempered with peace. Bishop really was coming to terms with his guilt. He’d only been ten years old when several loup from another run broke into the McQueen house intent on stealing a three-year-old Knight to replace their dead White Wolf. Their reasoning was that Cornerstone had a White in Andrea—idiotic, considering Knight was a toddler and would have been unable to act in any real White Wolf capacity for several more years. The three children were being watched by Mrs. Troost, and Bishop was seriously injured trying to keep his brothers safe. Knight was briefly kidnapped, but during the pursuit and recovery, their mother was killed.

Bishop had spent the rest of his life trying to make it up to his brothers for not saving them or their mother—no matter how many people told him that it wasn’t his fault. No matter how many times Rook and Knight told him to stop blaming himself, because they didn’t blame him. Being unable to help last month when Rook was kidnapped by the hybrids had torn at Bishop. Finding out what had happened to Knight when he tried to rescue Rook had devastated him.

Hearing and believing that Bishop was getting past it all gave Knight hope.

“You never were responsible,” Knight said.

“Not back then, but I am now.”

“As our Alpha, yes.”

Bishop studied the rosebuds in front of him, tracing over the delicate petals. “And our mother was the only thing you were thinking about?”

Irritation prickled Knight’s scalp. “If you want to ask me something, then ask me.”

“Fine.” He turned, arms crossed. “Did Rook’s news make you think about Victoria?”

Finally a blunt question. Talking to Rook about things like this was easier, because he flat-out asked. They didn’t do this verbal dance that he did with Bishop, and it was a lot less exhausting.

And the simple mention of that crazy bitch’s name made Bishop’s beast stir with anger—and with the need to protect Knight from something as innocuous as a name.

“Yes and no. I didn’t consciously think about
her
.”

“You thought about the child she was carrying.”

“Yes.”

His heart ached with the memory of a brief meeting he’d had with Dr. Mike two days after he came out of his forced shift. They’d managed to keep hold of Victoria’s body after she was killed with the intention of potentially studying her, possibly finding a weakness in the hybrid’s genetic makeup. During his examination, Dr. Mike had confirmed what Victoria had taunted Knight with for weeks: she was pregnant when she died.

With his child.

A child that had died with her, killed by its own grandfather in a brutal, bloody battle. An attack that left three hundred loup garou dead and almost a hundred more temporarily homeless. The survivors had been folded into the Cornerstone run, as had a small group of loup, humans, and loup-human half-breeds from another destroyed run. Patchwork though they were, Bishop had managed to unite the entire town in the fight against the hybrids.

Mostly.

“Knight, may I ask you something?”

“You can ask.”

“If that child had made it to term and actually been born, would you have been able to love it?”

Something cold trickled down Knight’s spine. “That’s an impossible question to answer.”

“Is it really?”

“Yes, it is.”

“But you mourn for its death.”

He mourned for a lot more than the death of a fetus whose very existence had been a result of violence and violation. He mourned for his father, who’d been killed trying to save a town from extinction. He mourned for his childhood friend Winston, who’d been slaughtered trying to protect Brynn and Shay. He mourned for the hundreds of loup garou who’d died over the last two months, all because a couple of insane hybrids decided they wanted Knight to father the next generation of murdering psychopaths.

His beast mourned the loss of his mate.

No, Knight didn’t mourn the child he’d lost. “I don’t mourn its death, Bishop. I’m angry. Angry that I had zero choice in its creation, and angry that I had no choice in its extermination. I have been nothing but a victim in all of this, and I’m fucking sick of it. I’m pissed, but I’m not sad. Not anymore.”

Knight’s voice had risen a bit, and Bishop was watching him with an intense expression. His nostrils flared, and his eyes were hard, and it took Knight a moment to realize it was his own fault. He’d let his guard down, allowed his own anger to reflect back onto Bishop, resulting in Bishop’s increased agitation. Only one of the many dangers of his empathy. He drew back on that rage, kept it for himself, while feeding Bishop what few shreds of calm he still possessed.

“I’m sorry,” Knight said.

Bishop shook himself, like he could shed the extra emotions that way. “It’s fine. It’s actually kind of refreshing to see you mad. You hide what you’re feeling way too often, and you know it.”

“Yeah, I know. But that’s what all this is about, right? Making me talk about it, instead of stew over it?”

“It’s supposed to be about that.” Bishop exhaled long and hard. “Maybe I should have asked Rook to check on you. He’s better at this than I am.”

Knight laughed, soft at first, and then harder at the confused look on Bishop’s face. “Dude, you’re the Alpha. You check up on people all the time, but you still can’t have this conversation with me.”

“It’s different with you and Rook, and you know it. I’ve been your Alpha for a month. You’ve been my brothers your entire lives.”

“Yeah, and we’re both about to become uncles. Can we focus on that for a while, please? The positive?”

Bishop grinned, then sobered. “It’s still a risky pregnancy.”

“I think we’re all aware of that. But Rook and Brynn got married knowing full well they might never have children. They have to be cautiously over the moon.”

“They are. We all are. Right?”

He kind of wanted to punch Bishop for questioning him. “Yes, we are. I would never begrudge Rook a family. He’ll make a great dad.”

“Brynn made him promise that, boy or girl, no piercings until they’re at least fourteen.”

Knight snickered. Rook had pierced both ears when he was twelve, mostly to rebel against whatever he wasn’t liking at the time. At fourteen, he’d traded in the studs for steel gauges that had gradually gotten larger. One .00 gauge was still in his right lobe. The left had been ripped off during a fight with a shifted loup back in early August.

Bishop’s cell trilled with the tone he’d chosen for calls from the other run Alphas. He glanced at the screen, then mouthed “Weatherly” at him before answering. “This is McQueen.”

Knight didn’t strain himself trying to listen in. He studied Bishop’s expressions instead. The wide-eyed surprise that melted into anger. Not good news.

“When?” Bishop’s jaw flexed. “How many dead?”

Oh please, not again.
Knight gripped the arms of his chair so he didn’t fly out of it and demand answers.

“Yes, of course, thank you, Carl. Please, let me know if there’s anything we can do.”

A waft of rage rolled off Bishop as he ended the call, then started tapping off a text message. Knight ignored his own phone when it beeped with the text. “What happened?” he asked.

“The quiet streak is over.” Bishop flexed his shoulders, settling a mirage of calm over his features that didn’t extend to his actual emotional state. “Four half-breed males attacked the run in Skydale, Iowa, with shotguns. Sixteen injured, five dead, including their White Wolf.”

“Shit.”

“They caught one alive.”

“What did the bastard say?”

“Only that the runs were militant and cruel, and that we all deserve the deaths coming to us.”

“What the hell?”

Militant and cruel? Sure, some of the older run laws were a bit uptight, especially the ones regarding interactions with humans and half-breeds, but it was also well-known that an individual Alpha could challenge the old laws for the good of his people. Bishop had done just that when he allowed the Potomac half-breeds, as well as the displaced Jones family, to join their run.