Pack

Chapter Thirty

Dorian, Logan, Dean and I waited on the porch for my pack while Logan's beta's met them at the territory line. My pack's van pulled up the drive first, followed by our sedan and truck and finally Bo's truck taking up the rear. The vehicles had barely come to a stop before the doors flew open and werewolves jumped out.

"What happened to you face?" Jonathan stormed up the porch steps and straight to me.

"Hey, it's not that bad. You should see the other guy." I tried to smile, but it hurt. The ferocious look on his face told me he didn't find my joke funny anyway.

"She attacked the King," Dorian offered.

"More like defended myself from the King," I corrected.

"It doesn't matter how you see it, it's how the people in power see it. You were lucky. Any other werewolf would have been killed for attacking him."

I ignored him and reached out for Jonathan. A look of surprise to cross his face, before he wrapped his arms tightly around me.

"I'm sorry, Avery," he whispered into my hair. "I shouldn't have let him take you."

"You had no choice." I pulled back. "He would have killed you. All of you."

"Then we should have died, together. Like a pack. I let you down." He suddenly looked older, like the immensity of his words had finally caught up with him. I remembered when I'd first seen him in the cave. I'd thought he looked handsome and young for his age. Now he looked disheveled, sporting a fairly decent beard. It appeared as if he hadn't bothered to shave since I last saw him. Like his hair, it had patches of gray in it. His storm colored eyes had grown dark, nearly black, while the thin skin under them had darkened with purple circles. He looked older. Tired. Haggard. Since meeting me, he'd aged. I wondered if he regretted it. All he'd done since abducting me was chase me around, while his pack members disobeyed his orders. He was losing control, and it was all my fault.

"I'm more trouble then you thought, huh?" I smiled, but I felt no humor in the truth of it.

"I knew all along you were special and others would covet you. I thought I was prepared for it. I even foolishly thought I could acquire territory and then keep you hidden from Stephen. At least that's what I'd hoped." He gave me a sad smile. "Sometimes I wonder if I should have just left you with your human family. Eventually you would have shifted and not known what was happening, but your instincts would have led you to the forest." His dark eyes met mine. "I tell myself that eventually some werewolf would have found out about you, but I think I'm just trying to convince myself I made the right choice. Maybe it would have been better for you if you'd never met us at all."

A time not that long ago I would have whole-heartedly agreed with what he said, but now, I realized how much of a danger I put those around me in. I had definitely become a danger to my pack, and the more they cared about me, the more dangerous I became to them. But my human family, they'd lived almost eighteen years totally unaware of the potential danger that would find me. Some werewolf would have crossed my path eventually, and even if I'd managed to escape them, the rumors about a female werewolf would have spread. My family were sitting ducks, completely unaware that they'd raised a ticking time bomb that would probably get them killed one day. I'd hated Jonathan for abducting me, but he'd saved my family and inadvertently put his own pack in danger. Jonathan and I were a far cry from ever having some happy father-daughter relationship, but I let myself finally start to believe he hadn't uprooted my life for his own greedy selfishness, but because he truly believed it was unsafe for me to be around humans.

And he was right.

Despite Dorian's warnings not to trust the werewolves around me, I couldn't help but believe that the selfless actions of the werewolves in my life showed proof that they too, wanted to keep me safe.