Amber Flame (The Flame Series Book 4) (24 page)

When she was ready to leave, Fergus insisted he fly her home. But Mary had other ideas. “You need to stay here where you belong. However, I will accept a couple of your guards just in case Sydon is anywhere near this part of Savage.”

“If that’s what you want.”

“It is.”

By the time he’d walked her up to the front entrance, part of her hoped he would suddenly realize how much he needed to change his thinking. But when he called for several guards, six in all, she knew it was over.

The steel door had slammed into place once more and she was heading home.

Alone.

Her throat tightened, especially when he gave her a parting hug.

But there was nothing more to be said.

With her flight bag in hand, she took to the air easily. The lead guard, Ryan, appeared startled as he caught up with her.

“Your alpha taught me how to fly,” she said. Using the word ‘taught’ was a lot easier than trying to explain how she and Fergus had been acquiring each other’s
alter
abilities.

She switched to telepathy, and asked the wolf if he wouldn’t mind talking to her mind-to-mind. He had long wavy brown hair and wore two braids on the right side that interlaced to form a single braid. He had dark blue eyes and a warm smile.

When he gave permission, she said,
You’re Ryan, right?

Yes,
he responded, taking up his place on her left.

Fergus has mentioned you a couple of times. He relies on you a lot.

Fergus is a good man, one of the finest I’ve ever known.

Wanting to hear more, Mary eased closer to him and slowed down a little. The detail matched her speed.
Have you served other alphas, besides Sydon I mean?

I was once a member of Warren’s pack early on, but asked to serve in Gordion because Fergus was new at it and needed to learn the ropes. Both Harley and I helped out a lot in the old days. I met Fergus on the Savage Border Patrol. Warren had no problem letting me transfer. He’s a good man, too.

Yes, he is.

As she directed Ryan to fly northeast, Mary felt herself frowning almost as hard as Fergus had in the guest room.
Tell me what it was like when Fergus became Gordion’s alpha?

He made an almost painful snort.
There was a massive territorial war that year, worse than any that have followed. Fergus lost at least fifty of his wolves over the course of several violent battles. He took it hard. He was finally able to make a difference in the war when he got more seriously focused.

She slowed her flying even more and as before, the entire squad slowed with her as though she’d emitted some kind of signal. Maybe it was a wolf thing.
What does that mean, ‘seriously’?

More attentive, more present. I’m not sure I can explain it.

To the exclusion of other interests, would you say?
Mary definitely wanted someone else’s opinion on the issue.

Yes, that’s it,
Ryan said
. Fergus stopped spending his time on anything else. He used to always have rock music blaring through the compound, then one day it stopped. Of course the compound was much smaller in those days, but that’s what made me think of it. You could hear the music everywhere.

And that was just one thing. I remember he had a vintage car that he’d brought over from his previous life. He loved to drive it around Savage, even on the bad roads. But he sold it. Some say he neglected his wife but I don’t see it that way. She was never happy, that one. But maybe I’ve said too much. Shit, I think I have. Apologies.

Not necessary.
She thought of Sharon and wondered if the woman knew what some of the other Gordion wolves thought of her. Even Fergus had called it her chronic discontentment.

Mary fell silent after that. Ryan had given her a lot to think about. She might have left Savage because she knew Fergus had closed off from her, but the fae part of her had started wrestling with all of it. And not just Fergus, but her own issues as well.

After thanking the men for seeing her home, she went in by way of the front door and locked it securely.

Checking her phone messages, one from her assistant let her know that all the pet patients she’d had scheduled were either given new appointments for the following week or handed off to other vets.

Mary was relieved. She went to the kitchen and the sight of the clean cat bowls meant her assistant had already taken care of her kitties. The fact that none of her felines rushed to greet her told her each had a full belly.

She poured a glass of cabernet sauvignon, then returned to the photo album and scattered pictures still sitting in front of her couch on the family room floor. The sight of them reminded her again of all that had happened in such a short time.

Her mind whirred, however, because her fae senses had locked onto Fergus’s shut-down, reflex process that had first alienated his wife, Sharon. And tonight, it had given Mary a powerful excuse to leave.

Reviewing what Ryan had told her, the issue seemed to be seated within Fergus’s initial rise to alpha level responsibility. That so many wolves had died on his watch must have affected his leadership, cementing his belief that while serving as an alpha, he didn’t dare focus on anything else or lives would be lost.

What Mary couldn’t quite figure out was where she fit into the equation. But she suspected that Fergus’s narrow focus, which had created the steel door in the first place, was preventing him from gaining a critical, larger view of his pack and his territory.

Now that she had some distance herself, she could take a long, hard look at everything, especially her role and what she wanted for the future. Savage was a brutal place to live and with all that she’d just been through, including saving Fergus from a witch’s spell, she had no reason to believe things would improve anytime soon.

Yet the project she’d started, of organizing her photos and creating an album featuring her family, no longer appealed as much as it had. With her sister killed accidently as a result of an out-of-control dominance fight, and her parents long dead, she was essentially alone in the world.

Her experience with both Warren’s wolves and the Gordion Pack had continuously soothed her emerging wolf. Now that she was back in Revel, she felt restless and uneasy.

As she finished her wine, she began packing up the photos. She might not be certain what her life should be, but right now making an album was not going to settle her restless wolf down at all.

Maybe she’d have another glass of wine.

Or three.

~ ~ ~

Fergus busied himself the rest of the night with taking stock of every member of his pack. He was planning a memorial service for Elena, the young female wolf who had committed suicide, and the ten wolves who’d gone berserk because of her desperate act.

At the same time, he began the process of negotiating the ransoms for the return of the women Sydon had already put to work in one of the cartel clubs. He’d have them home soon.

The whole time, he kept looking over his shoulder, though he couldn’t say why.

Harley finally asked, “Is there something you need to do? Do you want another guard on the door?”

“A guard? For what?” He had no idea what Harley was talking about.

“For the past quarter hour, you’ve looked toward the door every two minutes. Thought maybe you were worried about another attack.”

“No.” But he frowned. He honestly didn’t know why he kept checking the doorway.

Then it dawned on him. His wolf was looking for Mary, searching for her, but she wasn’t there anymore. It didn’t help that her scent was still in his nostrils.

His thoughts drifted toward her as he recalled having sex with her in real-time, while running beside her in the dreamglide. She’d brought so much to his life and he’d hated letting her go.

He gave himself a shake. He couldn’t afford to give in to desires that had no possible use in Savage Territory. Maybe he had built what Mary called a steel door, but he’d put it there for a reason. He’d needed to protect his pack while they’d been at war. Sharon had suffered because of it and he knew that. But he’d saved countless lives by centering his attention exclusively on the salvation of his wolves.

He forced himself to do so now. Sydon was still a serious threat he needed to address.

Summoning his top betas, he took them into his strategy room on the east side of the ground floor and settled in to discuss ways they could work to uncover the location of Sydon’s headquarters. He decided Sydon must be the priority and he would do everything he could to end the bastard’s destructive influence in Savage. There was no point pretending Sydon would go away all on his own, especially if he had no problem buying expensive, deadly spells to try to get rid of his enemies.

Both Fergus’s wolf and his fae were in complete agreement on that front.

The night finally drew to a close and at dawn, with his compound and attached home shuttered for the day, he made his way back to the guest room.

Unfortunately, he found all three lace negligees still hanging in the bathroom.

Without warning, a wave of grief washed through him so quick and so hard he weaved on his feet. He had to grab the counter to keep from falling over. He didn’t understand what had just happened. But the image that shot through his head had nothing to do with Mary but everything to do with Sharon the night before she died.

Fuck. He’d buried the memory. At the very least, he’d buried it, the way he did everything.

Sharon had dressed up in a sexy, skin tight black dress and had worn matching stilettos. She’d looked beautiful and he’d longed to take her in his arms, to hold her and to kiss her. But he couldn’t let her distract him from his duties or pack members would die.

So, he’d yelled at her, saying absurd things like she needed to be more modest, to set a better example for the other female wolves, things he didn’t even believe. He just didn’t want to be tempted away from his job.

She’d yelled back, saying she couldn’t live like this anymore. He’d given her a cold half-life that wasn’t worth the trouble. She’d already found another man, in another pack, and she wanted a divorce. She was going out for the night, but when she returned, she’d be packing up all her things and moving out for good.

Then she’d left.

He’d been shocked. He’d paced the rest of the night, waiting for her to come home. He’d made a huge mistake with her and he needed to start making amends, if he could.

Yet even then, he’d doubted his ability to make things work with Sharon.

Of course, she hadn’t come home and by nightfall the next day, he’d received word she’d been dumped a half mile from the Gordion Compound, near the canal. Sun exposure had damaged her corpse, but the Savage Medical Examiner said she’d been killed as a result of rough sex with a powerful male wolf who had bitten through her neck and fractured her spine while marking her.

Her death had become the final layer of the steel door he still used to keep himself focused on the safety of his pack.

As he brought his thoughts back to the present and the guest bathroom came into view again, he sank to the cold tile floor. He leaned his head against the cabinet and closed his eyes. He lifted his hand, intending to press his eyes and get rid of some of the burn, but his fingers got caught in the lace of one of the gowns, the black one that Mary had worn just before she’d left.

He’d failed Sharon.

And he’d sent Mary away without her knowing for even a second how much she really meant to him.

Suddenly, he felt inadequate in a way he couldn’t explain. He’d sacrificed his life for his pack. It should have been enough, yet it wasn’t.

The pack came first.

The pack always came first.

He remained on the floor for a long time. He wasn’t the same man that he’d been a couple of nights ago. He’d died out in the Graveyard when Sydon had skewered his heart.

But he wasn’t sure he’d truly been reborn. Instead, he’d launched straight back into his old life once his pack was secure. Yet now that everything was in order, he felt extremely restless and dissatisfied as he’d never been before.

He didn’t want to keep living this way.

Even acknowledging his dissatisfaction was new for him, a sign of the fae abilities and powers that had become part of his soul since he’d been with Mary. Yet he didn’t know what goal he was mentally chasing right now. Did he expect to have a sudden life-altering epiphany?

The pack came first
.

But what about Mary? Where was she right now? Probably in her home and in bed for the day. Would she start seeing pet patients again? Resume her life as a veterinarian? Would she forgive him for shutting her out so completely? Would she understand? Did she want any part of him?

He finally rose to his feet, showered and headed to bed. He’d expected Mary to stay with him through the day. He’d wanted to make love to her again. But as a sensitive fae, there was no way she could have ignored the steel door he’d slammed down in front of her.

When he finally lay on his side in bed and pulled the sheet up, he relinquished his attempts to make his current situation fit into the box of the past.

Time would serve him in this situation. It would dim his memories of being with Mary and help him to recommit to the wolves of his pack. He’d find some way to chart a new path without her.

He fell asleep reasonably content with those thoughts.

Hours later and somewhere in his dreams, he smelled a female wolf scent that woke him. He smelled Mary, though he knew she wasn’t with him. A longing for her so intense came over him, that even in his half-sleep, he released a howl that filled the entire soundproof room.

Then he was chasing her in his dreams through thorns that bloodied him.

~ ~ ~

Mary awoke to the sound of Fergus howling, or at least she thought that’s what she heard. But the howls were full of so much pain, she could hardly breathe.

She sat up in bed.

Fergus?
She tried reaching him telepathically over and over but nothing returned.