Page 6 of Final Drive

“Am I.” He sits back and crosses his arms. “Then prove it. If this pack of yours is as strong as you claim, it should survive a little scrutiny. A few uncomfortable questions. Some attention.”

“That’s not scrutiny. That’s sabotage.”

“It’s a test.” His eyes don’t move. “One I suspect your Miss Callahan fails. And when she runs the way Sophia ran, I expect you home and back in your place in this family. No more rebellion, no more pack nonsense. A Lockwood, doing what Lockwoods do.”

The server arrives with our food, and I look at the plate without any interest in it.

“I’m not going to abandon them.”

“I’m not asking you to abandon anyone. I’m asking you to be realistic.” He cuts into his steak and chews before he goes on. “The story runs in two weeks unless I make a call. That gives you time to extricate yourself. End things with the girl, step back from the pack, and return to who you’re supposed to be.”

“And if I don’t?”

“Then I’ll assume you’ve made your choice and I’ll make mine.” He signals for the check. “Think carefully. This isn’t a bluff, it’s a promise.”

He pays and leaves without looking back, and I sit alone in the Magnolia Club surrounded by the ghosts of my bloodline, working out how to protect my pack from the man who raised me.

It’s after nine when I get back to the house. I spent the afternoon driving with no destination and it didn’t help.

The living room is dark, but the kitchen light is on. Reese is slumped over the island with her head on her arms, surrounded by textbooks and notecards. Her laptop has gone to sleep and there’s a half-finished mug of cold coffee by her elbow.

She looks tired in a way that has nothing to do with studying. There are shadows under her eyes and her shoulders haven’t come down even in sleep, and I wonder whether she’s been eating, or whether she’s been carrying Saturday around alone while the rest of us pretend the week is going fine.

The right move is to wake her and send her up to bed. Keep my distance, the way I’ve been doing since the lake.

I stand there watching her breathe.

My father thinks she’ll run. He’s decided she’s Sophia with a different haircut, ready to bolt at the first real trouble, and he has never once seen her work. He doesn’t know what’s underneath. He hasn’t watched her command a boat full of Alphas without raising her voice, or stared down her own mother on a dock and pick us anyway.

She chose this life knowing the price of it. What I can’t work out is whether any part of that was me.

I’ve knotted her. I’ve held her through aftershocks that left both of us shaking, watched her come apart in my arms and put herself back together harder than before. I have never once told her what she is to me, because saying it out loud makes it real, and real things can be taken.

Sophia taught me that.

Reese stirs and mumbles. Her hand goes out across the counter, searching.

I move before I can talk myself out of it, sliding one arm under her knees and the other behind her back and lifting her against me. She’s lighter than she was a week ago and I’m going to say something to Zane about it in the morning.

She doesn’t wake. She turns her face into my shoulder and sighs, and her scent comes up around me, vanilla and citrus and the low note underneath that belongs to nobody else. Mine, the animal part of me says. Pack. Protect.

I carry her upstairs and skip the third step, which creaks. The house is quiet, everyone either asleep or deliberately elsewhere. Her room is at the end of the hall. I nudge the door open with my foot, cross to the bed, and lay her down on sheets that smell like her, and she curls onto her side and pulls the pillow in against her.

Every instinct I have says to leave.

I pull the blanket up over her shoulders and tuck it in without waking her, and I take longer doing it than it needs.

“Gray?” Her voice is thick, barely surfaced.

“Go back to sleep.”

“Mmm.” Her hand finds mine on the blanket and holds on until her grip goes slack. “Stay?”

One word, and it takes the floor out from under me.

“I can’t.”

Not because I don’t want to. Because I want it too much, and if I get into that bed I won’t stop myself from marking her, from making her mine in a way that can’t be undone. She deserves better than a claim made in the dark while she’s half asleep and can’t consent to what she’s agreeing to.