Page 132 of Shifter Situations

I nodded, unsure if I should ask for more information or not.

“Give her more than that, Briggs,” Palmer requested with none of his usual snark. “You don’t have to spill everything at once, but it’s important. She’ll probably kill him quicker if she knows.”

“Or slower.”

My wolf lifted one side of his mouth in a partial smile as he sat down beside me. He fidgeted for a moment before I placed my hands on his to try to calm him.

“We don’t have to talk about your parents. I just need to know enough to pick out punishment for Gerard, if you want me to. I’ll happily step aside to let you dish out your own.”

Briggs pulled his hair down, running his fingers through the loose strands. I’d seen him uncomfortable, but not like this. My guys were all quiet as he began to tie his dirty blonde waves back up.

“When Bay and I were kids, our father was the faction alpha in Colorado. His last challenge cost him his life. Gerard killed my dad during a dirty fight, threatened Bay and me, then forced my mom to move out of our only home.”

“Dirty how?” Novak inquired, frowning at his own interruption. “I’ve never understood that part, but I also don’t really get all the challenges and cake layers surrounding the pack.”

I flared my nostrils, knowing I shouldn’t grin while Briggs was opening old wounds. I appreciated my vampire’s effort, though.

“Alpha fights work a little differently than the apprentice challenges that we had,” I told him, trying to elaborate. “If the shifter challenging the alpha has a second-in-command picked out, then both of them challenge the alpha and his second. Two-on-two instead of one-on-one.”

Briggs continued to fidget, twisting his fingers together then reaching for his hair again.

“My dad’s second in command stood by his side as another shifter challenged him. In the middle of the fight, his second made it known that he wanted to be alpha as well. Gerard turned on my dad, helping the challenger before killing them both.”

“He was in attendance during your fights, witnessing—”

“Yeah.” He snorted as he cut Stone off. “And now he knows that I don’t want his pack.”

I smirked, finding a satisfying amount of humor in Gerard’s predicament. “There is a little bit of irony in this situation that you’re in with him.”

My mates glanced at me, and I held my thumb and index finger an inch apart, waiting to see if Briggs caught it.

“Now I’m his Alpha,” he vocalized. “And that’s what he’s been so worried about. That’s why he threatened Bay and me, why we moved, why Charlie said my parents would be proud.”

“Oh, how the tables do turn.”

“What about your mom?” York carefully asked, his eyes soft and his voice tender.

“She killed herself shortly after I turned eighteen. She said she couldn’t live with the pain of a lost mate any longer.”

He shrugged, but I could pick his emotions out in our bond. He still held some resentment toward her, though sadness was at the forefront.

“She left her will out for us to find, turning Baylor’s custody and the family finances over to me. We’d just celebrated his seventeenth birthday. It was just me and him until I moved to Nashville. I was gone for a few weeks here and there, but he didn’t want to leave.”

Briggs stopped, and we all got the sense that he didn’t want to talk about it anymore. York and Novak steered the conversation onto more lighthearted topics while I stewed in my thoughts.

I listened to the mixture of their voices as I idly traced over the tattoos on Briggs’ hand.

A month ago, my Sunday would have been spent alone, cooped up in that big house with no one except the hellhounds to keep me company. At this point, I could hardly recall what a day by myself felt like. I knew days without my guys would be boring in comparison to the mundane routines that I used to have.

Had anyone given me this exact scenario four weeks ago... I would have laughed in their face. We’d come a long way; I’d come a long way, but I still had a few things to work out for myself.

I had sealed my bond with four of my mates, but I couldn’t stop wondering if they would resent me in the future for rushing things. That could have been why Palmer and Vaughn had decided to move at a slower pace.

Not that I was complaining. Again, I was just wondering.

I didn’t want them to think that any part of our growing relationships had been shaped around a power grab. And I knew I’d thought about that before, but its relevance wasn’t lost on me.

We had rushed through some steps, though we were slowly making up for it. I couldn’t think of a single thing that I regretted when it came to them.