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Chapter 27
Zephyr
The fact that the killer was the same man as the one who’d given her husband partial blindness and a wicked scar chilled Zephyr more than she let on. It meant whoever it was, he’d been holding a vendetta against Alpha for long enough to try to kill him, and when that had failed, to kill others and frame him for it.
Alpha didn’t talk much about this Shadow Man character, and Zen hadn’t even known someone had been there though she’d been watching the entire time. But if he were to be believed, shit was hitting the fan.
Alpha had been on the edge since the meeting, darker, quieter, with a cloud hanging over his head that she didn’t really fault him for. Up until that moment, he’d had the hope that his injuries had been the cause of some freak accident. But now knowing that it wasn’t, that it was deliberate, knowing that someone else knew about it while he didn’t remember, it was eating him alive, and she felt for him.
Even her mother had noticed and been concerned that he’d been off when they’d come for dinner, and her mother didn’t like him at all.
Zephyr watched at him as he lay on the bed, the netting partially covering his shirtless form, phone on the speaker at his side, his eye staring off into space.
“Well, Vin did find something,” Dante’s smooth voice said through the speaker. In the background, she could hear a baby’s gurgles. He must be talking with Tempest around him. That was cute.
“Listen,” Dante said after a little pause. “I was thinking of flying down there on the weekend. Discuss this in person. Especially with the Shadow Man involved. We don’t know how he knows what he knows, and it’s best to be careful, especially since we don’t know what game he’s playing. It’s not a coincidence that he’s been in touch with Morana and now he’s coming at you with helpful but selective information. I don’t trust him.”
Alpha nodded, curling a hand behind his head, his bicep bulging with the move. “I agree on that. I have a fight this Friday,” he informed Dante, his eye coming to her to see her reaction. She kept her face neutral, her stomach in knots over his upcoming fight.
“Cool,” Dante quipped. “I’d like to attend it.”
“Sure,” Alpha agreed, and Zephyr was happy listening in, realizing that though tentative, the brothers were working around each other to find some common ground without being obvious about it. Men.
“Morana has been hounding Tristan about visiting your place, by the way,” Dante chuckled. “She’s been obsessed with honeymoon resorts lately, and Tristan told her your place looked like one.”
Alpha grunted. “It’s not a fucking honeymoon resort.”
It kind of was. Not that there was a lot of honeymoon part happening. Mooning, yes. Honeymooning, no.
Tempest blabbered some nonsense in baby talk and Dante blew her kisses before coming back to the line, the grin in his voice evident. “That was my polite way of telling you she won’t let Tristan come on his own this time. I’ll also bring”—Dante spoke in a baby voice, clearly to his daughter, and Zephyr melted—“my adorable little princess. I have separation anxiety these days. That means my baby mama”—Dante yelled in the distance, clearly to Amara—“my wife will also be coming with us.”
“You’re whipped,” Alpha huffed a laugh.
“Happily too,” Dante agreed, no shame in his voice whatsoever. “So two couples, two kids, and five security guys. We’ll land Friday afternoon.”
“I’ll arrange the pickup,” Alpha confirmed.
“Okay. Give my love to Zephyr.” And now he was blowing raspberries.
Alpha looked at her. “I’ll give her your greeting.”
“I said, my love.”
“Fuck off.”
Her husband hung up with Dante chuckling.
Zephyr grinned, climbing into bed and adjusting the netting as Alpha turned the remote-controlled lights off.
He was still on the edge, his face a dark cloud of apprehension, his mind preoccupied with too many things he did and did not remember.
She climbed on top of him.
She had felt herself open up to him again, bit by bit, her reservations going down with everything he’d been dealing with over the days, and still reassuring her that she wasn’t going anywhere. She didn’t want to. And she wanted it to be one less thing he worried about. Since she’d come back, things between them had evolved. With him knowing the truth about their past, even limited as it was, and her accepting and becoming completely okay with the fact that he would never remember it, things had become better. Though he tried to pry and ask about their brief but powerful relationship from a decade ago, Zephyr made him understand that maybe it was best left behind, especially since his mind had deliberately forgotten certain things, most probably due to trauma. She’d told him to trust her on that, and though he had trust issues, she could feel him trying to let it go.
She brushed his hair away from his face, straddling him, taking the eye patch off, exposing the scarred tissue underneath. She loved that he let her see him like that, at what he felt was his ugliest. Idiot man. His ugly was her beautiful.
As she did each night, she pressed little kisses on his scar, starting from his hairline, going over his eye, down his cheek, to the corner of his mouth. Usually, he turned and took over her lips at the point, but Zephyr had had enough of him trying to keep their lovemaking contained. She wanted him, as he was, brutal and raw, and she would have him.
