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“You’re on!” Conner poked a finger into Hunter’s chest before he headed for the fridge.
“Good training session?” Max asked from his spot at the kitchen table. Pride swelled in his chest, which was happening an awful lot lately.
“Hell, yeah! Brody bores the hell out of me when it’s all about footwork and repeating moves, but this time we got to spar.” Hunter darted around Conner’s position at the fridge and grabbed a cold bottle of water.
“It’s all about muscle memory,” Brody reminded the younger wolf casually. “It might sound boring right now, but it could really help you in the future. We’ve discussed this.”
Hunter wasn’t interested in any of that. His face was alight with his victory. “Anyway, Brody doesn’t always let me go against Conner anymore. He says it doesn’t do the pack any good to just have to top two going head to head all the time.”
“Are you just going to keep talking about me like I’m not here?” Brody asked dramatically. “And after all I’ve done for you.”
A slight smile crept over Max’s face, even though he’d felt nothing but gloomy all day. He had this deep, unsettling feeling as though there was something he ought to be doing but wasn’t. His wolf was restless, making it impossible to focus. He grounded himself in his son’s training, hoping it would help. “Brody’s right, you know. It’s great if you and Conner are always at the top of the class, but that means the other wolves could really benefit from sparring with you. They’ll learn things that they never would if they were only paired up with others on the same level. It’s the same reason you boys have to fight me or Brody sometimes.”
“Yeah, yeah. I know. But this was way more fun.” Hunter slid into a chair across the table from his father. “We were up in the clearing, and the two of us had been going at it for a while, popping in and tagging each other here and there. You know how Brody will step in every minute or so and stop things, pointing out what should’ve gone differently?”
Max nodded. It amused him that Hunter wanted to speak as though Max had never been involved in these sessions himself, but he wasn’t going to correct him. This was just his son’s enthusiasm bubbling over. Fighting was a skill Hunter would need at some point. As the sole Glenwood heir at the moment, there was a chance he could become Alpha someday, and Max didn’t want to deter him in any way.
“Well, he wasn’t doing that this time. He just put the two of us together in the clearing and let us go. I was a little thrown off at first because I kept waiting for him to say something,” Hunter continued.
“Someone won’t always be there to act as referee,” Brody noted. He was leaning against the breakfast bar, looking proud.
“When I realized it, I started to get really excited. It got to me, and I slipped up and gave Conner a chance to pin me.”
Conner put a platter of cold cuts on the counter and pulled off the cover. “You don’t have to slip up for me to pin you.”
“So he had me down, right?” Hunter slammed his hand on the kitchen table. “I was on the ground with half my face in the dirt. Conner is on top of me, and he’s heavy even when he’s in wolf form. He was just about to get my throat, and I thought that was it. In another second, I just knew Brody was going to call it. I couldn’t stand the thought, though. I knew there had to be something I could do. My front legs were pretty much bound up, but I used my back legs to take his hind end down.”
“And then I fell on my ass, and he pinned me instead,” Conner concluded for him. “Brody, please tell me we can get back out there sooner than later so I don’t have to keep hearing his victory speech.”
“Oh, we will,” Hunter promised, “but only so I can kick your ass again. You should’ve been there, Dad. It was amazing.”
Guilt stabbed at his heart all over again. Hunter had Max’s dark hair, but it was impossible not to see Sarah in his face. It was more pronounced when he was excited like this. He’d already denied his son a mother. Was he now being a bad father because he hadn’t gone to the training session? And all because he was feeling moody? Shit. He just couldn’t win for losing. “I’ll be there next time.”
Conner came around the breakfast bar. “How about we try this again right now? I just downloaded the latest edition of CyberBattle Apocalypse.”
Hunter leaped up from his place at the table. “You’re on!”
Snagging the plate of meat, the two boys thundered down to the basement.
Brody laughed. “I guess they can go kick each other’s asses in a video game now. They ought to be exhausted. I know I am. I’m heading home.”
“I’ll see you.” Max knew he should be getting home himself. He had the opening shift at Selene’s the next day, and he didn’t like just rolling out of bed and driving to work. Standing up and stretching, he padded toward the basement to tell Hunter he’d see him back at home.
A knock at the front door stopped him.
“Who the fuck could this be?” He wasn’t in the mood for visitors, and as far as he knew, they weren’t expecting anyone. The rest of the packhouse had mostly disappeared for the evening, so Max stomped to the door and yanked it open.
His wolf immediately slammed against the underside of his skin. His foul mood collided with shock, wonder, and something else he knew couldn’t be right. The two creatures that composed Max twisted and bent as he stared at the woman on the front porch.
She looked like his Sarah. She had that same dark blonde hair, though the light picked out a few strands of gray. There were those same brown eyes, the ones that had haunted his sleep and pulled at his heart every time he looked at his son. Tiny lines framed their corners.
It couldn’t be her. She’d been dead for sixteen years. He’d never forget the day she’d gone missing, nor the announcement from Edward Greystone that he’d culled his own pack to defend his honor. The human side of Max tried to find the logic in this situation, to meld what he knew to be true with what he was seeing right in front of him. He’d been thinking about Sarah a lot over the past week or so. She’d been constantly at the forefront of his mind ever since Hunter’s birthday, and it was making his eyes play tricks on him.
His wolf had other ideas. It was going wild, thrashing around inside him and snapping its jaws as it insisted that even the few feet between them were too much. It knew. She wasn’t the same as when she’d left him; she was older now. Her face and body had changed, but it was absolutely her.
“Sarah. I…” His voice was strangled as he tried to force her name past his lips. “I thought you were dead.”
“I know.” Tears welled in her eyes, and she blinked them away quickly. “I know you did, and I’m sorry to just show up like this. I wouldn’t do this to you if I had any other choice.” Sarah glanced over her shoulder into the darkness that now cloaked the front yard.
