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With nothing more than an annoyed huff, Mallory ignored the gun and looked at the banded stacks of cash. He pulled out a couple and flipped through them.
“Gotta be at least sixty-thousand,” he grumbled. “You steal it?”
“My mother gave it to me.”
He chuckled, shook his head. “So you’re saying she stole it.”
Doone had asked me the same question, but his tone had been inquisitive, not rife with accusation. My voice grew chilly as I tried to formulate an answer. After all, my mother should have led the cat shifters, not Henric. But, as leader, Henric could spend the leap’s money however he chose. And she had only tucked so much away in preparation of the day he would try to kill one or both of us.
Pain exploded in my chest at the thought of Justine already dead.
I whipped my head side-to-side, my hair lashing at my face.
“You’re not saying that?” Mallory asked, his black gaze carefully studying me.
Tears began to form. I shouldn’t be in Night Falls, shouldn’t be seeking whatever safety the pack might offer. I should be in Illinois fighting to free my mother, or dying in the attempt.
Yanking the bag to me, I jumped to my feet, turned and ran straight into Doone’s massive chest. His hands wrapped around my shoulders, his alpha wolf energy pushing just firmly enough to comfort me instead of further igniting my fight or flee instincts.
“This Henric asshole will always think it belongs to him, right?”
I nodded, my chest tightening with gratitude at the way he carefully chose to phrase it. Unlike Mallory’s blunt manner.
He offered a gentle squeeze.
“And you are exactly where your mother wanted you to be,” he said, a fresh wave of his alpha energy pushing at me.
I blinked and nodded, the robotic reply at odds with the whirlwind of thoughts and emotions whipping inside me.
Back in Illinois, I had never really responded to an alpha’s push, not even my mother’s.
Was I more wolf than cat? Maybe that was why it was so simple for Doone to ease my mind. But how could I still resist Mallory’s push? He was alpha, too.
The answer probably came down to hormones because Doone was giving me more than alpha vibes. And I sure as hell wanted to give them back, wanted to crawl all over his big body and finally find out what I’d been missing out on by relentlessly guarding my V-card from the loser cats always sniffing around me at the leap.
“Damn it!” Mallory barked at the same time my ears pricked with the sound of multiple vehicles approaching. “No time to ask you my questions. It’ll be Braeden you’re talking to.”
Doone chuckled. “Like you’re not perfectly happy to talk over anyone, old man.”
Another growl issued from Mallory as he walked over to the front window, but there was no bite to it.
“Double fuck,” he groaned. “He’s got Clover with him. I swear, between having her husband pussy-whipped and her big brother wrapped around her pinkie, that little beta is the de facto pack leader, especially with what she can do now. We’ll all be mincemeat if she ever takes an actual alpha form.”
“She’s a sweetheart,” Doone said, voice low and lips a millimeter from touching my ear even if there was no way to hide what he was saying from Mallory.
I didn’t mind the close proximity one bit. Whenever he put his lips close to my neck, delighted shivers rapidly fanned out across my body. I just hoped Mallory wasn’t picking up on that fact because, so far, I seemed to be making a terrible impression on my biological father.
“Whatever Clover is,” Mallory said, retreating to his recliner. “She’s going to love this kettle of drama.”
“She’ll love you,” Doone corrected, his big hand briefly soothing down my back before he walked to the door and opened it.
Instead of two shifters standing at the door, there were three. My nose told me two wolves and one cat—the second male with striking blue eyes that moved like laser-beams cutting through my skin.
“Oh, saints alive, you’re gorgeous!” the female said as she pushed through the two males standing guard in front of her to give me a welcoming hug. “Are we sure that mangy old coot sulking in his recliner is actually your dad? Your mother must look like a Hollywood goddess to balance out the looks on his side.”
I could tell she was having a goodhearted poke at Mallory. He was still quite handsome, his age somewhere in his fifties like my mother. I mean, damn, I just remembered what my initial impression of him had been in the video when I zoomed in on what had caught my mother’s attention. He was a Hot Daddy until I found out he was actually my father.
As for me being “gorgeous,” only Justine had told me I was beautiful, and only when I was a little girl. Everyone else followed Henric’s lead. Even the damn males at the community center would insult my looks at the same time they tried to get into my panties. All while asking if they could get a meeting with Henric.
