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“You two are late,” Karissa groused.
The lights of the house felt bright against the falling of the night, until I reached the dining room, where the lights were off and candles glittered across the table. Karissa loved to set a nice table.
“Sorry,” Shaw said. “Stone was busy killing a man before supper.”
Liam glanced up from the end of the table, his stormy gray eyes narrowing as he took in the three of us. “Cole and Teresa aren’t coming?”
“It’s just us tonight.” I tried to make my voice quiet, soothing. Liam hated any change.
Liam looked at me with his vaguely unfocused eyes, a slight frown creasing the skin between his brows. Liam also hated when I was condescending. But I didn’t know how the fuck to talk to my brother, no matter how much I wanted to help.
Shaw took the seat across from Liam. “It’s the eve of the night that we lost Brennan, Liam. We wanted to take some time to remember him. Privately.”
Apparently we were done talking about the rapist’s death. Good.
Liam rubbed his hand through his hair, his eyes fixed on the table. He had the fewest memories of Brennan, and I wasn’t sure what he remembered, because he barely talked to any of us.
When the Longroad pack requested a human face to our peace treaty, my father had been all too eager to get rid of the son he considered an embarrassment. Maybe if he had sent Brennan, Stone, or me, the Longroads would’ve treated us decently. My father hadn’t valued Liam, and so they hadn’t either. I didn’t know what they’d done to him in the years while Brennan and I plotted to get him back, but it had left him not just different, but broken.
After Liam returned to the pack, Brennan hadn’t lived long enough to watch Liam come back to life.
“I made his favorites,” Karissa mused. She reached out and touched Liam’s shoulder, smiling at him encouragingly, but he didn’t meet her eyes to see. “Liam helped me cook.”
The table was spread with Brennan’s favorite foods. Corn dogs. Roast chicken with stuffing and gravy. Mashed potatoes. Glazed carrots. Kettle popcorn. A chocolate ganache layer cakeandooey gooey butter cake. It was a ridiculous selection of food, Karissa’s love displayed with sugar and salt.
“I’m getting a beer, Shaw. You want anything?” My brother had driven me crazy today, showing up late, and I’d chewed his ass out privately once I sent Cole off. But I’d forgive him now.
“Yeah, I’ll take a Blue Moon. Thanks.” Shaw’s tension visibly released.
The four of us only had each other. I led the pack, and that was relentless. This was the only place where I could justbe.My house was a refuge, even if every one of my siblings was a pain in the ass in their own way.
Throwing a handful of popcorn in my mouth, I headed through the kitchen to the second fridge in the four-car garage. We always had to be prepared to entertain, even though I hated for non-family to enter our house. I tolerated it only to be the alpha the pack needed.
When I came back in, I tossed Shaw the bottle, and he caught it against his chest, not breaking his conversation at all. My little brother couldtalk.
“So Brennan said, ‘I thought there was no one here,’” Shaw finished.
Karissa laughed. “He wassounobservant sometimes. Remember that time he ducked under you when you’d climbed to the top of the doorway, and then Mom asked where you were, and he didn’t know?”
“He was too lost in his book. Always in his own world,” I mused, but I had fond memories of my brother walking with a book open in his hands.
Our father hadn’t wanted a bookish, intellectual son. He’d teased Brennan for being too deep in his own head all the time. But our brother’s smarts had been enough to take down our father when Brennan challenged him for alpha. He’d been determined to rescue Liam.
“He wasn’t lost in his own world,” Karissa said, her eyes suddenly growing sad. She glanced at Liam, involuntarily. “He always had the right idea.”
“Why are you looking at me?” Liam demanded, his eyes still on his plate. “It wasn’t my fault.”
“No one said it was.” Karissa sounded confused.
“It’s the Longroad pack’s fault,” I said, anger simmering under the surface.
Liam rose from the table, so abruptly that he pushed it away from him.
“Hey, what’s going on?” I demanded, reaching to grab his shoulder. “It’s okay, Liam.”
He twisted away, keeping me from touching him, and I didn’t push it. His gaze meeting mine, he snapped, “You look just like Dad when you’re angry.”
Anger twisted through my gut, a sudden swell of rage that touched the corners of my vision with red. But I always controlled that fury. I took a step back and let him pass, raising my hands dramatically.
