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“If you guys need us, we’ll be at the house,” I say more to myself than to the room of anxious boys surrounding my daughter.
Az and Tyler let go of Cash and Zay, and they waste no time moving away from them.
“I’ll stay here with them,” Ash says, but I can only manage a grim smile of thanks. “I’ll call you if she needs you.”
It kills me to leave her alone.
Ash looks like he wants to talk to me about something, but I shake my head. Not right now. I’m not ready. There’s too much going on to even think about anything but Ava.
I walk out of the cabin, wondering how the hell my daughter turned into a shifter and how this will impact her life.
Chapter two
Az
Theairinthecabin feels stagnant as soon as the front door slams shut behind Kat, or maybe it’s just the distance between me and my mate that feels so suffocating.Mate.I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of calling her that. After the day she came to my room, I knew we had to be something more. I can’t get enough of her. I want my scent all over her clothes, her room, her bed sheets so everyone knows she belongs to me. I don’t know how I’m going to keep my hands to myself after we mate.
Visions of her naked body tied to my bed and inside my car send my heart racing. I want to watch her bleed as I tease her body and she comes all over my dick, my hands, my mouth. I want to watch as my brothers fuck her and mark her. She belongs to us. The outcasts. The Iron Beast Pack.
Soon, I tell myself over and over again, trying to focus on the scene in front of me. Even if I had gone home with Kat, now isn’t the time to get her naked and mark every inch of her body.
She’s had a rough day—we all have. After so many years of wanting to catch Krissy and break the curse, she’s finally dead. We should be celebrating what we’ve accomplished, but for some reason, happiness doesn’t feel like our reality right now. Not with Kat’s daughter twisting in agony in front of me, and not with Krissy’s last words still bouncing around my brain.
Before she died, she told us that she was hired by the council to kill Kat and take the powers of all their ancestors. She said she was promised all the power and that they would rule together. I thought she meant that she would rule alongside her sister at first, but the way she spoke to a voice inside her head made it obvious that she wasn’t the brains of this operation. Someone was pulling her strings the entire time, but who, and why did they use her specifically? What was the real purpose for taking her ancestors’ magic, and now that she’s gone, who will be coming for us next?
“Ahhh—” another high-pitched scream pulls me from my thoughts, and I immediately swing into action. I walk into the linen closet and grab a small towel, then move to the bathroom and turn the sink faucet on freezing cold.
I bring the cold, wet towel back to Ava, and all the men stare at me and growl. I know how they’re feeling. It’s the same way when someone gets too close to Kat. They want to protect her, but they’re still so young and truly don’t know how to help her.
They’ve never seen someone transition. It baffles me how Kat did it all by herself.
I place the wet towel on her forehead to cool her down a bit. Her body responds to the shift in temperature and relaxes, but only slightly.
“Would you have cared for her mother?”my wolf asks. That stops me for a moment because in all honesty, I don’t think I would have. Maybe I would have felt a little bad for her suffering, but I thought she was more of a nuisance than anything, and that realization upsets me.
“From this day forward,”I tell my wolf.“We’ll make it up to Kat anyway we can.”That’s the truth. I may not be able to change the past, but I can change the future.
“Fuck off, Ryder,” Zay says, knocking into his friend’s shoulder. “I’m lying down next to her.” They push and shove like children, but I let them handle their own shit. I’m not here to interfere with what they have going on. I’m only here to help Ava.
Cash and Zay lie on either side of her, and Cash brings his hand to her stomach. I’m surprised he’s keeping it there. Her body is hot to the touch. He’s going to need a healer for those blisters, but it looks like he doesn’t mind so long as he’s close to her.
Her face is against Zay’s neck, and he flinches at the touch of her hand on his skin, but other than that, he doesn’t move.
She’s calming down, so I go into another room and pull out some clean sweats and a shirt. I take off my blood-soaked clothes and throw them in the trash. I don’t need a reminder of what happened today or what could have happened if Kat hadn’t been able to call her dagger the way she did.
I go back into the bathroom and turn the shower on. I wait for it to get hot and get in, washing off the blood, dirt, and sweat from the day.
Everything is quiet at the moment, so I allow myself five minutes extra to relax my muscles.
When Ava screams again, I get out and dress quickly. As I enter the bedroom and take in the sight before me, my feet falter.
Wait.
I put my palm on the wall to keep me from stumbling.
Something is wrong—very wrong.
She doesn’t have her mother’s violet eyes, which surprises me because I thought she would have the same power as Kat. Her eyes are as amber as mine and my brothers, but there are hints of black surrounding her irises, and when her eyes widen and turn to me, the amber turns red.
