Happiness is Earned (Second Chances Book 3), page 16
“Because they’ll want to see if we take over the pack,” I say, and David nods. “If Atticus is going to take it over, and your people become part of the Phoenix Pride, it’ll be a whole lot better than wherever they might end up. Those who are leaving to join family don’t care about that. But everyone else will.”
“Bit arrogant, but not false,” David says.
I shrug. “I’ve got the best Alpha. It’s hard to deny that.”
“Most people are hoping this is the end for Kennedy,” David adds, sitting down on the arm of Crystal’s chair. “Maybe not his loyal followers, or… the groupies, but the vast majority of the pack just want him gone.”
“His groupies?” Micah asks, and lo and behold, there’s yoghurt on his shirt. “I need a list of those.”
“What even are those?” I ask, scrunching my nose up.
“They’re the people who hope that Neve leaves him, or… dies, or something terrible happens to her so that they can take her place,” Crystal says quietly.
“Well, that’s morbid,” I mutter, wondering if Atticus has those. Is that something we should check in on?
I bet Voss would know.
“Oh, that’s actually a good point,” David says, grabbing the paper from the middle of the table. He jots down a bunch of names, and circles one before handing it to me. “This is a list of people that I think need watched that aren’t on the big lists because they’re just people I see him with every so often. I think it could really help.”
He bites his lips, his wolf desperate to please, and I give him a smile. He’s a good man, he really is.
“We appreciate it, baby Hart,” I say, pocketing the list.
“Baby Hart?” David asks, pausing his happiness. He gives me a dirty look.
Crystal bursts out laughing, the sweet tinkling transforming her from the quiet shy girl, to a beautiful woman. She seems a lot more free here, less of the stress and anxieties. Nora would be happy to see the changes, and, honestly, so am I.
David shoots her a betrayed look. “Really, baby?”
She laughs, leaning into him. “It was funny.”
“I can’t believe you betrayed me in front of the enemy,” he groans.
“We’re sorry that your night got ruined,” I say, and they both laugh this time.
“We hated this whole weekend,” David says, wrapping his arm around his mate. “We’re not doing it a third time, though. I love my sister, I truly do, but I might kill her if this is something she makes us do.”
Both Micah and I growl, and his hands immediately fly up in submission, his eyes wide.
“Neve!” he says, quickly. “I’d kill Neve. Not Nora. Fuck, not Nora.”
Micah snorts, losing the anger that I cling onto for just another moment. “Fair enough.”
“I think Voss might fight you for it, but at least he’ll not have to kill the baby,” I say, when I’m confident he’s not mad.
“What the fuck?” David demands. “I’m not killing my niece or nephew.”
“Technicalities,” Micah says, waving his hand. I spot the little bit of yoghurt on the arm of the chair. How the fuck?
“I think Nora was ready to end it before the first even began,” I say with a laugh. We’ll have to get them a nice gift, though, for all the shit they’ve gone through on our behalf.
A house maybe, if they do decide to come and join our pack.
“Do they still not know what they’re having?” Crystal asks, going back to Kennedy and Neve.
“No,” David says.
“I hope Nora will let us know,” I say with a small pout. I’d hate to not know. How would we make sure we’re prepared?
“Okay, well, with that, we’re leaving,” Micah says, giving me a dirty look.
David eyes me nervously. “I hear that you’re in the dog house.”
I growl, but it doesn’t even seem to phase him.
“It’s ridiculous,” I say, crossing my arms in front of my chest as Micah tries to discreetly wipe up his spilled yoghurt. “I didn’t even really do anything wrong.”
“What did you do?” Crystal asks quietly.
“Literally nothing,” I say, but she raises an eyebrow. Hm, maybe I want her to go back to being the shy girl who doesn’t push on things in my relationship. “I took her from the rehearsal dinner to get her home safe, and she was pissed off at me.”
“Did you explain that to her?” Crystal asks.
“Well, sort of, but there wasn’t much time.”
“What else happened?” she asks. “Because from the little I know about Nora, I doubt she’s mad at just that.”
Just. So she’s got a right to be mad at that? Why? I did exactly what Atticus told me to do, and I protected her and our child. Why would that be something she’s mad at? I know her and Atty talked about how she should’ve been told ahead of time, but I don’t stand by that.
You talk once the danger has passed. Always. How else would you process the action?
“Definitely not,” David adds. “My sister doesn’t overreact.”
“Then you don’t know the pregnant version of her.”
Micah groans. “And that’s why she’s so mad at you.”
I roll my eyes.
“Sometimes when you think you’ve done nothing, you’re missing the bigger picture,” Crystal says, taking David’s offered hand to stand up. She rubs at her eyes and gives me a soft smile. “Think back over your conversation and try to see things from her side. Not yours. The answer should become clear then.”
“I will, thanks,” I say, even though I have no intention of doing that. I legit tried to get her to eat, and she nearly murdered me over our baby.
She’s a little bit too hormonal for my liking.
The door knocks again, and Crystal tenses, leaning into her mate for protection. David squeezes her tight before moving out of her embrace. She hunches into herself, a coldness seeming to overtake her.
“Who the fuck is that?” David asks, heading over to the door with a sigh. I give Micah a look to stay with Crystal as I advance behind David.
He doesn’t check through the peephole or anything before wrenching the door open.
Fool.
“David,” a woman’s voice greets. She seems tired and not hostile, but I don’t have much faith. “I wasn’t sure where to bring this stuff, so I brought it over here to let you and Crys decide.”
“What stuff?” he asks, but she’s already heading over to the car.
“The leftovers from the dinner,” she says, popping her boot open, and David groans. “The soup will be good reheated, and we even set a portion aside for your sister. We didn’t want to anger Alpha Phoenix.”
“I see,” David says, shooting me a please help look.
But, honestly, I’m glad this random woman has brought some food over. It means Nora can eat it tomorrow. Some soup will be good for her.
“Thanks,” I say, and the woman shrieks in surprise. David moves so I can get past him, and I head over to the woman’s car. “Do you need help carrying it in?”
“There’s not too much,” she says, giving me a surprised look. “We didn’t start cooking the main course, so all that meat is still good for a few days. It was mainly the soup, the appetisers, and such.”
I take the two boxes and pass them to David before taking the one with “Alpha Phoenix’s mate” scrawled on the top.
“Her name is Nora,” I say with a frown.
“I know,” the woman says quietly. “But her mother wrote it on, and we didn’t want to upset her further.”
“I see.” I fucking hate that woman.
“Thanks, Carys,” David says. “Are you going to be all right driving home?”
She nods and gets back in her car with a sleepy smile. She doesn’t hang around, immediately driving away.
“Well, that’s us sorted for food for the next few days,” David says with a small laugh. “I don’t need to come steal your scraps.”
“Soup is nutritious but not enough,” I say with a frown. “I’ll make sure to drop some meals off for you both before I leave.”
“Wait, no, we’re fine,” David says, but I ignore him. Micah and I head off with reassurances that we’d have a better plan later today, considering it’s well past midnight at this point.
I wanted to wait until we’re a decent distance away from David’s house before starting the conversation, but Micah beats me to it.
“Crystal had a point,” he says, and I frown.
“Not you, too.”
“Look, Orson, for whatever reason, Nora’s adamant there’s no baby. She’s struggling with it, and as much as—”
“No,” I say, cutting him off with a shake of my head. “You keep trying to make excuses for her. She can’t just deny our baby. That doesn’t help her, it only enables her. That’s not a healthy mindset for her or the baby.”
“She isn’t,” Micah says, coming to a stop. “You’ve got to remember that she’s struggling—”
“She’s always fucking struggling,” I roar, slamming my hand into a tree because the other option was Micah’s head, and he doesn’t deserve that. “But struggling doesn’t help anything when it comes to us having a child. She chose to have this baby. She was the one who said she didn’t want the abortion if she turned out to be pregnant. Nora opened the floodgates and gave us this gift, but now she’s trying to take it away.”
“Yes, she did choose to have the baby if there is one,” Micah says. “But the key word there is if. To her, there is still no baby. She’s still allowed time to come around to the idea of being pregnant. To her whole future being different. Her heat ended a week ago, and, in that week, she’s been busy planning her mating ceremony, she’s quit her job, she’s had a lot of changes to deal with in such a short time. Hell, we’re going to go back, and that stupid jigsaw we’ve been doing—”
“That stupid jigsaw?” I ask with a small smirk, which takes some of the heat out of me. Micah’s obsessed with the jigsaw. We all are.
“Yes, okay, the amazing jigsaw that we’ve been doing is going to be done soon. She’s got a lot happening, and with that… she’ll have hormones raging rampantly. We all know she’s pregnant, Orson. We’re not worried about that in the slightest. But she is. Fuck, Atticus is probably going to smell it any day now, the heartbeat will be heard soon enough. Her pregnancy won’t be anywhere near as long as Ari’s, so we’ll get to hit all those milestones first. But we need to do things on Nora’s timeline. She’s the one giving us this literal gift of life, and she’s the one with all the changes she’ll need to deal with,” Micah says gently. “So work with her. Stop pressuring her. And respect the boundaries she’s putting into place for her mental health.”
That stabs deep.
I do respect her and her boundaries. I don’t push, I always support. I’m the one there to help brush her hair, or her teeth, to bring her juice or whatever she needs. I’m always fucking there.
All I’m asking is for her not to punish our baby and act like it doesn’t deserve to exist.
“You can’t sit there and act like you’re her mate and you love her, when, tonight, all you’ve done is belittle her and make her feel bad. Fucking hell, you turned your back on her earlier rather than saying goodbye or giving her a tiny bit of reassurance, knowing how badly that would cut her up. Swallow your fucking pride, and be the mate she deserves, or get out of the damn line. She’s already had one deadbeat mate, I won’t allow you to be a second.”
And, with that, he shifts into his tiger, effectively ending the conversation unless I want to try and broach his mental walls. I don’t because I have no doubt that the tiger is riding Micah hard right now, and I quite like my arm unmutilated.
The walk back to the cabin is silent other than the crinkling of my feet and the deep breathing from Micah’s tiger, and I’ve got nobody to reassure me that this isn’t my fault.
Because it is.
Micah shifts back from his tiger when the cabin comes into view, but he’s still pissed at me. He gives me a dirty look, puts a good few feet between us, and if he was as immature as his brother, he’d have stuck his fingers up at me.
“Finally,” Atticus groans. He’s sitting on the decking with Griffin and hops to his feet as we approach. There’s an excited energy surrounding Atticus, one I truly don’t like. “What took so long?”
“We had a few things to sort,” I say, and he nods. I open the boot of the car and put the care package for Nora inside it. I’m really grateful to Carys for bringing it, even if the scrawl on the top pisses me off.
“Should I give Cevon a call and let him know we’re on our way?” Micah asks, grabbing the satellite phone and moving to do so, as if the answer is going to be yes.
“Not yet,” Atticus says, and Micah pauses. There’s a confused look on the tiger’s face as he scans Atticus’s face for clues. It’s a shame my Alpha isn’t focused on him. Nope, his eyes are locked in on mine, a small smile tugging at the corner of his thin, cracked, pale pink lips. Well, if he weren’t hiding from me, they wouldn’t be cracked.
We share Nora’s pussy juices.
We can absolutely share a vaseline container.
“We’ve got a few things to settle first,” Atticus says, the smile turning into a smirk.
“We really don’t,” I say, shaking my head, knowing that he means we as in he and I. I do not want to fight with the angry Alpha who is protecting his mate. Not even a fucking little bit. I was a fool for even mentioning my pent up aggression. “I’m good to just move past it and pretend it never happened.”
“I’m not,” Atticus replies, tugging his shirt off. His muscles bulge—not that impressive, mine are better—and he meets my eyes. His are amber, showing his lion is already at the party.
Fuck.
“On a scale of one to ten, how badly do you want to kill me?” I ask, taking a small step backwards.
“I’m hovering somewhere in the high thirties,” Atticus replies. “Now, are you going to get ready, or is this going to be a beating?”
“He’s being pretty generous, giving you a chance to fight back,” Griffin says with a smirk. His eyes are red as his griffin eagerly watches.
“Generous is not the word I’d use,” Micah mutters, stepping back out of the line of fire.
I snort, half-agreeing with Micah. But this will be a very good way to get some of the aggression out. Atticus handled the vast majority of the physical demands with Kennedy’s pack, which means all the frustration I’ve been building hasn’t had an outlet.
Good thing my Alpha is a willing victim.
We both need this. Going back to Nora with anger and aggression filling us all will only stress her out. We need to calm the beasts.
“Are we ready?” Griffin asks, glancing between us both with an eagerness I didn’t expect from him.
I nod as Atticus charges forward, shifting into his lion in mid-air, knocking me to the ground. My eyes roll back, my head bouncing, as he snaps at my neck with an amused look in his eyes.
Fucking hell, this isn’t going to be fun.
10
NORA
I have slept for the entire drive over to Cevon’s place, which is probably for the best considering the mood I’m in. Atticus and I may have resolved things, but Orson and I haven’t. He was rude, refusing to even say goodbye, and his entire demeanour has pissed me off.
Which seems to be the mood of the car. Both Malachi and Devoss aren’t pleased they were sent away when things are in such a precarious state, the latter threatening to murder Atticus since it meant he didn’t get to partake in the problems at the pack.
Atticus didn’t take kindly to that threat, but, thankfully, I missed most of that fight since I was more concerned with my own.
I’m not sure what’s going to happen come morning. We might not be going back to the pack at all, which is a little disheartening. I didn’t get the chance to say bye to David or deal with my parents.
I wasn’t quite done with that situation.
“How are you feeling, little mouse?” Voss asks, turning around in the seat to look at me properly as Malachi parks the car in Cevon’s garage. Somehow, the tiger has the code to open it, which makes no sense since, to my knowledge, he’s never been here. “You slept for a long while.”
The original plan was for me and Malachi to run here, with Devoss taking his bike, but Atticus vetoed that with everything going on, and Orson changed the plan to accommodate me.
It was just another nail in the coffin for Voss, though, because everything he wanted to do tonight has been ruined.
I shrug, and he sighs before climbing out of the car. Malachi follows him before coming to open my car door for me.
“How are you feeling?” Malachi asks, cracking his back.
I sigh. “Let’s just not talk about it,” I murmur, patting his chest. “I’m sorry. I’m not mad at you, and I will get out of this stupid funk soon, but I’m just… mad, and I need a little bit to process.”
Malachi nods. “He’s just—”
“No,” I say, cutting him off with a sharp shake of my head and a purse of my lips. “I’m sorry, I know you’re trying, but I don’t want you making this better for him. Atticus tried to do the same thing, but this is something Orson and I need to figure out.”
Malachi laughs and nods. “I never thought I’d see the day that I sat here trying to make things better for the fucking bear, but here we are.”
“No, me neither,” Voss pipes in from where he’s looking at one of the other cars. Cevon seems to have three. One flashy car, one big car with wheels that nearly reach my shoulders, and one that’s super filthy.
I wonder what they’re all for.
We head out of the garage and make our way back to the front of the house. The house looks the exact same as last time I was here, although I barely got to see the outside, so I probably wouldn’t realise if something was missing. It surprises me that Mal has a key to this place, and he doesn’t hesitate in using it.
Malachi pushes the door open, the familiar emptiness making me smile. It feels like an eon since I was last here, even though it’s only been a month. Surprisingly, I’ve missed it.
