Saved By The Alpha
Chapter 6

I woke up the next morning groggy and disoriented. Even if I hadn’t totally adapted to London scheduling, I wasn’t completely on Texas time, either. It wasn’t as if I hadn’t crossed time zones before, but when I traveled for work, I drove.

Something about the length of time it’d take to get from one job site to another made it easier to adjust, and it was rare that I was more than an hour from where I’d started. When I had to drive cross-country, it took more than a day.

After staring at the ceiling for several moments — or maybe minutes, time didn’t feel particularly real to me just yet — I finally reached over to grab my phone and check the time. I sighed. Better get up to check on Bella. I had no idea if she’d stick to Texas time, if she was still on London time, or if she was caught somewhere between, like me. At least I don’t hear her — yet. She’s probably still asleep.

As I eased myself upright, I glanced over at Eli. He’d slept fitfully all night, tossing and turning. At one point, he startled so violently he’d struck me — not on purpose, of course, but he’d kicked his legs out and caught me right in the shin. I was almost glad he was so out of it because I’m not sure I could have convinced him it was okay otherwise. Getting him back to sleep would have been impossible.

I hope he’s okay.

I knew the trip to London had been stressful for him, too, but I still didn’t know everything that had happened at that pack meeting. I didn’t know exactly what had gone on with Brock either. I stifled a yawn and eased myself out of bed. Eli looked peaceful, at least for the moment, and after the last few days, we all needed as much sleep as we could get. I carefully got dressed before creeping out of the room and peeking into Bella’s room.

She was awake, sitting on the floor with her toy wolf as she leafed through one of the picture books we had left in the room for her. I gave her a small smile and closed the door behind me. “I didn’t know you were awake, Bella,” I said, coming to sit down next to her. “If you wake up, you can come and knock on the door or wake us up, okay?”

Bella looked up for a moment before giving me a shrug. I sighed, but she held up the book to me, pointing at it. She put it in my lap, and I laughed softly. “Sure, I’ll read it. But then we eat breakfast, okay?”

“Okay,” Bella said, wiggling sideways to press into my side. My smile broadened, and I flipped to the front of the book. “The Very Hungry Caterpillar,” I began. “In the light of the moon a little egg laid on a leaf…”

After I got Bella dressed,I took her downstairs to get breakfast ready. As I rounded the bottom of the steps, I realized there was someone sitting at the table and startled so violently I almost dropped Bella.

“F**k!” I said, realizing a moment later she was whimpering. “Oh, sorry, little one,” I said a moment later, adjusting my grip a little. She clearly didn’t want to be put down. I frowned as I glanced back up, having recognized the man’s scent only a few moments after I jumped. “What the hell, Nic,” I grumbled, scowling at him. “You could warn a woman.”

“I’m sorry,” he said, having the good sense to look abashed. “Eli seemed very upset yesterday, so I wanted to come over and speak to him. It seemed best to talk in person rather than over the phone, given…” He sighed and shook his head.

I arched a brow at him. “Given that the whole reason Brock and Gage are here was due to you being on the phone?”

Nic gave me a warning look there. My wolf whined, clearly intimidated by the alpha’s presence, but I knew I wasn’t. He wasn’t the first rich, powerful man I had to tell off, and I was quite sure he wouldn’t be the last, either. Maybe the richest to date, but not the last.

“That was an accident,” he said as if he were quite weary of all this already.

I really didn’t care. I didn’t know his brother or his…whatever you wanted to call Brock. Packmate? Probably packmate.

I didn’t know either of them well, but more people knowing about Project Night Moon meant there was more of a chance word could get out. “Have you told Remus we have extra bodies now?” I asked.

“I did,” Nic replied, still watching me. “He’s not particularly impressed, either. I do realize I made a mistake, which is why I’m here to talk to my son in person.” He raised a brow at me and then pushed forward a white box on the table. I hadn’t noticed it before. “I also brought donuts.”

“Donuts!” Bella chirped, suddenly lively.

I couldn’t help but smile, distracted from my irritation, as I got her settled into a chair with a napkin and a donut. Nic opened the box and allowed her to pick the one she wanted while I got out a plate to try and contain the mess.

Once I sat, he handed me a cup of coffee. “I almost got c-o-c-o-a for Bella,” he said, smiling at her, “but decided I didn’t want to aggravate Eli any further.” I snorted softly, and he gave me a wry look. “Just you wait until you have a toddler on a sugar high, Iris. You’ll appreciate it more once you know.”

I paused for a moment, almost smiling as I reached for my own donut. “I can’t imagine Eli as a toddler,” I admitted after a moment. “Much less one on a sugar high.”

Nic finally laughed, leaning back into the kitchen chair. “He’s serious now, but he was a riot as a boy,” he said, his eyes sparkling. “You know, we used to call him Chuckles.”

I almost choked on my sip of coffee. “Are you serious?”

“I know it’s hard to believe,” he replied, laughing again, “but he really was a happy baby. Always bubbling or giggling. He was pretty cute as a toddler, too.” He paused, looking at me with half a smile. “Should I be ‘that dad’ and show you a picture?”

“Only if you keep it a secret,” I replied, trying not to smile. Eli didn’t strike me as the type of person who’d want anyone to see his baby photos.

Nic smiled a little wider. “Oh, he’d never forgive me, I imagine,” he replied, pulling out his phone. After a few swipes, he held it out to me. On the screen was a precious toddler, lying in the grass and clearly giggling. His dark hair was a mess, and his blue eyes were as clear as the summer sky. My heart did something foolish, and I couldn’t help but coo.

“Oh, he was a cute baby,” I admitted, finally taking a bite of my breakfast.

“I think so,” Nic agreed. “Even if my opinion is rather biased.” He looked at the photo for a little longer, his smile slowly fading. The expression made my heart hurt. I made a curious noise.

“He was six when his mother and I split,” Nic said, finally setting his phone down. “I regret to say he wasn’t really ‘Chuckles’ anymore after that.”

I sighed, looking down into my coffee. “Divorce isn’t easy on anyone,” I replied after a moment. I wasn’t even sure if that was the correct word for a pair of shifters, but a few of my foster siblings had divorced parents. They’d ended up in foster care when the custody battle became so venomous that the state felt neither parent was fit to be a guardian.

I always wondered what had happened that the state felt the two little girls would be better off in foster care than with one of their parents. I asked once. Wanda, the older girl, burst into tears almost immediately. My foster mother had stormed in and scolded us both so fiercely that Wanda avoided me almost as much as I avoided her afterward. I shook off the memory and took another sip of coffee.

“Indeed,” Nic said quietly, still staring down. “I suspect he still blames me for it, but…” He shook his head. “Viola found her true mate. It wasn’t my place to try and stop her from being with him, and if I had…she’d only have come to resent me. It was also a very real possibility Brock would try to challenge me for her or the pack. Or both. And there was no winning scenario there.”

I frowned, nodding slowly. “If you won, she’d probably be mad at you. If he won…you’d lose your entire pack.”

Nic grimaced. “Challenges are to the death,” he said quietly, tipping his head. “I imagine she’d never forgive me if she had to experience the death of her true mate, and if I lost…not only would my pack be in the paws of this relative stranger, but so would my son. He would be raised by the man who killed his father. I couldn’t have that.”

I swallowed the lump suddenly forming in my throat. Brock had given me a bad impression to start with, but imagining that possible scenario made my stomach turn. “Brock doesn’t strike me as particularly paternal,” I said. Subtlety wasn’t usually my nature, but I hadn’t gotten much information about the man from Eli. Hopefully, Nic was still in a sharing mood.

“No.” Nic wrinkled his nose. “But we don’t get to choose our fated mates, much less someone else’s.”

I watched him for a moment. “You tried to make it work, didn’t you?”

“With Viola and Brock? Yes.” Nic shrugged one shoulder. “What sort of man puts his own pettiness above his son’s well-being? I wanted Eli to have his mother. I didn’t want him to feel like he needed to choose one of us or the other.”

I couldn’t help but smile a little. I knew things weren’t great between Eli and his father, but…it seemed, to me at least, that the elder Archer was trying. It might not be working for Eli, but at least he was making an honest effort, and that was not something I had experienced in any of the foster homes I’d been in growing up. Many of those people allowed their fighting with one another to bleed over to the children.

It was just one of many reasons a lot of it had been so tense.

“Most people I’ve met have not been willing to be friendly with their ex’s new partner,” I said. And most of the people I’d met weren’t even shifters — shifters could be much more possessive than your run-of-the-mill human.

Nic gave me a sad smile. “You know, when I was seven, I met a girl about the same age. Her name was Sarah Doyle. Her family had joined the Longbow pack a month or so prior — my father had made an alliance with the Moorland Pack. Some Longbow wolves were sent to Ireland, and some Moorland wolves were sent to London.

“Anyway, her family was one of them, and we became fast friends. As you can imagine, there were several other pups my age in the pack, but as my father’s only son — an only child — and an alpha, several of them were…well, not terribly keen on being friendly. Having grown up elsewhere, Sarah never had reservations. She’d put me in my place if she needed to. She might have been the only one who did.

“We stayed friends all through the years of school, and the moment I turned eighteen — I was two months younger than she was — I knew. She showed up for my surprise party, and I knew the moment I laid eyes on her. Sarah had always held a special place in my heart, but at that moment, I knew exactly why. I felt like I was the moon, and she was the Earth — no, she was the sun. She was the center of my…” He cut himself off, shaking his head.

I frowned, not liking that look on his face. “What happened to her?”

Nic gave himself a shake and looked back at me, the sad smile replacing the distant look. “My parents didn’t like her at all. Oh, they liked her just fine when we were friends and felt it was good to strengthen the bond between our packs. But the moment they realized I wanted to be more than just friends, they did a complete about-face. The Doyles weren’t wealthy. Sarah’s father was a mechanic, and her mother was a teacher. The Moorland Pack wasn’t well-known or a particularly long-standing pack. My grandfather, Winston Archer, was still in charge of the pack at the time.” He paused, snorting softly. “He was a crotchety man. Wouldn’t pass leadership of the pack to my father even though he’d slowed way down, but he didn’t adapt to change particularly well. He was fostering relationships with new packs, but that was only because our rivals at the time were doing the same thing, so he wanted to beat them to the punch. The idea of us being any more than friendly was, apparently, unthinkable. That Sarah was the one who had the nerve to tell me off when I was being an as*s — they liked it when we were just friends, but not when I looked at her like she’d hung the stars in the sky.”

I swallowed hard. The more I heard about Sarah Doyle, the more I was reminded of…myself. Sarah might not have been wealthy, but it sounded like she still had two parents working good jobs. By my standard, they were more than comfortable…and I’d told Eli off more times than I could count.

I l!cked my l!ps. “Did your family run her off?” I asked, trying to distract myself with my donut. Obviously, she wasn’t here anymore, or Nic wouldn’t be telling me this story.

“No,” Nic said softly. “No, they didn’t. I tried to convince them for about six months, and once it became obvious that they weren’t going to change their position on the matter, I showed up at Sarah’s flat with a bouquet of flowers. We took off in my car to Scotland for a week, and when we returned, my parents had no choice but to accept her — I’d claimed her. We were going to be together forever.”

But they weren’t.

A feeling of dread began to coil in the pit of my stomach. “What happened to her?”

“Sarah and I decided to take a belated honeymoon a year later. My grandfather had passed shortly after I’d claimed her, and my father took over Longbow. After a year, the dust seemed to have settled, and the time seemed right.

Sarah had wanted to go back to Scotland but wanted to do it ‘properly’ this time — something about castles and…well, anyway. It was raining when we were driving up. I was young, and I was invincible, and I was driving entirely too fast. We hydroplaned.”

He paused, swallowing hard. A moment later, he cleared his throat and took a sip of coffee. His discomfort was so palpable that even my wolf began to squirm, whimpering softly.

“I don’t remember the accident,” Nic said, looking over the table at me. His eyes looked like pools of sadness, as miserable as any I’d ever seen. “I remember waking up in the family’s private hospital ward. I’d been knocked unconscious when the car rolled, and my family had me transported as soon as they’d heard — shifter secrecy and all — but I knew. I didn’t have to ask anyone. I knew the moment I opened my eyes and felt the cold, stabbing pain in my chest that Sarah was gone.”

I sucked in a sharp breath, my eyes prickling. I didn’t even know this woman, but the emotion in Nic’s voice alone was almost enough to move me to tears. “I’m so sorry,” I said, not sure what else to say. It was decades ago, but it clearly still impacted him as though it had only been days.

He cleared his throat again and blinked a few times. “I know what it’s like to meet your fated mate and not be with them,” he said after a few moments. “Which is why I didn’t ask Fiona to choose between myself and Remington. And that is why I didn’t make Brock challenge me for Viola. There was no winning scenario for me. I knew I would be resented for eternity if I didn’t relent. After all, I was willing to give up my family and my pack to be with Sarah. I knew.” He sighed. “And I didn’t want to put my son into the middle of that, either.”

“I’m sorry that happened to you, Nic. I really am.”

I couldn’t imagine — or maybe I could. I knew how lonely it could be without your pack. Losing your mate once you’d met them didn’t sound so different. I can’t ever do that again. I can’t.

“If it ever arises, Iris,” he said a few moments later, finally meeting my eyes. “I hope you’ll consider spending more time in London. I know your first visit was…” He paused and sighed, shaking his head. “Well, it could have been on much happier terms, that was for sure, but I hope you give it another shot. I would hate for Eli to have to choose between his pack and his—”

“We’re not mates,” I blurted, not wanting to hear him say the words out loud. That would somehow make it more real. I could barely admit it to myself in my own head. Someone else saying it was just…too much. “It’s nothing serious. I wouldn’t make someone pick like that.”

Mates or not, that was such a power move. I wasn’t that kind of person.

Nic just gave me a wry smile. “It was always serious, Iris,” he replied quietly. I opened my mouth to argue, and he held a hand up. “I’m not asking you to do anything about it right now. That’s not my business. But when you are, I will be there to support you.”

I frowned, running my thumb up and down the coffee cup. “Me? What about Eli?”

He hummed. “I can be supportive of the two of you. Those aren’t mutually exclusive things.” He paused, leaning back in his chair. “I won’t let anyone ask you to change, Iris. All those quirks, all those differences — these are what make you who you are, and I know exactly how some of those older Archers can be.”

I paused and, after several moments, nodded. “Thank you.” I didn’t know what else to say, so I finally got around to eating my donut instead.

Maybe you aren’t so bad, Nicholas Archer. Maybe you aren’t so bad.