Chapter4

#Chapter4

/"You've already gotten into enough trouble for today, Lumen Grey. Don't push it,/" I warned.

/"You forggetied Wolfie. Loowmen Wolfie Grey./"

/"Lumen Wolfie Grey,/" I corrected, resisting the urge to roll my eyes. He'd taken the Christmas present from the pack, an official letter of acceptance as one of our own, to heart, and had insisted he was a wolfie boy ever since. /" Just because it's your birthday, it doesn't mean I won't put you to bed right now. No party. No presents. No brother./"

/"No Burr?/" he gasped, horrified. /"Daddy, I gotty keepy my bruda. I wan him./"

/"Then be good,/" I shot back. /"Go outside to mommy and enjoy your party. He put a lot of work into making sure everybody came./"

If it was up to me, all Lumen would have had for his birthday was cheese and jam, his crown and maybe a cuddle if I was feeling extremely generous.

/"Kay, daddy,/" he sulked, folding his arms across his chest, his eyes narrowing. /"I do that. But I will cwy if you go. An daddy be saddy cuz his rat saddy./"

/"I'll survive./"

The kitchen, currently beetroot red due to Lumen's constant magical redecorating, was segregated into areas, the kitchen island cutting off the dining area. Lumen and Ember slinked towards the door, hand in hand. Lou threw backwards glances every few seconds to make sure I was still there.

/"I really hope Ember doesn't develop that kind of attitude,/" Axe commented once the twins were out of sight. They'd left the back door open. Sound from the party bled in. I wanted to claw my own ears out. /"I know the two's are supposed to be terrible, but I heard kids hitting three is supposed to be worse./"

/"I doubt it,/" I said. Ember was a pussy. Wouldn't say boo to a goose. /"Lou's just a nob./"

Custer knew better than to agree with me. To me, Lumen was every name under the sun, but if anybody else had shit to say about my boy, it would have sounded a lot like fighting talk.

Instead, after shaking his head disapprovingly, he asked his lady Beta to excuse us and send Cyrus in. She nodded, her spiky black hair bobbing with the movement, and evacuated the kitchen. She had the decency to shoo away a stay brat that had wandered in and shut the door behind her.

Her absence was felt immediately; the atmosphere plummeted. We were not friends. Not exactly, but too much had happened for us to be enemies. We'd learned to compromise. To work together. We were not friends, but we were allies.

The sudden tension had nothing to do with our personal feelings. We'd avoided talking about all the bad shit that had happened, that we knew was still out there waiting for us, and took solitude in momentary ignorance. It was inevitable— sooner or later we'd have to talk about it.

Sooner, it seemed, held in favour than later; his expression was the only foresight needed to know the top was about to be popped from the tin of worms.

/"We didn't find him,/" Axe Custer said, blowing out a steep breath. His freaky-ass yellow eyes blazed like train headlights. It happened sometimes. It was impossibly rare but occasionally our animal attributes would carry over to our human form. that I'd ever met. /"Asher's in the wind right now./"

William Asher. A grade A asshole. Top applicant of my shit-list. Potentially my half brother. Axe had been chasing up leads on him, while I pumped Johno's nephew, Jacob-the-fucking-traitor, full of false information to try and flush him out.

We'd won a battle, but the war was far from over. We had celebrated our victory, for the boys' sake, for our packs' sake, but we knew the worst was yet to come. Call it intuition. Call it dead-set certainty. But something was coming, and it was gonna come at us hard.

It wasn't a question of if; it was a question of when.

/"We're working on it,/" Axe continued, ragging a hand through his hair. /"Cyrus and his brother, Lars, burnt the Brogan down this morning./" Because I'd heard through Clyde Lavoe they were using it to get between territories undetected.

The Brogan forest was a massive stretch of woodlands that snaked between the lands of three major werewolf packs. Lavoe's territory was one of them. It was just beyond my jurisdiction, but it was still right in my backyard. Losing it affected all of us. It cost Clyde Lavoe their land and gave his pack less room to hunt. The decision had been discussed at great length. It hadn't been an easy choice for any of us to make.

Losing it had cost me more than I was comfortable advertising: To make it worth Clyde's loss, I'd been forced to open my land to his pack when the moon reached its peak and the call of the beast consumed us. Axe had made the same offer to to share his land with Malik Wilding, one of the Alpha's at the furthest side of the Brogan. Jose Salazar was the only one still bitching, but he'd been outweighed so heavily, our peer pressure had strong-armed him into submitting.

/"How's your pride holding up?/" I questioned. He'd been having trouble within his Pride. Some of the younglings were unhappy about collaborating with wolves and it'd opened up tension within his operation.

I'd had the same problem, but Asher, being the ever helpful, disgusting, bastard little pig-shit that he was, had solved it for me; those who'd pledged their loyalty to him, betraying me, had followed him, creating a rogue pack. They ran amok, posing a danger to every pack they crossed.

Asher by himself, I could deal with, but after learning that he'd thrown his allegiance in with Lumen's mother, a sadistic, overpowered, mega bitch-witch who was hyped up on the idea of sacrificing her offspring and syphoning their power, it had been the cause of more restless nights than I dared to name.

Hell, just the thought had a shudder racing down my spine. Had my head snapping to the window, panicking until I located Lumen among the chaos. He was waving his arms around enthusiastically. Clarke was copying him, so lord only knew what they were doing. I wasn't entirely sure I wanted to know.

It posed the question that maybe Lou wasn't the only one who'd been left fucked up after our little side-quest expedition through Hell's Arsehole. The urge to bulldoze my way over to him, to crush him against my chest, to hold him in my arms — the only place I knew he'd ever truly be safe — it was one I barely battled into silence.

The brat's clinginess wasn't going to get any better if I kept scooping him up like he was my emotional support son every time my emotional grid went haywire.

/"I'm dealing with it,/" Axe said slowly. He opened his mouth to say more, but the back door opened and Jonathan stepped in, scowling.

/"I already told you both,/" he said sternly, waving a finger at us both. /"No business today. Sterling, get outside and come celebrate our son's birthday. Axe, you too./"

I sniggered slightly. /"Well,/" I said to Axe. /"I guess that told us./"

Our differences aside, Axe snorted, sparing a fleeting grin, and we followed after him.