Golden Valley (Pack 3)

Ricky winced. The last thing he wanted was to hear Keith describe his battle with Morgan again. A battle where, according to him, Morgan started without witnesses present and then intentionally threw the fight.

“Not that I was trying to kill him, but they didn’t know that when they ran up to us.” The tapping sped up. “It looked bad with him unconscious, gushing blood, and me on top of him.” Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. “I thought he’d protect his throat. He always protected his throat. Who doesn’t protect their throat?” Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. “I told them what he said about fate wanting his family line to end, and they believed me, I guess.” Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. He lowered his voice to a mumble. “I should have noticed he was off before we started.” Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. “I shouldn’t have gone forward with the challenge when he said his mate rejected him.” He swallowed hard and then shook his head. “If my teeth had sunk any deeper or that Beta had pulled me off him a second later…”

“Keith,” Ricky said wearily.

Jerking his face toward the rearview mirror, Keith met his gaze and said, “Yeah?”

“Can we stop talking about this?” Or more to the point, could Keith stop talking. He had already told this story a dozen times in the car and twice in the Blue Mountain Alpha house while everyone looked at Ricky like he might break and they weren’t sure how to help him. Not that he had asked for their help. Well, other than when he showed up at their door, pregnant, with no money or shelter or food or medical care and then took everything they gave.

“Yeah, yeah, sure.” The jittery, weird Alpha bobbed his head. “We’re almost there anyway, and the point is, Peters is extremely strong so he’ll heal and Golden Valley will be fine. I didn’t actually kill their Alpha, and by bringing you, I’m helping him, which will prove I didn’t mean harm to their pack.”

“Uh huh.” Everyone would consider him a real hero. Ricky rolled his eyes and then internally reprimanded himself. Alpha Iredell wasn’t the one responsible for his mate’s injuries. Sure, he had inflicted the direct harm, but Ricky knew Morgan could have easily defeated that Alpha and any other Alpha. He was strong and powerful and nobody could beat him. Not unless he wanted them to, and the blame for defeating Morgan’s spirit fell purely on Ricky.

He placed his palm on The Baby’s chest and looked at his sleeping face. Ricky was a parent now, and he owed it to his son to take care of him like Ricky’s own parents had done all his life. Hiding away in a faraway pack with no family wasn’t good for The Baby. Morgan may never forgive him for running away without explanation, forcing him to debase himself in front of the Blue Mountain pack’s Alphas, and then publicly rejecting him. He may never forgive Ricky for seducing him when he wanted to be left alone, and he may never forgive him for tricking him into having a child. But when Alpha Iredell had explained how close Morgan had been to death, Ricky realized that his Alpha’s forgiveness wasn’t as important as his Alpha’s life.

He traced The Baby’s eyebrows with his fingertip. Would they remain narrow or would they become thicker, like his father’s? Morgan had a square jaw; maybe The Baby would inherit that too. Letting out a shaky breath, Ricky closed his eyes and forced himself to focus on the reason he had agreed to come back to Golden Valley: he would honor and support his mate, even if doing so meant he would be rejected and detested. The first step would be confessing his mistakes.

Chapter 8

His entire family was gone and no matter how hard he worked and how much he sacrificed, he would never build a new family with a mate because the person destined for him wanted no part of him. Fate clearly had been sending Morgan a message, and it was time he listened and stopped fighting the inevitable. Which was why when Iredell had come to Golden Valley again to challenge him, shouting again that he would save the Golden Valley pack from the Peters legacy, Morgan had decided to try a new approach. He would lose the challenge and join his family in the afterlife.

Unfortunately, despite seven years of loud, detailed threats and despite Morgan not making any effort to defend himself, Keith hadn’t finished the job. When he woke up in his bed still alive, Morgan for the first time regretted not having killed the man. Too tired to hold onto his anger, he closed his eyes, forgave Keith for failing to kill him just as he had forgiven Keith over the years for presumably trying to kill him, and then he prayed for death to take him. Predictably, this prayer, like all his others, wasn’t granted, and after what couldn’t have been more than a handful of days, Morgan’s traitorous body had healed to the point that he could pick up where he had left off—as a strong, effective pack Alpha. But he wasn’t ready to return to that lonely existence; not if he could instead stay in his head and dream of a different life.