Across The Line. Amy Lee Burgess

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СКАЧАТЬ funeral. I’d come here after his murder, broken and grieving, to attend the tribunal of the man who helped kill him. Murphy and Fee’s father, Glenn, tried to strangle me on the main staircase and if not for Ryan Kelly knocking him down the steps where Glenn broke his neck, I would be dead too.

      I wasn’t a huge fan of the damn castle.

      Gwenith McCarthy, one of the pack’s young teens, rushed down the gravel walkway, her face aglow. She adored babies and I let her take Will and his diaper bag so she could coo over him as she walked back to the castle.

      The day was cold and dismal and I thought about lecturing Gwenith over her lack of a jacket, but couldn’t find the heart. She loved babies so much. I didn’t want to burst her happy bubble. Christ knew, I wished I had one.

      The pack gathered in the front courtyard. No one but the kids went inside the castle.

      Every step I took seemed to take more and more effort. On the castle steps, Colm’s bright red hair shone even in the muted November daylight and he had one large, muscled arm around frail Deirdre Collins’s shoulders. She was nearly six months pregnant and the round bump of her belly swelled beneath her tight blue winter coat. Paddy’s death at least ensured Deirdre’s baby would live because Fee bonded with her and Colm after the funeral.

      Only Alphas could have children. Deirdre discovered she was pregnant a few days before Paddy’s murder. She’d been scheduled to have an abortion until Grandfather Mick’s knife ended Paddy’s life and reign as Alpha.

      Sour bile rose in my throat. Had they made the pack bond elixir yet? Didn’t they need Fee’s blood too? Maybe Colm took her blood yesterday. Shouldn’t it be fresh? What would it taste like? Hopefully not as vile as my father’s blood mixed with herbs had tasted when I drank it to break his pack bond.

      What would the new bond feel like inside me? Would it chain my wolf the way my father’s shackled her?

      Panic, white-hot and nauseating, gathered into a fist in the pit of my stomach. Oh God, I couldn’t do this. I couldn’t willingly swallow any Alpha’s blood and chain my wolf to his and the others in the pack. No.

      I darted into the bushes beside the gravel path and puked. My legs went out from beneath me and I crouched on the gravel so it dug into my kneecaps. The brittle sticks of a winter-sleeping bush scraped at my cheek. I spewed again, half-digested chunks of eggs and toast, and the smell made me gag.

      “Mother of God, tell me you haven’t gone and gotten yourself pregnant,” scolded someone I knew well. And dreaded. Siobhan Carmichael—Murphy and Fee’s mother. She hated me. Hated me for bonding with her son. Hated me more for causing her bond mate Glenn’s death. She thought he’d had a heart attack under the strain of the tribunal which I’d called against Declan Byrne. She had no clue he’d been knee deep in the violent faction within the Guardians and contributed not only to Paddy’s death, but to his son’s bond mate’s years earlier. If she had, she’d probably hate me even more. She was like that. Irrational and mean as dirt.

      “I’m not pregnant, Siobhan.” I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand and wished I had a breath mint. A cough drop. Some damn thing to rinse the taste of puke from my mouth.

      “Are you sick? You pick a hell of a time to come down with a virus. Have you passed it along to my grandson? He’s too little to be sick, you selfish twat.”

      “I’m not sick.,” I spat into the bushes. “Do you happen to have a breath mint or some gum?”

      She rummaged in her purse and came up with a stick of what smelled like spearmint chewing gum.

      Grateful for the opportunity to clear the vile taste from my mouth, I hastily unwrapped the stick and shoved it in my mouth.

      Siobhan wrinkled her delicate nose as surprise dawned in her eyes. Her expression turned suspicious.

      “You’re not sick. You’re scared spitless. Of what?”

      I chewed the gum and swallowed until the taste of bile was gone.

      “Taking the pack bond.” I braced myself. Her hazel eyes narrowed. Here it came.

      “It’s nothing to be scared of, you silly bitch. Didn’t Liam and Fee explain this to you?”

      “I know all about pack bonds.” My chin jutted. God, this woman was infuriating. I tried so hard to like her because she was Murphy’s mother, but just couldn’t do it.

      “Then you know they’re nothing to shiver and shake about. Nothing to puke about either,” she said, her tone derisive.

      “Look, I have my reasons. Thanks for the gum.” I tried to walk past her, but she grabbed my elbow and spun me around to face her. She and I were nearly the same height, but she was strong and scrappy. Every goddamn member of Mac Tire was a fighter. Except for me. I hadn’t grown up brawling for fun. The Irish baffled me at the best of times. Just my luck, I’d fallen head over heels for an Irish bond mate.

      “What are your reasons?” Her gaze was flat and unconvinced, as if I was full of shit and she just couldn’t wait to call me on it.

      I spat out the gum and wished I had the guts to punch her.

      “When I was a year and a half old, the red virus swept through my birth pack,” I said and she was thrown for a moment. She hadn’t expected to hear something like that. I half anticipated her to argue or ask me what the hell the red virus had to do with pack bonds. Only everything.

      “Half my pack died and in desperation, my father, the Alpha, forged a pack bond with the ones left because he’d heard the pack bond promoted healing.”

      Understanding flickered in the hazel depths of her eyes. Siobhan Carmichael was in her fifties, but thanks to Pack genetics could pass easily for early thirties. She was damn good looking. Like Murphy in female form. Her face always threw me. She looked so much like Murphy, I expected her to be like Murphy. Only she wasn’t.

      “He gave it to the children too because some of us had the virus. I was sick and I was the fifteenth generation in the pack. I know that means shit to packs like Mac Tire who go back a thousand years, but it was pretty damn significant to us. Mayflower is the third oldest pack in America. I’m not such a provincial little nothing like you think, Siobhan. I have a pedigree, maybe not as much of one as you, but I’ve got one.”

      “I haven’t got a pedigree. I come from a tiny pack in Northern Ireland that isn’t even in existence anymore. It only lasted three generations. Mine was the last and when I left to bond with Glenn, I pretty much sounded the death knell for the damn pack. When I bonded with him, my entire pack joined with Mac Tire. So you’ve got me beat, if you think how many generations you can count from the founding members of a pack mean anything. Go on with your story, damn you. Your idiot father gave children the pack bond. That’s not right. It wouldn’t make a damn bit of difference to children because the pack bond doesn’t activate until you shift after you take it.” Siobhan’s laugh was harsh and yet, was there a touch of sympathy in there somewhere?

      I tried not to show her I was surprised at her confession. I’d figured her for the bluest of blue bloods. “They were desperate. But it does make a difference when the children grow up and shift for the first time with someone in the pack.”

      “How the hell could that be?” She frowned. “By the time you grew up enough to shift, your father would have long since СКАЧАТЬ