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Her Viking Wolves(117)

By:Theodora Taylor


My real father looks away from his brother to throw me a sorrowful look. “I didn’t want to abandon you. But my head—I wasn’t in no kind of place to raise you, and your mama and me...we was never officially, you know, mated. Officially, your mama married Wilton, took his brand, and I didn’t have nothing to do with it. Nobody knew what actually happened when she went into heat, that both of us…”

“I understand,” I say. In more ways than one. About why he hadn’t been fit to raise me. I think of my reaction to the news of FJ and Olafr not coming back from the Dragon Battle. And I feel so sorry for Ford, because it would have been even worse for him with no marriage certificate or official brand or any acknowledgement whatsoever to back up his claim to the she-wolf he’d lost. Just me. A squalling baby who’d just lost her mother and could easily be claimed along with my twin by my uncle, the Detroit alpha.

I am nothing like your father.

I finally understand why FJ took so much offense at that.

“FJ knew, didn’t he?”

Dad—I mean my uncle, Wilton, nods once, his jaw tight.

“That brother of his has a good nose. He smelled your connection to Ford right off the bat. But I made it a condition of your marriage contract that they couldn’t tell you.”

Do you think I wish to keep secrets from you? So many things I promised. For you. Only for you.

Of course he’d made FJ promise to keep me in the dark. I stare at the man I thought was my father. So much like his own father it feels like I’m staring at a carbon copy of the wolf who so callously decided his younger son’s fate thirty years ago.

Then I turn to my real father, willing to kill his own brother to keep me safe…and I forgive him in an instant.

We have so much in common. Not just the superficial stuff, like our introversion and our eyes. But also the deeper stuff, like our inability to deal with real life. Which led both of us to allow Wilton Greenwolf to have way too much power over us for way too long.

“It’s okay, Dad,” I say to the shifter holding the gun. “I understand and I forgive you.”

“No, it’s not okay. I don’t deserve your forgiveness!” My real dad shakes his head, and there are tears in his eyes as he continues to point his gun at his brother. “He don’t deserve you as a daughter. Trying to keep you under his thumb. For what? To protect his damn pride? Because he can’t wrap his head around having a gay son? Bigger damn fool than me.”

“Put the gun down! Right now, motherfucker.”

I curse myself then. Because Yancey, who was sitting on the other side of Ford, has somehow managed to pull out his gun, too. The chances of this family meeting not ending in bloodshed are dramatically decreasing by the second.

“No, Yancey, don’t shoot!” I say.

“Put the fucking gun down!” Yancey says to Ford again. Then he racks his sawed off, letting him know he means business.

“Dad…Dad,” Clyde says, looking down the table at the man who, as Olafr would say, ‘smelled like him.’ “You’ve got to tell him you won’t go after Tee. You’ve got to tell him or he will kill you.”

But Dad keeps his hand on the butt of his sawed-off. “Nah, nah…it can’t end like this.” His eyes meet Clyde’s. “I made a deal so you could keep your pride, so nobody would ever have to know.”#p#分页标题#e#

“Dad, is that what this is all about…?” Clyde shakes his head, his whole face filling with pity. “Because I’ve got my pride. I’m good. I know who I am and I can live my truth now, thanks to Tee. Trust me, that’s all I need. All I ever wanted. Now please, tell Yancey to back down.”

Dad, stubborn as a damn mule, just stands there. Arms crossed, refusing to give anyone any damn thing.

Clyde turns to Yancey. “Please, man—you’re family to me and I don’t want anybody in this family to get hurt more than they already been.”

Yancey looks from the wolf he thought would eventually take over Detroit to his former alpha, begging my father with his eyes to let him stand down.

But Dad doesn’t move and he remains murderously silent.

Just when I’m starting to think I’m going to have to throw myself across the table between Ford and him, Yancey surprises the hell out me by lowering his gun anyway.

“Do you want to tell them, Ev, or should I?” he asks my aunt.

“We don’t have to tell them any of that,” my dad—uncle, rushes out. The hard look has dropped off his face and he suddenly seems less like an MC prez and more like a guy scared to death of whatever Yancey and Evelyn are about to say.