“Noted,” Clayton said. Striding past them, he handed Vera an expensive looking bottle of wine.
“Oh, the fancy shit!” Vera said, hugging it close as she led Clayton into the dining room.
What the fuck? Link mouthed to Ian, but when Nicole arched her gaze to the quietest Silver brother, he looked utterly rocked and only shrugged in response.
“Elyse, I thank you kindly for the invitation,” Clayton said, sitting down at one of the empty chairs without a plate in front of it.
Elyse offered him a vacant smile. “Please don’t make me regret it.”
“Why would you invite him here?” Ian asked, his striking blue eyes round and trained on his mate.
“Because now that we’ve decided to try for a cub, I think we should at least try to give our kid a shot at a relationship with his grandparent, don’t you?”
Jenner scrunched up his nose. “Yeah, but that said grandparent is an asshole.”
“I’m sitting right here, son,” Clayton said blandly.
Jenner’s tone turned deadly in an instant. “Don’t you fucking call me that.”
“Pie!” Vera exclaimed, setting down the pastry right between the two death-glaring men.
“Elyse and Vera have offered me the opportunity to say my piece and apologize.”
“Apology not accepted,” Tobias said, sitting at the head of the table and leaning back in his chair, a fearsome expression on his face.
Link pulled out Nicole’s chair and waited until she was settled, then asked, “Why do you care if I’m cured or not? I’ve met you in person one time, when you came after Vera, and we bled each other.”
Clayton looked at Link for a long time, then leaned forward, elbows resting on the table, hands clasped in front of him. “When I was a boy, I had a friend. He was a McCall. We grew up together. I didn’t want to turn sixteen and begin my hibernations, and he didn’t want to lose his mind. He was…” Clayton swallowed hard and leaned back in his chair. “He was the only person who really understood me. And when I began sleeping through the winters, he didn’t go join the other McCalls. He didn’t hook up with that messed up pack and rush his insanity. He stuck with me. Protected my body every winter, lived in a cabin near me in the summers, and he never once made me feel bad when I had to pull an enforcer mission and put down one of his family members for hurting humans. And when my mate left me and had my sons without me, he picked up the pieces when all I wanted to do was drink myself to death. And I was there for him at the birth of all three of his sons.”#p#分页标题#e#
“No,” Link whispered. He shook his head back and forth in denial, his snow-colored eyes on Clayton.
“Putting out the kill order on Cole was the hardest thing I’ve ever done, second only to putting down your father. I watched my best friend, your father, Eris McCall, slowly lose his mind, and I was the only enforcer left to end his life. And it broke something inside me to kill him.” Clayton dragged his gaze from Link to Ian. “I know I’m a shit father, but I know what you’ll endure when you’re called on to put Link down, Ian, and I don’t want that for you. It’ll haunt you forever. I thought I had to make you three tough, harder than this world. Because it was my fault. I made you. I put those bears in you, and I knew from the day you were born that you would suffer because of my decision to become a father. Eris made me promise him something. We were sitting on the porch of his cabin, watching Cole, Miller, and Link play in the yard, and they were so little. Laughing and jumping around like little grasshoppers. Good boys, destined to turn into monsters. Eris was already half-gone, growling all the time, Changing uncontrollably, eyes white, talking to himself. He made me promise to save his boys from the McCall curse. And I failed—” Clayton’s voice broke on the last word, and he swallowed over and over, his eyes on his clenched hands in his lap now. “I failed Cole, and I failed Miller, and I made questionable decisions and hurt Vera inconceivably because all I could think about was saving Eris’s boys. After Cole and Miller chased their deaths, I wanted Vera to work on the cure until she could fix Link so I could keep part of my promise to Eris. Because I thought saving Link would save a part of me that had been broken the day my best friend died under my claws.”
Link sat heavily in the chair beside Nicole and scrubbed his hands over his face, over and over. “I only remember the bad parts of my father. He died when my brothers and I were young, and we were raised by my uncles. Cole and Miller turned out just like them.”