Chapter 32: Chapter Thirty-One

SAVANNAH

I’d never known my father, but he was my dad nonetheless, and he’d saved me without even knowing I existed. Lycan or not, he seemed like a decent man.

A man I didn’t want the other wolves to bully. Daxton took the initiative to enter the pack house first, and I was grateful. The hostile glares from his pack nearly sent me retreating into his mother’s arms.

I was aware that some wouldn’t take kindly to my half-lycan heritage, mainly due to the ongoing feud, but I hadn’t anticipated the hostility to surface so quickly.

Liam stood, seemingly unfazed, in the midst of a semi-circle of werewolves. “Where’s Dad?” Daxton asked his mother, glancing over his shoulder.

“He went into town to gather supplies for the wounded. They waited until he left to confront him,” she replied.

This revelation seemed to infuriate Daxton, and oddly enough, I found myself drawn to this angry version of him. He looked fierce and powerful, his veins bulging in his arms, and I couldn’t help but imagine those strong biceps wrapped around my waist.

~“Now who’s the horny one?”~ my wolf teased.

“What seems to be the problem?” Daxton asked, stepping onto the bottom of the grand staircase to command attention, not that he needed to.

One of the wolves, whose name I didn’t know yet, stepped forward. He was a stocky one with broad shoulders and a deep scowl. “Isn’t it obvious, Daxton? You have a lycan staying here.”

His beady gaze shifted toward me. “And you have… a mutt here, too—”

Daxton’s feet hit the floor so fast I didn’t see it coming, and his fist connected with the man’s jaw. The man stumbled backward into a few wolves behind him, shock etched on his face.

“Don’t you ever talk about my luna,” Daxton whispered, but the force of his words resonated within me.

His mother reached over and grabbed his forearm. “I think he gets the point,” she said, turning to face him. “Don’t you, Dave?”

Dave wiped the trail of blood from his lip and nodded reluctantly.

“Everyone… this is Liam. Savannah’s dad. And for those of you who don’t know, he saved her, and me, this weekend.

He is the reason our pack was able to take down the Lycan Kingdom, so if you have any problems with it, get over it. Now. Or you know where the door is.”

Daxton left them standing in stunned silence and stormed into the kitchen. I found him leaning over the kitchen counter, his palms braced against the granite, his shoulders rigid with stress.

I gently traced my fingertips up his spine and walked around to cradle his neck in my palm. “Daxton,” I whispered.

His honey-colored eyes met mine. “Savannah.”

I smirked. “You need to calm down. I’m sure Liam can handle a little heat, and so can I.”

Daxton sighed heavily, pulling me close to him. He rested his forehead against mine. “I know, but I won’t tolerate someone disrespecting my luna, Savannah.”

“I know,” I whispered back. “But this is new for them. Hell, it’s new for me.”

The kitchen door opened, and Liam’s heavy footsteps approached, stopping beside Daxton. I watched the neutral expression on his face. It seemed to be his default.

“I shouldn’t be here,” Liam said. “I think I’ve overstayed my welcome.”

“You just got here,” I countered, stepping toward him. “We haven’t even had one conversation without someone else being around.”

I wanted to know my dad, ask him questions about my mother, understand what had happened. I’d yet to read her diary or comprehend what it meant to be a lycan.

Liam swallowed, his hazel eyes intensely focused on me, as if he held the answers to the world’s most complex questions. “I’m here to answer any questions you have for me.”

Daxton ran his knuckles down my spine, nudging me toward Liam. “Why don’t you two go talk? There’s a gazebo out back, or you can go to the house for privacy. I’m going to wait for my dad to get back so we can talk about… Dave,” Daxton said, rolling his eyes.

I waited for Liam’s reaction, hoping he’d show some kind of emotion, to show me he wanted to get to know me too. Call it a daddy complex, or being raised by my Grammy, but I wanted to know where I came from, even if it wasn’t what I’d imagined.

Liam nodded. “That’s fine.”

Daxton gave me a reassuring wink and left us alone in the kitchen, the silence pressing down on us. “We can go to the gazebo. I know where it is.”

He followed me outside toward the back of the property, near the tree line where the lycans had attacked. The silence of the property hung between us like an unspoken elephant.

Liam watched me, sitting across from me on the bench, his elbows resting on his knees.

“I’m not the fatherly type,” he admitted. “I don’t want you to think that I don’t care, because I do, I just don’t have a lot to say most of the time.”

“I respect that,” I replied, idly kicking at a line of ants beneath my tennis shoes. “What made you come to save me?”

Liam leaned back, one arm stretched over the back of the railing. “You’re my daughter, Savannah. I had no idea you existed. If I had known you were alive, things would be different, but I didn’t.

“And I can’t fault your mother for keeping it from me. She had a mate, but I just couldn’t let it go,” he confessed, his gaze meeting mine.

“It’s the lycan in us. We can be unapologetic and cruel. Your mother was mine, and I despised her new mate, but I never, ~never~, wished for her death. You understand that, right?”

Suddenly, words seemed like a distant concept. My throat tightened, and tears welled in the corners of my eyes. “Grammy did it,” I managed to whisper.

Liam nodded. “Yeah, she did. She couldn’t control her wolf at times. She was a hybrid. Her mother a lycan and her father a wolf. Dad had her wolf taken away, and now she doesn’t remember any of it.”

“Don’t you miss her?” I asked. “You never wanted to go see her?”

Liam’s gaze drifted off into the distance. “Of course I did. I saw her a couple of times over the years, but she always came to me. She never wanted me to come to her, and now I understand why. Because of you.

She promised Amber that she would keep you safe, and after my depression about your mother, they thought I would kidnap you or disappear with you. I wasn’t stable. They were right to do it.”

“Mother wrote me letters over the years. One for every special occasion,” I said. “And she left behind her diary entries. I have them, but I haven’t had a chance to read them. Would you like to look at them, too?”

Liam considered it but shook his head. “No, it’ll hurt too much.”

I understood that. “So, what do I need to know about being a lycan?”

He chuckled without humor. “Since you’re both, I don’t know how you’ll react to things. Your wolf seems more werewolf than lycan, but you do carry the gene, and it could switch at any time.

You’ll have to work on controlling your wolf. I’m sure Werewolf University can help you with that.”

I frowned, because it sounded like he didn’t want to be around me. “Are you going to go back home and never talk to me again?”

Liam’s heavy brow furrowed. “No, I’m going to be in your life as much as you want me to.”

“I’d like that.”

Liam smiled, and I noticed a dimple on the side of his mouth. He didn’t smile much, but I was glad he did at me. I glanced over in the distance, noticing one of the wolves escorting someone across the yard.

I recognized her as the girl from the cell. “Why is she here?” I asked.

“Daxton said we needed to bring her along since we killed her mate.”

I remembered being distracted by the girl, and Hansel slicing my throat. But I couldn’t be mad at her, because I would have reacted the same way for Daxton.

“Maybe I should try to make amends with her,” I suggested, standing up. “Do you want to come with me, or were you serious about leaving? You know you’re welcome to stay.

I think we’re heading back to the university in a couple of days, but until then, I’d love to have you around.”

“I think I’ll stick around for a little while, since your mate seems to have my back.”

I found myself excited that Liam was going to stick around for a bit, but nervous about approaching the guard and the girl. She looked like she’d taken a bath, and wore fresh clothes, which was a relief, because she looked terrible when I first met her.

“Hey!” I called out.

The guard turned to me and stopped, holding the girl’s upper arm in his grasp. “Yes ma’am?” he asked.

I walked over, catching the girl’s gaze, and quickly realized she didn’t look too happy to see me. “I came to check on you,” I said. “Do you remember me?”

She chuckled without humor. “Do I remember the girl that had my mate killed?” she whispered softly. “Do I remember?”

“He was trying to kill me…”

“He was my mate!” she shouted, wrapping her arms around her stomach. She turned to the side and vomited.

The guard frowned. “Let’s get you something to eat,” he suggested.

She began to cry, and I felt my heart split in two. Lycan king or not, she was hurting, and I had contributed to her pain.

“She’s not sick,” someone said.

I glanced over my shoulder. Daxton’s grandmother stood behind me, leaning on a cane, her wise eyes focused on me.

“What do you mean?”

She wobbled over, her free hand swinging as she walked. “She’s pregnant with the lycan king’s baby.”

My mouth fell open in surprise. “How can you tell?”

She eyed me. “I can always tell when someone is with child. And she’s carrying his baby. Looks like we have an heir to the lycan kingdom in our midst, Sweet Savannah.

Question is… what are we going to do with her and the baby boy?”

“We can’t hurt a baby,” I said, tucking my hair behind my ear.

She shrugged her shoulders, and wobbled around me toward the pack house. “Can’t we? Should we let him grow and turn into a lycan king?”

I glanced at the back of the girl’s head as the guard led her into a small guest quarters on the opposite side of the property. They couldn’t hurt an innocent child; it wasn’t his fault the lycan king knocked her up. But they sure couldn’t let him take over the Lycan Kingdom either.

What would happen if a rogue lycan of royal lineage were set loose among humans? I didn’t know, and I didn’t want to find out.

***

~I love him. I know it’s wrong, and I know my father would be devastated if he discovered my feelings for a lycan, but I can’t help it. He’s nothing like my mate.~

~He’s gentle… not much of a talker, but kind. When he rescued me from that dungeon, I was certain he would kill me. Especially after seeing his bloodshot eyes and razor-sharp canines.~

~I felt like I was staring into the face of death, but I soon learned not to judge a book by its cover, or more accurately, not to believe the rumors that all lycans are evil.~

~Because this one… he is bad, but in the most wonderful way.~

I slipped one of my mother’s entries into the back of her diary and gazed up at the ceiling of our cottage. We had just one more night before we had to return to the university, and my mind was a whirlwind of thoughts.

Despite Daxton’s tireless attempts to distract me, which worked well into the wee hours of the morning and left a trail of love bites all over my body, the thoughts always came flooding back once I lay down to sleep.

Daxton’s gentle snores filled our room, and I couldn’t help but smile at the adorable way his forearm was draped over his eyes.

The howl of a wolf outside my window startled me, but I knew it was just one of the guards patrolling the woods at night, keeping us safe from any potential threats.

My thoughts drifted to the lycan king’s baby, and his mate. Who would care for the baby? Would the pack take him in? How would they support the human girl through the birth of a lycan?

I’d read enough to know that it was more difficult for a human to give birth to a wolf than it was for a wolf.

The thought of that baby growing up an orphan, like me, was unsettling. I turned and wrapped my arm around Daxton’s chest, sighing contentedly as he pulled me closer.

We had a big day ahead of us, and for some reason, the thought of trying to fit into the university made my stomach churn. I’d already tried as a human, and something told me it would be even more challenging as a lycan.