Page 134 of Dominion
“What was he like?” she asked softly.
He went rigid, his automatic instinct to shut down this line of questioning so familiar. But the conversation seemed important. The moment had weight. And he was so goddamn tired of the push-pull between him and Melissa that he didn’t want to return to that.
“He’s a hard-ass. Kicked me out of the pack at age sixteen for something I didn’t even do.”
Melissa’s breath had stopped. She ran a hand lightly over his chest, her nails scraping through the hairs and sending shivers down his arms. “What did he think you did?”
“A girl got pregnant. She miscarried and her parents found out. She told them I was the father.”
Melissa’s hand went still. “And you weren’t?”
He rubbed his face and sighed. “I wasn’t. But I’d had sex with her older sister, which is probably what made her think to throw me under the bus. I admit I was a hellion. Shifter hormones are worse than a human’s and mine were raging. I couldn’t keep out of trouble. My father and I were always at odds, so I guess it was the final straw for him.”
“What did you do?”
“I didn’t have more than ten bucks in my wallet and the clothes on my back. I ran to lower elevation. I grew up in Estes Park. The entire town population is shifters—bet you didn’t know that.” He grinned, twisting to look at her.
Her return smile stopped his heart. “I had no idea.”
“I lived as a wolf in the wild for a few weeks, hunted for food. But it’s dangerous to stay in wolf form too long. You lose your mind—become savage. I eventually hitchhiked into Greeley and got a live-in job on a ranch there. Then found my way onto a construction team.”
“And then you moved here?”
“Yeah. Eight years ago. There were only five shifters here then. The pack is still small.”
“Have you seen your dad since?”
His throat tightened. “Yeah. He knows I’m here. I went home a couple times to see my siblings. It was tense, but we survived it. He wants me to bring my pack up to the games they host this year.”
“Are you going to?”
He shrugged. “I don’t want to, but I’m thinking about it. It might be nice for the pack—to meet some females for mating.”
Melissa’s open expression shuttered and he wished he hadn’t said that. “Not for me,” he amended quickly. “I have no interest in breeding at the moment.” But that wasn’t true. He had a ton of interest, but only in breeding the little human beside him.
He thought of his father and his pack of nearly one thousand wolves. He’d always been tense and angry. Always dealing with some crisis.
“Honestly, I hated him for a long time, but I guess I can see how embarrassing it must have been for the alpha’s son to be the one running amok. No wonder he threw me out.”
“But you didn’t do it,” Melissa burst out, leaning up on her forearm. “Why would he believe someone else’s word over his own son’s? And who cares if you embarrassed him? He should care more about you than looking good in front of his pack.”
Something dislodged in Cody’s chest. Something that had long been frozen and immovable shifted around. He couldn’t speak past the knot in his throat. Melissa’s passionate defense of him felt too damn good. And quite probably undeserved.
“Did he ever believe you didn’t do it?”
“Yeah. I think the girl came forward after I’d been banished. The guilt weighed on her, you know. Or maybe she stopped caring about protecting whoever had knocked her up. My younger sister tried to find me, then, but I stayed in the human world, where they had no connections. Not until word got around about a little pack in Colorado Springs did they figure out what had happened to me.”
“You should forgive him.”
She shouldn’t have saidit. It wasn’t any of her business.
Cody’s head jerked up in surprise.
“I won’t forgive him, but you should. He sounds like an asshole, but he’s still your dad.”
Cody’s eyes traced her face and for the first time, she saw genuine fondness there. He smiled. “I’ll take that on advisement, Dr. Phil.”
She laughed. “Well, if you don’t, it’s just hanging on you, not him. It becomes your limitation.” Yeah, she was pulling a Dr. Phil, but she happened to know a lot about moving past trauma and getting on with your life.