Permission granted, Midas ended the call and shot to his feet. Pulse thundering in his ears, he knocked on the door until the crying stopped and the water cut off. Her hesitant footsteps might as well have been punching him in the heart. The door opened a crack, but she used it as a shield. He deserved that.
“I was fearless when I was young,” he told her. “Part of that was knowing my mother was the alpha, and part of that was knowing my big sister would never let anyone hurt me. I knew my whole life that Lethe would be alpha one day, and it made me feel invincible.”
“You don’t have to tell me this,” she said, but she didn’t slam the door in his face.
“We grew up hearing stories about Faerie, about how our family was descended from fae. Lethe wanted to see a real gwyllgi, and she wanted to do it in Faerie.” He leaned against the doorframe. “Whatever she wanted, I wanted, but Mom told us no. She forbade us to go, but Lethe was a young alpha personality. Mom never commanded her not to do anything when she was little. She didn’t want to break her wild spirit.”
Hadley remained quiet, but the gap didn’t shrink, so he kept going.
“The pack didn’t take in old ones back then, but our healer was a full-blooded gwyllgi, and he had the fae sense of mischief about him.”
“He helped you cross,” she said softly.
“He took us there, and he left us. I was ten and Lethe was thirteen. He thought it was a grand joke.” He shifted his weight. “For a while, Lethe did too. We found a pack, eventually, but they smelled the human in us. They chased us out of their territory.”
The next part was harder to tell, but he wanted no secrets between them.
“One of them stalked us over the next several days. He had his eye on Lethe.” Midas balled his fists at the memory. “He ambushed us before we reached the Halls of Summer, the least vicious of the fae courts. We planned to barter for the Summer Prince’s help to get home, but Lethe was attacked before we arrived. I had no choice but to kill the gwyllgi responsible or let him kill me. Afterward, we fled to the Summer court.”
The door opened another inch.
“The Summer Prince agreed on a price, and he began preparations for one of his underlings to cross a tether to Earth with us and deliver us to our mother to collect the payment due.”
Midas recalled standing next to his bloodied sister, a world away from his alpha and mother, as the exact moment he understood his own insignificance. As big and bad as he had felt all his life, there were bigger and badder than either of them. And Mom was too far away to help.
“The gwyllgi alpha arrived the morning of our departure, and he demanded an audience with the Summer Prince. He told him we had killed one of his people, and a debt was owed to him. The Summer Prince was not amused to learn we had killed on his lands and caused conflict among his people. So, he offered us a choice.”
“A life for a life.”
“Yes,” he answered her, not surprised she had guessed. “A life for a life.” He scratched his thumbnail against the paint on the doorframe. “The alpha wasn’t satisfied with the ruling and claimed that his pack would suffer the loss for decades. The male I killed had a mate and offspring, and they were left unprotected.”
Hadley made a noncommittal noise that spurred him on.
“The point that he had been stalking Lethe with an eye to mate with her was glossed over entirely. We had human blood in our lineage. We were less than nothing. Worthless. Only the favor the Summer Prince wished to ask of our mother gave us any value in his eyes.”
A neat row appeared above her brows. “What favor?”
“The gwyllgi pack, he explained, had been a thorn in his side for quite some time. They had a tendency to cut their elders loose to roam Summer lands. They were often feral, wild beyond their alpha’s control. Other denizens of Summer put them down in self-defense, which gave the alpha means to demand recompense from the prince. To solve the problem, the Summer Prince decided he would rather deport the old ones to Earth to live out their lives, or not, under the control of a powerful alpha.”
“Your mother.”
“Basically,” he attempted to joke, “he wanted the violent gwyllgi pack ruining his fun off his meticulously landscaped lawn, and he had grown tired of shaking his fist and yelling at them to behave.”
“He exploited a loophole, very fae of him, but you were a child.”
“I was guilty.”
A curse slipped out under her breath, and he took heart that she found it in herself to care for that lost boy. It gave the man he had become hope.
“The Summer Prince decreed that if repayment for suffering was the issue, he would give the alpha one of us to punish however he saw fit. But, to prove he was a male of his word, he would honor the bargain to send the one of us home.”
“You sent Lethe.”
“I killed the male. It was my fault. I thought they would kill me, and I was prepared for that.”
Gwyllgi are violent and territorial. Packmates die in combat, in dominance challenges, while securing mates. Death was a part of pack life he had understood, and accepted, even as a child. Mom hadn’t shielded them from the realities of their natures. She had bled, fought, and killed in front of them to prepare them for what their beasts would demand as they matured. She wanted them to understand that if they were afraid to embrace their natures, they would die.
“What did the pack
