Change of Heart (The Potentate of Atlanta Book 3) Read online

“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 do to you?”

  The question he had avoided answering all this time loomed between them, a gulf he could either swim across or drown in. The familiar blackness swirled around his feet, welcoming and cold enough to numb the pain, but Hadley was the lighthouse beacon that drew him over and over again.

  “They beat me within an inch of my life, and I think they would have killed me if my beast hadn’t been so strong. It gave the alpha the idea he could sell me to give the widow funds to care for herself and her children.”

  “You were enslaved?”

  “I was sold to a goblin who owned a coliseum where he hosted various fights between supernatural creatures. Nothing was taboo. There were no rules. Except one.” He dropped his gaze to the floor. “No matter how many went into the ring, only one came out.”

  Hadley peered around the door at him, but he couldn’t bear to see her eyes swollen and red.

  “I never lost.” He gritted his jaw. “The goblin kept me for decades, and I never lost. Not once.” He extended his arm. “I kept a tally, but I never counted them. It was enough to see the damage I had done written into my skin.”

  More of her body appeared around the door. “You fought for your survival.”

  “I killed for my survival.”

  “How did you escape?”

  “Lethe came for me. She was the only one left who thought I was alive after all that time. She waited until she was grown, until she was strong, and she came for me herself. We teamed up, fought our way through the guards.” A breath shuddered out of him. “She entered the ring, as an opponent. That’s how she got in. That’s how she found me.” He tasted bile. “I could have killed her. My own sister.”

  “But you didn’t.”

  “The fighting broke me.” He expected she would have heard the rumors. “The beast and the man split into two personalities. I was the beast in the ring, and the man in my cell at night.” He glanced up then. “That’s what caused the Jekyll and Hyde syndrome.”

  “How does Natisha figure in?”

  “Mom summoned her from Faerie to fix me. She didn’t realize it was Natisha’s pack we had stumbled across. I didn’t either, since they didn’t offer me a healer before selling me. Natisha told me later, after Mom bargained with her. She had known we were kin, in Faerie, and she never breathed a word.” He rubbed his knuckles. “No one would have stood against a healer of her renown. Her word could have saved Lethe and me both, but she let us suffer.”

  “I wish you had told me before we struck a deal with her. Facing her again must have been painful for you.”

  “There was no other choice. No one else can do what she does.”

  “How can a healer be so cruel? That type of abuse ought to be anathema to her.”

  “What she did, it didn’t heal me. It allowed me to recall those years through a filter. I didn’t have to feel what I had done. The grief, the rage, the anger. It all went away. For a while. It gave me time to adjust to being back here, to having a normal life.”

  “Can I ask what made you dedicate yourself to teaching women self-defense?”

  Hadley was too perceptive to let that detail slip, and he was here to tell her everything, to bare his soul as hers had been peeled back for him.

  “Gwyllgi males are bred to care for females and those weaker than themselves, and I had a particularly chivalrous streak. Thanks to Lethe and Mom, I looked up to females as role models. It was part of the fabric of my personality.”

  “And this goblin twisted it?”

  “He pitted me against females of all species, but mostly my own. It guaranteed the bouts lasted longer, and it made them bloodier. My beast didn’t fight back until it had no choice, but it refused to lose. To die. It kept me locked out of its head while it fought, and then it left me to deal with the aftermath.”

  Grief-filled screams as he thrashed on the floor of his cell in the throes of his nightmares, hating himself, hating the goblin, hating Faerie and everyone in it, had ruined his voice beyond repair. But no matter how loudly he yelled, no one heard him. No one came to help. No one until Lethe.

  “You’ve been atoning. All this time.” She opened the door all the way, and the heartbreak on her face twisted his stomach until he worried he might get sick in her hall. “You’ve been paying for your survival.”

  He didn’t dare move. “So have you.”

  “I brought this on myself. I made the choices that brought me here.”

  “So did I.”

  “It’s not the same, Midas, and you know it.”

  “I was young and foolish,” he said, “and I made a mistake that cost people their lives.”

  Her mouth worked, but she fumbled her argument.

  “Lethe believed in me, that I could get better, and I refused to let her down. That’s all that’s kept me going. I wanted my family to finally be happy. I wanted them to think I was okay. I didn’t realize how miserable I had become until I met you.”

  “I can’t tell if that’s a compliment.”

  “I pretended for so long, I couldn’t tell what was real anymore.” He glanced up then. “You’re the first real thing in my life since I came back. I don’t have to act when I’m with you.”

  “I’ve been lying to you since the moment we met. How can I be your one real thing when I’m fake?”

  A hesitant smile twitched on the edge of his mouth. “A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.”

  “You’re breaking out the big guns.” Blushing, she wiped her face dry with the hem of her shirt. “Next thing I know, you’ll be quoting full-on poetry at me.”

  “Go sleep.” He shoved off the frame, embarrassed he wanted to be romantic for her. “I’ll be here.”

  The way she lingered in the doorway telegraphed her fear she would wake to find him gone, and it gutted him all over again. He had known she was different. Hadn’t his mother warned him to find out sooner rather than later why she set their fur on end at times? He had been so certain he could handle it, but he let his past, his fears, rule him.

  “There’s one more thing.” He waited until she held out her hand then dropped a wide leather bracelet onto it. The heft of it made it clear it was meant for a man. For him. “The sight is permanent, for both of us. Only the fae who gave it to us can take it back, and I’m done bargaining.”

  “What is this?” She rubbed her thumb across the etched surface. “What does it do?”

  “It’s a charm that’s spelled to blind me to the sight.”

  “Why offer it to me?”

  “You deserve to choose how I see you.” He folded her hand over it. “Amelie or Hadley, the decision is yours.”

  “Thank you.” She clen
ched her fingers until they turned white. “Do I have to pick now?”

  “No.” He shook his head. “Take all the time you need.”

  “Okay.” She cleared her throat. “I’ll think it over then, if that’s all right with you.”

  “You can always change your mind,” he reminded her. “The bracelet can be removed later.”

  “Do you…?” She swept out her empty hand, inviting him in. “I have a new futon.”

  “I haven’t earned that privilege yet, but I will.” He risked a kiss on her cheek. “Good night, Hadley.”

  He shut the door, afraid if she offered a second time, that he would follow her. If she invited him to share her bed again, he wanted her to do it with clear eyes, not red-rimmed ones. He needed her to believe he was here, and there was no place he would rather be.

  Twenty-Four

  Smythe had two hours left on his deadline, and I had a decision to make before Bishop arrived to walk me to work. For what I had planned, I could use all the backup I could beg, borrow, or bribe. But I wasn’t sure if I wanted to drag Midas into my scheme. I didn’t want his standing in the pack to erode further, and then there was the issue of our relationship. I couldn’t risk being seen as the prop holding up the future alpha any more than he could afford to be viewed as the crutch for the future potentate.

  Then there was the whole mate thing.

  He kept saying it. Mate. Over and over. Not as in a hypothetical future but as in an incontrovertible truth. Like I had a clue what it meant when our courtship had sunk. We hadn’t crossed the finish line. No vows exchanged, no questions asked, no promises made. And yet…

  Mate.

  The kind of bond that would tie another person to me, through the good times and bad, gave me heart palpitations. I had weathered more bad times than good, and I wasn’t certain I wanted my escape route cut.

  Like Mother’s.

  Might as well say it. I was thinking it.

  If she had been free to choose a man she loved instead of falling prey to an arranged marriage, would she have been happier? Kinder? Better? If she had been free to leave when she realized Dad wasn’t a man she could love, would it have made a difference? If she had been able to pursue her own happiness, without consequence, would she have loved me?

  No matter the situation, the fact remained that no parent had any right, regardless of their own misery, to inflict suffering upon their child.

  Midas wasn’t my father, though. And I prayed to the goddess I wasn’t my mother. We hadn’t been forced together. Quite the opposite. We had done our best to avoid one another, to ignore our mutual attraction, and then to figure out why we couldn’t quit the other so we could use what we learned to do that very thing.

  And yet…

  Despite how wrong we were for each other, how much we complicated each other’s lives, I couldn’t stop thinking about him. Based on the night he spent outside my door, I was guessing the feeling was mutual. We made no sense. None. The timing? It couldn’t be worse. There was no good reason for us to keep fighting against the forces pushing us apart except…

  To believe in fate was to accept my life was a set of predetermined choices I had yet to make. I wasn’t in a fated mates frame of mind. Midas could call me Empress of the Universe, but that didn’t make it true. I wanted a choice, and I wanted him to have a choice. Both halves of him. I didn’t want one to choose and the other to settle. I didn’t want to be a cause for more inner turmoil for him.

  But I didn’t want to let him go either.

  Ambrose had confirmed a bond between Midas and me, and it terrified me that it might grant Ambrose access to him. And, okay, it also freaked me out that I hadn’t signed off on it or even realized what it was for it to take root in me.

  Breathe in, breathe out.

  I would talk to Midas. I would get to the bottom of our situation. Then I would focus my panic where it would do the most good. Or maybe eat chocolate until I fell into a sugar coma after drafting a sternly worded DNR on a wrapper. I’m sure that would be legally binding.

  “You ready or what?”

  I whirled toward the voice to find Remy sitting on the counter in the kitchen with her legs swinging.

  “What are you doing here?” I rubbed my temples. “Did we have a meeting scheduled I forgot?”

  Asking how she got in would be a waste of breath. She was my spymaster for a reason.

  “I heard you could use some extra hands.” She spread hers. “I have a few to spare.”

  Six other Remys slid out of her to lean against the counter while the original drummed her heels.

  “This isn’t like you.” I cocked my head. “Are you sure you want in?”

  Remy tended to cause trouble, not snap on gloves to clean up the mess left in its wake.

  “I’ll handle surveillance from the rooftops.” She gestured to the mini Remy army. “We’ll make sure no stragglers escape.” She chuckled amongst her selves. “How many times in life can you say you watched a giant roach stampede through downtown Atlanta?”

  A knock on the door kicked my pulse up a notch, and Remy rolled her eyes as if she could tell.

  Expecting Midas, I raked my fingers through my sleep-flattened hair then opened the door. “Oh. Um. Hey.”

  Hat. Plaid shirt. Jeans. Chaps. Boots.

  Ford couldn’t be more cowboy chic if he rode up on a horse.

  “What’s with the getup?” I swept my gaze over him. “Or should that be giddy-up?”

  “Heard you could use some help.” He pulled a lasso from behind his back. “So here I am.”

  Arms folded over my middle, I reminded him of what he had once told me. “It’s rude to assume that all Texans are cowboys.”

  “Yeah, well.” He tipped his hat. “I wanted to see you smile.”

  “You asked for time.” I tried for the smile he requested. “You’re over me that fast?”

  “You were never mine to lose, and you were always upfront with me about how you felt.” He tapped the lasso against his thigh. “You handled the situation better than me start to finish. The whole time I should have been listening better to what you were saying instead of to how I was feeling.”

  “I don’t want to hurt you,” I said softly. “I want us to be friends, when you’re ready.”

  “I want that too.” He flung the lasso onto the empty mattress I was pretending not to notice because I had the worst feeling in the pit of my stomach last night had been a dream. “This was like stubbing a toe, darlin’.”

  “You just compared me to one of life’s most painful experiences.”

  “It was a flash of blinding pain,” he elaborated, “and then it was over.”

  Obviously gwyllgi healing abilities meant he had no proper respect for stubbed toes.

  “In that case, welcome to the rodeo, partner.”

  “There’s one more greenhorn who’d like a ticket to the show.” He gestured to someone in the hall. “It’d mean a lot to her if you gave her a second chance.”

  Ares eased into view holding a candy bar bouquet stuck in a vase. Even the leaves were edible paper.

  “I was wrong to pin my fears on you.” She thrust it at me. “I knew the kind of world I was bringing a child into when Liz and I started this. I got overwhelmed, and you were an easy target. I can’t promise I won’t freak out again because the whole impending-motherhood thing terrifies me, but you’ve got my word I won’t turn it around on you.”

  “I can’t say no to chocolate.” I accepted her offering then sobered. “I don’t have many friends.” I toyed with a curling ribbon I was pretty sure I couldn’t eat and made a mental note not to try later. “I’m glad to have you back.”

  “You’ve got seven friends right here,” Remy called. “And none of us abandoned you.”

  “You’re not pack.” Ares shook her head. “You wouldn’t understand.”

  “I understand Hadley needs me to watch her back.” Remy reabsorbed her other selves. “She can’t trust you two not to dip when
it hits the fan. Same with Golden Boy.” She curled her lip. “Bunch of traitors.”

  Crossing to her, I slung my arm around her shoulders. “You’re a good friend, but they’re my friends too.”

  Mollified by the attention, she sniffed. “They’re not one-seventh as cool as me.”

  “No one is,” I assured her. “But maybe cut them some slack.”

  “Like she did for you,” Bishop said from the hall, nudging Ford and Ares out of his way. “You’re a murderous little fiend,” he told Remy, “and yet Hadley made you her full business partner.”

  “To be fair,” she allowed, “I didn’t give her much choice.”

  “Best decision I never made.” I set my candy arrangement on the counter. “You ready for this, Bish?”

  “Have you ever noticed how that nickname makes it sounds like you’re calling me a—”

  “I am hurt and offended.” I put a hand over my heart. “That has never crossed my mind. Not once.”

  “Mmm-hmm.” He passed me a café mocha and a bag with a chocolate croissant. “I see you’ve called in old favors.” He handed Remy her own bag. “I trust everyone here can play nice for one night?”

  “They’re here of their own volition,” I said between bites. “I didn’t coerce them.”

  Given how most of us had parted, I didn’t have the nerve to call in those kinds of markers.

  “The hall smells like Midas,” he said casually. “Are you guys okay?”

  After everything that had happened, I was miles from okay, but I was getting there. “Yeah.”

  “That didn’t sound very convincing.” He glowered. “Linus gave me explicit instructions.”

  Cold dread wormed through me. “What kind of instructions?”

  “Let’s just say he was considering a new rug for in front of the fireplace at Woolworth House.”

  Since I didn’t have a father figure in my life, or regular contact with my older brother, it was nice to hear someone else cared enough to threaten their fellow man if he hurt me. Forget shotguns. Linus was a nuclear option. It gave me a warm, fuzzy feeling.

  “Where is the belly-crawler?” Bishop angled himself to see up into the loft. “Gone again?”