Echoes of Fire (The Mercury Pack #4)(29)

He blinked. “You . . . you snored?”

She nodded. “I’ve been hit by lightning. Went right through me. Hurt like a bitch too. A few years back, I was supposed to go on a cruise, but my alarm didn’t go off, so I got up too late and missed it. The ship sank two days into the cruise. I also once had construction scaffolding fall over me. But the pieces fell around me, almost framing the shape of my body. I could go on and on with stories.”

Bracken sank into the chair. “Shit.”

“Yeah.” Amused by the stupefied look on his face, she said, “It’s my turn to ask questions now.”

“What do you want to know?”

Madisyn was surprised that there was no guarded glint in his gaze. If anything, he looked pleased. She wanted to ask about his childhood and years in Arizona, where he’d lived up until he joined the Mercury Pack, but she knew that speaking of his family would be hard for him. “Do you like being an enforcer?”

“That wasn’t what you wanted to ask,” he accused softly. “I can talk about my family without breaking down. My childhood was normal enough, I guess. My parents had a pretty mellow relationship. Out of my two sisters, I got along better with Ashley than I did Kim, but we never had huge fallouts. Not even after Kim handed my pack’s business to a reporter. She apologized, and I let it go because, you know, I loved her. We weren’t the tightest family in the world, but we were . . . just normal.”

She’d expected to hear a little sorrow in his voice. It was flat, emotionless. “How come you left your childhood pack?”

“Me, Jesse, and Zander suspected that the Alpha was involved in the disappearance of some of our family members.”

“Was he?”

“No. Turned out our relatives were taken to a game reserve that was run by a shifter and a human. Working with Nick and Derren, we tracked the bastards, who are now dead. Rather than return to our old pack, me, Jesse, and Zander remained with Nick, an Alpha we could truly respect and follow.” Bracken nipped at the tips of her fingers again. “After the attack at the drive-in, my old Alpha didn’t dispute my right to have my family buried on my territory. There wasn’t much left of my father, Kim, or Ashley’s mate to bury.”

Her chest tightened at that. “Did executing the extremists help?” she asked, her tone gentle.

“No. I wasn’t looking for justice—there is no restitution for what they did. And I doubted it would give me peace. But the fact was that my family deserved to live, and those fuckers deserved to die. So I made it happen.”

She gave a slow nod of understanding. “I’m sorry you lost them.”

“So am I. The need to track and kill the extremists was like a niggle in the back of my brain. It never stopped. Never eased up. Then the bastards were dead, and it was gone. And my wolf—who’s always wanted you—went from obsessing over hunting them to obsessing over having you. I didn’t know if it was real or if he just needed to cling to something. Now I get it. He needed the one person who could anchor him, anchor me.”

It surprised her to hear that his wolf had wanted her before now. “I don’t think I’ll make a very good anchor. I’m not the most stable of people.”

His mouth curved. “I like that you’re a nut.”

“A nut?”

“Yep.”

“Funny. You always seemed irritated by me.”

“Right back atcha.”

She lifted one shoulder. “You annoyed me a lot more in the beginning.”

“But not so much nowadays?”

“You grow on people. But then, so do moles.”

He laughed, and the sound surprised him. “Does that mean you would have given me a chance if it hadn’t been for the mating bond?”

Standing, she took the empty bowls to the sink. “You’d have wanted a chance?”

“I told you after making you come that I didn’t want anyone else touching you, remember?”

“Yeah, but that was just because you marked me.”

He shook his head. “I had a taste of you, and for the first time in a while, I felt something more intense than the anger I’ve been living with since the extremist attack. But it wasn’t enough. I wanted more. I don’t know how much more I would have pushed for—I didn’t feel that I had a lot to give anyone.”

She tilted her head as she made her way back to the table. “Is that why you paused in your pursuit of Shiloh?”

“Ah, Shiloh . . . it should have occurred to me that you’d want to know about her.” Bracken snatched her hand, dragged her to him, and pulled her onto his lap so that she was straddling him. Humming in satisfaction at having her right where he wanted her, he settled his hands on her hips. “It seems like a lifetime ago.”

Madisyn rested her hands on his chest. Solid and packed with hard muscle, it made everything feminine in her do a little happy dance. Despite the topic of conversation being another female, her blood heated at having him so close. Plus, his cock was mere inches away. It wasn’t easy to resist settling her pussy right over it. “I don’t need to know the ins and outs of it all.” She didn’t want to.

“Nothing happened between me and her. You had more with Lucah than I had with Shiloh. We mostly just exchanged text messages. She responded mainly with threats and insults. She was never the one to text first. Not until the end. And when, deep in grief, I didn’t reply to the few messages she sent, she left me alone.”