The Return: Chapter One

COREY

Angela Marquardt and her BFFs occupied a table in the corner of my coffeeshop-slash-diner. Like they were in high school, the girls—now ladies—were boisterous and animated. Normally I could ignore them, and was doing a pretty good job of it until Angie gasped and announced, “Can you believe he’d come back here?”

My ears perked up, unbidden. I didn’t mean to eavesdrop, but my skin prickled when they said someone had returned, and I was desperate to know who it was.

“I know! After what happened with Adam? Why the hell would he come back here? I thought they’d run far and fast.”

And just like that, I knew. My skin grew clammy, and I couldn’t hold the cloth I was using the clean the tables.

“Corey Mills, are you listening to me?”

I jerked my head in the direction of the voice.

“I asked if you were okay?” Deirdre Dawson—DD to her friends—whispered to me.

I gave a sharp nod, and she gave me a dubious look, but went back to her work. I had to think. Was I okay? There was a time I worshipped the ground that Jonas Brodie trod upon. From the moment I met him after we moved here, I couldn’t take my eyes off him. Jonas was a geek, just like I had been. A bit taller than my five-six, with sandy hair and caramel macchiato eyes. We were inseparable. My mom used to say she thought we might be conjoined, because where one of us was, the other wasn’t far behind.

All that changed in a moment. I wasn’t there, so I didn’t see what happened. I had been sent to the nurse—and later the ER—to get stitched up after Adam Taylor and his buddies roughed me up and dumped me in a garbage bin. It probably would have been the same as always, but I had to stand up and tell them what fucking cliches they were, and how they’d watched too much television, probably Glee.

That enraged Adam. He cocked his fist back and drove it into my face. He’d smashed my cheek and split my lip in two places. I slipped in the slime on the bottom of the Dumpster, and cracked my skull open on the way down.

Suffice it to say, it was not one of my finer moments.

The repercussions? None to speak of. Adam was popular, I was not. His buddies backed up his story of finding me like that, and all insisted I had to be confused, because they’d never laid a hand on me. I was out for a few days, and Jonas came to my house and sat with me, holding my hand, every morning, not leaving until late in the evening. His touch actually helped more than the Tylenol I’d been given. When he asked me what happened, I told him. We had no secrets from each other. When I finished, my throat hoarse, a growl erupted from Jonas, unlike anything I’d ever heard in my life. He got up and stormed from my room, despite my calling him to come back.

That was the last time I saw him.

When I returned to school, the buzz was Adam had gone to the principal and admitted what he’d done. The rumor mill was rampant with how awful Adam had looked. His right arm was broken in two places, his jaw fractured, his left leg had been dislocated. His eyes were black and swollen shut. Someone had done quite the number on him.

Then someone said it had been Jonas who’d done it. But that wasn’t possible. Adam was a linebacker. He weighed 225 pounds, and stood six-two. Jonas, on the other hand, was skinnier then me. He might have been, maybe, 120 pounds. There was no way Jonas Brodie could have hurt Adam that way. It was impossible.

When I called his house, his father answered, and told me in a gruff voice that Jonas was gone. That was it. When I pressed, asking where he’d gone, he snarled at me to not look for Jonas, then he’d hung up. Two days later, the family home was posted for sale, and they, like Jonas, were gone. Letters I sent came back undelivered, phones were disconnected. None of their neighbors knew where they’d gone.

The whole family simply vanished, and took my broken heart with them.

The next six years were hard. Memories of Jonas, of his smile, his wicked sense of humor, his inability to beat me when we played games. All of it was gone, and wasn’t coming back.

Only apparently, now it had.

I had the urge to kick everyone out and go looking for Jonas. I wanted—needed—to know what happened. Oh, who was I kidding? I wanted to see him, to wrap my arms around him and confess the secret I’d kept hidden from him for the longest time. I had been in love with him since we were eight years old. I went to my mom and told her that when I was with Jonas, I got a fluttery feeling in my stomach, and how much I liked looking at him and being with him. She gave me a soft smile, ruffled my hair, and told me to go out and play.

When I came out at seventeen, no one in my family was surprised. Apparently my love of Jonas had never abated, and I kept talking about it, until my mom took me aside and told me I would find love again. Jonas was my first, but wouldn’t be the last person I’d have in my life.

Only he would, and I knew it. My one chance at love had packed up and left.

“Has anyone seen him?” I asked, a nervous flutter in my stomach.

Angela turned to face me. “He was at the bank yesterday.” She shrugged. “He’s changed. A lot.”

What did that mean? “Changed how?”

She opened her mouth, then closed it. And then did it again. “I’m not sure I can explain it.” Her cheeks pinked. “Let’s just say puberty was damn good to the boy.”

Before I could ask anything else, the women all rose as one. They carried their trash to the wastebasket, making sure to separate the recyclables, then gave me a wave and headed out the door, leaving me with so many unanswered questions.

The rest of the afternoon was pretty quiet, which gave me time to think. Jonas used to say it was a bad thing, because my mind went places it ought not. In this instance, he was right. If I saw him again, how would I handle it? I wanted to rush to him and throw myself in his arms, and plead for him to tell me why he walked out on me. The other part wanted to haul off and drive a fist into his geeky face, because how dare he leave and not contact me and didn’t he know what was going through my head and…and…

I sighed. I would never hit anyone, but especially not Jonas. The truth is, I’d mostly moved on. Or at least I thought I did. He left, end of story. Not much more to write there. I threw myself into my schoolwork, got a scholarship, went to college where I didn’t exactly excel, but I got by. When I left school, I thought about moving to California or New York and making a fresh start of my life.

That lasted until the day I came back to Harken’s Corners, Delaware. I drove through the town I’d grown up in, and saw dozens of people I’d known in school. The population wasn’t much more than 3,400, but they were mostly close knit, help your neighbor kind of thing. I’d never seen a group so diverse, yet would stand shoulder to shoulder with you if times were tough.

About two years after we’d moved here, I think I was like ten at the time, the house of the Cheever family burnt to the ground. They lost everything. After the fire department left, the townspeople descended en masse. Most of them were clearing away the rubble, knocking down the remainder of the frame, and hauling the junk away. Some of them were consoling Amanda Cheever, whose husband had died in the fire.

Before the week was over, not only could you not tell there’d been a fire, but there was already a new building going up in its place. No one asked for money, no one refused to help. Even me and my parents were there, doing what we could. Mom cooked food to feed the hungry crew, Dad could swing a mean hammer, and I…. Well okay, I followed Jonas around doing whatever he said needed to get done, but at least I helped.

“You did good,” Jonas told me, gripping my shoulder and giving it a squeeze. “I know you’ve got no clue about our town, but that didn’t stop you or your parents from lending a hand where you could. I—we—appreciate you.”

The words, foreign sounding from the mouth of a child, still made me feel ten feet tall. It was after that Jonas became my best friend in the world.

And now he was back.

JONAS

The first thing I wanted to do when I got out of the SUV was track Corey down, pin him against the nearest wall, and bury my face in his neck. Then I wanted to bite him. Then fuck him. Then bite him again. Rinse, lather, repeat until neither of us could stand. Then I’d let him sleep for a few hours, wrapped in my embrace, before we started the whole process all over. By the time I was done with him, there would be no doubt who owned Corey Mills.

I’d waited for this day, dreamed of it. From the time my parents and I moved away, my mind, my heart, and, more importantly, my cock, were all in agreement about returning home to claim what was mine. Only my father, our Alpha at the time, stopped me. And that was a close thing.

The day I found out Adam had hurt Corey, I’d gone into a rage. Someone dared to lay a hand on Corey? Worse, a fucking pack member did it! I left Corey’s place and broke several laws getting to Adam’s house. When he answered my knock, I grabbed him by his throat and slammed him against the wall.

“What. The. Fuck. Did. You. Do?” I’d demanded, enunciating each word.

He tried to brush my hands away, only to find out that I was no longer the scared wimp I had been. With the flood of testosterone and adrenaline, the changes in my body had begun. “Oh, come off it. You’re not still hung up on him, are you? Get over it, man. I don’t understand why your father even let them stay in our territory. We should have run them out the moment they got here. If Annabelle hadn’t fucked up—”

The first punch. It shattered his nose, and brought a healthy dose of fear with it.

“My father, our Alpha, said that they could stay,” I growled. “After they helped us with the Cheever house, he made it clear they had special permission to be here and that we were to make every effort to avoid letting them know what we were. Are you challenging my father?”

“W-well, no, but—”

I leaned in close, letting him see how my scent was changing. I wanted him to know what I was becoming. At that moment, I would have been thrilled if he pissed his pants. “Choose your words carefully, Adam. Any hint of disrespect toward my father will be taken seriously.”

A quick huffed breath, but it was good to note that Adam, now a whipped pup, no longer met my gaze. “He’s a human, for god’s sake.”

“He’s my human,” I reminded him with a fist to his stomach. “I made my claim on him years ago, and my father recognizes it. So now you’re not only disrespecting my father, but you’re speaking ill of my future mate.”

The more Adam spoke, the angrier I got. Corey was mine, and I needed only to wait to come of age to claim him. My father had been uncertain at first, until he saw the two of us together. Then he noted how Corey tempered my teen hormones. I wasn’t out in the woods rutting with every she-wolf in the pack. Instead I watched Corey, dreaming of the day I’d be allowed to take him as mine.

“He is yours, isn’t he?” my father had said, a resigned smile on his face.

I nodded, unable to take my eyes off Corey as he ducked down an alleyway, doing his best to avoid Adam and his goon squad. We waited until he made it to his house before my father continued.

“When I was your age, I was in the woods every night, tracking down a willing female. The lust overrode common sense, but it’s the way of the wolf.”

“Not my wolf,” I informed him. “My wolf wants only one thing, and everyone else is a pale imitation.”

“I know, Jonas. I may not understand it, but that doesn’t mean I’m blind. Most wolves go their whole lives without finding the one person who fits them. You? Lucky son of a bitch—don’t tell your mother I said that. She hates that phrase!—not only have yours move into town, but also get someone I could not see you fit any better.”

“Your father should have let us hunt them all down,” Adam snarled, dragging me back to our conversation. His eyes still down, he was challenging me through words. “Doubt your boy would have provided any sport, but at least we could claim him at the end.”

The fury building within me burst out. I grabbed Adam’s hair and slammed our heads together. He was dazed, but I got even angrier. He was talking about sex—rape—against my mate. By our laws, that alone entitled me to kill him.

It was the first time my claws made an appearance. I slashed Adam’s stomach, enthralled by the blood that coated my nails. I’d done this. I nearly gutted him, and I wanted more.

I continued to punch and gouge him, reveling in every grunt and scream. It was during this time that my wolf decided to make himself known. He burst out, shredding the clothes I’d worn. Adam fell to the floor, sobbing. I opened my jaws wide and put them around his neck. It would have been easy to close them, to tear his throat out, to watch him drown in his own blood.

“P-please, no,” Adam pleaded.

Just then the door opened, and my father strode into the room. “Let him go, Jonas. Now.”

Instead I tightened my grip, my fangs piercing Adam’s skin, causing him to scream. The blood was bitter, rancid. But it was blood. That of my enemy. I needed to protect my mate, and if Adam had to die—

“Jonas James Brodie,” my father snarled. “As your Alpha, I am ordering you to release him now.”

My father’s power as Alpha washed over me. Anyone else in the pack would have rolled and given their stomach in submission. Instead, I dropped Adam and turned and snarled at my own father. He stood there, doing his best to seem unfazed, but I could sense the tiniest niggle of fear. He grabbed the nape of my neck and twisted my head to where Adam lay drawn in on himself.

“Look at what you’ve done!” he raged. “You could have killed him. A leader would have dealt with this, but in a way that wouldn’t harm pack cohesion.”

I didn’t give a good goddamn about being a leader. All I wanted was Corey. The pack could go to hell in a cute little handbasket. I growled at Adam, the urge to tear him to pieces riding me hard.

“Is this how you want Corey to see you?” My father leaned in close, his voice barely rising above a whisper, but even then I could feel his strength. “You claim he’s yours, but this disrespects him on every level. I’m aware of what Adam said to you. His mother was quite forthcoming when she called me, begging me to stop you from hurting Adam. Yes, by old pack law, you’d be allowed to kill him, and I will not debate that. But those rules were written nearly two hundred years ago, when mates—and yes, I know that’s what Corey is—were considered property. I’ve sat down to dinner with Corey and his family. He’s not shy about making his opinions known. Will you insist he takes a more subservient role in your relationship, or will you allow him to proudly stand by your side as your Alpha Mate?”

Corey. The name surged into my tiny lizard brain. Mate. Claim. Mine.

“You must shift now, Jonas. If you won’t do it for me, then do it for your mate.”

For Corey I would do anything. I drew my wolf back into me. He didn’t hesitate at all, because he knew it would make Corey happy. Moments later, I stood, not at all cowed by Adam or my father.

“Good, thank you.” My father ran a hand over my head, then pulled me into a tight embrace, pinning my arms at my side. “And I’m sorry to have to do this, but for now, I can’t allow you to see Corey again.”