She didn't think she had ever run so fast in her life. It was like she was fuelled on pure ecstasy. Trees flashed by her like a big blur, and all the while she kept communicating with Raine. He wasn't happy – that much was clear. Kato wasn't speaking, just limping after Raine and grunting every now and then.
Rowynn was grateful Raine was helping her. She owed him an explanation, all she needed was time to figure one out.
Rowynn caught her break once she made it back to the reserve. Mrs. Peterson was the first house she stumbled by when she made it out of the woods. Unlike other packs, they didn't have giant walls confining them to their homes. They were free to come and go as they pleased, however, there were scouters out and about to make sure no threats could get close – close enough to kill them, anyway.
She sighed as she grabbed a large blue scarf from the clothes hanger just outside Mrs. Peterson's window. The last thing she needed was her father asking questions about where her bruises had come from. She also needed to mix her scent and try to get Kato off her skin.
If there was anything her father hated more than Sullivan's, it was humans. Her father saw all human's as murderous, disgusting creatures. He always told Lincoln – one of his best scouters – to kill on sight if he saw one. It made Rowynn so angry that her father was so prejudice.
"Rowynn Elsbeth Marsden!"
Rowynn closed her eyes and winced as that horrible voice screeched at her.
"Miss... Mrs. Peterson, how are you?" she stuttered.
She turned around to see the older shifter hunched over at her garden, the woman's brows furrowed and the lines on her forehead were deeper than usual. "What are you up to now, girl?" she snapped.
Rowynn bit her lower lip and tried to inch herself away. "I'm not up to anything..."
The woman looked Rowynn over, studying her anxious body langue before her eyes rested on the scarf Rowynn had just stolen. "What are you doing with my clothes?"
Again, Rowynn tried to get away. "I was cold..."
That wasn't a lie. It was fall and winter wasn't far away. Shifter's didn't usually get cold, but Rowynn was no regular shifter. She had the strength and abilities a shifter was born with, but she couldn't turn into a wolf and probably never would.
"You steal my cookies, you steal my flowers, now you're stealing my clothes? What has gotten into your brain lately, pup?"
Rowynn laughed nervously. Truthfully, she stole the woman's raisin cookies because they were her father's favourite and it was amusing when she would take a tray of them to him, only to find half of them to be mysteriously missing – and it wasn't even Rowynn who stole her flowers. Eric stole them for Tatum, and Rowynn just happened to be in the area. It was all a misunderstanding, but of course everyone was quick to point the finger. She gulped back any remarks she had, however.
"Your father's going crazy. You better go and calm him down before I whip your butt myself."
Mrs. Peterson believed in 'tough love,' and it took all of Rowynn's self-control not to tell her that was why her son, Lyon, was a complete nut job. However, she nodded obediently and scattered towards the alpha's house.
"And you give me back my scarf!" Rowynn heard her holler from behind. She bit her lip as she walked away, half running for her life.
Rowynn had known the woman since the day she was born, and not a day went by that Rowynn wasn't thankful Mrs. Peterson wasn't her mother.
She sucked in a sharp breath. There it was. That little pain she had in her chest whenever she thought about her mother. She wondered if that pain would ever go away. Things had been lonely after her mother died. As she looked up at the giant wooden home of Alpha Jack Marsden, she briefly remembered that she wasn't the only one who was lonely.
Not by a long shot.
Her father was well known within the shifter community. He was best known for his stubbornness – he refused to convert to human ways, and so kept them out here in the middle of nowhere. Rowynn supposed it was only her who felt trapped. Tatum and Mia didn't like to go out into town, let alone the bigger cities, and Liam was so far up their father's ass he wouldn't dare do anything to make him angry.
No, because Liam was next in line to take their father's place. He wouldn't do anything to jeopardise his place.
Her lips fell into a grim line as she neared her childhood home – well, the only home she'd ever known, really. She'd ran away so many times that she often wondered why her father even bothered to bring her back. Tatum used to call it the Marsden Cells, because it had been like a jail, but she hadn't referred to it like that in a long time. Tatum would have her own home soon with her mate, and Rowynn would be the last daughter left in this big, lonely house. When Liam found his mate, it would be awkward having his little sister around when he had pups of his own.
Before she knew it, she was already inside the home and making her way upstairs. Rowynn took a deep breath before she knocked on her father's office door. She ignored all the thoughts rushing through her head at that very second. Everyone was hyped about the New Moon festival, everyone but her father, however.
"Come in, Rowynn."
He sounded mad – really mad. Carefully, she opened the door and peeked in. She noticed her father immediately as he sat at his giant oak desk, surrounded by paperwork. Although they were shifters, her father still had to maintain the massive land space he owned, and that took business. Her father prided himself in his knowledge of human business.
She made her way into the office as slowly as possible. He noticed this, and glared. Rowynn understood exactly what he was angry about and closed the door before making her way towards his desk. No use in everyone hearing this.
It was silent for the longest time before he finally said, "Rowynn, I have raised you to be a decent, sensible-"
Oh, here it comes. She went to interrupt, but he simply held up his hand to stop her, and continued in his rant. She knew it off by heart by this point in her life.
"-self-respecting young woman, but it seems you didn't take a liking to the way you were raised. Correct?"
Humans waited to have sex until they were married, while shifter's waited until they chose their soul mate. Rowynn hated waiting for anything. Males were very territorial over the females in their pack, whether they were mates or not. Now times that by ten, and you had Jack Marsden.
She arched her brow in apprehension. "You mean, because I've had sex?"
Her father's face turned so red she thought he would pop. Whenever she dropped the sex bomb on him it was always a battleground. Today, however, something was different. He just sat there and stared at her, instead of blowing his top and yelling. Her father's silence was always more terrifying than his temper.
He was calming himself down – she could tell – because the redness started to ease. "You say it like it's nothing. I suppose when you see yourself as nothing, that's how you start to act."
This was odd. He had never said something like that to her before. Rowynn started to regret coming here almost instantly. Her father was plotting something, and she didn't like it.
"Tatum is smart, beautiful, and fierce. She's also mated with a very decent young man. Mia is graceful, kind and expecting my first grandchild – her first pup. I raised them the same way I raised you, Rowynn, so why is it that you cause me the most trouble?" he growled.
There were two topics her father loved to throw in her face the most. When he was angry, he would berate her about her own self-respect and decency, and when he was really, really angry, he would compare her to her younger sister's. To throw both of those topics into this one meeting must have meant he was angrier than ever before.
Rowynn's arms were behind her back so her father couldn't see how fidgety she was, or how uncomfortable she was with this entire conversation. "I have three sisters, Father. Aren't you going to say something nice about Kaia?"
His expression was unreadable. "Kaia made her bed – now she can lay in it, and you'll be laying in yours as well if this behaviour continues, pup."
"Or what? I'll end up like her? She got out of this place, and you're just angry because she didn't lay down and take your crap anymore-"
"Enough!" he roared and jumped from his seat. He was towering over his desk, and if Rowynn wasn't careful, she was sure he'd jump that desk and drag her by her hair out of his office. "If you don't grow up, Rowynn, you won't get a piece of this land – or any rights to this pack. I won't leave my pack to someone so selfish and disrespectful."
When her father died, her eldest brother Liam would take over, but if anything happened to Liam, then the pack would go to Raine, and any assets would go to her sisters and herself. It made Rowynn laugh that her father thought she would want any of it.
"You think I want this place?" she snapped. "You think I'd want the one place I've spent the last ten years trying to run away from? I've been trying to get away from you since I was eleven years old, Daddy! Kaia left to be with the man she loves, and you tried to keep her away because you didn't like the fact he was a human! Well, you know what? Fuck you, and fuck your hatefulness!"
Oh no. What did she just say? Her hands instantly flew to her mouth. She'd never sworn like that to her father before, and the thing he hated more than the sex bomb, was the F-Bomb.
Rowynn expected anger, rage; something that told her he would treat this like any other argument. She needed something to validate it wasn't that bad – that she hadn't just spat on his future grave.
All she got in return was her father's eyes staring at her. His old, tired blue eyes filled with hurt, disappointment, and... acceptance. He was accepting the fact things between them would never change. That she wasn't that little girl who needed him to stay with her until the monsters went away.
His voice was gruff – a tone she'd never heard before, when he said, "The elders want to speak with you tonight. Don't be out too late."
She nodded absently and turned to leave. "Yeah, right."
"And be careful. I got word that there are Sullivan's running around."
Rowynn stiffened momentarily, but nodded. She exited his office quickly and suppressed any tears that were ready to spill. He didn't understand. He didn't know Rowynn anymore. He treated her like she was just another one of his pack members, or lower. She was his daughter, but she couldn't even tell him about Kato. She could never tell him about Kato at this rate.
"Why'd you do that, Rowe?"
Rowynn squeezed her eyes shut to pull herself back. "Do what, Tatum?"
Tatum shook her head as she leaned against the wall. "Dad worries about you more than anyone, don't you see that?"
She didn't have time for this. "Whatever."
She started to walk off when Tatum grabbed her arm. Although she was Rowynn's younger sister, she was much taller than Rowynn was. It didn't surprise her that stranger's often thought Tatum was the oldest.
Tatum's eyes were so much like their mothers when she looked at her like that. "You're supposed to be my big sister, why don't you act like it?"
Rowynn ripped her arm away. "He doesn't understand, and neither do you."
"No one understands, Rowynn! Dad loves you more than anything in the world. You think you've been so wronged in life, when our father has done nothing but try to favour you and take care of you. Where would you be right now if he didn't always come and find you?" she snapped back.
Rowynn shook her head and tried to walk away, but Tatum carried on. "He favours you because you can't shift. Dad's not going to be around forever, Rowynn, and when that day comes don't you come crying and begging for forgiveness."
Rowynn ignored her as she fled down the stairs and out the door. She couldn't hold back anymore as the tears streamed down her face.
She would never admit to Tatum she was right.
*******
Daddy, why do Liam and Raine and Tatum and Kaia look like Mommy, and I don't?"
Jack smiled. "Well, that's because you and me, well, we're two pees' in a pod, pup. You look like me, and that's why you'll always be my special Row-Row."
It was true. They both had hair that wasn't very dark, or very light, and eyes that matched the sky on a cloudless summers day.
The child giggled as she hugged her father. "Daddy, will you stay with me till' the monsters go away?"
"If those monsters are stupid enough to come after my pup, that is."
"And Daddy, if the monsters came and took me away, would you come and bring me back?"
His smile grew. "Always, pup."
No matter where she went, or how far she strayed, he would always bring his little girl home where she belonged. Where she was loved.
"Always."