CHAPTER SEVEN

FATHER'S PAST

The truck wasn't running right. Anna could hear it from the driveway, a rough idle, a catch in the rhythm like a skipped heartbeat. She followed the sound around the side of the house to the detached garage, where her father stood hip-deep in the engine bay of his Ford, a work light clipped to the hood casting his face in harsh shadows.

"Bad spark plug?" Anna asked, her voice sounding hollow in the quiet evening.

Pete didn't look up. "Worse. Timing belt's fraying. I keep patching it, but she's telling me it's time to let go."

Anna leaned against the workbench, her arms wrapped around her middle. The garage smelled of grease and cut grass, of her father's particular scent of sawdust and peppermint. It was the smell of safety, of childhood, and it made the pressure behind her eyes build until she thought her skull might crack.

"Dad?"

"Mmh?"

"I need to tell you something." Her voice broke. She pressed her lips together, hard, until the trembling stopped. "And I need you to not hate me."

Pete straightened slowly. He wiped his hands on a rag that would never be clean again, and turned to face her, his expression carefully blank. But his eyes, his dark, steady eyes, held a weight she'd seen before, the night she'd come home, the night he'd said be careful.

"I could never hate you," he said. "You know that."

"I don't know anything anymore." Anna laughed, but it came out wet, ragged. She sank onto an overturned milk crate, her head in her hands. "I think I'm in love with Chris. Carly's Chris. My best friend's boyfriend. And I don't want to be. God, Dad, I would cut off my own hands before I hurt Carly, but I can't stop feeling it. I can't stop wanting him near me, and I can't stop noticing how he smells, and when he touched me last week…" She stopped, gasping, the memory of the parking lot sparking through her veins like live wire.

"It felt like lightning. It felt like destiny. And that sounds insane, I know it sounds insane, but I can't breathe around him and I can't breathe without him and I'm terrified I'm going to destroy everything."

The words poured out of her, poison she'd been carrying for weeks, and when she finally ran dry, the garage was silent except for the ticking of the cooling engine. She didn't look up. She couldn't bear to see her father's disappointment.

She heard him move. Heard the scrape of a stool being dragged across concrete. Then his work boots entered her field of vision, scarred leather and frayed laces, and he lowered himself to sit across from her, close enough that their knees almost touched.

"Anna-bug," he said softly. "Look at me."

She lifted her head. Her cheeks were wet, when had she started crying? and her father's face swam in her vision. But he wasn't angry. He wasn't even surprised. His expression was solemn, ancient, the face of a man who had seen the end of the world and lived to tell of it.

"You think you're losing your mind," he said.

"I think I'm a terrible person."

"You're not." He reached out, his calloused thumb brushing the tears from her cheek with the same gentle precision he used to sand wood. "You're feeling the pull. And it's not your fault."

"The pull?" Anna said crooning her head.

Pete leaned back, his hands braced on his knees. He let out a long breath, his gaze drifting to the pegboard of tools behind her, to the chainsaw and the levels and the baby pictures Maddie had laminated and hung there ten years ago.

"I was twenty-one when I met Valerie" he said, his voice changing, dropping into a register of memory, of old pain carefully archived. "I was engaged to your mother. We'd grown up together, Maddie and me. Everyone expected us to marry. The house, the kids, the whole life. And I loved her. I still love her. But Valerie..." He paused, his jaw tightening. "Valerie moved to Millbrook that summer to help her aunt after a stroke. I met her at the hardware store. She was buying nails."

Anna stared at him. "Dad..."

"She turned around," Pete continued, his eyes glazing, seeing something Anna couldn't. "She smiled at me. And the world stopped. I mean that literally, Anna. The radio was playing, the bell over the door was ringing, and suddenly all I could hear was my own heartbeat. All I could smell was rain on pine needles. And I knew, I knew, that I would burn down everything I'd built to be near her."

Anna's breath caught. "What happened?"

Pete's laugh was rough, joyless. "I fought it. For three months, I fought it. I avoided her. I threw myself into wedding plans. I told myself it was a crush, a fantasy, a last gasp of freedom before commitment. But the bond doesn't care about your schedule, Anna. It doesn't care about your loyalties." He looked at her, his eyes dark with memory. "The full moon came. I Changed for the first time. And the only thought in my wolf's head was her."

"Changed," Anna whispered. The word felt heavy, foreign, terrifying. "Dad, what are you talking about?"

Pete stood. He walked to the garage door and pulled it shut, sealing them in the dim amber glow of the work light. When he turned back, the shadows had gathered in his face, carving him into someone older, someone stranger.

"Werewolves are real, Anna. We exist. Not like the movies, not monsters, not cursed just... people with another shape. Another nature, form you get right?. And Alphas..." He paused, searching her face for disbelief, for horror.

"Alphas are born, not made. Born to lead, to protect, to bond. And we don't choose our mates. The moon does. Fate does. However you want to name it."

Anna's hands were shaking. She pressed them between her knees to still them. "Chris."

"Chris," Pete confirmed. "He's young, but he's an Alpha. You can see it in the way the town moves around him. The way they defer without knowing why. And you, Anna..." He came back to the stool, sitting heavily. "You're his fated mate. I knew it the moment you mentioned his name at dinner. The way your voice changed. The way you looked at the door like you were waiting for him to walk through it."

The garage seemed to tilt. Anna gripped the milk crate beneath her, her fingernails digging into the plastic. "That's not possible. That's… Dad, that's insane."

"I know."

"I don't believe in…"

"You don't have to believe." Pete's voice was gentle but firm. "The bond doesn't require your belief. It requires your blood." He held up his hand, turning it so the work light caught the faded scar across his palm, a pale line she'd seen a thousand times, asked about once. He'd told her it was a sawblade. "Valerie gave me this. The night of my first Change. She was like me. Her wolf recognized mine. We..." He stopped, his throat working. "We bonded. Temporarily. Because I couldn't complete it. Because I had already promised myself to your mother, and I loved her, and I chose her."

"Mom doesn't know?"

"Mom knows." Pete's smile was sad, knowing. "I told her three days before the wedding. I told her everything, what I was, what Valerie was, what I felt. I offered to let her go. She chose to stay. She chose me, knowing I'd always carry a piece of someone else."

He spread his hands, looking down at them as if they held answers. "That's the agonizing choice, Anna. That's the price. You can choose duty. You can choose the life you planned, the people you promised. But the bond leaves a hole. Always."

Anna stood up too fast, her head spinning. She paced to the workbench, to the wall of tools, her mind racing through every moment since she'd come home. The spark in the parking lot. The dreams of forests and moonlight. The way Chris had looked at her, not like a boy looking at a girl, but like a compass finding north.

"Chris knows," she said, the realization landing like a stone. "That's why he's been pulling away. That's why he looks at me like he's drowning."

"He knows," Pete said. "An Alpha knows his mate the moment he scents her. The instinct to protect you, to claim you, it's biological. It's older than his human thoughts. And he's fighting it because of Carly, because he's a good kid who thinks loyalty can outrun destiny."

Anna turned, her back pressed against the pegboard, a screwdriver handle digging into her spine. "What happens if we don't... bond? What happens if I choose Carly? If I leave?"

Pete's face crumpled with sympathy. "Then you both hurt. For years. Maybe forever. The bond doesn't fade, Anna. It scars. Chris will survive, Alphas are built to survive, but he'll be diminished. And you..." He stood, moving toward her, his hands settling heavy and warm on her shoulders.

"You'll feel like you're living in a room with no air. Everything will be a little gray. A little less. And eventually, you'll convince yourself it was just a crush. Just chemistry. But some part of you, the part that felt that spark, will always know you left your other half in a small town in the Midwest."

Anna dissolved.

She crumpled against her father's chest, sobbing, her fingers gripping his shirt like she was falling. He held her the way he had when she was small and the world was simple, one hand cradling her head, the other wrapped around her back. He smelled like sawdust and peppermint and the faint, wild undertone of something that suddenly made terrible sense.

"I don't want this," she gasped. "I don't want to hurt Carly. I don't want to be some... some supernatural destiny. I just wanted a normal summer."

"I know."

"What do I do, Dad?"

Pete pulled back, framing her face with his rough hands, forcing her to meet his eyes. They were wet, she realized. Her father, who never cried, had tears gathering in the creases of his weathered face.

"You listen to me," he said, his voice gravel and thunder. "This bond is strong. Stronger than anything I've felt since Valerie. But strength isn't the same as rightness. Chris is an Alpha, and Alphas command. They protect. They possess. If you choose this path, Anna, you aren't just choosing a boy. You're choosing a life of instincts and territories, of pack politics and full moons. Of enemies who will see you as his weakness."

He wiped her cheeks with his thumbs, his expression hardening into something fierce.

"The werewolves from the eastern territory, I've heard the rumors. They're hunting young Alphas, trying to break bloodlines before they solidify. If they find out Chris has found his true mate, they'll come for you. To hurt him. To unmake him." Pete's hands tightened. "So if you choose this, you have to be sure. Not just about Chris. About the life. About the danger. About the girl you'll lose."

Anna looked at her father, really looked at him and saw the weight of his own choice written in the lines of his face. He had chosen Maddie. He had chosen safety and familiarity and a quiet life. And some part of him, some wolf-shaped part she'd never known existed, had been mourning Elena for thirty years.

"I don't know if I can choose," Anna whispered. "It doesn't feel like a choice. It feels like gravity Dad."

"That's the bond talking." Pete kissed her forehead, his lips rough and warm. "Gravity pulls, Anna. But people learn to climb. They learn to fly. The question is whether the fall is worth the flight."

He released her, stepping back, and the garage felt colder without his arms around her. Anna wrapped her own arms around herself, staring at the concrete floor, at the oil stain that had been there since before she was born.

"Does Mom hate me?" she asked quietly. "For feeling this?"

"Your mother could never hate you." Pete moved back to his truck, picking up a wrench with hands that shook only slightly. "She knows better than anyone what the bond does to a person. She'll be here when you're ready to talk to her."

Anna nodded, numb. She walked to the garage door and pulled it open, letting the night rush in, crickets and cool air and the distant, wild smell of the wheat fields. She paused on the threshold, looking back at her father, half in shadow, half in light, a man who had spent his life between two worlds.

"Dad?" she said.

"Yeah?"

"Do you regret it? Choosing Mom?"

Pete didn't answer right away. He stared into the engine bay, at the frayed timing belt, at the machine that would eventually break no matter how carefully he maintained it.

"Every full moon," he said softly. "And every morning when I wake up next to her, not for a single second."

Anna stepped out into the dark, the revelation settling into her bones like frost, and knew that nothing, not her friendship, not her innocence, not the quiet life she'd planned would ever be simple again.