Nicole bolted from Vera’s lab into the living room, but what she saw there had her skidding across a rug, legs locked so she could stay out of the north end of a loaded rifle. A tall, brawny man with silver hair and three long scars down his cheek stood at the front door, eyes bored even as the three Silver brothers aimed rifles in his direction. Link grabbed her arm and shoved her behind him defensively.
“What the fuck are you doing here, Dad?” Ian gritted out the last word like a curse.
“That would be my doing,” Elyse said softly from beside her mate. “I invited him.”
Ian jerked a shocked gaze to her, but it was Jenner who spoke next. “Shouldn’t you be hibernating? How are you still awake?”
Vera lifted her hand like a second-grader with the answer to a math question. “That would be my doing.”
“Vera,” Tobias gritted out. “What the hell is going on?”
“Guns down and I’ll explain, boys.”
Link snarled constantly in front of Nicole as she waited for one of the Silver brothers to either pump their asshole father full of lead or to back down.
Tobias cocked his shotgun. “Tell us you’re not here to put a kill order on Link.”
“I’m not. I want Link to be cured as much as you do. Maybe more.”
Tobias frowned, but slowly lowered his weapon. Ian and Jenner followed suit one after the other.
“You took Vera’s medicine to suppress your bear. That’s why you aren’t hibernating, right?” Tobias asked.
Clayton nodded once.
“Why?” Tobias barked out. “You were the one who said the cure would ruin us and make us weak. You fought me to make sure Vera went back to Perl Island. Fought me to make sure I stayed away from the cure.”
“I was wrong,” Clayton said low, hands clasped formally behind his back. “I was wrong about a lot of things.”
Jenner ran his hand roughly down his face and muttered, “Fuck. I need whiskey now.”
“I made pie,” Vera said cheerfully.
Tobias stared at his mate like she’d lost her mind, but after a few loaded, silent moments, he sighed and gritted out, “Clayton, won’t you come in and enjoy desert with us?” His hand was clenched around the barrel of his shotgun in a stranglehold. He lifted an empty smile to his dad. “Try anything, and we’ll happily kill you.”
“Noted,” Clayton said. Striding past them, he handed Vera an expensive looking bottle of wine.
“Oh, the fancy shit!” Vera said, hugging it close as she led Clayton into the dining room.
What the fuck? Link mouthed to Ian, but when Nicole arched her gaze to the quietest Silver brother, he looked utterly rocked and only shrugged in response.
“Elyse, I thank you kindly for the invitation,” Clayton said, sitting down at one of the empty chairs without a plate in front of it.
Elyse offered him a vacant smile. “Please don’t make me regret it.”
“Why would you invite him here?” Ian asked, his striking blue eyes round and trained on his mate.
“Because now that we’ve decided to try for a cub, I think we should at least try to give our kid a shot at a relationship with his grandparent, don’t you?”
Jenner scrunched up his nose. “Yeah, but that said grandparent is an asshole.”
“I’m sitting right here, son,” Clayton said blandly.
Jenner’s tone turned deadly in an instant. “Don’t you fucking call me that.”
“Pie!” Vera exclaimed, setting down the pastry right between the two death-glaring men.
“Elyse and Vera have offered me the opportunity to say my piece and apologize.”
“Apology not accepted,” Tobias said, sitting at the head of the table and leaning back in his chair, a fearsome expression on his face.
Link pulled out Nicole’s chair and waited until she was settled, then asked, “Why do you care if I’m cured or not? I’ve met you in person one time, when you came after Vera, and we bled each other.”
Clayton looked at Link for a long time, then leaned forward, elbows resting on the table, hands clasped in front of him. “When I was a boy, I had a friend. He was a McCall. We grew up together. I didn’t want to turn sixteen and begin my hibernations, and he didn’t want to lose his mind. He was…” Clayton swallowed hard and leaned back in his chair. “He was the only person who really understood me. And when I began sleeping through the winters, he didn’t go join the other McCalls. He didn’t hook up with that messed up pack and rush his insanity. He stuck with me. Protected my body every winter, lived in a cabin near me in the summers, and he never once made me feel bad when I had to pull an enforcer mission and put down one of his family members for hurting humans. And when my mate left me and had my sons without me, he picked up the pieces when all I wanted to do was drink myself to death. And I was there for him at the birth of all three of his sons.”