Page 63 of Brandon’s Mate

He said, “They all pledged to me and I tried to make them a crew. But I never realized how exhausting it would be—like battling my way up a mountain covered in thorns every damn day. They were constantly fighting each other, fighting me—and instead of settling my panther, trying to keep control of them just made me start spiraling out of control.”

She kept her hand there, in the middle of his chest, but this time her touch couldn’t keep away the cold.

He said softly, “I thought I could do it, Kitkat. I really thought I could save them. But I couldn’t. The whole thing finally imploded.”

He told her the story in as few words as he could, knowing she’d felt it along with him. October 25, the day Ranger had finally snapped and killed Jeb. Jeb’s brother Fargo had gone rogue from grief and attacked a human ranch, and Brandon had had to put him down. He’d returned to their compound to find that Nick had taken out Ranger and disappeared.

And he was alone, with his guilt and grief.

When he was done, she kissed him gently, right over the broken place in his heart that he knew would never heal. He felt her draw in a breath to say something, and at the same moment he became aware of the scent and presence of the McCall twins, inside the window behind the couch.

Fuck. They’d heard the whole thing.

Chapter 25

Kitty sensed them at the same moment, and the words she’d been about to say never came out. Remy spoke instead.

“Damn, Brandon,” he said softly. “Why the hell didn’t you ever call us? We would have come.”

Brandon hadn’t wanted them to hear this. It was between him and Kitty. They had no right to listen.

“And done what?” he asked. His voice sounded too harsh. He knew it, but he couldn’t stop it. The pain was too raw.

“Been there,” Colt said. His voice was just as harsh; Brandon could feel the angry leopard vibes coming off him. “We would have been there for you, but you were too busy trying to out-Flynn Flynn. Weren’t you?”

“Colt,” Kitty said, warning in her voice. He felt her wolf start to growl. “Cut it out. You have no idea what he went through.”

“Yeah. It’s always about what he’s going through.”

“Colt!” The warning in Kitty’s voice grew stronger, the growl louder. He loved that her wolf wanted to protect him, but this time Colt was right. Kind of.

“Maybe. I guess,” he said tiredly. “I wanted to save them. I mean, Flynn took a group of broken fucked-up shifters and made them into a family. Held their shit together until they could find mates and settle down. I thought if I could do that…”

“If you could do that, then what?” Remy kicked the screen out of the window and slid through onto the other end of the couch. He clambered down onto the porch and opened the fridge, pulling out two beers. “You’d get a parade? A gold star from the Shifter Council?”

“Don’t you start being a dick now,” Kitty growled.

Brandon said, “I was trying to do a good thing. And if Flynn could do it, why not me?” Fuck. Even he could hear the defensiveness in his voice. Had he really spent his whole life trying to fucking prove something to his childhood alpha?

He held out a hand for one of the beers, but Remy ignored him and handed it to Colt, who was now sitting sideways in the open window, his back against one side of it and one knee drawn up. Remy perched on the arm of the sofa, twisted open his beer and flicked the top at Brandon. It stung.

Remy said, “A) I don’t know why the fuck you’ve always been obsessed with being better than Flynn. And 2) Didn’t you ever listen to those stories your dad told about the old days?”

Brandon untangled himself from Kitty and got his own beer, plus one for her. “Not really,” he admitted, sitting back down next to her and handing her the beer.

Colt gave an exaggerated sigh and pitched in. “That prick Alexander Grant, the one who captured our parents? He was trafficking in shifters, for fuck’s sake. He had dozens of broken, messed-up shifters in captivity. They’d all been traumatized by his sick experiments.”

Remy took up the story. “Jesse and Sophia Travis broke them all out at the same time. You know how many Flynn managed to save, out of all those people? Five. Our dad, and yours. Kitty’s mom. Tank. And Tristan Barnes. That’s it.”

Brandon was shocked. He’d never really taken in the whole story, or realized how few of the shifters from Grant’s facility had been saved. “What happened to the rest?”

“Scattered. A lot had to be put down—either by the Council, or Flynn and Tank. For years Flynn tried to track down the ones who disappeared, to see if any of them made it. Hardly any did.”

Brandon tried to wrap his mind around that. It didn’t make what Flynn had done any less hard—Brandon knew what it was like trying to keep a group of fucked-up shifters from imploding, day after day. And Flynn had had to put down at least as many—maybe more.

That was a sobering thought.

But Flynn had still done more than Brandon. And Brandon still had his ghosts to deal with.