His wolf protector mm wo.., p.1
His Wolf Protector: MM Wolf Shifter Mafia Romance, page 1
HIS WOLF PROTECTOR
By
Alex McAnders
McAnders Books
Copyright © 2023
*****
His Wolf Protector
Chapter 1
Dillon
Taking a deep breath, I walked towards my father’s building. Each step echoed my thumping heartbeats. After years of neglect and abandonment, I was confronting him. I wanted answers, and a tiny, fragile part of me needed an apology.
The graffiti-filled, three-story brick building loomed in front of me. Holding my breath, I entered the narrow alley. Spilling into the backyard, I found the emergency exit.
To my surprise, pushing on it, I found that it had already been pried open. So, using the weight of my slender body, I leaned on it and forced my way in.
How many childhood hours had I spent staring into my father’s window from across the street? Were the people I sometimes saw inside his family? Were they who he had chosen over me and my mom?
Navigating up the damp, stained, concrete stairwell, I exited onto the top floor. Like the retail space at ground level, it looked empty. With dingy peeling wallpaper everywhere else, the only sign of life was the brightly painted door at the end of the hall.
Taking a moment to wipe my sweaty palms against my jeans, I steeled myself. Approaching it, the dull thud of my knock vibrated off the walls. Each echo was a gut punch.
Quickly, the door opened with a creak. On the other side was a pale figure, doused in the sterile glow of light spilling from behind him. This was my father. I had never seen him up close before.
When he recognized me, his eyes bored into me.
“You,” he gritted out.
I saw no reflection of myself in the man standing in front of me. My refined features that guys had so often complemented me on were broken curves on him. My mixed-race caramel complexion didn’t hint to his fair-skin. And the unruly curls that defined my profile, lay dark, straight, and flat on his head.
Despite that, I knew who this man was. I had been told many times by my mother. It was time for him to say it too.
“Yeah, it’s me. Your son.”
The words came out steadier than I anticipated. Each syllable brimmed with my years of pain, years of yearning for acknowledgment that never came.
Walking the streets of my old neighborhood, I looked up at the once-familiar buildings. This was Brownsville, Brooklyn, a place that was once home and now seemed so alien. I glared at the streetlights that pierced the inky darkness of the late-night. It cast eerie, elongated shadows that seemed to follow me.
As I walked, my stomach churned. I shivered as a cold wind slithered its way down my collar. Goosebumps pricked my skin.
Why was I here? It was miles from my college apartment in New Jersey. And having moved from Brownsville during middle school, everyone walking the streets were strangers. The only person I knew who still lived here was,
“My father…” I muttered to myself.
That’s right. I had come to finally confront the man I never knew. I had a plan for how I would pry open the emergency exit of his almost abandoned building and knock on his door. How could I have forgotten that?
Pivoting on the balls of my feet, I gritted my teeth and set my gaze on the bland three-story building that lay two blocks away. The ugly façade of my father’s apartment building gnawed at me as the reality of my impending confrontation set in.
My heart hammered in my chest. Sweat broke out on my palms as I neared the familiar but loathsome structure. It might’ve been an eyesore to everyone else, but for me, it was a symbol of the ignorance and indifference of the man who lived there.
Lifting my gaze, I spotted the glow of his lit apartment window. It pulled at old, familiar strings in my heart; a reminder of a simpler time when all I wanted was to cross that threshold. Countless times as a child, I’d stood yearning in front of it, but today, I wasn’t here to yearn. I was here for answers.
As if I knew it would be open, I rounded the building to the back door. The lock was lose as if it had been forced open many times. Ascending the stairs, it dawned on me how similar the stairwell looked to others. Why did it look so familiar? It was like I had been somewhere like it recently. But where?
Entering the hallway, I was overtaken by a similar feeling. Was it in a dream that I had seen this place? Throughout my childhood, I had had more than one dream that had come true. Was the feeling I was having an extension of that? It had to be, didn’t it?
Slowly crossing the hall, I approached the brightly painted door that for some reason felt burned into my mind. What was going on? Whatever it was, I wasn’t going to let it stop me. I had decided that this would be the day and it was.
Lifting my balled fist to knock on the door, it hit me. I had done this before. But that didn’t make sense. Never in my life had I spoken to the man my mother had said was my father. So, when I knocked and a sickly pale man opened the door and stared into my eyes, things made even less sense.
“What are you doing here?” The man spat in angry confusion.
“I’m your son,” I said determined.
“You will go away and never come back,” the man said peering into my soul almost replacing my thoughts for his own.
“No!” I said defiantly. “You’re going to answer my questions,” I declared as my heartbeats shot ripples of pain through my chest.
“I said, you will go and not come back!” my father insisted.
“And I said no,” I shout, fighting back the feeling that my thumping temples would explode.
As if retreating from my mind, my father took a step back. His retreat was like a cramp that suddenly subsided.
“Now,” I began, almost out of breath, “You’re going to tell me why you left me and my mother. I’m not going anywhere until you do.”
I couldn’t tell if the look on my father’s face was terror or disgust, but it haunted me. There was darkness in it. Seeing it created another feeling in me. This one I couldn’t describe.
“You want to know why I left you and your mother?”
“That’s why I’m here. Tell me why you abandoned your son,” I said losing grip of the armor that guarded my heart.
“It’s because you’re not my son,” he screeched.
“I am your son. I’ve always been your son.”
“You’re not. You’re an abomination!” he bellowed with conviction.
His words did something to me. The pain that was once in my temple came back twice as painfully. It was like there was a thought within me fighting to come out.
“I’m your son. I’m your son!” I insisted.
“You’re a spawn of the devil!” the pale man decried.
“I’m your son!” I kept repeating, grasping my head, trying to keep it from exploding.
“I’m not your father,” the old man said a final time before shoving me with the force of a wrecking ball onto the hallway wall behind me.
I collapsed in blinding agony as the door slammed shut in front of me. I felt like I was going insane. Without warning, my mind was awash in thoughts. The echoes only stayed long enough to touch before spiraling away replaced by another.
I couldn’t take it. It was tearing my brain apart. Moaning at first, I screamed. Screeching at the top of my lungs, it was like a miracle when it all stopped. With only the scars left behind, it was suddenly all gone.
Scared to open my eyes, I did. As if the headache had possessed my vision, everything looked different. It was like I had opened my eyes at the public pool. The hazy world around me glistened. And as my sight slowly returned, I noticed something that somehow I hadn’t.
The floor of the hallway ending at my father’s door was burnt. Worn to the texture of charcoal, it was covered in ash.
This wasn’t right. Something had changed. There was something different rattling around inside of me. And without a moment of doubt, I knew my father could tell me what it was.
As if it hadn’t been closed, I touched the door and it flew open. The interior of the apartment was now different. Everything from floor to ceiling was burnt. It looked gutted by flames and the only thing that wasn’t was the man I had cried at night hoping would acknowledge me.
He wasn’t only that man, however. The image of my father was a ghostly hologram that masked the creature beneath it. Bent and malformed, the person I had known wasn’t a man at all.
Growing up, my best friend, Hil, was a wolf shifter. Knowing what he and his family were challenged my belief of what was possible. How could humans who shifted into animals exist? More extraordinary than that, how could vampires?
“You’re a vampire,” I said before I knew what I was saying.
The man stared at me dumbfounded.
“You’re not my father. You can’t be.”
As if the image before me swept away, I stood across the room as my father and mother shared a bed. At first it looked like the two were having sex, but they weren’t.
“You fed on my mother. You compelled her to believe she was pregnant?” I said as the film strip in front of me continued to roll. “But why?”
“I did what my masters told me to do,” the decrepit creature replied with building fear.
“If you’re a vampire and vampires can’t bear children, what am I?”
“My masters’ spawn,” he hissed. “An abomination.”
“You’re scared,” I sudd
I looked away when the confusion overwhelmed me. Who was the “they” I was referring to? Could it be a demon? Was I a spawn of the devil like my father had implied?
Wait, he wasn’t my father. Vampires can’t have children. He compelled my mother to believe she was pregnant so I could exist.
When I looked back up, the man who I had thought was my father, had disappeared. With him gone, the room slowly faded back to normal. Whatever sight I had had was gone.
How long had I turned away for? Had the vampire compelled me again so he could escape? And more importantly, what was I? I certainly wasn’t human. Nor was I my father’s son.
I had come here for answers and now I had even more questions. Who was I? Where had I come from? And, why was it that no matter what I did, I was still a guy who no one loved?
Chapter 2
Remy
I stood in my father’s once grand office, now transformed into a makeshift hospice room. Hil and my mother were next to me, all of us looking down at our father’s lifeless body. The silence was suffocating, broken only by the soft sobs of my mother trying to hold back her tears.
Heartbreak washed over me. But gazing over the shadows cast on my father’s face by the dim light, I felt more than that. His was a mixed legacy. I had spent my life proving my worth to him, my alpha. And I had done things I wasn’t proud of. Now that he was gone, I wondered if it had all been for nothing.
Hil broke the silence. “I’ll organize the funeral. I want to do this for Father,” he said, his voice wavering with emotion. I could tell he was still desperate for our father’s approval, even after his death.
I glanced at him, my heart aching for my brother who had tried so hard to escape the life of crime our family had been born into. He hadn’t been built for it like I was. Unlike me, he had never been able to hide his attraction to men. It hung around his neck like a scarlet letter. To my father’s credit, he never judged Hil for it. But when my father and I were alone, he didn’t hide his disappointment.
It wasn’t for what Hil wanted to do with other men. It was that my father believed that his attractions were what was keeping him from shifting. “Gay wolf shifters weren’t meant to exist,” he once told me. “The Gods wouldn’t allow it.”
My shifting made that theory a hell of a lot more complicated. Yeah, I wasn’t gay, but neither was I straight. I was in that happy middle ground. Would my father say that that was why I took so long to have my first shift and not because my mother was human?
In either case, my father was right about one thing, our unforgiving world was hard to survive without access to your wolf. Other alphas wanted my father dead. Given the way Father claimed his power, I understood why.
That meant that no one in our family was safe. Hil, his sensitive human son, would always need someone to keep him alive. As our pack’s alpha, Father had no problem in doing that, even as he made clear that he wanted an heir who could take care of himself.
That was what I became for him. I took care of myself. Always unsure of when the pass he gave Hil would end, I soon took care of Hil too. I didn’t mind. He was my little brother. It was my job. But having to be the wolf my father wanted me to be took its toll.
“Thank you, Hil,” I said, my voice betraying the pain I felt.
My mother reached over and squeezed my hand, her touch tingling with a mix of sadness and gratitude. I could see the hope in her eyes for a better future, free from the violence and danger that had plagued our pack for so long.
My thoughts drifted to the pact I had made with Armand Clément, my father’s most vicious rival. I had agreed to hand over my father’s illegal businesses to him in exchange for keeping the legal ones and securing the protection of my pack.
My father’s wolves would become Armand’s and my true pack would be free from the criminal underworld. It was a desperate gamble, but I couldn’t stand the thought of replacing my father as his pack’s alpha. Not with the attractions that I had and a brother like Hil.
How many of my father’s wolves would I have to kill before they yielded to me? I had no doubt that I would defeat them. But, I wanted a different direction for my pack.
Besides, our family already had so much to make amends for. At some point, I was going to need to figure out how to give back to the community. Father’s obsession with power had caused a lot of pain. That couldn’t be my family’s only gift to the world. Wolf shifters were more than just human nightmares.
It was then that Dillon flashed through my mind. He was Hil’s human best friend and the boy whose presence never let me forget that I wasn’t straight. His lean lines, his lightly tanned skin, his loosely curly hair that I dreamed about pushing my fingers through.
They all turned me into a wolf who dreamed every night about nuzzling him. A guy who fantasized about sliding my hand up his tee shirt and wrapping my large hands around his narrow chest. He was my anchor in my father’s turbulent seas and now, the ocean that kept me from Dillon lay in front of me, dead, missed, and regretted.
Excusing myself before my family saw the smile that slowly crept across my face, I headed to my childhood bedroom. I couldn’t wait another second. I needed to hear his voice. My wolf paced at the thought. I had to call him.
Retrieving my phone, I found his number. Taking a deep breath, I dialed. My heart pounded in anticipation. The phone rang and my palms grew sweaty.
“Hello?” Dillon’s voice came over the line, warm and soothing as always.
“Hey, Dillon, it’s Remy.” I tried to keep my voice steady as I spoke. “I just wanted to let you know that my father… he passed away.”
“Oh, Remy, I’m so sorry.” Like all of us, he had known it was coming. But his empathy washed over me like a comforting wave. “How are you holding up?”
My throat tightened as I struggled to maintain my composure. “I’m… managing,” I admitted, the weight of my emotions threatening to spill over. Desperate to regain control, I swiftly changed the subject. “Listen, I was wondering if you could help me with something.”
“Of course. What is it?”
“Hil said that he wants to make the funeral arrangements. I think he could really use your support right now.”
There was a pause on the other end before Dillon softly agreed. “You didn’t have to ask that, Remy. I’ll do whatever I can to help.”
The silence that followed was heavy with unspoken words, my heart aching to tell him the truth about my feelings for him. But I couldn’t bring myself to say it, not yet.
“Thanks. I always know I can count on you,” I said with a smile.
“It’s no problem, Remy. I like being able to help you… and Hil,” he reassured me, his voice filled with genuine care. “We’ll all get through this together. Just let me know what you need.”
I nodded, even though he couldn’t see me. “I appreciate it.”
“I know,” he said assuredly.
As I hung up the phone, I wondered what I was doing. I didn’t have to restrain myself to two-minute conversations with him anymore. I was free. I didn’t know how he felt about me, but I no longer had to hide my feelings for him. It was time for me to tell him.
Heat washed through me and my wolf, considering it. It was a mixture of terror and exhilaration.
“After the funeral,” I said aloud. “My new life begins at the end of my old one.”
I could barely imagine living without hiding and secrets, but here it was. I was going to embrace the truth and see where it would take us. Was being with Dillon really going to be that simple? I didn’t know, but I was about to find out.
Chapter 3
Dillon
Ending the call with Remy, I stood in my apartment with my saddle bag still over my shoulder. I had just walked in having returned from confronting the vampire who I had thought was my father. How perfect was it that Remy’s was the first voice I had heard? I could no longer feel my face.
