Piercing Silence Read Online Free PDF Page A

you have it any other
way, Alpha?”
    A sly smile took the place of his scowl.
“And be bored out of my mind with a female that catered to my every
whim? No way. I’ll take worry, fighting, fear, frustration, and all
the other emotions that come with being mated to a feisty female
over boredom any day.”
    They both sat in contemplative silence,
though Fane was barely holding himself still. It felt so unnatural
not to be the one checking on his mate and the one fixing whatever
it was that she needed fixed.
    “Since we’re here and we’ve got nothing but
time,” Decebel said breaking the quiet, “why don’t you tell me what
it is that has you thinking you are incapable?”
    Fane’s eyes snapped up. “Why is that the
conclusion you’ve come to regarding my battles?”
    “Because I was young once upon a time. I
remember what it was like to have the confidence that is innate in
a dominate wolf and to then have it ripped from your grasp because
of something that was out of your control.”
    Fane knew the Alpha was speaking about his
sister’s death.
    “I did not handle what happened to Cosmina
with great poise,” he continued. “I broke under the weight of the
guilt I felt for being unable to save her.” Decebel narrowed his
eyes on him, not in a stern manner but a calculating one. “What
each of us endured in the In-Between left us wounded in some way.
Some of those wounds run deeper than others. Instead of just
grazing the skin, the wound has pierced muscle, tendons, and, in
some cases, even broken bones. A shallow wound will not heal at the
same rate as a deeper wound, and sometimes when a wound has begun
to heal it endures more trauma and is reopened. Something has
reopened your wound that was just beginning to scar, and the scar
had not had the time to harden.”
    Fane closed his eyes, remembering the peace
he had felt when he finally let it go. Why had he picked it back up
again? He kept coming back to the same questions. What had caused
him to begin having the dreams again, which in turn renewed the
flames of the memories he thought he’d doused?
    “I have this timeline mapped out in my mind,
and I keep going over it and over it trying to figure out at what
point I picked up the burden that I thought I’d let go of,” Fane
told him as he leaned forward with his elbows resting on his knees
and his hands laced together clenching and unclenching.
    “Have you come to any conclusion?”
    Fane shook his head. “There hasn’t been
anything, no so-called trauma, that has happened since getting the
females back. Things have been so calm.”
    Decebel glanced down at his sleeping
daughter as he responded. “Does the trauma always have to come from
a negative source?”
    Fane wanted to growl at he continued
metaphors but bit it back because he knew Decebel was just trying
to help him. “What do you mean?”
    “Sometimes wounds are reopened during a time
of celebration or fun. I’ve had many battle wounds open up while
sparring with other wolves, and the sparring was all in good nature
with no animosity between us, and yet that something good was still
traumatic to the wound.”
    “Are you deliberately dragging this out in
order to distract me?”
    Decebel chuckled. “Okay, perhaps, my age is
showing through my council. What I’m trying to say is you have
recently had something that is worthy of great celebration happen
to you. But regardless of how good it is, it is also going to
change your life in a very big way. Maybe you should consider the
upcoming birth of your first child as the possible trauma to your
wound.”
    “I’m not unhappy about Jacquelyn being
pregnant,” Fane said as he shot to his feet and began to pace. “I
know that we are both young and didn’t really plan for this to
happen so soon, but neither of us regrets it.”
    “I’m not implying that you do,” Decebel
parried. “I’m simply saying that maybe the stress, because there is
stress when having a baby whether you are