It wasn't exactly the best first impression to make, but at least he hadn't awakened.
He'd had only fractions of a second to react, but all the signs were out there in front of him: the dark clothing, the packed backpack, the attempts at stealth—Sharon was attempting to escape with his son.
Again.
Fury welled up in him from the never-drying well of it in his chest, and with not the slightest hesitation, he sprinted off. Sharon did too, leaping into motion like a gazelle, but he was taller and was not encumbered, so he reached the driver's side door first. She let out a little cry of vexation and tried to push him off the car, overbalanced by holding up their son. It was so futile that he laughed, which only infuriated her more. She wasn't leaving.
He had won.
"Liar," he told her, more amused than enraged now that he'd established the upper hand. "Now that I know I can't trust you, I'm leaving you no choice, Sharon. Get in the goddamn car, or I'll take that pup from your arms and leave you here and take him home with me to Tenzclaw land, where he'll be."
For the first time since she'd returned, Sharon's expression shifted from anger to genuine, bone-deep terror. Her mouth fell open, and she held their son close, her eyes flitting back and forth between him and the object clutched in her arms. He didn't know whether she was going to listen, and for a second, he thought about doing it anyway. But when he moved to draw him into his own arms, Sharon started to back away, a low growl deep in her chest.
It was not a warning growl of a shifter, but the universal growl of a mother defending her child. It was almost mind-boggling how much she had altered.
"Get in the passenger seat," he said again, "Don't make this harder than it has to be."
"I can't," she breathed. Her eyes were huge in her face, and her voice trembled, "You have no right to him, and I won't let you have him."
Her statement enraged him. No right to his son? Did she think that a child existed for one parent alone? It had not occurred to her that Kit's fate was connected to his? She was his Omega, and this was their child. He didn't care she was angry with him. It didn't matter that they'd broken up on the most heinous terms. They were bound together by the pack, and they'd conceived a child.
He'd given her an option, and she'd made the wrong decision. Now she had to face the consequences.
"Get. In. The. Fucking. Car."
She took another step back. Alexander snorted softly and rolled over in her arms. She scowled down at him, her mouth compressing into a hard line of resolve. "Fine."
She skirted around him, hugging Alexander so hard he thought he couldn't catch his breath, and went to the other side of the car, opening the back passenger door. As gently as she could, she stuffed Alexander into the back seat, still wrapped up warm and asleep. When she shut the door again, she refused to glance at him, her cheeks red in the silver moon.
He walked by her in silence and got into the car, waiting until she got into her side as well. He waited in close silence while she buckled up, the car so quiet that he could even hear the way that she was chewing on her bottom lip.
Well, if she was mad right now, he was just going to make it ten times worse.
He found the silver cuffs in his own pocket, holding them tightly so that they would not ring as he took Sharon's hand with his other. She tried to pull away, but he did not let go of her, holding her hand to his nose as if he wanted to smell her, and to his surprise, she released the struggle. Her bewilderment was evident as she looked at him, and it was her bewilderment that gave him enough time to strike.
He had the cuff on her wrist so fast that she didn't even have time to catch her breath, leaning forward to secure the other cuff with the passenger door handle. She was lucky that he'd grabbed her left hand, or it would've been a four-hour agony ride back to Tenzclaw territory.
Her jaw fell open, and she pulled at her wrist, but he was sure she would not be able to escape. His Omega was subdued, her face switching between fear and anger over and over.
"You're just lucky I don't put it around your own neck," he snarled. He looked back over at the kid in the back seat. He hadn't stirred the whole ride, and it made him wonder just how deeply he had slept. Good for him to be out cold while he got Sharon to look at what she had gotten herself into, anyway.
He couldn't help it, reaching back and pulling the blanket to catch a glimpse of his son's face for the first time. He was actually still sleeping, but catching sight of him was like a blow to the body. He'd seen that face before, all right--gazing back at him in the mirror when he was much younger, and in the photographs of him as a boy. He looked so damn much like him, with Sharon hues in the shape of his eyes and the curve of his mouth.
His son. He was finally taking him home.
He could sense the fear emanating from Sharon as he looked at Alexander and didn't relax until he let go of the blanket and slipped back into the driver's seat. "Get comfortable," he instructed, getting the odd vehicle in motion. "We've got a long trip, Omega."
All that Sharon was able to do as they left her cottage behind that she had struggled so hard to achieve, that she had labored years to transform into a home, was look back and see it fade from view in the distance. It was the evening, and all she could snatch was a few precious seconds before her home fell out of sight.
She felt like raging. If her wrists were loose, she imagined that she might try to strangle Luthor, Alpha crap or not. He could snap her like a twig, but at the moment, she didn't care. In one quick movement, he had ruined nearly everything she owned, except for the little boy sleeping in the trunk of the car.
The sorrow of losing everything almost strangled her, but that she still had Alexander and was still able to protect him was enough for now. It had to be.
"Don't be foolish," Luthor cautioned, as if he really knew what she was thinking as they finally left the town limits and approached the darkness. The streetlights behind them disappeared from the car as they sped quickly along the twisty road. There was scarce more than a narrow crescent of moon in the sky, but they both realized that they'd have no problem seeing as they drove home.
Her home, too, if she didn't get out.
The prospect of going back to Yellow Pack, right in the middle of so many shifter packs, was giving her the vapors. She'd wanted more than anything in the world to raise Alexander far from pack corruption and politics, and she'd just done that for seven wonderful years. Now Luthor had found them, and it was time to face reality of it all—her little Alexander was the product of an Alpha, and that Alpha had shown up to take what he believed was his.
Her magic of witchcraft churned inside of her like a hurricane, so intense that she patted against her chest to try to ward off the feeling. She reached out for it tentatively, but however hard it lashed back at her, there was something in the way of her touching it like she might any other day.
Since she'd originally laid eyes on Luthor, it had been as though the very shock of seeing him again had set something out of balance inside her. Her best weapon in the battle against the Alpha was gone, at least temporarily, and it made her feel like the same same old pathetic useless Sharon that had run from Luthor before.
But.she remained within her. Her existence in Yellow Pack was impossible to eradicate, the trauma of it having shaped much of what she had become.
Her childhood had been mediocre enough, but when she grew up into a teenager, none of her shifting skills manifested, and her pack noticed. Her parents' constant discouragement over her failure didn't help, because they never hesitated to remind her of it. But the most painful had been the response of her packmates. She'd never belong among them, a clumsy girl with no home to call her own.