I pulled into the driveway of the shabby looking motel that I now called home, and wasn’t the least bit surprised to see Dominic’s VW sitting in front of my room. He was leaning against his car, arms folded over his chest, and his legs crossed at the ankles.
I parked beside him, shut off the engine, and jumped out. “You were following me, weren’t you?” he asked, not even bothering to look at me.
I walked past him, digging out the flimsy plastic key-card from my pocket, and unlocked the room door. I thought about ignoring the question, but seeing him leaning there, so calm and cool, and with an obvious lack of respect, annoyed the hell out of me. “I was,” I snapped. “Spread the word through the pack; Jade is off limits.” As soon as the words came out, I regretted them. I could almost feel the anger rolling off of him instantly.
I pushed the door open and went straight for the curtains, pulling them closed. The room was an eye sore, and the sunlight dancing off the dust that coated the dark wooden surfaces of the desk and dresser only made it worse. I made a mental note to get cleaning supplies. I wasn’t a clean freak by any means, but the dust was starting to drive me crazy.
“Dude, you can’t claim her.” Dominic was right on my heels, coming into my room and slamming the door with a jarring thud. “You lost that privilege when you became the alpha. You know how it works. You can’t just pick a mate.” There was a protective edge to his tone that cut through me like a jagged and dull knife.
Dominic pulled out the desk chair and spun it around before dropping down into it. I could feel the hostility rolling off of him in waves, even if he did keep his tone even and the usual mask tightly in place.
“That’s not what I meant,” I said with a huff, except it kind of had been what I had meant, but I wasn’t about to admit it. I knew the rules better than most of this pack. My dad had been drilling them into me since I was old enough to understand. “Make sure Erika knows to leave her alone. Same goes for everyone else, including you.” I narrowed my eyes and I could feel my eyebrows knit together as I glared at him. “This pack is going to learn to treat people with respect.”
Dominic held my stare for a long moment, his hazel eyes shifting more yellow with every passing second. For a moment, I thought he was going to try to lecture me again on why an alpha wasn’t free to pick a mate, but he didn’t. Instead of arguing with me, he said in an acidic tone, “Yeah, sure, whatever you want.”
The tension in the room was thick as we both glared at one another, neither of us willing to back down. Secretly, I kind of admired his gall. He had only known me for half a day, and in that time, he had watched me kill the alpha, and still, he stood up to me. This was the kind of beta I needed. One that wouldn’t hesitate to tell me I was wrong. One that would stand up to me when I was making dumbass decisions. That’s what my father’s beta had done for him, and that’s what I wanted, too. Except, Dominic didn’t stand up to me because he was trying to help, he did it because he had absolutely no respect for me.
“You will start showing me some respect,” I said evenly, forging an authority into my voice that I didn’t feel, but I was already getting sick of the way he challenged my every decision, and it had only been twelve hours now. It had to stop. “This is your last warning.”
“You think you can run this pack without me?” He tensed in his chair, and his muscles shuddered under his skin as if he was on the verge of shifting.
I narrowed my eyes further and gritted my teeth. “Are you challenging me?” It came out as a growl.
Dominic considered it. He looked me up and down, insolently, and the first snap of a bone breaking and grinding sounded loudly in my ears. Bristles of coarse hair littered his cheekbones. His eyes glowed yellow, as his shift to a wolf began.
Okay, so that wasn’t what I had expected. My jaw hardened, and I widened my eyes, staring him down. My inner-wolf squirmed in my stomach, itching to come out, but I held it back, if only barely. Pins and needles rushed over my skin as my fur began to sprout. I stepped closer to him; a savage growl erupted from deep within my gut, and rumbled through my lips.
Dominic’s eyes widened, and for a split second, fear passed across them. It didn’t last. “Nope,” he said, shrugging his shoulders; any trace of the wolf vanished. “Just stating the obvious. Ray couldn’t do it, and you won’t be able to either.” He spun the chair lazily in slow circles, and all the tension in him melted away, replaced by the cool conceit that I was getting used to seeing in him. “Once Bruce’s pack finds out about you, they’ll be here, ripping this town apart while you’re weak, and I know them. I’m the one with the contact. I know how they work and where they’ll hit.” He chuckled and grinned. “You just focus on the games. Without a strong mate, you’re as good as dead.”
Again, I wanted to tell him to get out. How was I supposed to work with him? I didn’t like him, didn’t trust him. Everything about him screamed authority and he wouldn’t back down. He had made it clear more than once that he didn’t want to be the alpha, but I wasn’t buying it. No one would go to such extremes to show their dominance if they didn’t want the position. There was just something about him that got my defenses up and whatever it was, it only felt more intense with each passing minute.
He was still spinning the chair around in slow circles, when I finally dropped my glare and padded over to the lumpy bed. I sprawled out, staring up at the off-white popcorn ceiling. I couldn’t say how long we sat there, neither of us bothering to say anything, when I asked, “Why haven’t you made a move for her?” I hadn’t even really realized that I wanted to know his reason until the words were out of my mouth. I glanced over at him then and he was smirking.
Dominic’s smirk turned into a smile and his shoulders began to shake as he tried to hold in a laugh. “Is that what you think?” He burst out into laughter, and choked out, “Dude, I’m into men.”
That hadn’t been the answer I had expected, and I was sure that if I hadn’t been able to smell the truth in his scent, or hear the steady beat of his heart, I wouldn’t have believed him. As I looked at him, though, even without those other things, I could see the truth written all over his face, and it confused the hell out of me. The kind of hatred I saw between him and Jade was the kind of hatred that stemmed from a lot of hurt feelings and a deep connection. Maybe they were together before he realized? I wondered.
“Why does she hate you so much?” I asked.
His smile vanished and his laughter died abruptly. “She doesn’t hate me.” His tone was insolent, his jaw, clenched. It was as if he was daring me to say that Jade didn’t like him.
“I’m not an idiot, Dominic,” I growled and sat up, glaring at him.
He threw his hands up in surrender. “Seriously, she doesn’t hate me exactly,” he said with more than a little contempt. “Jade just hates the pack. She thinks we ruined her life. She’d be happy if there was no such thing as a werewolf.” He was lying. I could hear it in his voice. It was defensive, and wavered slightly. I was about to call him on it when he smirked, and chuckled. “But don’t worry about it too much. Soon enough she’ll hate you, too.”
I lay back on the bed, forcing my tense muscles to relax. I didn’t want to think about her, or anyone hating me just because I shifted into a wolf every once in a while. It was still hard to wrap my head around the town dynamics. Humans knowingly living with werewolves. It seemed wrong and utterly perfect all at the same time. I figured it would make life easier, not having to hide, and from what I’d heard about Bruce’s pack, not hiding would make these people a whole lot safer. But still … it was weird.
“We’ve got to get going,” Dominic said. “You ready to defend your title and start the games?” There was laughter in his voice, and when I shifted on the bed to look at him, he was giving me an odd kind of look.
“I’m defending the title against you?” I asked, forging my voice to sound cool and uncaring, as if he was a pesky flea and nothing to worry about, but in all honesty, out of all the males I had
met so far, Dominic was the one I worried about.
He didn’t answer. His eyes were dancing with amusement and he chuckled as he rose from his chair and headed for the door. But then I guess his laughter was enough to answer my question.
“I won’t go easy on you,” I said, sitting up. “I might not have meant to take over this pack, but I do intend on keeping it.” Part of me wanted to launch at him right then and there and end this … whatever this was that was brewing between us, but I couldn’t. No. I wouldn’t. I was going to do this by the rules. Every male had a right to challenge me once I overthrew the alpha. That was the point of this ceremony, and I needed to defend the title with honor and witnesses, not in a brawl in a grungy motel room. Tonight, I would either be taken down or I would remain standing. I intended to remain standing.
Dominic stopped at the door and glanced over his shoulder at me. “Hurry up, man,” he said with a smirk. “Let’s get this over with.”
CHAPTER 5
~ JADE ~
The walk home was quiet. Too quiet. I took the trail that cut through the woods. It ran from the school right past my house. It was probably just Dominic’s insinuated threat that Erika was lurking about, but the whole way home, I was on edge. At every bend in the path, my heart literally stopped until I could see that nothing was hidden around it, and the hair on the back of my neck stood on end, sending prickling shivers down my spine. After the first two minutes or so, I was seriously kicking myself for not taking Aidan (or Dominic for that matter) up on the ride home.
Me and my stupid pride! That’s pretty much what it all boiled down to. I was too proud to ask one of those stupid dogs for help. And Aidan, well, I couldn’t think of a good excuse for that. Stupidity was pretty much all I had there.
I wondered if Aidan knew about the werewolves. I was pretty certain that he didn’t. If he did, he wouldn’t have faced off with Dominic as he had. I thought about telling him, warning him to stay clear of the pack, but each time the words ran through my mind, all I saw was his smirk and laughing eyes. He’d probably think I was a lunatic.
“Jade, where have you been?” Marcy yelled from my porch step, as I stepped out of the tree line. “I’ve been waiting for hours.” She raced over to me, throwing her arms around me in a too tight hug. “Don’t scare me like that again.”
Laughing, I pried her too tight arms off of my waist. “Really, Mac? Hours?” To say she was a little dramatic would have been a complete understatement. Marcy was one of those all or nothing kind of people, and she applied it to every aspect of her life. There was never a middle ground with her. And that was one of the things I loved about her the most.
She wrinkled her nose at me and tucked her long blond hair behind her ears. “Okay, maybe it was only ten minutes. But it felt like hours.” She grabbed my hand and dragged me over to the porch swing. “Did you hear the news?” she asked, as she plopped down, taking me with her. The swing creaked and cracked under our weight. She didn’t even take a breath for me to answer before she huffed and muttered, “No, of course you didn’t. I shouldn’t even know yet.”
“What news?” I asked distractedly, noticing that the oversized driveway was empty, and the house was quiet. I glanced at my watch, 4:15. Where were my parents?
“If I tell you, you have to swear not to breathe a word,” she said, giving me a stern look.
“Of course,” I grumbled and rolled my eyes. Marcy had been going through this gossip phase. It started about a month ago, and each day since, there was another big piece of ‘news’ that I couldn’t breathe a word about. It usually consisted of who was dating who, or what one of the she wolves had worn; a bunch of useless information, really. But like I said before, she was an all or nothing kind of person, and gossiping was no different from anything else. At least her information was harmless to those she talked about. Marcy didn’t have a malicious bone in her body. I leaned back on the swing, getting comfortable, and waited to be bombarded with whatever had sparked her interest today.
Marcy leaned into me; her vanilla spice lotion tickled my nose, and she whispered, “Ray is dead.”
If Marcy had wanted my attention, she got it. “Holy sugar sticks!” I shrieked, and I swiveled on the swing, making the chains creak. My eyes felt as if they were bulging out of their sockets. “He’s dead? You sure he’s not just on a bender again?” It wasn’t uncommon for the pack’s alpha to disappear for a few days (or weeks) when he started drinking again. Clearly, Dominic wasn’t kidding when he said the pack was stressed.
I felt sick. Guilt washed over me in nauseating waves of hot and cold. Had Dominic been reaching out to me because he needed a friend? Did I want to be that friend? Yes. No. Yes. Maybe.
Marcy held a finger to her lips and shushed me, and then she began wrapping a chunk of her hair around her finger, a nervous release she did often. That’s when I noticed her puffy, bloodshot eyes, and her wrinkly T-shirt. Marcy was a girly girl. She always looked perfect, and come to think of it, unless she was sleeping, I was pretty sure that I’d never seen her in a baggy T-shirt before. She tried to smile, but I could see through the act. Her lips were tight, forced into an exaggerated curve. If she had been wearing red lipstick, she would have resembled a demented clown.
She leaned into me again, dropping her voice even lower, as if she was worried someone would overhear her. “I overheard Dad talking about it at the station this afternoon so I snuck into his office and …” she let her words fall short and visibly shuddered before whispering, “I saw the pictures from the investigation. Ray had bite marks all over him. You know what that means, right?” Her eyes were as wide as quarters and that creepy smile twisted at the edges of her lips again.
I just sat there, staring at her speechless, and a small shiver rushed over my skin. A new alpha, a voice in my head whispered, but I couldn’t believe it. “Impossible,” I said, more firmly than I felt. “We would have known already if someone had challenged Ray. The pack doesn’t keep that stuff a secret. Are you sure the pictures were of him?”
Marcy pursed her lips and glared at me. “Of course I’m sure. I do work there.”
I rolled my eyes. I didn’t think a co-op class was classified as actually working anywhere. Well, maybe it kind of was work, but really, she had only been doing it for a week now. There were two detectives in Dog Mountain, Marcy’s dad being one of them, and he wanted her to follow in his footsteps. Or at least that’s what he said, but truthfully, I thought it had more to do with her mom walking out on them last year than career training. He wanted to keep a closer eye on her, and what better way than to have her spend half of the day on the job with him.
A gust of cool wind blew over us, rustling the leaves in the towering oak tree that sat in the front yard, and I shivered again. Fall was coming. I could feel it in the air, crisp and fresh. It wouldn’t be long now before the leaves changed. They were already starting; a small hint of red and yellow tinged the oak and maple trees surrounding my yard.
“I’m just saying,” Marcy said with a shrug. “He was a werewolf. I highly doubt it was a random drunk man falling into a ditch and being mauled to death by a wild animal kind of thing.” She arched a puffy brow at me then and asked, “What took you so long anyway?”
“Erika stole my clothes and left me pretty much naked in the gym locker room,” I said absently, my mind reeling with the threat of a new alpha. The recruiting would start again and then the power struggle; all of the wolves fighting each other for a higher standing in the pack. I had seen it happen twice in the last seven years, and each time had been worse than the last.
Marcy gasped and grabbed my arm. “You’re kidding.”
I let out a strangled kind of laugh. She was wiggling about on the swing, dying to hear the gossip. “Nope, and out of all the people who could have come by, it was Dominic that brought me my stuff back.”
“Dominic? Really?” she squealed. “Please tell me you two have worked it out, and the two year silent treatment is over.”
r /> With a long and drawn out groan, I said, “Mac, seriously, he’s a jerk.” I cut her a look that I hoped showed how much I disapproved of the way she still idolized him. “You need to forget about him already. It’s been two years.”
Marcy, unlike me, had nothing against Dominic or the pack for that matter. It made no sense to me. It was their fault that her mother left, even if it wasn’t intentional. Marcy’s mom had never been okay with the whole werewolf thing (not that I blamed her) and last year she finally cracked — literally. She started doing drugs, drinking, and then a few months later, she just up and left without even saying goodbye. But, instead of blaming the pack, Marcy blamed her mom. I guessed there was something rational behind her blame, but seriously, shouldn’t she hate the wolves just as much?
She smacked my knee playfully. “I miss him, and he’s really not that bad. He hasn’t changed as much as you think. If you’d just give him a chance …” She looked at me, giving me one of those I feel sorry for you looks, and said, “I think he misses you, too.”
Misses me. The idea of Dominic missing me made the hair on the back of my neck and my arms stand on end and a small, but very noticeable, chill prickle over my skin. I tried to pretend that the shiver was from the brisk wind, but it wasn’t. My stomach twisted and jumped; my body was alive with a craving — a longing — for him, one that I was beginning to think time would not dampen.
“Have you heard anything about a new alpha?” I asked, steering her back to the important stuff. My palms were starting to sweat, clammy and cold. My heart was aching. It was as if with every frantic beat, a hand gripped onto it, squeezing it tight in my chest. The last thing I wanted to think about was the gaping hole that Dominic had left behind when he walked out on Marcy and me two years ago.