Mark and Landon moved closer to me, their faces as hard as stone. They growled, low and deadly, their gaze locked on Jared, watching his approach with trained eyes. Craig turned, moving in, flanking Jared. His eyes flared and his muscles began to tick all along his neck.
“Jared, that’s close enough.” Beck’s voice barely carried over the increasing sound of the growling coming out of Mark and Landon and it didn’t stop Jared from taking another step.
The five of them, Jared and Craig on one side, Mark, Landon, and Beck on the other stared off. The growls increased as the tension rose. The air crackled with it and I started to crack.
“What the hell has gotten into you all?” I shouted. My imprint heated, my skin shuddered. I let my scent thicken, hanging like a heavy mist over us, and I focused on calling their attention to my alpha wolf. The echo of growls slowly softened, and then there was only the heavy pumping sound of their breathing.
Jared recovered first as my scent began to recede, and he looked at me with a haze of violence clouding his face. His lips pulled up at the corners again, but his eyes stayed cold and black. “Come on, kitten,” he snarled. “We all know why you asked me to come back. And don’t think no one has noticed that it’s you who’s standing in Aidan’s way from trying to kill me. It would take a moron not to see it.” He took another step toward me.
Beck shoved him back so hard that Jared stumbled. “I said that’s close enough.” His voice was a low, menacing growl, as he faced off with Jared. “Take one more step and I will kill you.”
Dammit! What the hell is going on with my team? I harnessed my scent again and forced their attention. It took a bit longer than the last time, but one by one they each started to relax, thankfully not fighting the call of my alpha wolf. Jared even bowed a little. The show of respect was a shocker. And then he gripped Craig’s arm and dragged him out the door.
~ AIDAN ~
Running on the treadmill turned out to be a good relief. It kept me focused and let me think as I waited for Jade to get back. My thighs were screaming as I hit the tenth mile, but I wasn’t ready to stop. I increased the incline, found my stride, and kept going.
Dominic had finally given up on trying to talk to me and left. I figured that was probably for the best. The more I thought about the information that Tommy and Chris had uncovered, the more I wanted to punch something. And listening to Mrs. Shaw confirm it all plus some, seriously hadn’t helped.
I knew the team was a necessary evil to defend my pack, not just from outside threats but from me. But I still kept coming to the same conclusion: I needed to disband them and build a new team. Blood was thicker than pack to some and those boys were a perfect example of that. Dammit! Jade had had enough heartbreak. She didn’t need this.
At that moment, the gym doors swung open. Jade. Her scent filled the air like a warm breeze through a farmer’s fruit field. I glanced up. Landon had a loose arm around her waist, and she leaned into him as she limped into the room. Mark and Beck crowded in behind them. And none of them looked happy.
I hit the emergency stop button and was off the treadmill before the belt stopped rolling. Jade looked pale and the scent of her pain mingled with her natural fragrance, causing anxiety to spike through my head. My instincts fired up, because Jared and Craig weren’t with them, and that had to mean something had gone wrong. More wrong than her being hurt. Even if he hated me, Jared wouldn’t leave her like this. He wouldn’t. My mouth went dry as if my tongue had shriveled up and a low rumbling sound went through my chest.
Just as I was going to go to her, she said, “Before you get all growly …” Pain laced her voice, and it showed in the deep lines on her forehead. She sucked in a breath. “I can’t walk without his support yet.” She wasn’t looking at me. Knowing her, she didn’t want me to see the pain in her eyes. She probably figured it was a weakness.
I went to her in a rush and gathered her into my arms. As soon as she was settled against me I felt her soothing hands stroke down my shoulders, as if she thought I needed calming. “What happened to you?” I demanded. My voice was too harsh, raw. Maybe I did need calming.
“Hunter’s trap,” she said. She leaned into me, kissing my cheek at the corner of my mouth. “I was looking at some claw marks on a tree when I got snagged in a trap.” Her hand brushed over my chest and drifted up to my cheek. “I’m fine. Really, I’m fine.”
I lifted my gaze, fixing it on the boys. “Where are Jared and Craig?”
“Taking a breather,” Beck said. He fell into an attack posture, bending his knees, bringing his arms up. “And it’s best they take it.”
I glared at Beck and let out a bitter laugh. My chest burned so badly with white-hot rage that I thought if Jade wasn’t pressed against me I’d probably let him attack and then kill him for trying it. “Which one of them are you willing to fight me to protect?”
He didn’t get a chance to respond. Jade stiffened and dragged in a lungful of air. “Aidan, let this one go,” she said, brushing another kiss over my cheek. She glanced over her shoulder. “Beck, you’d better relax that glare you have fixed on my mate.”
I was so pissed off that it took me a moment to see what was happening right in front of me. Without a word, Beck relaxed, and whipped his head down, fixing his gaze to the floor, obeying her command.
My jaw dropped on its own no matter how hard I tried to keep it up. I couldn’t believe she had spoken to him with that kind of command. And I really couldn’t believe that he had listened. Wait, had she just called me her mate?
I put a hand over my eyes and scrubbed at my face. Okay, this was good, right?
Her scent shifted then, and it confused the hell out of me. I could smell her pain, but there was also a thick flare of sweetness, the same sweetness she’d had in the showers. Her delicate touches were ruining my focus, and when I glanced down at her it was clear that that was exactly what she was trying to do. Distract me.
Sitting down seemed like a damn good idea right then.
I shook off my fury and sucked in a breath, and then I scooped her up and carried her over a weight bench. I sat her down gently, and kneeled in front of her. Once she was settled, I took the foot she’d been favoring into my hands, rolling up her jeans. Her ankle was swollen and raw looking with an angry red line encircling it. I looked over my shoulder, glaring. “How the hell did she get so hurt?”
Landon grinned, shaking his head. “She shifted while she was dangling upside down by the rope.” He chuckled. “You’ve been too easy on her. Our girl stays with you for a few days and she forgets everything we taught her.”
“It’s not funny,” Jade hissed, as a rosy flush crept up her neck. She managed to put the entire definition of embarrassed into it.
And that’s when I fully understood her scent and the touches. The entire team had seen my mate naked, dangling by a rope, and she probably assumed I’d lose it. I knew I shouldn’t have, but I smirked and chuckled. Seriously, I had never met a werewolf who was as paranoid about being seen naked as she was. It was adorable, and incredibly impractical.
She must have seen me realize it because she said, “Not a word, Aidan.” Her eyes blazed with fire. Her throat worked hard and another brilliant flush crept up her neck.
I quickly swallowed my chuckle and put on my best serious expression. I figured it wasn’t very good because Jade rolled her eyes and pursed her lips. “Tell him what we found, guys,” she snapped.
“Uh-huh, sure,” Beck said with a stiff nod, and came over to us. He wouldn’t look at me, but then that was probably a smart choice on his part, because, yep, I was still simmering. “We searched four hunting camps. They’d been in all of them. I’m pretty sure the last one was where the accident happened.” He looked a little green suddenly and he swallowed a few times before continuing. “There were barbed wire cages with traces of human blood, whips, chains …” Another hard swallow. “Jade found claw marks on the trees.”
“They’re climbing the trees,” Landon
added. “It’s why we keep losing their damn trail.” He was still in the doorway, stiff and straight. His tall, long legs were like thick boards, and his arms hung like metal rods, rigid and unbendable. He stared at me with wide, red-rimmed, baby-blue eyes. I could almost taste his anxiety in the air. He looked back at me with an intense focus and I got the gut twisting sinking feeling that he knew Tommy and Chris would have told me everything while they were gone.
“The marks were deep, not just one of them scratching, but really cut in,” Mark continued. “I think Jade’s right about them climbing, but I can’t see how they could jump from tree to tree. It’s not like they’re small cats. You’d think the branches would snap on the landing.”
“About Jade …” Beck started, shoving his hands in his pockets. He glanced down as if he were trying to put some words together in his head but couldn’t quite find any he liked.
“Don’t worry about it, guys,” she said in a low calm voice. “I’m almost as good as new. Honest.” But she wasn’t. She started to tremble as she gave me a bright, brittle smile.
“Sorry we didn’t take Tommy and Chris with us,” Landon said. He looked overly calm, and his glare was still pointed.
Oh, hell. He must know they told me. With a shrinking feeling, I wondered if I should apologize for killing their dad.
Landon smiled then, a sad smile, and before I could think of anything to say, he said, “You should probably take her home. She’s exhausted.”
CHAPTER 27
~ JADE ~
I grabbed a steamy breath of air. My nerves were too tight, too bunched up under my skin, and the blistering shower wasn’t helping much.
Aidan had been so quiet on the drive home, as if he’d been waiting for me to open up. He hadn’t asked anything and I hadn’t either. The words had been on the tip of my tongue, but they hadn’t fallen from the safety of my mouth. Why was it so hard to admit that I may have been wrong?
Beck had threatened to kill Jared, hadn’t he? And then he’d threatened to attack Aidan, too. Jesus, I’d been so surprised by the menace I saw in those guys tonight. I’d always known they could be scary. I even remembered a time when I went to all costs to avoid them. But they had always been close with each other. Always.
But they weren’t close. Not now. Not anymore. And it was my fault. I didn’t have a clue why, but I knew, just knew that it was.
If I hadn’t stepped in, harnessing my inner-alpha, well, I wasn’t really sure if we all would have made it back. No, I wasn’t sure of that at all.
Commanding them the way I had really hadn’t left a good taste in my mouth. It was the vicious look that Jared had given me that made me feel sick, as if I’d stepped over a line by using my inner-alpha on him and his team. I’d stripped him of his authority without thinking and I was pretty sure he would never forgive me for that.
Damn, I still felt sick.
My eyes watered and I leaned my forehead against the tiled wall as the scalding water beat against my skin. I’d been such a fool to bring Jared back into the mix. I should have just let him go.
By the time I’d finally turned off the water, it had started to run cold, but at least I was beginning to feel a little more like myself. I dressed in a rush, pulling on jeans and a sweater, and went straight for the kitchen. My stomach was grumbling and the house smelled deliciously like Shake ‘N Bake chicken.
Aidan was standing over the sink, elbows deep in suds as he scrubbed at a baking sheet. When he saw me, he grinned. “How’s the ankle?” he asked, drying off his hands on his jeans.
“Hurts, but it’s getting better,” I said. I hobbled over to the table and sat down. It was set, which seemed out of place. Aidan just didn’t set the table. He didn’t usually eat at it either. Meal time was more of a grab and go thing with him, leaving everything on the stove. Normally, we would dish out what we wanted before heading to the couch. But at the table were three lit candles, placed in the center, the flames tall and flickering. “What’s all this?” I asked, eyeing the candles suspiciously.
Aidan went to the oven, pulled it open, and with a towel draped over his hands, he pulled out two heaping plates of chicken and vegetables. He placed a steaming plate in front of me. “I’m trying to make up for my crappy growling earlier.”
I laughed a full-belly laugh, and darn, it felt good. “By lighting smelly candles?”
He rounded the table, setting down his own plate, and took a seat. He gave me one of his lopsided grins and gestured to the plates filled with chicken and vegetables. “And I cooked dinner.”
I smirked, trying not to laugh again. “You could also just say sorry, you know.”
Aidan looked down at the table, furrowing his brow. “Isn’t this better?” he asked. He was absolutely serious.
I blinked, shaking my head. “Nope, saying sorry is always better.” I closed my fingers around my fork and scooped up a piece of broccoli. “That way I get to feel like I was right.”
He snorted and rolled his eyes. He looked as if he were about to say something, but he must have thought better of it, and dug into the food instead, which was probably the smart thing to do given the wicked smirk that was playing on his lips.
We ate in silence for a few minutes. The food, like always, was fan-freakin-tastic. One of the things I loved about Aidan, the man knew how to cook. The chicken was juicy; the vegetables warm, but still had that nice crunch. Delicious.
I swallowed a mouthful of chicken and looked up. “Something is really wrong with the team,” I said. As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I kind of wished I hadn’t said them, because it was pretty much the last thing I wanted to talk about right then.
Slurping his drink, Aidan leaned back in his chair. His smirk was gone. “Yeah,” he said.
Considering what had happened with Beck, I really expected more than just Yeah, but it didn’t look like I was going to get it. In fact, he was looking at me with a perfectly guarded expression, which was weird. Aidan wasn’t much for guarding his feelings, at least not with me. With me, he kind of sucked at it.
I pushed some food around my plate, glanced back up at him, and heard myself ask a question that I wasn’t sure I really wanted the answer to. “How did you know I was with Jared earlier?”
“Your Dad,” he said, forking a piece of chicken and popping it into his mouth. He chewed it slowly, considering, and then swallowed it down. “Jared beat the shit out of him and then took off when you called.”
I was thrown for a minute, and I was sure my eyes went saucer wide. “What was Jared doing with my dad?” I dropped my fork. “Wait. He hit my dad?”
Aidan nodded. His eyes were darkening, a rich brown velvet, and some of the guardedness faded as if he had just then decided to tell me what was going through his head. “Jeff said something about people getting hurt when he fights with his brothers.”
I stared at him blankly for a few long seconds, trying to understand what Jared’s fighting had to do with anything. I puffed out a breath. Pulled one in, and said, “He doesn’t have any brothers.” I was sure of that.
“About that.” Aidan set his fork down. He watched me with an intense stare, the kind that he usually reserved for when I was pissing him off or when he was about to tell me something I really didn’t want to hear. “He does have brothers, four of them.”
And just like that, our nice dinner turned into a long, long evening.
Eventually, Aidan finished telling me about the newest piece of information that Tommy and Chris had found out. He told me about his concerns with everyone in the team being brothers and stressed that he thought we should take apart the team and rebuild it.
He went on to fill me in on how the pack had handled me taking off with the guys, which as it turned out, was better than I had hoped, and he thought that some of the males were warming up to me. I thought that it was about time we had some good news.
But then he told me about his visit with my mother and when he was done, I was pretty much numb.
<
br /> Through the whole thing, he kept his tone detached and direct, only giving the facts and closing off all emotion. Except, he watched me as if he were assessing just how upset I was about the news, which, on a scale of one to ten, I was sitting somewhere near an eleven.
Given everything he told me, it was a surprisingly short conversation and when he finished, I tried to tell him about what had happened at the camp, but he cut me off, gave me a kiss, and told me nothing had to be decided tonight, and then, he went to take a shower.
I puttered around the kitchen, washing the last few dishes. I thought about everything. About what I could fix and what was completely out of my control. But mostly I thought about how this was the first time Aidan had talked to me, really talked to me, about pack stuff without trying to protect me.
In the bedroom, I stretched and changed into a pair of boxers and a tank. I pulled my hair back, tying it into a loose knot, and waited for Aidan to finish his shower.
I had every intention of staying awake, I really did. I wanted to talk to him about what had gone down at the hunting camp and about what we found, but as I laid down and my head hit the pillow, sleep took me in a rush.
~ AIDAN ~
Jade was a bed hog.
I had an elbow digging into my ribs and a knee in my back. The covers were kicked off the bed, not even a sheet left. I went to roll over a little but I couldn’t. Somehow she’d managed to shove me to the edge of our king size bed.
The space on the other side of her was loaded with the pillows she’d flung. She had even snagged mine, I noticed, which she was now using as her own.
I held in my laugh and worked to dislodge her knee and elbow without waking her up. She made a contented sound from the back of her throat and wrapped an arm around me, nuzzling her head into my side. She didn’t fully wake up, stuck somewhere between sleep and awareness, and when I kissed her forehead she sighed, and then her breathing deepened and evened out, and she was lost in sleep again.