by Quinn Loftis
She jerked the phone away from her ear and tossed it on her bed. Jacque continued to watch the Jen from the past pace while muttering under her breath. It sickened her to think that she had caused this. She’d put a rift in their relationship for a guy that wasn’t even her soul mate.
“She loves you,” the Great Luna said placing a hand on Jacque’s shoulder. “That is why she is so angry, because she loves you and wants what’s best for you.” Once again they are pulled from the room but this time when they stop Jacque doesn’t recognize her surroundings.
“I’ve never been―” she begins but her words get stuck in her lungs as she watches Lucas carry her into the room. He tosses her playfully onto a large bed and she giggles.
“I do not sound like that when I laugh,” Jacque snarled as she watched herself smile up at him. She wanted to walk across the room and smack the grin off of her own face.
“I really need to get home. If I break curfew my mom will make me work every weekend from now until I graduate,” the past Jacque said still smiling like an idiot.
Lucas let out a low sigh. “Our time together goes too fast.” He laid down beside her and played with a tendril of her hair. Lucas stared at her with such intensity that Jacque nearly had to look away from them, and when he leaned forward she understood clearly that he was going to kiss the Jacque laying with him.
“Please don’t make me watch,” Jacque pleaded as she placed a hand on the Great Luna’s arm. “Please.” She closed her eyes and when she opened them again she was back in her room. Her eyes widened as she looked at the three girls standing next to Jacque’s bed.
“I guess this is the intervention?” Jacque looked over at the Great Luna.
“You three friends have a rare blessing in each other. You don’t find such devotion in many relationships.” The Great Luna turned back to the group.
“We’re doing this for your own good, Jacque,” Jen told the Jacque standing in front of her. “You haven’t been yourself since you started dating that best friend thief and we’re tired of it.”
“Lucas isn’t the problem,” her past self responded.
“Are you implying that we are the problem?” Sally asked pressing a hand to her chest.
“Look, I know that I’ve been spending a lot of time with him, and I’ve canceled on you guys a couple of times.”
“A couple of times?” Jen scoffed. “Are you living in an alternate reality or something, Red? Try every time for the past two months. You are with him constantly. You don’t return our calls. You text us when you want to cancel instead of growing a pair and looking us in the face when you bail. I don’t even know who you are anymore. And don’t even get me started on the crap we know that you aren’t telling us.”
Jacque watched as the face of her past self paled. So she was keeping something from them.
“Now you’re just letting your vivid imagination fill your head full of crap, Jennifer,” the other Jacque huffed as she folded her arms across her chest. “I have no secrets. And I honestly don’t mean to blow y’all off. Lucas can just be really persuasive.”
“I frankly don’t give a damn if Lucas pee’s gold and craps twenty dollar bills. He’s making you keep things from your best friends and that is not cool, Jac. Not. Cool.” Jen looked as though she might reach across the bed and strangle her best friend.
The past Jacque stood there staring at her two friends and, after several minutes of tense silence, she seemed to deflate as if all the air had been let out of her. “They aren’t my secrets to tell, Jen.”
“Maybe not, but it was your lie. You could have just told us instead of lying to us about it all together.” Jen’s voice was full of hurt. Her shoulders slumped forward as she shook her head. “I know you think he’s perfect, but he’s not good for you, Red. Why can’t you see that?”
“How can you possibly know what’s good for me when you won’t even take the time to get to know him?”
“Excuse me?” Sally jumped in. “We tried, but if you can recall, your precious Lucas was a complete and total ass to us the couple of times that we were with you guys. And you just made excuses for him. He’d had a bad day, or he just doesn’t share well, or blah, blah, blah. Don’t you dare lay that on us.”
“You know what?” Jen asked as she met the past Jacque’s hard gaze. “I’m done. If you can’t see the truth when it’s slapping you in your stupid face, then I’m not going to waste my oxygen on you. When you realize that Lucas Steele is not who he seems to be and come running back to us, you had better hope I’m in one of my forgiving moods.”
Both Jacque’s snorted, though the girls only heard one of them. The past Jacque added, “You don’t have forgiving moods.”
Jen turned for the door with Sally on her heels. “Then I guess your screwed, Red. Have a nice life.”
The bedroom door closed behind them and it was as if a prison door had been slammed shut and Jacque was on the wrong side of it. She watched her past self slide to the floor as the realization of what had just happened fell heavily on her shoulders. Her body shook as she tried to hold in the tears.
“I’m an idiot,” Jacque whispered to the Great Luna as her own heart broke right along with her former self.
“You were blinded by a charming, handsome man who caught you at a vulnerable time after Trent broke up with you. The most difficult thing in this whole situation is that though Lucas’ good intentions will only have ill effects, he genuinely cares for you.”
“Can we go?” Jacque asked her as she watched the past her fall apart. She didn’t want to hear about how a wolf that wasn’t her mate cared for her, especially when that relationship was tearing her friendships apart.
The Great Luna looked over at her and nodded. “Perhaps, now is a good time to show you how your true mate fares without you by his side.”
Jacque’s stomach dropped. She truly hoped she wasn’t about to have to watch Fane with another girl the way she’d just watched herself with Lucas.
“What if I tell you that I’ve seen the error of my ways? Can we just go back to our time?”
The Great Luna smiled as she took Jacque’s hand. “I want to believe you, but it is my experience that humans never learn that quickly, and you, my child, are half human.”
Jacque attempted to steel herself against what she might see. She didn’t know if she could watch Fane have a life without her. In fact, she was pretty sure that if she watched Fane smile at another female the way she’d just watched herself smile at Lucas she might attempt to claw the chick’s eyes out. Wouldn’t that be dignifying?
Chapter 7
Fane and Decebel ran through the forest, and though they weren’t in their wolf forms, they still moved inhumanly fast. Fane had caught Jacque’s scent the minute he’d gotten out of the SUV, which had been about the same time Decebel finally decided to tell him that his mate and Jen were being chased by wild boar. He kept trying to reach out to her, but she had their mental bond closed up tight. All he could picture was his pregnant mate running through a dark forest with pigs attempting to trample her. She wasn’t helpless, by any means, but she was his and she was once again in harms’ way.
“How far did Jen say they were?” Fane asked Decebel as the Alpha kept pace beside him.
“She didn’t,” he growled. “She was yelling like a maniac and then she just shut me out.”
Fane was pretty sure that they would never fully understand their females. They wanted space, of course, but all hell would break loose if the males were the ones who closed the bonds. They wanted open and honest feelings, and yet Jacque hid from him instead of talking to him about whatever it was that had caused her to close their bond. He was truly at a loss on how to be what she needed.
Decebel suddenly made a sharp turn as he yelled, “There!”
Fane altered his course to follow the Alpha. He’d lost Jacquelyn’s trail a quarter of a mile back and could only pick up Jen’s scent and the scent of wild pigs. But still he kept running beca
use Jen had said they were together. He had no reason to believe that Jen would be lying about it.
Jen continued to run despite the fact that she could feel her mate closing in on her. For someone who prided herself on her adaptability, she was feeling rather unprepared. She was blaming it on pregnancy hormones… No, not her own, she couldn’t get by with that anymore but she could claim Jacque’s. “Yeah, you just keep telling yourself that, blondie,” she grumbled to herself as she pushed her feet to move even faster. Jen knew she wasn’t going to keep it up much longer. Decebel was simply just too much stronger and faster than her. His legs were more powerful and able to cover more ground than hers, no matter how much she hated to admit it.
When she could hear his breathing behind her, she knew it was time to move on to part two of her plan…whatever the hell that was. She slowed down until she was able to come to a stop and leaned over, resting her hands on her knees. Her breathing was fast, but she was in no way out of breath. Werewolves could run for a long time before they finally gave out.
Decebel’s arms were around her seconds later and she leaned into his touch as she always did and always would. Jen was going to soak it up while she could because it wouldn’t be long before he put on his brooding face and started grilling her with questions that she was not going to have answers to.
“Are you alright?” he asked, his voice low and fervent.
Jen pulled back to look up at him and sure enough his amber eyes glowed with the presence of his wolf. “I’m good.”
“Where is Jacquelyn?” Fane asked as she watched him stomp around in useless circles searching through the trees. Jen could tell he was trying to listen as well. Poor wolf wouldn’t hear what he was hoping to.
“Okay, so you might want to sit down for this,” Jen said as she stepped out of Decebel’s hold. She pulled the band from her hair and re-gathered it into a neater pony tail, more to stall than for any other reason. It wasn’t like she really cared what she looked like in that moment.
“No offense, Jen, but I don’t want to sit. I want to see my mate. Is she alright? Has she found a place to hide from the boar?” Fane’s eyes were glowing the ice blue that was freaky as much as it was beautiful.
Jen let out a long sigh. Damn, she hated to give in so easily, but what was she supposed to do? It’s not like she could just keep running and expecting them to follow her. Eventually both the males were going to figure out that there weren’t any stupid pigs in the forest and there sure as hell wasn’t any Jacque. “Okay, so it’s like this,” she began. “I came over here with every intention of spending some time with my bestie and hoping to figure out what’s crawled up her butt and made her act so weird. When I got here I caught her scent leading into the forest. It was strong so I knew it was recent.” Jen paused and wondered if maybe she should skip all the truly unnecessary information, because Fane was really starting to look a tad crazy. But then she remembered the Great Luna asking her to distract him. She couldn’t let the deity down, so the long, totally unnecessary version it would be.
“So what did I do?” she asked as she walked over to a tree and leaned up against it, crossing her arms in front of her chest—might as well get comfortable. “I trek my happy little butt up into the forest, in the dark, where it is beginning to get cold. The whole time I’m marching along I’m thinking my pregnant little friend―well not little. . .because let’s face it, the girl's butt has expanded. Anyways, I’m thinking she better have brought something warm to wear, because as you can see,” she said as she pointed to herself, “I did not come prepared to take a leisurely stroll through the cold mountain terrain. But then, knowing Jacque, and what a planner she is not, I’m figuring she probably didn’t put on a coat so I started to pick up the pace. I didn’t realize how far I’d gone until I happen to look around and notice all the big boulders and crevices in the mountain. This is where you,” she said looking at Decebel, “contacted me about my breathing. Truth be told, babe, I was having some flashbacks to a certain time when a nut job pushed me into one of those crevices.”
Decebel growled and took a step toward here. Jen held up her hand. “Chill, big guy, I lived. I’m here. It’s all good.” Jen had yet to open the bond completely back up, and she felt Decebel’s very powerful push and finally dropped it.
“Are you truly okay?” he asked and the tone of his voice had her wanting to crawl up in his lap and reassure him that memories weren’t enough to have her falling apart.
“I’m fine, B. It just caught me by surprise.”
He watched her intently before finally nodding.
“Not to interrupt but could you please just get to the part where you tell me where Jacquelyn is?” Fane asked and Jen could tell he was trying very hard to keep the growl out of his voice.
“Right,” Jen said turning back to him. “So, after dealing with that minor setback I continued on my mission to figure out where Jacque was and why the crap she’d gone so far into the mountains at night.”
Fane paused in his pacing and closed his eyes. Okay, Jen, she thought, maybe I should tone it down about his mate being alone in the dark cold mountains full of predators.
“Maybe you should just get to the point,” her mate helpfully added.
She shot him a glare. “I have a reason for doing what I’m doing.”
“Naturally,” he huffed.
“Not too long after the boulders, I picked up a scent that didn’t belong in the forest.”
Fane’s head snapped around and his eyes narrowed on her.
Jen held up a hand. “Whoa, hold it together a little longer wolf-man. It was the Great Luna.” Jen inwardly growled at herself for not having a better plan. Man, it was embarrassing to have to resort to the truth, especially since giving him the truth wasn’t really going to help. Regardless of what the Great Luna had told her, she still didn’t have a clue where Jacque was, and that was not going to make the already pissed off wolf any happier.
“What did she say?” Fane practically snarled.
Decebel took several steps closer to his mate; his natural instinct to protect her, no matter who it was, taking over. Jen knew she was going to have to tread carefully. Male werewolves were touchy about their females on a good day. Fane did not know where his mate was and could not communicate with her. It definitely wasn’t a good day.
“You know how she can be,” Jen hedged. “She said a whole lot but very little of it was any use. Basically, it was a whole lot of Jacque needing to learn a lesson about something―blah, blah, blah― and she might have mentioned something about needing me to distract you for a bit so that she would have time to teach Jacque said lesson. So naturally because she is a deity and all and could basically zap my ass out of existence if she wanted to, I did as I was told and I provided a distraction. I will admit that it was not my best effort, but, seriously, look at what I had to work with.” She motioned to the forest around her. “I’m honestly quite ashamed that I’ve had to give you this long, drawn out story, though it is the truth, when I could have just told you that last part. But you have to try and understand the position that I’m in here, Fane. I mean surely if the Great Luna knows where Jacque is then she isn’t in any danger.” Jen was attempting to sound reasonable but judging by the rapid breathing that was issuing forth from Fane, he was a few exits past reasonable-ville.
“So where did she say my mate was?” Fane asked and his words sounded a tad garbled since his incisors had lengthened—not a good sign.
Jen chuckled. “Funny thing that, um.” She paused. “She didn’t exactly say.”
“So she gave you an idea of where she is?” Fane asked, his piercing blue eyes boring into her.
“Not so much.” Jen shook her head.
Fane was shaking with the need to phase, to hunt, and to protect his mate. Jen knew exactly what he was going through because she’d felt those emotions running through her own mate when she and their daughter had been in danger. He was basically a ticking time bomb. And here she thou
ght things were going to be all calm and hunky dory for once. That will teach her to think.
Chapter 8
The world around Fane suddenly disappeared as his tunnel vision set in. All he could see was his pregnant mate, in his mind’s eye, surrounded by every possible danger he could think of. He had no idea where she was or how to find her. He wanted to believe that if the Great Luna was involved, then his mate had to be safe, but that just wasn’t enough for him. He needed to see her or, at the very least, hear her voice. He was beginning to realize that everything he’d been upset about, all the things he couldn’t move past, really amounted to a huge pile of nothing that, through his own self-pity, he had made into a big deal.
For the past few months, he should have been enjoying the time with his mate instead of fretting over the past. He should have been relishing the moments they had without danger constantly knocking at their door. Instead of worrying about his ability to protect his child, or whether or not he would make a good father, he should have been rejoicing that they were even expecting a child considering how difficult it was for their kind to have children. Fane had squandered the time they’d had and now he didn’t have either his mate or his child. Why did it always take drastic measures to make him see what was right in front of his face?
Focus on her, his wolf spoke up, obviously losing patience with the man. Let us get her back and then you will fix the wrong. It was one of those moments when Fane was truly thankful for his beast and his ability to think without the cloud of emotions hanging over him.
We will search for her, Fane told him. He felt his wolf’s agreement but wasn’t prepared for the sudden phase that his beast forced. One minute he was standing on two legs and the next his clothes were shredded and he was on all fours. Everything around him sharpened into focus as all of his wolf’s senses took over.
