A bundle on the couch moved. Chelsea saw it out of the corner of her eye and yelped in surprise. The blanket fell away to reveal Zane’s sleep-addled glower. Chelsea set her phone face down and grinned at Zane’s mussed hair. The strip of white stood on end, like a wavy road in his dark hair.
“Were you sleeping on the couch all morning? I assumed you left for the day because breakfast was already made.”
He mumbled something that she couldn’t understand in the kitchen. So, she grabbed a couple slices of bacon and went over to him. He greedily ate them from her fingers. It was such a normal moment that she could almost let herself believe this could work. Maybe forever could be real for them; it could be happy, even.
But she sighed and dropped herself onto the floor beside the couch. Zane asked her what was wrong, but she couldn’t organize her thoughts enough to talk about it. Not yet. The yearning for what he promised was quarreling with her better senses. She couldn’t give in to him.
Not even when his fingers found her hair and began massaging her scalp. She leaned into him as his touch eased the tension gripping her chest tight. It was as if just being touched by him made the world a little easier to bear.
Was this what Zara and Asher shared? Their relationship was built on gentle teasing and playfulness. So far, all Chelsea had offered were bad jokes and an ability to stumble into trouble. Zane wouldn’t want to rescue her every day for the rest of their lives. Sure, being a knight in shining armor was sexy, but it had to be exhausting around Chelsea.
Who knew when she would run into her next serial killer or find herself in the path of a wayward vehicle on her way to campus? This wasn’t meant to work. Chelsea had a hundred reasons why, but she didn’t think Zane would accept any of them.
Nor would her traitorous body. Just looking at him, the way his shirt rode up over his perfect abs and his pants dipped a little too low, made her core hot and tight. She could remember how he felt inside her as if they were still in the middle of lovemaking. Her heart raced a little faster and she avoided eye contact so he couldn’t see how off-kilter she felt.
His touch was warm and sparked a tingling in her fingertips. She curled her hands into fists and tried to push back the sensation, but it was useless. There was no stopping it. Pleasure radiated from her head to her toes until she let her head fall back.
Zane laughed and the sound woke a primal creature inside her, one that was mere seconds away from jumping on top of him. She tensed. If Zane felt it, he didn’t say anything. She fought the urge to crawl onto the couch and sink into him. Sex with Zane was a one-time thing.
She couldn’t allow her body to override her decisions. Chelsea did her best to protect her heart, but she couldn’t keep it up if Zane made her feel like this just by touching her head. It was supposed to work the other way around. Zane was supposed to lose control if she touched his head…the head of his dick, that is.
Yet, here she was nearly purring like a cat over a simple gesture.
“I didn’t know how you like your eggs, or I would have made some,” Zane said as his fingers rubbed her scalp.
She snorted. “Unfertilized.”
There was a long pause. His hand stilled and she grieved the massage.
“That wasn’t…I didn’t mean…”
She turned her head just in time to watch him narrow his eyes at her. She offered a half smile because she didn’t know what to say after her awful joke. Her cheeks warmed as he stared her down.
“I wasn’t going to bring that up, but is that what you want in life?”
Her lips twisted. This wasn’t a conversation she wanted to have. If Zane wasn’t going to stick around long term, what was the point in embarrassing herself? She didn’t need to tell him anything.
Right?
“Because I only want what you want,” he went on. He rubbed his thumb along her cheek and made her eyes burn with unshed tears.
She quickly looked away. Once she finalized her divorce, she had been grateful that nothing ever worked out. She and her dumb ex had tried to get pregnant, though their attempts had been infrequent because he was too busy nailing other people. All she’d wanted was someone to truly love her back, but even that had been a failure. While she never went to a doctor, she always blamed herself. There had to be something wrong with her insides. They were downright inhospitable. That was the only reason she could think of.
“The only thing I want is for you to be happy,” Zane said.
She swallowed the sob that was trying to break free of her. This wasn’t fair. It wouldn’t last. He would leave. These words meant nothing, even if they were successfully breaking past her barriers. Even if they were making her love him.
Upon finally opening her mouth to spill some of her confusion out, they heard a shout from outside.
“This isn’t a good idea!” a male voice bellowed.
“Nothing is a good fucking idea right now!” a familiar female voice snapped back.
Chelsea caught Zara’s mumbles amidst the chaos and surged to her feet. Already, Zane growled. He slowly sat up, looking like a feline predator in his liquid movements. Chelsea caught the hint of otherness in his eyes, a flash of unearthly light behind his blue-green irises.
“You’re pregnant, for fuck’s sake!” The male cried out, a hint of desperation clinging to his voice.
The outcry was followed by a gasp and a low whistle. They reminded Chelsea of the canned audience in a sitcom. When Chelsea crept up to the window, she found four people standing outside. One was the woman with the long, russet hair. She stood off against a man with impossibly broad shoulders, black tattoos, and black hair. He should have been imposing, but the russet-haired woman wasn’t deterred.
If anything, Chelsea thought she saw the gleam of that unearthly light in this woman’s eyes. Except hers were gold. The beauty of it stole Chelsea’s breath. She felt so inconsequential among them. All her life, Chelsea strived to make sure her body stayed perfect. And yet, here was a family of the most beautiful beings she had ever laid eyes on.
Chelsea knew that she and Zane would never work, but to see just how badly she didn’t belong was like a knife in her chest. She wanted to pull it out, to scream and cry, but she kept her lips sealed shut. Now wasn’t the time to give in to her pain. Now was the time for action.
Behind her, Zane was snarling. He was halfway to the door when Chelsea lunged and caught his arm. His response was a low and threatening growl. Not aimed at her. His eyes never left the front door. She hissed at him and demanded that he look at her.
Before she could get his attention, someone knocked on the door. This was it. The fight Chelsea avoided the night before had come to them. The dragons Zane hated had come to finish him off. They would make sure he wasn’t able to interfere with their plans. Her mind went wild, racing over every errant thought that bounced around her skull.
Somehow, she pushed herself into action. She cracked open the door so that no one on either side could see each other. The woman with the russet brown hair grinned warmly at her. Chelsea recalled the soft way everyone treated her when she showed up on their doorsteps. Surely, this woman hadn’t come to kill Zane. The clan couldn’t be planning world domination.
Could they?
“It’s time you get to talk,” the woman called out, not talking to Chelsea. “I brought Cole and Asher because they’re probably the most stable of the group.”
Zara snorted somewhere behind the woman and then whispered, “She thinks you’re stable.”
Asher’s response was a hearty laugh.
The man with dark hair and tattoos pressed up against the back of the russet-haired woman. He glowered down at Chelsea before his eyes flicked to the darkness inside the house.
“If you start a fight, Zane, I’ll make sure you never leave that lake again. I’m not risking my mate and child just so you can throw a temper tantrum.”
Zane gripped the door Chelsea was holding half-closed. His blood thundered in his veins. He could feel
each thump of his heart like a churning wave. Here were the monsters who doomed him to his slumber under the lake. They had come for him once and for all.
And they thought it would only take two grown men to stop him.
Chelsea refused to give up the door. She twisted and looked up at him with pleading eyes. He could promise her one thing. He would do his best to make sure this fight stayed away from her. None of these monsters would be able to touch her while Zane was around.
When she finally let him open the door all the way, the first face he saw conjured a name in the back of his mind.
“Jude?” He didn’t know how he knew her name. There was a foggy conversation in the back of his mind, one they shared. He couldn’t remember when or how, but he knew her.
She smiled wide. It was a toothy predator’s grin. She might be pregnant, but she was still a powerful beast. Zane didn’t know how she let Alistair take control. She seemed dominant.
“Shit, man.” Asher’s voice cracked.
They had been the youngest members of Alistair’s clan. Their youth had been a constant competition to out-do one another. Now, Zane faced off against him. If Asher so much as flinched, Zane would leap. Zane wasn’t in the mood for a fight.
He wanted to go back inside and let his mate feed him more bacon. She wanted to talk about something. He had seen it on her face. This visit was an unneeded interruption. Zane should have cared about what the clan was doing, but he craved time alone with his mate. She still didn’t seem convinced.
His gaze dropped to her neck. Her hand was over the claim mark on her neck, and she rubbed it almost absentmindedly. Was it still there? Or had it healed over? Zane wondered, briefly, if she would allow him to leave another. She still didn’t know what it meant. He would mark her every day until she told him she loved him.
Every day he had.
“If you wanted to talk, you should have called,” he said.
Jude’s features rippled. “You don’t have a phone.”
“That’s the point,” he told her. “I don’t want you to visit, and I don’t want you to call.”
“So that’s it?” Asher asked. “You torture us for months, you wreck our cabins and houses, you sweep away entire beaches. And when you come back to the real world, you don’t even want to say hello?”
Zane snarled. He didn’t know what Asher was talking about, but Chelsea went still beside him. Her shoulders suddenly dropped, and she groaned. Pressing a hand to her forehead, she ducked under Zane’s arm and stumbled back into the house.
“What the hell are you talking about? I didn’t do any of those things.”
Everyone except Chelsea stared at him. His mate was face down on the couch, her hands on the back of her head. She said something, but it was swallowed by the couch cushion. Zane looked back to his old clanmates and their mates. Their expressions were a mixture of pity and confusion.
Zane wanted to yell at them and push them off the lawn. Whatever they were trying to insinuate was a lie. He shouted it over his shoulder at Chelsea. The clan wanted to instill doubt. They wanted to pull everything out from under his feet so he would be alone again. If they turned Chelsea against him, then he would suffer.
This was all because he’d tried to go after them the night before. If Zane hadn’t told Chelsea what he planned to do, if she hadn’t raced after him, then she never would have fallen into their hands. The clan used lies like weapons. He would block their attacks.
“It makes so much sense,” Chelsea whispered behind him.
He spun and found her staring at the floor. Her arms were tight around her middle again. He let go of the door and went to her, dropping to his knees in front of her.
The porch steps creaked, giving away the clan’s approach. Zane didn’t even look at them. He took Chelsea’s hands in his own and tried to pull her attention to him. She was closed off. He was surprised she didn’t pull her hands out of his.
“That day at the beach,” Chelsea whispered.
“I think,” Asher began, “that you were pissed off at Zara and me. You sent a huge wave to wipe out the beach. It was a busy day. A lot of people got pulled under. Including Zara and Chelsea.”
Zane whirled. “I would do no such thing!”
His beast was suspiciously quiet. He didn’t understand why it wasn’t thrashing with anger. It should have rebelled at the thought of harming Chelsea. He would do no such thing. He was incapable of it. Zane wasn’t the villain of this story.
Was he?
“You don’t remember anything,” Cole said, more of a statement than a question. He let out a bitter laugh. “You’ve been fucking with us since Jude showed up. The first thing you did was drag her under. I would have emptied the lake to get her back.”
“You’re lying,” Zane snarled.
He was growing tired of their accusations. He told Chelsea that they were trying to drive a wedge between them. Leaning in to whisper in her ear that he loved her, she flinched away from him. The reaction stunned him. He couldn’t breathe.
He couldn’t think.
The clan was succeeding. They were managing to rip his mate from him. She should have been the only person to trust him. She should have been his one solace.
“I knew all along,” she said. “I knew you were the reason for that wave. I think you said something about it when we first met. Yet, I didn’t want to believe you could do that to me. To so many people.”
She covered her face with her hands. He wanted to peel them away and force her to look at him, but Zane was scared of what she might see. Fury contorted his face. Not at her, but at the old clanmates behind him who were smugly watching.
He flew to his feet and stormed towards them. Cole and Asher stepped in front of their mates, power rippling from them like a verbal threat. Zane was undaunted. He’d been waiting for this for ten years. This was his chance to show them how badly he suffered.
The nightmares.
The loneliness.
All because they had succumbed to Alistair. Zane was the only one left who believed in doing the right thing. These beasts followed the doctrine of a man who wanted only destruction. Alistair would dominate through death and chaos. He wanted to turn the world upside down.
Couldn’t they see that he would only get them and all the other shifters killed? Couldn’t they see the pain they were going to cause? Maybe it was because Zane was the only one with a human mate. He had everything to lose.
“We came to talk,” Jude reminded her mate as she set a heavy hand on his shoulder.
Cole had never been one to fold, but his aggression bled away as he looked to the woman behind him. Zane saw his opening. He slammed into Cole’s solar plexus. He heard the air leave Cole’s lungs in a grunt. Jude spun aside and let them crash into the wall.
The drywall crumpled on impact. Dust rained down on their heads. Cole slammed his fist into Zane’s jaw, but Zane wasn’t ready to give up. He could tell his old friend wasn’t putting his all into it. Why wasn’t Cole fighting with everything he had?
Zane shouldn’t have cared. He should have used the opportunity to end him. Zane couldn’t bring himself to do it. Every hit that he landed was like a stone in his gut. It felt wrong. His entire being howled against it. Not even his beast, the cold and furious being squatting inside him, liked this.
Leaning back for only a moment, Zane then found himself thrown off. He flew across the room. Chelsea’s cry pierced the air. He was ruining her house. This fight couldn’t keep going on. Not inside. They had to take it elsewhere, but Zane couldn’t fly to lead them away. His useless wings would only take him so far before crumpling under his weight.
“We aren’t your enemy!” Cole shouted as he stood. He wiped a bit of blood trickling down his chin. “We never were. But if you continue to attack us, we won’t let you hurt the ones we love.”
“Then why are you working with Alistair again?” Zane’s beast flexed its claws. It wanted Alistair. It wanted to make the man bleed.
The room went silent. It was his mate who broke the silence.
“They don’t have a guy named Alistair!” She threw her hands in the air like she was done with them all.
From the state of her home, she probably was. There were two holes in the walls. Frames had been knocked down. One spilled glass onto the floor. When Zane peered down at his arm, he realized he had rolled through the glass at some point and there was a chunk lodged in his skin. He tore it out, but didn’t know what to do with it.
He didn’t dare throw it to the ground and make his mate pick up broken glass. Especially blood-slick glass. This was too much of a burden on her already. He appeared in her life begging her to believe in the supernatural, forcing the mate bond on her, and taking up space in her life.
Behind him, her textbooks were open on the table. Her phone sat beside them. She must have noticed the message by now. Her ex was getting remarried, and now Zane was destroying her home.
Shame weighed on his shoulders. He leveled his glare at Cole, who looked as bad as Zane felt. There was an invitation on Cole’s face. Not to keep fighting, but to cross the gap between them. How Cole thought Zane would understand their horrid ways was beyond him.
“Bring Alistair to me. We will settle this,” Zane growled.
Chelsea shot up. “Didn’t you hear me? There is no Alistair. You sound like a mad man. Don’t tell me I’m falling for someone who can’t get a grip on reality!”
Zane jumped over the back of the couch and took her shoulders in his hands. When he spoke, he kept his voice low and gentle. “They could have lied. It is no great stretch of the imagination that Alistair would have changed his name.”
She shoved him off, and Zane thought he felt his heart crack.
9
“Get out,” Chelsea’s voice shook. She hated the words leaving her mouth. She didn’t want it to be this way, but Zane was scaring her. “I want you out of my house. You’re not welcome here anymore.”
Zane (Keepers Of The Lake Book 6) Page 8
