by May Dawson
Not that I’d done a very good job of holding that boundary. It was hard for me to keep my hands off Maddie Northsea.
Dani studied me, her lips pursed, waiting for me to explain.
“I’m not very good at showing her I love her. But if I wait…” I didn’t want to finish that sentence with what I hoped for.
Maddie was right; it was hard to imagine how we’d ever find our way back together. The fight when we’d broken up felt like an earthquake, but it seemed as though the fissure in the earth between us deepened every day.
“If you just silently stalk her from a distance, she’ll realize that you love her even though you don’t say anything? Seems like a plan.” Dani sounded amused.
I shrugged. “Wolves are weird.”
“Witches are weird too,” she admitted. “I don’t know why I like you so much, Lex.”
I didn’t know what to say to that. I stared at her, perplexed.
She pulled a face. “I don’t know why I’m still talking after you told me how much you like her. I thought maybe, if I got you out of my system once, I wouldn’t feel so…weird…”
My lips parted, trying to figure out what to tell her gently to let her down. She was an amazing girl.
She just wasn’t my amazing girl.
She leaned forward, swaying in toward me. Her lips were red, with a pronounced cupid’s bow and a plush lower lip. Her eyes had gone soft. Panic tightened my chest.
I rolled off the futon, even though my head was an aching blur, and to my feet.
“I’m sorry,” I said to her shocked face. “I can’t do this.”
“It’s fine.” She was wide-eyed as she shook her head. “I’m the one who’s sorry—”
But I couldn’t face her one minute more. If I’d kissed Dani, I’d have proven all over again that I didn’t deserve Maddie. I headed out of the room.
“Lex.” Rafe’s low voice was a rumble as he came out of Will’s room, where he was supposed to be sleeping. Dani and I must have been loud enough to wake him. Great. I definitely needed my best friend’s judgment right now. “What the hell is going on?”
Instead of answering, I let the door slam behind me. I needed fresh air.
Fresh, cold air.
Chapter Nineteen
Maddie
Jensen and I put some miles between us and Reefer’s house, just in case, then pulled off the highway at the bright lights of a motel. It was late, and we both needed some rest.
More than anything, we needed to clear our heads. That tic in Jensen’s jaw kept fluttering, no matter how cool and controlled he pretended to be.
His sister had been murdered. He’d suspected, but now he was sure of it. But we had to figure out who had done that to her and to the rest of her patrol, and right now, the path forward seemed dark.
“We’ve only got king-sized bedrooms left.” The lady behind the register looked us over curiously, as if she wondered why we’d asked for a double room at all.
Between Jensen paying in cash and the two of us looking so young, we were likely to stick in her mind.
“That’s fine,” I said quickly. Let her think we were sleeping together. It would make our arrival seem less odd. I should’ve stayed in the car.
Jensen leaned with his elbows on the counter. He looked tired, but the pose still brought the long lines of his body into sharp relief, including the athletic curve of his ass in those jeans. Determined not to be caught admiring his ass yet again, I wandered across the little lobby, checking out the brochures for local area attractions and the coffee machine in the corner.
Jensen turned, his gaze following me.
“It’s three o’clock in the morning,” He reminded me. “And really, you don’t ever need to be caffeinated. You’ve got more energy than a squirrel on speed.”
I rolled my eyes, but luckily, she handed him a key card. The two of us ambled across the parking lot to the row of red exterior-facing doors.
“Ever stayed at a motel like this, princess?” Jensen asked.
“I’ve stayed in a lot worse,” I told him. “I’m one-hundred-percent confident you’re the bigger princess, Jensen. I’ve seen those Gucci sweatpants of yours.”
“You noticed my pants,” he said. “Like you noticed my ass back in the lobby?”
I leaned against the stucco wall beside our room, crossing my arms over my chest and shooting him a weary glare. I was definitely not opening up that line of conversation. “Let’s just get into our room, okay? I’d like to get some rest before tomorrow’s round of ill-advised antics.”
He led the way into a small motel room with a single king bed covered in a faded green comforter. The carpet felt thin underfoot and when I hit the lights, only one bulb in the fluorescents overhead flickered to life.
“You take me to the nicest places,” I muttered, glancing around as I threw my backpack on the end of the bed. “I’d rather sleep in the woods. This place feels like something from a horror movie.”
He flopped onto the bed, stretching out his arms to either side so he took up the entire bed. With his tall, muscular body, he already took up too much room even before he starfished.
“Come here,” he told me. “I’ll protect you.”
If he were anyone else in my patrol, I would’ve made some quick, glib remark but still launched myself onto the bed beside him before resting my head on that big shoulder. I could’ve done that with Penn, or Tyson, or Chase or Silas.
“Get over on your side,” I said, even though my heart sped up at the thought of pretending for the night that Jensen and I could cuddle. I’d thought things would be different after I helped exonerate him from Faro’s murder. Instead, the two of us were still fighting.
He sighed dramatically and rolled over, putting his back to me.
I took my stuff into the bathroom and brushed my teeth, checking the shower to make sure there wasn’t anyone hiding in there—a totally healthy and normal quirk to do any time I entered a bathroom—and frowning at the weird window above the tile in the shower stall. It was big enough for someone to come through, and I checked that it was locked. I couldn’t shake a weird feeling about this place.
I got under the covers before I pulled off my jeans and wriggled my bra off under my shirt. I didn’t want Jensen to see me undressed but sleeping in a wire bra was a far worse fate.
He threw his arm over his eyes. It seemed like he was tossing and turning, and I wanted to ask him if he was okay, but it had been a long day in a series of long days. Sleep dragged me under.
I was dreaming about a fight when I was a little kid, a fight where my sister’s mate Finn was stabbed and thrown off the edge of a cliff into the sea. I knew I was dreaming, and I knew he survived, and I still couldn’t shake myself out of the horror of that scene, like I was small and helpless all over again.
“Wake up!” A hand grabbed my shoulder, and I exploded out of bed, jolting awake.
“Shit!” Jensen stumbled back, his hand pressed over his nose. Blood trickled from his nostril as he stared at me, wide-eyed in the dim light trickling from the bathroom.
Somewhere between asleep and awake, I’d punched him in the face.
“Sorry,” I said. “Dream.”
“Not a great one, from the sounds of it.” He crossed our threadbare hotel room for a roll of toilet paper, and returned holding some of it to his nose. “I guess I knew from the pits that you had a solid right hook, but I hoped we could get through the weekend without me feeling it. Apparently, a truce means nothing to you.”
Jensen was one to talk about a truce meaning nothing. Nothing had come of our last truce. He was still a relentless pain in my ass.
“It doesn’t help if someone wakes me up.” I didn’t have a lot of bad dreams anymore. They’d faded with time. Why the hell they had to come back now, when I was in close quarters with Jensen, I didn’t understand.
His gold eyes fixed on me, but he didn’t seem angry. “Well, I guess I knew better anyway. I shouldn’t have come clo
se. Just felt bad for you.”
I hadn’t expected that gentle reaction. “There’s a first.”
He snorted, then winced, pulling out another length of toilet paper to ball up to his nose. “What was the dream about?”
“Doesn’t matter,” I said.
“Yeah?” He cocked his head to one side, studying me. “Seemed to matter to you five minutes ago. Who’s Finn?”
I shook my head, refusing to answer.
“Boyfriend?” He threw himself down into the pillows, so close that his shoulder brushed mine. There wasn’t a lot of room in the bed.
I shifted over, but I could still feel the heat of his body.
“No,” I said, irritated into answering. Finn was definitely not my boyfriend. “One of my sister’s mates.”
He pursed his lips dramatically as if he was about to whistle. As I caught up with his implication, dismay fluttered in my chest. “No, I wasn’t calling his name like—When I was a kid, I thought he was murdered in front of me. But he survived.”
“What the hell was going on?” A faint protective edge colored Jensen’s voice.
I frowned, wondering if I’d really heard that.
“The coven was trying to kidnap me and my sister from our pack,” I said. But that wasn’t exactly an accurate depiction of the situation. Whatever. I’d told him part of it; I might as well tell him the rest.
Jensen snapped the light back off and we plunged into darkness. “The covens came after you when you were a kid?”
“Well, it was my mother who tried to murder Finn. She was trying to bring me back to the witch I thought was my father—” I broke off. “Never mind. You don’t care about this. It was just another war with the covens.”
“You were raised by a witch?”
“He kidnapped me when I was little so he could drain my magic. He enchanted me so I thought he was my real father.”
“Wow, Maddie. And I thought I was fucked-up.”
“You are. Believe me, you are.”
“So, your mother betrayed your pack?”
It was too dark for me to see him, but he sounded genuinely interested and caring. I bit my lip, reminding myself not to trust too much. For some reason, it was hard to keep my defenses up with him.
But these were simple facts. “Yep.”
“What about your real father?”
My father. That secret message, the demon-possessed animals… It could be my long-lost father, or it could be someone pretending to be him. “I don’t know, I think he’s dead. Why? Looking for something else you can use against me?”
Too harsh. The words hung between us, and I’d bit my lower lip. I was just so wrapped up in tension about my father.
Maybe once I helped Jensen with his family mystery, he’d help me with mine. Maybe.
He hesitated. “I’m not going to use anything about your past against you, Maddie. Just like you don’t use mine.”
I couldn’t tell if he was being sarcastic or not. I cast back in my memory, trying to remember if I’d said anything that might have felt like I was using his past against him. I’d been tempted, but I’d tried not to.
Maybe he was being sincere for once. Maybe it was easier to be honest here in the dark.
“So, you don’t hate magic even though it was used against you?” he asked.
I hesitated. My magical ability was supposed to be my secret. I’d promised my sister.
Everyone could use magic by working spells, if they were willing to make a sacrifice of blood or burning or both, but some of us could weave our magic without any props.
Shifters weren’t supposed to have that kind of magic.
“No,” I said. “Shifters do use magic. The way we transform is magic. But no one wants to admit it.”
“If we did, how would we be superior to the witches?” he asked lightly. “Man, the transformation practically is a sacrifice. It hurts like a bitch.”
“Exactly.” Did Jensen and I actually agree about something? “What matters is what we do. The covens hurt people…”
“The packs aren’t always exactly innocent,” he said.
Reefer’s ambivalence about the packs had been bugging me since we left. “What do you think Reefer meant about seventy percent of the patrols’ mission being bullshit?”
“Still bothering you, hm?” Jensen sounded knowing, as if he’d guessed that would lodge in my head.
I turned my head on the pillow to look at his handsome face in profile, barely illuminated by the thin moonlight in the room.
“Yeah, of course it is,” I said.
He scrubbed his hand over his face. “I don’t know what Reefer meant exactly. But I do know there’s a big play for power between the packs. The covens are a real threat, but I swear to god they’re also convenient for the Alpha council. Gives them something to keep everyone in line.”
The words hung between us, and I could almost feel him regret his words, as if he’d been too outspoken.
I sat up on my elbow. “It’s just me, Jensen. You can tell me anything.”
“Oh?” His voice came out amused. “Because we’re such good friends now?”
“No, because no one’s going to believe me. Right? No one’s going to believe you and I ever had some deep heart-to-heart…”
But I did feel closer to Jensen just now. I would never have imagined he was using magic too. He knew magic wasn’t inherently good or bad.
If only I could trust my own feelings, including the strange throb low in my belly as I studied the beautiful, chiseled angles of his face. His eyes were closed, his lashes resting above the curve of his cheekbone, and that made me feel bolder to study him.
Not only did I want to trust my feelings, I wanted to trust him.
“I’m glad you’re here, Northsea,” he said quietly. “Even if you do have a vicious right hook.”
He sounded as though he meant it. I didn’t know what to say back to him, so I hesitated.
I lay back down. We were shoulder to shoulder, touching casually like we really were friends.
This time when I fell asleep, the nightmares didn’t find me.
Chapter Twenty
Rafe
“You okay?” I asked Dani when I found her. She’d given me a bright smile after Lex stormed out, then she’d disappeared just like he had.
I’d felt exasperated by both of them, but then, I was always exasperated by Lex these days.
Dawn was breaking, light coating the pines in the distance even though the moon still shone in the darkness above.
“Yes, of course.” She smiled up at me. I’d thought she was upset by things with Lex, but she seemed relaxed as ever. She sat with perfectly straight posture, one leg crossed over the other. She held a coffee cup out to me. “From the faculty lounge. You know they don’t even let these poor children have coffee?”
I grinned as I took the mug from her. “Poor children? Unless Hunters are a lot less annoying than shifters, I don’t think my sympathy is with the students.”
She patted the seat next to her, and I sat by her side. Cadets rushed to class. Unlike at the shifter academy, these kids wore hunting leathers and t-shirts that were colored by year, so they looked like a rainbow as they hurried past in blue, red, green, or brown shirts. Their cadre all wore black shirts. And everyone carried a weapon.
“Not a blazer in sight,” I said. “I like it.”
I sipped my coffee in companionable silence with Dani.
“Will should be free after classes end at one,” she said. “We can have lunch with him then steal him away. Unless you want to watch their hand-to-hand training?”
“I’m not sure there’s anything your average shifter would enjoy more than watching Hunters punch each other in the face.”
She laughed out loud, a surprised peal of laughter. “I have to admit, I don’t understand the enmity.”
“It’s based in centuries of their people slaughtering ours.”
“And don’t the witches hate the wolves be
cause you slaughter them?” she asked. “Perhaps you could all just agree to stop slaughtering each other?”
“You make that sound so simple.”
“Maybe it is,” she said. “Hunters and shifters have come to work together when threatened by the covens. Maybe if there was another threat, like the humans discovering the underworld, we’d all find ourselves uniting.”
Some people believed that, thanks to the internet, the underworld would become common knowledge sooner or later.
I shook my head. “The stuff the covens do—We could never work with them. They hurt people, Dani.”
She inclined her head; she couldn’t really argue that one. “It doesn’t have to be like that.”
“Sure. Maybe. I’ll believe it when I see it.”
She flashed me a smile. “I didn’t mean to start an argument. Just thinking out loud. Maybe I should save my theories until we’ve both finished our coffee.”
“Maybe.” I didn’t mind her theories, though, so I clinked my mug with hers.
“Have you seen Lex yet this morning?” She took a slow sip of her drink, her gaze fixed on the distance.
“Nope.” Half to myself, I muttered, “And if I were him, I would maybe not be a werewolf wandering an academy full of Hunters at night by myself… even if there’s supposed to be a truce.”
“Your friend can be an idiot,” Dani observed.
“Yes,” I said fervently. “Yes, he can be.”
“What bothers you more?” she asked. “That he’s fallen for Maddie too, or that he doesn’t despise magic like you do?”
I choked on my coffee. She said the words so bluntly, like it was obvious to everyone that I had a crush on Maddie. Fuck me if it was. I did my best to hide those feelings.
“I am not,” I said evenly. “Where the hell did you get that idea?”
“I’m not going to judge you for liking her. You should like her. She’s lovely.” She took another sip of her coffee, looking completely relaxed even though she had my heart beating faster now. “I might judge you a little for hating magic, though. Because that can also be lovely.”
