by Rae Foxx
Her green eyes met mine and for a moment, I thought she might give in, let me do what I came here to do and so much more. I took a step forward, and she immediately countered, taking a wide step back.
“I can hire someone myself. It shouldn't be hard to find someone who can do this stuff.”
I chuckled at her. “There is a reason Cami sent me, Lucy.”
Her name burned through me and I took another step forward. Again, she countered and pressed herself right up against a wall.
“There is no one else.” I stepped closer, leaning around her to the switch right by her head and flicked it on. “Hear that? Something is very wrong. I don’t want you in here with faulty wiring, Lucy.”
I swallowed as she stood under me. Her head barely came up to my chest as she pressed herself against the wall, my hand still resting against the light switch. Her eyebrows were drawn down, her shoulders tense. As I took in her perfect face, so close I could see the flecks of yellow in her eyes, it was only up close I realized that her eyes were puffy and red. Dark crescents hung beneath them, as though she hadn’t slept in days.
I chanced a guess that the dark circles and the puffy eyes were connected.
Her breath hitched as she looked at me, those green eyes pinning me in place.
“Lucy, I know you feel this between us.” I placed my hands above her head on either side, trying to stop her from running from us--from this--from her mate.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” My wolf growled inside me at her lie.
“Yes, you do. I’m your m…”
Again, before I could say the word, she cut me off. “No. Don’t even think it. My mate is dead.”
“What?”
Before I could recover from my confusion, she ducked and fled the building.
Dead? What the fuck was she talking about. I was far from dead.
Nine
Emmet
I sipped on my beer, not interested in getting wasted. I had been out for a celebratory run when Rich had found me and dragged me here.
I hadn’t fit in here before, and I really didn’t now.
I didn’t have anything to bitch about and I couldn’t be happier about it.
I had found my mate. Imagine that.
I guess it was good that Rich had found me, if only to keep myself from running to Lucy’s house and demanding to see her. She needed space, she also seemed to think I was dead.
Both were problems for tomorrow when I went to work on fixing her office for the first time. So, I drank to keep my mind off her rather than to numb pain.
It was only now that I realized I might have a problem.
I put down my half-filled bottle and kicked at some of the old ashes at my feet.
“They’re all in it together,” Sam continued his drunken bitching from the other side of the fire. It was always something about women and how stupid they were. Tonight was focused on how Cami and Emma had hired Lucy to further their very female, very taking over the world, agenda.
Hearing Lucy talked about that way was hitting me hard and my wolf was growling loud enough that I was shocked none of them had heard the sound of warning.
“The Alpha, the Beta, and now the fucking shrink. All of them, conspiring against us.” That was Rich, who clearly agreed.
So much for keeping my mind off Lucy. They were driving me mad in other ways.
They shouldn’t be talking about my mate that way.
“Who does she think she is?” Sam agreed and did his ‘I’m pissed and I’m going to show it by crashing my bottle into the fire’ thing, sending sparks into the air and me to my feet.
“A therapist,” I snapped without thinking. “She’s doing what Cami asked her to do.”
I clearly should have thought my actions through. Both men turned toward me, all of that red-faced anger now directed at me.
“I mean…” I stammered, trying to find a way to fix it. “Is Cami really that bad?”
“It’s what she does, Emmet. Everything she does is turning this pack into a group of weaklings.”
Says the man sitting around a fire bitching and drinking. Who was the weakling in this equation?
I kept my eyeroll to myself, but barely.
“How?” I really needed to start thinking through these questions before I asked them. “Everything she does!” Sam roared as both he and Rich stepped closer. I needed to back down if I wanted to get out of here safely. The combination of booze and prejudice was turning into a tornado. “Can’t you see it? Or are you one of these men that are going to bare their necks and do what the cunt tells them to? Well, that won’t be me. Something has to be done before she turns this whole pack pussy-whipped.”
Sam was screaming, but I simply didn’t give a fuck. The only thing on my mind was getting to know my mate and helping her get her office fixed. In one morning, all of my priorities had shifted.
My priority was Lucy, who I would like to see the next day.
“Of course not. Just making conversation. Calm the fuck down.” I reached for another beer, tossing the tepid one into the woods.
Rich laughed, going so far as to hold his pot belly in the process. “Yeah, get some more in ya, young blood. That’s your problem tonight. Not enough beer!”
The rest of the men laughed with him and thankfully the tension broke, at least until they started to bitch about Cami again. Which they did almost immediately. I took a long drag of my beer and gave Rich a tight smile.
I wished I could stand up and get out of here, I had a feeling that would just out me as a ‘Cami lover’ again.
Looking down at the amber bottle, I wondered if my mate liked beer or wine. Other than her name and a few things from when we went to school together, I didn’t know much about her. Yeah, she was a shrink and the most stunning female I’d ever seen, but I needed to know her. Beyond the past, beyond what was on the outside. What made her tick. What made her cry. Because something was making her cry, that much was clear.
She was strong and fierce, so whatever it was had to be something that cut her to the core.
And what the fuck was that shit about her mate being dead?
I had a list of things to fix for her and a list of things I wanted to know about her. Lucy had me making a thousand fucking lists in just one day, and they were all centered around her. My mate.
“We need to take the bitch down!” Rich’s yelling and fist-pumping made me blink back into reality. What the fuck were they talking about now?
“But how? She’s strong as hell. We can’t claim an Alpha challenge and fight her. If she didn’t kill us, Luke would.”
Fuuuuck. I’d missed the part where they’d evolved from talking shit to actual plans. Drunken and angry plans, but plans nonetheless.
“So no challenge, but we can make her disappear.” Sam’s voice was low at the suggestion, all of them nodding along eagerly. “We can still kill her.”
I was frozen in ice on the side of the burning fire.
They were serious. They were seriously fucking planning on taking out the Alpha and for no good reason other than her gender.
And somehow I had found myself in the middle of it all.
Ten
Lucy
I stabbed at the scrambled eggs on my plate with too much force, the sound of fork against porcelain sounded like I had broken the plate. I wouldn’t be surprised if I had. All of my movements this morning had been staccato, and perhaps a little aggressive.
When Mandy knocked on my door this morning I had thrown it open so aggressively that I had damned near pulled the thing off the hinges. Mandy had given me a look but said nothing more. She hadn’t even laughed. My face must have been a warning. Didn’t stop her from barging in and making me breakfast. Even when my wolf growled at her.
It’s what happens when you don't get any sleep after your wolf has a hissy fit and mistakes some arrogant wolf as its mate.
Second mate.
Which was not possible.
My damned animal didn’t care that Clint had passed only months ago. She recognized Emmet as my mate, as the one that was currently making her preen inside me with joy.
Which I didn’t want.
Especially not with Emmet.
The guy had always been full of himself. And hot.
Which was what I was trying to forget as I continued to stab my eggs, albeit a little gentler.
“What’s with you this morning? You know, if you need to go on a run for breakfast I am sure the plate wouldn’t mind. It’s not used to getting murdered this early in the morning.” Mandy gave me a look, her eyebrows nearly in her hair as she grabbed the toast from my plate.
“No, I didn’t sleep well. That’s all.” Truth was, I never slept well. Not since Clint died. The problem was that last night, for the first night in months, I didn’t have the same recurring dream of his death.
Which was possibly pissing me off more.
Mandy nodded, but I knew I wasn’t going to get off the hook that easily.
Shifters didn’t have more than one mate. Period. I shook my head to fend her off and drank the rest of my coffee, even though I knew the caffeine would only fuel my nerves.
A knock at the door had both of us whirling toward it.
“Expecting someone?” She asked, that grin on her face like she knew something that the rest of the world didn’t.
“Yes, my mail order wolf bride from Siberia,” I growled at her as I stomped over to the door. I didn’t bother to look out the window to see who it was. Big mistake. I flung open the door and my heart stopped at who was on the other side.
Him. He was here.
“Is it your mail order bride?” Mandy asked loudly, and his smile spread. The sun hadn’t even fully cleared the trees and there he was looking all perfect and glowy and muscley.
Could that wolf of mine shut up for five seconds?
“Good morning, Lucy.” Emmet’s dark hair was disheveled under a light blue ball cap, his shirt and jeans rumpled and well worn. He was ready for work. I guess I hadn’t made myself clear enough that I didn’t need his help. “I thought I could walk you to work.”
“Why Emmet, what a nice surprise.” Mandy’s high-pitched excitement echoed from right behind me, her breath warm on the back of my neck. “What are you doing here?”
“Offering to walk Lucy to work,” Emmet beamed, glancing at Mandy before his focus dropped right back to me. “It’s been a while since she was home, and I would hate for her to get lost.”
Thank Gods he hadn’t said anything about being my mate, but that doesn’t mean I was out of the dark. Especially with how Mandy was bouncing on her toes.
“Oh, how nice of you! I didn’t know you two had caught back up,” Mandy prodded expectantly. She sounded so much like Mom that it was turning me right back into a teen on a first date.
I didn’t like it.
“Yeah, Cami wants me to fix up the clinic, and I’m glad to do it.” His eyes were right back on me, his wolf beaming as the corner of his lips turned up and I felt my stomach flop.
“Oh, so you will be able to see each other every day.” Mandy was officially prodding.
I needed out of this minefield, even if it meant being with the one person that I didn’t want to be with.
But also, the one person I didn’t want to be away from.
My wolf whined and growled along with my thoughts. She wasn’t as conflicted as I was and it was pissing her off.
“Maybe I will bring you two lunch...”
“Nope, not needed, just walking to work!” I spoke over her as loud as I could, grabbing my bag off the floor and darting out the door, practically dragging Emmet down the stairs as Mandy laughed behind us.
I turned, giving her my best bitch face. She was grinning so broad it didn’t even matter.
The second we were out of sight I chanced a look at Emmet, the guy looked pleased with himself. He walked with his hands in his pockets, giving me a full two feet between us.
I couldn’t help or stop the thrumming of my heart in response to having him so close, though I cursed it every time. In his dingy jeans and a flannel button-down shirt that had seen better days, he was dressed the opposite of me. I had on my office attire; a deep red shirt, and black pants. I was careful, as we walked, to make sure the top button was fastened.
Opposites.
Opposites attract.
The silence dragged on between us. I would ask him to leave, but we were going to the same place, and I could already tell he wasn’t going to give up.
Might as well make the best of it.
“What was your job before you were assigned to help me?” I asked, perhaps a little too loud in my attempt to cut the tension between us. The silence was choking me.
His smile was breathtaking. As though he’d been waiting all of his life to hear me speak. I remembered being like that the first time Clint asked me to dinner. Emmet’s hand brushed mine more than once and I finally stuck the damned thing in my pocket to keep it from happening again.
“I worked in the fields.”
I nodded, trying like hell to simply concentrate on the conversation and not read anything else into it. “In the pot fields?”
He laughed and it shattered me and put me back together again all in one second. “Yeah, the pot fields. I enjoyed it but I’m liking this assignment so much more.”
His grin spread and rage and bliss wrinkled through me like thunder and lightning in my veins. I barely held back a shiver. “Are you still friends with Emma? I remember at one point you two were inseparable.”
His shoulders tensed at the question but then he sighed. “We are friends, or we used to be, maybe not anymore.”
My eyebrows dipped down. “What do you mean?”
“We were best friends for a while until I fell in love with her--or thought I was in love with her. Then things changed, she found her mate and I…”
“She found her mate?” I asked, disappointed, and yet not.
“She did. The mating ceremony was the night before you arrived here. I was so certain that she was mine,” he sighed, giving me a brief smile before looking back to the shack that was our destination. “But I realize now that I didn’t know what I was looking for.”
Thunder and lightning.
It ran through my veins a second time as he turned to look at me, his steps slowing as we made our way over the broken walk of my new clinic. I nearly tripped over a broken slab of cement. Thankfully, I was able to right myself before Emmet could grab me. Although he tried.
Worry and something else I didn’t want to acknowledge lined his forehead. I pulled away before he moved any closer.
“Now, it’s my turn,” Emmet began as we made our way through the door, the hinges acting like an alarm to our arrival. “What did you mean when you said your mate was dead?”
I stopped in my tracks, staring at a spot of yellow-worn wallpaper as peeled itself from the wall.
I didn’t turn.
“Because my mate
My tone was harsher than necessary. As though I was attacking him for killing Clint.
However, Emmet didn’t even react.
“That explains why you were so surprised to see me, then.”
“You have no fucking idea.”
He sighed, the floor creaking as he came up behind me. His body warmed the air as he moved within an inch of me. Close, but still not touching. Still respecting my space.
I didn’t turn to him, I just stared straight ahead at the long strip of soggy paper.
“I understand,” he began, his voice rough, as if my heart wasn’t the only one that was breaking. “I don’t want you to worry, Lucy. I’m not going to push you. I’ll be here for you. I can be patient.”
It was then that I turned, my eyes narrowing.
; “You can be patient all you want. It’s not happening. Not now. Not ever.”
Eleven
Lucy
“And what did you see out your window?” I asked Gerald the question out of pure curiosity. I had diagnosed him in my head already but wanted to see the extent of his paranoia.
He began to tell me the story again, of the tall shadowy figure outside his window, the one that stared at him all night. I heard a noise above me but ignored it, knowing exactly what it was. Emmet was there. Just as he had been all day. And the day before. And the day before that. He had been somewhere in this building ever since our conversation the other morning. I was still adamant that nothing would ever happen between us, and he seemed okay with that.
He was more interested in being close. Being my friend.
I didn’t know if that was worse.
“It just stares at me--always staring,” Gerald continued, pulling me out of my thoughts.
Shit. This wasn’t the first time that day I’d drifted off into Emmet land. Not that it was hard to forget he was there with the hammering above me.
“And what did you do? Do you open the window? Confront it?” I asked, fact-finding through whatever Gerald was going through.
Gerald furrowed his brow and screwed up his mouth like he was disappointed in me and my snooty questions. But that was my job, rooting around with questions until I allowed my patients to realize their own truths. “Confront the shadow man? Confront the aliens?”
As though Emmet had heard Gerald’s sentiments and was reacting to them, he began to hammer on the roof in deeper furor. A long stream of bangs, sounding more like a machine gun than a roof repair, rang over us, echoing off the rickety walls.
Out of nowhere, Gerald jumped up, staring at the ceiling as he began to scream, “They’re here! They heard me talking about them!”
“What? No, that’s someone doing repairs on the building.” I kept my voice monotone, attempting to let my calm drift through the air toward him.
