Before she could finish her sentence, she heard a loud, shrill voice that stabbed into her eardrums like a dentist’s drill.
When Krista twisted around, Maybelline was there, standing by the table full of drink coolers. Of course, she was. If there was an opportunity for drama and public crises and sobbing, melodramatic, woe-is-me scenes, Maybelline would be there with bells on.
Her voice carried across the crowd, as it was meant to. “No, no alcohol for me, of course not! I’ve got my soda water, that’s all I need. Don’t believe me?” Her tone turned belligerent, and she glared at the half circle of people who’d gathered to watch the show. She thrust her soda glass at them. “You can smell it.”
Nobody had actually offered her a drink—it was pure drama. Alcoholics were supposed to recognize that they were powerless and put their faith in a higher power; the only higher power in Maybelline’s life was her crippling narcissism.
Krista wanted to crawl under the table and never come out. Half of her wanted to run to her mom and hug her while the other half wanted to go to her and slap her straight. But both sides of her froze.
Maybelline had changed over the years. She’d stopped bleaching her hair so aggressively and it was more of a faded strawberry blonde, even shot with a little gray. Her once-full figure had diminished, but she wore it well, with a clinging red scoop-neck dress that highlighted it. She still wore far too much makeup, but the look she was going for was dramatically wan rather than aging bombshell. She hurried towards Krista and drooped onto a bench next to her. Krista was only surprised she hadn’t arranged for a fainting couch.
Blake let out a little growl and nudged up against Krista. She managed a bright smile and looked up at him.
“What brings you back home, Krissie?”
Krista didn’t know what her mother was up to, but she was fairly certain neither of them was ready for this conversation. It probably needed to happen anyway, though.
Krista deliberately unclenched her fists, laying her hands flat on the table, palms down. She stared at Maybelline. “What do you want?”
Her mother gave a wobbly little smile that was supposed to make it look like she was about to cry. “What do you think I want? I want the chance to make up for the way I raised you. I want to make up for… a lot of things.”
“And you think you’re going to do that how?”
Maybelline’s expression turned furtive and she leaned forward and spoke in a low voice. “Help you save that boy for one.”
Krista stared at her narrow-eyed. Here it was. “Bullshit. Buulll… shiiiiit. The day that you go up against Dawnie? Cold day in hell.”
“Krista.” Maybelline’s eyes filled up with tears. Krista was unmoved. “I know you didn’t come here to show off any old fated mate. You don’t even believe in such a thing.”
Krista glanced at Blake and then shook her head at Maybelline. “I do now, no thanks to you.” She was rewarded with Blake’s smile.
Maybelline’s face went sullen as a toddler’s. Krista had a man and she didn’t.
“I had a fated mate too, you know,” she said, that familiar whine creeping in. “I forgive you for scaring him off.”
Krista gave a bark of laughter. “I scared my daddy off? I thought your cheating did that.”
Maybelline’s eyes flashed with a brief burst of rage, but then she pulled herself together and pulled her lips up in a smile. “Not your daddy. He was never my fated mate.”
“That’s funny, you always told everyone he was. Who did I scare off?”
“Norton, of course. But you’re my daughter, and I forgive you.”
Norton. The man who’d tried to rape Krista. Blake let out a low, rumbling growl that vibrated up from his chest, and Maybelline shrank away from him fearfully. She looked at Krista as if hoping Krista would defend her.
Not today. Not ever.
Krista swallowed her rage. “And, we’re out.” She deliberately turned her back on the woman who’d never been a mother to her, looking up at Blake. “I’m ready to make the rounds again, are you?”
Maybelline hurried around til she was facing them, eyes snapping with hurt and anger. “I guess you don’t care that much about that boy after all. Poor little cub.”
Krista actually laughed at that. There was the old Maybelline—she couldn’t even call her “Mama” in her head anymore. Maybelline turned into a mean bitch when her audience didn’t buy into her act.
Krista gave her a look of bored disinterest. “I guess I don’t believe you know a damn thing that’s useful, and if you did, you wouldn’t risk Dawnie Reed’s wrath to tell me. And your head’s half-pickled with alcohol anyway.”
“I’m not even drinking. Here, smell me.” Maybelline leaned forward, and Krista winced as a cloud of perfume stung her eyes and burned her nostrils.
“Jeez! Yes, you haven’t been drinking.” She blinked hard. “Doesn’t change the facts. The only person you ever help is yourself.”
Maybelline hissed out a long, angry breath. “Fine. He’s up at their winter cabin, way out of town. Percy’s guarding him. He’s alone, he won’t be hard to take on. I want you and your friend to take that cub and get him out of here before the lions come swarming through here and kill us all.”
Pure cowardly self-interest? Now that Krista could believe. She felt a surge of hope. And this was also the first time that anyone had directly admitted that the Reeds were the ones who had Ethan. “All right then,” she said and turned and stalked off.
Blake shot her a look, turned, and hurried away to make a call on his satellite phone.
Suddenly, Maybelline hurried back to Krista and threw her arms around her, crushing her in a surprisingly strong hug.
“You may not forgive me, but I forgive you!” she yelled out, loud enough for everyone to hear. “My door is always open to you, Krissie-Kit!”
Something cracked in her purse, and Krista elbowed her mother off and stomped away, to murmurs of disapproval from the gathered crowd. In this little drama, they’d judged and found Krista wanting. Cruel Krista, breaking her mother’s heart.
Krista rolled her eyes. She didn’t have time for this. She scanned the crowd for Blake while she felt around in her purse, feeling the pieces of a broken comb. And something else. She opened her purse and peered inside, tore at the fabric lining of her purse, and what she saw sent a blast of cold from her head to her toes.
She looked up at Blake, who was holding his phone and walking towards her. And she saw him in an entirely new light.
Chapter Seventeen
Blake
Blake waved at Krista to get her attention. Talking to her mother had clearly stressed her out because the look on her face was stony and her eyes were brimming with hurt.
“Yes?” she bit the word out when he reached her. It was okay. Her mother had just told Krista she ‘forgave’ her for things not working out with the man who’d tried to force himself on her own daughter. His mate had the right to be a little surly.
“Stef’s pulling the team together. I need the directions to the winter cabin,” he said, glancing around. Nobody was standing close enough to overhear, although they were the object of a lot of curious stares.
She rattled them off in a monotone and then turned to go.
He grabbed her by the arm. “Wait! I have something I wanted to tell you.” He quickly repeated the directions to Stef, who would now be heading up to the winter cabin with a couple of dozen shifters as back-up.
Then he turned his full attention to Krista.
“Your mother is a liar,” he blurted out. She just looked at him in mild puzzlement. Great. He was doing it again, the thing where he had something really important to say so his brain froze, and his tongue spit out sentences full of stupid.
“What I mean is… I know that you’re still a little iffy on this fated mate thing, and I want you to believe it. Because I believe it now, from the top of my head to the bottom of my paw-pads. You were questioning the whole concept of fated mat
es because of your mother and because your dad ran out on you. But she’s a liar. First, she said your dad was her fated mate, and then she said it was that pig who I would like to bring back to life so I could kill him again. I don’t think your mother ever had a fated mate. So your dad running out on you—that doesn’t mean that fated mates aren’t real. Because he never was that. Fated.”
He looked at her pleadingly. “Just stop me any time, will you? You know how I get.”
“Do I?” She arched an eyebrow. Her face was a strange, expressionless blank. “What do I really know?”
What had just happened? Maybe he’d overstepped his bounds in saying what he really thought of Maybelline.
“If it upsets you to hear your mother called a liar, I’m sorry.”
She shook her head. “No, that does not upset me, anymore than hearing that poison ivy leaves a rash or bee stings hurt. It’s an unpleasant fact of life, but why get upset about facts?”
What the hell was going on here? He could sense a coldness flowing from her, and whereas before she was wide open to him in a way that he’d never felt before, now, somehow, she was closed and hard. And it hurt.
“I need to talk to Hattie for a minute. Alone.” She hurried away from him, leaving him standing there, baffled. He went over to the drink table and grabbed a beer, downing it in three mighty gulps. He tossed it aside and grabbed another one, drinking more slowly.
People were staring at him. That creep Bo Durian, for one. And the bears. Their eyes slid back and forth between him and Krista, and he didn’t like it one bit.
After a couple of minutes, he made his way back to Krista, who was standing with Hattie, Pearl, Marigold, and Ethel, who seemed to have forgotten their fight and were now all gabbing like best friends.
Krista flashed him a huge bright smile.
“Blake. Do you love me?”
“Of course,” he blurted out the words before he even had time to think. And he didn’t need to think. She was his mate. He loved her, even though they’d just met. That didn’t matter. Fate was fate. They had their entire lives to get to know each other.
“Well, if you really love me, you’ll entertain Hattie and the girls here until I get back from the restroom. Might be a while. All of my make-up’s melted off my face and I have to put it back on again.”
“Ok.” He knew enough about women to understand that he had said or done something to piss her off, and this was his punishment. He flashed her a dazzling smile, and she returned a smile that was more plastic than a Hollywood starlet’s tits and hurried off.
Hattie and all the women pounced on him, peppering him with questions. Who were his people? Where had he grown up? Where would he and Krista live? When would they start having cubs or kits? Were they expecting any yet? What exactly did he do for a living again?
Hattie was drinking cup after cup of… something and getting drunker and drunker.
He just nodded and wished that Krista would come back. He felt as if she were getting farther and farther away from him. As if she wasn’t even here any more, as if she was miles away. But he kept smiling and nodding and saying “Uh-uh” to the increasingly inebriated Hattie, who had taken over the whole conversation.
“An’ another thing,” she was saying. “Wolf whistles. S’not right, hooting and whistling and looking at young ladies’ bottoms. Not when you’re committed to my great-great…” she squinted in thought “great-gran’-neesh. She’s a very shpecial person.”
Blake wondered how long the bruise would last as she poked him again. “It’s not a wolf thing,” he insisted tiredly. “I think it’s construction workers, actually. And even if it was, I have no interest in other ladies’… bottoms. Only Krista’s.”
“A-ha!” Hattie exclaimed triumphantly. “I knew it! You’re only in it for her bottom!”
“No! I mean, it’s a very nice bottom, but…” Now all the ladies were glaring at him like he was some kind of sex-starved pervert.
Blake wasn’t sure quite how the conversation had got to this point, except that you got happy drunks and angry drunks, and Hattie was apparently an as-crazy-as-a-box-of-frogs drunk. So far, she’d blamed him for wolf whistles, wolves in sheeps’ clothing, crying wolf, and wolfing his food, and she’d said “I’m not speciesist, but…” three times. Well, actually she’d said “shpeesheezhiz…isht”.
Where the hell was Krista? He’d been in the army for eight years, but he’d never needed backup as badly as he did right now. In fact, he’d take enemy fire over this any day.
“Taking a vixen as a mate’sh a very shound idea though,” Hattie was saying. She hiccupped, then screwed her face into what was probably supposed to be a coy smile. She put one hand on her hip and gave a geriatric wiggle. “Stone-cold foxes,” she explained. “An’ very relia… liable. Known for guarding henhouses.”
Blake scowled and sniffed the air as Hattie grabbed a jug from the table and refilled her cup. What the hell was she drinking?
And then it hit him. Hattie was drinking straight up lemonade, no alcohol.
He looked down at her. She wasn’t drunk at all. She was lying to him. Stalling him. Why?
“Hattie! What gives?” he snapped. “What is Krista up to?”
Hattie’s face turned smug, and she pulled something out of her pocket and shoved it into his hand. She stopped swaying where she stood, all pretense gone.
“If you wanted to know what my niece is up to, you shouldn’t have bugged her. You should have just asked her.”
Dumbly, he stared down into his hand at a small listening device which had been crushed flat.
That was why she’d been so cold. Krista thought that he’d put a bug on her somewhere. She thought he didn’t trust her.
And now she was gone.
Chapter Eighteen
Krista padded through the undergrowth, dainty paws picking a path through the grass, ears pricked for any sound. She could move more swiftly and silently in her vixen form. And she had a pretty good idea of where she was going now.
Talking to Dawnie and seeing what was happening at the party had cleared things up in her mind.
It was clear as day that Dawnie looked so exhausted because she’d been out searching for Ethan. And from the anger and tension radiating from her body, it was obvious she hadn’t found him. She’d gone to the party with her people to gather information on Krista and Blake, and to make sure that nobody talked. She was sending a message; she still ruled this valley, and anybody who talked would pay with their life.
Now, why would Dawnie be out searching for Ethan? And why had she tried to get Coffman to leave the searching to her? If the boy had been kidnapped by someone outside of Dawnie’s organization, she’d have joined in the search with the Golden Eyes pride for numerous reasons. She’d be furious that someone had acted without her say-so. And she’d reap the rewards if she could find the cub for Michael—he’d be in her debt forever.
The only reason she’d try to search on her own would be if one of her kids had grabbed Ethan. But somehow, Ethan had escaped.
There was only one way that Krista could imagine Ethan would stay hidden all this time—if Gummi was helping him. Percy would have killed him, and Eva-Jo would have handed him over to her mother.
And that was why Krista was heading through the woods right now—because she knew something that Dawnie didn’t. Gummi had a secret hiding place where he hid from his mother and brother when they were on a tear—he’d shown it to Krista once when she was living with him. And Krista had told Hattie about it when she drew her aside a little while ago. She’d made Hattie swear not to tell Blake until sundown, just in case something happened to her.
She’d thought about telling Blake that she was pretty sure Maybelline had fed them false information, but seeing that bug hidden in her purse had detonated an explosion of rage and hurt in her heart. She’d stormed off before she had a chance to talk herself back down.
He’s my mate.
And he doesn’t trust me.
Also, Gummi was a huge man-child trapped in an enormous bear body. He knew Krista; she was pretty sure she could sweet-talk him into handing over the boy. If he smelled or saw Blake, he was liable to shift and go on the attack, and then heaven knew what would happen to the boy.
But mostly, hadn’t she left without him because her feelings were hurt?
As she padded along the ground, she was constantly sniffing the air, ears perked up and listening.
She could smell some faint, fading odor trails from Gummi, weeks old most likely. That was excellent. It meant he still came up here on a regular basis.
She didn’t smell any fresh trails, but Gummi knew how to use noscentium. He was a fearful bear by nature, poor guy. And he’d definitely be covering his tracks.
Her nostrils flared as she sniffed the air. There were patterns in the smells around her—not individual threads, but patches of different colors and hues that formed an overall picture.
Krista reached the hillside and began pacing. There was an entryway here somewhere, covered with vines and underbrush.
The sound of rustling leaves froze her in her steps. What if she’d been wrong? What if Percy was the one holding Ethan prisoner? Or Eva-Jo? She’d be screwed, that’s what. The best she could hope for would be that she could lead them away and give Ethan a chance to escape.
If he was still alive.
The sound stopped, and she stood perfectly still, her heart rate slowing. She couldn’t scent anything; it could have been some small forest creature, or maybe the wind.
Damn it. She should have brought Blake with her. And now it was too late. She didn’t have time to go back and get him, and she might have put Ethan at risk. And she could have slapped herself for it.
She felt the sting of Blake’s betrayal, but she understood it, too. Getting the cub back home safe had to be top priority. Blake didn’t know her that well. He didn’t know if he could trust her—and he hadn’t been willing to stake a cub’s life on her doing the right thing.
Blackmailed By The Wolf (Shifters, Inc. Book 6) Page 13
