by P. Jameson
“Mmmm. So good.”
Marlee shifted on the bed, stretching her legs out and wrapping her arms around her pregnant belly. It was perfect and round and she almost smiled when her hands touched the bulge. She was pregnant and happy about it. Maybe even blissful. Like those pictures Janet had found online when she was looking for any indication that the tests could be wrong. Smiling, glowing moms-to-be wearing stretchy pants and cutesy maternity shirts that accentuated their growing middles. Marlee looked blissful like them.
All Janet could feel was scared. But maybe things would change when she saw her baby on the monitor tomorrow.
“So…” Marlee began, giving Janet a careful look. “How are you feeling?”
Janet shrugged, trying to seem at ease when she was anything but. “Like shit. But at least now I only vomit once or twice a day. Yesterday I went nineteen hours between tossing. It’s a damn miracle, really.”
Nyla smirked, ever logical. “The miracle of modern medicine.”
Marlee grinned, rubbing her bump. “I was lucky with this guy. A little nausea but zero vomiting. Not sure how we’ll hold up in the third trimester, but so far so good.”
“You know,” Nyla said, her expression turning wicked. “They say in the second trimester your hormones are going wild and you need sex like, allllll the time. That true?”
“Yeah, is that true?” Vegas piped up, but no one could miss her blush. “Because… well, that could be fun.”
Marlee pressed her lips together and her hands to her cheeks before blowing out a slow breath. “It’s true. God, it’s so true. And you know…” She looked at Vegas and Nyla. “… the werecats can sense it. Not just the mates, but all of them. It’s downright embarrassing sometimes. But it is fun to watch Ratchet get all territorial and protective.” Her smile slipped just a millimeter. “Except when Charmer tried to get a little too close when he was reaching for the bread at dinner. Poor thing nearly lost his head over a dinner roll.”
Poor thing. As if any of these men were poor things.
Nyla raised an eyebrow. “He won’t make that mistake again.”
“I suspect not.” Marlee turned back to Janet. “So… Smokes. Tell us about you and Smokes.”
“Smokes,” Janet repeated, and the girls stared at her expectantly. “Um. Well, there’s nothing to say, really.”
Vegas frowned. “Nothing to say?”
“No.”
“Bullshit.” Nyla snorted, chewing her cookie.
“I mean… he was just… helping me until I could figure out what to do with myself. Now that the news is out in the open…” She let the sentence fall away to nothing.
“Helping you. But I thought he was the father.” Skye eyed her skeptically and then her gaze moved to Janet’s belly. “Did he… Janet, tell the truth. Did he hurt you?”
Hurt her? They must think… of course they think—
“You can tell us,” Nyla pushed.
“I’ll kill him,” Vegas whispered. “Won’t even be hard.”
Shit. She forgot what he’d told the clan.
“No!” Janet shook her head, swallowing down the knot of nausea in her throat. “No, okay. Smokes didn’t hurt me. Not at all.”
Skye leaned forward. “I don’t know if I believe you. Janet, there’s a baby in you.”
“I-I know that.”
“Then help us understand,” Marlee said carefully. “Are you and Smokes together. The way we are with our mates?” She implicated Vegas and Nyla. And Janet could see their relief at the idea in the way their shoulders sagged. It was palpable in the room.
But she couldn’t let them think what they were thinking.
“No.” She shook her head. “We’re not together.”
Nyla scowled in confusion, her dark brow wrinkling above her golden eyes. “He kidnapped a doctor for you. That means you’re practically mated.”
Janet coughed at the M word. “What? No. It’s not… it’s nothing like that. I…” She was going to have to tell them the truth. “It isn’t his,” she blurted. The words burned from her lips, tasting like acid. “The baby isn’t his.”
The room was silent as she waited for the information to sink in. Saying it out loud made her feel even sicker. It was too easy to pretend, to go along with what he’d told everybody. But she couldn’t pretend forever, and keeping her friends in the dark seemed unfair. To them, to Smokes. To the little one inside, who was already destined for a lifetime of unfairness.
Skye moved closer to the bed, going up on her knees to reach for Janet’s hand. “One of the others then?” she whispered.
All Janet could do was shake her head and prepare for the question that was coming next.
Marlee took her other hand. “Who’s the father?”
Janet shook her head again, this time noticing the tears falling from her eyes to land on her knees.
“You don’t know.”
Another wordless answer that finalized the weighted reality for them all.
“It’s okay,” Marlee murmured, pulling Janet into a hug.
But it didn’t feel okay. Nothing felt okay. The only thing in the whole goddamned world that felt okay was Smokes. And now that he’d gotten her the help she needed, he was done with her. Like he’d completed his part of some unspoken bargain they’d made. Maybe he was just making up for how she helped him when he was shot.
Help for help.
Debt paid and canceled.
She’d been a fool to think it was anything else. And an even bigger fool for wanting it to be.
She sniffed back her sorrow, pulling away from Marlee to dry her tears. She’d spent many years in actual hell and didn’t cry over it. Perhaps her situation deserved tears. The life she carried inside deserved her tears. But she would not cry over Smokes. It wasn’t like he had claimed her as his. Never. Not once. And she knew that was a big part of the way the werecats worked. It was shifter law or something.
See your woman. Claim she’s yours. Earn her trust. Give her your mark. Live happily fucked-up ever after.
There was none of that with Smokes.
“It’s gonna be fine,” she croaked, clearing her throat to sound stronger. She didn’t want them worrying about her. “I’m going to be okay. On my own. It’s fine.” The words felt like a lie, but maybe it was just because they weren’t true yet.
“You’re not on your own,” Vegas insisted. “You will never be on your own.”
Marlee nodded in agreement. “You have us. Always.”
“They say it takes a village anyway,” Nyla added. “We’re the village.”
Janet shook her head, squeezing her eyes hard against the tears that wanted to come. “No. I won’t be the burden that drags you down anymore. You are all going to live. And grow. And heal. And be so so much better than you are now.”
Skye tightened her hold on Janet’s hand. “Jan, you’re not a—”
“I am!” She found Skye’s concerned gaze. “I am, and you know it. I’m the one everyone worries about. The one who can’t keep her shit together, ever. The weakest link. And now, I’m pregnant.” The words still burned an ache in her chest. “I’m pregnant with a baby who, if I choose to keep, will grow up without a father. And with a mother so weak she can’t keep food down on a nervous day. A mother who was sold for sex to who-the-hell-ever his real father is. How will I ever tell him he’s better off not even knowing where he came from? How will I love him, raise him, teach him right from wrong? How will I do any of it, when I can’t even stand on my own two feet?”
“We will help you,” Marlee said. “And you’ll accept our help. The way you always have, Jan.” The way you always have. Janet remembered how the girls would cover for her with Bastian when she was late for a job from being sick. They’d make up such believable lies. Especially Skye. Or the way they would save back food so she’d have something to eat after she was done being sick.
“What do I offer you?”
Marlee frowned. “What?”
“What do
I offer you? Or you, or you?” She looked at each of them in turn. “Or you?”
Vegas opened her mouth to speak but nothing came out.
It was Skye who finally answered. “You are our friend.”
Janet shook her head, rocking back against the headboard. “It’s not a fair trade. You all come through time after time, picking up my slack, saving my ass again and again. Now you have to help me raise a baby I might never be able to mother. I can’t… I can’t let you.”’
Vegas pressed a cool hand to Janet’s forehead. “Calm down, okay. Things aren’t as bad as they seem right now.”
Janet drew in a breath but couldn’t answer. Because she had nothing good to say. Of course things were as bad as they seemed.
“I can’t speak for everyone,” Nyla began, “but I will anyway. Jan, we want to help you. If we don’t have each other… then we lose the only good thing that came out of our imprisonment. Our bond.”
“Our bond?”
Nyla glanced at the others and they nodded. “Like the mating bonds we share with our males. We five have a different kind of bond. One that was born out of shared trauma and what it took to survive that trauma. And you know what? That shit is unbreakable. Whether you like it or not.”
“Ny…” Janet rubbed her temples, trying to wrap her head around what she was feeling. If she could just make sense of it herself, then she could make them understand too. “I don’t want to break anything. I want… I want…”
When the silence stretched into too many breaths, Marlee spoke. “Maybe you don’t know what you want,” she said gently.
Janet pressed a palm to her stomach willing down the sick feeling. “It’s not that.” She knew what she wanted. She just didn’t know how to put it into words.
But she had to try.
“It’s hard to explain. I… I’m no good. Not because of what I’ve done or what I’ve been through. Not because I’ve been broken or made bad choices or used. I’m no good because I can’t come out from behind the walls I’ve built. You can coax and prod, and I even want that, I do. I want to trust. I want the connection, the friendship, more. But I can’t… can’t handle it.”
In all their years in the dungeon, they had never talked about this. They’d spent all their energy trying to survive. Now they were trying to heal, and maybe it was even harder to do than just survive.
“I might as well be chained inside my hole with real iron, because the confinement feels that real. I can’t let anyone see how dark it is inside these walls. I can’t let that poison out into the world, so I hold it in. It’s mine to live with, mine to work through, mine to understand. And no matter how lonely it is inside… I can’t come out. I won’t. The light hurts. Everything hurts. But the darkness, at least I know that kind of pain. And I know I can withstand it.”
The room grew quiet, and she knew they were working through her explanation. All she could do was wait and hope she didn’t lose them.
“I get it,” Vegas murmured. “What if there was someone who could meet you in your darkness, and love you right there in the midst of it. What if you never had to step out into the light. What if the darkness is what can heal you?”
“How?”
Marlee answered, “By living through the things that hurt. By finding things that hurt less, or not at all. Doing all that, right there in your safe space. What if it changed your darkness, all that mess behind your walls, into something new entirely?”
“But how can I do that?”
“Invite him in,” Nyla whispered.
Invite him in. It sounded too easy.
“He doesn’t want me like that. Why would he? He knows what I am, what I’ve done.”
“What was done to you, Jan. What was done to you.”
Janet swallowed back a new lump in her throat. One that felt different. Full of possibilities. Maybe even… hope?
But she was afraid to feel that.
She shook her head. “He doesn’t want me.”
“Maybe not,” Marlee agreed. “But he wants the same things. Peace. Something to make the darkness bearable. What if you were that for each other and he just doesn’t know it yet?”
“Or isn’t paying attention,” Nyla added.
“It can’t work.”
Marlee squeezed her hand. “What if it does?”
Nyla nodded. “No one ever kidnapped anyone for me. Just sayin’.”
“No, yours broke into a fortress to rescue you and killed your captor,” Vegas reminded.
“True. That is a little better, isn’t it?”
“A little.”
Janet pulled in a breath, forcing herself to think about what they were saying.
“Don’t you want to try?” Marlee whispered.
Did she? Did she want to risk it when she was in such a fragile place, when her life was such a mess?
She gave them the brutal truth. “I don’t know.”
Marlee’s expression was full of understanding. “When you decide, whatever you decide, let him know. Because I think Smokes hides behind his own walls. And I bet he won’t come out as long as he thinks it’s keeping you safe.”
Janet let the words sink in. Did Smokes feel the same way she did about being dangerous? About not wanting her sickness to spread? Was he battling the same demons she did, by himself, behind a wall? Lonely, damaged beyond reconciliation, needing a quarantine.
She wasn’t sure how long the room was silent. Minutes for sure, but maybe even hours, while she wrestled with her thoughts.
Eventually, the girls started to leave, promising to come back another time with more food. Maybe next time, she’d even eat it.
Skye was the last to leave, and she stopped at the door, turning to stare at Janet.
“Hope,” she said.
“What?”
“You asked what you offer us. The answer is hope. You think you’re weak because you respond to things differently than the rest of us. You turn inward and feel in a more physical way when the rest of us shut down and become numb. But if you can keep going and work through the things you’ve experienced, it gives us hope that no matter what, we will endure. All of us, different as we are. We. Will. Endure.” Skye’s voice shook with each word, and as she turned into the hallway, she sighed. “You give us hope, Jan.”
With that, she pulled the door shut, leaving Janet in silence.
Chapter Twelve
Smokes held the woman beneath him carefully as he eased in and out of her body, so slow. His kisses were soft presses against her silky skin, never bruising. Never damaging. And her sweet moans of pleasure drifted around his head like a sultry fog. She loved everything he did, every move he made. And he loved…
Her.
This wasn’t fucking as he’d ever known it. It was something else. It was beautiful and liberating and... from the depths of his fucked up heart.
Making love. He was making love to the woman. To her.
“Janet,” he whispered against her cheek moving on her body like a wave. “My mate.” She was his symbol of peace. His dove.
Making love was better than any dream he’d ever—
Dream.
It was a dream.
In his dream, he was so gentle, and exactly what she needed. He wasn’t afraid of hurting her because he was completely hers and she was completely his and nothing could be wrong between them.
He was good for her.
In his dreams.
Which he’d had ever night since he held her in her bed that night. A week and a half full of these dreams that felt better than heaven, only to awake to a reality without her.
As if on cue, the room caught fire, hot flames licking at the walls until the paint lit and the bedding began to singe.
It always ended this way. With fire. With both of them burning up in a lusty tangle while he tried not to hurt her, tried to get back the gentleness of before. Tried to keep making love. To keep showing her they could be together, that they were meant to be.
But the tr
uth always came in the end.
He was dangerous. He would ruin her.
Because in real life, he wasn’t careful. Not gentle. Didn’t kiss softly. In real life, he battled an inner beast that wanted out, wanted him to claim her, mate her. Mark her with his claw. In real life, she was already pregnant with the baby he wanted to give her. A baby he wanted too, but had no claim to.
Real life was a sick twisted fuck, and they were all just along for the ride.
Smokes watched through dream eyes as Janet’s dark hair caught fire and her eyes went wide with surprise. With betrayal.
“I’m sorry, so sorry,” he said, regret winding him into a knot. But it was as if she couldn’t hear him. “I’m sorry, mate. Please…”
She screamed as the fire consumed her, and he wanted to die in her place. Anything to make the burning stop. His turn was coming. But not until he watched the woman he loved in a dream burn to ashes in his arms.
Desperate, he pressed her close, trying to put the fire out with his own body, trying to absorb it like the other Firecats did. But as always, it was a useless gesture. “Shhh,” he crooned in her ear, hopeless. “It will be over soon. Be strong, dove. Be strong.” The last part was for himself. Losing her night after night was like hell.
Maybe that was it. Maybe he was in hell, and paying for all the sins of his past. That made more sense than ever waking up.
As he burned, holding what was left of Janet’s body, he realized there was only a small piece of her remaining. Small enough to hold in the palm of his hand, and so fragile it seemed like it could blow away with a faint breath.
Her heart.
He cradled it with both hands, determined to keep it from the blaze. But in the end, the fire took everything.
Smokes jerked awake, soaked in sweat, breath chugging in his lungs.
Goddamn it.
He blinked, staring at the ceiling. No fire. No smoke. No roaring blaze that stole his female away.
Goddamn fucking fucked up dreams. As if he wasn’t twisted up over his woman enough. As if his every waking moment wasn’t spent trying to distract himself from thinking about her. From ending up outside her fucking door knocking to be let in.
He blinked again, swinging his legs over the side of the bed and ran a rough hand through his hair, trying to catch his breath. He reached for his bedside table needing a smoke, only to find the normal pack of cigarettes he kept there missing.
