The Warrior

by Rebecca Royce

  “You’ll have to get me a copy of that book sometime so I can see what it entails.”

  “You’re funny.” He yawned. “And I’m not distracted. What’s the matter?”

  “Oh, Jason.”

  I closed my eyes. Chad was dead. I needed to depend on Jason, who made me feel a ton of conflicting emotions. I couldn’t believe I was going to have to open this door and let what was sure to hurt him out into the open.

  “Tell me.”

  “Your mother isn’t dead, not really.”

  I spoke the words as barely a whisper, knowing he would hear them as if I had shouted.

  He stood up, staring down at me. “What?”

  “Your father told me he saw her right before he woke up and shook off the bad Werewolf mojo. Seeing her woke him up.”

  Jason rubbed his chin. “She’d be really old. Where did he see her? Why wouldn’t he have told us?”

  I sighed as I stood up. “Because she’s a Vampire.”

  Silence stretched out in front of us. I had to say something.

  “You should be able to smell that I’m not lying.”

  He nodded. Okay, that was good. But that didn’t mean he wasn’t about to shoot—or bite—the messenger.

  When he spoke, it was with tears in his eyes. One second they were there, the next second they had vanished.

  “My father has such a bag of lies, I wonder how he can carry them around.”

  “I’m sure, in this case, he was trying to protect you from pain.”

  I couldn’t believe I’d just said that. Was I defending Andon Kenwood?

  He took a step away from me as he stared out into the darkness, seeing things I couldn’t with his sense of smell and his acute hearing. But I didn’t think he was really noticing anything out in the woods. No, Jason’s thoughts were all self-directed at the moment.

  “He took you away from me for the same reason. He was protecting me. I’m not a child. I haven’t been for years.”

  I could barely make out his words so I stepped closer to stand next to him. “You’re not a child but even you have to admit that he’s always seen your chipper view of the world as being somewhat naive. He thinks he needs to protect you.”

  “If you’re not going to sleep, I’m going to shift and run you home.”

  I didn’t follow his train of thought. “What?”

  “If she’s alive, then my father owes me answers. I have to know where she is and what happened. But I’m not going anywhere until I get you home.”

  A sinking feeling surfaced in my gut at the thought of his leaving and I pushed it away. It had to be processed later.

  “Don’t worry. I can get myself home. Just point me in the direction I need to walk.”

  “No.” His head jerked around as he looked at me and I swallowed my response. Jason was serious. He would not leave.

  “Look, you have your own business to handle. I can take care of myself. I have my entire life.”

  “Up until now. As you love to point out, I left you sitting in the snow. I’m not going to leave you stranded in the woods. I love you. You’re my mate. That means I see you to safety.”

  Genesis wasn’t likely secure. But if I brought that up, I’d probably get dragged kicking and screaming with him to see Andon.

  “Okay, let’s go.”

  He shook his head. “You need to sleep. Are you willing to give that a try?”

  “No way am I going to sleep, Jason.”

  “Why not?”

  Because if I closed my eyes, I knew who I would see in my dreams. Chad haunted me when he was alive, now he would consume my unconscious mind, accusing me of all kinds of horrible betrayals. The sad truth was that he would be absolutely correct.

  “I just can’t.”

  “All right, then I’m going to shift and you’re going to get on my back.”

  My heart beat fast in my chest. It was the kind of moment that didn’t happen very often, but where I knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that something significant was about to happen. I had been putting off seeing him as a Wolf again. It would mean that I was back to being completely okay being around him. Maybe it was stupid. Maybe I had already made that change in my mind and I just hadn’t acknowledged it yet, but in my mind I hadn’t done this yet.

  “Are you going to leave your sisters here?”

  He nodded. “When they wake up, they’ll follow us. Trust me, they followed me here, they can find us anywhere.”

  That was disturbing on so many levels. “Could you guys find me anywhere I went?”

  “I can’t speak for Luna and Autumn, but trust me, Rachel, you are my mate. There is nowhere you could go that I couldn’t find you.”

  But I knew for a fact that the opposite was not true. “It’s not exactly fair. You can vanish and I’ll never see you again but anytime you want to see me, boom, you follow my scent.”

  “What do you propose to do about it?”

  “Maybe I should have you wear a bell.”

  “We can’t put this off forever. I’m going to shift now.”

  Of course, he had known I was stalling. Why shouldn’t he know? He knew everything else by my scent alone. I rolled my eyes.

  “Well then go ahead, get it over with.”

  With a grin and a nod, he shifted into his Wolf form. His face elongated as his hands covered in fur. His body hunching over, he was almost immediately down on four legs. The whole thing took thirty seconds, but it felt like an hour as I watched him change.

  He shook his head as he looked up at me, his wolf eyes finding me in the moonlight. He whined and moved forward until I patted him on the head.

  “I’m not sure I can do this. The last time….”

  We both knew what had happened the last time I’d ridden on his back. We’d been alone all night in a house until I’d picked up Vampire signals I’d not been able to ignore. We’d had no choice but to run. Still, the time we’d been in the house together had been the one time in the brief time I’d been with Jason that I hadn’t been able to discount as meaningless. I had known, deep in my subconscious, that whatever turned out to be true and false between us, that night had been legitimate.

  It had been sweet, powerful, and, for me, all consuming. I had believed in us. If I got on Jason’s back, I might do that again.

  He whined again, touching my hand and I knew I had no choice. I needed to let Genesis know what had happened, Chad’s family had the right to hear how brave and flawless their son had been, and Jason needed to have another big confrontation with his father.

  None of this could happen in a timely manner unless I got on Jason’s back and let him run us a lot further at a faster pace than I could walk.

  It was imperative that I not let my fears of being destroyed again become so consuming that I couldn’t move forward into what had to be done.

  I couldn’t spend forever wandering in the woods, no matter how appealing the thought might be. I had a purpose I needed to accomplish, a need that had to drive me on.

  No matter how hard I tried, I didn’t remember my mother but I was sure from the stories I head that she wasn’t a coward. My father had been so consumed with his grief that he’d never gotten over it. Life had ceased for him.

  It couldn’t do that for me. I hadn’t died. That meant I had to keep going.

  “Okay, Jason, I’ll get on your back, but if you drop me on the ground I’m going to cause you pain.”

  We both knew it was an empty threat, but Jason dropped his head like he took me seriously. If he’d been in his human form, I would have seen humor in his blue depths.

  Holding onto him tightly, I climbed onto his back and wrapped my arms around his strong wolf neck. Placing my head down on his fur that was somehow both rough and soft at the same time, I took a deep breath, inhaling the familiar scent that was Jason as a wolf. I might not be Werewolf but I could still relate to smell. It could still transport me to places in my memories I might otherwise not visit.

  As I held on
tightly, Jason ran hard through the trees, turning at the last minute and barely missing twigs and trees, which were in his way. It might seem careless but I trusted him. If I held on, I wouldn’t so much as get a bruise on me while I was on his back.

  I hadn’t asked him how far we would travel before we stopped and after a while I started to, unbelievably, feel tired pressed up against him as he ran. My eyelids started to close, and Jason growled at me. I forced my eyes back open.

  He was right. I couldn’t afford to sleep; I might fall off. The idea made me shudder. I didn’t want to break my arm or, worse, my neck.

  A few minutes later, Jason skidded to a stop and I forced my tired legs to climb down from his back. They must have, at some point, gotten stiff and I had a hard time getting my feet to work beneath me.

  Jason shifted back into his human form and pulled me against him as he did.

  “Come on, Rachel, we’ll both sleep.”

  I swallowed. “I’m afraid to go to bed.”

  I hadn’t been when I’d been on his back. The whole experience had short-circuited my brain functions, and I’d been able to pretend that I wouldn’t dream. Now that I stood still, I didn’t have the luxury of that kind of imagination.

  “Why?”

  “Because I don’t want to see Chad screaming at me.” A tear escaped from my eye and I quickly wiped it away.

  “He would never scream at you. He loved you like I love you. I could smell it on him. Truthfully, I could smell it on you, too. His love manifested itself inside of your pores. In a million years, I can’t believe he would scream at you.”

  “You didn’t know him. Chad could yell. Would yell, if need be. I think right now, he’d be screaming his head off.”

  Jason pulled me into his arms. “He wouldn’t. He’d want you to get home.”

  I hoped he was right because even standing in Jason’s arms I could feel myself giving into the blackness of sleep.

  “Relax, I’ve got you.”

  I hoped he really did.

  Chapter Fifteen

  I woke up in a frenzy, my mind moving a thousand miles a minute even as my body was sluggish like I hadn’t moved in a really long time. If I’d dreamt, I couldn’t remember what it had been about. My whole focus was on waking up and getting on with my day.

  Jason pushed me back down to the ground when I attempted to jump to my feet.

  “Easy there, Pixie-Girl, you’ve been asleep for twelve hours. I don’t want you to fall over.”

  I blinked at that news. I don’t think I’ve ever slept for twelve hours in my life. I rubbed at my eyes as I looked up at the sky. Yes, it looked like afternoon. I groaned as I shoved away his hand to stand up on my own.

  “Why did you let me sleep for so long?”

  He shrugged as he handed me an apple.

  “You didn’t give me specific instructions when you collapsed in my arms.”

  My cheeks heated at his words. Yes, that was exactly what I’d done.

  “Sorry.”

  He grinned as he ran a hand through my hair. “I liked it. Don’t apologize. It made me feel like Don Juan.”

  “I’m sorry. I don’t know who that is.”

  Frequently, Jason and I spoke different languages. The fact that he’d lived in Before Time gave us very different cultural references.

  “Someday, you and I are going to hole up in a library somewhere. I’ll find one that is still standing and we’ll just read for weeks.”

  I yawned as I took a bite of the apple. “How can you find food so easily?”

  He tapped his nose. “I can always locate food and water.”

  The apple was sweet. If I could have found a way to get a bath with actual warm water—not something I’d had since the Genesis population had stopped living underground—I would have been in pure ecstasy.

  That was about as likely as the sky opening up and dropping hamburgers on my head, which meant I would be returning to Genesis absolutely disgusting. They’d have to disinfect me for days before they let me near anyone. Of course that was presuming they let me back in at all after I let Chad get killed rescuing me.

  “What are you thinking about?”

  I shook my head. “Jason, I have to be able to have some private thoughts. If you can smell my distress, keep it to yourself. I’ll talk about it when I want to.”

  “I would, if I thought you might actually ever tell me.”

  “Don’t most guys not want to hear what a woman is feeling all the time?”

  He tapped his fingers on my arm. “Does it surprise you that I’m not like ‘most’ guys?”

  “No, but on that topic, Mister I-can-smell-everything-all-the-time, I really stink. Where do you suppose I could find a place to bathe?”

  “You don’t stink.”

  I shook my head, my insides warring between utter embarrassment and wanting to wring his neck. “I do.”

  “There’s a river not too far from here. You can have a drink there too. It smells clean. Follow me.” He sniffed the air. “Do I stink?”

  I grinned, loving the ability to actually tease him for a change. “What’s the matter, Wolf-boy, can’t smell yourself?”

  “It’s a personal failure. I’ve always been ashamed.”

  Jason mock-cried and I rolled my eyes. Following behind him, we finally came to the river he had said was nearby. His definition of ‘near-by’ and my definition of it were two different things. I wondered if it was possible for Jason to ever actually get tired.

  I looked down at the rushing water and knew instantly I was going to freeze. I’d had to do this in the past. It wasn’t like I wasn’t accustomed to cold water but still the frigid temperature that was sure to greet me as soon as I submerged did not inspire me with a great deal of pleasure.

  Turning to Jason, I noticed he was deceptively peaceful-looking as he stared off into the distance.

  “I need you to step away.”

  “I’ll turn my back but I’m not leaving. You’ll get into trouble. I’ll be away for three seconds and you’ll get swept away in a current or attract some way-laid octopus that will drag you off to places unknown.”

  I stared down at the river and then back up at Jason. “I somehow doubt that there are octopi or any other creatures in there that could pull me anywhere.”

  “My point remains the same.”

  “I can’t take off my clothes with you standing here.”

  Like an innocent child, he stepped forward until he was so close I could feel his warm breath on my face. “Why not?”

  “Because it’s not appropriate. You know how I feel about these things.”

  He was quiet for a second. “I’m biting my lip to not say something that’s going to make you angry.”

  “That’s good.” Of course, because he’d said that, now I wanted desperately to know what it was he’d thought to say. “Oh hell, Jason, you might as well tell me now.”

  “I want to know if Chad saw you naked, but I know it’s none of my business, right?”

  He’d closed his eyes as he spoke. I might have gotten angry, but it spoke volumes that he’d closed his eyes. The only reason he’d do that would be to hide any pain he felt.

  “Chad did not see me naked, and I wish you would stop obsessing about it.”

  I tried to keep my voice steady. I wasn’t the only one in the world with emotions, even if I occasionally forgot that fact.

  “Turn around.”

  He opened his eyes as he did what I asked.

  Quickly, I stripped my clothes off. Laying them in a neat pile, I decided I’d be efficient about my efforts to clean off. It’s not like I had any soap. This was going to be more like a freezing cold soak than a bath.

  I turned my back to face away from Jason, just in case, as I dunked myself down into the water. I gasped as the coldness assaulted every pore.

  “Where did you get the tattoo?”

  I shrieked and ducked back down into the water. “You’re not supposed to be looking at me.”<
br />
  “Relax, all I can see is your back and I had to look after I heard you gasp. I needed to make sure a rip current hadn’t suddenly appeared to scoop you down river.”

  “Well, it didn’t, so turn around.”

  The water might be cold but my body now felt like a volcano had exploded inside of it. I both did, and did not, want him looking at me without my clothes on. But the majority did not want him looking. I’ve never been looked at completely naked, well not since I was a baby, that I could remember anyway, and I had a feeling I was not being displayed in my best light.

  Not that I particularly had a great light….

  Jason whirled around. “So answer me, where did you get the tattoo?”

  I took one more dip into the water and felt like I might permanently turn blue.

  “It was a few weeks ago. Micah, Tia, Deacon, and Chad picked it out for me.”

  I almost managed to say Chad’s name without choking on it. Almost.

  I scurried onto the shore, grabbed my clothes, and quickly dabbed at myself with my pants and my shirt. They’d have to dry in the sun. With Jason present I couldn’t exactly sun dry myself. Not that I ever, ever, ever wanted to be naked outside. No, absolutely not.

  “Did they know I called you Pixie-girl?”

  After I shoved on my underwear and bra, I pulled my shirt over my head. “No, we didn’t exactly discuss you very often.” Or in a way that didn’t make one of them declare that if they ever saw him they’d kill him….

  “Then how did that happen?”

  “Apparently Micah and Chad thought it suited me.”

  I hadn’t really believed it myself. Deacon hadn’t thought it fit me, but I really didn’t think Jason needed to hear the details. Besides, I needed to get dressed. I shoved myself into my pants and searched the ground for my socks and shoes, which I had been less than smart about placing. It took me a minute to find my second sock.

  “It does suit you.”

  I jumped at how close his voice was behind me. He kissed me on my neck gently and I sighed. Jason always knew how to touch me, how to caress. Sometimes he made me want to throw my good intentions aside. But then all I had to do was think about Tia and how she was going to try to have a baby and what that would mean for her life….