by Abigail Owen
“Calling me an idiot is not likely to get me to listen to you. And cougars do well in the snow. So I’m not too worried.”
Jaxon wanted to shake her but instead projected a calm he wasn’t quite feeling and shrugged. “You’re putting pride before common sense. I expected more from you… Commander.”
Strangely, he wasn’t angry about her not revealing her true position to him. That information was part of her keeping the Carstairs defensive systems under wraps to keep her people safe. He got it.
She said nothing, just shoveled more food in her mouth and kept chewing.
“You leave and I’m just going to follow you and drag you back here.”
Andie growled low in her chest. About the sexiest damn sound he’d ever heard, but Jaxon kept his focus on convincing her to stay. He walked over and placed his hands on the table on either side of her and let loose his own deep growl of pure dominance.
“Don’t make me play the Alpha card, Andie. I don’t want to be that way with you, but I will if you force the issue.”
“But you’re not my Alpha.”
“You know what I mean.”
She held his eyes defiantly for a moment but then glanced away and shrunk down in her seat. Her body language conceded his superior position, even if she’d never admit it out loud. Jaxon actually hated seeing his strong, proud woman like that. He wanted a partner, an equal in every way. But he’d also use any means necessary to get her to stay in the safety of the cabin and work this out.
“I’d like to talk to Mike if he’s still at your compound,” she muttered.
“Why?”
She lifted one eyebrow. “I want to make sure he’s okay. Is it possible, security wise?”
“It’s possible. I have a secure satellite phone with me. But it’s not necessary. I assure you that your people were treated well.”
Andie looked down, and then nodded. “Thank you for that.” She glanced back up and caught his look of surprise. “What? You didn’t think I’d believe you?” Some of her usual spark twinkled in her eyes.
He smiled. “Something like that.”
She shrugged. “I’ve heard stories of Jaxon Keller for many years. By all accounts you are an excellent Alpha, fair and honorable.”
He ran a hand over the stubble on his jaw. “So you trust me with your people but not enough to stay with my dare?”
Andie’s shoulders stiffened, and she glared at him. “I’m not going to talk about it.”
Jaxon leaned back. “Okay.”
Now it was her turn to look surprised, her eyebrows shooting up. “Okay?”
He nodded. “Yeah. Okay. The storm buys us a little time. I can give you some space to think if that’s what you need.”
A flash of something shadowed her eyes. Then she sat back, pushing her now empty plate away, and glared. “And if I’m never ready to talk about it? I’m still leaving here the second I get the chance.”
“Andie, running away is not the answer, and you know it.”
“It’s the only option I have left,” she muttered.
Jaxon snagged a chair and sat down close beside her, crowding right into her space, his gaze intently holding hers. “You do have another option. Mate and marry me.”
She looked down at her empty plate. “I can’t marry someone I can’t trust.”
“You trust me. And you’re not as mad at me as you want me to believe.”
Andie pinched her lips closed and shook her head. “You don’t know that.”
Jaxon reached out to touch her face, but she jerked back. “I know you, Andromeda Jaci Reynolds. Or should I call you A.J.?”
She jumped up and turned her back on him. “I don’t thi—” She turned narrowed eyes back on him. He’d used her full name. She let out an exasperated sigh. “Who told you my name? Hannah? Or Mike?”
“The night you ran away from the dare Hannah had to explain Mike’s role in things and his relation to you. And especially about your role in Nick’s and her escape. His word alone wasn’t enough for us to take him on faith. Andromeda Jaci? Your mom sure liked unusual names.”
“Jaci means moon in Tupi, part of her Brazilian heritage. She liked meanings.”
“Hmmm. The stars and the moon.”
Andie frowned, confused.
“Andromeda is not only a Greek myth, she’s also a constellation. So you were the stars and the moon to your mother.”
Surprise had her blinking owlishly at him. Apparently she hadn’t thought of that reason for her unusual name.
Jaxon stood and moved toward her. “So you kept things from me too, A.J.”
Andie backed away from him, the distance feeling like a wall she’d never let him climb. “It’s not the same. I wanted to win my place in your dare on my own merits,” she said.
Jaxon stopped walking and held up his hands. “And I wanted to win my place in your heart on my own merits.”
Andie’s eyes widened. “I… I’m not ready to talk about this right now.” She turned and fled up the stairs.
Jaxon knew by the panic in her eyes that he’d pushed her too far, too fast. As much as it pained him to do so, he let her go. He wouldn’t push her anymore. Tonight, at least. The clock was against them, but he’d be patient as long as he could. The storm bought them some time.
Chapter 18
Andie opened her eyes, focusing in the darkness as she strained her ears to listen, her instincts on high alert. Something was wrong, and it’d woken her from a dead sleep. Maybe it had just been her own thoughts. Jaxon had as good as said he wanted her for herself tonight. God she’d wanted to hear those words so much. But the whole point of her being here was to protect him. She’d honestly had no idea how to handle it. Fight or flight had kicked in. She’d chosen flight.
Now, she listened. A moment later Jaxon knocked on her door and then eased it open. He held a flashlight, which he aimed at his feet rather than blind her with the beam of light. “We lost power. I took a chance that you sensed it and were already awake.”
Andie nodded. She flipped her covers back and swung her legs to the floor. She glanced out the window at the weather. “Did the storm get worse?”
“No.”
Andie’s eyes shifted from the window to Jaxon. He was concerned but didn’t want her to know. She wasn’t sure how she knew that. She just did.
“Talk to me, Keller. I’m a Commander, not some breakable doll.”
A small smile tugged at his lips. “The storm has passed, and it’s calm out there. It’s possible the weight of the snow took out our power.”
“Or I didn’t put enough gas in the generator when I started it up today.”
“Maybe.”
“But you don’t think so?”
“What makes you say that?”
“There’s a certain tone in your voice when you’re holding something back from me.” What she didn’t add was that she’d been able to hear it when they were at the compound. This was the first time she’d heard it since they’d been at the cabin.
“Let’s just say I play on the side of caution.”
Andie stood up, ignoring the fact that she was just in her underwear until his gaze skittered down her body. “If the power was going to come back on, it would’ve by now, right?”
He dragged his eyes back to hers and nodded. “I’m going to go check it out. You stay here.”
She grabbed her jeans off the end of the bed and started pulling them on. “I’m coming with you.”
He opened his mouth to protest but shut it. Reaching out, he tugged on her long braid that lay over one shoulder. “Not a doll, huh?”
She grinned. So he could listen. “Right.”
“All right. Put on some warm clothes and follow me.”
Andie quickly dressed and met Jaxon at the bottom of the stairs. “Stay close to me,” he said.
“Let’s go.”
He turned the flashlight off and opened the door. Cautiously, taking their time to sniff the air, their senses tuned to ev
ery nuance of their surroundings, they made their way around the house. The going was slow, hampered by the snow, which was knee high on Andie in some areas.
Finally they made it to the small structure that housed the generator. They had to dig the snow away from the door to the shed. Luckily, Jaxon had had the forethought to bring shovels. Once inside, he checked it over.
“No gas.” He grabbed a canister. “Stay here. I’ll be right back.”
Andie nodded.
He’d been gone about ten minutes when she heard a sound that made the hair on the back of her neck stand up. The howl of a wolf.
“Not good,” she muttered. The animal was close by and located vaguely in the direction in which Jaxon had just disappeared. Was it alone? And was it a wild wolf, or worse… a shifter?
“Please let it be a lone, wild wolf,” Andie muttered as she shivered in the cold. She paused and listened.
Then her heart dropped as she heard them.
The answering howls of the wolf pack. The sounds came from all around the clearing. Andie kept silent, but expletives were going off inside her head like bombs. She knew that sound too well. She’d heard it the day her mother was killed.
Those were definitely shifters. Wild wolves did communicate similarly, but shifters… if you knew what to listen for, you could hear the signals they were passing back and forth. Based on what she heard, there were a lot of them, more than she and Jaxon could handle on their own. And she and Jaxon were split up right now. Their stupidity just dropped their odds considerably.
Andie clenched her hands. She was a fighter, a Commander. But the one thing that scared her more than Kyle Carstairs was a pack of wolf shifters. Wolves coordinated like no other type of shifter. A mountain lion in the wild could often take on a pack and win. But a cougar shifter, even two, against a pack of wolf shifters, was a recipe for death. Keep your wits, Andie, or you’re as good as dead, she told herself harshly.
Okay. She and Jaxon were surrounded. Andie debated her options. She could try to find Jaxon. She knew where the tank was, and she could follow the path he would’ve had to carve through the snow to get there. The risk was not reaching him before the wolves reached her. Or missing him altogether if he took a different route back. He had to have heard the wolves.
Her other options were to stay here and wait for him or try to get back to the house, taking the chance that he’d meet her there. They had a better shot at getting through this if they could get to the protection of those walls and his arsenal in the basement.
Rather than run out into the night impulsively, she stayed in the shed and waited. She opened it a crack and looked in Jaxon’s general direction. She had no idea how far away he was. At the very least, the depth of the snow was going to slow down the wolves as much as it would Jaxon and her. She didn’t want to shift. Not yet.
She heard a thump as something heavy landed on the roof of the shed. A wolf? Or Jaxon? Whoever it was, it didn’t move or growl. After a few minutes, Andie concluded it had to be a wolf. Jaxon would’ve moved inside with her or said something by now. But why wasn’t the shifter attacking?
Damn. Either he doesn’t know I’m in here… or maybe I’m bait.
Slowly and silently, Andie stripped out of her clothes. She immediately felt the bite of the cold, and goose bumps covered her skin. But she could deal with that for as long as it took. If she shifted now, the wolf was likely to smell the change in the air. There was a slim chance that it wasn’t aware of her presence, either in the shed or on the property at all. When Jaxon got close enough, it would pounce. Andie had every intention of intercepting.
She got in a position where she could slam open the door and put every ounce of power behind her leap. And then she waited, watching for Jaxon to show. It took a little while, and she had to clench her teeth to keep them from rattling inside her head from the cold. A small fission of worry had started to creep into her thoughts, but she’d heard no sounds of a fight. So she held still and waited.
But Jaxon didn’t approach from the direction she expected. The sound of another muffled thump came from above her, accompanied by a loud yelp, and suddenly a cougar and wolf landed in a tangled heap on the ground in front of the shed door. Jaxon had already snapped the wolf’s neck.
She should’ve known. Of course he’d heard the wolves call and decided on his own approach. He was an Alpha, after all. And she’d fought him and had her ass kicked enough to know that he was formidable.
Jaxon looked over his shoulder. He gave his head a small jerk, indicating she should follow. Without hesitation, Andie opened the door, shifted, and leapt out into the snow to land beside him.
The rest of the wolves most certainly would’ve heard their pack mate yelp. Jaxon nodded at their tracks to the cabin and Andie understood. She took off at a sprint through the deep drifts, and Jaxon followed. As she hit the porch, the sound of a cougar’s scream tore through the air and stopped her heart. Andie spun to find Jaxon about twenty feet away. Out further, surrounding the house in a semi-circle, were about ten wolf shifters. Their eyes reflected eerily in the moonlight.
Dammit!
Knowing they both wouldn’t make it inside and that they couldn’t stave off that many wolves without help, Andie ran into the house and straight to the basement. She scanned the arsenal of weapons and grabbed exactly what she was looking for in her mouth. She heard Jaxon’s scream of warning, and then she could tell all hell had broken loose. Adrenaline pumping, Andie ran back upstairs and out into the night.
Chapter 19
Andie burst outside. She watched in horror as Jaxon, who could easily defeat several wolves on his own, was ambushed by all ten at once. He held his own for a few seconds. Several big wolves looked as though they were tossed away from the fray with little effort. But after a moment, he went down under the force of the pack.
With a guttural growl, Andie ran and leapt directly on the back of the wolf closest to her. She stabbed her unsheathed claws into the side of his head and pulled back hard. She would’ve sunk her jaws into his neck if she hadn’t been carrying her weapon, but she needed it more than she needed to kill this one wolf. The creature stumbled under the impact of her hit and the pain of its injury. As he went down, Andie jumped. She landed right on top of Jaxon and grimaced. No way to be gentle given the snapping jaws of the wolves around her.
Without a moment’s hesitation Andie shifted, grabbed the weapon she’d dropped, and turned it on full blast. Fire burst from the end of the flamethrower, and she aimed at the closest wolf, catching him point-blank in his side. He howled in pain. Then she spun in a circle, forcing back the rest of their attackers.
They retreated but didn’t leave. The firelight glinted off their eyes and snapping teeth. The one she’d lit up had rolled in the snow and now lay injured, but alive, off to the side. While keeping her eyes on the shifters, she knelt down to Jaxon, who was still prone on the ground.
Get up, she pleaded with him silently. She couldn’t fend them off alone. Nor could she stay in human form much longer. Not in these temperatures.
“Jaxon Keller, get your ass up!” she ordered in the most Commander-ish tone she could muster.
Come on. Come on, she pleaded silently. She aimed the fire at one of the wolves who was trying to inch closer. It danced back with a snarl.
“Keller, if you don’t get your arrogant butt moving, I’m leaving you to the wolves,” she tried again, nudging him with her foot this time.
Please…
Suddenly Jaxon heaved a deep breath, and Andie inhaled with him. He opened his eyes, pushed to his feet and gave his body a long shake. Snow flew from his fur, hitting Andie’s bare skin. But she was so numb at this point, it didn’t really matter.
“You good?” she asked quietly.
He nodded and then pulled his lips back in a grin that would have been cute if he hadn’t been showing his razor sharp teeth. Instead it looked feral.
When the wolves saw Jaxon stand upright, they growled but didn�
��t move. She and Jaxon were still outnumbered nine against two, with possibly more wolves out where she couldn’t see them. Wolves weren’t stupid. Andie inched toward them with the fire, forcing them to skitter back. Jaxon prowled along beside her. With no warning, the wolf closest to Andie lunged for her.
Before Andie could aim her flames at the beast, a massive polar bear suddenly appeared and caught the wolf mid-leap in his colossal jaws. Andie watched in shocked relief as the bear shook his head violently, tossing his victim around like a rag doll. Then he dropped the limp form to the ground.
With an earthshaking roar that Andie felt down to her toes, he started stalking towards the rest of the pack. At a signal from their leader, they scattered and ran. The bear took off in pursuit.
Andie dropped her weapon to the ground and shifted, feeling instantly warmer. She could hear the bear roaring as he thundered after the wolves. Andie grabbed the flamethrower in her teeth and moved to Jaxon’s side. She leaned into him, supporting some of his weight. He’d put on a brave front for their adversaries, but he was barely keeping himself upright. Once she was touching him, Andie could feel the violent tremors wracking his body. He was ready to drop, but she couldn’t do much to help him in her present form.
Shifting back, she said, “Start walking for the house. I’m going to put on some clothes, and then I’ll be out to help you.”
He nodded, and she shifted and took off at a sprint. She was pulling too-large boots onto her feet when the sound of a cougar’s scream outside the cabin made her heart stop. She burst out the front door, terrified she’d find Jaxon at the bottom of a pile of wolf shifters again.
Jaxon had his back to her. His ears were pinned, and he was snarling and hissing as he faced off against the massive polar bear who’d just helped them chase off the pack. The bear, easily one of the biggest creatures Andie had ever seen, topped Jaxon by a good fifteen hundred pounds or more. Gleaming white except for the black of his mouth and nose, he was an impressive sight. And despite Jaxon’s aggressive posture, the bear was just standing there, seemingly unfazed.
