by Mandy Rosko
“Garret said he trusted me enough to go. Honestly, I was just staying because I wanted to make sure you were still okay,” she said, looking at Miranda and trying to force herself into believing the things she was saying. “But, seriously, I need to get back to work. My clients are still waiting for me to finish their projects, and I can’t put that off anymore. You can both come and visit me whenever you want. We can go shopping, have a drink and everything.”
That was something she didn’t have to convince herself of. She meant every word of that one.
“What about Dane?” Miranda asked.
That piercing sensation came back, striking her hard in the chest. “I…he’ll be fine. He has his friends here, right?”
Both women were silent. Lois knew what they were thinking about, and it got her thinking, too.
Lois had liked Dane. She still liked him. But she wasn’t going to be a hopeless romantic about it. He’d saved her life, and she had nursed him back to health after his injuries. Those things combined, even with his sour personality, did a lot to make sure she would look at him with rose-colored glasses. She thought she might be in love with him, but no, that wasn’t right.
Dane made it clear from the start that he didn’t want anything from her. Not even after they slept together. Now she knew why. She saw it with her own two eyes. He was an amazing man, strong and brave and so many other things, but he had something inside him that he couldn’t always control. He’d saved her life with it once, but she couldn’t be with him if there was a danger that he would ever kill someone.
“Lois?” Miranda asked.
Lois snapped out of her daze, realizing both women were still staring at her, waiting for an answer.
By the pitying expressions on their faces, it was clear they felt her silence was answer enough.
“Dane doesn’t like me and I just had a little crush on him. There’s nothing there.”
Anna’s eyes widened slightly. “But—”
“I’m going to be an adult about this,” Lois said quickly. “I’m not going to hang onto something when there’s nothing there.”
Anna winced.
Fuck. Lois hadn’t meant for that to come out sounding so harsh. It wasn’t Anna’s fault and it wasn’t childish for any of them to have hoped for something good here.
Anna, for whatever reason, didn’t seem to have many friends within the pack itself, so she’d latched herself onto Miranda and Lois.
Now Lois was leaving.
“I’m not going forever. It’s not like you’re never going to see me again,” she said, wishing there was some way she could convince both women she was telling the truth.
“But you’re afraid of us,” Anna said darkly.
Miranda looked at Lois, hazel eyes wide, as if that thought honestly hadn’t occurred to her.
“I’m not scared of you,” Lois said. “Do I honestly look like I’m scared of either of you?”
“Then it’s Dane you’re scared of?” Miranda asked, sounding heartbroken over the idea. As if it was her heart that was being squeezed tight by an invisible fist as Lois had been packing to leave.
Lois sucked back a deep breath. “Dane doesn’t want me, and I’m making him lose control.” The words shocked her when she managed to get them out of her mouth. They only shocked her because of the truth that was behind them. “He bit Joey because of me. I’m the reason he had to go to the hospital.”
Anna shook her head. “No.”
Lois knew it was the truth, and she wasn’t going to trick herself into thinking it was something else.
Her presence was irritating the creature that lurked inside Dane’s mind. He’d used that form to save her life that day Miranda lost control, but now her presence was having the opposite effect. She needed to go.
“I’ll call you when I get home,” Lois said, heading for the door. “We can talk later.”
“What about Dennis?” Anna asked, not getting out of her way. “You’re safer here.”
Lois stopped, reminded herself that Anna was still young, that she was just being idealistic and didn’t know this was for the best. “I’m not in danger from him. He doesn’t care about me, and Garret said he’d get someone to watch over me for a while to make sure he wasn’t following me.” Which Lois appreciated. As much as she didn’t think Dennis cared about her, she also wasn’t brave enough to risk being home alone when there was a pissed off shifter potentially lurking around outside her apartment.
Anna opened her mouth, as if she had something else to say, but then decided there was nothing and closed it.
Lois hugged her. She had to. The girl was such a good friend and she tried so hard to make Lois feel welcome. The hug seemed to shock the younger woman. Anna held still for a few long seconds before she melted and hugged Lois back. Lois thought she heard a little sniffle, and damn if that didn’t make her own eyes burn.
She wasn’t abandoning her friends. She just couldn’t be here.
Lois pulled away from Anna and turned to Miranda, who also had tears in her eyes. This woman was like her little sister, and when Lois went to her, Miranda opened her arms and met her halfway.
“I mean it. I’m not disappearing out of your life,” Lois said softly, pulling back. Miranda’s hair was getting in her face. Lois pushed it back. “This isn’t my house. I’m a guest here, and now it’s time that I go.”
Miranda nodded, though her brow still crinkled with the tears she was fighting back.
With more promises of calling, texting, and visits, they walked with Lois downstairs. It was easy enough to find Garret. He was in the back with some of the betas and omegas. They were hosing off the patch of grass that had the blood on it.
When Lois asked to go home, Garret had seemed shocked, but to his credit, he didn’t argue on the matter either. She wasn’t sure if it was because he wanted her gone as well, for Dane’s sake, or if he was simply trying to respect her decision.
Either way, she was grateful when one of the betas was put in charge of driving her back to her apartment. The drive was an hour and a half long, the beta had tried to make some small talk with her at one point, but Lois wasn’t really in the mood.
The entire drive, she stared out the window, contemplating telling the beta to turn around and take her back. Every mile she was separated from Dane felt like ten miles, and the weight on her chest wasn’t lifted the farther away she got. It became heavier until it was almost suffocating.
15
Anna hurt. She knew it was stupid, and like Lois had said, childish, but she couldn’t help herself. She hated that one of her friends had left the pack.
Lois wasn’t a shifter, so she wasn’t part of the pack, but Anna had thought for sure there was something between Lois and Dane, maybe a mating, something that would’ve made her part of the pack. And that would’ve been great, because then it would’ve meant one more newcomer, another woman in the house that didn’t see Anna as the alpha’s little sister, and therefore had to be tip-toed around.
But Lois wouldn’t have left if she really was Dane’s mate. Mates were drawn to each other, right? That’s how Garret always described it.
If they weren’t mated, then maybe it was for the best that Lois left. She was a human and had her own life with her own apartment and her own career. All the things Anna was jealous of, and it wasn’t right that she try to keep the other woman here.
Except now Miranda was talking to Garret, and Anna was alone again.
They looked so perfect together. Anna always thought she’d be jealous when Garret’s mate finally came into the pack. Hell, Garret had known he had a mate since before Anna was born, and had been looking for her for years after she vanished.
Anna had been jealous of that as a little girl. With her mother abandoning her and her father dead, Garret was the only real father Anna ever had, and Anna hated knowing he’d been looking for someone else.
But now that Miranda was here, Anna liked her. She could see how happy the other woman ma
de Garret, and it seemed kind of silly that Anna would have ever felt jealous at all, considering a mate would be able to offer a lot more things to an alpha than a little sister ever could.
Anna decided to leave them alone. She could find something to do back in her room. She could make up some new outfits out of the clothes in her closet. She could find Jax and spend some time with him.
Finding Jax seemed like a better idea, a lot less lonely than being by herself, so Anna found his scent and went looking.
He was in the kitchen. Katie was in there with him. Anna stopped at that. It wasn’t that she and Katie didn’t like one another, but it was just the way they were around each other. Katie was another one of the women in the house that always seemed to walk away whenever Anna was around. Anna attributed that to no one wanting to get too close to the alpha’s little sister. Oddly enough, it was the other females in the pack who were the worst with this, and Anna had learned a long time ago to not take any offense by it.
It looked like they were gathering up cleaning supplies onto the counter island, but there was something in the way they were talking that made Anna not say a word when they were in sight.
And it was the way Jax touched her cheek, in the way Katie hesitated, and then pulled away, as though it pained her to do so. Jax clenched his hand into a fist, as though embarrassed, before stepping back.
Anna realized how hard her heart was pounding, and she slipped away before either of them could notice she was there. Hell, any other shifter would have noticed her, but they were too lost in each other. Too engrossed in whatever intimate thing it was they were doing.
Being alone suddenly seemed like the best idea there was. It wasn’t like Anna never had any practice with it.
* * *
By the time Dane went to knock on Lois’s door, to apologize and maybe explain as best as he could the reasons behind his behavior, it was too late. Apparently, she’d requested to leave the night before.
And Garret, that fucking cock-sucking asshole, hadn’t said a damned word of it to Dane.
Which was why he felt more than justified when he walked into Garret’s office and slammed his fist through the desk. Garret barely had a chance to grab his laptop before it could fall under the wrath of Dane’s fist, but there was no other expression on his face that suggested he was in any way shocked.
Dane roared at the man, his bear teeth coming out just as his claws did. “What the fuck is your problem?”
Garret surveyed the two pieces his desk had been turned into, then looked up at Dane with a raised brow, as if Dane was some small omega or weak beta who would fall for that shit. “I guess you knocked on Lois’s door.”
Not a question. Dane’s hunch had been right. Nothing happened in this house without this asshole knowing about it and he’d given Lois the ride she’d needed to get out of here.
She was gone.
“What the fuck? I told you I was going to give her some time! To explain things! You let her go?”
“I didn’t kidnap her. She’s not a prisoner I can keep,” Garret said, putting the laptop onto the nearest bookshelf. Dane wanted to go over there and smash it. It wasn’t like Garret couldn’t afford another one, and at the very least, it would force him to have to start over whatever work he was doing.
Probably checking his bank numbers or the recent stocks, or whatever else it was billionaires did on their computers.
And Dane just kept right on fuming at him.
Garret’s eyes turned stony. “What? Nothing to say? I guess you forgot that I can’t keep her here if she doesn’t want to be here, right?”
“You could have told her I was going to explain. You could have asked her to stay!”
“She wanted to go. I wasn’t going to guilt her into staying.”
“You could have told me she was leaving!”
“Would you have let her go?”
“No!”
“Well, then there’s your answer. Of course I wasn’t going to ask her to stay when she didn’t want to stay. All this freaks her out enough as it is, and Miranda needs a normal connection to the rest of the world. And you, you sure as shit can believe I wasn’t about to tell you she was going. Not after you tell me she’s your mate. You would’ve kidnapped her again, only this time she wouldn’t have shrugged it off and thought it was no big deal. You would’ve become the creepy enemy she couldn’t wait to get away from, mate or no mate.”
“Oh fuck off,” Dane snapped, disgusted. “You want to give me that self-righteous horse shit after you kidnapped Miranda?”
Garret’s eyes flashed red. “Considering Miranda was going to bleed out and maybe die if we weren’t looking after her, yeah. I can say that I was willing to kidnap her and still say you’re full of shit. It’s not the same thing when she wants to go and you want to keep her just because.”
The mocking way Garret said those last two words nearly made Dane fly into a rage. The only thing that stopped him was the fact that Lois was gone because Dane had gone into a rage, had let the bear inside him go completely and totally wild.
He’d scared away his mate. She’d stayed, sticking close to his bedside when he was injured, even when he tried to deny what he was feeling for her. That feeling made him angry, angry at her, the world in general, and his body for not healing. It felt like a betrayal to his wife who was dead because the humans had killed her. Dane never wanted to feel that way ever again.
But Lois had stayed, despite his being a moody bastard to her at every turn, and then he couldn’t contain himself anymore and fucked her.
He’d fucked her and still didn’t want to see what was right in front of him, even when his body started to heal. His own healing abilities had been trying to yell the truth out at him, but it was like he hadn’t wanted to hear any of it.
Now she was gone, because she’d seen the animal inside him for what it really was. What did he expect a human woman to do after something like that? It was a miracle she’d stayed so long to begin with. Probably had more to do with her friendship with Miranda than anything else.
He was so fucking stupid.
Garret got to his feet and was next to Dane before he realized the man had stood. He put his hand on Dane’s shoulder, and Dane didn’t have the energy to push him off.
“If you really think she’s your mate, then give it a little more time. I’ve got someone with her, watching her. Dennis won’t do anything. She’s not important to him and he won’t take the risk for one human.”
Dane snorted a reply, though he had to admit Garret was probably right. If anything, it was safer if Lois wasn’t here at all.
“She’ll want to come back to you if you really are her mate.”
“She’s human,” Dane said. “She won’t feel this the same way I do.”
“You don’t know that.”
Dane clenched his fists. If it was safer for Lois to not be here, then it made more sense for Dane to go to her. If being here meant she was going to be targeted by Dennis and any other rogue shifters, then Dane wouldn’t put her into that kind of danger.
And he wasn’t going to wait any longer. She could turn him away, break off this thing that was between them, and it would be over. It would hurt, but a mating could be ended with enough effort, and if that’s what she wanted, he would give it to her. He wouldn’t draw out this pain either of them were feeling any longer. It would just make it worse. One way or another, she needed to know today, about his past, his wife, and how he and the animal inside him were both reacting to her.
She had a right to know, and to make a decision.
“What’s her address?”
“You’re going to go to her today, aren’t you?” Garret asked.
“Yes, give me the address.”
Garret gave it to him, and as Dane walked to the door. He was pretty sure he heard the other alpha laughing as he left the office.
It wasn’t until he was on the road, halfway to Lois’s apartment, that his phone rang. When he put it
on speaker and heard Garret’s angry voice, he knew well enough to pay attention and not laugh, despite the hilarity of the situation.
Anna had run away.
16
When Lois got home last night, she spent a good portion of a few hours just walking around in a daze. Being home felt…different. Everything looked the same as she’d left it—there was mail piled up in the mailbox in the lobby downstairs, but aside from that, it was as though she hadn’t left. Not enough time had passed for much dust to settle, and her plants were still alive and doing well.
Considering where she’d come from, and what she now knew about the world, it almost felt like she’d stepped into another dimension. A world where everything was safe and normal, where the only thing Lois had to worry about was her rent and making sure the door was locked at night when she went to sleep.
Booting up her computer felt weird. Contacting her clients to let them know the emergency had been dealt with and she could return to the projects they wanted her to design for their book covers, or their comic strips, or anything in general, was just as weird.
Having normal conversations about her business, about deadlines and what she could do in Photoshop, almost seemed hilarious considering she knew werewolves existed, knew that her best friend could turn into something that was like a cross between a fox and a dog.
And that Dane, a man she’d really liked, had felt something deep for, could turn into a raging monster of a bear creature and really hurt another person if he wasn’t careful, if he didn’t keep control.
She wished she hadn’t left. At least not without checking on him or saying goodbye. When he found out, he was going to know she’d left because of him. Would it make him feel guilty? Or would he be glad that the woman who’d been following him around like a lovesick teenager was finally gone?
Lois didn’t want to think too much about either of those situations. Neither seemed pleasant, and she hated thinking about it at all.
