Crazy Over You

by Wendy Sparrow

  “That might even be part of why I want you. I’m not ruling it out, anyway.” She needed him. She needed his logic and control. Travis felt uniquely appropriate for the role of her mate. He’d never anticipated how attractive that was. Plus she looked great naked.

  Inside the house, he heard Jordan call Dane to warn him Ross was still alive. From LeAnn’s stillness, he could tell she’d heard it, too. “Has anyone else been here that you can tell?”

  She stood up. “A lot of people have been here. I can smell my scent from when I came here last time and, oh, damn, I had Alanna’s lab coat with me then. I left everything else in the safe because I didn’t want to get caught carrying around a bra and a sock in my purse, but I had her lab coat with me.” She grinned. “So I guess, technically, I tried to frame her first. It’s a shame I didn’t put on the coat and sashay all over Merilee’s house in it while I was talking to her.” She shook her head. “Anyway, I’m still sure that I can smell her actual scent faintly. Then, there’s some other male—recently, so maybe Liam, you…” She inhaled. “Troy was here. So was one of the other guys I have a pair of boxers from, but that smells older and fainter.”

  “You have a pair of boxers from a male from my pack?” The jealousy was so fast and hot that it staggered him.

  “They’re my brother’s.”

  “You have your brother’s boxers?” That was both weirder and less weird. At least it dampened the jealousy.

  Standing up, she leaned toward him and made eye contact. “You need sleep.”

  He shook his head, but sat down on the porch swing anyway. He was starting to feel bone tired. He’d been chasing ghosts for too long. If Ross was really leading them on another chase, he’d go nuts. He’d need therapy.

  “My brother had a bunch of clothes in a safe. I guess he was using them to fake you guys out. He had Merilee’s bra, Alanna’s lab coat, Troy’s socks, and then a few other things.”

  “I hate your brother for that,” Jordan said, walking out. “I had to smell a bunch of the pack’s clothes to rule them all out and discover we were being screwed with. You found those?”

  She nodded. “They’re still in the safe—other than Alanna’s lab coat. I figured it’d be a good excuse to talk to her so I grabbed that. Little did I know I’d want to strangle her with the sleeves within seconds of meeting her.”

  “He picked up all but the lab coat at an orgy they had at the lodge one night.” Travis rubbed both his hands down his face. He was so tired of this. It was strange to love LeAnn while despising her brother so much.

  Travis froze. He loved LeAnn. It skipped into his brain as naturally as if it belonged there, as if he had loved her for a long time.

  “He picked up hers separately?” LeAnn asked, breaking into his thoughts.

  He and Jordan shrugged.

  “I swear, if he was sleeping with Alanna, I’ll shoot him myself and then shoot her. That’s disgusting. Practically cross-species. I’m not sure Alanna has a species. She probably crawled out of a crevice one day, and we’re assuming she’s evolved.”

  Jordan grinned. “Yeah, anyone interested in Alanna would have to be a totally worthless individual.”

  So help him, if Jordan outed his previous interest in Alanna, he’d shoot him.

  LeAnn glanced between them, looking suspicious.

  Luckily, Travis was so tired that he couldn’t even drag up the energy for an expression. “Who else was here recently?” he asked LeAnn.

  “Hm. A couple other females, and then there are several older scents from males, but the strongest are Troy’s and maybe Liam’s.” Shading her eyes, she scanned the woods. “They had to remove the body, right? So if we follow the scent of death and sex, maybe we can see where they took it.” She winced. “That sounds disgusting, but Merilee really wasn’t…shy.”

  “LeAnn and I can check it out, Travis. You can stay here.”

  “Why?” He narrowed his eyes. Jordan had a mate, but still…

  Jordan gave him a bland look. “Because you look ready to drop, and I don’t want to have to drag your body along with us while looking for one.”

  “Oh. Right.” He pulled out his phone. “I should probably warn the pack that we’re almost certain Ross is still alive.” He met Jordan’s eyes. “You are, too, right?”

  Jordan nodded. “It’s insane. But she’s right about his scent out here. I don’t think you could get it this clear with his clothing so long after he last wore them.”

  “What about Alanna? What do we know about her?”

  “I might be able to smell her, but if her lab coat was here—it could just as easily be that,” Jordan said.

  “We know she’s wearing my sweater all over. If I ever find her in it, it’s going to need to die in a fire,” LeAnn grumbled.

  “What precisely will be dying in a fire?” Jordan asked smiling.

  Travis shot him a quelling look.

  “Well, I certainly won’t be rushing to take it off her first.”

  Okay, time to rein this in. They didn’t have enough proof. They needed proof. “Maybe we should keep our concerns about Alanna to ourselves until we have more evidence.”

  Jordan nodded.

  LeAnn narrowed her eyes, but shrugged. She leaned in and put a hand on his arm when he lifted his phone. “Can you ask them, if it’s at all possible, if they could not kill Ross until I’ve talked to him one last time if they find him?” She dropped her eyes and wouldn’t make eye contact with him. “He’s all I have left. Everyone else is dead.”

  “You have the pack now, LeAnn. You have me.” If he said it often enough, maybe she’d come to believe it; maybe it would keep her here.

  She glanced up, but then pointedly looked at Merilee’s place. “Yeah, and the pack is all warm and fuzzy, and I’m a murderer’s sister they decided to let live.” Without saying anything else, she spun away and left the porch to walk to the rear of the house.

  Jordan shook his head. “I wish she was in my pack. We’d take her in, but I think you’d go insane being separated from her, and you definitely need her here.” He nodded at Travis. “Stay put. We’ll be back shortly.”

  “Okay, but I can hear you if you put the moves on LeAnn.”

  “Eww,” LeAnn said on the other side of the house.

  “My thoughts exactly,” Jordan said, grinning, and walked off.

  Yeah, well, maybe they hadn’t noticed, but LeAnn’s near-fight with Alanna hadn’t turned off all the males in the lodge. He wasn’t taking any chances.

  …

  “What do you mean that you think he needs me?” she asked Jordan as they slowly walked along surveying the ground. She asked quietly, but there was still a good chance Travis heard.

  “Well, first of all, scent-matched mates tend to go nuts if you separate them. I had my mate’s sister-in-law at my place for a short amount of time after she scent-matched to Dane, and she killed my blender one day. Smashed it to tiny pieces. I thought I was next. And I’m not handling being apart from Christa all that well, either. If there was a blender nearby, it’d be dead.”

  That shouldn’t make her happy, but it did. She didn’t want Travis to be miserable without her, but she also did…sort of. That most likely meant she was an awful person. But whatever. “Is Christa like you?” She hated to admit to it, but Alanna seemed more like an Alpha than she felt. She’d definitely never say it out loud.

  Jordan grinned and pulled out his phone. “No. Not at all. She’s small, human, and beautiful.” His background was of a younger woman wearing a red-hooded coat with a flirtatious grin on her face. She looked tiny. Like half his size. She also was more cute than beautiful, in her opinion, but she was very cute.

  “Not at all what I was expecting.”

  He pocketed his phone. “Not at all what I was expecting, either, but she’s perfect for me. And your mate keeps dragging me here away from her.”

  “She’s cute.”

  He nodded.

  “She’s an Alpha?” If his mate
could be an Alpha and she wasn’t a Lycan—maybe LeAnn wasn’t as far off as she’d thought.

  “Yeah. She keeps me in line, and she’s better with a gun than I’ve ever seen.” He pointed down at the ground. “Those look like drag marks, but I think we’re going to lose them when we go through this grass. And I can’t smell much of anything due to the moisture. You?”

  “No. Here and there I catch the scent of something, but that rain was timed well for our psychopath, and this misty stuff has never really stopped. I swear it’s raining more than not up here.”

  “It’s our rainy season. It’ll dry out a bit more in the summer. This would be much easier in June or July.”

  They tried to follow the marks left in the ground, but it was wishful thinking in her opinion. She sighed. “I’m much better in an urban environment. Ross gave me a crash course on tracking over near White Pass but there are so many other scents that smell…earthy. And it’s so humid here.”

  He cleared his throat. “How close were you and Ross?”

  “I’ve known him about five years, I guess, but I never really knew him. He seemed to want to hang on to the fact that he was an only child. His mother died and left him alone with my father, and it sounds like I didn’t miss much by never having met my dad.”

  She crouched down and pointed to a black plastic scrap. “Wrapped in plastic. That’s why we can’t smell Merilee anymore.” She stood up and redid her haphazard ponytail while Jordan examined the ground. “I feel like I was too late everywhere I go. I was too late to be a family for Ross. I was too late to stop him from this. I’ve been too late before. Now we’re too late to make much of anything with this trail.”

  “Travis isn’t wrong that the pack can be your family.”

  “Alanna and I are well on our way there.”

  “No, not Alanna, and I’ve already told Travis she has to be tossed out on her ass.”

  “Because of me?”

  “Yep. When she goes into heat in March, one of you will be dead by the time she’s done.”

  And they really had enough death on their hands already. She shuddered. It was freaky to hear about her “going into heat.” If it wasn’t a serious matter for them, she might be tempted to score one on Alanna for that. Instead, she asked, “One of us?”

  “I’m betting on her being dead—for what it’s worth.”

  She smiled at Jordan. “Thanks.”

  He shrugged and went back to scouting the area, though his scowl spoke to how successful he was.

  “My mother was a real piece of work, but she used to say, ‘There but for the grace of God, go I.’ Mostly when she wanted to point out how miserable someone else was, but I’m wondering if I’d been stuck with my father instead of her…if I’d be as messed up as I’m starting to think my brother was.”

  “I think we all have a choice in who we’re to become and how events shape us. I was a real ass two years ago, and some might argue I haven’t changed, but I nearly killed Dane—Christa’s brother—twice actually. But the whole experience that set your brother on his course changed mine. If Christa would have met me two years ago, she wouldn’t have wanted anything to do with me.”

  “Oh, hey, I’ve got some drag marks again here,” she said, pointing.

  He walked over and they followed them for about ten feet before they lost them again.

  “Why else do you think Travis needs me? You made it sound like there was more than one reason.”

  “There is, and the second is more important. Lycan packs are only as strong as their leaders usually, but this pack is the least unified pack I’ve ever seen—and it’s partly because a large percentage of them see themselves as leaders rather than followers. They don’t see themselves as a pack, and they need someone strong to get them acting like a pack.”

  The rage built inside her faster than ever, and she fought back the urge to snarl. She saw red. No one challenged Travis like that. “Travis is strong,” she ground out. She didn’t like where he was going with this. Maybe he still was a real ass.

  Jordan cut her a look and then stopped walking to gaze into her eyes.

  Clenching her fists, she forced her temper back and took a deep breath. The darker side of her held on for a moment and then slipped away as she exhaled. “Travis is strong.” It bore repeating.

  Jordan shook his head with a half smile and went back to scanning the ground. “No, you misunderstood me. I meant this pack is too much for a single Alpha, and they see him as weak because he’s behaving like a human leader rather than an alpha Lycan. He’s organizing them rather than dominating them. He’s always had a problem with that. He likes to control situations rather than commanding people. In another pack, that might be fine, but he’s on shifting ground with this one. If he’s not going to kill those who oppose him, he needs a second Alpha to bolster his position.”

  “I thought that was the problem with Troy.” It sounded like the last thing Travis needed right now was a second Alpha. She shook out her arms. Her temper didn’t leave her feeling so jittery normally. She’d nearly lost it with Jordan—over nothing.

  “No, an alpha female. He needs an alpha female who’ll respect him and support him so that when he lets another challenger live—which might be a matter of time here—it’s seen as merciful rather than weak. If you continue to refuse the scent-match, you’re weakening his image. His mate is refusing his advances. In animals and in humans, that suggests something is faulty with him, not you…and we’re a little of both of those. Troy would have probably held off longer, but Travis was forcing them to accept you as pack to keep you safe, even as you weren’t accepting him. He needs you to step up and be the alpha female or he’s going up against challenge after challenge.”

  She knew it’d been partly her fault, even if Travis had acted as if it was inevitable. That didn’t sit well with her, but what could she do? Travis seemed to want her here. He’d gone searching for her last night.

  Well, she could accept the scent-match.

  It was so final. It was closing her escape hatch. She always kept track of her way out whenever she got into any situation.

  But Travis’s life was more important than this stubborn instinct she had. Not that self-preservation was such a bad thing. Maybe she could take Travis with her when she ran this time.

  “Maybe he ought to walk away from this pack.” Not that she’d ever taken the easy path before, but this time the other option had sharp teeth and claws.

  “Have you met Kurt?”

  “Who?”

  “Short, sort of nerdy guy who was in the back of the group? He came from my pack. I think he was hoping to meet someone in this pack.”

  “If you’re trying to hook us up, you better hope Travis has fallen asleep.”

  He laughed. “No, I’m asking because he told Alanna to leave you alone. He’s never spoken up at a single meeting I held. It was unusual. I was proud of him. I wondered if you’d met him because of that.”

  “No. I didn’t.” It stunned her. Her mind went blank and she just stood there, blinking. Now she was curious who the guy was. A guy she didn’t even know had stood up for her? Maybe this sort of thing happened in packs. So weird.

  “How about Tasha? Have you met her? She’s your height. She used to be a twin. She donated a kidney four years ago to try to save her twin, but her sister died anyway. She’s much slower than she used to be, but she doesn’t regret it. She was directly in back of you. You nearly plowed her over when Travis tackled you.”

  “There was someone in back of me?”

  “Yep. She voted for you to live, too. No hesitation. Even after you nearly caught her with your elbow. In fact, she looked impressed.” He crouched down again, and when he stood up, he picked up a stick and threw it…like they were on a nature walk, rather than chasing a killer.

  “I haven’t met her.” Another person. Another stranger. Nobody had been on her side before Ross had come along. But these people weren’t even related to her. It was…disconcerti
ng, almost uncomfortable.

  “Nope. You’ve met the standouts who are the loudest and most unlikable.”

  “Merilee wasn’t too bad.”

  “And someone killed her because they saw her as weak. This pack needs someone to lead and protect them. They’re looking for someone to follow, and the pack is too unwieldy and stubborn for a single Alpha.”

  She shrugged. He made it all sound nice like she could be important. There was one huge flaw. “That doesn’t mean it’s me.”

  “You’d rather see Travis with someone else?”

  She rolled her shoulders in discomfort while wrinkling up her nose. No. Really no. That dark side of her growled its displeasure.

  “Alanna maybe?”

  And then she did actually growl. Holy freak. Her eyes widened and she glanced at Jordan to see if he’d noticed.

  He was looking away rather than at her, but she could see his shoulders shaking.

  She narrowed her eyes. “You only picked her because you know I hate her.”

  She could still hear the amusement in his voice as he said, “No, I picked her because she was Travis’s most logical choice for an Alpha before you showed up. And Travis isn’t going to want anyone else anyway. Scent-matched is scent-matched. He only wants you or no one. So even if there was someone other than Alanna who could be Alpha, he wouldn’t be interested.” He laughed. “Did you know that one of the females in this pack refuses to go on patrol if it’s too muddy?”

  “On patrol?”

  “We protect our lands. Lycans watch their territory and their own very carefully. If this pack were closer and more protective of one another, Merilee might still be alive.”

  “So if I became pack, I’d do that? Patrol? Even though I’m not a Lycan?” She’d been doing that on her own occasionally. In the cities she lived in. How fantastic would it be to do it as a job? She could actually feel like she was contributing.

  Jordan turned and frowned at her while seeming to examine her.

  “What?”

  “You’ve never shifted in your life?” he asked.

  “No! Why does everyone assume I’m lying?”