Nash’s eyes tracked a smaller female Nowere who stumbled inches from our bodies. I flinched, and he squeezed my hand. “Good.”
I alternated between holding my breath and panting. The stench was overpowering, and my heart was pounding. Being this close to Noweres, even with a layer of ruebane for protection, was heady. I kept expecting one Nowere to catch a scent, especially because Vaughn was being a jackass. I caught him waving a hand in front of a Nowere’s face, and Pace sent him a look like he was going to cut out his heart. I vowed to beat Pace to it.
“This is amazing and terrifying at the same time,” I said.
Nash’s shoulders shook, like he was holding in a laugh. “It is.”
“Can you imagine what we could do with this stuff? Dare has been working on studying Noweres. If we could figure out what causes the Nowere virus, maybe we could find a way to prevent more from turning…” I shook my head. “He started trying to figure it out after Lee was attacked.”
Nash’s face twisted. The day Lee was attacked was the same day he’d disappeared. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there.”
“Yeah, me too.” I sighed. “Dare wasn’t the same after that, and neither was I. But he became obsessed with more than surviving, you know? He wants to live, rebuild our whole civilization. Maybe one day get out from behind the stone walls.”
“It’s a good goal.” Nash’s voice sounded hollow.
“I’m sorry to bring up that day. And Lee.”
He shook his head ever so slightly. “It’s fine.” His voice was barely a whisper now, just a movement of his lips.
“I mourned Lee that day, but I never gave up hope for you.” I needed him to know that.
He didn’t answer. When the last Nowere passed us, slipping into the trees, Nash and I didn’t move for a long time, even as Dal climbed a tree to scout for more packs, even as Pace laid into Vaughn, who stood with his arms across his chest and a bored expression on his face.
We didn’t move until Dal rested her hand on my shoulder. “You two okay?”
I nodded, and that was when Nash finally broke our gaze to look at her. He blinked a couple of times, like he needed to orient himself. “Yes, we’re fine.”
She smiled as she held out her arms. “Dare is going to lose his mind over this stuff.”
“Yeah,” I said, still shaken up over my whispered conversation with Nash, and the image of Lee turning. Her unseeing, undead eyes would always haunt me.
Pace let out a low whistle, and I appreciated the distraction. “Let’s keep moving. I want this trip over with before I slit your mutt’s throat, Bay.”
“I’d like to see you try, brat.” Vaughn sneered at him before stalking off into the trees. I turned to see Nash looking in the direction of the Nowere pack. I waited until he turned around, and noted his conflicted expression, like he was torn on a decision. “You sure you’re all right?”
“I’m sure,” he said softly. He ran his knuckles down my throat, that simple gesture again lighting a fire in me. “Just glad they’re gone.”
I swallowed. “Me too.” I followed on Nash’s heels, ignoring Pace’s mutterings about Vaughn.
We walked until we stumbled in the dark, exhausted. When we made camp, that didn’t stop Tati and Vaughn from wandering off into the trees. The sounds of them kissing filled the air, and I hoped the sex made Vaughn more agreeable.
Pace, Baron, and Dal were huddled together for warmth, sleeping peacefully despite Vaughn and Tati’s moans.
I lay next to Nash on my stomach as he rested on his back, staring at the clear sky full of twinkling stars. I was physically exhausted, but my mind was still working a mile a minute. It had been for days. “So what’s the plan when we get back?” I asked him, resting my chin on my fists.
Nash continued to stare at the waxing moon above us. He hadn’t flinched when I talked, like he knew I wasn’t ready to sleep yet. “What do you mean?”
“What do you want to do? Cook? Teach the novuses? Be a trainer?”
He was quiet for a long time before he said softly with downcast eyes, “Always thought I’d teach.”
A rush of adrenaline surged through me, because this was the first time I’d been able to get him to talk about any sort of future. I couldn’t understand why he was so adverse to forming a plan for his life. He’d fought so hard to live, why didn’t he want to live?
“And what about us—”
“Bay.”
My name was a line drawn in the sand. One that I wasn’t supposed to cross, but I leaped right over the damn thing. I was tired of being so passive with him. I sat up and swung my legs in front of me, resting my wrists on my knees. “Don’t pull this bullshit on me. Nash, you know you’ve always been my mate.”
“Enough!” This time his voice cracked into the darkness, so sharp that the distant giggles from Vaughn and Tati ceased.
Anger flooded my system, swift and hot, and I wasn’t seeing clearly anymore, not while Nash was shutting me out. I refused to remain behind the dam he’d been holding onto for days. I crouched over him, shoving my face in his as he bared his teeth in warning.
“Quit trying to intimidate me.” I was shaking, my fists clenched, as I stared into Nash’s ice-cold eyes. “If you were anyone else, I’d let it go, figuring you don’t want me, but I know you want me. I can feel it in your touch, your kiss, and the heat of your eyes every single time you look at me. I don’t understand what’s holding you back, why you won’t let this happen between us when we both want it so bad. When we finally have what was stolen from us.” By the time I was finished talking, my chest heaved. I’d exerted more energy confessing all of that than it took to fight a pack of Weres.
Nash stared at me with that same impassive expression that was starting to tear at my soul.
For a moment, I wanted to hit him. Smack him. Make him fight me. Anything to get a rise of emotion out of him. Instead, I fell back on my haunches and hung my head between my shoulders.
It seemed like he wasn’t going to answer me, but then a shift of his weight as he rose up onto his elbows made me glance at him. “You should mate with a female.” His voice was monotone, emotionless. “Have some novuses. You have the type of genes that should be passed on.”
I couldn’t believe what he was saying. “I’m sorry, what? You don’t want to be with me because you think I should breed?” He looked away and my mind raced to figure out what was going on. “Nash, I can still sire a novus. So can you. There are plenty of females who want novuses but not mates.” I inhaled sharply. “If I wanted another mate, I would have gotten one. I don’t, though. I want you.”
His head swung to me sharply, and his eyes blazed for a moment before he let the fire die. “You want the Nash I could have been. Not the Nash I am now.”
“That’s not true—”
“You don’t know me now.”
“I know you well enough, and what I don’t, I’ll learn.”
“Maybe I don’t want you to learn,” he snapped.
The impact of his words hit me in the chest like a punch. “Nash.”
“You deserve…” He swallowed. “You deserve a whole Were.”
“You look pretty whole to me.”
“Appearances are deceiving.” He inhaled and let out a deep breath. “I can’t do this, Bay. When we return to the pack, you have to let me be, I can’t…I can’t do this.”
“But why? Don’t I deserve an explanation?”
He lifted his head and speared me with a blue gaze, shiny and wet in the light of the moon. “You deserve everything that I can’t give you, and that includes an explanation.”
“I don’t understand.”
He reached out, his fingers slipping through the hair that had fallen onto my forehead. “I know. Sleep, Bay. We have a long journey ahead.”
“I’m mad at you.” I had to say it.
He gave a bitter laugh. “That’s okay. I’m kind mad at me too.”
I turned away from him, pissed and heartbroken. I shifted
to my werewolf form, wanting the comfort of my fur and tail and a break from my human brain and heart.
A hand stroked between my ears, lulling me to sleep.
Chapter Eight
The next two days, Nash avoided me. He didn’t walk next to me, he didn’t brush the back of his hand against mine. He kept as much distance between us as possible. Our conversation the night before replayed on a loop, but I couldn’t think of a way to break through the barrier Nash had thrown up.
The farther we walked, the more withdrawn Nash became. I didn’t want to press him in front of the group, and I wasn’t sure it would make a difference anyway. I couldn’t make him tell me anything he didn’t want to tell me. But the more he retreated within himself, the more I worried I’d never draw him back out.
For so long, I’d imagined a reunion with Nash, where he’d still have the same kind, bright eyes, the easy smile, the gentle, loping gait and calming presence. We’d embrace and fuck and eat and train together. Of course it had been a fantasy, but one I’d spent a lot of time with.
I hadn’t thought about what a returning Nash would be like, with all the baggage of where he’d been, why he’d been found in a hole in a werewolf compound, nearly dead. Why he flinched when I made sudden movements and why the closer to him we got, the more his hackles rose.
I did understand that he was different, that all he’d been through had changed him. What he didn’t get was that I admired him for it and still wanted him. The Were he was now. He was still kind and compassionate, gentle with novuses, smart and cautious. He was all those things, and although he thought he was a husk, I knew differently. I saw him the way he couldn’t see himself, but how could I show him what he looked like through my eyes? Especially when he was blocking me at every turn?
There was no deal breaker for me with Nash, nothing that could prevent me from wanting him. If he’d give me a chance, I’d show him.
That night, we lay around a dying fire. Everyone was asleep—Vaughn snoring with Dal curled up next to him in her werewolf form, which was how she preferred to sleep.
I was restless despite the miles we’d traveled that day, and sleep wasn’t coming. I stared into the fire, thinking about shifting to my Were form and roaring at the moon.
I glanced over at Nash to find him on his back, his head turned to stare at me. One leg was bent, his hands folded on his chest, and the orange of the fire reflected in his light eyes. He didn’t look away when I caught him, just continued to watch me with an almost mournful expression.
I shimmied closer, and he tensed a bit, but didn’t move out of the way. I stilled once we were touching, our bodies aligned on the damp ground. I waited a beat, then nuzzled below his ear. His breath whuffed along my neck and shoulder.
We hadn’t touched intimately, not since that time in his hut. I’d spent most of the last two days half hard every time I got downwind of him, and because of it, I was irritated as hell. Maybe that was why he was so tense. Of course, we could do something about that. I pressed closer, darting my tongue out to get a taste of his skin. He made a small noise in his throat as I nibbled at the vein in his neck.
I took the sound as an invitation and threw my leg over his body, grinding against the hard length in his pants. He bucked into me, a soft, “Bay,” escaping his lips. I rolled my hips as I sought his mouth.
Vaughn snorted in his sleep before rolling over. The sound echoed through the clearing, and in the next second, I was dumped onto the ground in a heap. I blinked, trying to get my bearings, and looked up to see Nash above me, wild eyes darting around the area, hands out like he was fending someone off. He didn’t look all there, his gaze full of terror and…shame?
Finally he looked at me. “I can’t…I can’t. With them here…”
I looked around, but they were all sleeping, and even if they weren’t, Weres weren’t known for needing privacy. Vaughn and Tati had fucked ten feet away from us just the night before. “Nash, they’re asleep.”
“I can’t…people watching…” His voice shook. He was goddamn terrified, and he wasn’t present in this moment.
I stood up slowly, hands out in a pleading gesture. “Nash, baby, it’s okay—”
“It’s not okay,” he spat at me, shadows lurking his eyes. “That’s what you don’t get. It’s. Not. Oh. Kay. I’m. Not. Oh. Kay.” Hair sprouted on his arms, and his nails extended into claws. I didn’t move, unsure what was tipping off his shift. He didn’t go full Were. Like all alphas, he could perform a partial shift, and this one seemed stress-induced. His bulging chest heaved, and his thighs tested the seams of his leather pants.
Finally he took a deep breath, returning fully to human, then turned on a heel and stumbled off into the woods.
I panicked. I didn’t know what was wrong. I didn’t know where he could go. I wasn’t proud following him, knowing he probably wanted to be alone, but I couldn’t lose him. I couldn’t.
So I followed. He knew I was behind him—I took no pains to conceal my scent or the sounds of my footsteps. His back remained tense, his hands fisted as he crashed through the trees with me at his heels. When we reached the edge of a large river bank—the river that, in the next two days, we’d follow to our compound—I knew I had him cornered.
“Nash, what the hell—?”
He whirled around, his eyes flashing in the moonlight, his face a riot of anger and fear and other emotions I hadn’t been sure he could feel anymore. His lips were curled back in a sneer that twisted his handsome face into something I didn’t recognize. “Where I was…they made us perform.” He punctuated the last syllable with a punch to a nearby tree trunk. “We were ordered to fuck in front of them. If we refused, they’d drug us with something that made us too mindless to protest.”
My entire body went cold. The food we’d had for dinner threatened to come back up as my stomach rolled. My Nash. My beautiful, kind, gentle Nash had been made to fuck for an audience. He should have been with his pack, he should have had a choice. It should have been with me. I didn’t know what to say, so I said nothing, but I gave him the respect he deserved by never taking my eyes off his face. If he had to tell me this story, then I’d listen.
“I never refused, because I at least wanted to be aware of what I was doing. I wanted to be in control, but I loathed every minute of it. Some of the females were so far gone, it was like…” He paused, his nostrils flaring. “It was like fucking a corpse.”
I’d crashed after him, preparing to lay into him, but now I was rocked back on my heels with the sickening truth. “I’m so sorry.” Those words didn’t encompass how I felt, not at all. “I don’t know how you survived it.”
“Some days, I didn’t want to,” he said bitterly, turning away to look at the rippling current of the river. “I didn’t want to at all.”
“So back there…” I pointed in the direction from which we’d walked.
“All I could picture was their eyes, so many eyes, watching me.” His voice sounded far away as he kept his gaze on the water.
“I want to make you feel better,” I pleaded. “We’re Weres, we connect physically, I thought—”
“I’m not like the Weres you have back in the pack, Bay.” He pounded his chest. “When the fuck will you get it through your head? This isn’t going to work, this happy mating you’re trying to push—”
“Don’t do that,” I said, stepping into his face. “Don’t put words in my mouth. I’m not a novus who believes in fairytales.”
“I can see it in your eyes, Bay. You haven’t changed all that much. You’ve been through shit, but you’re still the Bay I remember. With the smart mouth and the big smile. Oozing sex.” He reached out and clapped a hand around the back of my neck, hauling me against him. I rested my hands on his hips and gazed up at him as he stared down at me with narrowed eyes. “When they ordered me to fuck, I’d lock you out of my mind. I refused to think of you, to taint you the way they tainted me. If I couldn’t have you, they couldn’t have you either.”
“There were so many times where I wanted to give up, but every time I thought of you and I stayed alive.”
I dug my fingers into his waist. “You don’t have to just think of me anymore.” I pressed closer. “I’m here. I’m right here. No one’s watching us now. It’s just you and me.”
He bared his teeth at me. “You just push and push, don’t you, Bay?”
Of course I did. We belonged together. This was how Weres connected. “I push because I know we both want it.”
His hand slid around to the side of my neck, and his thumb pressed into the corner of my mouth. I darted my tongue out to taste him, and his breath caught.
“Tell me you don’t want me, and I’ll walk back to camp now.” I bumped my chest into his in a challenge, and his jaw clenched. “I’ll leave you alone, and I’ll stop pushing. Go on.” I growled and pushed into him harder. “Tell me.”
He shoved me away, but didn’t say a word. He was hard, the thick ridge in his pants bulging obscenely. I wanted it. Fuck, I wanted it. I wanted him, to show him how good fucking could be, how good we could be together.
We’d been denied this for so long, and no fucking way would I let either of us go any longer without.
I turned my back to Nash and undressed within seconds. His gaze was like a fiery brand, but I wasn’t in the mood to bask in the heat of it. I braced myself with my hands on the trunk and stuck my ass out, knowing the scent of my slick would drive him crazy. I looked at him over my shoulder and saw a wreck. His hair was pulled in all different directions, his body a vibrating mass of alpha hormones. His gaze was on my ass.
I arched my back. “This is yours, Nash, you know it’s always been yours. So take it.”
He lunged at me, and I straightened in time for his body to send mine slamming into the trunk of the tree. I grunted as the bark scraped along my bare skin. Nash’s hand was on my throat, squeezing, his mouth at my ear, and his leather-encased dick sliding down the seam of my ass.
Chasing Destiny (Silver Tip Pack Book 2) Page 8
