“Yeah, I think the panther house is having a party. Aren’t they always? It’s like they got out from under Lockhardt and they just want to go wild. Not wild enough to actually sleep with anyone. Unfortunately for them, there aren’t any male panthers here, so I’m just biding my time till one of them caves.”
I bit back the growl threatening to erupt from me at the thought of Matt and Tessa.
“How about we go grab a beer at Jacks and head on over there? Those girls do know how to throw one hell of a party,” Matt suggested and my brothers agreed.
I took a moment to clean up and prepare for a night out. I knew I should take a shower, but I wore my mate’s scent from our time in the woods. It was faint, but I wasn’t ready to wash it off.
I had three beers at Jacks, nervous at seeing Tessa after the way things had ended. It took the edge off a little, but not enough. My body was hyperaware that she was near when we finally walked into her sorority house. Ayanna had rolled her eyes as we entered, but she didn’t stop us. It was no surprise she hated the D.O.G.s.
Once inside, Matt headed for the dance floor. Liam went off in search of more beer, and Patrick hung back with me. He asked which one she was, and I knew she was close. I could feel her. My eyes scanned the room and my heart sank at the site I found.
In the middle of the dance floor was Tessa, surrounded by four guys dancing intimately close to her. I gritted my teeth waiting for the possessive need to arise within me, but I felt nothing. I was entirely numb. Disappointed, but not freaking out over the image before me.
Perhaps that shocked me more than anything. Just that afternoon I had gone alpha-level protective over her, and now nothing?
“I swear I’m losing my mind here, Patrick,” I yelled above the music. I pointed her out on the dance floor and Patrick’s eyes widened in surprise. “My wolf attacked a freaking grasshopper this afternoon for getting too close to her, and now he’s perfectly calm at that? What is going on? It’s like that’s Tessa, but it’s not. I don’t know how to explain it.”
“I’m sorry, man, but there is no way your wolf would tolerate its mate dancing like that.” He waved towards them in demonstration. “You should be losing your shit right now, but not in confusion. She can’t be your mate. Trust me.”
I stared at the girl before me. Nothing. I felt nothing. The emptiness it created was crippling. Yet I still smelled her.
“Patrick? How can I look at her and feel nothing, but her scent is still here and affecting me? I’m so confused. One minute my heart tells me she’s my mate, the next she’s not? I can’t stay here. I’m sorry. I’m out.”
As I turned to leave, Patrick grabbed my arm.
“Holy shit!”
“What’s wrong?” I asked him.
He pointed to the other side of the room, and then looked back at Tessa on the dance floor. His headed whipped between the two sides and I turned to look in the direction he pointed.
When my eyes landed on my beautiful mate, my entire world righted itself. Shocked, I jerked my head between the two. They looked the same, but they weren’t.
“Twins?” Patrick asked, voicing my own question. “Identical twins? Can you tell which one is which?”
I nodded. “That one,” I said, pointing to the girl leaning against the wall talking to Anita. “That one’s mine.”
I breathed a huge sigh of relief and doubled over to steady my breathing. Twins. Tessa was an identical twin. Pieces of the puzzle began falling into place.
The moment Anita left her side, I headed straight for her. Predatory instincts were on high alert. I didn’t say hi, I just stared at her, then back towards the dance floor.
“Why didn’t you tell me you were a twin, Tessa?”
She cringed, then stiffened her shoulders and raised her chin in defiance. “That’s Tessa,” she said, pointing to the girl on the dance floor. The pain in her voice and the hurt in her eyes felt like a kick in the groin. “I’m Jenna.”
Jenna
Chapter 8
I couldn’t help the hurt I felt every time he called me Tessa, but he was here, questioning me, and not her. That had to mean something. Didn’t it?
I wasn’t sure I could have said anything to shock him more. The confusion in his eyes was real. He really didn’t know.
“Jenna,” he said reverently, letting it roll off his tongue. It caused a warmth to bloom in the pit of my stomach.
“All this time. Why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t you correct me?”
I looked around in panic. We weren’t safe to talk openly here. “Not here,” I told him.
He nodded like he understood and walked away. Pain shot through me at his retreating back. Just like that? He’d give up on us so easily? I should have been relieved, but instead it felt as though my heart was on the verge of shattering.
My phone dinged with an incoming text and I checked it.
CHASE: Woods in 5.
I gasped for breath, trying to rein in the whirlwind of emotions he had just caused. I went to my room and grabbed my coat. I quickly reapplied my lip gloss. I tried my best to compose myself and paste on a smile. I didn’t feel confident walking through the house and out the back door, but I didn’t seem to draw any attention either, so I hoped I at least looked the part.
Heading straight for the woods, I looked around. Channeling my panther, I called on her eyesight to help me see in the dark. It took no time at all to find Chase. He was about fifteen feet into the woods and I knew that even my sisters wouldn’t see us from the house.
The moment I reached him, Chase grabbed me by the waist and pulled me flush against him. I gasped in surprise, but it was muffled as his lips crushed down against mine. Need and desire heated my skin and I purred against his mouth, greedily kissing him back. Shocked by my own response, I pulled back, breathless and wanting more.
“You have no idea how crazy you made me. One moment I was certain. The next, I felt nothing. I’ve been going out of my damned mind trying to figure out what the hell was going on between us.” He paused and looked at me in wonder. “Twins? You may look the same, but you definitely don’t feel the same.”
His hand framed my face and he breathed in my scent. When I didn’t pull away, he closed his eyes and pressed his lips to mine once again. This kiss was softer, sweeter, and held so much promise it simultaneously mended and broke my heart all over again.
“Jenna,” he said with a sigh against my swollen lips.
A tear ran down my cheek and he gently swiped it away as he pulled me into his embrace. Warmth, love, and belonging. That’s what I felt in his arms.
“When you called me Tessa today, I didn’t think you could tell us apart,” I sobbed into his strong, muscular chest.
“I may have had the wrong name, but I never had the wrong girl.”
We stood there just holding each other. I knew I shouldn’t let myself indulge, but my heart was in control now, no matter what my head told it.
He kissed the top of my head and pulled back to look at me.
“I’m sorry I hurt you earlier. It’ll never happen again,” he said sweetly.
I wanted to believe him, but there was simply no way things could ever work between us.
“Chase, you’re a dog.”
“And you’re a beautiful black cat,” he interrupted. “So what? I know you feel it too, Jenna. I can see it in your eyes. You are my one true mate.”
My back stiffened and I pulled away. “Don’t say that.”
“Are you denying it?”
“I didn’t say that,” I confessed, unable to deny the bond between us. “But we can’t. You don’t understand. Nothing can ever happen between us.”
The pain was evident on his face. “I don’t understand it either, Jenna, but you are my mate. I don’t know a lot about panthers, but to a wolf, that means everything. Nothing else in this world matters to me, but you.”
“My father, he’ll never allow it. You can’t possibly understand.”
�
��Actually, I can, to an extent. I’m an Alpha’s son, and the Westin Pack is unarguably the largest and wealthiest of all wolf packs. That kind of makes me a little like royalty too, princess.”
I appreciated what he was trying to do, but really wished he hadn’t brought the dimples into the conversation when he smiled at the end of his speech. It made my body go from stubborn confidence to complete mush in zero to five seconds.
“It’s not the same. Before coming here, I had only ever met a few jaguar shifters. I had been sheltered to only black panthers my entire life. We don’t live in groups the way you do. I don’t even know if I could. I like my space. Yeah, my family’s close, but Daddy’s very strict about no fraternizing outside the panthers, but outside my species? A canine? It would kill him if he ever found out, and trust me, the sisters will be equally against it.”
“Anita’s our friend. Don’t you think she just wants to see us happy? You happy?” he argued.
I shook my head. “No. Sure, she may feel sorry for me, but she would never support us either.”
“It doesn’t matter. I can support us. I will take care of you. You’ll never want for anything,” he told me, offering me the world, yet it remained too far out of reach.
I started to cry again. I had never been much of a crier, but I had never experienced emotions like Chase Westin invoked in me before.
“Please don’t cry, princess. I don’t know how we’re going to make it work, but we will. I’ll find a way for as long as you’ll have me.”
I hiccupped. I couldn’t drag it out. “The more we’re together the harder it will be on both of us, Chase. It’ll be best if we just end it now before it’s too late.”
He took my hand and laid it against his chest.
“Do you feel that?” I nodded as the soft rhythm of his heart steadily beat against my open palm. “That’s not my heart you’re feeling. That’s yours, because it already belongs to you.”
My breath caught in my throat and I nibbled on my lower lip involuntarily as I stared into his eyes. His gaze dropped to my lips and I saw raw desire in his eyes, and a tiny bit of mischief. He pulled me closer and covered my mouth with his, sucking my bottom lip into his mouth, his teeth grazing against it as he nibbled. The world was starting to spin when I remembered to breathe again. He kissed my lower lip as it escaped his teeth and he planted a light kiss against my full lips before pulling back with a smile.
“You have no idea how crazy it makes me when you do that.”
I knew he was referring to my nervous habit of chewing on my lip. He had definitely made his point, but I couldn’t help but stare in wonder and surprise he’d even noticed.
“I don’t know if I’m strong enough to do this, Chase,” I admitted, wanting him more than I had ever wanted anything in my entire life.
“One day at a time,” he said, as he leaned his forehead against mine. “Just give me one day at a time.”
I nodded. I could do that, as long as no one found out. “My sisters can’t find out. They’ll never understand. I don’t even understand. But they’d tell Daddy and he’d have me removed from here faster than you can blink an eye.” There was no doubt in my heart it was true, too.
“Okay, but you have to promise me something.”
“What?” I said, even knowing I’d agree to anything he asked.
“Promise me I can see you on days we don’t have class together. It can be a quick run in the woods, lunch, studying in the library, I don’t care what. It’s just really hard on the days I don’t see you.”
He looked so vulnerable, raw even, that I instantly melted.
“I don’t like Tuesday and Thursday either, or most of the weekend. My sisters have even noticed I get very moody on those days,” I confessed.
I looked up at him shyly to gauge his reaction. I should have known my confession would make him happy.
“So, I can see you more often? I mean we wouldn’t want your sisters suspecting anything, so we should definitely not let you get moody like that.”
He grinned, his adorable dimple-filled smile that brightened my day each time I saw it. Those dimples took away every fear, every pain, every concern I had. Weapons like those should hardly be legal. I had the incredible urge to swirl my tongue inside each of them, but I kept it in check, or so I thought.
“What?” I asked him, knowing he was trying to mask something from me.
“Um, Jenna, how well do cats smell?”
It seemed like a random question to me, but I answered honestly. “We have really sensitive noses, but I don’t think we have like super smelling powers or anything. Why, do you?”
“Um, yup. Wolves have a very heightened sense of smell.”
“Why?” I asked, suddenly panicking. “Do I smell bad?”
His grin turned smoldering as he leaned in and whispered in my ear, tickling the sensitive spot there. “You smell delicious, and quite aroused. It’s driving me crazy.” He pressed himself against me and I felt exactly how crazy I was driving him. He kissed down my neck and across my collarbone as I struggled to breathe normally.
Pulling back, he was still smiling, and then he wasn’t. A low growl rumbled in his chest and he pulled me behind him.
“Relax, pup, it’s just us,” a strange voice said from the dark.
Using my panther vision, everything cleared and I saw two tall men walking towards us. I was certain I had never seen them before and my heart started thumping in my chest.
Chase relaxed immediately, but I couldn’t. My body was strung tightly with emotions and panicked from the two strangers.
“A few of her sisters are looking for her. Best to return now. Tessa, is it?” the redhead spoke, surprising me with an Irish accent.
“It’s Jenna, actually,” Chase said. “I was wrong. I’ll apologize for the rest of my life for it. Tessa is her twin sister. Identical twin. So, I’m not going crazy after all.”
I watched the two men closely even with Chase still shielding me.
“Dude, you screwed up her name?” the blonde razzed him.
“Sure, laugh it up. If Maddie had an identical twin sister what would you have done?” Chase questioned.
Both men laughed. “We wouldn’t have been as fecking daft as you,” the Irish one said.
Chase just shook his head. “I was there when both of you mated. Remember? Laugh it up all you want. I still haven’t screwed up as bad as either of you.”
My eyes widened and my heart raced. “You told them?” I demanded.
Chase cringed. “Jenna, meet Liam and Patrick. My brothers. Not like my frat brothers; these are my actual brothers. Remember I told you they were coming in for the weekend? Okay, so Patrick is technically my sister’s mate, but we claim him just the same.”
Patrick smiled affectionately. “You’re either a Westin or you’re not. Keeps things pretty simple.”
“How many others know?” I asked, horrified. I couldn’t afford for it to get back to my family. I could never be this open with my own family. I was surprised how much that thought pained me, but it was the truth.
“I only told Liam,” Chase said. “I swear, but he told Patrick, which means Elise already knows, and if E knows then Lily knows, and if Lily knows the whole damn pack probably knows by now.”
The world was starting to spin around me. His whole pack already knew about me?
“Do they know what I am?” I whispered into Chase’s ear.
“Yup, we do, and you should probably know, we have heightened hearing, even in our skin. Chase has a device in his room that dampers everything if you need to talk without fear of others hearing. Use it,” Liam advised.
“Best device ever invented,” Patrick added.
“It doesn’t bother you that I’m not wolf?” I asked incredulously.
Liam shrugged. “We just want the kid to be happy. We’ve both been blessed to find our true mates, and if you’re it for him, then great. I mean, who the hell am I to judge anyone? My kid’s half tiger.”
“Tiger,” Liam said definitively. He pulled out his phone and Chase rolled his eyes and shook his head.
“Now you started it,” he warned.
Pictures of an adorable boy with dark hair and dark eyes flashed across the screen.
“This is Oscar,” Liam said proudly. “My son. He’s half wolf and half tiger. So, sure, cats and dogs, not exactly the norm. Not everyone will get you two, but that doesn’t mean it can’t work.”
“You really should be getting back. I can hear them starting to look more aggressively for you,” Patrick said.
I wanted to stay. I had a million questions for Liam after hearing his mate was a cat, too, but I couldn’t risk being caught with them.
“Okay,” I said, and started to walk away.
Chase grabbed my arm and pulled me back to him. “Try actually responding to my texts or calls once in a while.”
He gave me a quick kiss on the lips right in front of his brothers and I turned in shock, feeling the heat rising in my cheeks as I walked away.
“Pup’s never actually texted or called first, and he sure as hell hasn’t been ignored by a lady before, so give his poor bruised ego a break and answer him next time,” Liam said to my retreating back.
When I reached the edge of the woods I dared to look back. Patrick had Chase in a headlock, giving him noogies as they harassed him. No doubt they were talking about me. I still couldn’t believe he so easily told his family. The more people who knew, the less we could be together. I made a note to discuss the importance of keeping this to ourselves the next time I saw Chase.
Chase
Chapter 9
I lay awake staring at the ceiling and thinking of Jenna. I grabbed my phone and texted her, but first I corrected the name on her number. Erasing Tessa, I added Jenna as the new contact and marked her number one on my speed dial.
Confusing Hearts (Westin Pack Book 4) Page 6
