Prey to the Heart

by Kristen Banet

  “She doesn’t trust us because of what we are!” he roared out. Thomas burst in from the back hallway and glared at him. “She doesn’t trust us because of the forms we were fucking born with.”

  “What the hell, James?” his Alpha growled. “Calm the hell down. She doesn’t want in the Pack, then we can’t drag her in by her damn hair.”

  “Yeah,” Tony sighed. “You need to chill.”

  “No,” he snarled back at them. “I don’t. I want to go find Gavin and rip his fucking eyes out for…”

  “For what?” Thomas demanded, glaring at him.

  He couldn’t find the words to respond, shaking his head. He touched his chest and tried to figure out why this pissed him off so much. “I’m a wolf, Thomas,” he finally growled out. “All wolf. I grew up completely in the culture. I’ve never left it. I’m a homebody who just wants Pack and all it entails. It’s so good, and never have I encountered someone who made me think there’s something wrong with that. Until now. Until I meet a woman I’m half desperate for. She doesn’t think being a wolf is okay. And that pisses me off.”

  “And?” Thomas asked.

  “And I can’t stop thinking about her. It fucking hurts that there’s one god damn woman that I want and she hates that I’m a wolf. I can’t stop thinking about her…”

  “Neither can I,” he admitted. “We’re all hung up over her, James, but she’s…justifiably wary of us. I just wish we realized who she was earlier, so we didn’t freak her out in the woods. We acted exactly like a bunch of fucking horny wolves do, like Gavin fucking would have. We would have slept with her in the woods and moved on like it was nothing. Because to us, it wouldn’t have been a big deal.”

  “It was a big deal to me,” James cut in. “It was when it happened. Seeing you guys with her, knowing she was there, bending to us. It was a big deal to me.” He felt the flood of anger again. “But I’m just a wolf. We don’t even fucking grieve right in her mind, so what would I fucking know?”

  “Jesus,” Tony mumbled, shaking his head.

  Thomas looked struck when James looked up at him. “You know she probably didn’t mean that, right?” Thomas asked gently.

  James shook his head. “Then what the hell did she mean?” he asked angrily. “What the hell else could she possibly have been saying?”

  “Maybe you could ask her?” Thomas offered. “Damn it, James. We’re all into her. It would be so easy for us to share her and care about her. She fucking needs it - but if she doesn’t trust us, there’s nothing we can do about that. My instincts are screaming for me to go find her and force her to accept that, but I can’t do that. I can’t go Alpha on her over her feelings. It would be a betrayal of everything I am as an Alpha. I can’t order her to trust us.”

  He thought about that, staring at his ruined pasta. Thomas couldn’t do it. He couldn’t use whatever fucking power Alphas had to force their Pack or Pride to listen. If Thomas wanted to, he could order her to run with them and she wouldn’t have the willpower to deny him.

  But James could convince her. He wouldn’t be at risk of pushing over the line that Thomas couldn’t cross.

  He didn’t say anything, just stormed out, threw on some clothing in his room, and left. Thomas didn’t even try to stop him. James often went out on drives to clear his mind, especially since they had gotten to Wild Junction.

  He’d lost everything, and he finally had something he really wanted again. He was going to hunt her down and make sure she knew that. If he was good at anything, it was hunting.

  He drove to her hotel first and didn’t bother to stop when he saw that her rental car wasn’t there. She was probably out hiking then. That made this harder, but he could handle it.

  He was driven by a need to explain to her. She was a doe and he was a wolf, and this was a hunt. Those instincts had claimed him to the point where nothing else seemed to matter.

  He drove to several of the main hiking trails, not finding her car at any of them. When he began to try the more ignored ones, he found one that started near their property. There it was. Her car.

  She was so close to their house. They had noticed it before. She seemed to pick the small trails, even after she promised to go on the more populated ones. She also stuck closer to their home than she realized, as if she could smell or sense that they could possibly be close by.

  It told him enough about how she felt. She was running scared, and he was going to convince her not to be. He would never harm her, he decided. He sat in his truck for a moment, knowing when he got out, there was no turning back. If he went after her, he would need to be all in. She was so easy to talk to about how much he missed his friends. How much it hurt to lose everything.

  He would never hurt her.

  He got out of the truck and began to walk into the woods, sticking to the trail. She had to be out here somewhere. He trudged deep into the woods, following her scent. She was here recently, so she had to be close.

  He could hear one of the hundreds of streams that ran through the mountainous region and saw her there, finally. It took nearly twenty minutes of walking, but there she was.

  And she took his breath away, like she did every time and never knew it.

  She sat on a rock and just stared at the water rolling by. Her brown hair hung loose, like she always kept it, the breeze sweeping it over her face. She seemed lost in thought, wearing that big yellow sweater and silly black hat. He wanted to shift and curl up at her feet suddenly. Just let this peaceful beauty run her fingers through his fur.

  He stepped closer and watched her jump up in shock. He didn’t move as she turned around and gave him a wide-eyed stare.

  “James,” she breathed out. “What are you doing here?”

  “Looking for you,” he admitted to her, his anger gone. “I had the urge to talk to you and I couldn’t resist it anymore.”

  “How long have you been looking?” she asked, confused.

  “About an hour,” he chuckled, looking down at the ground. He felt a bit stupid now. “I could have just called.”

  “I wouldn’t have answered,” she admitted, softly. “What do you want to talk about?”

  “You,” he sighed, walking closer finally. “Abigail…”

  “This is about what I said to Thomas, isn’t it?” she asked, sitting back down.

  He walked closer before responding. He tentatively reached out to push her hair back away from her face. He tucked it behind her ear and nodded when she looked up at him. “I’ll be honest,” he groaned. “It fucking hurts for you to run from us when we didn’t hurt you. We aren’t Gavin, Abigail.”

  “I know,” she mumbled. “I’ve just been looking for the courage to admit that and ask for forgiveness.” He sat down next to her as she kept talking. “It’s hard not to judge, James. It’s hard to listen to my own knowledge about how wolf Packs work and realize that Gavin was just an ass, not a wolf being a wolf. I’m afraid that if I get too close to you guys, guys that I am attracted to, I’ll get burned again. But I should have never made a snap judgement based on what you are. I should have just come clean earlier and admitted what made me so scared. I’m sorry.”

  “I forgive you,” he whispered, leaning on her shoulder to say it in her ear. He did forgive. He felt it deep down that he could accept her apology. “Abigail, we aren’t asking for your heart. We aren’t asking for forever. We’re asking for a chance.”

  “A chance at what?” She sighed, watching the stream. “What can I give you that you can’t get on your own?”

  “Healing,” he told her. “You can offer us some healing. I think we can offer you some too.” She looked over to him and he bared his heart for a moment. “I am bleeding to death slowly, Abigail. I used to be happier, and since we got free of the hunter’s compound, I’ve been searching for it again, that happiness, and I can’t find it. But when we ran with you…I felt it. When I danced with you at Rocker’s, it was there. Abigail, I’ll be honest. I’m just chasing that feeling, and you give i
t to me. I have nightmares sometimes, but I don’t have them when I’m thinking of you.”

  “James,” she gasped. “I…”

  “I don’t want Doctor Abigail,” he said sternly, but keeping it soft. He didn’t want to scare her with anger he wasn’t feeling anymore. “I want this weird Hippie Abigail that plays in the woods. With your goofy black hat and oversized sweater. The one that can dance like she’s swaying in the breeze. The one that runs like the wind and makes me chase.”

  “And I want to stay here,” she whispered. “I love this area, James. What if I screw this up? Being a Pack member? If this goes wrong…I’ll lose this.”

  “We would never hold anything against you,” James growled softly. “Never. We can see it. The way the woods call you. We know. Also, I think Riley would be furious with Thomas if we fucked you over, and then Brenton would chase our asses out of this place to make her happy again. We love it too, so let’s not let that happen.”

  She laughed, and he closed his eyes to focus on the bell tone of it. Beautiful. When he’d first seen her, she’d been pretty. Now he knew otherwise.

  “I’ve been coming out to these woods for two weeks thinking about this, James,” she giggled. “And came to no real conclusions. Yet you make it sound easy.”

  “It is easy.” He leaned over again and kissed her. It was chaste and soft. He just wanted to feel those soft lips again. He didn’t pull back very far, whispering against her lips. “You just need to gather the courage and try.”

  “I want to get to know you guys a bit more,” she whispered back. “I don’t know much about you. I’ve been running so hard from my attraction that I barely know the men I’ve been running from. I’ll join the Pack, but…the rest needs to wait even longer.”

  “I play guitar,” he growled, smiling. He had her. She was his prey now. Now he needed to convince her to come home and…his mind filled in the blanks, causing the scent of his desire to fill the air around them.

  “Woo a lot of ladies with that guitar?” she asked, raising an eyebrow. It was teasing and playful. “In those leather pants of yours?”

  “I’m hoping it works for the one I want,” he teased. His heart felt lighter, so much lighter now. He pressed into another kiss, and this time, he didn’t keep it soft. He claimed her mouth and began to pull her into his lap, pleased that she didn’t resist. When she was there, he broke the kiss and stood up with her, holding her to his chest.

  “What are you doing?” she laughed. “Put me down.”

  “I’m going to take you home,” he growled, “and eat you.”

  “James,” was all she said, and he sighed, putting her down. She had just told him that she needed the ‘rest’ to wait and here he was, wanting to drop her in a bed and take her.

  “Come over in a few days,” he told her, being serious. He would need the time with Thomas and Tony to fine-tune the idea and the changes. They would need to figure out their own rules, so they didn’t screw this up. He’d gotten them the chance, though. “We’ll work out the details. No sex, nothing like that. Just you and the Pack and how we help each other. I promise.”

  “I can do that,” she smiled at him and his knees went a little weak. “Walk me back to my car?”

  “Of course,” he chuckled, offering his arm. Together they walked quietly, her head finally leaning on his shoulder. He could get used to this.

  “How mad were you at me?” she asked, as they got closer to the vehicles. “For what I said? Don’t think I didn’t smell the anger on the breeze when you found me.”

  “I wasn’t…okay,” James groaned. “I was a bit mad at you, but it’s not really you, Abigail. I was, am, madder at the fact that a wolf could hurt you like that, and you judged me for it. I can’t blame you for it. I really just wanted to go find fucking Gavin and kill him. I never thought his shit would affect me, but here we are. You, broken-hearted and scared of trying again. Us, wolves who lost everything and wanting you to try again. Yeah, I was a bit mad that what I am is the very reason that you’re wary of us.”

  “I promise to try,” Abigail sighed. “I’ve been told now by too many people not to pass up an opportunity. I’m going to try.”

  He just nodded. He could accept that. He could accept her just trying for them. He needed someone to try. After everything - after losing his brothers, losing his place in South Dakota - hearing that she would try meant the world to him.

  18

  Abigail

  Abigail knocked softly on the front door to the farmhouse, nervous. This was it. She was joining a wolf Pack. Her nerves were going to kill her.

  Thomas pulled open the door and grinned at her. He was her Alpha now, and they both knew it, even before she walked in to hear what they wanted to say. “Come in, Abigail. You don’t need to knock anymore. Pack doesn’t make Pack wait.”

  “Thank you,” she whispered. “What’s the plan today?”

  “Ground rules,” Thomas told her. “Talking about your fears and worries about this. Making sure you know that you can leave at any time.”

  “Then?” She knew there was more.

  He closed the front door once she was inside and continued to smile at her. “We’re going for a run,” he told her calmly. “Just a run.”

  “Okay.” She took a deep breath and nodded.

  He led her to the living room and she saw James smile at her. She smiled back, remembering those kisses in the woods. He’d been so sweet, so different from the temperamental man she originally met. He wasn’t always happy-go-lucky like Tony, or peaceful like Thomas. He was just a good guy who was hurting a bit and now, the hurt was easing.

  “We talked,” Thomas told her, falling into his recliner. “You have a job that can take you anywhere, Abigail. A job you love, I’m guessing.”

  “I do,” she told him. Tony patted a seat on the couch between him and James. She put her bag down and sat between them, trying not to get nervous about the arm Tony casually threw over the back of the couch and around her.

  “Here’s what we’re going to offer. While here in Wild Junction, you’ll answer to me in concerns over your health. You need to get running more, Abigail. Your doe wants it. I’m going to focus on that. Make sure you’re eating right, that kind of stuff.”

  “I can handle that,” she said, trying to make sure the Alpha knew she was okay with it. She knew what she was getting with having an Alpha, especially one with a small Pack and who genuinely cared about the people around him.

  Thomas continued after she offered him that reassurance. “When you aren’t here, and if anyone gives you trouble, let them know you are one of us. Word has spread at this point, so I’m certain every shifter knows we’re Kingson’s ally. No one will give you a hard time.”

  “No one gives me trouble.” Abigail giggled. “But okay.”

  “Doesn’t matter,” James growled softly. “You need to know what your options are.” She nodded to him, accepting that, and waited for more from Thomas.

  “It’s not complicated, Abigail.” Thomas sighed, smiling at her still. It hadn’t left his face since he opened the door. “We just want you to…This is weird now that it’s happening.”

  “You want me to be a part of the Pack and community, for both of us,” she finished for him. “I know.”

  “How long have you been without a community?” he asked softly.

  “I left the Herd officially when I went to college. I was never a member of the North Dakota Pack…So, I haven’t been a member of anything since I was eighteen.” She hadn’t ever really thought about it. Twenty-two years since she was a member of something real, not just an employee for an organization. It made her want this even more, now that it was there, right in her grasp. She was going to have something again. Something that was hers and also theirs. Something together with other shifters and not just her own loneliness.

  “Wow, baby,” Antonio coughed out in shock. “That’s a long-ass fucking time. With no one?”

  “I mean, I have family,
but I see them during the holidays only. My parents never really approved of my choices. I’ve had jobs, but the SSTF doesn’t promote that sort of bonding or community in the organization. They are ‘above it,’” Abigail informed him. He looked concerned and she shook her head. “It’s fine, Antonio.”

  “Call me Tony,” he whispered. “Call me Tony, and I’ll drop it.”

  “Tony, it’s fine,” she chuckled, unable to stop a smile. “I’m here now, aren’t I?”

  “You are,” Antonio agreed, giving that playful grin.

  “Is there anything you want from us?” Thomas asked softly. “Anything we can do?”

  “I want to keep this quiet,” she admitted. “Not because of anything serious. I don’t want everyone learning and then pressuring me to do one thing or the other. I know if this spreads back to the Herd, my phone is going to blow up. I know Riley is going to want to know everything.”

  “Are we your dirty little secret?” Antonio growled playfully.

  “If I can be yours,” she retorted, smiling at him. “Can you understand why?”

  “I can,” James told her. “I can imagine you want this to be a safe place for you, no outside pressures.”

  “It’s already scary enough to be here, trusting you guys enough to join the Pack,” she whispered to them. “I don’t want others making it harder for me to figure out what I want or need.”

  “We can keep it quiet,” Thomas confirmed. “We can do that for you until you know what you want.”

  “Thank you. That’s really all.” She smiled at him, glad they were willing to make that concession.

  “We have an extra bedroom or two,” Thomas stood back up as he spoke. “You can claim one.”

  “Wouldn’t that make it really obvious that I’m here?” she asked, standing up with him.

  “If you want Brenton to pay for a hotel for the entire time you ever stay here…” Thomas raised an eyebrow at her and she heaved a sigh.

  “Good point,” she groaned. “I’ll think about it. I don’t feel guilty for the hotel room while I’m his employee, though.”