Jared (River Pack Wolves 3) - New Adult Paranormal Romance

by Alisa Woods

  Everything in her life was unraveling.

  Jared trailed behind her as she strode, as confidently as she could, into the high-rise that held her father’s campaign office. Jared wore the same dark suit as last night, his jacket and white dress shirt neatly tailored to fit his large, muscular body. He’d kept absolutely silent on the long drive into downtown. He clearly had issues of his own, and she didn’t know where any of this was going, but she still was having a full-body-alert reaction to his nearness. It surged up her wolf, and twice already this morning, Grace was afraid she would accidentally shift. Her wolf gave a constant whimper of need that was utterly distracting. And whenever Grace accidentally touched him—when he gave her a hand to climb out of her father’s black sedan, when she accidentally brushed him as he held the door, or just now, as they both reached for the elevator button at the same time—it was like electricity zapping through her body.

  Jared dropped his gaze and pulled back from the elevator buttons. He was so tightly wound. Grace didn’t know what roiled under that cool, calm exterior, but she’d seen a glimpse of it the night before, when he said his mate was dead. There was so much pain and grief, and he’d locked it down so quickly—the idea of being with him seemed like being around a ticking bomb. Only she wasn’t afraid. More like she wanted to defuse it, take it apart, see what was inside. In spite of the mess she was in, this mysterious shifter was strangely exciting… albeit in a “you might die from the explosion” kind of way.

  Jared held the campaign office door open for her. She strode in ahead of him, heading straight for her little-used office and ducking her head to avoid Kylie’s goggle-eyed looks and Nolan’s narrow-eyed suspicion. She held the door of her office for Jared, then closed it behind him. That would hold Kylie and Nolan off for at least a minute.

  She stayed by the door, arms crossed. “Are you going to talk to me?”

  He strolled over to her desk, scanning the office with a calculated look. “I was waiting until we had a moment alone.”

  “We’ve been alone for the forty-five minute drive into the city.” She wasn’t sure why she was poking him, or that she even wanted to talk, but his silence was driving her nuts.

  “I was waiting until we were alone and I wasn’t operating heavy machinery I might crash.”

  That drew a small smile out of her. “Why don’t you start by telling me your real name? I know it’s not Jared Bachman, or whatever you told my father.”

  “Does it matter?” His dark-eyed stare zoomed in hard on her. “You already know more about me than you need to.”

  So that was how it was going to be. “I don’t know anywhere near what I need to.” She stalked away from the door and stood close to him, staring defiantly up into his dark eyes, her hands clenched at her side. “You want me to give up everything that I have—my job, my home, my father’s love…” She stalled out, choking up. “You know he’s going to toss me out as soon as he figures out I’m not really his child.”

  Jared’s hard stare melted a little, but she pressed on. She was just getting started.

  “All that,” she said, getting up her steam, “and you won’t even tell me your name? Who are you really? Who are you working for? And don’t they have someone better at this job they could send to convince me to give up everything for your cause?”

  The hardness returned to his eyes. “Yes, there are other people who could do this. People who would blackmail you. Use your secret to force you to do what’s right. I was hoping—no, I made the apparent error in thinking—that you might do the right thing on your own, once you understood the stakes.”

  Anger was welling up inside her. “The right thing?” Her voice was rising. “I’m trying to do the right thing! I’m trying to find a way out of this. Can’t you see I want to stop my father and this terrible idea of his?”

  He gave her a look of disgust. “You’re trying to remain, if at all possible, the pampered daughter of a Senator, even though you’re a shifter. You don’t care what happens to everyone else.”

  She actually raised her clenched fists, as if she could pummel this large, muscular, dangerously sexy man who was demanding impossible things of her. “I’m doing the best that I can!”

  His voice was cool, with a slightly raised eyebrow for her threatening fists. “I’m sure that will be a consolation to all the shifters whose lives are ruined by your father’s legislation.”

  Her fists dropped, and her shoulders slumped. He was right. Her life didn’t really matter—well it mattered a lot to her, but she had spent her whole life trying to help others, and when it really came down to it, all she could think about was the fact that her mother had cheated on her father. With a shifter. And created her, this half-shifter illegitimate child.

  Her life was unraveling.

  His voice was soft again. “Why are we here, Grace?”

  She didn’t look at him, just shook her head, staring at the floor. “It’s better if I go about my normal activities until we figure this out.” Her voice felt hollow, and her skin was too tight. There was no way out of this box, and even if there were, she wouldn’t be able to find it—her head was still spinning too much. And her heart felt like it was breaking.

  Jared lifted a hand to her shoulder. His hand was big and heavy, and it felt like he could crush her with a single squeeze, but his touch was gentle and warm. Completely unlike the hard-eyed anger from before.

  “I’m sorry about your parents,” he said. “I’d assumed that you’d figured it out already. I should’ve known better—you’ve been isolated. On your own. It doesn’t have to be that way, not for our kind. Wolves are built to be part of a pack, Grace. I know you don’t have one, but that’s why I’m here. To help you see what you need to do.”

  She looked up into his eyes—they had turned warm. The electric feel of him touching her was even stronger now with his soft words. She leaned into him a little.

  “I can’t believe my mom had an affair. It’s just… I don’t even know who I am anymore.”

  “I know how that feels,” he said in a whisper. His hand on her shoulder squeezed a little—he was so strong, that small movement pulled her closer, until her body was nearly touching his. His eyes went a little round, like he hadn’t meant to do that. Every part of her was heating with his nearness. Her chest was tight with need, and she thought maybe he wanted to kiss her. She sure as hell wanted to kiss him. Wanted to have some relief from this constant sexual tension, something to distract her, blur her mind, and make her forget about everything. But her mind was too mixed up to tell if it was all in her head, or if he was feeling it, too.

  She didn’t get a chance to find out because, at that exact moment, Kylie burst through the door.

  “Oh!” Kylie exclaimed, screeching to a halt by the door. “Er… good morning… Grace and the extremely large man who is accompanying her.”

  Jared dropped his hand from her shoulder and backed away. Grace turned slowly and gave her best friend a look she hoped would vaporize her on the spot.

  Kylie beamed an even larger smile. “I’m having trouble with the coffee maker, Grace! Can you come work your magic on it?”

  Grace blew out her frustration in a low breath. Kylie’s curiosity was burning, and Grace knew she would have to explain anyway, so she might as well get it over with.

  She glanced back to Jared. “Duty calls.”

  He squinted at her in a way that said he wasn’t amused, but he let her go with a nod.

  Grace led the way from her office to the tiny closet that served as a coffee room. Kylie was hot on her heels. Nolan caught sight of them and hustled over. There was hardly room for the three of them to stand in the cramped closet, but Kylie jammed them all inside and closed the door.

  “Oh my God, Grace! Is that him?” Kylie gushed.

  Nolan scowled. “Him who? There’s a him? I haven’t heard of a him before.”

  “The guy Grace is hot for!” Kylie shushed him, then turned to Grace. “That’s him, isn’t i
t?”

  Nolan swung to her. “You’re hot for that guy?” The jealousy was rolling off him in waves, and Grace really didn’t need to deal with that on top of everything else.

  “Jesus, Nolan,” she said. “I can’t help it if the man’s hot.”

  “So you do think he’s hot?” His pinched look got even more so.

  “She has a pulse, doesn’t she?” Kylie whacked his chest with the back of her hand. “Back off, Nolan. The girl has a Grade-A hottie in her grasp. Don’t mess it up.”

  “When did all this happen?” Nolan was gritting his teeth. “Since when do you have a boyfriend?”

  “He’s not my boyfriend,” Grace said, wearily. She couldn’t even see a word as tame as boyfriend applying to Jared. “His name is Jared, and he’s my new bodyguard.”

  Kylie squeaked and clapped her hands together. “Holy shit, that’s even better! Jesus, Grace, why do you get all the lucky breaks?”

  Grace glared at her. “It’s not lucky to have a need for a personal bodyguard.”

  Nolan frowned. “Hang on, why do you need a bodyguard all of a sudden?”

  Some of the glee finally dropped off Kylie’s face. “Wait a minute, is something wrong?”

  Grace took a deep breath, but she figured that lie was the simplest of all. “There’s some shifter gangs out there who aren’t happy with my father. Apparently, there been some threats against me. My father wanted me to have a personal bodyguard, just in case.”

  Kylie’s face took on a look of horror. “Oh my God, Grace.”

  Nolan’s face had gone stormy. “What kind of threats?”

  “I’m sure it’s nothing.”

  “I’m sure it’s not nothing.” Nolan’s storm darkened. “The Senator wouldn’t do this if it weren’t necessary.”

  Grace shook her head. Her father, the Senator, was looking out for himself, primarily. That would be even more true, if he knew what she was.

  “I don’t like this.” Nolan’s voice had dropped an octave.

  “Well, I don’t like it, either,” Grace said. “It’s probably nothing, but I’m going to have a bodyguard for a while, so you guys will have to get used to it. Just for the campaign. Just a precaution.”

  “I think I need to have a talk with your new bodyguard.” Nolan wrestled the door open and squeezed past them to get out.

  “Oh Christ,” Grace said under her breath.

  Kylie scowled after him. “He better not mess with this. You need to get laid, Grace, and Hot Bodyguard Man seems like just the ticket. Don’t worry, I won’t let Nolan screw this up for you.” She charged out after him.

  Grace sighed and followed them both, scurrying in her high heels to try to stop Nolan before he reached Jared. But by the time she arrived at her office, Nolan was already laying into Jared, who was looming over him with his arms crossed. Jared’s expression, looking down at Nolan, was the kind you gave a steaming pile of crap on the sidewalk that you’d like to avoid stepping in.

  Nolan was getting in his face. “What kind of threat are we talking here? Do you have the details? Or are you just the muscle?”

  “Nolan!” Grace said, stumbling into the room. “For God’s sake—”

  “We have a right to know,” Nolan said, throwing a glance at her. “If there’s a threat against you, and you bring it into the office, we have to know what we’re dealing with.” He mimicked Jared by folding his arms.

  “Nolan, don’t be a pain in the ass.” But Kylie’s admonishment didn’t even make him flinch.

  “Shifters are dangerous,” Nolan said, his voice hard. “If it’s a gang, it’s even worse. If it’s some deranged individual, with a burr in his fur, they could be flat psychotic. A predator. They’re animals, and God only knows what they’ll do. So I want to hear everything you know about this threat against Grace.” Nolan’s words were hard and demanding—Grace was impressed that Jared kept his expression unchanging and inscrutable.

  “You’re the speechwriter, right?” Jared’s voice was ice cold.

  “What does that have to do with anything—”

  “No one cares about you.”

  Grace had to stifle her laugh. She really shouldn’t be laughing—Nolan was just trying to protect her. Well, throw his testosterone around a bit, like he was marking territory or something, but also protect her. She knew him—he was genuinely worried. And he had cause to be, only not for the reasons he thought.

  Meanwhile, Nolan’s face was slowly turning red. “Maybe they’re trying to intimidate us. Maybe this threat from the shifters is all about derailing the Senator’s plans.” He swung a pointed look to Grace. “We’re not going to let them intimidate us, are we, Grace?”

  Jared flicked a look at her, boring into her with his dark eyes.

  “That’s why I’m here,” Grace said to both of them. “We continue on, just like normal. We don’t let anyone intimidate us.”

  She pursed her lips because she didn’t really want to have this conversation at all.

  Nolan and Kylie were both giving her nods of approval. Nolan unlocked his arms and strode toward the door. He brushed past her, giving her a still-angry look, but then he paused at the threshold. “We have that rally at two o’clock. I’m going. Kylie will go. But Grace… I think you should stay here.”

  She shook her head. “No, I’ll be there.”

  He frowned and raked a harsh look over Jared. “Make sure you bring the muscle.” Then he stalked out of the room.

  Kylie rolled her eyes. “Ignore him,” she said to Grace. Then she grinned and crossed the room to offer her hand to Jared. He jumped a little, then slowly extended his to shake.

  “My name’s Kylie. You just let me know if you need anything. Anything at all.” She gave him one of her patented please bed me smiles, then turned and sauntered from the room.

  Grace closed the door behind her.

  “Your boyfriend?” Jared asked coolly.

  “Ex-boyfriend. He’s a nice guy.”

  “He’s not a nice guy, Grace. He’s a bigot. And if he knew what you were, he’d fear and hate you just like all the rest. That’s what we’re up against.”

  Grace leaned back against the door. “I know.” She pressed the heels of her hands to her forehead and closed her eyes. “I need coffee. And time to sort this out.” Then she opened her eyes. “Are you really going to hang out in the office here with me all day?”

  He gave her a very small smile—it wouldn’t have been a big deal on anyone else, except that she’d never seen a real smile on his face. It looked like it hurt him. “I’m your bodyguard.”

  She snorted a laugh. “All right, Mr. Jared, the bodyguard with no last name. Make yourself useful and get me some coffee, will you?”

  He gave her a small scowl, but it wasn’t too harsh. “You’re trying to get rid of me.”

  She sighed. “Only for a minute. You can bring your badass self back here if you’ve got coffee.”

  That small smile made an appearance again, then he strode toward the door. She stepped aside to let him pass, but when she closed the door again, she banged her head softly against it.

  One week. Six days now, actually.

  She had to pull herself together enough to fix this mess.

  Jared should have known—the rally at 2 o’clock was an anti-shifter one.

  He stood to Grace’s right, while the ex-boyfriend speechwriter stood to her left, and the coordinator girl—he thought her name was Kylie—flitted around the stage and fussed with the Senator’s microphone.

  Every muscle in Jared’s body clenched.

  The restless crowd that had gathered in the rented hall quietly murmured amongst themselves, waiting to hear the main speaker—two others had already spouted more hate speech than Jared wanted to hear in a lifetime. They were ordinary folk, just as he always suspected—that neighbor down the street, the guy you buy your groceries from, the mid-level manager coming down from her office for a little bigotry with her lunch. Their hatred was a pheromone that floated
in the air—the scent of their anger twisted his stomach. Evil was a common enough thing in the world, but he thought he’d left most of it overseas. To see so much of it on display in Seattle chilled him deep in his bones.

  He kept quiet, not blowing his cover in front of the speechwriter, but that asshole sure was flapping in his mouth.

  “Would you look at the size of this crowd?” Nolan held up both hands as if embracing the lot of them.

  Grace bent her head to listen, and with her hair pulled back, Jared could see the tight press of her lips. He would give anything to know what she was thinking, but that would have to wait until later. Assuming this poison didn’t seep into her system and scare her off.

  Nolan kept talking. “The poll numbers are off the charts. People don’t want to say it out loud, but they’re starting to. Look at this…” He gestured to the crowd again. “This is on a Tuesday afternoon. Think about what it’ll look like when we have an evening rally, or a weekend one.”

  Grace just shook her head and didn’t answer.

  The Senator tapped the microphone, and the crowd quieted down. He started in on his speech, which Jared had absolutely no interest in. He watched Grace instead. Her eyes were glued to her father’s tall, commanding form. He was almost big enough to be a shifter, and a nagging doubt tugged at Jared’s mind. Was it possible? He seriously doubted it. There were plenty of alpha males in the human population who weren’t alpha because of their wolf nature. Which Jared actually counted against them. Wolves were more pure in spirit than humans—at least, Jared’s wolf nature was the good side of him, as far as he could tell. It was his human hands who had done all the killing, and humans who had given him the orders to do it. Humans made war; not wolves. Packs only fought when a member was threatened. It wasn’t as if there weren’t dark wolves—there were—but usually it was the human side corrupting the wolf, not the other way around.

  No, the Senator wasn’t good enough to be a shifter.

  “They’re a hidden menace among us,” he was intoning, to murmurs of agreement in the crowd. “They’re overrepresented in our criminal elements, they hide in the shadows, and by their very nature, they’re dangerous. They don’t reason or think the way humans do—they make blood vows within their packs and revel in their aggressive, animal nature. It’s not entirely their fault, I understand that. They can’t help being born what they are. But that doesn’t erase the fact that they’re a danger to the law-abiding citizens of our country.”