Lilah snatched it, wondering who would possibly reach out to her. The curse had severed Lilah from the outside world time and time again. She didn’t have any real friends. All she had was…
Vivi.
The text message wasn’t text, but a photo. It showed Vivi standing outside Lilah’s last apartment with a confused look on her face. Moments later, a message appeared beneath the photo.
Where did you disappear to?
Vivi was back in town. That hadn’t taken long. Her baby sister must have flown through the little bit of money Lilah had saved. The photo showed heavy bags under Vivi’s eyes and nearly had Lilah texting her new address to her lost sister. Before she could compromise herself, Griffin appeared laden with blankets and movies.
Lilah laughed at him and tucked her phone into her pocket. She ignored the vibrations, got up and claimed some of the DVDs from Griffin, and set them on the coffee table.
“What is all this?”
“This is healing time,” Griffin declared. “I think.”
She raised a brow. “You think you can force healing in a single night? Just because my physical healing is overnight doesn’t mean my emotional healing will be just as quick.”
His shoulders dropped and a look of hopelessness overcame him, making him look very much like a puppy. Lilah rolled her eyes and took the blankets from him, too. Griffin was making an effort to help her. At every turn, he was there. She could at least let him go on with his wild ideas.
She needed a night away from her troubles. The nest of blankets was inviting, begging her to get lost in it’s fleece folds. No troubles, no curse, could find her inside all that plushness. The smell of food on the air convinced her. This night would be dedicated to forgetting about her new condition. She would spend the night not thinking about it at all.
So, she settled down into the blankets and beckoned Griffin to join her. His smile was wan, as if he was still thinking about her pain and how he couldn’t fix it, but he joined her, nonetheless. He took a moment to lay a blanket over her lap so she could see the cactus and llama print that decorated it.
“That proves you pay attention,” she said.
He beamed with pride. Lilah wanted to reach for him and pull him close. She wanted to know how those lips felt against her own, wanted to know how he might hold her. The beast agreed, rising with every ounce of pent up energy Lilah had been holding back. She dug her fingers into the blanket and fought back the urge.
Griffin watched her for a long moment. His eyes were unreadable. She couldn’t decipher what she saw in them and chose to turn away instead.
“So, what do you want to do first? This is your prescription. You tell me what to do.”
Griffin made a sound in the back of his throat. It dragged her attention back to him and made her face warm. The look in his eyes had become heated. He held her gaze. The fire grew hotter and hotter. She thought she could see the same urges mirrored in his face that she’d felt only a moment ago.
As quickly as it rose, he shook his head and it was gone. He reached for two movies on the table. “We could watch an action movie or, uh, this.”
The second option featured a man and a woman leaning against each other, snarky grins on their faces. It was clearly a romantic kind of movie and it clearly made Griffin uncomfortable. As much as she would have liked to watch him squirm, Lilah picked the action movie. She preferred high stakes and lots of shirtless men, anyway. Griffin loaded the movie into the DVD player and returned to the couch to crack open the boxes of chicken wings.
“What? No whiskey to go with it?” Lilah teased, even though she craved alcohol to make this easier.
Each time Griffin moved, she was acutely aware of it. She was aware of the way his elbow rubbed hers. She could feel his gaze on her skin, even if she was looking away. Her body felt alive in his presence. She did her best to push it all away. This was no time for feelings, for urges, or for any kind of desire. It would only make her life muddier than it had been in the first place.
It would only open her to the curse once more.
Just as the movie menu appeared, the front door burst open. Lilah jumped, startled. Griffin leaned into her and slung his arm over her shoulder. For a moment, she stared at him in confusion, then she remembered she was still pretending to be his girlfriend.
Lilah expected Ashton to stroll into the room, but the scent that preceded the invader was completely unexpected. Jasper burst into the living room…and kept going. He paid them no attention as he made his way past them and into the hall.
She expected Griffin to get up and follow his king, but he stayed where he was with his arm around her. He tilted his head and met her questioning gaze.
“Don’t ask me,” he replied.
She thought he’d turn his attention back to Jasper, but his eyes dropped to her lips. Lilah realized just how close they were. All Griffin had to do was drop his head a little further. She could already feel his warm breath on her cheek. It cascaded down her neck and filled her with shivers. Her fingers curled into the blankets once more. Need flooded her core with molten heat.
Then, Jasper reappeared. He snarled and knocked over a bookshelf. Lilah jumped, heart racing. Her beast snarled fiercely. The creature didn’t care who Jasper was to them. All it knew was that he’d interrupted them and then threatened them.
Griffin squeezed her shoulder, and Lilah realized she was growling out loud. She swallowed back the sound, realizing that Jasper had narrowed his eyes at her. The molten gold gaze flicked to Griffin, and Jasper’s lips peeled back in a sneer.
“Where. Is. It?”
Griffin hugged her tighter. Lilah wasn’t sure if he was protecting her or keeping her from pouncing Jasper. Either way, she was grateful. Their king looked monstrous and fierce. His anger had eclipsed his humanity and brought the beast to the surface. All he needed to do was shift right then and there, and the whole house would come crumbling down on their heads.
Lilah would be defenseless. She couldn’t shift. Wouldn’t shift. She’d be trapped under the rubble. The curse would be one step closer to claiming her.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Griffin said. “Can you see yourself? Do you realize what kind of monster you look like?”
Jasper stormed forward. It looked like he was about to flip the coffee table at them, but before he could even reach for it, Griffin was there. Griffin grasped his cousin’s arms and pulled him off his feet, throwing him toward the door he’d entered.
“Get out,” Griffin growled. He placed himself between Lilah and Jasper. “It is not my turn to baby sit your useless ass. If you want to terrorize someone, how about you go look in a mirror?”
Jasper launched himself from the floor. He flew toward Griffin. Lilah thought they would fall back onto the coffee table and quickly reached to yank it out of the way. They collapsed onto empty floor, only clipping the corner of the table. When she pulled back, her hands were shaking. The beast inside her fought to break free, but Lilah knew she didn’t even have enough energy to shift, let alone fight.
She’d starved herself to the point of breaking and it rendered her useless. A small and pathetic whimper crawled up her throat. The dull sounds of flesh hitting flesh, of male grunts, filled the air. She felt helpless. Useless.
“Give me my whiskey!” Jasper roared.
Everyone else paused.
“I didn’t take your damn whiskey,” Griffin spat.
Atop him, Jasper paused. “Don’t lie to me. I need my whiskey.”
Griffin kicked Jasper off him. The king tumbled across the floor, landing on all fours like a cat. His gaze was hot. Not in the way Griffin’s had been before Jasper entered, but in a way that threatened to burn everything to the ground.
“I can’t stand this anymore,” Jasper said, low and guttural as if it pained him. “I can smell her everywhere. She’s on everything. But I. Can’t. Have. Her.”
His last words were howls. Lilah sank back into her blankets, pullin
g them up over her chin. She recalled what Griffin had told her after she’d been changed. The war that caused the attack the other day was all over Jasper and the mate who refused him. Now, she was seeing first hand how it was affecting their king.
“This is not the time to take my whiskey. I am doing my damn best to keep myself under control. Whoever thinks they’re doing me a service is digging themselves a grave.”
Griffin groaned. She could see his exhaustion in the flat expression on his face, the one that hid every ounce of joy he’d shown her. This was the life Griffin lived, the one he wanted to escape.
“Go ask Ashton,” Griffin told his king. “He and Makenna probably took it to the new house when they moved.”
Jasper’s eyes widened. He spun on his heel and raced toward the door, a man on a mission. Or, a monster on the hunt.
The only way to explain the look on Griffin’s face once they were alone was defeat. He dropped to his knees. She watched his clenched fists tremble and suspected he wanted to punch something. He could probably put a hole through the floor with ease.
It didn’t frighten Lilah. His anger wouldn’t turn toward her. The kind of man who bought ice-cream, blankets, and rom-coms wasn’t the kind of man to hit a woman. An idiotic cousin, yes, but never a woman.
Lilah gently pushed the coffee table, intending to put it back even though Griffin was still in the way. She prodded him in the shoulder with the table. His head snapped up. She laughed at him and pushed again. He narrowed his eyes at her. She raised a brow in challenge.
“I’d shove it and see if I could knock you over, but I don’t want the food to fall on the floor.”
“Is that the only reason you saved the table earlier?” he asked, a smirk taking over the corners of his mouth.
Lilah wanted that mouth. She wanted it on her, wanted to see it smile. Her stomach swooped in and saved her from her errant thoughts with a loud growl.
“Yes. I need food. I’m done starving myself.” To punctuate her point, she ripped away the plastic bag that surrounded the take-out containers and flicked the first one open.
The saucy, crispy wings released a cloud of mouth-watering scent that had her sliding onto the floor between the couch and table. She reached back, snatched a pillow, and tucked it behind her for support.
She patted the floor space beside her. “I’m going to eat these all by myself if you don’t join me.”
“Go ahead. They’re all yours.”
Griffin crawled on all fours around the table and into the narrow space between the table and couch. He filled every inch and more, making her breath catch in her throat. He watched her for a long moment, holding her gaze while he grinned. Lilah licked her lips.
Then, he flopped onto the floor and reached to tear the lid off one of the take-out containers. He set it aside, for the wing remnants. They ate together, picking through the wings for their favorite shapes and the pockets where the sauce had pooled.
Her mind worked over the interaction. She replayed Jasper’s words while remembering the visceral devastation that overtook his face.
“Is that what it’s like?” She tossed down two bones from a flat wing. “To have a mate who doesn’t want you?”
Griffin felt her words like a punch. It hit harder than any blow Jasper could have dealt him. He stared at the door, where Jasper had gone, and did his best to organize his words.
“Jasper is…more dominant than most. His beast is stronger and a lot pushier. Everything he feels is dialed up to twenty.”
Beside him, Lilah kept working on the chicken wings. He was counting how many she’d gone through and eagerly pushing more in her direction. Her hands were still shaky, and he knew the gauntness of her cheeks wouldn’t go away immediately, but the desire to keep feeding her was still overwhelming.
“Ashton left his mate in Grove for years while he worked at Aurum headquarters. Neither of them realized what they were to each other at the time, but Ashton wasn’t drowning himself in liquor the whole time. I’m not….” He froze.
Lilah paused, casting a perplexed look in his direction. “I thought you said you’d never met your mate. Didn’t you once tell me you didn’t think there was one out there for you?”
“I was going to say I wouldn’t act that way if I were in his shoes. You didn’t let me finish.” Griffin was glad he could blame the beading sweat on his forehead on the hot wings. The lie had come quickly, but he wasn’t sure he’d delivered it with any kind of conviction.
Lilah seemed to take it at face value. She was more concerned with food at the moment. His arm laid across the couch cushions behind her. The urge to touch her hair made him tighten his hand into a fist, just to keep it still.
He couldn’t tell her that he’d known from the moment she’d been changed that she was the only woman meant for him. Of course, he’d been slow in believing it, but Jasper’s intrusion had convinced him. Griffin would have done anything to protect Lilah, even hurt his own king. It seemed like blasphemy, like betrayal, but he could no more ignore the instinct to protect Lilah than he could ignore the change.
“Just so you know,” he said, changing the subject. “I’m filling you with protein tonight so I can make you shift tomorrow.”
She scowled, dropping her chicken wing. Bumble leapt atop the table with a yowl and pranced toward the lid full of chicken bones. Griffin leaned forward and shooed the creature away. Bumble was affronted and reached out with a paw to push back at Griffin’s hand.
“I can’t…I don’t want to.”
When he looked back, Lilah seemed smaller than ever. She’d shrunk in on herself while he’d been dealing with her cat. Griffin turned his glare on Bumble, as if he could ask the defiant creature to help comfort Lilah somehow. The cat did have much more experience than Griffin did.
When the cat jumped off the table and ran away, Griffin turned toward his mate. He touched Lilah’s chin and gently directed her to look at him. There was so much hurt in her eyes, it broke him. Fear made tears wobble at the corners. He reached and wiped them away before they could fall.
“Can you trust me when I say everything is going to be alright?”
Her jaw tightened beneath his touch. He watched her throat work and thought she might be fighting back a sob. Griffin couldn’t help but feel useless in the face of his mate. He didn’t know the first thing about helping her. Disaster had struck and he was still trying to pick up the pieces. Putting them back together was another story altogether.
“I’m just so scared,” she whispered. “I don’t want to feel myself being torn apart. It’s…I can’t…”
He rubbed his thumb over her cheek again, trying to ease away the chill of fear that made her shake. When it didn’t work, his hand fell away, and he pulled her close. Lilah let her head fall against his chest. He could have sighed with happiness if it hadn’t been for the elephant in the room.
Her inability to shift.
Her refusal.
“I know our circumstances are different, but I can explain how the shift feels to me.” His head fell back, and he stared at the ceiling. The beast lurked beneath the surface, quietly feeding him the sensations he needed. “It feels like I’m being covered in butterflies. I know that sounds awful girly, but it’s the only way I can explain it. The shift starts and I get the butterflies on my skin feeling, then it’s warmth, like basking in the sun or opening a hot oven.”
Her only response was a subtle nod, head still pressed against his chest. He laid his hand on her hair. This was as close as he could get to his mate. Though they were in an agreement to appear like a couple, Lilah had pulled away from the world. She’d pulled away from what she’d become, and Griffin couldn’t help but fear that she hated him for it.
He wouldn’t blame her, but it hurt. He wanted to hold her and feel every inch of her curving body, but a wall stood between them. Even if he could steal these precious moments tonight, Griffin knew there would still be a wall when they woke. It would be filled with Lilah’s pa
in. Her confusion. Her resistance.
“Where was I? Oh, yeah. Butterflies and sunlight. That’s it. The feeling of hot sunlight fades and I’m in my dragon form. It’s not terrifying or painful. It can be uncomfortable if you fight it, but if you let it take its course, then everything will be alright.”
Lilah pulled back. She wiped at her face with the back of her hand and carefully kept from looking at him. His heart clenched, aching to see her face. There was no way to tell if his words had helped. She kept herself turned away from him so he couldn’t read her. She laid her hands flat on the table for a long moment, then reached for another chicken wing.
Griffin could only take the advice of other women and hope for the best. This night seemed like a good start, but Jasper had momentarily ruined it. They were back on track, though. Lilah was eating again.
She was at chicken wing number sixteen.
It would have been a lot for a human, but it was just an appetizer to a starving shifter. He set his last bones aside and leaned back. Lilah mimicked him. She couldn’t be full yet, but he knew if she kept eating, there was a chance she could make herself sick.
“Where did you get the cat?” He made an effort to change the subject.
She sniffled, but only once. Bumble appeared as though the mere mention of him could summon him. The cat crawled into Lilah’s lap and attempted to lick at her hands, even as she pulled them back.
“I found him as a kitten,” she began. “He was just this tiny ball of fur trapped in the middle of the road. Everyone was driving around him. He kept running from side to side, but the cars wouldn’t let him escape.”
Griffin couldn’t imagine the massive beast of a feline being trapped by anything. Nor could he imagine Bumble as a kitten.
“I pulled over and nearly got my door swiped by a car impatient to get around me. At first, I thought the car hit the kitten. I couldn’t see it, but then the car passed, and the kitten raced for me. I grabbed him and turned around to go home. What else could I do?” Lilah paused, running her hand down Bumble’s fur. “I fed him a can of tuna and lost my job. I called to tell them I couldn’t come in, and they fired me over the phone.”
Griffin Drake Page 9
