Annie barked out a short laugh, shaking her head. “You’re impossible.”
“That’s what I’ve been told.”
Annie glanced at Lukas, the moonlight illuminating the side of his face. Annie wanted to sigh and pull him into a kiss, which led to her immediately looking away from him and crossing her arms over her chest. She did not need to think like that. He was bad news, and she knew that. She didn’t know what he’d done to become a rogue, and she didn’t need to have these conflicting sexual desires for him, either. Maybe Thea was right, maybe she was attracted to bad boys . . .
“Are you really walking me all the way to the hotel?” Lukas interrupted her train of thought. She didn’t look at him as they walked on, not trusting herself to keep calm and not act like a sex-depraved lunatic that was only interested in men that were horrible for her. “You know, there’s always that possibility that I’ll just walk right back out when you leave.”
Annie sighed. He was right. She couldn’t stop him from doing anything he wanted to do. She just knew that she had to get away from him before she did something she really regretted.
“Just . . . just do me a favor and stay in your hotel for the night. The pack is still on edge, and, believe it or not, I really don’t want to have to bury your mutilated body because you were dumb enough to go party in enemy territory.” Annie could at least try to reason with him.
Lukas sighed. He knew she was right. “Alright, I’ll go back to my hotel on one condition.”
Annie didn’t like this at all. “What’s the condition?”
“You get breakfast with me tomorrow morning,” Lukas smiled, looking like the sexiest devil Annie had ever seen.
“What?” Annie asked, almost not believing what she heard. A rogue did not just ask her to breakfast . . . did he? And why were her palms all sweaty now?
“Breakfast. Your place, my place. I don’t care. But I’m going to need to be well fed before I go back to talk with your father, deep in that enemy territory. I’m a starving rogue, you know.”
Annie sighed. Even though she knew it was a bad idea, it didn’t seem like the worst idea to her. But she couldn’t really trust herself lately, with her hormones all out of whack every time she was around Lukas.
“Okay, we’ll have breakfast at my place with my roommate. I’ll pick you up tomorrow morning, deal?”
Lukas smiled. “Deal. Have a great night, Anastasia.” He turned around and walked off, the misty night making him disappear in a few seconds.
Annie stood there, gazing after him, wanting to punch herself. Why did she just agree to that? Oh, right, because she wanted to jump his bones every time she saw him. She turned back to walk to the bar, desperate to get herself under control.
She walked through the bar doors, seeing Milo and smiling as she caught his eye. Yes, Milo would do . . . for now.
“Hey, who was that guy you were with?” Milo asked her as she sat down across from him at the bar. Annie sighed as he slid a shot of tequila to her, her go-to drink.
“No one, just a friend of Kato’s,” she lied, smiling at him and leaning over the bar to give him a quick kiss after she took her shot of tequila. “I’ll wait here for you until you’re off.”
Milo smiled, his black eyes shining a little as she played with his hair. Yes, Milo will do for now. Annie just hoped she would be more in control before she had breakfast with Lukas.
And if she were being honest with herself, she felt more excitement than dread, when she thought about Lukas coming over to her house tomorrow morning. She sighed to herself as Milo walked away to help another customer.
What the hell was wrong with her? A rogue was bad news. But Lukas was . . . well, he was different. He was beyond gorgeous, and his smart-ass remarks went along nicely with her own.
She took another shot of tequila, hoping to erase his smirk from her brain. She couldn’t wait for Milo to get off work. She needed to get this rogue out of her system now. Or else it was going to lead to something that would get her in a lot of trouble.
Chapter 9
Annie picked Lukas up from the hotel room and drove them both to her house the next morning. Lukas could tell that Annie was a bit hungover and tired. She didn’t get any sleep. Lukas felt a weird feeling in his chest as he came to the conclusion that she had more than likely gone back to the bar to see Milo. He was angry, possessive, and hungry for Annie’s attention, and he’d only known her for a few hours. He hated when his shifter side got like this and made his human-self seem like a total tool.
Annie introduced him to her roommate, Thea, when they walked into the kitchen. Annie then immediately went to the coffee pot and made a fresh brew.
“Hi, there,” Thea said to Lukas, jumping off the island bar stool she was sitting on. “I’m Thea. It’s so nice to meet you.”
“You as well,” Lukas said, smiling. Thea was the absolute opposite of Annie. Whereas Annie was a tall, athletic brunette, Thea was a petite and lithe, pale blonde fairy. Lukas didn’t know how they lived together, with Thea being human. How did Annie hide it from her? Thea couldn’t know . . . could she?
No, Lukas thought. Annie wouldn’t be that stupid as to put Thea in that type of trouble.
“So, how’d you two meet again?” Thea asked innocently, batting her eyelashes at Lukas. Lukas looked to Annie, not knowing what to say. He couldn’t very well say that he was a rogue shifter.
“I told you, Thea,” Annie said, almost glaring at her roommate. “His father knew my father, we knew each other as kids.”
“Yeah, right,” Lukas added, knowing he sounded like a dumb ass.
“Oh, that’s right,” Thea said, almost laughing. Lukas looked back and forth between the two girls, wondering what the hell he was missing.
“Thea’s going to make us breakfast since she’s the best cook in this house,” Annie said, gently shoving Thea to get going as she made her way to sit by Lukas at the kitchen island. “So, did you go out last night after I begged you to stay inside?”
“Nope, I went home and actually got some much needed sleep,” Lukas told her. He eyed her up and down. “Looks like you didn’t, though. How’s the hangover going?”
“Not well, and also none of your business,” she snapped, though there was a smirk on her face. Lukas found himself beginning to adore that smirk of hers.
Before Lukas could respond, Hann walked through the door. Shit. Lukas liked Hann, and he felt like Hann liked him. But things could change if he saw a rogue sitting at his daughter’s kitchen table. Lukas immediately stood up out of respect to him, straightening his spine.
“Hi, girls,” Hann responded, walking by and giving Lukas a friendly slap on the shoulder. Annie stood up and gave him a hug, meeting Lukas’s eye and shrugging slightly over her father’s shoulder.
“Hey, Dad,” Annie said, sitting back down as her father walked over to pour himself a cup of coffee. He smiled and stole a piece of bacon.
Thea acted like she was going to throw an egg at him. “Just stopping by for breakfast?”
“Well, I went by to see Lukas today only to find he wasn’t at his hotel,” Hann told them, eating the bacon. “So, I came by to tell you, but I don’t need to, I guess.”
Lukas sat back down by Annie and smiled politely, his nerves making his heart beat fast.
“I invited him to breakfast with me and Thea, considering he didn’t really have any options at the hotel or in town,” Annie explained, to which her father smiled.
“I’m glad you’re coming around, darling,” he replied, trying to steal more food from Thea. “I gotta tell you, Lukas, I’m glad you’re here. I thought you’d ran.”
Lukas found he couldn’t look in Hann’s eyes directly. The trust and friendliness he found there was too much for a rogue like him. “I decided to stay, at least until I inform you about . . .”Lukas trailed off, having suddenly remembered Thea standing there in the room, a human with shifters that could kill her in seconds surrounding her. Hann looked at him questio
ningly, then looked at Thea and realized what he stopped talking for.
“Oh, no need to censor yourself, son,” Hann told him, smiling and patting Thea’s head. “Thea, here, has known for years about us.”
“What?” Annie and Thea both exclaimed, looking at Hann in bewilderment.
“Please, did you really think that I wouldn’t know about the little secret you two had? Don’t insult me,” Hann smiled. “Thea’s proven to be a capable human being that can keep her mouth shut and not get in any trouble, so I’m fine with it. As long as no one else but us in this room know, no one else, especially the Elders, needs to know. Do I make myself clear?”
“Yes, Father,” Annie replied, her face red. “I didn’t mean to do it on purpose! We were in high school, and I was . . . incapacitated for a moment.”
“I would never say anything, Mr. Bellova,” Thea added. “I mean, I value my life way too much.”
Hann chuckled and waved them both off. “Now that we have that settled, what were you saying, Lukas?”
“Um, I have decided to stay and inform you about Kaiser and the rogues, giving you all the information and strategies that you think you need. I’ll stay until you tell me to go, Hann. I just hope to help you in whatever way possible.” Lukas felt like he was in a dream.
Here he was, sitting next to a halfie that made him lose control of every sexual desire he held, talking to an alpha who was also said halfie’s father and actually wanted him to stay around and with his pack, all while a human was listening avidly to the conversation with no one caring. What type of pack had he found himself in? And why was the pack he was raised in so different?
Maybe if his pack had been like this, he wouldn’t have made the decision to leave and become a rogue. But he couldn’t think about that right now. It would fuel his desire to run to kick in. He knew that if he shifted and tried to run around this area in Maine, the shifters of Hann’s pack would feel free to shift and then kill him in their wolf forms. And even though he’d come to terms with his death by a shifter’s hands, he felt the weird desire to live bursting through his chest now.
His life was totally different now. And he didn’t know what to do with that understanding.
Chapter 10
“Okay, you said Lukas was a total babe, but you really didn’t explain just how gorgeous he is,” Thea said immediately after Lukas and Annie’s father left. Annie was sitting at the kitchen island still, her head resting on the cool surface. She regretted the amount of tequila she’d drunk last night, but Lukas had left her feeling so sexually frustrated that she had to calm herself somewhat before Milo got off work.
“Trust me, I know,” Annie muttered, her head pounding. Yeah, she really regretted that tequila.
Lukas and her father had left to go back to the bar and talk about Kaiser in the office, where no one could overhear them. Annie desperately wanted to go and learn more about Kaiser and what the hell he wanted, but both her father and Lukas said that they’d fill her in later.
She also desperately wanted to figure out who Kaiser’s father was, and why her own father killed him. Annie knew her father had taken lives before, but she also knew that he only did that when he was attacked himself. Maybe Kaiser’s father tried to take the alpha throne from her father? She wanted to know, and she wanted to know now. But she hadn’t had a chance to talk to her father since everything happened.
Last night, she tried to call him and learn more, but he said that he was filling in Ross and his team about everything. They would talk tomorrow, and he would fill her in. Except, here tomorrow was, and Hann was with Lukas, while Annie was hungover and dying inside.
“I smell breakfast,” Kato’s voice rang from the front door. Annie mumbled, her head pounding even more. Kato walked into the kitchen, his feet pounding like drums in Annie’s head. “Wow, you’re hungover.”
“Shut it,” was the only response Annie could grumble.
“You’re never going to guess what your dad told me last night,” Kato told her, sitting down beside her with a bowl of food that Thea handed him when he walked in.
“Whatever it is, could you tell me quietly, please?” Annie begged. Kato chuckled softly and dug into his food.
“As much as I’d love to hear this conversation, I have to go get ready for work,” Thea said, giving Kato a hug and running upstairs to shower. Kato waited to start talking until he was sure Thea was out of the room.
“When I was leaving the bar, he patted me on the shoulder and told me that I should take you out on a date to get your attention off the whole thing. Said I need to act fast if I want you to be my mate.”
“What?” Annie snapped, her head shooting up. She regretted it immediately, clutching her face in agony. “He did not talk about you mating with me again.”
“Oh, yes he did,” Kato smirked at her, reveling in both her pain and humiliation.
Kato and Annie had grown up together, and Annie truly didn’t know what life would be like if she didn’t see Kato every day. She adored him, considered him one of her best friends, and would honestly die for him. However, mate with him? That’s something she didn’t think she could do.
It wasn’t as if Kato wasn’t attractive or sweet or nice, because he was all of those things and more. But they knew each other way too well to ever think about mating. Also, the romance, or even the lust, wasn’t there.
For a short time when they were both in their late teens, Kato was hung up over Annie big time. Annie attributed it to the fact that it was around the time her father first got the idea that Kato and Annie would be good together. Kato was one of Hann’s favorites, and there were rumors that Kato would vie to be the next alpha after Hann stepped down from his role. It would be fitting for Annie and Kato to mate with each other.
However, Kato got over it just as Annie found out that he was having feelings for her. They had a long talk, both of them being completely honest with each other, and came to the conclusion that they really didn’t belong together. They didn’t really talk about it after, and Annie made sure to yell at her dad and tell him that he didn’t need to talk to Kato about mating with her anymore.
Annie was also beyond nervous about the whole process of mating. While she gained the ability to shift to her wolf form, something that many halfies struggled to do, she was still waiting for her human side to show up. She was worried that she wouldn’t be able to carry her shifter babies to full term. She didn’t even want to think about what could happen if she didn’t have that ability.
Annie was always confused about her halfie status. She had the strength, the agility, the insight, everything a shifter had. However, her human-self came through when she thought about the pack. She didn’t have that strong urge that other shifters did to stick with the pack and the family. She didn’t know if it was that human gene in her, or if it was because her own pack were assholes to her from the day she was born, but she didn’t feel the need to be around the pack, or even go on runs with them in her wolf form, ever.
She sometimes found the idea of just leaving Maine and the pack to be freeing. She craved that freedom. But she could never voice those forbidden thoughts aloud because that would basically be saying that she understood rogues. And rogues were evil monsters that were the scum of the shifter society. Saying what she felt could lead to becoming even more of an outcast than she already was.
“And what did you tell him?” Annie asked Kato, sticking to the situation at hand even though her hungover and sluggish brain was working in a paranoid overdrive.
“I told him that I would definitely try to lure you into my arms, of course,” Kato told her, shrugging with a playful smile on his face.
“I hate you,” she grumbled back at him, getting up to make herself another cup of coffee. “You know when you say stuff like that to him, he eats it up and thinks you’re being honest. My father wants me married and mated off sooner rather than later, and the only shifter he has in mind is you. So, shut it, unless you want to be chained to m
e for the rest of your dreadful existence.”
“Well, if I was chained to you for the rest of your life, I would be able to stop you from doing something stupid. Like, I don’t know, defending a rogue and trying to get in a fight with Grant.”
Annie whirled around, again regretting her sudden and fast motions. Her head was incredibly mad at her now. She brought her cup of coffee over to where Kato sat, eating his breakfast with a blank look on his face.
“Why don’t you just tell me what Grant said instead of leaving me guessing,” Annie sighed. She was going to have to defend herself regardless of whatever story Grant told Kato.
“Our lovely Grant said that he tried to scare Lukas. You know, make sure he doesn’t get any wise ideas, but you stepped in and defended him. Lukas, evidently, didn’t even have to speak or defend himself. Grant said you were looking for a fight.”
Annie shrugged, surprised Grant had actually told the truth and not elaborated like he normally did. “My father said that Lukas was under his protection. I was saving Grant and his buddies by stepping in, Kato.”
“I’m not defending Grant,” Kato said, putting his hands up in a surrender mode. “We all know that Grant and his posse are a bunch of dumb-asses that just give our pack a bad name. I’m just worried about you spending all that time with a rogue.”
“I can take care of myself, you know.”
“Oh, I know,” Kato smiled. “I’m more worried about him.”
“If Lukas was going to hurt or pull something on me, he would’ve done it already. He’s had more than enough opportunities.”
“I’m not talking about that,” was all Kato said, leaving Annie confused.
“Then what are you talking about?”
Kato looked at Annie, a confused expression on his face. “I’m talking about the way Lukas looks at you.”
“What?” Annie felt her blood heat up along with her heartbeat. She really hoped her face wasn’t as red as it felt. She did not need Kato thinking that she had a thing for Lukas.
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