Book 3 Chapter 21

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

"How did Paulo handle the news you were quitting?"

I continue to stare down at the early morning traffic from the balcony of our hotel room.

After all the drama from last night's fight at the Merrick house, followed by my late-night call to Paulo after Jeremy and I got back to the hotel, I didn't expect to be in another one of Jeremy's shirts and on the balcony at four.

Jeremy fell asleep not long after we showered and made love, and once he had, something compelled me to stumble out of bed and go looking for my phone. I found it in my bag beside the front door, where he must have left it, and then I crawled back into bed.

Although Jeremy woke at the start of my conversation, he was asleep again by the end, and I realized, as I watched him sleep while talking with Paulo, that he hadn't been getting much sleep because of me.

"Surprisingly okay," I admit. "I sent him a picture of you naked. I think it helped him understand why I wouldn't-"

I shriek when Jeremy throws me over his shoulder and starts inside.

"Jeremy, put me down. I swear-"

He gives my ass a hard slap and I suck in a breath.

But when he follows it up with a firm rub, I only just manage to hide my moan. "I told you not to do that," I say, fighting to sound outraged.

Jeremy tosses me onto the bed and follows me down a second later. "Yeah, that's not going to work, sweet. I know exactly what that does to you," he says, gruffly.

He presses a kiss on my lips. "Exactly."

Does that mean he knows…?

"Yes. It does," he says. "And if you behave, I might do it again."

I stare at him for a moment, oddly excited by the prospect, then horrified at myself for liking it. "Uh, get off me. I'm disgusted with myself."

Jeremy doesn't move. "You want me to share some of my fantasies? Might make you feel less disgusted with yourself."

I snort. "And disgusted with you instead? No thanks."

We lay there in silence for a moment, Jeremy running a hand distractedly through my hair. "You didn't really send him a picture of me naked, did you?"

I pat him on his shoulder and close my eyes. "Of course, I did. He had to know what was keeping me from taking the job. It was full frontal. Had to be. Paulo wouldn't have understood otherwise."

At Jeremy's continued silence, I open my eyes a peek and find him gazing down at me blankly. "What?"

"You really did, didn't you?"

"Yep." I close my eyes and go back to stroking his bare shoulder as Jeremy lays braced over me.

We lay in silence for a long time, and as the minutes tick by, I feel him studying me. And the longer it goes on without him saying a word, the more it disturbs my calm.

Yesterday, after Jackson caught me and Jeremy sneaking into the forest after our fight, he snapped at us to deal with the dead bodies first.

So, we spent the next several hours burying bodies. Amongst them was Maria.

I'd assumed it was Jackson who'd killed her, but when I asked him, he told me he thought it must've been Loren since he found her inside the house beside a packed bag. He guessed Maria had been about to run, and Loren had killed her to stop her, maybe believing that Maria had betrayed her.

While I had no love for Maria, I can't help but pity her for her life ending like that. The sad thing is if she'd gotten away from Loren and Glynn Merrick years ago, she would've survived, but fear kept her trapped with the Merrick's, and it ended up costing her life.

It's kind of ironic that Jackson admitted killing Loren when he caught her slinking away, so I guess that was instant karma.

Given how she'd been shooting tranquilizer darts at Jeremy and Jackson and was pretty much responsible for this whole revenge plot, there was no way Jackson was about to let her live another day only so she could disappear and come back to repeat it all a few months down the line.

No. She had to die.

Jeremy's fingers smooth hair from my face. "Savannah."

He says nothing but my name, but it's enough to make me tense, to have panic rising because I know what's coming.

"Savannah." This time, he presses a soft kiss to my lips, and I open my eyes.

He's trying to peer into my heart, into the darkness, and the shadowed places I never want anyone to see. Even I don't want to see them.

I shove him. Hard.

I send him flying out of bed and to the floor with a loud thud. The only reason it works is because he isn't expecting it.

I don't wait to see where he ends up. I'm too busy ripping my shirt off and then I leap from the bed, and by the time my feet touch the floor, I'm a wolf.

"Savannah!" My name is a snarl on Jeremy's lips, and I turn to find him crouched, closer than I would like, and his eyes have gone wolf.

Yeah, probably not the best thing I could have done.

But he's going to want to talk, and as a wolf, I can't. He'll have to catch me, pin me, and convince me to shift, and that's not going to happen.

I turn to stalk away.

"This isn't about me forcing you to talk, sweet."

His voice makes me pause, but I don't turn around.

"This is about you choosing to let me in. By choice. Because it's important you choose."

I turn and snarl at him.

Choice? What choice?

Anger surges at his words. The universe didn't give me a choice about which mate I'd have. He didn't give me a choice before he bit me. All of this just happened to me. And as much as I know I'm lucky to have found my soul mate when few ever do, a small part of me feels trapped by it.

To my surprise, Jeremy lies on the ground and stares up at the ceiling.

I stare at him, confused since I was expecting a full-blown wrestling match.

"I didn't think you'd have stayed, even if I'd told you. I knew you didn't want a mate. I could feel it. That's why I didn't tell you."

The quiet seriousness of his words holds me still before something compels me to pad closer.

Sensing this might be a trick, I halt far enough away from Jeremy that he can't grab me, and lay on the floor, my chin resting on my front paws.

"Come closer, sweet. I'd like to pet you."

I narrow my eyes in suspicion. Yet when he turns his head to me, there's no smirk, no smile in his eyes. He's perfectly serious, and that's what convinces me this is no trap, no trick.

I rise and move closer, close enough for him to bury his hands in my fur.

"Even as a wolf, you're beautiful. Soft golden fur. Pretty tail."

At his attempt to grab my tail, I growl, but it's playful rather than aggressive.

Pervert.

"Hey, it's not my fault my wolf likes your tail," Jeremy says, a smile touching his lips.

He closes his eyes and goes back to stroking my fur as I sink beside him and try not to purr. We wolves don't purr but my God, do I want to at the firm but insistent pressure of his hand stroking me in all the right places.

"You're a famous model. Jackson and I are lone wolves who never fit in anywhere, and had to work for every last bit of what we have. I didn't even have a pack to offer you, so I thought if I gave you the best sex of your life, you'd want to stay."

I snort.

Typical guy.

"Yeah," Jeremy admits with a sigh. "I know."

We fall back into silence.

"It's happened before, you know. A fated mate rejection."

I go still at his words.

What?

I feel the desperate need to shift so I can ask Jeremy, because what he's saying sounds impossible.

"I won't tell you why, but maybe one day he will."

Which means I know who it is, and since the only one connected to me and Jeremy is…

Jackson?

Jeremy lets out a tired sigh. "Don't push, sweet. Not my story to tell."

No, something like that wouldn't be. I feel like I know too much already. I can feel Jeremy's pain for his brother, and what would've devastated Jackson.

I couldn't imagine the other half of my soul rejecting me. And then it hits me: I nearly did the same to Jeremy.

God, no wonder he was so pissed.

I move closer, and when I do, Jeremy turns his head. He gazes at me without expression for several seconds.

And then I lower my head and lick his face.

When I pull my head back, he's staring at me like he can't believe I did it.

"Savannah, what was that?" Jeremy's voice is calm. Controlled. Yet his body trembles with the force of him trying to hold back his laughter.

I back up until his hand falls away from me, and then I shift to human.

I drop to the carpeted floor beside him, resting my head against his shoulder. "Wolf kiss," I tell him, curving my arm around his waist.

"You licked my eye. Half my face is wet." He lifts his arm, presumably to wipe his face before lowering his hand to stroke my hair. "Next time shift before you kiss me. Less messy."

"It depends where I kiss you."

Jeremy stops stroking my hair. "We're not talking about that right now."

"Are you sure, because-"

Jeremy takes my hand from around his hip and places it over his cock. It's rock hard and I feel it throbbing.

"You feel that, sweet?" His voice is gruff.

I swallow, closing my hand around it. "Yeah."

He pulls my hand away and puts it back on his side. "So."

I wait for him to say more, but when he doesn't, I lift my head so I can peer into his face. "So…?"

"So." Jeremy presses my head back to his chest and resumes carding his fingers through my hair.

"You realize that makes no sense at all, right?"

"Of course, it does."

He sounds so sure of himself that I can't stop myself from smiling, and then I think of us leading a pack.

"It's a good thing Jackson's running the Dawley pack. We'd be terrible at it," I say.

"I wouldn't want to share you with anyone," Jeremy admits.

"We don't know how to talk to each other, let alone other people."

"We'd be off somewhere having sex with each other instead of actually leading."

"And I-" I stop because we're veering into dangerous territory, territory I had no intention of going.

Jeremy waits for me to speak. He doesn't push. He doesn't say my name, just waits.

"I would let my pack die instead of protecting them."

I wait for the condemnation. The blame. The horror at what just came out of my mouth, but Jeremy continues stroking his hand through my hair as if I didn't just admit to being responsible for my pack members' deaths.

"Now we've got the guilt out of the way, you want to tell me what happened?"

Although my first response is to shove Jeremy, to lash out at him, I don't because I know he doesn't say it to hurt me, but to provoke me. "You know, you could've said it a nicer way," I tell him, as I try to put off talking about the thing I've been avoiding for days, weeks, months. Years.

I feel Jeremy nod. "I could. But nice doesn't work with you."

I grip onto him. "I don't want to talk about it. Any of it. Not ever."

"And you don't have to. Not all of it. Not all at once. We can do a bit at a time, and then I'll let you have sex with me, and then we can do something else."

"Jeremy Stone, are you attempting to get me to talk with the promise of hot sex as payment for my secrets?"

"Of course, I am."

I lift my head from Jeremy's chest and eye him in silence.

He looks so relaxed, laying stretched out naked on the floor, his hair still tousled from sleep. Also, probably from my raking my hands through it when we had sex last night.

He's not the mate I would've chosen.

No, I'd have gone for someone who I could convince to do what I want. Someone who'd love me but wouldn't push me too hard to probe the places in my heart that hurt too much for me to want to look at.

He isn't the mate I would've chosen, but he's the one I needed, and I think the universe knew that.

I'm glad he's mine.

I don't know what Jeremy reads on my face that has his eyes warming, but he buries a hand in my hair and draws me down for a kiss. "I love you too, sweet."

I fake glare at him. "Actually, I was thinking you were an ass."

He smiles at me. "No, you weren't."

Since Jeremy sounds so confident, I know there's no point trying to deny it, so I sigh and lay my head back down on his chest. "No, I wasn't."

We lay there in silence, as Jeremy strokes a hand through my hair.

"I suppose you heard about Dayne being the cold-blooded alpha," I start, with my eyes fixed on a potted plant in the corner of the room.

"I heard. But now I've met him, I have strong reservations they were nothing but rumors."

"Some things were true. Not all of them." And then I stop because I don't want to talk about this. "I need to get up."

Jeremy's arm tightens around my waist. "No, you don't."

He's right. I don't want to be anywhere other than in Jeremy's arms.

"I only have vague memories of my parents-my biological parents-since they died when I was so young. It wasn't anything anyone could've done, just slick rain, the wrong tires, and a dangerous road."

Starting here is good, I think. Painful. But a different kind of pain, more manageable.

Jeremy doesn't comment on my time jump, only squeezes me to show he's listening.

"The Blackshaws-Dayne really-took me into their hearts. And that's all I knew. From then on, I was Savannah Blackshaw with an older brother, Dayne, and two sisters, Bridget and Angel. Dayne damned near tortured me by making me watch cartoons with him. I learned to cry on demand so someone would come and save me since arguing with him never seemed to work."

"Master manipulator at work," Jeremy murmurs, "at how old?"

"Six," I admit, smiling. "Angel taught me."

But then my smile falls away at the thought of Angel. "I can't talk about her and Bridget yet. I can't talk about the kids. Not yet. Not all at once."

It hurts too much.

"We can talk about that another time. After you tell me why you were burying poop in a sandbox."

I suck in a sharp breath and raise my head to glare at him. "You were eavesdropping!"

He grins up at me unrepentantly. "I couldn't help it. It wasn't like your friend was trying to keep her voice down."

I lower my head back to his chest. "Regan. I will kill her."

"Tell me why you think it's your fault they died," Jeremy says, his voice soft, undemanding.

After a pause, I nod. "I knew something was wrong with him-with our old alpha, Owen. I saw it in his eyes." My voice ends in a whisper.

"What did you see?"

He must know, since I nearly told him when we were in the rental next to the Dawley National Forest and I was talking about Abel. Back when some wolf, probably Loren, tried to scare me away from Dawley, and nearly succeeded. At least that's what Jeremy and Jackson think.

"Predator."

Jeremy doesn't respond, but I can feel him listening. I know he wants me to keep talking, to talk through my thoughts.

I sigh. "He wasn't like that before. At least I don't remember seeing it in his eyes when I was younger. He fell in love with Angel, and when he realized he was losing her, I think it broke something inside him."

Jeremy doesn't ask for details. He's always been the observant kind, far too observant for my liking.

I think he can guess a lot of what I'm not saying, or rather, what I'm choosing to leave out.

"By then, Bridget had moved back home. Dayne was out trying to track down Talis, and an agent had scouted me, so I was getting more and more bookings. Back then, none of us were staying in the pack house a lot. Owen wanted it that way. Mostly I stayed with Dayne's parents in their house in town."

"And no one else saw this side of Owen?"

"I think some of the pack suspected what might be happening. Maybe they talked to him, I don't know. But he's-he was-alpha, so other than killing him, I don't know what they could've done. I mean, how do you tell an alpha their job is to protect the pack, not hurt it when you know he could kill you for it?"

Jeremy is silent for a long moment. "But you did. You said something."

I go back to staring at the potted plant. "I said something."

"And then?"

"And then he killed them all."

"But not you?"

I close my eyes and say my next words in a whisper, "He thought I might make a better Luna than Angel had."

"I see," Jeremy says after a long silence.

And something in his tone of voice tells me that he does.

"I should've told Dayne, or Luka, or someone else."

"Savannah." Jeremy rolls us until I'm lying on the floor, and he's braced over me, peering into my eyes. "You always have a good reason for deciding one action over another. Tell me why you didn't tell Dayne or Luka."

My smile is bitter. "So, you can blame me for it?"

His expression doesn't change. "I'm not going to waste either of our time responding to that. Tell me."

I swallow and fix my gaze over Jeremy's shoulder, as I think about all those years ago. "I knew Dayne would fight Owen. Owen was an alpha in his prime and he was… obsessed with Angel. Dayne was distracted about finding Talis. Owen would've killed him."

"Tell me why you didn't tell Luka or any of the other pack members."

Tears fill my eyes and I blink them away. "Owen would've killed or kicked out any other pack member who tried to intervene. He wouldn't have hesitated to punish them."

"And?"

I blink more tears away, but even though I feel Jeremy's gaze on my face, I can't bear to meet his eyes. "I didn't think anyone would believe me." I close my eyes. "I didn't want to be kicked out. Not when I didn't really belong."

"Baby…"

I meet Jeremy's eyes. "My parents-my biological parents-they weren't pack. Not really. They'd moved to Hardin because they wanted a fresh start. When they died, I would've had nowhere to go if Dayne's parents hadn't taken me in. If Owen hadn't agreed."

"And who told you this? Who threatened to kick you out?"

I shift my gaze to Jeremy's ear. "Owen," I whisper.

Jeremy nods. "So, you didn't tell anyone you thought the alpha was unhinged for good reasons, and you thought you could deal with it yourself. But I know you're not reckless enough to think you can take on an alpha in his prime yourself, so I'm guessing you told someone."

How can he know me so well?

"I told Dayne's parents. I told Bridget. I tried to tell Angel, but she said she knew Owen, knew that he'd growl a bit, but with all of us there, he wouldn't do anything more than that."

"But that isn't what happened."

Although I'm staring at him, it isn't Jeremy's face I see, but the day when our alpha lost himself to a wild rage. "No. That isn't what happened."

"Sweet?"

Jeremy's fingers brush back the hair from my face.

"He tore into them like they were enemies. Like they weren't family. His eyes…" I stop because I need to breathe. "I ran. I hid, and then he was there, his hand on my shoulder."

I shake at the memory of his hand closing around my shoulder and when I turned, he was there, his face covered with blood, and I knew all of them must be dead for him to have come after me.

I remember the predatory gleam in his eyes, and I tremble harder.

"I hit him, and I ran again. I shifted so I could find somewhere to hide. There was blood everywhere."

"Sweet." There's a note in Jeremy's voice as if he's telling me to stop, only now that I've started, I can't.

"He found me. Told me to shift. I knew what would happen if I didn't. So, I shifted. And then he told me I would be a better Luna than Angel. Less of a disappointment."

"Baby, stop now."

I'm sobbing with no memory of having started crying, or when my cheeks got so wet. "I threw myself down the stairs trying to get away. He came down after, one slow step at a time, and I couldn't move. I couldn't do anything. But then Luka was at the door because he thought something might be wrong. He came with some of the others, and Owen took off into the forest. Luka saw all the blood, and he guessed what must've happened. He called Dayne to come back. And Dayne went into the forest and killed Owen."

"And you went to live in a cabin in the woods."

"But it didn't matter where I lived, or where I went, the nightmares followed me everywhere. I'll never escape them. They'll haunt me forever."

"No, sweet. Not forever," Jeremy says, pressing my face to his neck and holding me close as I dissolve into tears. "I won't let them. We'll fight them together."