by May Dawson
He rubbed his hand over his face, then peeked at me between long fingers as if I scared him. “You are a lot first thing in the morning, aren’t you? Pre-coffee?”
“Just eager to get started.”
“You snore, by the way.”
“Oh man, I’m crushed. You mean I’m not the perfect woman? And here that was all I’ve been aiming for in life.”
“I figured we could go visit the Kierney pack today,” he said, ignoring me. “After all, they had someone in Eliza’s patrol, and her sword seems to have ended up there.”
“Two birds with one stone,” I said.
“I have a feeling the stones are going to be thrown at us, and there’s going to be a lot more than one.”
“We need a better plan than magic,” I told him. “We’re not just walking onto pack territory asking questions that will either make no sense to them—or will make them want to kill us.”
He touched the swollen bridge of his nose as if he was testing the pain, then winced. “A plan? How about your right hook? Lord knows I’m scared of you.”
“That’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me, Jen.”
He rolled his eyes. “Take a shower, Northsea. We’ve got to spend the day in the car together to get to the Kierney pack.”
“Of course I’m going to take a shower. You take a shower. Wash off that twenty-four-hour old Axe body spray. It wasn’t great when it was fresh.” I lied.
Jensen always smelled good to me, even when he was sweating. There was a warm muskiness to his scent that made me feel a conflicted stir of emotions every time he slung his arm around me.
“It’s not Axe body spray.” Jensen frowned as if I’d found the one chink in his armor. “Believe me, normal girls like it.”
But he rolled out of bed, yawning, and pulled his t-shirt off as if he was on his way to the shower. Jensen stood there for a beat longer than he needed to in all his damned chiseled glory. He was well over six feet tall, broad-shouldered and powerful.
“Is that really necessary?” I demanded. “As long as we’re discussing being normal, you can undress in the bathroom.”
“Why?” he asked, glancing down at his chest and the hard ridges of his abs. He hooked a thumb in the waistband of his jeans, yanking them down an inch, revealing his taut lower abs. “You hate me, right?”
“The fact you know I hate you, yet you’re still putting on this little show is really weird and needy.” And yet, it’s still turning me on.
“But if you hated me,” he mused out loud, shoving one hand in his pocket as if he was thinking absently, which pulled the jeans another half-inch down his narrow hips, “you probably wouldn’t have come along.”
“I’ve got a responsibility as your team-mate to help you out when you’re being a moron,” I told him. “Like right now, when I tell you to stop embarrassing yourself.”
“I’m not embarrassed, though, that’s the thing.” He winked at me. “You’re the one who feels embarrassed looking at me. Why’s that?”
“You know, I briefly regretted hitting you this morning, but now I’m happy I did.”
He laughed as he headed toward the bathroom, one of those rare, genuine Jensen laughs that didn’t have a cynical edge to it. He must’ve unzipped his jeans, because his jeans and boxers slipped down his hips and he stepped out of them as he reached the doorway. I glanced at the muscular shape of his naked ass and his long, lean legs before I made myself look away, before he could catch me.
But I was pretty sure Jensen knew I looked.
While he was in the shower, I pulled my fleece sweatshirt on. I almost went out without telling him, but that was dangerous and we did need to work as a team, no matter how much we didn’t get along.
I headed for the door to the bathroom instead, and steam billowed out. “Hey. I’m going to grab some coffee—I’ll be right back.”
“Black, two sugars,” he called above the patter of the shower spray hitting the tile.
“Presumptuous.”
“You wouldn’t want to be rude.”
I shook my head as I headed for the door. I called back, “You always have to get the last word in, don’t you?”
“That’s cheating, Maddie,” he called back, just before I closed the door between us.
Such a pain-in-the-ass.
I was in the motel lobby fixing two Styrofoam cups of coffee when my cell phone pinged in my pocket. Worried it was my sister, I set the cups down and slipped it out.
Babies are a go. Water broke! Headed to the hospital now.
A second later, there was another ping, accompanying a picture of my sister in the backseat of the car. She was giving a thumbs-up that rested on the swell of her enormous belly. She grinned at the camera and crinkled her nose at the same time, and the trees were a blur in the background; whoever was driving was in a hurry. Probably Arthur. He tended to go full Alpha where Piper was concerned; aka turning into an asshole, but Piper and the rest of her mates seemed to find it endearing.
I smiled, because my sister was texting me when she was in labor.
Good luck, sis. <3 you
A second later, another ping:
<3 you too M. Josh said to remind you, we all do
A lump came to my throat. I wanted to stand on my own two feet, but it was nice to know I always had a place to go home too. They were good to me.
Also, Kai asked if you’ll be judge for who the babies look like. The guys have a serious betting pool.
I laughed out loud, about to slip the phone back into my pocket.
Then I realized I had another text that I’d missed earlier. It must have come in while I was snuggled up to Jensen, because it was hours old.
It was the number I’d saved last night. Reefer’s.
I thought of something that might help. Or maybe not. Stop back by my place.
I texted back, be right there.
I headed across the motel lobby, passing a set of harried parents checking out with what seemed like a half-dozen kids underfoot.
I picked up our cups and set out across the nearly abandoned parking lot back to our hotel room. What did Reefer want?
There was something off. My skin prickled with the sense that someone was watching me.
Instead of leading them toward Jensen, I turned to my left, heading away from our room. Jensen didn’t have his phone. There was no easy way to tell him to watch his back.
I had to figure out how to watch both our backs right now.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chase
I barely slept that night on the couch. I was too big a guy to sleep on a couch; my feet hung over the arm. So much for resting up while I was away from the academy.
It felt as if I’d drifted off right before I woke up to clattering in the kitchen. I was still half-drifting when Skyla perched on my legs.
“Skyla, get off.” I half sat up, pulling away from my younger sister.
“Stop moving.” She mumbled around the spoon in her mouth, then took it out to say, “you’re going to make me spill my cereal, and that’ll make Aunt Jen mad.”
It seemed like everything made Jen mad. But she hadn’t asked for the stress of taking in two kids at the same time as she dealt with her sister’s death, either.
Of course, that wasn’t as bad as the stress of being an orphaned kid who was newly grieving a parent, either.
“Well, don’t treat me like a couch!” I said, exasperated, but I stilled.
She wriggled to get more comfortable on my legs. At least she barely weighed anything.
“Well, don’t sleep all morning when I still have to get up and go to school. I don’t get a holiday today.”
“I’m sure the fifth grade is really brutal.” I took her cereal bowl out of her hands so I could get up. My legs hurt like a bitch as I shook one cramped leg, then the other. Everything hurt from a month at the academy, between sore muscles and bruises. And I’d thought football was rough.
“You have no idea,” she told m
e.
“I also went through fifth grade,” I told her. “I survived subject-verb agreement worksheets and beginning algebra.”
She flashed me a look far older than her years. “It’s not the worksheets that are a problem, Chase. It’s the people.”
It’s always the people that are the problem.
I ruffled her hair. “You want me to walk you to school this morning?”
“You’re not exactly cool,” she told me.
I clutched my chest, over my heart. “Hurtful.”
“But sure,” she said. “You can come.”
“Where’s Blake? I know he doesn’t want me to walk him to school.”
My brother was a junior this year, and apparently coming into a new school and a new town hadn’t been easy on him. He talked about how much he wanted to go back home, and he’d quit the football team here because he didn’t make varsity. He was driving me crazy, even long-distance.
“Never came home last night,” Jen said from the kitchen doorway, scowling.
She looked at me like she didn’t want me here, but worse, she looked at Blake and Skyla that way.
“That’s not my fault.” The two of us had argued over dinner. Jen had perked up when I came home and gave her the envelope Dean McCauley had given me. Blake, on the other hand, didn’t seem all that thrilled to have me ‘home.’
“I didn’t say it was.” But Jen’s tone as she stared me down said enough. She was sick of the three of us.
Unease twisted through my stomach. If she kicked out Skyla and Blake, I didn’t know what I’d do.
I was glad to escape the cramped apartment to walk Skyla to school. Summer heat was fading into fall, and the world was misty and quiet when Skyla and I headed out.
Along the way, out of the apartment, she began to tell me about how she was being bullied at school. Kids had been tripping her and teasing her, and there was a girl who threatened to beat her up after school. Skyla always ran home, trying to take different routes and sometimes getting lost in this unfamiliar town.
Her face changed when she was talking about it, and her wide, frightened eyes made my heart ache. I hadn’t seen Skyla look scared like that since the ambulance came to take our mom away for the last time.
I was failing Skyla and Blake. They needed me. And yet, if I weren’t at the academy, there wouldn’t be the money for Jen to keep them. She couldn’t afford to raise two kids on her own. I wasn’t going to get a job, after dropping out of high school to take care of our mom while she was dying, that would pay our bills.
If I had rejected the science experiment deal Dean McCauley offered me, Blake and Skyla would have gone into the foster care system. They were safe with Jen, even if they were pissed at me. But it still hurt.
I was doing the best I could, and it wasn’t good enough.
“Well, what do you need?” I asked Skyla, hoping that the right jeans, the right shoes, something would help her fit in. I wanted to fix this. In the four days I had.
Her lips tightened. Her ponytail bobbed, brushing her shoulders; it was a little off-kilter, like she’d done it herself. Mom used to help her with her hair. Jen wasn’t the type.
“Money’s not going to help.”
“Money always helps.” She was still a kid, no matter how much she tried to act grown, if she really thought that was true.
When I’d seen her off into school, I headed off to find my brother. It was better than going back to the apartment with Jen waiting.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Maddie
One of the motel rooms door was already propped open, a cleaning cart parked outside. I dumped the coffees in the trash section of the cart and then slipped inside the room, closing the door softly behind me to slow down whoever was following me.
The lady was vacuuming with her back to me and didn’t even see me as I slipped into the bathroom. I stepped over the pile of damp towels left in the doorway.
The night before, I’d been weirded out by the realization that the windows were basically in the showers of the cramped bathrooms, up by the ceiling. I’d checked that ours was locked, standing on my tip-toes on the slick tub surface. Now I grabbed the shower curtain rod in one hand for balance and stuck the toe of my shoe into the slot for the soap, leveraging my weight up to pop the lock open. I pushed the window open.
Someone knocked on the exterior door to the hotel room. The housekeeper’s vacuum quieted to a whine, then shut off completely. Quickly, I kicked my legs up onto the windowsill. As I shimmed forward, the narrow window ledge bit into my ass.
The shower rod started to give, tearing away as too much of my body weight hit it, and I let myself slip down the outside wall. The brick on the building’s exterior caught my hair and yanked a few strands of hair out.
I landed awkwardly on the pavement underneath the window, my knees buckling, but I shot right to my feet even though my knee ached. No time to catalog the damage. I had to get to Jensen.
I ran the length of the motel, counting those high-up windows in the otherwise blank back wall of the building. I was pretty sure we were the fifth unit from the end. Here goes nothing.
I could hear the shower going from this side of the window. If this was our room, Jensen was taking the world’s longest, most relaxed shower while I tried to keep us safe. What the hell was the boy doing in there for so long?
I jumped up and smacked the window. It rattled under my fingertips. I jumped and smacked it again.
After a second, the window opened and Jensen’s head popped out, frowning. “What the hell are you doing, Maddie?”
“Someone’s following me,” I said. “I didn’t want to lead them to you.”
I glanced down the alleyway, but there was no one else out here. Yet.
“If you wanted to join me in the shower, you could’ve just asked,” he said, already wiggling forward, exposing his shoulders and his pecs as he reached down to me. I jumped and caught his arm, and he yanked me the rest of the way up the wall.
There was no easy way to get back into the hotel room, just like it hadn’t been graceful getting out. I teetered for a second on the edge. Then I tipped forward.
Jensen tried to catch me, holding his arms out. I landed on top of him. The two of us fell through the shower curtain as he wrapped his arm around my waist. As soon as my feet brushed the surface, I tried to get my balance on the slick floor. The edge of the tub caught my shins, and the bathroom floor rushed up toward me.
He twisted and landed underneath me, my body against his. “You okay?”
“Fine.” His cock pressed against me, and I scrambled up suddenly. “Christ, Jensen, we might be fighting for our lives here—”
“Don’t take it personally, sweetheart,” he shot back. “I was in the middle of something when you interrupted me.”
I put my hands over my ears as I turned and headed for the motel room. “I don’t want to know. Get dressed—I’ll grab our stuff.”
In a hurry, I gathered the files from across the table in the corner. He’d gone to bed when I did, so he must not have been able to sleep and instead returned to the files. He needed so desperately to get these answers about his sister.
I slipped the files into the bag. That was what mattered. We could get new clothes somewhere else.
Jensen came in wearing jeans, a t-shirt and motorcycle boots once again. He slipped his 9mm into the back of his jeans and threw his leather jacket on over, then picked up his sword. I was already pulling on my sword sheath.
He tilted his head to one side, listening, and I stilled. Someone was knocking on all the doors, coming nearer and nearer to us. They were only a few doors down now.
“Perfect,” Jensen mouthed at me, which would not have been my reaction. “We can find out what they want.”
He drew his gun before he concealed himself to one side of the door. When I went to the door and took the knob in one hand, my heart hammered in my chest. We had one chance. Whoever came through that door was not friendly.
They knocked on the door of the room next to us. A woman answered the door. “Yes?”
“Sorry to bother you, ma’am.” It was a man’s voice. Harsh.
A little kid said something unintelligible, and the man laughed. “Have a good day.”
My heart sank. There were innocent civilians so close to us. If bullets started flying, we’d put them in danger.
Then the knock came on our door. I glanced at Jensen, who nodded. His yellow-gold eyes were bright in the dim light.
I yanked open the door.
Jensen hid the gun in the holster so fast I barely saw him move. “Good morning, officer,” he said, in a polite tone I’d never heard from Jensen in my life.
A police officer in blue stood at the door. His gaze fixed on Jensen, although he gave me a brief confused look. “Good morning. Jensen McCauley?”
Jensen cocked his head to one side curiously. “Yeah?”
The cop brightened. “I wanted to ask you some questions about Reefer Tegan.”
Jensen frowned. “Okay.”
I had a feeling Reefer had been dead before he texted me.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Penn
“Take Tyson with you,” my father said. “You two have always had each other’s backs.”
I leaned back in the chair next to his hospital bed. His eyebrows lifted slightly, as if it was strange I didn’t jump to follow his orders. As if I ever had.
“What’s really going on, Dad?” I asked.
He wanted me to check in on the pack’s businesses outside the compound: the bars, clubs and apartment buildings that our pack used but that also brought in money from outsiders. Something had him worried.
“You know how they are.” He didn’t have to bother to say who. I’d seen plenty of the squabbling to take his place—and the killing that came after. His voice still sounded so hoarse it could be a stranger’s. “Taking advantage when I can’t get around.”