by T. S. Joyce
“He has some of the best trackers in the world in his crew,” Greyson said softly. “You got yourself hunted, and you put us in the middle.” He sighed and pushed off the wall he’d been leaning against, then leveled Ben with a look. “I’m with Barret. She has to go. These mountains are a panther safe haven, and she’s too big a risk to what we’ve built here.” Greyson followed Barret’s lead and left. At least he didn’t slam the door, so there was that.
Anson followed without a word, just a narrow-eyed glare for Annalise. And then it was just her and Jenny and Ben, drowning in silence.
Annalise cleared her throat delicately. “I’m really sorry I fought you. I don’t have good control over my animal—”
“Annalise, stop,” Ben demanded. “You apologize too damn much. I can tell you say sorry when you’re trying to keep from getting hurt, but you’re a fuckin’ panther now. Don’t mess up. Don’t make it to where we have to hear your apologies.”
“Ben,” Jenny said low.
“I don’t know what I’m gonna do with you,” he said, his blond brows arched up high. “You were already on a trial period, and you went after me and my crew on day three, woman. Day three! And the boys aren’t wrong. You brought a damn Barns grizzly up here after you.”
“I don’t understand what his last name or family have to do with any of this,” she huffed in frustration.
“You wouldn’t because you don’t know enough about your kind! You got bit. That sucks. It’s a shitty way to become a shifter. But you should’ve started researching immediately. You weren’t careful, you made some kind of bond with the exact type of shifter we try to keep out of these mountains, and you attracted him here. I’m gonna think on this. I have to take my crew’s wants into consideration, Annalise. Until I make a decision, I forbid you to see Jaxon Barns.” Ben’s eyes flashed with anger before he repeated, “I forbid it.”
Fury blasted through every cell in her body, burning her up instantly. Annalise stood in a rush and strode for the door before she gave into the urge to cuss him out. She was grown and had parents, so she sure as hell didn’t need some asshole alpha making rules like he was her damn father, instead of a man she barely knew, who was the same age as her.
He was being unreasonable and prejudiced, and it wasn’t fair, because yeah, she’d been thinking about Jaxon since the second she recognized the man in the truck. Not just thinking about him either, but thinking of how she could see him. There was a history and a connection there she couldn’t explain to these jerk-offs who wouldn’t listen to her anyway. Who would just make fun of her and tell her to turn her heart off like it was a light switch. She didn’t work like that. She’d tried and failed.
Three days since she’d texted with Jaxon, and she felt like her guts had been ripped out. Loneliness had been her only companion, and she wanted that high that Jaxon had given her for all those months. The one that staved off all those thoughts of what she’d lost—her relationship with her parents, and all of her friends. Hell, she couldn’t even eat in public and talk to strangers, because her eyes glowed, and she snarled uncontrollably, and Changed on a dime. She’d been cut off from everyone but Samuel, and he had his own busy life. Jaxon had been the only constant while she’d spiraled down into this awful, unfulfilling, solitary existence.
And now she had three billion questions for the man who had been hiding the same exact monstrous secret that she had, but she was forbidden to see him? From the man who had taken the sting, and the edge from her soul-deep loneliness?
It felt like she was losing everything all over again.
Burning tears welling up in her eyes, she jogged down the stairs and bolted for her cabin. She just wanted to be inside where nobody could see the breakdown that was coming. Anson and Greyson were talking quietly near Ben’s truck, and their eyes tracked her as she fled. Annalise ripped her gaze away from them and ran up the three porch stairs that led to her cabin. She was the first on the row. The door made a deafening sound as she slammed it behind her, and inside, she left the lights off so she could fall apart in the dark. It was evening, and only gray light filtered through the bay window near the small kitchen.
With a sob, she rested her forehead against the door and regretted throwing her phone in the water at her old home. She’d been so stupid. How could she have forgotten that re-reading their old messages had been medicine for her soul? When she was having a bad day, she’d watched the videos he’d made of him driving through a small town or through the woods while he talked to her. She missed the timbre of his voice and his country accent. She missed how confident he was in each syllable, missed imagining the man behind the camera as hers. She missed reading all of their silly conversations, but most of all, she missed the occasional ones that had been real. The ones where he had exposed something important about himself that made her fall a little harder for him.
But Jaxon was a ghost. He hadn’t been real until today. He’d been this elusive high she could get when she looked at her phone, but today, he had become a flesh and blood man. And now she wanted to see if his arms would feel as strong around her as she’d always imagined. She wanted desperately to see if he could make her feel as safe as she’d assumed.
I forbid it.
Annalise pushed off the door and wiped her eyes furiously with the sleeve of her sweater. Ben had forbidden her to see Jaxon. He hadn’t forbidden her to talk to him.
Annalise still hadn’t had a chance to replace her cell phone, but there was a landline in the kitchen. She locked the door and made her way to it, then hopped up on the counter. Feeling utterly reckless, she dialed the number she’d memorized by heart.
This was against their rules. They’d never talked on the phone, only texted. Twice she’d accidentally called him, and he’d rejected the call both times. Please let the third time be the charm.
It rang. And rang. And rang. When the voicemail came on—some generic woman’s robotic voice telling her to leave a message—she slammed her back against the wall and dialed again.
They owed each other answers, dammit.
“Hello,” came the angry, growly voice at the other end.
“Please tell me it’s you,” she whispered in a rush.
The line went silent. So silent that she checked she hadn’t accidentally hit the button and hung up on him. “Please,” she repeated.
After what felt like years, he murmured, “It’s me.”
“Why didn’t you tell me, Jax? Why didn’t you tell me you were a shifter?”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I asked first.”
“I don’t know!” There was a loaded pause and then, “Are you crying?”
She kept it quiet, but her shoulders were shaking and tears streamed down her damp cheeks. Annalise rolled her head back against the wall and stared at the exposed rafters of her cabin. When she could get words past her tightened throat, she squeaked out, “It’s just really fucking good to hear your voice.”
“Baaaabe,” he murmured. “Fuck. Where are you? I can come back.”
“No, you can’t. I’m forbidden to see you.”
“But you can talk to me?”
“No. I don’t know. I didn’t ask, I just called. I had to. Jaxon, you looked sooo…”
“So what?”
She swallowed hard as she remembered his dark hair and eyes, his height, his tattoos. “You look even better in person than in the picture you sent me.”
He heaved a sigh. “Dammit, Anna, I’m so mad at you right now. I’m just pissed. You pretended you were moving in with another man. And you’re a freakin’ panther. If you were any other shifter…any other one…”
“What? Finish it. If I were any other shifter, what?”
“This would be do-able. God, I don’t date shifters. I never have. I want a human mate. But you sunk your damn claws in me before I knew what you were, and now my head’s all messed up.” His voice was so gravelly. No wonder he hadn’t wanted to talk to her on the phone. She would’
ve figured out he was a shifter just from talking to him. “Panthers don’t go outside of their species to date, Anna. You live by a whole different set of rules than the rest of us. We were dead in the water from your first shift. Do you understand?”
“No,” she whispered. “I don’t understand any of this, Jaxon. I’ve only been this…this…monster for six months.”
“What?”
“I got bit.”
“Fuck, Anna!” Static blasted across the phone, causing her to wince away from the painful sound. “I need a minute,” he said.
The line went dead.
She had never heard such fury in a man’s voice before, and it left her shaky, and gripping the phone harder, like it was a lifeline. It felt so damn good to hear someone be angry on her behalf for what happened to her. She’d been alone with her fury for so long. Slowly, she settled it back into its cradle and slid off the counter. The conversation had ended so abruptly she didn’t know what to do with herself. Was she supposed to call him back in a minute? Did he mean a literal minute?
When Samuel got worked up like this, she’d learned to give him as much time as he needed, so after a minute passed, then five and then ten, she decided to keep herself busy and give Jax a big chunk of time to work through whatever had pissed him off.
Bear shifters had bad tempers.
Well, so did panther shifters. Were all shifters just angry beings in general? Thanks to She-Devil, all signs pointed to, hell yes.
Absently, Annalise wiped down the already shining two-seater table with a damp rag. She’d cleaned this place from top to bottom over the last few days, just avoiding the hell out of the crew, who, if she was perfectly honest, intimidated and scared her. They were all this tight-knit group of foul-mouthed, burly, growly, giant mountain men. The alpha’s mate, Jenny, would be nice to get to know, but she’d stayed closed off and spent the days in town with her son, Raif. The boys had mentioned another female in the crew, but they made the she-panther named Lynn sound like she was crazy. Not just typical emotional-woman-on-her-period kind of crazy, but certifiable. Annalise didn’t even want to meet her if her animal was even more psychotic than She-Devil.
She’d wanted to tell Jaxon what had happened over the last three days so she wouldn’t feel alone with this insane living situation she’d found herself in. This wasn’t supposed to be her life. She’d done well in school, been raised in a perfectly normal two-parent household with her brother, gone to college, had normal boyfriends, normal friends, got a normal job at a post office in her hometown right after graduation. Her life had been set on a path of utter brown-colored normalcy since the day of her birth. Until the bite.
That one second had annihilated her entire future.
That one second that plunged her into infinite loneliness.
One second, and she was ruined.
One second, and all she could hope for with a man was what she’d built over text with Jaxon—a shallow relationship that would never go as far as touch.
She was monster now. How could she expect any man to love her the way she’d turned out to be?
The phone rang, and she jumped nearly out of her skin. Before she could stop herself, she peeled back her lips and hissed out a feral sound. God, she was weird now.
“Jaxon?” she answered.
“Come outside.”
“What?”
“Come outside. Walk around your cabin and head straight back to the tree line. There is an old, wooden broken down fence about thirty yards in. It’s rotted and falling down, so you’ll have to look for it. There’s an opening in a broken section, and behind it there is a deer trail that leads straight up the mountain. Follow it until you get out of Red Havoc territory.”
“I can’t just run away.”
“I’m not askin’ you to. You’ll go back to your den tonight, cover your ass, tell your crew whatever you want. This is me giving you a choice, Anna. I’ll be there on the edge of the territory. Face me. Tell me all the whys. Tell me what’s happened and if you’re in trouble because I can’t get my animal to leave this town until I hear you say the words.”
“What words?”
“That you’re okay. That you don’t need my help. That you don’t need me. Tell me to my face, and I’ll leave.”
“And what if I get there and I don’t want you to leave?”
Silence dragged on for eternal seconds. “Then you should tell me that to my face, too. I’ll be here. Come or not, it’s up to you.”
“Wait. Jaxon, I have to think about this. Ben forbade me from seeing you. This crew is my shot at some kind of life where I’m not in a fucking cage. I can’t just run up the mountain and disobey him. I’m already on thin ice here.”
“Then no pressure, Anna. I’m not here to ruin your life. That was never what I wanted. I wanted…”
“What, Jax? Finish.”
“I’ll be on the edge of the territory for three hours. Bye, Anna.”
Click.
Annalise strangled the phone and made a screeching sound that hurt her throat. Ridiculous man, she couldn’t just disobey Ben! She didn’t know much about shifter culture, but being alpha meant he was basically mayor of Moonshine Town and she was nothing but a peon. She made to slam the phone down in the cradle, but thought better of destroying her only means of communication with the outside world and slowed it down right before it hit. Gently, and like less of a psychopath, she settled it into place.
Three hours. She glared at the bay window. It was full dark outside now, but how was she supposed to sneak by a crew of freaking panthers who heard and saw everything? She couldn’t even go to the stupid communal bathroom without being watched.
She wanted to see him. There it was. She was really tempted to do this, and damn the consequences because it was Jaxon. Her entire body had gone fuzzy in the moment they’d locked eyes. He was important to her, and she couldn’t even think of him driving away without seeing him first.
Maybe if she just went and told him the words he needed to hear, that would be a good compromise. Sure, she was disobeying Ben, but for a good cause…right? She was getting Jaxon the-mother-freakin’-grizzly-shifter Barns out of the territory. She was basically making up for turning on her crew in the fight. Really, she was saving them all by making him go. Or something.
But before she went, maybe she should put on some make-up and straighten her hair while she mulled over what she would say to Sexy Giant Jaxon…if she actually found the courage to do this. And maybe she should brush her teeth and smear on a second helping of deodorant to mask the scent of fur. And maybe put on cuter panties, too. Just in case.
Hmm, maybe she should call Samuel and ask him what she should do. No. This was her life now, her decision. Plus, she knew what Samuel would say, and she wanted to look at Jaxon’s McHotboy face. Beard. He had a great beard. It was one of those four-day, perfectly trimmed, beautiful-man beards that made her think pervy thoughts about what kind of scratchy sensation it would cause against her sensitive inner thighs. Since he was a grizzly shifter, he would probably be bitey in the bedroom. Oh my gosh, stop thinking about this.
That was it. There would be no changing into cuter panties because she needed the giant granny panties to keep her pants on. Because there was no way in hell she was going to expose her purple polka-dotted comfies to any man as sexy as Jaxon Barns. These comfy cottons were her chastity belt. They would keep her on track to say what she needed to say and keep his beautiful-man beard from tickling her inner thighs.
Feeling like goddamn Wonder Woman, she slathered on powder fresh deodorant like a boss, plumped her lips with colorless Chap Stick, and pulled her thick brunette hair back in a let’s-get-shit-done bun. She looked like a proud mess. Jaxon definitely wouldn’t get handsy with her like this.
And if anyone stopped her, she could just say, “Look, asshole, I’m going to save all our lives, so outta my way. I have hero shit to do.”
Emboldened with her terrible plan, she marched out of the cabin, loo
ked around the empty clearing, waited a couple seconds to get caught, shrugged, and made her way to the tree line. At least She-Devil improved her night vision significantly. It wasn’t even that hard to find the rotted wooden fence in the dark, or the hole with the deer trail. Up, up she climbed the path until she couldn’t see the lights from the cabins behind her. Brush tripped her up time and time again, but she was determined, and the scratches on her bare legs where her shorts didn’t cover would heal soon. Another advantage to She-Devil. She might want to kill every living thing around her like a little hairy serial killer, but she healed fast.
Annalise smelled Jaxon way before she saw him. He was all dominance and fur and some sexpot cologne that probably got him into a lot of girls’ undies. The thought of him with other girls caused her to rattle off a snarl. When She-Devil made her imagine a pile of bodies, it reminded her of why she couldn’t have pretty things—like Jaxon.
His monster truck was parked at the top of the hill, and he was leaning against it, looking down at the ground, wearing a black T-shirt and dark jeans over scuffed work boots. His arms flexed where he had them crossed over his chest, and the inky tattoos along his forearms were dark against his pale skin. His hair was messier on top than it had been earlier, as if he’d been running his hands through it. A nervous habit maybe, but it made his hair look sexy in that just-woke-up way, the kind that said he didn’t care overly much about the way he looked or about being perfect.
When he noticed her, she expected his dark eyes to match the night around them, but she was surprised to find them lightened to a bright green. “You came,” he said low, pushing off his truck. Jaxon lifted his chin higher and let his fists fall to his sides. Tension rolled off him in waves, and Annalise stopped in her tracks as her inner animal growled out a warning.
“I won’t hurt you,” he said in that deep, gravelly, inhuman voice.
“Then why do you look and feel so different?”