“This is a business arrangement, Maddox, and I want to verify our verbal contract before you put it in writing. According to your terms, I can leave whenever I want. That means you can’t hold me by force. If I leave, I don’t want to be looking over my shoulder because you’re stalking or harassing me. I won’t agree unless you can promise me that even under your protection, I’ll still be able to pay off my debt. I don’t want that to be the tie that binds me to you. Someday I’m going to want to leave, and I want to be free and clear.”
“Hmm. I can arrange something between us if that’s what you want. But why not just stay on the outside if all you want is to pay me back?”
“I gave it some thought. I’ll have a better chance at paying you back quicker if I don’t have any bills or rent to worry about. Plus I’m sure you can find me a better-paying job than what I’ve been doing. You said you have connections. Can we come to a compromise?” I said, making a business proposition.
“I don’t mind you going to school, but I won’t have you working a job.”
This wasn’t going to be easy. “Instead of an indefinite stay under your care, what about five years and you’ll clear what I owe?”
“No, I can’t agree to that. But ten years and you sleeping in my bed, I’ll consider those terms.”
“Absolutely not.” I sat up and tugged at my hair. “What about seven years, no sex, and I’ll work my ass off to pay my debt by cleaning, cooking, doing your taxes, whatever you want.”
His laugh sounded like a crow and he quickly put a cap on it. “You’re quite the negotiator. I’ll agree to that, but you don’t have to worry about the taxes. I don’t have a relationship with Uncle Sam.”
“Promise you won’t push me into sex? How do I know I can trust you?”
“Because I’m giving you my word, and that’s the best thing I’ve got. You’ll have it in writing, but I’m not an animal. Not to mention it’s a little insulting to insinuate I have to force a woman to sleep with me. I got problems, but that’s not one of them.”
“That includes kissing and anything physical.”
He chuckled a little, but his voice was sincere. “Sure thing. But if I need you as a date, I’d like it if you uh… well, if you put out the vibe that you were sleeping with me, I’d appreciate it. I’m a man who likes leaving an impression with my business partners; it’ll look bad if I have a pet who doesn’t cuddle up with me at night.”
“Fine, as long as we adhere to the previous rules. I’m not going to make out with you in public to prove something, but I’ll give people the impression we’re intimate. Can I date?”
“No, I went over that already.”
“What if I see them but don’t sleep with them? Just go out to a movie or something?”
He paused and sighed through the phone. “No. If you’re my pet, then you’re no one else’s. That’s a hard-and-fast rule because no man will respect me if you’re gallivanting across town with other men. I get that you’re human and this is a hard thing to wrap your head around, but it’s a legitimate offer that’s only going to come around once. I’m not just offering you a chance at a clean slate, but if you want to further your education, I can help. That’ll come out of my pocket. This isn’t a self-serving relationship, and I’ll want to see that you’re happy.”
“April, do you need the bathroom? I’m about to take a shower,” Trevor yelled out.
“No, I’m good.”
He shut the door and I slid back under the covers, turning on my right side.
“Including him, whoever that was,” Maddox said firmly. “Platonic means nothing in my world.”
“Except with you, right?”
“The door’s wide-open on that topic. You’ll have seven lonely years to make up your mind, and how old will you be by then? That’s a long time to go without being loved by a man. You may not want me now, but you’ll cave eventually. That’s not a threat—it’s just a fact. Don’t beat yourself up over it; I’m not that bad of a guy. Just so we have it out in the open, I don’t lay a hand on women. I find a man contemptuous who would strike a female, so you can put that fear to rest. I’ll treat you fair and no one will mistake that you’re mine. That means you’ll be protected and won’t have to worry about anyone else messing with you. I mean it. No one touches you. All right, we’ve exhausted enough time going back and forth on this, so decide now. If you’re good on the deal, then I’ll send someone to pick you up. Give me your address.”
I heard Trevor singing a Thirty Seconds to Mars song when I slid out of the bed and put my clothes on. He liked his long, hot showers and wouldn’t notice I was gone until I was really gone. I had to keep reminding myself that the Breed world didn’t work the same way as mine, that this was a business proposition. More than that, it was an opportunity for me to get my head together and start over. Maybe Maddox thought I’d cave in to sex, but that wasn’t happening. As we spoke, I scribbled a short note for Trevor and left it on the bedside table.
“Maddox, I want you to draw up a contract with our agreement. Laugh all you want, but that’s nonnegotiable. You guys may hide from the human world, but I’ll drag you into a court of law if you breach the contract, and I know for a fact that would put you in some serious hot water with your own Breed laws. I’m at the Western Lodge Inn. Have you heard of it?”
“I got a guy who can be there in five minutes. Wait out by the lobby and he’ll pick you up.”
Maddox ended the call and as I walked by the bathroom door, I leaned forward and kissed it.
“Bye, Trev,” I whispered.
***
“Mom, you need to go lie down.” Lexi was clearly frustrated. “You heard what the doctor said.”
Lynn stood in the lounge room with a bandage on her head after getting a bunch of stitches in the emergency room. Reno felt sick about the whole thing. “I want to know what happened to April. Hon, I can’t go upstairs and sleep after everything. I need a drink.”
“You don’t drink, Mom.”
“I still need a drink.”
“Lynn,” Austin said.
She cleared her throat. “I told you not to call me that.”
Austin scratched his jaw and a smile ghosted his lips. “Mom, you need to take it easy. We’ll sort everything out down here and fill you in tomorrow morning.” He glared at Reno. “Lexi’ll cook breakfast and bring it up to you.”
“That’s right, Mom. French toast and bacon—your favorite.”
Reno hadn’t spoken a word since they had walked in the door. He just sat back in his favorite brown chair with a beer in one hand and his good-luck charm in the other, wondering what the hell he’d done to drive April away. Reno knew nothing about human women outside of what he’d seen on television, but it sure as hell didn’t feel right letting her walk away. What could he do? He had tried to get her to talk to him, but he didn’t want to risk pushing her further away with an aggressive pursuit.
Denver dragged his bare feet across the living room floor, wearing his favorite sweats and no shirt. After reading Peter Pan with Maizy and putting her to bed, he’d gone into the kitchen to forage. “Maybe next time we should all take real guns. That would have been kickass,” he said, eating soup right out of the can.
“Your aim is so bad you can’t even hit the toilet,” Lynn blurted out.
Jericho barked out a laugh and grabbed his smokes off the table. “I’m heading upstairs,” he said, still laughing. “She got you good, brother. I’m sleeping in tomorrow, so don’t come knocking.” Jericho left the room and the stairs creaked as he disappeared out of sight.
Denver ignored them, eating another giant spoonful of chicken and rice. “Would’ve been easier to take down the asshole who grabbed Maizy if I’d been armed like Reno was. Just sayin’.”
“I don’t like guns.” Lynn glared at Reno.
Months ago after Lynn had been kidnapped by her ex-husband, she’d remained in a state of denial, still excusing the man’s actions. Then one day, reality had hit
her like a runaway freight train, and she’d smashed every plate in the kitchen. She’d finally come to terms with the fact that a man she’d loved had almost killed both of her daughters and was indirectly responsible for the death of her son.
After that, Lexi bought a bag of paper plates, and they ate on those for a few weeks until Lynn sought counseling. Lexi went with her for support but also found it helpful to talk out her own feelings even though she couldn’t disclose details about Shifters or her father’s death. Humans didn’t cope as well as Breed did when it came to traumatic shit. Part of it was having lived long enough to learn how to shut off pain, but it also had to do with the spirit and strength of their animal.
Pain sliced through his gut when he thought of April looking at him over her shoulder when she walked off the porch. She’d stumbled clumsily, but April didn’t have a clue that he thought she was adorable as hell. He didn’t make a big deal of it when she bumped into things. In fact, it made her even more fascinating to him. She was different on so many levels from Shifter women. April was like one of those Rubik’s Cubes that no matter how many times you twisted it around, you couldn’t figure it out.
“Where’s April?” Austin asked for the umpteenth time.
Reno tightened his jaw.
“Guess she didn’t want to be your bitch,” Denver muttered matter-of-factly.
Reno was out of his chair in a heartbeat. The soup splattered on the floor and he seized Denver’s throat.
“Cut it out!” Austin shouted, wedging between them. “Dammit, Reno, you know he didn’t mean nothin’ by it.”
“Maybe not,” Reno bit out, giving Denver a hostile glare, “but you ever call her a bitch again, no Packmaster will be able to stop what I’m going to do to you.”
Denver wiped the soup off his arm and shook some of it off his foot. “When the hell did bitch become a bad word in this pack? Maybe you need to lighten up, big brother. Humans don’t like all that serious Terminator shit. Someone tracking our ass down is just another day in the life of the Cole family. But April goes out for laser tag and finds herself in the middle of a showdown. That’s some heavy shit. And why don’t you explain how you helped her cope when you got home? Did you give her a beer? Watch a little TV? Yeah, we all saw the panties by the door.” Denver waved his hand and walked away. “I’m outta here.”
“I need everyone upstairs except Reno,” Austin said in an authoritative voice. That was the tone he used as an alpha, the one that every Shifter wolf heeded whether in human or wolf form. There was power in his words when he summoned it, and without an argument, everyone drifted upstairs and left them alone.
After Lexi shut the door, Austin folded his arms. “Talk.”
Reno pinched his chin and slanted his eyes away. He didn’t want to talk, but Austin was the only one in the house he could confide in. “While you guys were still cleaning up the mess with Sanchez, Trevor came by and took April away. She’s gone. For good.”
It took a second before Austin decided what to say. “And you’re okay with that?”
Reno’s eyes slid up. “Do I look okay with it?”
Austin sat across from him and touched the small cleft in his chin. Reno noticed a few spatters of blood on his dark green shirt. “I can think of at least four Shifter women who’ve had their eye on mating with you. Good women from respectable packs. All I’m saying is that you want someone who’s going to age at the same speed. I get the fascination; we’ve all had crushes on a human at one time or another. They’re the forbidden fruit and incomparable to our women. But you don’t want to get your emotions mixed up with one of them. They don’t understand our ways—they don’t mate for life. Men leave their families and some want nothing to do with their own children.” He shook his head. “And that’s another thing. Shifters and humans can’t have children together. Think about what you’d be giving up. She did you a favor.”
Reno stretched his legs and laced his fingers together on his lap. “Did our dad ever tell you about Faye?”
Austin shook his head and Reno continued.
“This was long before you were born. Faye was a good bitch from a respectable pack, and we had a thing. A good thing. She was a tough woman with black hair and blue eyes—all the men had their sights on her, but she was mine. We knew right away we had a connection, and it got serious.”
“How serious?”
“Serious enough that I was going to ask her to be my life mate. Turns out I couldn’t give her what she wanted.”
“And what was that?” Austin knitted his brows.
“Children.” Reno took a deep and painful breath. “I’m sterile.”
Austin sat back, staring pensively to the right. “Sorry. I didn’t know.”
“Yeah, that’s not something I want to share with the others, if you catch my meaning. It’s better that you were born the alpha. Maybe that’s why the gene skipped me, little brother. Faye didn’t stick around; she found herself a man who could give her what I couldn’t. So that bullshit about wolves mating for life is only a standard we hold ourselves to. Maybe we honor it more than humans do, but it doesn’t make us any better than them. I don’t believe in destiny. I believe in finding something good and making it work.”
It had taken years for Reno to get over losing Faye. He didn’t reveal to Austin how her rejection broke him in ways he couldn’t have imagined. That he’d pursued her hard, even after she chose another man. He’d loved that woman and the last time he saw her, she slapped him in the face and told him he was a disgrace to his own kind—that no woman would ever choose to mate with him. Faye wanted children more than love. Reno would have built a pyramid for her. And yet Faye didn’t hold a candle to a human who had stolen his heart with her whimsical smile and unyielding acceptance.
Austin leaned forward, his icy blue eyes pinning Reno to the chair. “Don’t be so quick to knock the idea of destiny. I’ve always felt a connection with Lexi. It’s not something I can explain—it’s a pull in my gut that tells me she’s the one. When she’s in trouble, I can sense it. There’s something about the way we fit that doesn’t always make sense, but we’re like two puzzle pieces coming together. I wouldn’t be a complete man without her, and that’s as good as destiny for me. We’ve all heard the stories about soul mates and the bond between two Shifters who were born for each other. I believe it because I have that with Lexi. It’s an inherent attraction that brings us together like magnets. Just give it some time and you’ll find it with a Shifter. You can’t have that kind of bond with a human.”
Reno shifted in his chair. All the things Austin had just listed off were exactly how he felt about April. “So you’re saying if Lexi had turned out to be a human and not one of us, you would have let her go?”
Austin flexed his jaw and sat back, the lamp beside him shining on his tatted shoulder. Cold weather didn’t faze Austin; he ran hot and often wore T-shirts or tank tops in winter. “Lexi would have still been in our pack if she chose—that’s a given. Not all humans can accept that people like us exist. I don’t know if I could love someone that hard and let them slip through my hands because they have a shorter expiration date. But I don’t have that choice to make, you do. April is a smart girl and she lived with us long enough to see this was the wrong life for her. Lynn still struggles with it, and she’s been talking about sending Maizy away to live with her grandparents or shipping her to boarding school when she’s older. She’s worried we’re a bad influence on her even though she’s found a home with our pack. Lynn doesn’t want to start over on her own, and she has a place in our family. Humans don’t think the way we do. They don’t get our lifestyle. They don’t cope well in a crowded house full of people who aren’t even related. She doesn’t like having to hustle downstairs whenever I want to get frisky with my woman. I don’t understand how anyone could ship their kid off, but humans do it all the time. They leave them in day care and send them to summer camp.” He shook his head and ruffled up his hair. “They don’t raise a family
the same way we do—that’s part of the disconnect. Maybe April wants a family and that’s something she can’t have with a Shifter. We live in a dangerous world, Reno. Do you think it’s fair to ask a human to give up family and normalcy to live with Breed?”
Reno released a heavy sigh and rubbed his face. April was adamant about not wanting kids, but she was only twenty-three. Does a person really know what they want at that age?
Then it hit him like a sledgehammer.
She didn’t want to commit, plain and simple. A female Shifter her age wouldn’t hesitate to settle down with a good man, because Shifters were tenacious and decisive. Humans were uncertain about their feelings and always changing their minds. She didn’t want to live in his world, but she also didn’t want to force him into making a choice between love and family. And she was right. It would have torn him apart. April could have taken advantage of his hospitality, but in the end, she’d walked away with nothing. Maybe it was for the better. She would have never found happiness if she’d felt indebted to him.
That night, Reno let go of hope that two star-crossed lovers from different worlds could make it work.
Chapter 26
Several weeks had crawled by after I left my old life behind and moved in with Maddox. He lived in a quaint house compared to Reno’s—a five bedroom, two bath. The kitchen was outdated and I stood taller than his fridge. My favorite place was the tranquil patio in the back with a tin awning. It wasn’t so tranquil on rainy nights when the water hammered against the tin roof, but the house was nestled deep in the woods on a large stretch of private property. Lantana bushes ran along the side of the house, and a covered hot tub sat out back. Maddox said he only enjoyed running it in the summertime.
True to his word, Maddox set me up in my own room and didn’t make any sexual advances. Per my request, he had drawn up a contract. The first week, I was timid about our arrangement and kept to myself. I cried in my bed late at night until one morning, he took me out to the back patio and we had a long talk about how Shifters lived. Having human pets wasn’t the norm, but it wasn’t a deviant lifestyle either. Many humans were willing because they were fascinated with their world, and for a Shifter, it often showed status since most were wealthy and respected. Maddox craved companionship and I needed to get my life in order. I became optimistic about my future for the first time in a long while. Maddox supported my desire to go back to school and said if I wanted anything else, that he’d pay and it wouldn’t be included with my debt. I had a feeling his reward program was merely an incentive to stay with him longer. I began to see that Maddox was just a lonely guy.
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