“No, no, of course not,” he said, deflecting my anger with his hands.
“Oh, of course not,” I said in my most mocking tone. “That’d be totally beneath you, wouldn’t it? You wouldn’t do that, would you?”
He was starting to visibly breathe deeper, presumably trying to keep his shit together while I totally lost mine all over him. My anger was fully and completely irrational, and unfortunately, very unstoppable. I was hitting him in the chest with every word I spoke, beating emphasis physically into what I said.
“You’re getting this all wrong, Ruby. I came over here because I wanted to tell you that I…”
“That you’re going back to the PC homeland for good? Gonna spill the beans about my little bloodbath in Utah? And here for that matter?” I said, accusingly.
“No!” he shouted in his defense. “Well, sort of. But it’s not how you’re making it out to be.”
Jackpot…shaken the unshakable.
I was starting to get some emotion from him and it felt good. It further fueled my rage.
“That’s me, the village idiot, barely capable of rudimentary function, Sean. I must be at fault here because your perfect ass would never do something unbecoming or incorrect.”
He finally clasped my wrists to keep me from punching his chest. I doubted that I was hurting him, but I was certain it was difficult to think while your body was being used as a bass drum.
“ENOUGH! You will listen to me!” he commanded.
I stared him down, doing my best impression of her, my inner beast.
“I’ll do whatever the fuck I please.”
“I came because I need you to understand something,” he said.
“Oh, I understand many things, Sean,” I shouted. “I understand that you’re leaving forever. I understand that you were going without so much as a ‘nice knowing you.’” He took a moment to look the slightest bit stung by that.
“But what I understand most,” I started, with a sudden eerie calm to my voice, “is that you’re leaving to be with Sophie, that you are to be together and always have been, and that whatever trivial emotions you have for me pale in comparison. And they always will.”
He looked floored. He didn’t know that Cooper had overheard their conversation, though I’m sure he was not at all surprised that he’d share that little tidbit with me if he had. I paused for a brief moment before delivering the final blow.
“I. Hate. You.”
I sprang up off the floor and brushed past him as I walked towards the door. I was done with him and the situation entirely.
The pain hit me as I neared the threshold and I clutched my chest in a fruitless effort to relieve it. My lungs tightened with every step, and I stopped just before exiting, leaning on the door casing for support. I furiously rubbed my ribs, trying to massage the breath in and out of me.
Calm.
I felt his energy calling to my own, soothing me. It was familiar and welcome, and it sparked something in my consciousness that had silently gnawed at me ever since he’d told me what I was. He said that RB’s could not be influenced by others, making them dangerous and unpredictable. It never fully made sense to me because he could with me. He always had. But my wolf and I were not one, rather two separate entities comfortably sandwiched into one body, and though his being could not speak to her, it sang to me. Beautifully.
I heard him step slowly closer and with his every advancement, my chest eased. His broad palm slid from the base of my neck down to the small of my back. I shivered under it, but my breathing normalized. For a moment we both remained still, just breathing together.
His hand slid back up slowly to its starting point, gaining strength in pressure. He repeated that soothing path over and over for minutes in silence until changing course suddenly. His fingers wove themselves up into my matted curls and rubbed circles in their roots until finally grabbing them lightly, turning my head to face him. My body followed.
My anger with him was a cover-up.
My tantrum had been a mass of emotion based on pride, hurt, embarrassment and slight. I didn’t hate him at all. I loved him, the recognition of which threatened to physically tear me apart. Staring into his eyes was painful because of everything I stood to lose. I wriggled to get away from him, running being my default response, but he was having none of it. He held me kindly but firmly in place.
He slowly brought his face to my ear, his breath tickling me.
“You shouldn’t believe everything you hear, Ruby,” he said softly. “I thought you of all people would understand that by now.” He went back to doing the scalp rubbing routine with his fingers and I had no clue how I was supposed to think clearly with that nonsense going on. “I am leaving. I don’t know when I’ll return, or if I will be able to at all,” he admitted, sounding mournful.
Is this supposed to be helping?
“Sophie is complicated, as is our situation,” he said, fingers still working through my curls.
Soooo not making this better.
“I came back here for one reason, and one reason only. I needed you to be clear on something.”
I stood perfectly silent, hanging on his every word.
“You. Are. Mine.”
And with that his lips pressed brutally to mine, kissing me with a frantic passion that I feared would consume us both. I was even more concerned that it wouldn’t have bothered me if it had. He broke it off as suddenly as he started it, looking at me with complete satisfaction. His mission had been accomplished.
He took my face in his hands again, admiring it for a moment.
“You truly are the most exquisite thing I’ve ever seen.”
I stumbled in my mind, trying to think of something, anything, to say in return. The man whose face was the pinnacle of perfection in my mind, mirrored that sentiment about me. Interesting how life could go from one extreme to the next in a blink of an eye. I couldn’t believe the moment was occurring, not having previously admitted that I’d wanted it to. I struggled for what I wanted to say to return the sentiment. It took a minute while he waited patiently.
“Ditto,” I sputtered.
I had such a way with words.
Epilogue
It had been a month since Sean left, and still I had received no word from him. My emotions bounced around from concern to anger to hurt and back to concern again like a bad pinball game. I later found out that he had gone back to the Elders to not only plead my case, again, but his own as well. It seemed that there was dissension in the ranks and one of his beloved brothers had ratted him out to the powers that be. I was looking forward to making that individual’s acquaintance. I think we both were.
Sophie had gone with him, and visions of her nearly naked body draped all over him plagued my imagination. Perhaps she could be dealt with at the same time as the big-mouth-brother - make it a combo-meal of sorts. The only glitch with that plan was that it required them to come back, and there didn’t seem to be any of that happening any time soon.
Cooper turned out to be less and less of a hindrance as time went on. I found out that he had a BA in accounting so I put him to work at the shop to clean up the books. Despite his first two weeks of constant bitching about ‘fiscal negligence’ and ‘systemic irresponsibility’, he turned out to be a Godsend. Prayers really were answered sometimes.
It wasn’t only prayers he answered, but also lingering questions about my Change and why it seemed so unpredictable. I knew after the attack at my apartment that my ring had something to do with it, but not why. Cooper solved that mystery for me. Apparently Sean had ascertained from Marcus during their time together that platinum was a Rouge et Blanc’s kryptonite, a revelation that Marcus had stumbled upon centuries earlier with the woman I reminded him so much of. It explained everything, especially why I wasn’t able to Change in Utah. I remembered the strange silvery lining of the iron manacles and realized that the Alpha had had them specially made just for me on Marcus’s instruction. They kept the wolf buried deep within me, unable to be
accessed. But now that she had officially been let out with my knowledge, things seemed to be changing and I wasn’t sure if it was for better or worse. I could hear her thoughts and feel her emotions with clarity, and it made me feel like a headcase. Maybe I was.
Cooper and I spent a lot of time together working at the shop during the week. He handled the books and customers and I worked in the back, designing new pieces to beef up our inventory. I couldn’t pay him much, but he worked off his room and board and seemed more than happy with the perks. The perks being the twenty-somethings that seemed to frequent the shop for repeat purchases ever since his arrival. It didn’t matter to me - money was money.
I was worried about Coop, though. For all his joviality during the day, his nights seemed haunted somehow. About two weeks after Sean left, Cooper started waking me up at night with his screams. His cries were short-lived given the continued state of his voice, which appeared to have been damaged during his healing with Sophie. When I repeatedly asked about the dreams, he played them off as nothing, but his attempts at casualness were failing.
I knew something was wrong.
HAUNTED
Coming Soon
Book 2 in The Caged Series
“I cowered away from him, unable to formulate a coherent sentence. Questions ran through my mind though none made it past my lips. I wondered how this could be happening, what he wanted, and what major injustice I’d brought against the universe in this life or another to bring a fate such as this upon me.
Perhaps being born was reason enough.”
After his near death experience only months earlier, Cooper’s behavior is rapidly deteriorating.
So what does Ruby do? She adds a new roommate into the mix. When her friend Ronnie is abruptly called away for a family emergency, Ruby takes in Peyta, Ronnie’s highly intelligent and overly observant teenage daughter. With an increasingly unstable Cooper in the house, Ruby fears for Peyta’s safety.
But when Peyta’s behaviors become as perplexing as Cooper’s, Ruby finds herself juggling a series of lies to ensure their safety as well as her own.
Then the balls, and the bodies, start dropping…
A Note From The Author
If you enjoyed my first novel, CAGED, then hold on tight because you’re in for a wild ride with Ruby and the gang. There are currently three more installments in The Caged Series completed, and one in the works. If you want to continue to read about these characters, please take a moment to go online (Amazon, Barnes & Noble, etc.) and leave a review to encourage others to take a chance on Ruby.
Your support is greatly appreciated; I couldn’t do it without you!
For more on the Caged Series check out my sites:
amberlynnnatusch.com
facebook.com/amberlynnnatusch
If you’re dying to know more about me, allow me to put you at ease. I’m a sharp-tongued, sarcastic cancer, who loves vegetable smoothies, winter storms, and the word “portfolio”. I should NEVER be caffeinated, and require at least eight hours of sleep to even resemble a human being. At thirty-four, I just now feel like I can keep a straight face while saying the word “rectum” (which is actually a huge lie because I just laughed out loud while reading this to my husband). I live with my iPod firmly affixed to my body, drive too fast, and laugh/cry at inappropriate times.
Think you need to know more? Check out HAUNTED…I’ll leave you some juicy tidbits at the end.
Acknowledgments
Though this project started as a humble little story that I just couldn’t ignore, it is what it is today because of the amazing people who volunteered their time, energy and creative input to help me see this through. Publishing CAGED is not only a success for me, but also for them.
Amanda Zabski (aka, the other ten percent of my creative brain) is single-handedly responsible for getting me out of my own way, helping me craft, mold and shape the story lines, and pushing me when I feel like throwing in the towel. This book never would have gotten where it is without her. Literally.
I would be remiss if I didn’t give an enthusiastic nod to my cheerleading duo, Virginia Nicholas and Eryn Bagley. Virginia is always the first person to read the rough draft from cover to cover and give me her general impression, whereas Eryn likes to take the chapters I write as I write them (which are usually horribly out of order) and comment along the way. I love you both, but I think you’re becoming Ruby addicts.
Since I write like words are flying out of my head with little to no regard for grammatical accuracy, I desperately need my friend and editing drill sergeant, Jen Krom.
Jamie Rosen is my graphic designer extraordinaire. He takes what I see in my head and makes it into a haunting cover, which is admittedly no easy task.
My husband Bryan is, and always has been, the yin to my yang. Luckily for me, he loves to research things ad nauseam, and is a total tech-whiz with computers, programs and all things internet related. He prepared everything for publishing so I wouldn’t have to. He truly is one of the best.
To those I haven’t directly mentioned who have contributed to the success of CAGED in any way, please know that I love and appreciate you. Now, on to the next project…HAUNTED!
Table of Contents
CAGED
THE CAGED SERIES
Copyright
Prologue
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
Epilogue
HAUNTED
A Note From The Author
Acknowledgments
Caged Page 24