by Mandy Rosko
"Besides, I've been running around these woods ever since I was a little girl. I know them better than Dennis does."
“Dennis was part of this pack long before you were born. He probably knows these woods better than you think you do."
Anna looked away from him, a frown pulling at her slim blonde brows. She didn't say anything. Jax realized he'd probably embarrassed her by saying that.
Great. Sometimes, he didn't know how to act around this girl. Avoiding eye contact whenever she tried to get his attention at the dinner table always seemed to work, but when she got him alone and he did start talking, it seemed as if he always hurt her feelings somehow.
This had to stop.
“Anna, I know you have feelings for me—”
She shook her head. “We don’t have to talk about that.”
“I didn’t make it clear before, so I need to make it clear now. I’m sorry, but I do not feel the same”
“I know.”
He looked at her, really looked at her.
And he could see that, despite his words, and how often he said them, she was still holding out hope for something he couldn’t give her. It seemed as though the more he avoided her, the more she followed him, and it was starting to get dangerous if she was following him out here.
"Let's get back," Jax said. He glanced towards the broken trees. He was getting a bad feeling, and he shivered.
"Fine," Anna said.
"Actually, come here," Jax stepped forward. Anna tensed when his hands touched her shoulders.
He was still looking towards the trees.
Anna seemed to pick up on the tension he felt. "What's the matter?"
It was too quiet. That's what the problem was. Jax couldn't answer, however. He was too busy trying to see in the distance. He'd thought he'd caught movement down there.
Anna grabbed his biceps and pulled. "Get down!"
Something hard punched into his shoulder. He went down all right. Jax fell to his knees. His brain immediately went on autopilot as he curled his arms around Anna's waist and pulled her close.
Another bullet whizzed by, just overhead. Thank God they were at an incline.
"Jax. Get us out of here. Please, get us out of here!"
Jax shrugged off his jacket. It fucking hurt taking it off with the wound in his shoulder.
He would've tossed it, but his phone was inside. "Hold this," he said, then brought his wings out. They shredded through the back of his shirt with only some effort.
Jax wrapped them around his and Anna's bodies, and he changed his colors until he was blending in with the dead brown leaves and green trees around him.
Dane would be proud of the camouflage. This was Jax's specialty.
"We have to run before they come close."
"Won't they see us moving?"
They might. The idea was that Jax was supposed to hold still if he was going to hide like this. The problem with that was the men with the guns knew where they were. He and Anna couldn't stay here.
"Just stay under my wings and keep low to the ground. Let's go."
* * *
Garret was pissed.
Lois hoped Miranda was doing something to calm the man down, because if she could hear him yelling like that from her room, she was pretty sure an entire house full of shifters could hear it too.
And it was definitely was not a small house. This was a mansion, with thick walls and everything. Garret was not only from money, but he owned his own shipping business that allowed him to have a house this size, where a number of his omegas also lived.
Dane hadn't seemed too worried, or concerned, on Anna's behalf.
Lois hadn't seen the girl, but Miranda had said she was crying.
"Well, what do you think happens when she disobeys her brother like that?" Dane asked.
Lois could hardly believe him. He was in bed, above the covers, and propped up against a mountain of pillows. He looked better today as he went over the pictures Jax had risked his life to take for him.
"What are you talking about? You say that like Garret owns her or something."
Dane glanced up at her, reached for his coffee on the nightstand, and took a drink.
"What? What is that look for?" Lois demanded.
She was suddenly so irritated with Dane that she wished she hadn't been so eager to accept Garret's offer to stick close to him, regardless of whether she owed the man her life or not.
"I'm just trying to figure you out," he said. "Do you want Anna to run off into the woods and get killed? Or put Jax in danger by running out there with him?"
Lois frowned. "Of course not."
"Okay, so why is it so offensive to you that her older brother, who is in charge of this entire house and everyone in it, would yell at her when she disobeyed him, ran off into the woods without telling anyone, and nearly got herself killed?"
"It's...it's not offensive. That's not the problem. The problem is he would command her. He's her older brother, not her owner."
"You keep using that word. Ownership has nothing to do with it."
"Doesn't it?" Lois asked. "That's what it sounds like when someone tries to tell a grown adult what to do."
"Anna is twenty-three and Garret is over a hundred. She's not a grown adult. Not in his eyes yet, and considering he raised her and had to be more of a father to her than a brother, I don't blame him for yelling at her."
"You don't?" Lois crossed her arms over her chest, feeling her defenses rise.
Dane shrugged. "You were a kid once. You're telling me your parents never yelled at you and made you cry when you did some stupid or dangerous shit?"
Lois's breath caught in her throat. She wanted to argue back, but she had nothing. Dane was right. Of course her parents had made her cry when they'd yelled at her.
And Dane seemed to realize this as he looked at her. "See? So what did you do?"
Lois sucked back a hard breath. Her body felt warm. "I...I ran into the street without looking and was nearly hit by a car when I was six."
Her best friend at the time had lived across the street, so her parents usually let her go by herself. That day, however, her mother happened to watch as a car came screeching to a halt right before it could smash into her.
Dane's brows lifted. "That's it? You're embarrassed over that?"
"I'm not embarrassed."
Dane continued. "I thought you would've faked being dead or something with how red you just turned."
She was blushing. Great.
"So, when do shifters see someone as being an adult then, if this is just like Garret yelling at his own kid?"
Dane seemed to forget all about the pictures in front of him. He scratched his black hair. "Same as humans. Eighteen is the legal age for everything. It's just that we live so much longer than anyone, under thirty seems pretty young."
Lois was older than Anna was, but she was under thirty. She'd always dreaded her thirtieth birthday, but now that she had the idea in her head that Dane thought of her as little better than jail bait...
"How old are you?" she asked.
"One hundred and two."
She blinked at him. "Are you serious? Are you trying to trick me?"
He smiled at her. "No. I'm not trying to trick you. That's how old I am, and no, I have no real way of proving it."
Lois swallowed. "I saw you as a giant bear creature. I don't think you need to prove anything."
Dane kept right on smiling, and he looked back at the photos. "Jax told me she saved his life. Garret can't be angry for too long if that was the result, and he wouldn't hurt her anyway, so don't worry."
"I wasn't worried he would hurt her," Lois said.
And she hadn't been. Despite not really knowing these people, Anna seemed okay and normal enough that she'd been raised by good people, and Miranda trusted Garret wholeheartedly, so that also had to mean something.
Dane continued to look down at the photos printed off for him. He made some notes.
"What
are you looking for anyway?"
Dane shuffled his papers. “Something, anything that can give me a hint as to where Dennis is going to strike next. What he wants.”
“You don’t know why he’s attacking your pack?”
Dane glanced up at her. Their eyes met, and he looked away. “We know. It’s an old grudge. Dennis’s father, Dennis, and a couple other shit disturbers were kicked out of the pack by Garret’s father, back when he was the one running things. Dennis blamed James, Garret’s father, and they’ve been trying to get back at him ever since.”
“Why not just forgive him and let him back into the pack?”
Dane shook his head. “No, it’s way too late for that now, and after what happened, there was no way James would’ve forgiven jack shit.”
Lois swallowed hard. “Why?” she asked. “What did they do?”
Dane didn’t look up at her. “They hurt some of the omegas.”
That could mean anything. “And what they did was unforgiveable?”
“You ever stop to wonder why Anna doesn’t have parents?” Dane asked. “Dennis killed James in a fight just after she was born. Her mother left almost right after that. She couldn’t handle how dangerous things had gotten, and with her mate dead…she took off.”
Lois could only stare in horror at Dane and the incredibly sad story he just told her. “God, I’m…so sorry.”
“It didn’t happen to me.” Dane shook his head, frowning. “Fuck. I shouldn’t have told you any of that.”
“I won’t say anything to Garret or Anna.”
Though it would be difficult to keep from looking at them with any amount of pity. Lois was afraid to ask what it was Dennis and his friends had done to get kicked out of the pack.
She didn’t ask. Lois reminded herself that she was a guest in this house and that she was already prying way too much into matters that were really none of her business. Dane had said some omegas got hurt, and that was all she needed to know.
Garret hadn’t told her she had to stick around, just that he wanted her to see to Dane’s care. Garret was actually paying her now that the other omegas refused to come near Dane at all.
But she wasn’t tied to him with a piece of rope. His bandages were fresh and his wounds weren’t as deep. Even his coffee was still hot. There was nothing that prevented her from getting up and leaving the room.
And yet, she felt drawn to stay here. At the side of a man who’d made it perfectly clear he didn’t want her around.
It was pretty pathetic.
“Maybe there’s something I can do to help?”
Dane shook his head. “Not unless you can profile all the men in Dennis’s pack. That would be a big one.”
Lois blinked. “Profile them?”
“We don’t know who they all are.” He looked up at her. “Since Dennis has been so ballsy lately, the omegas have been getting nervous about going to Walmart or Costco, not knowing if the person in line behind them is with the guy who wants to wipe us off the face of the earth.”
And in that moment, Lois ran out of the room.
4
She came back quickly. Dane had pushed himself out of bed and was on his feet, ready to shuffle out the door and chase after her if he had to, but then she was back, and he was blinking over the stupid shock of her sudden departure and return.
“Where did you go?”
“To get some paper. Sit down, you shouldn’t be up.”
“I can do it myself,” Dane muttered, but her hands were already on him, gently pushing him to sit back on the mattress, and he was getting that warm feeling back in his gut, so what the hell, he allowed it.
“You should lie down.”
He looked at her. “I can sit up. What did you run away to get?”
For a minute, he’d thought he’d scared her clean out of the house and that he’d have to run out and get her like before.
She was holding a sketchbook and some number two pencils in her hand.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m such an idiot, I should’ve thought to do this before, but I think I can still sketch their faces.”
Dane’s brows lifted. “You can do that?”
Lois nodded. “If I’ve gotten a good look at their faces, and if it’s fresh. Fuck, I really should have been doing this before.”
Dane watched her, insanely interested in everything she was doing all of a sudden. “Where did you get that stuff?”
“Anna’s room. Almost every girl has a sketchbook lying around somewhere that they don’t use. She doesn’t have the materials I would usually use, but these will do for now.”
She sharpened the pencils and got to work.
Right, she’d been there with Anna and Miranda the day they’d tried to sneak her off the property. She would have seen Dennis and the men he was with. Dane had seen them too from time to time, but he couldn’t draw them.
“How many did you see?”
“Only three that I could properly draw aside from that Dennis guy, and I’m guessing by now everyone knows what he looks like.”
She glanced up at him. Dane nodded, and she went back to what she was doing.
Dane’s eyes were on the slim digits of her fingers. Her nail polish was chipping off, but she made long, sweeping strokes that didn’t look like much of anything at first, until a shape started to emerge. A couple of shapes, and then shadows.
She had pretty fingers too. Of course she would.
“Are you an artist or something?”
This time, she smiled. “Yeah. I worked from home when you snatched me up.”
He hadn’t known that. “Doesn’t being here affect your business?”
“A little, but for now it’s okay.” She looked up at him again before turning her attention back to the sketch she was doing. “Garret let me call my main clients to tell them I would be busy with a family emergency. Some canceled their projects with me, but others are holding on. So long as I keep my supporters happy on Patreon with some paintings and drawings, I should be okay.”
Dane didn’t know what Patreon was. Garret hadn’t told him she was in business for herself either, and he wasn’t feeling so good about keeping her from it.
He’d assumed that because Miranda had been living out of her car and working in a diner meant that Lois hadn’t been in a much better position. He’d figured she could get a diner job anywhere.
It was different if she worked for herself and had a successful career. That was harder to repair.
She was doing herself and her job harm by wanting to be near him. She wasn’t here because it was helping her out in any way.
He wasn’t sure what to make of that.
He didn’t say anything as she worked. He just watched her hands move and listened to the faint scratching noise of the pencil on the paper.
It took her about an hour, but it didn’t feel that long as Dane watched her.
“Okay, this is the first one.”
Dane leaned forward, about to get to his feet again, but she beat him to it and brought the drawing to him instead.
He took it and looked at it. It was good, definitely someone he recognized, but he hadn’t known the man’s name. Dane didn’t even know what this guy shifted into.
“Does he look familiar?”
Dane looked up at her, then stared down at the drawing, transfixed. “Yeah, he does. This is really good.”
Lois beamed. It wasn’t even that she smiled at him, it was that he felt her pleasure in the compliment. He felt that.
“I can do the others if you need me to.”
He nodded. “Yeah, yeah, that would help a lot.”
It would help so much it wasn’t funny. His redhead suddenly got a lot more useful to the pack, and when he looked up at her, she was positively glowing because of it.
And he felt that, too. Right in his chest. Especially when she smiled at him.
Fuck.
Dane cleared his throat. “You can sit here and do the others if yo
u want. I’m going to give these to Garret.”
For once, she didn’t try to stop him, or tell him he needed to rest. Which was good because he really needed some air, and he didn’t care how much the wounds on his back and legs pulled because of it.
“Okay. You think you’ll be back soon?”
Dane stood with only a mildly pained grunt on his part, and he looked back down at the picture in his hand. “Probably.”
* * *
Miranda came to her shortly after, instead of Dane. Lois expected Dane, but apparently, since he was still having trouble walking around without making his wounds bleed, Garret sent Miranda to get her.
“What’s going on?” Lois asked, following her friend into the hall.
“Garret wants to know if you can do more of those drawings. He was really impressed.”
Lois was only halfway through her second one. Dane hadn’t been gone that long at all. “I can only draw three of them.”
“I hope that’s enough.”
They got to the sitting room. The TV was turned off and there was no one else in there except for Dane, who sat in one of the reading chairs, Jax, whose arm was in a sling, and Garret, the only one of the three alphas who was not currently injured.
Lois had seen his face when Miranda had slashed it, however, and he’d worn bandages for a while after that. Anna had said it took him a long time to heal when Miranda was angry with him.
Lois didn’t think it was long at all. If she’d blinked, she would have missed it.
In that moment, Garret was holding onto one of her drawings. “You told me you were an artist, but it didn’t occur to me that you could do stuff like this.”
Lois shrugged. “For most people, it doesn’t. That’s a specific kind of art. Not everyone can draw can draw a face from memory. It might not even be totally accurate.”
Dane shook his head. “It’s accurate enough. I recognize that guy. The drawing is amazing.”
Lois felt warmth rushing through her at the compliment. She wasn’t sure why. She hadn’t been downplaying her skill, just being realistic about the potential problems with the work.