But, she didn’t respond. She reached for the door knob and lurched from the room.
Chapter Eleven
Thalia slipped outside, following the human woman. She suspected the worst, waiting to see her crawling toward her fellow hunters to inform them of a room full of shifters ready to be harvested. Instead, the human woman simply paced the parking lot. She walked back and forth, hands lifting her hair from her neck as if she were too warm.
Was the human woman afraid of them? It hadn’t seemed that way when she first stepped into the room. The woman had come across as strong and guarded. What she’d become since leaving the room was a mess quickly falling apart.
Thalia felt for her, quite against her will. Rolling her eyes, at herself or at the human, she wasn’t sure, and stepped forward.
“Hey, you alright?”
Nora slammed to a halt at the sound of Thalia’s voice. She said nothing.
Thalia resisted the urge to roll her eyes again. She was trying to help, but the woman had become a wall. If she didn’t want help, Thalia could turn away. Something kept her feet rooted. Call it instincts, call it a gut feeling. She stayed, waiting for Nora’s explanation because she knew she needed to hear it.
“You’re his sister.”
Thalia’s brows furrowed. Butterflies fluttered in her stomach, leaving behind a trail of queasiness. She knew she shouldn’t trust this human woman. Nora smelled like the nightmare she’d almost been pulled into. Like the nightmare her brother was living while she flirted with Rhylan. Guilt was sharp and sour, turning her stomach.
Nora let out a choked sound of frustration, pulling on her hair. “The reason I defected. The reason I’m caught up in this confusing mess at all. You’re his sister.”
“Okay, lady. You’re not making a lick of sense. Try speaking in more direct terms. You know, use proper nouns and all.”
Nora laughed. The sound was silver on silver and it sent a chill up Thalia’s spine. “I left my own family for a shifter, but I couldn’t get him out with me. I thought I knew how the world worked. Humans struggle against the powerful forces of the supernatural, my family helping keep the balance. Then, the universe thought it funny to strike me with a mate bond.”
Mate bond?
Thalia’s hands shook. With no pockets to shove them into, because the industry of women’s clothing had a severe lack of pockets, all she could do was cross her arms over her chest to hide the tremble. Her mind refused to unfold the story Nora was feeding her. There were things hidden in the wrinkles and folds, but she couldn’t seem to grasp them.
Nora shook her head. She spun on her heel and stormed away from Thalia. No, not away from Thalia. She marched back toward her car. The human woman was abandoning them. Thalia stumbled forward. Nora couldn’t hand her the page of a book without telling her the rest.
“Hold up!”
Nora paused with her car door open. “You’re not going to like what you find.”
“I don’t get it. Would you stop being so damn cryptic?”
“They’ve twisted his mind. He’s not the man he was before they got their claws into him. He’d been…. A pet project of my mother’s for a long time.”
Ice splashed over Thalia. Slowly, her lips curled away from her teeth in an inhuman snarl. The human’s words were starting to sink in and she did not like them.
“You’re telling me that you’re my brother’s mate? And you left him there?” She couldn’t control the rise of her voice. She’d never been so angry in her life. Not even when Rhylan tried blackmailing. Not even when Miles first strayed after their engagement.
Nora crumpled. Only her grip on the car door kept her standing. “Do you think it was easy for me to do that? Do you think I walked out of there with my head high and the sun shining overhead? No. I did what he told me to do.”
“You’re lying. You’re just a human piece of crap, a spy sent to report back to your mother. You aren’t his mate. You aren’t anything to me or my family.” Thalia’s heart shriveled. As it fell apart, venom swept through her and into her words. She hated this human. Hated her for the lies she spoke and the wrongs she’d committed.
From behind the car door came a strangled sobbing sound. Nora pounded her fist against the door, each slam becoming weaker and weaker until she dropped to her knees. Thalia didn’t move to console her. She didn’t feel anything as the human woman broke down.
Was she cold? Was she broken? The thoughts filtered through Thalia’s mind, threatening to bring her down beside Nora. But, she refused. She held on to the bitterness crouching inside her chest. She gripped it so tight her own breath became shallow.
Eventually, Nora rose of her own accord. In the dim light, Thalia could see the streaks tears had left in the human woman’s make-up. She refused to look at Thalia, her gaze hardening with each passing second.
“I’ll help you get him out. Then the two of you can head back home.” She slid into the driver’s seat. “Tell them to call me when everyone is ready.”
Nora left Thalia standing in the dark parking lot by herself. She hated the woman the universe had handed to her brother. The human was weak and selfish, undeserving of a man like Javi. It made her want to throw something. So, in the dark, she slid down the side of a ravine and walked through the brush toward a small river.
She lifted a water worn stone and tested the weight of it. Unable to control herself, she chucked the first one far over the water. Rage boiled through her, like pasta boiling over the stove. With each stone, the rage receded until she was able to skip the stones over the water. The first stone to skip only touched the water once before plunking into the dark depths. The next few were more successful.
***
Jax and Sydney were in the middle of mapping out a detailed rescue plan when Rhylan realized his mate and the human woman had been gone for a while. He reached out, touching the spirits he’d discovered. They whispered with the voice of a gentle night, the sound of frogs croaking in the night.
Standing, he asked them where his mate had gone. His pulse raced until they responded. They led him outside and down the side of a ravine. Wreathed by moonlight, Thalia stood on the edge of a rocky creek bank. Her hair was as wild as the rage that swelled through her when she threw a stone. The next rock was more tempered, Thalia swinging from the hip to skip it across the water’s surface.
After a moment, her head perked up and she turned toward him. “What do you want?”
Her words were clipped and biting. She was hurting and, Rhylan wanted to figure out why. He stepped closer, but Thalia side-stepped out of his reach. His outstretched hands fell limply by his sides. The wolf rose, curious and concerned. For once, they agreed.
“You ran off before we even started planning the rescue. What happened?”
“A lot of bullshit is what happened.”
Her words answered nothing. He still ached to take her into his arms, to kiss away her worries and fears. The blond shifter’s shape entered his mind and made his wolf growl. Thalia belonged to him, by orders of her father. Rhylan wanted nothing more than to steal her away, to shelter her in his arms, and convince her that she would want no one else.
“What’s your problem?”
He snapped back into reality. “Huh?”
“You were growling just now.”
He felt the rumble inside his chest, felt the wolf brush the surface. Rhylan swallowed and tried to push the beast back down. It wanted nothing to do with Rhylan’s human sensibilities. Their mate would leave them for another shifter. They couldn’t let it happen.
“Look at us,” she began, turning back to the water. “Just a pair of dumbasses thinking we can do anything good in this world. It owns us and there’s nothing we can do about it. We’ll never get to know happiness. The world won’t give it to anyone.”
His brows knit together, both Rhylan and the wolf confused by her sudden philosophical tirade. “Now, that’s not true. Look at Jax and Sydney.”
Thalia shook her hea
d. “Look at you, unable to deal with the monster in your head. Me, with every step of my life so carefully controlled. Hell, Javi might have it the worst. The universe gave him a piece of shit mate who left him in that hell-hole.”
“Wait. What?”
“Nora. The shitty human.”
Her words left him dumbstruck. The small piece of gossip had suddenly lightened the situation and brought a laugh to his lips. Thalia’s head spun, her glare burning through him even through the darkness of the night.
She swung out her arm, pointing toward the invisible human. “She left him there. She knew they were mates, and she left him!”
He sobered and stepped toward her. This time she didn’t back away or run. “Sometimes we have to do things we don’t like in order to get to the places we need to be. I… I know what it feels like to be mated to someone. Leaving him probably destroyed her. She’ll fight the hardest to help us get him back. I can guarantee it.”
He pulled her close, fingers light on her elbows. She was warm in the cool, spring air. He let his fingers trail down her skin, around to her spine, soaking up the warmth of her presence. She lifted her chin. Her eyes caught the light of the moon and glowed. Her lips parted. He wanted to claim them, to feel what it was like to brush against her soul.
Thalia let out a shuddering breath. Her body followed, brushing against his. He growled and pulled her closer.
“You know what it’s like to be mated?”
His breath caught in his throat. He expected her to melt into him, to prepare to fight against her father’s declaration. Instead, she backed away, stones falling away from her steps and into the water. He reached out, words on his lips.
Thalia shook her head. She crossed her arms over her chest, shoulders sunken, and shoved past him.
Chapter Twelve
She’d gone too far. All she’d wanted was to convince Rhylan to help her. She’d thought using her feminine wiles would work in her favor, but all it’d done was backfire. Now, Rhylan thought they were mated.
Part of her wanted to laugh in his face, another part of her ached with fear and loathing. She ran back to the lodge parking lot. Her car was parked at the far end from meeting him there earlier that day. How long a day it had been.
She’d found her brother, nearly been caught by his kidnappers, had mind-blowing shower sex, seen her fiancé, and met her brother’s so-called mate. Exhaustion sank into her bones. She didn’t have enough energy to drive home. It’d be her luck that she’d fall asleep at the wheel and wreck the only mode of transportation she owned.
Instead of driving, she chose to throw open the back door and climb onto the seat. She laid her head down. Overhead, a waning moon winked in the sky. Its light was weak, but enough to illuminate the outside world. After a while, she became aware of Rhylan’s shape outside her car.
He didn’t step toward her or try to wrestle the door open. Good. She couldn’t be around him. She couldn’t let him continue to think they could be anything. It’d gone too far. All she’d wanted was a small amount of infatuation, enough to get his help. Instead, the infatuation had blown into a kind of love she couldn’t return.
Right?
She pressed the heels of her palms into her eyes. In the morning, she would set out to rescue Javi on her own. Now that she knew where he was, she no longer needed her job at the lodge. Rhylan could turn her in for her aggression, but she doubted he would. Not if he thought he loved her. It was all the more reason to do this on her own. All the more reason to leave him and his pack behind.
Rhylan’s pack, a small group of shifters tossed together by circumstances. They might not know much about one another, but she could already see the loyalty growing between them. It was so unlike the Pack she’d grown up in. The Pack had been existing for decades, if not centuries. The power structure was full of vicious, ladder climbing vipers, all searching for a place at the top. It’d made her father harden, made him prickly and controlling.
For a moment, only briefly, Thalia imagined herself a part of Rhylan’s pack. She considered the happiness that the small, loving group would bring-- the warmth of a supporting hug at hand, the wilderness of the Blue Ridge Mountains at their fingertips, and the resolve to break into a den of hunters at the ready.”
But, that was not the life Thalia had been brought into. Not the one she’d been groomed to lead. She would rescue Javi and head back to California to marry Miles. It was a boring and loveless life, but at least she would have her brother again.
That was all she could ask for.
***
Thalia woke to a knocking on her window. She shot upright, head foggy and vision hazy. Scent touched her nose first, even through the closed door. Disappointment hit her and she fell back onto the seat.
“You could open the door, you know. It is raining out here.” Miles tapped on the window again.
Groaning, she sat up and pulled the door handle. Miles did the rest of the work, yanking it open. He shoved her legs aside and quickly sat beside her.
“What do you want?” she groaned.
“Well, you didn’t come home last night. Then, I get here, and they tell me you never showed up for work today. Understand my surprise when I find you sleeping in the backseat of your own car in the Lodge’s parking lot.I understand your place is a nightmare, but I don’t know if this is an upgrade.”
She kicked him, not hard enough to hurt. “I found Javi. I’m going to get him and then we’ll head back to California with you.”
His brows shot up. “What the hell has he been doing all this time?”
“A den of hunters found him. I don’t know how long they’ve had him or what they’ve been doing with him.”
“Hunters would have just killed him. They wouldn’t have kept him locked up for years.”
“Apparently this one is headed by a witch who uses soul magic. The shifters face a fate worse than death when this family gets their hands on them.”
Miles cringed.
“You smell like another woman again,” Thalia said, uncaring anymore.
Miles didn’t hesitate. “Do you think I asked for this engagement? Do you think I’m ready for that kind of commitment? No. Your father forced it on me just because I’m part of his damned Pack. From the looks of it, you aren’t looking forward to this either, so don’t come complaining to me.”
Her lips curled away from her teeth, but she didn’t have the energy to fight.
“Here, drink this. Then we can talk about how you plan on getting Javier out of the hands of a group of hunters.” He passed her a cup of hot coffee.
She missed iced coffee, but she would take it. The warm liquid warmed through her and brought her back to life. Sitting up to drink it probably helped. She filled him in, on her old plan of using Rhylan and his pack as help and her new plan to do it on her own. Miles gaped at her, clearly alarmed.
“Know this, there is no love lost between us, but I don’t want to see you die. Going into that den alone is asking to die.”
She gripped the paper cup. “What other choice do I have?”
“Um, how about the help that the other pack offered you? They seem nice enough.”
“You don’t get it. Rhylan thinks he’s my mate! I don’t get a mate. I get you. I can’t… I can’t…”
Miles leaned back in his seat, coffee in one hand as he studied her. She wished she had something to throw at him because she couldn’t deal with the obtrusive gaze. Despite the divide between them, it still seemed to intrude on her very being.
“Do you really think your father could fight against the bond of mates? Who is he in the face of the universe?”
Her breath caught in her throat.
Miles looked away, finger toying with the rim of his cup. After a moment, he cast a sidelong glance in her direction, waiting for her to understand.
Chapter Thirteen
Rage burst through Rhylan. He’d barely stepped outside his door and his world fell into sharp, broken shards. Across the lot,
he saw the blond shifter in the backseat of Thalia’s car. The wolf leapt forward, snarling and snapping at the blond shifter. Then, Thalia’s head rose, and the anger grew into long teeth and claws.
It scraped its way out of him, a fury and rage as he stormed toward the car. Thalia was his mate. No one would take her away from him. He only needed to convince her who she belonged to. He would take however long he needed with her, but no other man was going to come between them. The wolf would not allow it.
What if he makes her happy? Rhylan asked his beast. Wouldn’t we want her to be happy?
No. We want her.
Rhylan shook his head, trying to push back the wolf. Thalia told him they needed to find a balance, a kind of compromise. What kind of compromise would fit this situation? Ripping out Miles’ throat? No, that wasn’t right. The wolf’s voice was too strong. This time, the compromise would have to lean in Rhylan’s favor. He promised the wolf there would be another time it leaned in its favor.
The wolf wasn’t happy, but it settled long enough to watch this play out. The beast’s retreat surprised him. It left him pleasantly startled.
As he was crossing the lot, Thalia’s eyes found his through the window pane. She looked as though she’d discovered gold, her eyes wide and brows arching toward the skies as her mouth formed a small O of surprise. His heart flipped when it morphed into a slow smile. The night before, she’d practically run away from him.
This look, the way it reached her eyes, twisted his heart. He wanted to believe she would come to love him. If anything, that was what he’d thought. He’d thought he was on the way to making her his for the rest of their days. Then, her actions changed. She pushed him away.
The wolf sent an idea to the front of his mind. It made him pause. He let out a laugh. She’d used him. Thalia had turned on the charm to convince him to help her. It was only fair, he realized. The war between him and his wolf had pushed him to do foolish things. In turn, Thalia had tried to use his feelings to her benefit.
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