by Morse, Jody
When I reached my bedroom, I found that Gage was inside, sitting on my bed. He glanced up when he saw me, his sea-blue eyes piercing through mine. A hint of a smile tugged at his lips. “Hey.”
“Hi,” I replied, sitting down on the bed next to him. “What are you doing up here?”
Gage shrugged. “Just chilling, I guess.” His eyes darted over at me. “What are you doing up here?”
“I just followed you,” I replied.
He raised an eyebrow at me. “Oh, yeah? Are you stalking me?” He chuckled.
“No.” I sat down on the bed next to him. “I just didn’t want you to get upset that I was dancing with Davis.”
“Skye…,” Gage paused, biting down on his bottom lip. “You don’t need to explain any to me. We’re not a couple. You’re entitled to dance with whoever you want to dance with.”
My face fell a little, even though I knew I was being overly sensitive. Of course we hadn’t agreed to see each other exclusively, but it still sort of hurt that he didn’t even seem affected by me dancing with someone else. “I know that. I just didn’t want you to think that I don’t like you…because I do.” There, I’d said it. I’d admitted out loud, for the first time ever—well, for the first time ever to someone besides myself or Thane—that I had a crush on a guy.
Gage’s eyes softened a little at my confession. “You have feelings for me?”
“Well, I don’t know if I would call them feelings just yet, but I think I could have feelings for you,” I admitted. “I think you’re cute, and you seem like someone I could see myself being with…and I would like to explore that.”
“Aww, Skye.” Gage smiled, this time a genuine smile. “I like you, too, babe. Come here.” He held his arms out to me.
I slipped into his arms, pressing my face against his chest. I inhaled his scent for the very first time. I’d obviously been around enough humans by now to know that they smelled so much different from werewolves, but I’d never been this close to one of them before. Gage smelled like the cologne I’d smelled at the department store; it wasn’t a bad scent, but it was different from what I was used to.
When I pulled away and met his blue eyes again, he was still smiling. “You look really pretty tonight.”
“Thanks,” I replied with a small smile. I was wearing my hair up with a few loose curls; my eyelids had gray shadow on them and dark mascara covered my lashes; and I was wearing light pink lip gloss, which matched my light pink nails. It was the first time since I’d been in New Jersey that I felt as pretty as the other girls at school—the first time I’d felt like I really fit in.
Even though Amanda could drive me nuts sometimes, I really was grateful for everything she’d made happen tonight, from the whole entire party to my outfit. Even the guys in my pack had been impressed by my transformation.
“I know this might be a little bold of me, but what do you think about going out with me?” Gage asked. “And not anything like what we planned to do the last time. I was thinking that instead of meeting at some event, we could go on a real date—just the two of us.”
The warning Amanda had given me crossed my mind. She thought I should stay away from Gage, but I still couldn’t seem to figure out why. They’d been friends—maybe even more than friends—but she didn’t want me to talk to him for some reason.
It was probably because she was no longer friends with him. If there was anything that I’d learned about her since knowing her, even if it had been for such a short time, it was that she needed to be in control of everything. Her new friend speaking to her old friend was a relationship that she wasn’t able to control.
Well, I wouldn’t let Amanda decide who I did and didn’t hang out with. It was really none of her business. Turning to Gage, I said, “Sure. I would love to go out with you sometime.”
A wide grin crossed his face. “Cool. How about next Friday night?”
“That sounds perfect,” I replied.
“I’ll look forward to it,” Gage whispered, leaning into me. He was so close to me that I could feel his breath against my neck; it felt cool against the heat of my skin. As he continued to move closer to me, I realized that he was going to kiss me.
“Me, too,” I whispered back, closing my eyes as his lips brushed against mine. When our lips met, a spark radiated through me. I’d only ever kissed Thane before, once when we were kids. I’d never felt anything so intense—so wonderful—as kissing Gage.
“Ahem,” someone cleared their throat.
I broke my kiss with Gage and opened my eyes. When I glanced up, I found Akar standing in the doorway. He stared back at me, his dark eyes clouded over with anger.
Chapter 14
I was positive that Akar was going to yell at me at first, but instead, he aimed his anger at Gage. “The party’s over. Everyone else has already left. You need to get out of here.”
I realized for the first time that the music playing outside had stopped. I’d been so involved in Gage that I hadn’t even bothered to pay any attention to what was going on around me.
“Are you Skye’s brother?” Gage asked Akar calmly, seeming completely unfazed by how angry he was.
Akar met my eyes quizzically; at first, I was pretty sure that he was going to blow my story and tell Gage that we weren’t really related. But, instead, he nodded. “Yeah, she’s my sister.”
I breathed a sigh of relief. If someone somehow figured out that he really wasn’t my brother, it could make people start questioning everything—like why a minor was living in a house with a bunch of guys who she wasn’t even related to.
I heard footsteps on the stairs. Thane glanced into my bedroom on the way to his room, and it made me realize that he hadn’t done what he was supposed to do. He hadn’t kept Akar away. A thought crossed my mind at that moment…a thought that I probably shouldn’t have had, but I did.
Maybe the reason the two of them were back so early was because Thane wanted Akar to find out about the party. Maybe he felt so spiteful about the way I felt about Gage that he wanted to ruin everything. It made perfect sense.
God, I was so angry at Thane. If he was a true friend, he wouldn’t have done this to me.
Gage didn’t even bother to introduce himself to Akar. Instead, he turned to me. “Okay, I guess I’ll get going, then. I’ll see you at school, though, okay?”
I nodded and, then, even though Akar was still in the same room as us, I leaned in and gave him another small kiss on the lips. The whole time, I could feel Akar’s angry eyes on us, but I didn’t care. If anything, I kissed Gage harder than I might have otherwise, just to prove a point to Akar.
“Bye,” I whispered once we broke away from each other.
“Bye, Skye. Bye, dude,” Gage said to Akar as he slipped past him and out of the room. The steps creaked as he made his way down them.
Once the front door opened and then slammed shut, Akar turned to me. “Skye, what the hell were you thinking tonight?” His voice rose to an angry level as he narrowed his eyes at me.
I glanced down at my hands and shrugged my shoulders. “I don’t know. Having a party.”
He shook his head frustratedly. “Do you not realize that this little party of yours could have gotten our pack into serious trouble tonight?”
“I don’t see how. It was just a harmless little high school party,” I replied with another shrug, even though I knew that I was downplaying how serious it was. I did know that high school parties could get out of hand sometimes, even though I’d tried to make sure that ours didn’t. That was part of the reason I’d distracted the guys from our pack all night so that none of them would drink.
Oh, crap. I’d been so wrapped up in Gage and me that I had completely forgotten about monitoring the boys to make sure they weren’t drinking. I met Akar’s gaze. “Did one of the guys drink and change into their wolf forms on accident? I was trying to make sure that wouldn’t happen, but…then I got distracted.”
“Clearly you got distracted,” Akar mutte
red bitterly. “What does drinking have anything to do with them changing into wolves?” It took him a moment, but he seemed to realize the reason that I’d thought that. “Did you think that because it’s what your mother told you?”
“Yeah.”
He laughed, but there was an obvious note of frustration in his laughter. “She told you that because she wanted to scare you into never taking a sip of alcohol, Skye. Being drunk doesn’t turn us into our wolf forms.” Sighing, he added, “This is just another example of how naïve you can be at times, though. You need to open your eyes and realize when people are telling you the truth and when people are lying to you. Now, I’m not sure what would have compelled you to throw this party tonight, but this could have had serious consequences. If one of these people had died in a car accident on their way home, or got into some other sort of trouble, I could have been held responsible. And if that’s not already bad enough, they might somehow figure out that I’m not your brother.”
“I know.” I lowered my eyes to the ground, feeling guilty now. I’d known the party was a bad idea all along, even though it did seem important.
“What’s even worse than the party, though, is how involved you seem to be with this boy,” Akar said.
I glanced up at him, meeting his dark eyes. “What do you mean?”
“Skye, you just kissed that kid right in front of me.” Akar said ‘kissed’ like it was a dirty word, or the most shameful thing that a werewolf could do in front of her Alpha. I didn’t see what was so wrong with it. “Clearly, you’re interested in him, but do you really know anything about him? You’ve only just met.”
“I’m trying to get to know him. Why do you think I had this party?” I shot back. “To get to know people around here. To become less naive. And, Gage isn’t a kid.”
“I consider him a kid—a disrespectful one at that.” He shook his head disgustedly. “And of course people need time to get to know one another, but girls don’t just throw themselves all over the first guy they’ve even met.”
“Okay, look. You might be my Alpha, but it’s really none of your concern who I ‘throw myself’ all over. You can’t tell me who I can and can’t date.” I folded my arms over my chest and glared at him.
“As your Alpha, I can tell you whatever I want to tell you to do,” Akar said. “If you don’t like it, you can go straight back to Alaska. As I told you before, you’re one of the strongest members of our pack but, as much as I need you here, I don’t need to deal with whatever aggravation you might cause me.”
“So, that’s what you’re going to do every time something bad happens? Threaten to send me back to Alaska?” I questioned with raised eyebrows. “I didn’t think you were one to give up that easily.”
He sighed, his expression softening a little. “Look…I’m sorry. I’m not trying to be bossy about who you see, Skye, but seriously. He’s a human.”
“Yeah, so?” I asked with raised eyebrows. “Plenty of werewolves date humans. I know it can be dangerous for him, but not if I make sure it isn’t. I’ll just make sure that I’m never in my wolf form while I’m around him.”
“You overestimate your abilities, Skye. You can’t control your inner wolf all the time. None of us can. All of us change when we get pissed off or if we’re affected by the full moon. We can try to control it so that it doesn’t happen all the time, but it will eventually. It’s a fact of life.” He met my gaze evenly. “The real reason I have a problem with you seeing him has nothing to do with his safety. I wouldn’t want to see you hurt him, because of the type of attention it could draw to our pack, but…it’s more than just that. I can’t even begin to fathom why you would want to be with a human,” he spat.
I’d known that Akar didn’t trust humans to keep our secrets, but I didn’t know he was so against them. For some reason, I’d always assumed that our pack’s parents were the only ones who hated humans so much. I didn’t realize that it had carried over to our generation.
“What’s wrong with humans?” I asked after a few moments.
“They’re inferior to us. They’ll always be weaker than us—both physically and mentally. Even though this kid may seem like he’s cool right now, he’ll never live up to the sort of mate you should have.” Akar shrugged. “Werewolf blood just doesn’t run through his veins. It doesn’t make him a bad person, but it probably means he’s not the right fit for you.”
I thought about what he was saying, but it only made me feel angrier. “You don’t have the right to insult someone I’m interested in just because you don’t think they deserve me. I decide if Gage is the right guy for me. Not you.”
Akar sighed. “I don’t want to do this the hard way, Skye, but it looks like I’m going to have to. As your pack Alpha, I forbid you from seeing him outside of school again. Do you understand?”
My eyes filled with tears. “No, I don’t understand! How is that even fair? I didn't come here expecting you to treat me like a child. You’re not my father.”
“You’re right. I’m not. However, I think it’s safe to say that if your father was alive to see this happening, he would feel the same way I do about it. And, as I already mentioned, you’re free to do whatever you want…in Alaska.” Without saying another word, he walked out of the room.
I got up and slammed the door behind him before throwing myself onto my bed and burying my face in my pillow as the tears streamed down my face.
Akar has always been a strict Alpha, but this was the first time he had ever told me that I had to do what he said or he would do something as drastic as send me back home to Alaska.
I felt helpless, almost like I lacked my own identity. I couldn’t choose who I wanted to be with. I wasn’t allowed to ask questions. I wasn’t allowed to have an opinion or a voice of my own, as long as I was a part of this pack.
But, at the same time, I still didn’t want to go to back to Alaska. Even though Akar was forbidding me from seeing Gage, I still had a feeling that being here would make me happier than I ever could have been there. And, besides, what Akar didn’t know couldn’t hurt him…could it?
I wasn’t sure how I would pull it off, but there had to be a way to see Gage without Akar knowing. I would do everything I could to prevent him from accessing my thoughts, and I wouldn’t tell any of the other guys what I was doing. The only thing I needed to worry about was Thane hearing my thoughts and ratting me out to Akar. I wanted to think that I could trust my lifelong best friend, but after tonight, I wasn’t so sure.
Just thinking about how he hadn’t kept Akar away like he’d promised made a wave of anger wash over me. I rose to my feet and stormed over to Thane’s room. I banged on his door.
Within seconds, he pulled it open, just as I was about to knock again. “I know what you’re thinking.”
“I’m sure you do. You always know what I’m thinking,” I replied, rolling my eyes at him. “Why did you do it Thane? Why? That’s all I want to know.”
“It’s not what it seems like,” Thane insisted.
“Then what the hell is it?”
He pulled his door open wider, letting me inside. He sat down on his bed, and I sat next to him. “I tried to keep Akar away from here, but he told me he had a really bad feeling,” he explained. “I tried to convince him that he was just being paranoid and that everything was fine, but he started to question why I didn’t want to trust his instincts. I think it made him realize that something really was going on back here.”
“Well, you should have found another way to stall him,” I shot back at him. “Now all my new friends are going to be angry at me for ruining their back-to-school party. That was the whole reason I wanted to have this party, you know—to make friends.”
“Maybe, but you were also excited about the party for other reasons, too.”
I glared at him. “You don’t know that.”
“Trust me…I do know it, Skye. I know part of the reason you were so excited, at least for the past couple of days, was because you wanted th
e chance to hang out with Gage.” He lowered his eyes to the floor, and I couldn’t help but wonder if he knew that I’d kissed him—not just once, but twice.
“Yes, I know,” Thane whispered, overhearing my thoughts, as usual. “And I know that you really felt something for him when you kissed him, too. It’s hard to explain, but I felt this rush of happiness, except…it wasn’t my own.” Even though he didn’t say it, I knew he was thinking that it couldn’t be his, because he wasn’t happy.
“I see,” I replied, feeling a pang of guilt. “Well, I told you I was going to start dating people. I’m not really sure what you want me to say.”
He met my eyes, a look of hope flickering through his. “Just say that you won’t give up on us…not completely, at least.”
“Okay,” I agreed, knowing that it was the most I could do. And as much as I didn’t want to admit it, there was still a part of me that couldn’t deny that, deep down, I still felt something for Thane. I wanted to see where things went with Gage, but it wasn’t like Thane was completely out of the question for me, either. “I’ll think about it, but only under one condition.”
“Anything,” Thane breathed.
“If you hear my thoughts—no matter what they are—you can’t tell Akar. Promise?” I felt sort of guilty about holding something like this over his head in exchange for agreeing to consider him as a mate. But it felt like the only way I could be one-hundred percent certain that he would agree to keep my secrets for me—if he knew that there was something in it for him.
“Okay,” he agreed. “But I have one exception.”
“What is it?”
He met my eyes. “If I ever sense that you’re in serious danger, I will let the rest of our pack know so that we can help you.”
I hesitated. “I don’t know…”
Thane shrugged. “If you can’t agree to that, then I can’t promise you anything.”