by Lily Cahill
Derek was a shifter? How had they never noticed? Did he not shift? Jax pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes, searching for some clarity. Why would Derek go to all this? For revenge? He was their tour manager, for Christ’s sake. How had he even managed to get himself attached to them?
Then Jax remembered. Their original tour manager had an accident not a month before they were supposed to set out. Apparently, Derek had requested to take on the job, even though he was new to the label. And for the last ten months, that bastard had toured with them, lived with them, shared meals with them. All while plotting to hurt them.
But for what? It didn’t make sense. And why why drag Tiff into this?
“Because she’s my mate,” Jax answered himself aloud.
“What?”
Jax looked up at his brothers crowded around him. “He’s seeking revenge against Errol’s children for his mother. And what better way than to hurt one of our mates? It’s the one thing that would devastate us completely.”
Jax jumped to his feet and strode toward the front of the bus. They had to find Tiff, and they had to do it quick. Derek had mentioned a cabin, a property belonging to his mom’s family. Somewhere north of New Scandia. He racked his brain, trying to scour his mind for the name of the town. It didn’t come.
“Call Mac back,” Jax shouted. “We need to know the exact location of the Craven clan’s property. And we need it now.”
Chapter Nineteen
Tiff
THE FIRST THING TIFF FELT was the cold—harsh at her neck. Then, the ache. Tiff tried to move, but couldn’t. Her chest tightened, like something was pressing down on her. Fear closed her throat and threatened to choke her completely.
Tiff squeezed her entire body tight for one long moment, then released. She had to stay calm, she had to get her bearings. Slowly, steadily, she pulled in a shallow breath. Then another.
Her vision cleared, adjusted to the dim, sickly light. She shifted as best she could and realized her hands were bound behind her back. Tiff groaned and succumbed to the fear that was rising once more up her throat.
“No, no,” she moaned.
Breathe, commanded herself. Breathe.
Using her shoulder, Tiff shimmied herself up onto her side. She was dumped into the crease of a scratchy couch, the brown and orange weave harsh against her skin. Tiff stretched her legs and pushed against the far arm of the couch to twist so she could see her surroundings.
Another cold wind raked icy fingers down her back.
Tiff twisted completely, clenching her teeth against the pain in her shoulders from their unnatural position.
A cabin. She was in a cabin … or what used to be a cabin. It’d fallen into disrepair, with sagging furniture and rags tacked up over the one window she could see. And the door was wide open. It was black as pitch outside the weak circle of light overhead. The lamp swung with another gust of wind through the open door and lit up more of the cabin. Tiff strained to see: a stone fireplace, a pot-belly stove, a door.
A door. If she could ….
Derek stalked back through the open door, slamming it shut behind him. He grimaced when he noticed Tiff and dropped a bag heavily to the floor. It hit with a clatter and sent a plume of dust into the air. Derek crouched to his knees and rifled through the bag, still not acknowledging the woman tied up on his couch. Finally, he straightened with a bundle of sticks in his arms.
Tiff scrambled to sit, pushing herself deeper into the couch. What the hell was he going to do with those? Derek paused, something unreadable passing over his face as Tiff cowered, then stumped past her and knelt at the fireplace.
“You felt freezing,” he said gruffly. “Thought I should make a fire.”
“Why are you doing this?” Tiff said, finally finding her voice. It was raspy and thin, and she could barely keep the tremors out of it.
Derek didn’t answer, just bent over the wood. He was stacking it in the old fireplace, grunting as he did. Despite the chill, there was sweat staining the back of his T-shirt, and the frayed ends of his thin hair were curled and wet.
Tiff strained against her bindings, but the only thing she achieved was a horrible rubbing along the inside of her wrists. Her fingers brushed against something hard in her back pocket, and Tiff froze.
The precision knife. She couldn’t believe it. Tiff closed her eyes in a silent thank you and then slowly slid the knife out of her pocket. Feeling for the top, she flicked the cap off with her thumb and wrapped her fingers around the shaft. The angle was awkward, and she could only work in tiny increments.
Derek stood suddenly and spun around. Tiff froze.
“I can give you money,” Tiff said, desperately.
“I don’t want money,” Derek spat.
The anger that flared in Derek’s dark, watery eyes made Tiff worked harder against the ropes binding her wrists.
“What do you want?” Tiff’s heart hammered in her throat and she could barely whisper around it.
Derek’s mouth pressed into a bloodless line, and muscles strained in his neck. He took a step closer, wrapped two long-fingered hands around Tiff’s shoulders. “I want revenge.”
Tiff sucked in a breath and jerked away. Adrenaline spiked through her and made her muscles clench. Her hand slipped against the precision knife, and the wickedly sharp point nicked her finger. Think. She had to think. She had to keep him talking. She’d promised Lacy she’d call, and if she didn’t, Tiff had to hope that Lacy would call her father. Help could be on the way.
A wild hope sparked in Tiff, only to be doused just as quickly. How would they ever know where she was? She didn’t even know where the hell she was. No. She had to get out of this herself. And that meant getting out of these bindings.
“Why me, Derek? Can you tell me that? I’ve never hurt anybody.”
Derek’s shoulders slumped for a second, his mouth turned down. His eyes when he looked up at Tiff were clouded and almost soft, but then they hardened into obsidian.
“Neither had she,” he hissed. His lips twisted into a snarl and his hands curled into fists. Tiff sawed more frantically. “You have no idea how long I’ve waited for this. I kept a close watch, got myself into the right position.”
“Please, Derek. Please,” Tiff begged.
Derek loomed over her. “You think her begging stopped him from raping her? From murdering her?”
Confusion just made Tiff more scared. Derek was mad. He was raving about something that meant nothing to Tiff.
Derek laughed, and that jolted Tiff even more. His laugh scraped across Tiff’s skin and left horrible shivers in its wake. “They didn’t even know who I was, you know that? My own mother was brutally killed by their father, and they didn’t have a fucking clue who I was. They didn’t care about the misery their father put others through.”
That’s when Tiff knew. She gasped, and her bounds broke. Her shoulders jerked with the sudden freeing, but she kept her arms hidden behind her back. Derek lurked just above her, blocking her path to the front door. She had to get him to move, get him to calm down before she could make a run for it. She glanced again at the door off to her side. Maybe she could barricade herself in there, climb out a window.
“Jax’s dad,” she said, emotion coloring her voice. Jax had said his father was a killer, but to see the devastation he wrought in front of her face was something else entirely. Tiff’s blood ran cold—fear for herself, pain for what Jax must have gone through. Then, a new realization. “You’re a shifter too?”
Derek cocked his head and regarded Tiff for a moment. The smile that stretched his lips made Tiff’s blood run cold. “Oh, don’t worry, sweetheart. You’ll meet my bear soon enough.”
“Derek, I don’t know the pain you must have gone through, but I know what it’s like to lose a parent. My mother died when I was twenty.”
Derek sucked in a small breath and paused. He narrowed his eyes at Tiff. “How’d she die?”
“Cancer. Pancreatic cancer. She died fou
r months after the diagnosis. It nearly killed me.”
Derek scrubbed his hands over his face. “I’m sorry. This really has nothing to do with you, you have to know that. I’ve been a coward for nearly a year, hoping like hell those fuckers wouldn’t find a mate. I almost didn’t ….” Derek covered his face with his hands.
“You don’t have to do this. You can let me go. Maybe you can find peace. Your mother … your mother wouldn’t want her son to become a monster.”
Derek jerked his head up. “Errol Hart was the monster. How do you know what my mother would have wanted? I was thirteen when she was murdered. I didn’t get a wonderful four months to say good-bye to her. She went out for groceries one day and never came home. You know what that’s like? No, how could you?”
His shoulders were heaving, his breath coming short and fast. “You know what it’s like to watch your father shrink in on himself, devoid of life after he’s lost his soulmate? You know what it’s like to relocate to a place you’d only visited once, have no friends, then come home one day to find your dad with his brains blown out?” Derek stalked closer and leaned down into Tiff’s face. His teeth were bared and his eyes were manic. “No,” he hissed. “You don’t.”
Underneath the fear, Tiff’s heart twisted for this broken man, for the scared, lonely boy he must have been. Grief had twisted him into a monster, but Tiff had to believe he wasn’t born that way. She appealed to that core of goodness that she hoped was still buried inside of him.
“I’m sorry, Derek. I’m so sorry for what happened to you. If there was anything I could do to make you feel peace. Death like that, it leaves a hole in your world that can never be filled.”
Derek leered, and Tiff’s heart nearly stopped to see the humanity blink out of existence in his dark eyes. “I’m going to fill that hole with blood.”
Tiff flinched away from him, her hand tight around the knife. It was now or never. She lurched to the side, swinging her arm as she did. She slashed at Derek, ripping the knife down his cheek. He roared and stumbled back, probably as much in shock at her freedom than anything. But it was something. Tiff scrambled to her feet and sprinted for the door.
A hand clamped around her calf and jerked. Tiff shrieked and hit the floor, smacking the side of her head so hard black spots ghosted in her vision. The knife skittered out of her hands and across the floor. She cried out in frustration even as Derek’s grip around her calf was dragging her back. He flipped her over onto her back and pinned her down. Tiff reached blindly out to her side, desperation coursing through her.
There. Her fingers scratched against something solid and she dragged a large stick across the floor. Over her, Derek was breathing heavy through his nose, his eyes nearly shut in what looked like immense pain. He roared, and his face lengthened, his teeth sharpened.
Tiff choked back fear and struggled against him, but he was so heavy … too heavy. His joints were snapping, reforming, his mouth and nose becoming a snout. Shaggy hair was rippling down his limbs, and ragged claws were splintering his human fingernails.
With every last bit of strength she had, Tiff smacked the stick against Derek’s temple.
But it wasn’t Derek’s temple. It was a bear.
Tiff sobbed and shut her eyes against the terror snapping its jaws above her.
“Tiff!”
That voice. Was she hallucinating? Had fear broken her mind in her final moments?
“Tiff!”
Behind her, the cabin door banged open, and Jax was there.
Chapter Twenty
Jax
TERROR LANCED THROUGH JAX. TERROR and relief and a hundred other emotions that he couldn’t name.
Tiff was alive. Tiff was pinned under a bear. A bear that had been their touring manager for the last year without any of them knowing it.
A primal need to protect his mate above all else surged through Jax. His mate was being hurt. Jax lunged for the bear looming over Tiff, already shifting himself. He rammed his shoulder against the bear, flinging him off Tiff.
“Run,” he growled at Tiff with the last use of his human voice before he’d shifted completely. His front arms hit the ground heavily as paws, and he roared at Derek.
The two bears squared off, pawing at the wooden floorboards as they shifted around each other, looking for an opening. Derek’s bear was tall and rangy, but not even half the weight of Jax’s powerful, muscular bear form. His fur was patchy in places, and almost leeched of color. He looked emaciated and weak.
That’s when Jax put together how another shifter had lived with him for months without him knowing. Derek had denied his bear … and by the look of it, he’d denied it for a very long time.
Derek snarled, then jumped. Jax reared up on his hind legs and met the attack with all his force. He rammed his great, shaggy head into Derek’s bony chest and deflected the attack. Derek whined in pain and fell onto his side, scrambling to get back up. But he was weak and slow. Jax swiped on giant paw along Derek’s ribs, opening up four deep gashes. The bear struggled back up, but Jax swiped at him again, and Derek collapsed back to the floor. He raised his paw for the final blow—to put this decimated bear out of its misery—when Tiff yelled.
“Jax! Stop!”
Jax huffed loudly, his need for blood singing in his veins. This monster had hurt his mate. He deserved to die.
“Stop it,” Tiff pleaded. “Please, Jax. Don’t hurt him.” A tender hand came to rest on his shoulder, and he paused. Tentatively, Tiff buried her fingers into Jax’s thick fur and pressed her hand against his warm skin. Her touch was a soothing balm, and Jax found his breath.
Underneath him, he looked down to see Derek cowering on the floor, a man once more. Jax shifted back just as his brothers burst through the door. Bret shot a tranq gun, and a syringe lodged into Derek’s neck. The tranquilizer wouldn’t knock him out, but it would stop him from shifting. Not that they had much danger from that. Jax reached down and hauled Derek up to standing, grabbing a length of rope from the couch and binding the man’s hands behind his back. Derek hung limply, didn’t protest.
“You’re going back to Montana to face the shifter council for your crimes.”
That roused Derek. He jeered at Jax, at the others, then spit at Jax’s feet. “Like your father did? How many did he murder before he was finally brought to justice. I don’t accept any justice from your kind.”
Anger flared in Jax, but it was twinged with a truth that seared him. This was all because of Errol Hart. Tiff had been hurt because of that man. It may have been Derek who had done this, but it all reached back to Errol. Jax stood up tall and glared at Derek.
“We have no father. The man who sired us was a madman, and we are survivors of his terror. We are not him, Derek.” Jax sighed, suddenly very, very tired. “If you could have given us a chance, maybe you would have seen that. We can’t change who we are—I wouldn’t want to change who I am, a bear and a man—but that doesn’t make us complicit in Errol Hart’s crimes.”
Drew came forward to haul Derek off, and Jax turned to Tiff. She fell into him arms, and he held her tight. His mate. His love.
Jax couldn’t stop touching Tiff. Couldn’t stop running his hands over her skin, her hair, her face. She was okay. No, more than that, she was amazing. When he’d burst in, she’d been trying to fight off a bear. How many people would have the ability to do that?
His mate did, though. He didn’t think it possible, but Jax fell more in love with Tiff in that moment.
Jax buried his face into her long hair and breathed deeply—the first proper breath he’d taken since waking up on that bus.
“How’d you find me?” Tiff asked. Her voice was watery and thin, and Jax held her closer. “I thought I was on my own. I thought ….”
“You’re my mate, Tiff Anderson. I will always find you. I will always be there for you.”
Tiff sobbed and clutched at Jax. “I read your email, Jax. I am so sorry I doubted—”
“Shh, shh,” Jax murmured
. He pulled back and lifted Tiff’s chin to look into her beautiful face. “I shouldn’t have given you any room for doubt. I should have fought harder for you from the very beginning.”
Her eyes were wet and her lips quivered. He pressed a soft kiss against her forehead, her nose, her mouth. Tiff melted into his touch and nestled against his chest.
“You’ll never have to fight to prove your love to me again. I am yours, Jax Hart. Utterly yours.”
“And I am yours. Tiff, you must know how much I love you. When I thought you were hurt ….” Jax had to stop and focus on taking a breath. Jesus. If Tiff had been hurt …. His soul twisted painfully at the possibility.
It was Tiff’s turn to touch him softly, to reassure him. She ran a finger along the seam of his lips and then pressed up onto her toes to kiss him.
“I never want to go another night without you by my side, Jax. I know we’ve only known each other a few days, but I … I need you, Jax.”
Jax sucked in a breath and captured Tiff’s mouth with his own. His kiss lingered, a long hello. A hello to his future, to his happiness.
“Tiff,” he murmured, pressing his forehead against hers. “I don’t know what next year will bring, or the year after that, but if I have you with me, I’ll be happy.”
Tiff sighed and smiled. “So it looks like I’ll be saying good-bye to New Scandia then.”
Jax’s smile matched her own. “We can build our life absolutely anywhere you want, Tiff. My home is with you, always.”
“Always.” Her eyes fluttered closed for a moment, but then a wicked smile curled at her lips. “I know where we should go first.”
“Yeah? Where is that?” Jax kissed her briefly, then pulled back to look at her.
Tiff raised her eyebrows. “Well, you did reserve me two nights at The Drake in Chicago. It’d be a shame to let that big bed go to waste.”
Jax growled his approval. “And the shower, and the chair, and the desk.”
Tiff laughed, a sound that flooded Jax with happiness, and nuzzled into his shoulder. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”