by Vanessa Jaye
“Get lost, you stupid fucking bird!”
Then she was off again, throwing jerky glances over her shoulder as she ran because the obscene crunch, crunch, crunch, crunch of the bone-paved path blocked out every other sound except the white-static panic roaring in her head.
Finally, the most beautiful sight of Silas’s beat-up cab came in view. Tessa sprinted the last few feet, squeezed through the gates and climbed into the backseat. Silas revved the engine as he turned to look at her, his eyes stretched so wide they showed mostly whites.
“You okay, miss?”
“Just get me out of here, Silas. I want to go home.” Her voice was thick with tears.
She didn’t have to ask twice. He left a spray of gravel behind them as he sped back down the hill and away from Templeton’s. Away from Nate.
She left her dreams behind.
Chapter Nineteen
“And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.”
As Nate stared at the painted scripture on the walls of the shanty he felt truth of the words down to his bones, but most of all he felt the absence of all three in his life.
She was gone.
Forever.
No use thinking about it. Instead he let other things occupy his attention, like the chickens scratching away in the yard or the fast-tempo song playing on the radio inside the house. He could have zeroed in on the low-pitched voices out by the main gate, but he didn’t, just caught the odd phrase here and there. Alejandro would get around to him once he was done giving Mitch his new orders and once Mitch stopped bitching about heading back to Russia. Nate felt a small smile tug at his mouth.
As for himself…well…he looked around and everywhere he looked he saw Tessa, white-gold hair almost liquid in the sunlight, slim thighs silhouetted by her thin cotton dress. And in the room just minutes ago, touching him, begging him—
His smile died. He swallowed and wiped away a bead of sweat that trailed past the outer corner of his eye. It would’ve never have worked. And he had no one to blame but himself, because he’d known, hadn’t he? That avenging Beth’s murder, turning himself into this other thing, could mean his own end. It had been the risk he’d been prepared to take.
But that was before Tessa.
Everything had changed with Tessa.
Nate’s hair lifted, sweeping in front of his face before whipping back. He watched little dirt devils spike up and whirl away into grass, sending the chickens running. Looks like it was his turn now to get bitched out by the boss. The faint scent of burning leaves grew stronger, then Alejandro walked into his line of vision.
Like him, the Elder was dressed in loose-fitting jeans and T-shirt, but Alejandro wore his long black hair pulled back in a ponytail. He stood silent for a moment, hands clasped behind his back, taking in the ramshackle structure and random writings. Finally, he turned to give Nate the same scrutiny.
“Well, this seems familiar.” He made a careless gesture in Nate’s direction. “You, alone, looking like shit, and mooning over the loss of your mate.”
Nate felt a muscle tick in his jaw. “That your way of calling me a pussy?”
“Oh, no, not at all.” Alejandro’s mocking tone belied his words. “Most shifters, especially a wolf, would have never found the strength to send away their mate. But you, you my great lumbering self-sacrificing beast of a hero, had a second chance and you just—” he snapped his fingers, “—let it go. No, I’d say that takes a lot of balls.”
“Or a lot of stupid.”
Alejandro laughed. A flash of white teeth faded to the merest shadow of a smile as his dark gaze sharpened. “You’re not stupid, my friend. Reckless, yes. A bit of a cowboy, for sure, but never stupid.” He grew even more somber.
“To break with a mate…it is not the easiest thing. In most cases it is impossible. I feel your pain.”
Not bloody likely. Nate just nodded. He didn’t trust himself to speak.
“So, now that we’ve reached an understanding, you will go to the female.”
“What? No!” Nate surged to his feet. “Don’t want to.” Liar. “I can’t.”
“You can and you will.”
“No. She’s not safe with me. You know, you know what I’ve become.”
“What you’ve become is insubordinate and this close to being a liability.” Alejandro held his thumb and forefinger close barely apart.
Gooseflesh rose up on Nate’s arms. The air grew oppressively hotter and felt like it was filled with a million tiny needles that pricked his throat on the way down to his lungs.
“I took you into my tribe, gave you the training, the tools and an able soldier in Mitch. And I warned you of the dangers of the creature’s venom, yet you decided you knew better than me. And you kept your secret from me. A very dangerous secret, as you know. One that would have gotten you killed. Might have gotten you killed as recently as yesterday, if I hadn’t sworn to your stability with the other Elders. Don’t you ever fucking put me in that position again.” Alejandro’s lips were almost bloodless as they curled under, baring his teeth.
“Don’t ever make me regret my decision about you, Nate. I have more than enough regret to last this lifetime as it is. I’ll spare you the same fate. So let me be perfectly clear now, you will go to the woman and you will finish this assignment.”
Alejandro’s little show of power eased enough for Nate to unclench his jaw and gasp out, “Finish what? Are you ordering me to breed my mate?” The image of Tessa, round with his child, her breasts full and heavy hit hard. Nate swallowed. His voice hoarsened. “The assignment is over. I killed the Pithcus.”
“No,” Alejandro said with soft finality.
Nate felt his gut wrenched. “It couldn’t have survived.”
“Why not? You did.”
He shook his head, recalling the feel of the monster’s muscular neck in his grasp as they spiraled deeper into the cold black water. He’d kept squeezing until her one good eye had clouded over, she’d stopped struggling and her dead weight had dragged them both down. Even then he’d been loathed to loosen his grip. When he did, the ocean had quickly swallowed her up before he made a desperate break for the surface.
“This Angelica—” Alejandro’s mouth twisted and his eyes resembled two flat black stones in his face, “—she broke contact with her tribe years ago. Obviously no one knew what she’d been up to since. No one could have imagined the depths she’d sink to. I couldn’t afford to underestimate her again.
“After our debriefing on the phone two days ago, I decided to come up here and personally satisfy myself of her demise.”
“Without telling either me or Mitch.”
“I’m accountable to no one but myself, Nate. Never forget that.”
Fucking Elders and their secrets. “And what’ve you found out since your arrival?” he asked sarcastically.
“She was in hiding. Recovering, just as you are, but she knew I was here.” Alejandro’s expression became even more remote. “She did not escape her fate this time,” he said chillingly.
“But how did she survive? The Cartemine poison. The silver blades…there was one embedded in her eye, another in her side. She was hurt, worst than me and Mitch.”
“She was also Pithcus.” Alejandro looked away, the strong lines of his profile as clean and sharp and still as if Nate were staring at a photograph.
A photo that captured a moment of profound pain.
And that’s when Nate knew.
“She was,” he said.
“She was…” Alejandro repeated softly.
“Your mate.”
The Elder flinched. He walked to the edge of the shelter, facing the yard, his back to Nate. He cleared his throat, but his voice was rough when he finally spoke. “You think you’re a monster now, that you’re a danger to Tessa, but the true monster, my friend, is the one who closes their heart to love. Even the possibility of it. I will tell you this truth, the only time you ever hurt Tessa, was whe
n you sent her away.”
Nate saw himself reaching for her in the bedroom earlier, deliberately letting his creature out. He’d only meant to scare her. For her own good, so she’d leave. But—
He would have never hurt her. Ever.
And that truth hit him hard. It freed him from the grip of an all-encompassing fear, but only deepened the realization of how majorly he’d messed things up.
Alejandro hadn’t finished saying his piece. “Five years ago, when you came to the hacienda, you came to die. I gave you a cure and a reason to live. This assignment was never just about having revenge or gaining justice. It was about your healing. Spiritually and emotionally. So far you’ve beaten all the odds—survived the Pithcus bite to become Pithcus yourself. You’ve mastered the beast inside you for all these years. And now, another mate. A second chance at love.”
Over his shoulder, Alejandro nailed Nate with a piercing look. “Some of us never get that chance. Don’t screw it up. Go to Tessa. Don’t hurt her any more than you already have.”
He flicked his hand out and something flew across the space between them with a slight jangle, and Nate caught it on reflex. He looked down, they were car keys.
When he looked up again Alejandro was gone.
Even with the ill-fated stop at Templeton’s, Tessa still had plenty of leeway to get to the airport on time. And that was without taking Silas’s maniac driving into account. As desperately as she held back her tears, she held on to her seat more. Then, when his cell-phone rang and the car went airborne as he answered, for one terrifying moment Tessa actually rose above her overwhelming grief. Not to mention a few inches off the backseat.
Thankfully, he slowed down while taking the call, and kept to a more sedate speed when it ended. Going as far as to suggest a more scenic, roundabout route to the airport. Tessa was all for it—arriving in one piece, that is—but didn’t pay much attention to the lush scenery once he turned onto a quieter road. Vivid flora and multi-hued fauna all blended into a blurred backdrop before her uncaring eyes.
She just wanted to go home, curl up in her own bed, surrounded by the familiar and the mundane, and put this whole wretched experience behind her. If it were possible. As if anything could ever be the same again.
That had been twenty minutes ago.
Twenty long minutes since the car had started to make a strange rattling noise and decelerated. After some under-his-breath cussing, Silas assured her he’d have the problem fixed in no time and pulled over to the side of the road, then popped the hood.
That was twenty minutes ago.
And they hadn’t seen another car pass this way since several miles back by her estimations. Now Tessa was regretting the decision to leave the main thoroughfare.
She poked her head out the open window. “Having any luck, Silas?”
“I think so. Maybe if I—”
A distressing hissing sound suddenly cut off the rest of his words and he let loose a string of curse words in St. Stephan’s patois interspersed with the more familiar, and all-purpose, Anglo-Saxon.
A sudden eruption of steam billowed out from under the hood of the cab and Tessa scrambled out of the vehicle. “Silas?”
He appeared around the edge of the cab, waving away the streaming vapor from in front of his face.
“It done fer now, miss. But I’se put in a call to a friend. Help soon come. This car have lots more life in it yet.”
Oh really? Tessa ignored Silas’s beaming face and stared at the rusted heap of hope and metal he so optimistically referred to as a car. How Silas had kept his taxi even marginally operational, especially with his parkour approach to driving, was anyone’s guess.
“Maybe you can call me another cab?”
He made a dismissive gesture. “No need for that, miss. Listen. You hear that?” Silas cupped a hand to his ear and leaned forward in an exaggerated pose that made her want to ask if he heard a Who.
But then she heard it too, the sound of an approaching car, and before long a shiny low-slung sports car seemed to shoot out of the surrounding vegetation as it came hard around the last major turn in the road. Silas’s friend was driving some serious horsepower.
Tessa’s admiration of the late model Mercedes lasted right up to the moment the driver slowed and pulled up behind them. Shocked, she met Nate’s gaze through the windshield, then the hurt she’d been keeping at bay flooded over her anew.
She set her mouth set in a firm line and turned away before she shamed herself and let her hungry gaze eat him up.
“Tessa!”
She hesitated long enough to hear the men exchange some words. As she slid into the backseat of Silas’s taxi the other car’s engine revved up and Tessa glanced through the rear window, disappointment spearing through her that he’d gone away again, so quickly. So easily.
If she’d thought there was no more hurt to be had in the world, she’d just been proven wrong. Pain cleaved into her chest.
She’d barely made out the shadowy outline of the driver in the other car as it sped by, when the door of the cab was wrenched from her grip and she realized that Nate was standing there. He hadn’t left. Tessa quickly squashed the flare of happiness she felt and scrabbled across the seat for the handle on the opposite door as he clambered in after her. Her breathing turned to a rapid mix of gasps and moans of denial. She couldn’t stand to have him this close. She didn’t want him to touch her and yet it was the thing she wanted most.
“Tessa, stop!”
Nate grabbed her by the shoulder and pulled her towards him.
“No! Let go! Get away.” She turned on him. All her hurt and fears whipped into frenzied action. “You said you didn’t want me,” she sobbed out, grabbing fistfuls of his hair. Nate didn’t want her. Her parents, Eric…even Tricia had left her. Well she didn’t want him either. She didn’t need anyone.
When Nate roared in pain, she felt a thrill of satisfaction and yanked on his hair harder.
He swore, his face darkening with anger. “I said stop!”
She did, panting. “Fuck. You. Let me go.”
Blue-brown eyes glared back at her. “Never.”
His response flipped a switch inside her. She went from zero to crazy in the space of a breath, kicking, pushing and clawing until Nate had both her wrists captured in one hand and his body pressed hers down into hot leather seat. She heaved, arching her back, but that only settled him more firmly against her. The sweet familiar weight was her undoing. His hot breath at her neck, the silky sweep of his hair, the scent of him, the memories…
The wanting.
The needing.
It was all too much. Tessa found herself sobbing uncontrollably into his shoulder.
“Don’t. Babes, please don’t cry. I’ll make it up to you. I promise. I’ll spend the rest of my life making it up to you. I’ll never hurt you again. Never.”
He was whispering things in her ear, vows and apologies, punctuated with tiny kisses, and his hold went from controlling to comforting. By the time the storm of tears passed he’d maneuvered them both so she was on his lap.
Tessa had one arm flung around his shoulder and she funneled her fingers through the hair at his nape, content to just sit in silence with him for a while. They’d both been through so much, and she knew that they still had a way to go for this relationship to work, but now she was confident that he wanted this as much as she did.
After all, he’d come after her.
“I’m sorry, Tessa,” Nate said again, his voice low and fervent. “I’ve been an idiot.”
“And an asshole.” She wasn’t letting him off that easily.
“And an asshole,” he conceded wryly.
He could tell her mind was working furiously, but he waited for her to speak.
“And afraid,” she added quietly.
She was right. He had been afraid. Afraid to believe they had a future. Now he was just as afraid to let her go. To go on living without her, if that were even possible.
“I
t’s okay to be afraid. I’m afraid too,” Tessa said and wove her fingers farther through his hair.
Nate buried his face in her neck. She smelled of soap, and lotion and perfume. Her scent was all Tessa. The scent of his mate.
She kept stroking his hair, murmuring that it would be all right, and he felt her mind just as gently coaxing his to open, feathering his senses in downy calm. Her caring soaked into his pores, melting in his veins, etching into corners of his heart where it hadn’t reached before.
He was helpless to resist, didn’t want to fight it anymore, so he let her in, his last defenses slipping away like a heavy cloak, and he gave her full access to all his secrets and fears because a spark of doubt still remained. Just look at the messed-up deal between Alejandro and Angelica.
“Oh my God…they were mated…and Alejandro had to…?” Tessa drew her hand from his hair and pressed a fist to her mouth, she’d gone pale and her eyes were wide.
A kind of wild desperation had taken hold of him. Tessa had come to mean so much to him. So much. Was that fear in her gaze? Or was it a reflection of his own fears? What if he ever…
“Oh, Nate.” There was a little hiccup in her voice and now tears sparkled in her eyes. She pressed her fingers to his lips.
“You need to stop that right now and just believe in us,” she urged in a whisper.
For a very long time, Nate stared into the glowing promise held in her gaze while he read the steady resolve in her mind. Most of all, he let the warmth flowing from her heart envelope him as the interior of the cab was filled with the soft glitter of dancing motes.
“Okay. I can do that. I will. I do.”
That he could feel hope again. Have this happiness, this woman in his life…well, then yes, he could believe in anything. Anything for her.
Even second chances.
Even love.
Especially love.
About the Author
I write on my laptop, sitting at a battered, gothic-inspired dining room table I picked up for a song at an antique market. To my right, the patio doors give me a clear view of a tree-filled backyard that receives many visitors—four-footed and winged—from the nearby ravine. It’s a nice spot for my muse to play.