by Jessica Ryan
He wanted to believe that was true, but in actuality it sounded like the reasoning of a nerdy teenage boy who had watched too many movies after the prom queen had rejected him. Seth wasn’t a teenage boy and he damn sure wasn’t a nerd. He was an alpha wolf, dammit, and she was going to realize what she had thrown away. Once she saw his strength and power, once she saw the way the bigger Rowan would defer to him and back down when he demanded answers, she would be forced to come falling back into his arms, begging that he forget everything she had said before about their love being a mistake. And he would forgive her. Together they would preside over Bucklin until the time to retire was near. Then they would steal away together to some remote, wooded mansion in the hills where they would live out the rest of their days with their pups—not a care in the whole world. It was perfect—and it was going to happen.
As he pulled onto her street he felt a pang of excitement run through him as he saw the house she was staying in. The anger and angst was gone, replaced by the thrill of the hunt. When he was apart from her, things felt hopeless and bleak, but when she came into view all his vigor returned and he knew that he was doing the right thing. She was sitting on the front porch, staring out at the street in front of her.
How many times had he driven by that house to find someone else sitting on the front porch? Someone else staring into the distance trying to find their purpose in life? So many times he had wanted to pull over and hop out, walk up to that person and lay it all on the line. He wanted to let them know they weren’t alone.
He wanted to say, “I know your sister has been kidnapped and your father was murdered by her captor, but you don’t have to feel alone anymore. Sure, Aster is like a brother, but you have an actual blood brother right here. Rowan, it’s me: your brother.”
William would have his hide if he did that. Instead, he ignored his half-brother every time he drove by, and bided his time—hoping and praying that William knew what he was doing. The chance was lost, or so Seth thought. Now he had a chance to make everything right. He was going to take his new mate and he was going to go find his brother and prove that he wasn’t attacking Bucklin like Jacko claimed. Then he would form a strong alliance with Rowan and Aster, one built on blood ties that were stronger than any human contact. It would continue to ensure the future of Bucklin for generations to come. Nobody would ever bother the town as it grew into prominence and his brothers would run checks on any shifters who tried to cause trouble.
He smiled as he hopped out of the truck. Everything he had ever wanted was coming together and it all began with the buxom beauty who was sitting on the front porch of Rowan’s old house. She was now looking at the ground, looking more bored than anything else.
She was probably doing complex calculations in her head—she seemed to get off on that kind of thing. Or she was trying to figure out the statistical probability of their survival.
“Hello, Maribel,” he said, stopping and trying to remain cool. “Where’s your bag?”
She looked up at him and took in a deep breath. He could immediately smell the arousal on her as her eyes traveled over his tight gray t-shirt and even tighter blue jeans. She knew exactly what she wanted—she just wouldn’t let herself fall that easily. He wondered if she knew how easily her body betrayed her true feelings to him.
“I haven’t packed yet,” she said.
“What do you mean, you haven’t packed yet?” he asked, looking up at the sun, which was beginning to make its descent. “It’ll be dark soon. I want to be at the entrance of the forest by then.”
“Why didn’t we just leave in the morning?” she asked.
“Because we can’t waste any time. Plus, a lot of wild shifters are nocturnal. If we sleep when they sleep, we don’t run the risk of any of them happening upon our camp. Now, why haven’t you packed?”
“Ninety-three percent of women over-pack for simple overnight trips. This is more than an overnight trip, but it’s one that I’ve never been on. I didn’t want you to laugh at me when I walked out with a giant suitcase to drag into the woods.”
How sweet. She was worried about what he would think. Another strike against the speech she had made in the conference room. “Fortunately for you, I brought a camping pack. It should be all we need. We’re not going through the woods to find the Four Seasons, I’m sorry to say. This is going to be a tough and rugged trip. I’m not even one hundred percent sure where they are. I have to follow marks and use my nose.”
“You can smell that well?”
“Not as a human.”
He watched as the color drained from her face as she realized exactly what he was implying. She wasn’t going to get to travel with human Seth for most of the trip.
“I read that shifted wolves have a forty-seven percent chance of their wolf taking over and turning them feral for a brief period. Are you going to run that risk with me there? Mr. Sokolov would never forgive you if you ate me.”
Seth rolled his eyes and sighed loudly enough that she immediately knew she was being ridiculous. “Maribel, do you actually believe that nonsense?”
“It was in a book.”
“Do you believe every book you read?”
“He had good sources.”
“What source is better than an actual alpha wolf? Tell me that.”
She smiled. It was a weak smile but a smile nonetheless. “I know you told me numbers don’t have much bearing when you’re dealing with a shifter.”
“They have even less meaning when you’re dealing with Seth of Bucklin,” he said with a sardonic smile that was dripping with confidence. He could smell her arousal grow even more as she kept her eyes firmly trained on him. But just as quickly as the moment hit them, it floated away again as Maribel regained control of her senses and shut him out.
“So, what should I pack?” she asked, standing up. “I wanted to bring my first aid kit. It’s pretty stocked up. I stopped by the only drugstore you have in this town on the way home.”
“We’ll have many more, plus other stores when the casino is built,” Seth said. Bucklin was in a sad state, but it would reclaim its once-beautiful ways someday. Every abandoned building Seth saw brought a knot to his stomach, but soon it would be over.
“Well, I got some basic necessities,” she said. “I’m not sure what to do about snakebite, although there’s only a fifteen percent chance that we’ll get bitten by one and can’t suck the venom out. You don’t have any open cuts in your mouth, do you?”
I’ll suck anything out of you that you want, Seth thought. “No, I don’t. And you don’t have to worry about it. A wolf can’t be poisoned by a simple rattlesnake. We’ll be fine. Nothing will harm you when I’m around. I promised to protect you, remember?”
She stiffened when he said those words, like they were bringing some repressed memory back to her head. It was brief, but it was enough for Seth to catch it and cock his head in confusion. She had seemed to like his promise before, but now it upset her?
“I know you did,” she huffed out. “Can we just get on the road soon? I need to grab my flashlight if we’re going to be traveling at night.”
“No flashlight,” he said, shaking his head.
“Without a flashlight I’m sixty…”
“Yes, sixty thousand hundred percent more likely to break your knee or roll your ankle or something. Just trust me, please. We can’t go out there with a flashlight. It could attract predators. We have to use the moonlight to see. If it’s that bad, you can just ride on my back.”
Maribel curled her arm around her stomach and looked up at him. He knew she was feeling self-conscious about her size. It had probably been a stupid thing for him to say, but she had to know that he wasn’t going to let her fall off a cliff or break her ankle on a tree root in the darkness. “You’re a wolf, not a horse. I can’t ride on your back.”
“You’ve never seen me shifted,” Seth said. “I don’t think you realize how large a shifted wolf is, especially an alpha. You’re in for a tre
at.”
Her eyes grew wide with excitement before returning to normal size as she turned to reenter the house. “Just wait for me here. I’ll pack up.”
“Maribel?” he asked, looking back at his truck. She turned and looked at him as she got to the doorway. “You haven’t even gotten the pack from me yet.”
“Oh,” she said. Her mind was starting to wander again now that it was time to go. Was she really that disturbed about going into the woods alone with him? He knew females had mood swings, but who had ones this wild?
Seth walked back to the truck and grabbed the pack before heading back up the stairs. Maribel tried to block his entrance into the house, but he pushed his way past. As he entered the kitchen he froze, the hair on the back of his neck standing up. She was alone now, but she hadn’t been alone this entire day. The scent was an affront to his nostrils. He could feel his muscles involuntarily flex. The offending party hadn’t gone much farther than the door and his stink didn’t cover Maribel, so there’d been no foul play sexually. What the hell did Jacko want with her and why had he been in her house?
Maribel’s eyes grew wide as she stared at him. She knew exactly what he was smelling and that was the reason she had tried to prevent him from entering the house. Was he being set up? Was Maribel part of their plan?
He looked back at her, studied every inch of her face as she stood behind him. No. She hadn’t betrayed him. If there was a plot against Seth, she was not involved. The fear in her eyes as she studied Seth’s reaction was all the convincing he needed.
“What did he want?” Seth asked quietly.
“He and Ms. Wilson stopped by,” Maribel said hastily.
“He must have scared you pretty bad for you to lie to me,” Seth said, turning back to face her. “You think I wouldn’t be able to smell her whore’s perfume?”
“It was nothing,” Maribel said, grabbing the pack from him and heading for the bedroom. “I swear. Nothing happened.”
“Did he hurt you?” Seth asked. His question made her freeze in her tracks. Her head turned slowly to face him. “He’s bad news, Maribel. Let me know if he hurt you and that’ll be the end of him.”
“No,” she said, her words barely squeaking out of her throat. “He didn’t hurt me at all.”
“Did he threaten you?”
“No.”
“You don’t have to lie to me. If he did anything to you, then I need to know about it. I’ll make him pay.”
“You should stay away from him,” she whispered. If he’d been a normal man, he wouldn’t have been able to hear her words, but his enhanced hearing picked her voice up perfectly.
“He should stay away from me,” Seth corrected.
“No,” she whispered again. “Stay away from him.”
“I don’t fear him.”
“You should,” she said.
Her words hit him in the chest like a battering ram. She left him standing in shock as she disappeared into the back of the house to gather her belongings and prepare for the trip. Seth couldn’t believe the words she had said to him. He was an alpha wolf and he feared no man or beast. So why couldn’t he shake the feeling that she was right and he should be more careful around Jacko?
Chapter 3
The drive to the forest was so silent Maribel thought she would pass out. When she had finished packing her change of clothes and spare shoes, she had found Seth waiting in the truck. When she got in, he had looked at her like he wanted to say something, but he had shut up quickly and thrown the truck into reverse. As they peeled out on the street, she’d sworn she saw Jacko standing on the front porch of the house he had been given. He was watching them, and she hated it.
Seth didn’t try to engage her in conversation at all during the drive. He drove at speeds that weren’t safe for the old, beat-up roads they drove on. She considered laying the statistics out for him several times, but she knew he would just lecture her again about how he was a big, bad alpha wolf who defied all probability and good judgment.
She wanted to believe him so badly. He was strong, confident and exuded leadership like no man she had ever met. But somehow she was still afraid of Jacko and she knew Seth should be too. What the hell was Jacko and why was he so damn scary? She knew that statistically a man had no chance to beat a shifter in any kind of fair fight, but Jacko didn’t fight fair. She knew he’d killed shifters before.
She’d once read about ancient orders that gathered together to hunt down the supernatural. They were usually just men, but somehow they had been able to slay vampires and werewolves with brutal efficiency. Many of them had claimed they were protected by their faith in God, while others had claimed they had special magical items that they had gathered over the years from ancient tombs. Whatever the case was—they didn’t fear any shifters. But Jacko didn’t seem like the most pious man she had ever met. No, he was confident in his ability for a different reason.
When they finally arrived at the entrance to the forest, she was exhausted from the silence. Seth was brooding like a moody teenager and she was tired of playing this game. She wanted him, she wanted him bad. But he could never know that. Still, she had to say something to bring his mood back around. She’d read studies that said you were seventy-two percent more likely to catch a man’s interest if you asked about him. Generally a man’s favorite subject was himself.
“So, have you ever been out here before?” she asked, trying to find some sort of jumping-on point.
“Once,” Seth said, pulling their packs out of the truck. “It was a long time ago, though, when I met with Aster.”
“The old mayor?”
“That’s the one.”
He’s in a shitty mood, she thought. “What did you two have to talk about?”
“I just wanted advice,” Seth said.
“So you know where he lives?”
“I caught him in town,” Seth said. “I followed him back here.”
“So, the other wolves do come back to town from time to time?”
“Not that I know of. He was trying to get something from his old home. He told me it was the last time he’d ever lay eyes on Bucklin.”
“That’s kind of depressing,” Maribel said, following him towards a small hill that led up into the tree line. She could see a path just on the other side that wound through the trees. At least they wouldn’t be on an overgrown trail.
“How so?” Seth asked.
“He just gave up his home,” she said. “Just like that. I mean, you’re attached to it, right?”
“I guess.”
“It is a special place. One of a kind, actually. There aren’t many places like this out there in the world. Sure, wolves have their pack land, but how many can really claim to have an entire city to themselves?”
Seth looked back in the direction of Bucklin with a sort of reverence in his eyes. He smiled and then looked down at her, his hardened face softening. She could tell at that moment that the tension and anger he had felt before was beginning to escape his body, bringing back the same smiling cutie she had spent so much time with over the last week. “I guess you’re right. It is one of a kind, but unfortunately it’s going the way of the dinosaur too. We’re opening it up to humans now, remember?”
“Yeah,” she said. She had forgotten that little detail. “Still, Seth, you have something to be very proud of. I guess things change and people grow. Aster outgrew Bucklin and did what was best for those who wanted to follow him. You’re doing what’s best for who’s left. Who’s to say which one of you is right or wrong?”
“We’re both right,” Seth said, leading her through the trees. “We did the best we could with what we had in front of us.”
“That’s a good way to look at it. Aster has moved on, but maybe Rowan hasn’t.”
Seth stopped and turned back to her with a cold, steely gaze she hadn’t seen before this point. “My brother isn’t the one who attacked Jacko. I’m not even sure Jacko was attacked.”
Surely he wasn’t imp
lying what she thought he was implying. That was madness. Jacko was paid very well by Mr. Sokolov. He wouldn’t jeopardize his mission. “He didn’t set it up.”
“I can’t rule anything out,” Seth said. “Once I talk to Rowan, I’ll have my answer.”
“And if you don’t like the answer?” she asked.
Seth stopped and turned back to her again. This time his eyes weren’t hard, they were almost sad—pleading with her to stop this line of questioning. “Let’s not talk about this anymore. I know you have a job to do, but so do I. Trust me. When the time comes I’ll do what’s best for my people. I believe in the strength of a blood tie, but William raised me. He’s back in Bucklin along with everyone who matters to me right now. The only person who matters to me that isn’t in Bucklin is standing next to me right now.”
Maribel was never more thankful than right now that she had tan skin to hide her blushing. When the words came out of his mouth, she had to suppress a giggle as she felt a tingle run through her entire body. When he spoke like this, he was hard to resist. Before she knew it, she was in a situation she didn’t want to be in. Seth was leaning against a tree, nearly blocking the path in front of her. If she wanted to go by, she was going to have to touch his sweaty, beautiful body. He was leaning closer to her, his face drawing ever nearer. If she didn’t move now, they were going to kiss and god knew what else. She couldn’t let this happen, not now.
“Who made this path?” she asked, pointing past Seth. He turned and looked behind himself, opening a path for her to slide by without any skin-to-skin contact that she was sure would force her to dip into that change of panties she had brought.
“Oh,” he said, shaking his head. She knew his wolf was probably talking to him, and it was probably distracting. It was going to be hard to avoid him if the beast had staked its claim to her. Jacko had warned her as much. But surely it wasn’t as horrible as he had suggested. Seth wasn’t like that, he wasn’t that kind of wolf—she hoped. Plenty of men had put up fronts in the past. Everyone had thought Ted Bundy was a great guy.