“I’m not doing anything, Lily,” he said. He was getting impatient. I could tell from the way his voice pitched up. “You’re getting pissed off at me and I don’t know why.”
My eyes narrowed. “Really? You’re really going to treat me like an idiot? After everything I’ve done for you? After I fell in love with you once and you did this same bullshit? Do you realize how hard it was for me back then?”
“You had other boyfriends,” he said. “Don’t think I didn’t hurt too.”
“It was your fault! You wouldn’t talk to me! Big surprise, huh? Here we are again. Jesus, how could I be so stupid.”
Damon grabbed my hand. I yanked it away. “Lily, please,” he said. “I’m just trying to protect you, same as back then.”
“Protect me?” I said. “From what, exactly? From my own feelings? From reality?”
“No, just...” he took a deep breath. “From things you don’t understand. Poko gives me all these cryptic clues, and hints about how I have to grow up strong, to be a leader of my people. He talks about the responsibilities I have and how hard a path I’m going to have.”
He kicked the ground, dug in a little with his toe.
“You ever get the feeling you just wish reality would go away? Maybe even for a second, or an hour? That’s how I feel with you – like everything is okay for just a little while. I know Poko’s right and I know my duty is real, but sometimes... I just don’t want it to be.”
“Oh yeah?” I had to prod that wound. I just had to. “Well for something you’re not sure you want to believe in, you sure like to fall back on it a lot.”
His big shoulders were shaking, either with anger or desperation, but I couldn’t tell which. Damon’s face hardened, his mouth drew into a tight slit. “I can’t convince you of anything you’ve already decided is false. Or is true, or, shit, I don’t even know what we’re talking about anymore.”
I stood up. Sitting down with my legs draped over his legs just wasn’t getting the right message across, but hands on hips was much closer to how I felt. “You were going on and on about the future and about us, and I wanted to know if it was just the fate Poko told you about that made you want me.”
Damon nodded. “And I said—”
“I know what you said. You kind of half answered, but whatever. At least it was something approaching a response.” I took another big breath. “And then we got to the part where you say you’re scared of something and I’m about to cry because I think that you’re finally going to fucking open up to me about something more important than how much you can bench press.”
It all came out in one syllable, almost. My rushed voice, my irritation with his refusal to engage on even the most basic levels of human emotion all came out at once. Without really meaning for it to happen, tears welled up in my eyes.
“God damn it, Damon, I don’t want anything more in the world than to love you and have you love me back. That’s all I’ve ever wanted, but I’m not going to put up with a stone wall of a boyfriend. If you want me, you have to open up. You have got to—”
“I’m not ready,” he said softly. “If Devin gets ahold of you, he’ll do whatever it takes to lure me out into some trap, and he knows how much you mean to me.” A second later he grumbled something about how he didn’t remember talking about his bench press with me. “And I can’t fight him. I’m too weak. Too young or whatever. I can’t fight him and I think he knows it.”
“If you were that worried about me before, you wouldn’t have come to me in that damn dream, you wouldn’t have done any of the things you did.” I was trying really hard not to scream, but the pinch in my voice just made me sound more angry.
I took a deep breath and continued. “Anyway, we’ve already done... what we did. You told me we were bonded, that was it, right? We’re two bodies with one soul now or whatever. What can Devin do to break that? If we’re bonded and one, what can that lunatic possibly do?”
He was getting impatient. The little crease in his forehead pinched up. “I can’t control that. Any of that, it’s our way. I went to you in your dreams because you’re my soul mate, but now I realize that’s just one of the things happening all around me that I can’t control.” He looked at the ground. “And... no, it isn’t done. Devin can break the bond. If he transforms first, he’ll be so much stronger than me. He’ll be a real alpha. A true one. All he has to do is,” Damon shook his head. “I can’t say it. But no, he can break our bond.”
“Everything you say is like you have to make sure to keep your precious wall up so you can’t possibly get hurt. Do you think I feel like I’m in control all the time?”
“It’s not only Devin and all that. What if.” He ground his teeth together. “What if something happens like when I cornered you on the mountain? Remember that? I could hardly control myself. What if—”
“You’re in control now,” I said. “That danger has come and gone. It’s almost like you’re reaching for excuses. Like you’re not just scared of duty and your responsibilities, but it’s like you’re scared of having to open up to me.”
He opened his mouth and then clapped it shut.
As soon as I started to speak, Damon put his hands on my shoulders. It felt good to have his heat against my skin but I jerked away, and when he went to grab me again I slapped him away. “No,” I said. “No, you don’t get to make my decisions for me. You don’t get to tell me what I can and can’t do. I’m a grown up woman, Damon,” I said, more to convince myself than him, “and I’m perfectly willing to risk whatever it takes to make sure you stay safe. To make sure you...”
“You don’t know what you’re saying,” he replied. “I went too far. With you, I mean. I couldn’t keep my hands off you because I don’t have the discipline to not give in to what I want. I know I did, and I know it’s my fault. Just like before. I let myself go, Lily, even though I tried to stop.”
I puffed a breath out of my nostrils. “Didn’t seem much like you wanted to stop the first six times. What is your plan, exactly? You think that somehow, getting rid of me means that Devin will just... what? Quit going after me?”
“Well,” he said slowly, “yeah, I suppose so...” The look on his face told me that he didn’t even believe himself.
“What are you saying, Damon? That I’m just supposed to act like none of this is happening? That my love for you was just some stupid passing phase? This is real, Damon. The way I feel about you is real. And if you think this is going to work, you’re more of a coward than I ever thought.”
That hurt him. Damon swallowed hard and almost visibly shrank at my words.
“Answer me,” I persisted. Tears rolled down my puffy cheeks, the gentle breeze cooling them on my hot skin. “All you have to do is say that I’m wrong, and this is all some kind of plan or something, or—”
“No,” he said. “You’re right. You’re exactly right. I am a coward. I’m a child with no guide. I love you more than anything but I’m not strong enough to let you get yourself killed for me. It’d break me, Lily. It would absolutely break me.”
“At least you decided to talk about your feelings,” I said with a twist in my voice. “That’s something, I guess.”
“Lily, listen,” he said. I’d heard that before, and it always came before something I didn’t want to hear. “It isn’t forever. It’s just until I can deal with Devin and figure out what’s happening with the clans. If the Skarachee lose this war, I don’t know if I’ll live. And I can’t let that hurt you either.”
“I don’t wait around, Damon. I’ve got a life,” I shot back. “If you’re willing to risk what you know is the best thing that either of us has ever had because you’re scared that I’m too much of a burden, then you’re just going to have to live with it. There’s no going back, Damon. I let you do it to me once, but I’m not going to be fooled again by your cute smile and how much I fucking want you to want me as much as,” I sniffed and turned away.
“I do, Lily,” he said. “Can’t you s
ee that? If we hurt a little now, then maybe you won’t hurt so much later.”
Pausing for a moment, I hoped he’d grab me again and spin me back around. “I don’t need protection,” I said. “I need you.”
No hands grabbed my shoulders.
I took a step.
He didn’t follow.
Thirteen
Damon
“I’m sorry, Mr. Belder, I’ve been—”
Damon winced when his boss slapped his shoulder and grinned at him. His ribs, for all the healing they’d done, still ached. Every time one of those pulses screeched through his chest, he briefly imagined how badly he’d hurt when the wounds were fresh, and how kind Lily had been.
And then, of course, his thoughts fell on Lily and her face and those beautiful eyes and her gentle curves, and it was incredibly hard for him to focus on anything else.
Especially with how he’d just thrown it all aside. He couldn’t believe, still, that he’d said the things he did, but at least on the surface, he was at peace. She was in danger if this thing with Devin and the Carak went to war, and he wasn’t going to have her be a part of it.
Even a week after their fight and his watching her leave, every word of their exchange still stung. He’d managed not to call her somehow, managed not to go by and bother her or try to get her back. It hurt. Deep and hard it cut him every time he so much as thought of Lily, but he knew this was better than the alternative.
Immediately he thought back to the sight of her walking away. Every fiber of Damon’s being wanted to chase her, to reach out and grab her hand and make her stay, but he somehow stilled himself.
“You got some painkillers on the brain, boy?” Dan Belder whistled between the gap in his teeth and squeezed Damon’s shoulder.
Damon preemptively scrunched up his face, waiting for a throb of pain that never came.
Squeezing is fine, slapping, not so much.
In a way, he did have painkillers coursing through him. Endorphins, or oxytocin or whichever one it was. He couldn’t remember junior-year biology well enough to recall which the love drug was, but it was one of those.
His round-bellied boss thumped his shoulder again. Damon wished that he actually was on real painkillers.
Poko would have never allowed that. “The alpha suffers through his pain,” the old man had said over and over again, in those long, dark nights after Lily was gone and agony burned through his body.
Damon shook his head, trying to banish the wild fantasies. “No,” he said. “I just... well, I took a spill on my motorcycle, and I had to take some time to get patched up.”
“Well,” Belder said, “next time, at least call, boy. I can’t do with not knowing where my staff is. And besides, we’ve been worried.” He chewed on his chubby little cigar and turned it with his lips. “This ain’t the biggest town. If my best busboy gets smooshed on the road, gonna be hell to try and replace him. Though from the size of you, it’d take one hell of a truck to turn you into goo.”
As brusque as Dan Belder was, he cared deeply for Damon. The worry behind his voice gave that away. A half smile crossed Damon’s face. “Yeah, of course,” he said. “I’m sorry I didn’t.”
“Don’t mention it no more,” Belder said with a grunt. He tossed Damon a towel. “Can ya work today?”
Damon stared at the limp, slightly damp rag for a moment like he wasn’t sure what it was. That week and a half underground had apparently gotten to him a lot more than he thought.
“Ground control to Captain Damon,” Belder said. “Can you wipe a table or are you too spaced out, cowboy?”
Once again, Damon shook off the cobwebs. “Sorry,” he said. “It’s just that I’ve been in bed for a while, Mr. Belder. Took me a half hour to find the keys to my bike, even though they were right where I left them.” What he didn’t add was that right where I left them was lying beside a straw pallet in a cave.
“Hap’ns to the best of us. Slow today anyhow, take your time getting used to the world again, Damon. There’s a couple of tables need wiping in section four, and a few cops hanging out in a booth drinking their lunch.”
“Yeah,” Damon said. “Yeah, sure, I’ll get it taken care of.”
Damon swept his long, black hair back out of his face and then retied his blue bandana around his head. Just being in the Black Hog made him feel a little better, like reality had returned, or at least some kind of semblance. He collected his dish bucket, grabbed a few towels, some cleaner, and headed back out to the front of the restaurant.
“Can you believe what the hell that kid did?” A voice from across the dining room, a whisper, met Damon’s ears.
He didn’t need to turn to hear, which was immediately strange, because he’d never had particularly great ears, though even so he heard the four police officers conversing with startling clarity.
“I never saw anything like that before,” another of the officers said, wiping the beer off the bottom of his mustache. “It was like he just punched straight through that car door. How in the hell does something like that even happen?”
Damon absently scrubbed at the table, spraying it with whatever the acrid yellow stuff was in his spray bottle. They couldn’t be talking about Devin, could they? No way he’s already up and causing problems again.
“Damndest thing,” a third voice chimed in. “It wasn’t so much like there was a hole punched in that gas station wall, it was more like a cannon blew through it. Concrete was just, I dunno, splattered all over the floor.”
One of them ate a nacho, another one whistled. “Yeah, I saw it. It was—” he paused. Damon’s ears perked up and he froze. “It was like, you know, powder.”
Damon chewed his lip. Only one thing was strong enough to punch a hole through a cinderblock wall and turn it into powder. A gun couldn’t do it unless it was from a tank. He knew it had to be Devin, and he also knew that if his rival managed to undergo his transformation ritual first, then there wasn’t a damn think that could be done about it. The Skarachee would have to convene to handle a wild Carak alpha.
They didn’t control their own people. They thought they shouldn’t have to bother. Poko had brought Damon up to understand that the Skarachee wolves existed to protect, not to run wild and feed their own vicious desires. The Skarachee, he learned, had for thousands of years, been in charge of keeping the Carak in check.
And soon, he knew that it would all be his problem.
“Hell if I know,” one of the police said. “But something sure as shit busted that wall in. Weirdest thing is what was missing from inside. No money, nothing like that. Just food. Lots and lots and lots of food. Must’ve eaten about forty of those crispy burrito things.”
“I’m sure that set well,” another of them said.
The little group laughed. “Well boys,” the biggest-bellied one, with the mustache, said as he pushed away from the table. “I’m thinking it is just about time to kick on outta here. That fella workin’ probably wants to get our dishes for the dinner rush.”
“Huh. Half of four already,” another one said.
Damon’s breath caught in his chest. A cold sweat beaded up on his forehead and he tried to keep calm. Slowly, he forced his lungs full, then empty. Willing his heart to slow, the way Poko showed him, he thought he’d calmed himself enough.
Pop!
A glass that he’d just picked up exploded in his hand. One second, his slashed palm bled a river down his arm, and the next moment, the cut sealed. Damon looked down just in time to see the gout of blood begin soaking into his sleeve before he managed to mop it up with a dishtowel.
“You all right, son?” One of the cops called over. “Hell of a—”
“No, no, it’s nothing,” Damon said. He tied his towel around his hand, play acting like it was necessary. “Hazard of the job, I guess. Hand cuts bleed the worst, even if they’re not that bad.”
He couldn’t help himself. Damon just had to know.
“I’m sorry to have listened in to your talki
ng,” he said to the police officer who asked about his hand as the others gathered their belongings. “But I have a friend who works at Lottie’s.”
“The... oh,” the officer’s voice grew quiet. “Really not supposed to talk about that, bein’ as how it’s an open investigation. Don’t blame you for listening though, crazy story, that one. Nothing ever happens here in Fort Branch, except roadrunners getting hit, I guess.”
Damon grunted in response. “Is there anything you can tell me because,” he paused. “Look, I’m really nervous about my buddy. I haven’t talked to him in a couple of days. Could you at least tell me if anyone was hurt?”
“I don’t—”
“Oh come on, Neely,” another of the officers said, coming up beside the one speaking with Damon. “It ain’t gonna hurt anything to keep this kid’s mind at ease. Yes, son, someone was hurt, but I doubt it was your friend.”
“What?” Damon asked. “But who – how do you know?”
The cop lifted his shoulders in a shrug, and relaxed them with a sigh. “It was an older fella working on Tuesday. I can’t remember his name off hand. Peter, something like that. Anyway, yeah, older guy in his sixties. Balding with a ponytail.”
“You said he was hurt?”
“Worse than that, I’m afraid. Real bad situation. Fella didn’t make it.”
Damon gritted his teeth so hard he heard the enamel grating in his ears.
The officer stuck a toothpick in his mouth. “Don’t tell me the old guy was your friend?”
“No,” Damon said. “Just... it’s nothing. I can’t believe someone did that to someone else.”
The police, both of them, nodded. “Real tragedy. But now remember. Like Neely said, it’s still under investigation, so don’t go saying anything to anyone. Understand?”
“Yes sir,” Damon replied. “Of course. Thanks for letting me know.”
Fated Mates: The Alpha Shifter Boxed Set (12 Book Bundle) (Insatiable Reads) Page 38