“Go away. I don’t want to see you!” Like that. I couldn’t see him in the form of that creature. He was terrifying. Big, his thick fur a rich black, and his eyes so freaking dark they were inhuman.
But he was inhuman. That was the point.
A key slid into the lock, and when the door opened, I screamed. Zane stood there and behind him was silence. They must have cleared out the place.
Shit. What had he said about that? Everyone in the place was a shifter. I was surrounded by them.
“Go away. Please. God. Go away.” I backed into the corner, remembering the switchblade, taking it out and popping it open, holding it up against him even if it was useless. He walked inside and closed the door behind him, holding up his hands, palms facing me in surrender.
If he thought I’d put the blade down, he was mistaken.
“You bit me.” I suddenly remembered it, realizing he could have done so much more.
“You liked it,” he said, his answer matter of fact, his approach undeterred.
“Please don’t come any closer, Zane. I really don’t think I can handle this.” At least that I was too scared to cry any more.
He stopped. “I’m not going to hurt you. I’m me, that’s all. Nothing has changed about me.”
“Nothing has changed?” He wore jeans and another black T-shirt, a different one that hugged and defined every inch of rock-hard muscle, a strength I couldn’t begin to comprehend.
“I buy a lot of basics.”
I wondered then how many sets of clothes he tore through weekly.
“As a shifter, you have to keep extra clothing on hand.” If he was trying to make a joke, it wasn’t working. Not even close.
He was hurt, bloody marks and tears marring the parts of his body I could see. I should help him. Did he have a first-aid kit around here?
“And, no, nothing has changed. It’s what I’ve been trying to tell you.”
“Well you should have tried harder!”
He took another step toward me.
“Stop, I mean it!”
But he didn’t, and he moved so fast I didn’t even see him grab my wrist until the blade slipped from my hand and clattered to the ground.
“That won’t help you here, Aria. You can’t hurt us with that.”
He grabbed me up in his arms, wrapping me tightly in his embrace and taking me back to the couch where he sat with me on his lap, holding me while I wept.
I finally got what Zane had meant when he’d said there was no power in understanding because, right now, I felt more powerless than I had the night of the murders. I wept for my family, for the horror of their last moments. I wept for a father I didn’t remember. For a life doomed from the start.
“What’s going to happen to me?”
“Nothing. I’m not going to let anyone hurt you.”
I pulled back and looked at him, forcing myself to see him. “That man, Jake, he’s…like you?”
Zane nodded.
I shuddered at the memory of the parking lot confrontation.
“And those three dogs — wolves — were they coming for me?”
“I’m not sure, but we don’t have to talk about that. No one will hurt you, Aria.”
“That was my grandfather out there.”
He nodded. “And he’s waiting on us. We should go talk to him.”
“What’s he waiting for?”
“He wants to take you with him. He thinks he can better protect you.”
“No.” I pushed off his lap, almost falling on my butt before recovering my balance. “I’m not going anywhere with him. If you think—”
“Hold on there.” He stood, too. “I don’t think anything. As far as I’m concerned, you’re staying right here. With me.”
I was?
“But he’s Xander Marks. He’s Alpha. Not mine, but, still, he comes with a lot of power behind him, as you probably saw.”
I had.
“Can he make me go?” Would he take me if I refused?
“I promise you I won’t allow that to happen, but we do need to go talk to him.”
“Fine. But if you do that — if you turn into those things, I swear, I will lose my mind. I don’t ever want to see that again.”
He chuckled and took my hand.
“Wait a minute.” I jerked back. “What did he mean when he said you’d claimed me? Just before all hell broke loose?”
“We have a heightened sense of smell. Actually, all of our senses are heightened. He smelled me on you.”
Oh.
Eew.
My grandfather smelled another man’s…stuff on me. There was just something wrong with that.
“Maybe I should clean up —”
“No. You’re mine. They need to know it.” From the look on his face, I had the feeling he liked the idea of rubbing it in Xander’s face.
Oh, that so wasn’t the right way to say it.
“You’re hurt.” I pointed to the gash on his upper arm. He glanced at the spot but dismissed it with a shrug of his shoulder.
“It’ll heal. Let’s go.”
I took a deep breath and we walked out into the bar to find Xander seated at a table, Fly across from him staring him down, and the six goons he’d brought standing by, staring Fly down. It didn’t seem to me like Fly gave a shit though.
“Aria,” Xander said, rising to his feet. He lifted his hand toward me, but then dropped it, his lips tightening. “You look well.”
“Thank you.”
“I…I’m sorry if I frightened you earlier. It wasn’t my intent.”
I nodded. What did he want me to say? It was okay? People shifted in front of me all the time?
“Sit down, Aria.”
“I’ll get everyone a drink. Feel like you could all use one.” I didn’t say no when Fly set beers down in front of all of us. I took a sip. Xander didn’t touch his.
“You look like your mother.”
How should I respond? I did look like my mom. In fact, I was a carbon copy of her, just younger.
“Appreciate your trip down memory lane, Xander, but we’ve got business to deal with and I’d like to reopen my bar.”
Xander glared at Zane, who simply tipped his beer back, looking incredibly relaxed. Xander then turned his attention back to me. “I heard about the black rose, and I believe you’re in some danger, Aria.”
No shit, Sherlock. But I didn’t say it. He was, after all, my grandfather. I wondered about his age. He looked younger than I’d expected, actually, but he’d have to be in his late sixties or even early seventies. A few lines marked his face, but his hair was still thick and dark, and his eyes bright.
“Zane’s taking care of me. He’s —”
“That’s all fine and well and I’m sure Zane’s intentions are good, but all the same, I’d prefer you to come home with me until we get this cleared up.” The inflection on Zane’s name piqued my curiosity, but other things bothered me more.
“So, after six years of silence, you expect me to just come home with you because you say so?”
“You were guarded all along, even when you left the school. You were always protected. Only when you came into contact with him,” he pointed at Zane, who chuckled, “did you have any trouble at all.”
“You were watching me?”
“To protect you, yes.”
“Oh my God. And you think that’s okay?”
“You’re my granddaughter, Aria. You’re the last of my line.”
“That’s what this is about? What, you want grandbabies to carry on the line? The line, as you so affectionately call it, is finished because my family was murdered. They were people, not some…legacy.”
His gaze never hardened but he narrowed his eyes, considering before speaking. If I was testing his patience, I didn’t care. “Never doubt my affection for my daughter, for the grandson I lost and the granddaughter I’m losing.” As he said that last part, this man who appeared made of steel, softened just a little, just for a moment. He
meant what he said.
Zane cleared his throat. “I will keep her safe, Xander. You won’t lose her.”
“How can you guarantee that? You’re one person.” He glanced at Fly. “Two. You can’t protect her from an entire pack.”
“My father’s not responsible for the rose.”
“Did he say so? I thought you were smarter than that. I thought you’d learned your lesson six years ago.”
I felt Zane tense beside me and put my hand on top of one of his fists.
“Savage Blood is not responsible,” he repeated slowly.
“Well, I certainly didn’t order the hit on my own granddaughter, which means, if Cain is telling the truth, there’s a traitor among his pack.”
“Maybe the traitor is from Rage.”
“On penalty of death. This is my blood we’re talking about. Besides, we all know what Cain is capable of.”
Zane slammed his first down on the table, but even though I jumped, Xander didn’t even blink. “Enough.”
“It will be enough when I know my granddaughter is safe.”
“Stop calling me that. My name is Aria. I’m Aria. I’m not anyone’s anything.”
Xander looked at me but addressed Zane. “And besides, who’s going to keep her safe from you?”
Zane’s response was a low, dark growl, a threat coming from deep inside him.
“Did he force himself on you, Aria?”
“What? No. Of course not!”
I could feel Zane growing angrier beside me, that rumble I had become familiar with a warning.
Xander turned to him. “Let me have a moment alone with Aria. I want to be sure.”
“Fine. I could use another drink anyway,” Zane said, then added, “I’m right here, Aria.”
I nodded and he walked to the bar.
“Believe it or not, I have your best interests at heart,” Xander said.
“Believe it or not, I know.” Should I be angry with him? I guess I’d thought I would be angry, but I wasn’t. He’d done a lot of things very differently from how I thought he should have, but that was past, and I did believe he thought he was doing the right thing. He was all the family I had left, and maybe it was time to stop fighting everyone. Time to forgive. “But I want to stay here. With Zane.”
“If you’re saying that because you’re afraid he’ll hurt you —”
Zane stood, white knuckling a beer, listening to Fly whisper something into his ear while continuing to glare at Xander.
“I’m not afraid of him. He won’t hurt me.”
“He may not mean to, but the intention isn’t always the outcome.” Xander turned to Zane who reached the table and resumed his seat. “You’ll have men from me to keep the perimeter safe. Here and at your home.”
“Here is fine. I don’t need anyone at my home. And don’t fucking question whether or not I can control myself with Aria.”
“Your temper is…legendary, Zane.” He glanced at Fly as if to make his point. “I’m merely concerned for my granddaughter.”
Zane’s eyes narrowed infinitesimally. My grandfather’s comment had gotten to him.
“Well, don’t be. And no men at my house.”
“They won’t bother you. They’ll be instructed to remain outside. You won’t even see them.”
“I said no. Not at the house.”
“I’m leaving my granddaug…Aria…in your care. I won’t take any chances with her life, and you’d be wise to accept my help on this.”
Zane breathed in, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Fine. Outside. I don’t even want to know they’re there.”
“Agreed.” He faced me. “Aria, I expect you to check in nightly. A text or a phone call will do. I need to know you’re all right.”
“That’s fine.” It wasn’t, or it wouldn’t be if things were normal. If I didn’t have a contract on my head. But, right now, I just wanted him to go. I couldn’t be sure he wouldn’t forcibly take me with him until he was gone.
“What’s your plan once this is over, Zane?”
“Plan?”
“You’ve claimed her. You know what she is.”
“What am I?” I’d apparently been shorted some cards in this insane game they were playing.
Xander turned to me. “Females are rare within our packs. Just as we carry the ability to shift, you carry the ability to create shifters — as long as you breed with a shifter. Without that, the gene lies dormant in you and your children, until a time comes when the proper mate is reintroduced, however far the generational line. You are both children of Alphas. You would make powerful Alphas of your own. And, according to the rules of the packs, now that Zane has claimed you, you are his. You’re bound to one another. And you may be safer than without that bond.”
“What?” I looked from one man to the other, my blood pressure rising, pulsing in my ears. “Am I mistaken that it’s 2015 and women are free to choose their mates — ugh, their partners? I said it before and I’ll say it again: I belong to no one and no thing. Zane?”
But Xander spoke. “Your mother should have told you, but I understand her reasons not to. You were raised outside of the packs, Aria. In time, you’ll come to understand.”
“Understand that I’m a piece of property? Valuable for my breeding potential?”
He ignored that, and Zane didn’t speak.
“Keep her safe and you’ll have my blessing. You’ll have your place as my successor, Zane.” Xander rose to leave. Zane just sat there, staring at some spot on the farthest wall, every emotion masked, leaving me in the dark.
Chapter Fourteen
Zane
I didn’t want this. I didn’t want to be Alpha. I’d left. There was a fucking reason I’d left. And now, here I was, across the table from a powerful enemy, discussing my future within his pack. Fly had been right. Aria would suck me right back into this life, even if she had no idea what that life was or that there even was a life.
But I didn’t blame her. She was a victim, period.
I felt her eyes on me as Xander and his men left, but remained as I was until their bikes roared to life and they drove off. I didn’t care about the men he’d send to help keep Aria safe. That was fine. And he was right. I had no idea the numbers I was going up against. I may be Alpha material, but I wasn’t Alpha yet, and I certainly wasn’t indestructible.
The question nagging at me, however, was if Aria was safe with me.
“Zane?” Her touch on my elbow was feather light.
I didn’t want to deal with this now. I needed something else.
“Swore I saw some Rage jackets coming from this direction on my way in here, Z.” It was Mark, walking in from the back door.
“You did. And you may see more. It’s fine, I’ve got it. Don’t engage.”
He looked from me to Aria to Fly, but obviously decided not to ask questions. “Got it.”
“Let’s get out of here,” I said with a nod to the door.
“Yeah. Good idea.” Aria got up. “Let me get my bag.” Mark had left her duffel bag of clothes in my office before he’d taken her car to repair. “Thanks, by the way, for my car,” she said to him.
“No problem. I ordered a new window, so that’ll be here in a few days, but brakes are done. Although you’ll have to ride convertible style for a while. Had to special order the top. It’s a pretty old model you’ve got.”
“It’s an original,” she said, smiling.
“Right,” Mark chuckled.
While she went to pick up the bag, I talked to Fly, remembering something he’d said that I’d blown off. “You mentioned a war brewing. What did you mean?”
Fly’s expression said he’d known I’d come back to it. “A shipment of arms went missing on its way to the Savage Blood compound last week. Cain’s pissed as fuck, but Ace is more pissed.”
Both packs were involved in activities that weren’t quite on the up and up. I hated that my father dealt in arms, but at least he didn’t deal in flesh. That was rumored to
be Rage’s specialty. “Any idea who took it?”
Fly took a moment then shook his head. “Not yet, but Ace is searching high and low. Says he’s going to kill whoever stole from him.”
“From him? You mean from my father.”
“No. I mean from him. The truck was ambushed on its way, but ironically, there was a second ambush.” Fly poured himself a glass of water. He didn’t drink anymore. In fact, the last sip of alcohol he’d had was the night I’d messed up his face. I still felt bad about that, but, as far as he was concerned, it got his head out of his ass. Crazy fuck had been loyal to me ever since, and I loved him like I should have loved my father.
“That is funny. Wish I could have seen Ace’s face.”
“Well, rumor is, it was his men, a pocket no longer loyal to Cain, who were surprised when they’d made to steal the cargo.”
“If this is true, it’s a problem. A big one.”
Fly nodded and drank his water.
“Any word on what Cain thinks?”
“Nope. That man keeps it all locked up tight,” he said, pointing to his head.
“You don’t have to tell me about that. Let me know if you find out anything else. Especially about my cousin.”
There was no love lost between Ace and I. We’d been fiercely competitive since we were little, with me having the upper hand only because I was the Alpha’s son. But now that he was going to take over, I didn’t think he gave a shit about me. Which circled me back to Xander’s words. He’d make me Alpha of Rage, enemy to my pack, all because of Aria.
“I’m ready.” Aria stood with the overstuffed bag slung over her shoulder looking tiny in an oversized, faded gray sweatshirt and tight black jeans with a pair of very worn high tops on her feet. Cute and distracting as hell. I shifted gears, thinking about all the things I would do to her when we got home.
But Xander’s words taunted me. Who would keep her safe from me?
“Let’s go then.” I took her bag and we left, using the truck rather than my bike.
“You’re stressed. My grandfather helping, that’s a good thing, right?”
“It is. That’s not what’s bugging me.”
“What is it then?”
I shook my head. “Just let me think.”
She watched out the window. “If it’s about what he said, the future, I’m not…it’s not something I’m thinking about. I came to find you because I wanted answers. Not a…” She paused for a moment. “Mate.”
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