Jared (River Pack Wolves 3) - New Adult Paranormal Romance

by Alisa Woods

“I’m sorry.” She bit her lip, unsure if she should say anything more. But she couldn’t help herself—because she was falling in love with this hot, sexy shifter. “Can you have more than one mate? I mean… is it a one-time thing?” God, she hoped not. She wasn’t even sure what it meant to submit, much less be mated—was that for life?—but she needed to understood at least what the possibilities were, especially between her and Jared.

  He hesitated, his gaze lowered, not meeting hers. “No, I could have another mate.” He raised his eyes to meet hers. “I just never thought I would.”

  “You don’t have to tell me about her,” she whispered with a shake of her head, all while thinking, please tell me about her. This felt important—it seemed like part of what drove Jared to lock himself down. And Grace knew that she was part of what was opening him up again. She couldn’t do that—she couldn’t help him overcome his past—if she didn’t even know what it was that shut him down in the first place.

  He held her gaze, but his eyes weren’t hard and his expression wasn’t that stone-faced look he’d worn so many times. “Her name was Avery,” he said, finally. Then he sucked in a deep breath.

  She reached a hand to press flat against his chest, over his heart. He glanced at her hand and placed his over it, holding her to him, then looking up into her eyes again. “I like it when you do that.”

  She smiled a little and waited to see if he would share more.

  “I mated before I went overseas to serve,” he said quietly. “When I came back… I was different. Avery sensed it. She asked what had happened, and I told her, and…” He swallowed, and dropped his gaze again, avoiding hers. “She was horrified. Repulsed by it. I don’t blame her, not really. War is horrifying. She pulled away, and I didn’t have anything left in me to keep her. I was already dead inside—the war had done that to me. I couldn’t leave it behind, even though I was back home. I never really knew if that was what drove her away—not what I’d done, but who it made me become. In the end, it didn’t really matter.” He dropped his gaze to his hand holding hers against his chest. “When she left me, I had nothing but the war inside. So I re-enlisted, did another tour. While I was gone, she died. Simple car accident. Happens every day. I wasn’t there to protect her. Maybe I couldn’t have done anything, but I’ll never know.”

  She cupped his cheek with her hand, tears threatening her eyes. “I’m so sorry.”

  He looked up, eyes glassy with tears that weren’t being shed. “When I lost her—my mate—I lost everything. I lost myself. Being alone and isolated is the worst thing that can happen to a wolf. It’s not supposed to happen. I still had my brothers and my pack, but I pulled away from them all. I’ve been dead inside for so long… and then I saw you.” He gave her a smile that seemed pained. “You were isolated, a wolf in hiding, and my wolf… he took one look at you, and he sent me tearing off into the woods to protect you. Because no one should be alone like that. No one.”

  The tears were flowing down her face now. “Jared.” She didn’t know what to do, how to say the feelings that were bursting inside her, so she pulled him closer and kissed him, long and hard and hungry. “I’m not alone,” she said when she paused for breath. “I have you.”

  He pressed his forehead to hers. “Protecting you is the best thing I’ve done in a long time.”

  She searched his eyes. “I want more than just your protection.”

  He smiled. “The lovemaking comes included. Package deal.”

  She smirked and blinked away her tears. Then her gaze fell on their hands still clasped over his heart. “I want even more than that.” She pulled her gaze up to his eyes.

  All humor had fled his face.

  She touched his cheek with her fingertips. “I want you for my mate.”

  “Oh, Grace.” Her words seemed to pain him.

  “I know it’s fast, and I don’t even really understand, and this is all so crazy, but—”

  He cut her off by rolling her on her back again and pinning her with his hot, sexy, naked body. “Shhhh…” Then he smothered her words with a kiss. “Don’t say it. Don’t say those words… not until I can do something about them.” Then he erased all doubt by nipping a line of small tastes down on her neck—just with human teeth, but it ran shivers of pleasure up and down her body. Her wolf howled in triumph. Grace was light-headed with panting by the time he raised his head from her flesh again.

  “I want you so badly, Grace.” His breath was hot on her face. Before she could say Yes! he pulled back and said, “But we really can’t do this now.”

  She willed her heart to stop pounding so hard. “No, you’re right. We need to… think. And not just have sex like crazed teenagers.”

  He just chuckled and rolled away from her, rubbing his face hard and blowing out a deep breath. “Rain check for lovemaking at a later time.”

  “Hell yes.”

  He grinned at her, then gave her a serious look. “What’s your plan with this, Grace?”

  She forced herself to sit up in the bed. That was the only way she wouldn’t simply throw herself at him again. “Shower. Fresh clothes.” She turned to face him. “Then a strategy to destroy my father’s anti-shifter legislation.”

  His face went solemn, and he just nodded.

  Grace took a deep breath and prepared to start the rest of her life.

  As a shifter.

  Night had fallen on his family’s safehouse.

  Jared had been gone less than a day, but it had been a life-changing twenty-four hours. He pulled his car into the large, graveled parking lot—it was filled to capacity with all the shifters who were staying with them now. His family’s estate was large, but it was stuffed to the rafters with all the shifters who had been rescued from Agent Smith’s medical prison—and the experiments fully authorized by Senator Krepky. At least, that was their operational theory, even though they didn’t have definitive proof of the connection. And barring some smoking-gun evidence, Grace would be the key to bringing the Senator down—she’d embraced that fact, he was certain, but she needed time to act on it. Which meant waiting until the morning.

  He hated leaving her in that house with her father—his stomach had been chewing itself into pieces ever since he left—but even as her personal bodyguard, he had no plausible reason to stay there overnight. Garrison Allied’s normal security was supposedly sufficient to keep the Senator and his daughter safe while ensconced in their estate. It was probably just as well—any more time in her presence, especially in her bedroom, and Jared would’ve been making love to her again and again. They had managed to get away with it so far, and soon enough she would be telling her father she was a shifter—after that, Jared would be free to spend as much time with her as he and his wolf could handle. At least, that was his plan… assuming she would still want him.

  But just being separated for the night was killing him.

  The plan was for her to come out to her father tomorrow morning and threaten to take it public if he didn’t back down on his legislation. Apparently, she and her father had some kind of strategy meeting in the mornings before they headed off for the day’s schedule of campaign activities. Jared would be back at the estate bright and early in the morning, standing by her side as she told her father she was a wolf. Grace claimed this was the best approach, the best way to bring down her father’s plans, and as nervous as it made him, he trusted her. In the meantime, he needed to report back to his brothers and make sure they were on board with the plan and not moving on some separate front without him.

  Jared strolled in the front door of the safehouse. The great room was bustling with people he didn’t know, and the scent of dinner lingered in the air even though the dining room had been cleared out. He didn’t see his brothers among the meandering and chattering temporary residents of his home, but he caught a glimpse of his mother’s long gray hair as she disappeared into the kitchen.

  He strode after her. She had three shifters on kitchen duty, cleaning up the massive pile of dis
hes left over from the evening’s meal. They weren’t letting her lift a finger and had set up some kind of production line to get the job done, but she was definitely in charge.

  “That bowl goes on the top shelf, Owen,” she said. Owen was ex-military, one of Jace’s brothers-in-arms, and he’d been a prisoner of Agent Smith’s for over a year. The guy looked like shit when they first rescued him, a few days ago, but some of the black circles under his eyes had already started to disappear with Mama River’s good cooking and attentive care. She mothered everyone, whether they needed it or not… but most of them did.

  “Yes, Ma’am,” Owen said with a small smile and a nod for Jared behind her. Owen quickly stowed the bowl on the top shelf and returned to his station at the end of the production line of washing, drying, and putting away the dishes.

  Jared’s mother turned to him. “You missed dinner.” Her small scowl was more a concern that he hadn’t eaten at all, not that he had missed her particular spread that night. His mother could support the 10th Mountain Division on KP duty, if she had to. One missing shifter from the table wouldn’t alarm her.

  He stepped forward and dropped a quick kiss on her cheek. She startled, eyes wide, and he smiled as a blush crept up on her cheeks.

  “Don’t think that’s going to earn you forgiveness.” But her voice faltered a little.

  He just grinned wider—he hadn’t done anything like that in forever. But a painfully wrenching sense of hope and life stirred inside him, and it was no mystery why—Grace had brought him back, almost literally, from the dead.

  “You could put me on KP duty as punishment,” he suggested.

  His smile was still throwing her. “Shut up and sit down,” she ordered, gesturing to the small table in the corner of the kitchen. “I’ll rustle up some leftovers.” She swept toward the massive refrigerator where she kept her supplies to feed the hungry hordes.

  He could tell she wanted to say something, but there were way too many people present. Fellow shifters, but still strangers. Not even pack, much less family. She dug around in the refrigerator and came out with bread, an assortment of sandwich meats, and condiments. He relieved her of the jumbled mix and carried them to the table.

  She turned to her KP detail. “You can just leave the rest of that.” She waved them away from the sink.

  Owen frowned. “We’re not letting you touch a bit of this mess, Mama River. You best get used to that.” His Texas drawl was no match for his mama’s will.

  Jared took a seat at the table and just folded his hands behind his head to watch.

  His mother parked her delicate hands on her hips and gave Owen her patented glare. “Private First Class Owen Harding, I need you to clear the room, soldier. You can finish kitchen duty when I’m good and ready for you to.”

  The other shifters turned to send a questioning look her way. Owen hiked up his eyebrows, but then glanced at Jared and seemed to figure it out.

  “You heard the lady,” Owen said barked to the others. “Clear out.” As the lot of them trotted out of the room, Owen said quietly as he passed her, “You touch any of those dishes, Mama River, and we’re going to have a talk about the proper meaning of gratitude.”

  She shook her finger at him on his way out. “Don’t you sass me, Owen Harding. You haven’t earned that privilege yet.”

  He just grinned as he left the room.

  His mother came and sat with him. “Jared Anthony River, you tell me right now what’s happened.”

  “I thought you wanted me to eat,” he teased, gesturing to all the sandwich fixings.

  “This is the one time you can eat while talking at the same time.” Her serious expression didn’t waver.

  He shook his head, rueful that a couple smiles and a kiss on the cheek was grounds for this level of concern in his mother. He’d been way too deep in his own head for too long. The toll it had taken on his family was becoming painfully obvious.

  “I’m good, Mama,” he said softly. “I know I’ve been… distant. Hell, let’s just say it—I’ve been broken. I know that’s worried you, and I’m sorry for that.”

  She grasped onto his forearm, which was lying on the table. “You’ve got nothing to be sorry for. Not then, and not now. Full stop.”

  She was talking about Avery. And the war. It was no secret, at least among his family, what had happened with all of it. “It’s not that, Mama. I met someone, and she’s…” Gorgeous. Sexy. Bringing him to life in a way that caused a smile to break out on his face at the slightest provocation. “She’s something special.”

  If the word joy had been stamped on his mother’s forehead, it wouldn’t have been any more obvious how she felt. That look settled something deep inside him—something that Grace stirred up and revived. And now she was bringing healing to not just him, but to the people he loved.

  Tears pricked his eyes—which flat astounded him. They vanished in his surprise.

  The smile lines around his mother’s eyes crinkled. “When do I get to meet this girl?”

  Jared smiled again. He loved this most about his mother—complete and total acceptance of people. No judgment. Just joy.

  “Soon, I hope. She’s in a bit of trouble right now, and I aim to get her out of it.” He glanced back at the open door to the dining room where several of the kitchen duty shifters were still lingering, pretending they weren’t listening in. “Where are my brothers? I’m going to need their help.”

  She squeezed his arm where her hand rested, then let him go. “They’re out back, fixing up some of the cabins. Making a home for their new mates. Maybe we need to make room for one more?”

  His smile tempered, but his heart leapt—which made him realize just how much he wanted that. When Grace had said it, he thought his heart might burst with need. But he didn’t want to get his mother’s hopes up. Or his.

  He shook his head. “I don’t know, Mama. Can’t rush her too much. She’s in a fragile state right now. She needs me to go slow.”

  His mother nodded, just once, then stood up. “I know you, son. You’ll do what’s best for her. No doubt in my mind about that.” Then she gave him a slightly skeptical look—like she had reason to doubt he would do the best thing for him. That didn’t concern him.

  He rose up as well and hastily put together a sandwich. His mother nodded approvingly. Then he stuffed the sandwich in his face and chewed as he strode out to the back part of the estate. He was actually famished, so it went down quick.

  They had horses and a few livestock in the stables, and the rich smell assaulted his nose, mixing with the pine scent that swept in from the forest behind the estate. This had always been home to him, even after he had moved out to the city like his brothers. And when he’d taken Avery for a mate, they’d used one of the bridal suites out back—a small, cozy cabin, just the two of them. It felt strange to even contemplate bringing Grace here, but this was his home. And she needed one—or at least, she would, once her father disowned her. That was the most likely outcome, and he wanted to have a place for her to come and feel welcome. He should bury the ghost of Avery now, once and for all, before Grace arrived. He didn’t want her feeling even a hint of that lingering.

  The animals were quiet, and there wasn’t much activity out back, now that night had fallen. Light shone from two side-by-side cabins at the end of the row, and Jared figured that must be where his brothers, Jaxson and Jace, were making their new homes. As Jared approached the cabins, Jaxson strolled out of one, carrying three stacked boards on his shoulder.

  “Hey, you’re back,” his brother said. “How’s it going on the political front?”

  Jared tipped his head to the second cabin—the front door was closed, but light poured from the windows. “Is Jace in there?”

  “Yeah, we’re trying to get stuff set up for a week from Saturday.”

  The two of them headed for the door. “What’s happening then?” Jared asked.

  “The weddings?” Jaxson smirked. “You didn’t think our mother was g
oing to let any grass grow under her feet with that, did you?”

  No, he supposed not. Jared returned his smile.

  Just like their mother, Jaxson startled at seeing Jared’s grin. “What’s going on?” he asked, stopping dead in his tracks.

  Jared kept walking toward the cabin door. “I need to talk to you and Jace both.”

  Even before Jared open the door, he could hear the voices inside.

  “Well, we can’t fill the entire wall with shelving.” That was his brother, Jace.

  “Why not? It’s the perfect corner for reading.” Piper’s voice had a little edge to it.

  Jared opened the door just as Jace responded, “Because then we won’t have room for the crib.” He followed it up with a sexy smile, and Jace’s arms wrapped around Piper’s waist. His brother was going in for a kiss, and she was giving him a dead-sexy, encouraging smile.

  Jared cleared his throat, and they both jumped. He smiled at them. “Hate to interrupt your baby-making plans, but I need a minute of your time.”

  Piper glared at him. “Jared, your timing sucks.”

  He just laughed. “People have said much worse things about me.”

  Jace just stared at him with open-mouthed wonder, then he said to Jaxson, “What the hell happened to him?”

  Apparently, the changes Grace had wrought in him were that obvious.

  Jaxson brushed past him on his way into the cabin, then set down the shelving boards. “I don’t know, but I like the new Jared a lot better than the old Jared.”

  Piper was studying him with a gleam in her eye. “This is about the girl, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah.” Jared closed the door behind him, then turned to their expectant faces. “Here’s the thing: she’s willing to come out to her father as a wolf. She thinks it will embarrass him, but even more important, she thinks she can use it to talk him out of the legislation. Make some argument about not putting her under the scrutiny of the law or some such thing.”

  Jaxson looked skeptical. “But you don’t think it will work?”

  Jared folded his arms. “She wants to appeal his sense of decency. I’m not entirely convinced the man has one. You should’ve seen his supporters at this anti-shifter rally today.”