27. Kate
My body is as still as a statue, my eyes mirroring his unblinking stare.
Is that relief in Jagger’s blue gaze?
A choked scream from behind rips me out of the trance I’m stuck in, my body jerking around to face Ivy. The horror in her eyes looks through me as the sacks of food fall from her arms.
“H-he sliced t-that guy’s th-throat,” she stutters.
I grab the sleeves of her dress, pulling her into an embrace.
“H-he’s dead, i-isn’t he?”
“He was a hunter, Ivy,” I inform her. “He was going to kill us both.” I squeeze her and then pull away so that I can look her in the eyes. “Jagger saved us. He’s my friend. You don’t have to be afraid of him.”
Her heart pounds so fast I can feel the pulse in my ears. A minute of silence passes when her eyelids snap up, her shell-shocked eyes meeting mine.
“I’ve never seen a…” she trails off, her gaze peering around me.
“But you were there when we watched Henrik get killed,” I say, confused.
“Salem told me not to watch. I didn’t see it happen. Plus, my eyesight isn’t like yours. I wouldn’t have seen whatever you saw from where we stood.”
Her body tenses up a hair’s breadth before a squeak slips from between her lips as she backs fully against the brick wall. That’s when his steps register from behind me.
“Kate,” he whispers.
Warmth envelops my chest at the sound of his voice. My wolf perks her ears, having heard him too. There’s a pull inside of me, but not like a command; more like a connection fusing together, like recognizing like.
Slowly, I turn, and when I’m facing him and my eyes land on his, he jerks me forward. Banding his arms around my waist, I can’t do anything other than wrap mine around his shoulders.
“After you left, I thought I’d never see you again,” he admits, fear in his tone, but I’m too stunned to respond, so I hug him back. For the first time since I left Moonwake, I find breathing easier.
A minute passes when he slowly pulls away. “Don’t ever do that to me again.” When I don’t respond, just continue staring, Jagger adds, “Do you hear me, little sister?”
“Sister?” I say, but it’s more to myself than to him.
Why would Jagger call me little sister?
I know what Salem said, but it isn’t fathomable.
It just isn’t.
My focus veers off in thought because what if I’m not allowing myself the option to consider what Salem said as the truth? But then my gaze catches on his throat, and my mouth drops open, that train of thought forgotten as my feet retreat, stepping away from him when I see the claiming mark.
“You’re mated. But…” My chest deflates as air rushes out. “I-I don’t smell Trez. I smell someone else.”
My heart rate kicks up a notch at the realization. No, he can’t be. My brother loves him too much for Jagger to have found someone else. And I thought…
“You smell different too,” he says as if that’s an answer to the question I haven’t asked.
“What?” I bite out, a growl following as anger coils inside my head, making my neck stiff.
A smirk takes up residence on his face. It relaxes him and shows me the side of my friend that I’m used to seeing.
“You smell like one of us now. So does he. I’m mated to Trez, Kate. There was never going to be anyone else.” The way he says it is like he’s stating the obvious. Relief is almost instant as his words wash over me, and that’s when I take in the whole bite.
“It’s an interesting placement for a mark,” I tell him when I don’t know what else to say.
I mean, it is interesting being in the center of his neck. Without wearing a turtleneck, there’s no covering that scar.
Jagger laughs. “And you and everyone think I’m the possessive one.”
“Trez made it after I left?” I ask, and without waiting for an answer, I continue needing to know more. “Kane didn’t hurt him?”
“Kane knows Trez is his brother, Kate, but even if he weren’t or he didn’t know, Kane would never have followed through with his threat. Not to Trez. Not to you either.”
His brother? Trez is my brother.
I step to the side, needing distance to think and not wanting to crowd Ivy at the same time. My head swings away from him, my focus landing on the motorcycle I thought I’d lost as I try processing everything.
“My bike,” I say in lieu of the shit running rampant in my head.
Little sister.
His brother.
“We searched for you.” Jagger’s voice snaps my focus back on him. “Well, Kane and Trez did. For a week, they scoured everywhere between Moonwake up I-5. They found the bike where Hale took you from.”
Does he know what happened in the parking lot of that diner?
“Here,” he says, and my eyes flick downward, seeing Jagger reaching into his blue jeans pocket, where he pulls out the key to the motorcycle.
“No.” I hold up my hand, stopping him from handing it to me while taking another step away from him and Ivy. I glance at her and then back to Jag as I step back again. “You can take Ivy to her sister. I promised I’d get her to Storm. You can take her on the bike and get there faster than I would have made it.”
This works out better than me taking her there. He can do it, and she’ll be safe with him. I trust Jagger.
“Kate, no.” He shakes his head. Worry and something else—concern or fear—seep into his features. His legs move, but he only takes a short cautious step toward me. “You’re coming home with me.”
A tingle runs down the left side of my neck behind my ear as my vision becomes brighter.
Jagger is in front of me before I can take my next breath. “Shut it the fuck off. Don’t you dare open your mouth right now.” His palm suddenly covers my lips and half of my face. I jerk away, shoving him while he continues. “Do you even know?”
“Know what?” I bark while I keep backing away when what I really want to do is lash out at him for putting his hands on me. Something inside me pushes at the back of my skull to make him submit.
He doesn’t tell us what to do.
Jagger’s arm lifts, his fingers gently grabbing the ends of my hair. On reflex, I swat his forearm away.
“You couldn’t have looked at yourself in the mirror and not seen exactly who you look like, Kate. You have Mom’s hair and eyes just like I do, but you look so much like Dad in the face. You’ve had to have realized who you are by now.”
“She knows,” Ivy speaks for me, her voice less afraid. “But she hasn’t looked in the mirror. She’s too scared. She doesn’t want to believe it.”
“I’m not scared,” I say through clenched teeth, my fists balling at my sides. Closing my eyes, I bite harder, locking my jaw so I don’t yell at her.
“Kate,” Jagger says, and I hate the caution in his tone like I’m an animal he needs to calm down.
My eyes pop open, and as he goes to step forward, I take a longer stride backward.
“I-I have to…” I look to Ivy and then back to Jagger. “Please get her to Storm. I need…” My words die off at the sound of squealing tires.
My body twists around, seeing a black truck with headlights shining directly on us. I know that pickup. It’s the one Kane rarely drives.
The truck suddenly comes to a halt, and a door swings open, pulling my gaze off the windshield. With the headlights shining in my eyes, I can’t make out the people inside, even with my supernatural sight. But then I see a massive body jump from the passenger side. My unblinking gaze follows, and when I see my brother, my feet are running before my head catches up with me.
It’s when I wrap my arms around his neck and crush myself against him that I realize Trez is really okay. He’s here. My brother is alive.
Tears leak from my eyes, so I slam the lids closed to make the moisture disappear.
“You’re really here, right? I’m not dreaming?” I ask.
I feel him nod as he pulls me closer, his arms banding around my middle, and he squeezes so tight it feels like I can’t breathe, but I don’t even care. My brother is alive.
“Fuck,” he breathes through my hair, fanning the now dark strands. “It’s really you.”
The click from the truck’s back door forces my eyes to pop open. I see a woman around my age slip to the ground. Her ash-blonde hair so much like Ivy’s.
She must see her sister because her warm gaze is on me for a split second before her eyes flick past me, a scream falling from her lips, then, “Ivy,” in the next breath before darting past Trez and me.
“He told me you were dead,” I confess, not sure if Kane or Jagger told him, my heart aching when I think back to that moment and the gleam in Dick’s gray eyes. “Where were you?”
“The cave, but let’s talk about that later.” He pulls back but doesn’t release me. I can’t seem to let him go just yet, either. “Did Henrik or that crazy bitch do anything to you? Did they hurt you?”
I’m guessing he’s referring to Salem. Jagger admitted they looked for me, so cameras must have been on one or both buildings. It’s the only way they’d know Henrik and Salem were there. It makes me wonder if Kane knows who else was there.
Wouldn’t he have to?
Not ready to linger my thoughts on Kane, I shove him and the rest as far back in my head as possible and focus on my brother.
It’s now that I’m hit with the full force of Trez’s appearance. To say it’s a shock is an understatement. He still looks like himself but has a different shade of hair and eyes, like he is wearing colored contacts. He has a warmer skin tone, but his jawline is still the same. Square, just like…
Jesus.
I’m staring at a literal replica of Kane’s father, of Trez’s Dad, which means…
It’s all true.
Everything Salem told me was right.
Not that I didn’t kind of believe her, wanted to believe her even... Then, how Jagger’s eyes looked at me like they would jump from their sockets at any moment told me what I’d been too afraid to face in the mirror.
I’m not Kate Everhart.
Trez isn’t Trez. He isn’t my brother.
“Kate,” Trez calls out, his tone cautionary as I’m warring with the fact that I don’t know if I’m even supposed to call him by that name, or if…
My thoughts trail off when my brother tightens his fingers around my back, but before he can latch onto me, I jump back. His eyes widen and then flick somewhere behind me to where Jagger is standing, I suppose. Some silent message passes between him and whoever is behind me, then his warm eyes are back on me as he steps forward. “Kate, what’s wrong?”
Everything is wrong, but I can’t tell him that, so I hug my middle as the need to shift festers, my bones aching to break, yet my wolf is holding me in my human form.
“I’m happy for you,” I say, and I am. I’m glad he and Jagger discovered they’re mates, but I… can’t be here. I have to go.
Kane is here. I feel him like an invisible string tugs at the base of my skull, urging me to seek him out, to find him, to go to him.
But I can’t.
I won’t.
My vision starts to haze, my view of Trez clouding. It’s either that or he’s glowing an orangish red.
Fuck, I’m losing my shit.
“Whatever you’re thinking right now, shut it down, Kate,” my brother… no, Kane’s brother says. “Everything is going to be fine. We have a lot to talk about. Let’s just?—”
“No,” I cut him off, but he advances toward me, so I take two steps back. “Just stay put. I need a minute. I need…” My words fail me when I feel his warmth behind me, towering over me a hair’s breadth before his hand grips and squeezes my hip.
“Don’t make me do this,” Kane pleads, his palm shaking against the material of my pants.
“Do what?” I bellow as I whip around to face him. He’s so close I’m forced to tilt my head back, and that’s when it happens.
His hand wraps around my throat while his other one finds my waist. At the same time, my stare locks on his, but in place of his amber eyes are two literal blood moons shining down at me. His alpha power takes hold of my mind, then my body, and lastly, my soul, freezing my limbs where I stand. I couldn’t run right now if I wanted to. I couldn’t even take a swing at his insanely hot face if I tried.
What’s surprising is that I don’t want to do either of those things. That’s when my wolf decides to roll over onto her back with her tongue lolled to one side, showing her belly—to her alpha.
You goddamn traitorous slut, I seethe through the link inside my head. He broke our fucking hearts. Get up!
Something unlocks from inside my chest, and it catches me completely off guard. It’s as if an imaginary key was inserted, then turned, making the door squeak open and the word Mate is whispered all around me, echoing. A gasp falls from Kane’s lips, and I know he heard it too, felt it.
“Don’t fight it, baby. Just close your eyes. Take a nap for me,” he commands, but his tone is soft as he coaxes me to comply with his wishes.
The sheer power coming from him and into me feels like the warmest blanket wrapped around bare skin on the coldest night. It’s hot, but it isn’t suffocating like I’m used to when Dick turns his alpha power on me. This feels good, making my anxiety slowly dissipate into nothingness.
My eyes droop, my body relaxes.
“I got you, Kate,” is the last thing I hear, a breath before my eyelids lose the fight to stay open, and all the remaining strength in my body vanishes, and sleep takes hold of me.