Chapter 14 - Lucas
My knuckles were white as I drove, pulling toward Gina's house. My entire body felt like it was locking up as I unbuckled. Fear gripped me. Someone was in the woods.
I swung out of my truck and marched up to the house. I was tense and worried. Anyone could cross the border into her land and hurt her. There was nothing stopping them.
I told Ayden about the phone call, and he turned pale. We all knew who it could be, and the thought of them being so close to the border put all of us on edge.
We hadn't seen Logan, but that didn't mean he wasn't lurking. There was no way he was sitting quietly after everything that happened. He was planning, and I just hoped today wasn't the day he decided to do something.
I found Gina standing in the garden, and I relaxed slightly. She had at least listened and stayed there instead of lurking around the wood herself. The thought of her going into the woods to whoever was waiting made me uncomfortable. Her wolf was too small, too fragile to go against another.
"You're fast," she said, and I could see her shoulders relax a little. "Did you speed here?"
"Wouldn't matter if I did or not," I said, my eyes snapping to the woods.
I heard her snort. "You did speed, which means you're concerned." I glanced at her, and the smile that had appeared for a second disappeared.
"I am," I said. "Stay here. I'm going to look around. "
I hopped over the small metal fence of the garden and started down the hill towards the woods. I felt the hair on my body rise, but not because someone was there. I could smell that someone had been.
The scent was foul. A mixture of sweat and blood coated the air, and it made my stomach churn. And it wasn’t anyone I knew. This wasn’t a scent I recognized, so it wasn’t anyone from town.
I entered the woods, my eyes scanning the space, finding it silent and empty. The woods were quiet, but this was too quiet. That only happened when something was around.
I looked down, finding footprints pressed into the dirt. They were large enough for a man, and my stomach flipped. The smell and the footprints told me someone had been there. Someone had been here watching Gina. And that angered me.
She couldn't stay at the house anymore. It was unsafe. If someone was ballsy enough to stand and watch, they were ballsy enough to go up to the house and hurt her.
An image of Gina being shoved down hit me all too quickly. It was when they were younger, and her brother shoved her into a pit. She'd tried clawing her way out, but she couldn't.
Gina wouldn't even know what was coming before it happened. She would end up hurt or worse. I couldn't let anything happen to her. She'd already had enough heartache when we were growing up. She didn't need to worry about this now.
I curled my hands into fists and scanned the space once more, looking for any sign of them. But there were no other footprints, just the ones like the person had stood here for a while. The thought of them standing here more than once made me feel sick.
It wouldn't take much to walk up the hill and enter the house. With the renovations, Gina hardly locked the door. She wasn't sleeping there, but she was there early in the morning and late into the night sometimes. And she was often alone.
I thought back to everything that had been happening with Logan. Owen was still very protective of Ashley, and for good reason. As independent as she was, Logan was a monster.
The thought of him putting his hands on Gina made my entire body tense up. The idea itself made me sick. I looked down and kicked the dirt marks, hoping it made it known that I had been there. The person would likely come back, and if I found them, I was going to strangle the life out of them.
I then turned back up to the house. Gina stood by the gate now, eager and quiet. She looked behind me and then at me. "So?"
"There is no one there, but I can tell someone had been."
She made a face. "Well, that's creepy as shit."
"It's not creepy, Gina. It's bad."
She rolled her eyes, making a clicking sound with her tongue. "Yeah, I gathered that part, but until you…"
I didn't even let her finish. "You aren't staying here."
Her mouth snapped shut, and her eyebrows went up. And after a second of confusion, she crossed her arms and glared. "I'm sorry, what did you say?"
"You can't stay here. It's unsafe."
"This is my house."
"I understand that…"
She didn’t let me finish. She shook her head, waved her hands, and stopped me. "No, I don't think you understand. Lucas, this is my house. This is my land. I will stay here if I want to, and you can’t say otherwise."
"And I don't know who's watching you," I snapped at her. I felt my irritation starting to grow. I understood her desire to be strong, but this wasn’t the time. "It's not safe. We aren’t going to argue about this."
"Then I can put up a security system," she snapped back at me. She dropped her arms. "But I'm staying when the time comes. There is no reason to overreact to this when it could just be someone in the woods trying to be funny."
She didn’t honestly believe that, did she? If she had, why would she have called me? I stared at her, and I could see the shock and fear in her eyes. "Gina, this isn't up for debate. You can't stay here until we get things figured out with the pack neighboring us."
She half laughed, shaking her head. "You do not get to tell me what I can and can't do, Lucas. We may be getting married, but we both know that doesn't change anything between us. And it could take years before you guys settle things with the pack next to you. I'm not waiting years before I can stay here."
I took a deep breath, knowing yelling at her wouldn't get us anywhere. When it came to Gina and me, yelling wasn't the answer. But I wanted to yell. She called me because she was worried. I’m sure her wolf could feel the shift in the air, and I felt it, too. It wasn’t safe here, and she was just stubborn.
I softened my words. "Gina, I'm uncomfortable with you being alone when we don't know who's out there."
Her shoulders dropped slightly, and her eyes flicked towards the woods. She swallowed, and I could see the concern in her eyes. It worried her as well, even if she was trying to act like it didn’t.
She then looked back at me. "If I stopped doing something every time someone made me uncomfortable, I'd still be the little fragile wolf that you obviously still see."
It felt like a slap, and it angered me. "I am trying to protect you, Gina! This is not about what I see."
"And I'm telling you that I don't need your protection. I've done fine without it this far."
I laughed. "Oh really? Because you got the house by yourself? Pretty sure if I weren't here, you wouldn't still be here either."
Rage filled her eyes. And I regretted the words. "Fuck you." She turned and started to march towards the house.
I moved after her and grabbed her arm. She tried to get free, but I held on. I yanked her, turning her back to me. "You may think you're strong, but I have seen what he can do, and you have no idea what you would be up against. Whether it was Logan or not, we have to be on high alert."
She ripped her hand free, growling at me and baring her teeth. "Fuck. You," she said, enunciating her words. "You don't know who's even out there. What makes you think it isn't just Chris lurking around? Or some lone wolf that just stopped for a second to catch his breath?"
I didn't know it was, but I didn't think it was Chris. While that sounded like something he would do, it also seemed like a waste of his time. He would rather piss Gina off than stalk her.
And the smell was off. It wasn't him. It was someone who enjoyed bloodshed. Only someone who normally enjoyed blood and shedding it would leave a scent like that.
"Gina, for once, just listen to what you're being told."
She stiffened, and I watched her face go from fury to sad. She narrowed her eyes at me. "You have no idea what I have had to listen to my entire life, Lucas. I've been told I'm a waste of space since I was born. Yet, I graduated college. Everyone told me that when I got older, someone would cross my path and teach me a lesson. They have, and I won every single time. I have broken bones and bruised every part of my body, surviving and listening to what everyone has had to say about me. So, trust me when I tell you that you can take your words and shove them so far up your ass you can taste them. Because I will never do what you tell me."
I'd seen Gina angry, but not like this. Not this raw and emotional. And for the first time, I wasn't seeing a little fragile wolf in front of me. She was showing me the claws and teeth that sat beneath the surface.
I’d never seen Gina fight, but I could now imagine she was quite good. To survive this long, you have to be smart enough to figure things out. But if Logan made Ayden and Owen uncomfortable, there was a reason for it.
I swallowed. "Gina, I'm trying to protect you."
"No, you're not," she snapped. "You have never protected me. You have always let me get eaten by the wolves. You stood at the sideline as they picked me apart and laughed. So don’t start acting like the savior now."
"I did…"
She didn't let me finish as she pulled a hand up, poking me hard in the chest. I could see raw emotion in her eyes, and she was fighting tears. "You did. You laughed. Countless times, you could have stepped up and done something, done anything, and you didn't. You let my family and the entire pack treat me like I was nothing better than the dirt they stood on. And you made it known."
I swallowed, unable to find my words. She wasn't wrong.
"You and everyone else in that pack were wrong." I could see tears grow in her eyes and the years of pain bleeding out of her.
I thought back to it all, and she had me. I had stood by the sideline and let it happen. I had joined in and agreed with them. Gina was small, and her chances of survival were slim. She shouldn't have, but she did.
I remembered how she walked skittishly and kept track of who was around her. Her brother always planned some way to humiliate her, and it worked. She would grow red, but there was nothing she could do but take it.
And I rejected her all those years ago. When we figured out she was my mate, I rejected her. I never wanted anyone to know who she was or what she was to me. A small wolf like her wasn’t someone you wanted to mate.
She wiped at her eyes. "Now, excuse me while I go check on my house." She turned, marching off, and I stood there, unsure of what to say. There wasn't anything I could say. She was right.