Chapter Fifteen – Angela
Chapter Fifteen
Angela
I don’t know how I slept, but I managed to until Gray came home the next morning.
“Oh baby, I heard,” he said, coming across the room and sinking to my level, reaching for me.
I—I fought him then—I didn’t want him to touch me—but he wasn’t trying to hurt me, he was trying to console me, pressing me to his chest as I squirmed until I pushed myself away from him.
The sorrow that scored his face—how could he pretend to be upset?
He had to know the danger he’d put her in when he gotten her pregnant.
More werewolves didn’t just come out of a machine.
“I wanted to be here. I would’ve if I could,” he went on, apologizing.
Apologizing!
Like he didn’t know what I’d seen! And—maybe he didn’t. I’d only seen the wolf part of him, really, on his wild night. Maybe the wolf part didn’t talk to him? How could it? It was an animal.
And I miraculously wasn’t dead. He didn’t even seem interested in killing me. So I doubled down.
“She died. Because of you!” I shouted at him, and started hitting him, beating closed fists on his chest.
“Ang, stop that,” he said, catching me.
“They wouldn’t let me take her in! And then when I tried to, I got into an accident—and you should’ve been there!” I said, falling into all too real tears, letting my sorrow break me.
“Shh, sweetheart, shh,” he said, pulling me close.
It felt wrong, like a betrayal of all that Willa and I had, letting him touch me anywhere. But if I could manage to live through this, I could live through fucking anything. And I didn’t just have myself to live for anymore. I had the baby—that above all else I knew I had to get away from Gray.
The bar’s alarm started blaring, warning every one in every room that the police were right outside. Gray scrambled to attention and I followed him up as we heard shouting in the hall. The door to our room kicked open and men with handguns streamed in.
“Erik Bergman, you’re under arrest, put your hands up.”
Caught unawares, Gray started to spin things, looking at each of them like they were all friends. “Hey, we’re cool here,” he began.
“Does the name Brittani Jacobs ring a bell?” the lead cop said, as he grabbed for Gray’s shoulders.
I gasped. The book I’d seen—the one that was still on Gray’s desk—was a gift from Brittani. They’d search here, and find it—and Willa and I had never pulled those old dresses from his closet, choosing instead to keep our own clothing in assorted piles on the floor.
“Who’re you?” a detective shouted down at me. I held my hands up.
“She’s nobody,” Gray said, giving me a look that I knew meant I should keep my mouth shut.
And then the detective I’d met last night came in the room, pulling up the rear. He saw me and I saw the flash of recognition in his eyes—right before they narrowed, taking the situation in.
“I don’t know anything,” I said. “What the hell is going on, Gray?” I kept making innocent sounds, pleading Detective Derizzio with my eyes—and he, likely pleased to take credit for the first big Pack bust, nodded subtly, knowing anything more than that would condemn me to die.
“Just stay quiet,” Gray demanded, as the cops nearest him started shoving him out while reciting Miranda rights.
The Pack descended into chaos.
The cops tossed our room and found Brittani’s book and dresses she’d been photographed in.
I didn’t really have a place to stay there anymore—but I didn’t feel like I could go.
I was worried abandoning the bar would cast suspicion on myself.
I did, however, spend a lot of time moping and crying everywhere—half-fake, half-true.
But after a month, I knew I needed out. Each morning I woke up, worrying I would show. I’d reached out to my folks, I knew they would take me back—and I had to go before pretending to be a devoted girlfriend to a man I hated drove me insane.
So one morning I hitched my backpack over my shoulder and walked out like I was going to the bus stop, even though there wasn’t school that day—and that’s when I remembered my Dringenbergs from Wade.
My parents didn’t know about my tattooing and if I told them they’d think it was a fad—they’d never spring to replace five-hundred-plus dollar machines.
I trotted back in like I’d forgotten a book and grabbed them, then went for the front door.
Wade blocked my path. “Where do you think you’re going?”
Ever since Gray had been taken, he’d been trying to comfort me. He also clearly remembered nothing about his wolf-night. I regarded him coolly. “Out.”
He looked me up and down and took a moment to think for himself, measuring some internal tide. “I don’t think so,” he said, and grabbed me.
“You put me right down this instant Wade!” I shouted, loud enough for half the mall to hear. “I mean it!”
I started throwing punches, right and left, but anywhere they landed felt like stone—it was like the man had no give to him, and he had little care for me. He hauled me into the bedroom, where I’d made a pallet of Willa and I’s clothing where the bed’d been, and threw me onto it.
“Wade, don’t you dare,” I growled—and felt her, for the first time since that night beneath the moonlight. My own wolf, welling up inside me, her fur hidden just under my skin.
He didn’t notice the change in me, he was too eager to unlatch his belt. “Take your clothes off or I’ll rip them off you.”
My wolf wanted no part of this indignity. I had blinding waves of emotions from her—anger, ferocity, so strong they left me reeling.
But if I let her out now—the Pack would claim me. They’d never let me go alive. And if I died—I put a hand on my stomach, where any day my baby—my baby, not Gray’s—would show.
For my baby’s sake, I could swallow my pride.
“Fuck you, Wade,” I said, but I shoved my jeans down.
That was as much of an invitation as he needed.
He didn’t take the rest of his clothing off either, he was too excited, with me this close, he had to be inside.
He curled beside me, setting his body against mine and I could feel his cock, jutting ramrod straight, begging to get in.
He lowered himself, hauling my hips towards his and prying my clenched legs apart with his much stronger hands.
Despite my decision to take it and live, my body couldn’t help but fight—and he acted like he was used to such things.
At any rate, it didn’t stop him—and soon his cock was chafing me as it rubbed in, dry.
“Ever since I saw you, Angela—ever since I smelled you—I’ve wanted this,” he growled, one hand holding my leg up and open, the other clutching my shoulder, hauling me back onto him, so that he could thrust while I lay still.
“I never wanted anything to do with you,” I hissed.
“That’s not true. You liked the attention. You liked sharing my art.” Now that he was drilled solidly inside he let my leg down and reached up to grab my hair. “You were special—and now you belong to me.”
“I hate you. I’ve always hated you,” I said through gritted teeth.
He laughed. “That’s what they all say—at first.” Then he rolled himself on top of me.
I buried my face in the clothing at hand, willing myself to leave my body. My body was just a meat-thing, and he could have his way with it, but I was still me. And someday, somehow, I would kill him for this. For Willa, and her baby. I would figure out a way to kill them all.
His hands clawed the ground on either side of my head, and I could see his scar, along with the heart I’d sketched on him over a year ago.
“Yes—yes—oh my god—yes,” the last word left him as a wild howl and I knew he was coming inside me.
I closed my eyes shut. Inside the bar, a wall away, I imagined I could hear smattered applause.
And then his cock in me flared, same as Gray’s had, in the woods near the Farm.
“Oh, God—I didn’t mean for that to happen—but it feels so right,” he said, lowering himself on top of me, crushing me down.
“I couldn’t help it—you’re so hot—the moon’s near—and my wolf wants you—needs you—God!
” he shouted, rolling himself through another thrust. “You’re so goddamned tight, and now your pussy’s all mine for the taking,” he breathed into my ear, still rocking back and forth, satisfying himself again and again, until I imagined myself overflowing with his cum.
“How the hell did Gray resist this? How could he stand not knotting you?”
So that’s what it was called. I twisted my head and opened up my eyes a mere sliver. “He didn’t.”
That gave Wade pause.
“He knotted me—and now I’m pregnant with his baby,” I whispered.
Wade tried to pull back, but couldn’t, his cock had him trapped inside me.
“I’m not just another fly-by-night hussy to him, Wade. And when he gets out of jail and finds out what you’ve done,” I let the barest hint of my wolf out, letting my voice fill with her threat.
He lifted himself up off my back. “I—I didn’t mean to. It was my wolf—I swear it.”
“The same wolf you drink silver to keep at bay?” I twisted in time to see him nod. “What happened to Willa? And the other girl?”
He swallowed, I heard it. “Men we can bite in. But women have to make it to term.”
I twisted to reach up and touch his throat, his cock still spreading me wide. “Which do you think he’ll pull your windpipe out with, Wade? His teeth, or his hand?”
“I could kill you now.”
“My parents know I live here. The Pack’s already under scrutiny, it’d be too messy. And then the autopsy would show I was pregnant, besides.”
“You still might die.”
“I might. But I’m going to take my chances in the outside world. And you’re going to let me.” I kept twisting against him, trying to escape the thick pressure of his cock, like a tail between my legs.
“God—if you don’t stop—it’ll never go down,” he said, looking haunted.
“We could always cut it off,” I muttered, and went still.
I had dark thoughts about using his cock for myself, cruelly fucking him while he was trapped with the dawning horror of the situation he’d brought on himself—but that wasn’t me.
And after far, far too long, his knot began to subside, until both of us could escape the other.
I scooted as far away from him as I could and hauled up my jeans.
“Why didn’t you say anything?” he accused me.
“I didn’t want anyone to know.”
He grunted. “So what now?”
“I run out the door, and you don’t tell a soul.”
“And you won’t tell Gray about….”
“This? Not if you don’t.”
Wade frowned in confusion. “But it’s his child—you have to tell him.”
“Only if I survive. If I don’t, you’re in the clear.”
“And if you do?”
“Then we both pray he’s in prison for life, after what he did to Willa.”
He weighed the anger in my words as he stood, shoving himself into his jeans and fastening his belt without taking his eyes off me. “You would’ve made an excellent mate, Angela.”
“Shut the hell up,” I said, and ran for the door.