Chapter Twenty-two – Angela
Chapter Twenty-two
Angela
Jack wouldn’t fuck me again after that, or even let me make him come again. He held me down, ate me out, stroked me, licked me—he wouldn’t stop, pulling waves of pleasure out of me, even after I was sure I didn’t have any more to give—but he’d scared himself, biting me, I could tell.
“Do I taste that good?” I asked him, cradled in his arms at the end of the night.
“You have no idea,” he said, breathing rough. I looked up and caught him staring at the cement overhead. “It’s going to be dawn soon, Angie.”
I groaned. It wasn’t fair—none of this was fucking fair. “No.”
“I know,” he said, sitting up. “But I’ve got to get back.”
“I don’t see any light.”
“I feel it coming. And I need to shower. If I wake up smelling this much like you and you’re not there….”
He didn’t need to say anything else. I could see it in his eyes.
“All right,” I admitted, and stood, picking up all the clothing I’d dropped.
In between carnalities, we’d planned this upcoming evening.
I would go before moonrise and tell the Pack everything I knew.
And then, when the full moon caught us all—we would see what’d happen.
Rabbit was going with me—as was Jack, once again hidden in the back of the truck.
I couldn’t tell him what to do after he woke up, so I didn’t try.
I only hoped that if something bad happened to me or Rabbit, he would get away safely and tell Mark.
He stood as well, pulling on his jeans first, then tugging his silly green polo back on. The lean muscles of his back and arms rippled, and I had kissed each and every one of them. “If I had a camera, I’d take a picture of you in that to remember you by,” I said.
“Don’t say things like that. This isn’t allowed to be final.”
“Sorry,” I said, and offered him my hand. He took it, and we walked quickly back to the hotel room together.
Showers were an oddly private thing, considering everything we’d just put our bodies through—but maybe walls were good, maybe walls would stop us from hurting so bad later.
I went first and came out to snuggle up against a still-sleeping Rabbit on my bed and when Jack came out, reclothed, he took to his own.
I was almost asleep, Jack had sexed all the adrenaline right out of me—but seeing Jack laying atop the bed over there, I knew he wouldn’t be asleep until dawn.
“Hey,” I whispered to him, over Rabbit’s head. “C’mere.”
He looked over at me, as though there were someone else in the room I could possibly be talking too, and then stood. I scooted back on the bed, and patted the space in between Rabbit and I. He hovered beside the bed, unsure.
“Let’s pretend to be normal, Jack. Just for a minute.”
I watched his chest lift and sink as he considered it, and then without saying a word he crawled up on the bed between us.
Rabbit turned in his sleep toward him, throwing a careless arm over him as if he were me, and I folded myself up into his armpit on the other side, wrapping his arm around me.
He nuzzled his face into my hair, I could feel the heat of his breath, as his thumb gently stroked my arm.
I would have said something, if I’d known what to say, but I didn’t. I’m sorry it had to be like this, but also thank you, and I’ll never forget you, even if twelve hours from now I’m dead? For his part, I knew he felt it too—and he kissed the top of my head.
I rubbed my head against his chest, and rested, listening for heartbeats, and could’ve sworn I heard some as I drifted off.
When I woke up, I woke up alone.
I startled up in bed. “Rabbit?”
“I’m peeing!” Rabbit announced from the bathroom.
I sank back. The clock on the nightstand said it was eleven a.m..
There was light creeping in around the edges of the blinds and—I leaned over the bed and looked underneath.
Jack had built himself a cocoon under there, hiding from the world behind a wall of blackout fabric.
I swallowed. Last night…everything we’d done to one another felt like it was all a dream.
I remembered falling asleep against him and then him moving me to get back out of bed—
“Why’s Jack asleep, Mom?” Rabbit asked, returning from the bathroom. I hadn’t heard him wash his hands—I’d chide him for that later.
“Because he got worn out, honey.”
“Rescuing me?” Rabbit asked.
“Something like that.”
Rabbit and I spent the afternoon doing fun things. I went out and bought us ice cream, we colored, we played tag in the room, bouncing from bed to bed, laughing with glee. But once the clock rolled around to two p.m., I knew we had to go.
“Home?” Rabbit asked, watching me bend rebar I’d found alongside the road to replace the back window, wedging it into the truck’s frame. “Oh, wait, grandma….” he said, remembering she was gone.
“No—not home. To meet other wolves. Tonight’s a full moon night.” The newspaper had said moonrise was at four-forty-five, sundown at five-fifteen. “We need to go talk to them.”
“Why?”
“Because I need to tell them some things, and hope they believe me.”
“I’ll always believe you, Momma.”
“Thanks, baby,” I said, and smooched him.
Loading up the truck didn’t take long—and I made sure to secure Jack in the back. He’d slide around a little again when we drove up to the new Farm, but he’d make it okay.
Along the way, Rabbit hit me with a litany of questions.
“Where are the wolves?” “How many are there?” “How big are they?” “Are any of them little like me?” It was hard to stay patient with him and concentrate on the road—but maybe it was a good thing, because all his questions didn’t leave any time for thinking.
I followed the path up that I’d taken down, and put the truck into park at four-thirty.
I was cutting it close. I needed to be heard, but then I needed to change, because if I was a wolf, I didn’t think Gray could cage me.
I could already feel her, pushing against the surface of my skin, ready to come out.
The house in front of us was dark—so were the woods behind.
“You stay here,” I told Rabbit, and hopped out of the cab.
They knew I was coming. And I knew that Gray was here—I closed the door quietly behind me—and saw a blur leap off the roof of the farmhouse, dropping onto the truck’s hood, denting it into undrivability.
“Welcome back!” Daziel shouted. Rabbit screamed with surprise, and Daziel looked at him strangely. “You brought the boy?”
“Where’s Gray? Where’s Jonah?”
“Jonah’s a fucking traitor, he is,” Daziel said, jumping to the ground.
I swallowed. “From what I hear, you’re the fucking traitor. You killed Wade.”
“On my orders,” Gray said, appearing in the farmhouse door. His body took up the entire frame of it. “I did it to prove my love to you—and it worked. Here you are, with David.” He had the gall to be smiling at my son. Rabbit spotted him and ducked down beneath the dashboard.
“It didn’t work, and you know it. I only came back here to finish things—and tell the truth.” My voice rose and I hoped it carried. “Daziel and Murphy killed Wade on Gray’s behalf! And they killed Bella, mate of Jonah, too!”
“Shut-up, girl,” Daziel said, and punched me.
On any other night before this, it would’ve floored me. But now that I was silver-free, and with my wolf so close at hand—it dropped me for a second, and then I rebounded, jumping onto him, knocking him to the ground and bashing his head into the dirt. He threw me back and looked startled.
“Bella was pregnant! With a boy!” I shouted as loud as I could.
“So?” Gray said, advancing across the porch and coming down the stairs. “Who cares about her boy, when I have my own? Come here, David,” Gray said, trying out his most fatherly tone on Rabbit.
“His name is Rabbit,” I growled.
“No son of mine would ever tolerate being named that.”
Rabbit peeked up over the edge of the dashboard—and hit the locks on both sides of the car. “Momma says you’re a bad man!” he shouted.
“He is, baby. You’ll see,” I said low.
Daziel growled and raised his hand again—but Gray caught it. “That’s your plan, isn’t it.”
I swallowed. I hadn’t dared voice it aloud, but yeah, it was.
I couldn’t save Rabbit from the Pack—but if he watched Gray kill me—he would spend his entire life either planning to escape or plotting my revenge.
Either way, he’d never belong to Gray. Not that I wanted to die though—or that I’d go down easy.
I leapt for Gray.
He caught me, as easily as someone swatting away a fly. He bashed me to the ground, and I heard Rabbit shout, “Noooooo!”
“You stay in there, baby!” I shouted back at him, kicking away from Gray on the ground. “So that’s your plan? To just kill me in front of him? Or cage me? Like he won’t smell my tears?”
“I wanted us to be a family—that’s what I’ve always wanted, Angie. You know that about me. You remember you and me and Willa—”
“Who you murdered!” I screamed at him.
He went still and I could see the rage building inside of him. “It was an accident.”
“And how many accidents have there been? Did the others not matter to you, too? Did you ever learn your lesson?”
The clock was ticking away, I knew we both could feel it, any minute now our wolves would arrive and make all of this moot—and whatever happened to us while we were wolves, our human selves would not remember.
So if Gray just waited out the clock, he could always try to tell Rabbit he was wrong, that Daziel killed me, that maybe he tried to stop it but he was too late—so I played my final card.
“I’m the one who turned you in!” I shouted—at him, and for the benefit of anyone else listening. “So that no one else would die!”
Gray put his hands on his knees, looking half-way sick. “Too late.”