Chapter 19 - Jasper
Jasper hunched over the papers in his office, frowning, trying to focus on the information scribbled on them and constantly failing. His thoughts kept drifting every time he tried to concentrate. They kept sneaking up on him, thoughts of Nikki and the fight looming large.
Snarling, he tossed the page clutched in his hand back to the desk. It was no use. He couldn’t focus on anything. Every time he tried, he found his thoughts drifting idly back to Nikki.
After their fight, he had come back here to find something to preoccupy himself with, something that would get his thoughts off her, something that would make him feel productive after that fight. Except he needed to focus on Lucas, and that meant he had to think about her, too.
Why couldn’t she just see that he was trying to protect her? Why did his intentions make her so furious? Yes, he should have told her about Donovan. He’d made a mistake there, but if she hadn’t been so stubborn and resistant to everything he’d done to help her, maybe it wouldn’t have come to that.
A stab of guilt lanced through his stomach at that last thought, and he knew it wasn’t fair the second it crossed his mind. He growled, fingers tightening around the pen clutched in his hand, and willed himself to focus again.
He read the pages in front of him for the third time, trying to retain their information. It was the reports on the area that the scouts thought Lucas was hiding in. He needed to study them before they made any semblance of a plan to go after him.
As he scribbled, he realized with a jolt that he hadn’t even told Nikki the good news.
The fight had shoved all thoughts of it out of his head.
Growling in frustration, he ran his fingers through his hair, biting back a snarl.
He had been trying to protect her, but even now, he knew he had gone too far.
What was it about her that made him behave like this?
It had always been this way about her, ever since he had first laid eyes on her months ago, the first time he had stepped into the gym to start his self-defense lessons and had seen her toward the back of the class, watching him studiously, trying to pay attention to every little thing he was teaching them.
Ever since then, he hadn’t been able to get her out of her head.
He had this overwhelming need to keep an eye on her, to protect her.
It was why he had watched her, because he knew that if anything happened to her, he would all but lose his mind.
He still couldn’t explain why. It was like something had come over him and had never left, at least not where Nikki was concerned.
He sighed, pushing his hair back. He wanted to put all of this behind them.
He wanted to start over with Nikki. What would it have been like, had Lucas never shown up that night?
Would he still only be talking to her when correcting her during training?
Why hadn’t he spoken to her before then?
Why had he felt the need to follow her instead of approaching her?
There was a knock on the door.
“Open,” he grunted, dropping his pencil onto the desk, relieved to have something other than paper to distract him at the moment.
Cillian strolled in. “Hey,” he said. “Camden’s about to have a meeting. All hands.”
“Be there in a minute,” Jasper grunted.
Cillian tilted his head, looking him up and down, his brow furrowed. “You seem more upset than normal,” Cillian said, almost conversationally.
Jasper grumbled, but didn’t answer.
“Very illuminating,” Cillian said, nodding as if he’d received some sage advice. “Wow. I never thought about it that way. You really have a way with words.”
“Not the time, Cillian,” Jasper muttered.
“It’s never the time,” Cillian said. “So why don’t you tell me what’s going on?”
Sighing, Jasper dragged his gaze away from the paperwork to glance up at his friend. “You told Nikki about Donovan?” Jasper asked.
Cillian’s eyes widened with alarm, the playful smirk slipping off his face. He squirmed a little and glanced away. “I did. I didn’t realize it was supposed to be a secret, and she asked me not to tell you I’d told her.”
“Yeah, well, she confronted me the second I walked through the door,” Jasper said. He relayed the events of the argument, making them neutral, trying to remove his own emotions about the situation. He wasn’t sure how much he actually succeeded.
When Jasper finished, Cillian didn’t respond immediately. Jasper studied his friend’s features. Cillian didn’t look uncomfortable, necessarily, but he didn’t look entirely at ease, either. He regarded Jasper for a long moment before finally speaking.
“Why didn’t you tell her?” Cillian asked.
Jasper opened his mouth, then closed it, letting the words wash over him.
He let out a low breath. “I don’t know,” he admitted.
“I wasn’t sure how. I knew how unhappy she was, and I thought that she would assume I was being even more controlling with something like that. And I didn’t want her to worry.”
Cillian nodded, his features uncharacteristically serious as he contemplated what Jasper was saying.
“I think that you need to consider things carefully,” he said.
“Because the decision not to tell her that you knew about Vincent and the others, even after the fact, could be construed as you wanting to control her.”
“I didn’t—” Jasper interjected, but Cillian’s raised eyebrow and knowing look caused the protest in his throat to die.
“You didn’t want to keep your mistake from her because you were worried about how she would perceive it?” Cillian asked.
Jasper didn’t answer right away. Finally, after a moment, he said, “You know you’re obnoxiously perceptive when you want to be?”
“It’s a gift,” Cillian said, flashing a smirk. “But the question is why. Why were you worried about what she would think?”
At first, Jasper didn’t respond, more surprised by the question than he would have cared to admit.
Once he got over that initial stupor, though, he thought about the question—truly thought about it.
Why had he been so concerned about what Nikki thought about him to the point where he would hide something like that from her?
The answer was obvious, once he thought about it for half a second.
It was because he was in love with Nikki.
He wasn’t sure when he had fallen for her, exactly.
Only that at some point, either when he was learning everything he could about her or when they were living together, that fascination with her and need to know everything about her had developed into something more.
He liked seeing her grow into a strong, confident woman.
He liked her stubborn streak and her optimism.
He liked the backbone she had grown, her refusal to take things lying down if she saw them as unfair, the way she hadn’t hesitated to call him out on his idiocy when he’d messed up.
He enjoyed spending time with her, and all he wanted was to make her happy and keep her safe.
Cillian was still watching him, one eyebrow raised in a perfect arch. Jasper didn’t say anything, but he didn’t need to. Cillian seemed to read everything on Jasper’s face.
“That’s what I thought,” Cillian said. “At least you finally figured it out. We’ve been waiting for you to realize it for weeks.”
“Right,” Jasper muttered. “Well, regardless, I’m pretty sure she won’t want anything to do with me now.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure about that,” Cillian said mildly.
Jasper frowned. “Sorry?”
Cillian gave him an exasperated look and huffed.
“I’d talk to her, that’s all I’m saying,” Cillian said, shrugging. “Take that however you want to.” He glanced at his watch. “I’ve got to get going. Go talk to her.”
Cillian left, closing the door behind him and leaving Jasper alone with his thoughts.
Tapping his pencil against the desk, he mulled everything over, trying to get a grasp on his thoughts and emotions, still reeling from the revelations that had just slammed into him like a truck.
He was in love with Nikki. It should have been obvious long before now, but sometimes you needed someone to slap some sense into you. And she had done just that. She’d been right. He’d been acting no better than his father.
Sighing, he ran his fingers through his hair, staring down at his desk, trying to figure out what he was going to do. The more he thought about it, the more he realized he needed to talk to Nikki before it was too late.
After a long moment, his thoughts still swirling, he shoved himself away from his desk and hurried out of the pack house, heading back home.
***
He realized something was wrong the second the house came into view.
There was nothing out of the ordinary from the front.
It was more of an odd sense than anything tangible, but he could tell that there was something off.
Over the years, he’d learned to trust his instincts, and this was no exception.
The hair on the back of his neck stood on end, and his eyes narrowed.
He slowed, coming to a stop, eyes sweeping around the perimeter, checking for any sign of intruders. When he rounded the house and saw the back door, he came to a halt, the world around him seeming to go quiet.
The back door was cracked open.
He couldn’t force himself to move at first, his eyes locked on that sight, as if willing it to change. Because while an open door might mean nothing, he had a sinking feeling that wasn’t the case here.
It could just be Nikki, he told himself. She could have stepped out for some reason, and that’s why she left the door open. Or maybe she came back in and forgot to close the door.
But that didn’t sound like Nikki at all. She may be stubborn and have a fierce streak, but she was cautious. She would never do something as stupid as leave the door open.
He moved slowly, ears pricked for any sign of an intruder or deceit. When he heard nothing, he moved a bit faster, still praying that he was overreacting and this would be something he and Nikki could laugh over when it was finished.
He wanted to call out her name, but held off.
If there was someone inside, he didn’t want to tip them off that he was home, that he was creeping inside the house at that very moment.
Taking a moment to listen, he pricked his ears, hunting for any sounds inside.
Nothing. He wasn’t sure if that was good or bad.
He nudged the door open. It was silent inside. Nikki’s scent was stale, and it was mixed with the stench of three or four other shifters.
His heart sank when he caught the smells, but he held fast. He crept into the kitchen, still moving quietly and slowly in case it was an ambush. When he had satisfied himself that there was no sign someone was going to attack him from the shadows, he hurried his pace.
“Nikki!” he called, stepping into the living room. “Nikki, are you here?”
The house remained silent. He waited, hoping against hope that he would hear the creak of a floorboard or the sound of the shower, and that was why she wasn’t answering. But he was greeted by nothing.
“Nikki, if you’re here, then you need to tell me!”
Still nothing. The only sounds in the house were his breathing and his footsteps as he moved through the rooms.
He made his way up to her room. The door was wide open. She never left it open. He stepped inside, searching for any sign she had been here recently.
The first thing he noticed was the suitcase, open and empty on the bed. Had she left? Was that what had happened? If that were the case, her suitcase would be gone, not here and vacant. A cold breeze brushed his face, and he saw the open window.
He sprinted around the house, searching in every corner, every nook he could think of, calling Nikki’s name the entire time.
After some time and searching each room multiple times, he slowed to a stop in the living room, finally accepting what he had been refusing to admit since he walked in: Nikki was gone.
His mind spun. She might have been furious with him, but she hadn’t gone of her own accord; she would have taken the suitcase if she had. Also, there was no note, and nothing explained the open door, the open window, and the scents of the other shifters.
He caught another whiff of a shifter’s scent. A jolt of pure fury lanced through him as one of the scents brought him back to the mountain, when Vincent had been dragging her away.
He froze, his body stiffening with rage at that smell. Vincent had been here. He had broken into their home, and now Nikki was missing. He knew what it meant. There was only one explanation, one that he had known was the truth since the beginning but had hoped against hope he was wrong about.
Nikki had been kidnapped. Lucas had her.
Without giving himself time to think, he jerked out his phone.
“Change of plans,” Jasper said when Camden answered, gripping the phone so tight that he was in danger of breaking it at any moment. “We’re attacking the hideout now.”
There was a pause on the other end of the line that infuriated Jasper. Every second was time wasted when they could be going after Nikki.
“What’s going on?” Camden asked, his voice sharp and alert.
“Lucas has Nikki,” Jasper said.
Camden swore. Jasper heard him relay the information to someone else, presumably Franco and Cillian. Jasper heard swearing in the background before Camden returned his attention to the phone.
“We’ll get her, Jasper,” Camden said. “Don’t worry.”
Jasper grunted and hung up. He stalked out of the house, slamming the door behind him.
Whatever Lucas had planned, he wasn’t going to be alive long enough to enact it.