Chapter 22
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
GARRETT
Angel’s scent, that tantalizing mix of fresh air and lilac, tickles my nose and stirs other parts of me as I reach the door to my cabin. With my hand on the latch, I hesitate, unsure what I’ll say, what I’ll do.
My wolf remains blessedly quiet as I stare at the door. He’s giving me time to think, but as I know, having time to think often creates more problems than it solves.
“Garrett, is that you?” Angel calls out from inside my cabin.
The door swings open. She’s standing there, looking a lot better than when I last saw her.
Her skin has a radiant, healthy glow, no longer as blue as the water that nearly drowned her.
Soft golden hair hangs loosely about her shoulders, just how I like it, but the temptation to sink my hands into those soft locks proves too much for me.
I shove my hands behind me and adopt a neutral, military stance. “I thought I caught your scent. I guess breaking into a shifter’s home while he’s away is becoming habit for you.”
“It was unlocked. And last time you were here.” She bites her lower lip, then takes a deep breath. “I didn’t think you’d mind, since I had nowhere else to go.”
“What’s wrong, Angel?” I won’t play games with her when she’s hurting or in trouble.
“No hello?”
“Hello. What’s wrong?”
“Sorry, I’m just a bit edgy. I was worried about you and no one told me where you went. Damien, Frank, and several others took off after that alert sounded at the border, but they all returned. You didn’t.”
“I didn’t mean to worry you. Damien should have explained that he sent me to follow the trail left by the intruders.”
“He and I aren’t exactly best buddies.”
“But you and Tess—”
“She’s nice, but she doesn’t talk pack business. I got the standard line. He’s away on an op and he’ll be back soon. I wasn’t quite sure what to believe. And my imagination, if left unchecked…” She shrugs.
“I intended to come find you the second I returned. When I reached our border, Frank told me you’d moved here. That surprised me, after what happened last time.”
Her eyes roam over the doorframe. “It appears our positions are reversed.”
“You can slam the door in my face if you’d like. I deserve it.”
“Why would you say that?” She swings the door wide open. An invitation into my own home, yet I’m reluctant to enter. Afraid that if I do, I might act on my base desires.
I swear I can still feel her cold, limp body in my wolf’s jaws. Nearly losing her… it’s fucked me up more than I thought possible.
“I’m not sure we should both be inside… together,” I warn.
“Come inside, shifter.” Those blue eyes holding me hostage in a way I can’t explain, and don’t want to escape. “Don’t make me ask twice.”
“Tell me why you’re here, Angel.” I hold firm, not entering. “You said you didn’t have anywhere else to go. Explain that. What about the women’s cabin?”
“I had a disagreement with one of the women.”
“Disagreements are common in close quarters. I used to have them all the time when I lived in the men’s cabin. Never let them kick me out though. It was as much my home as theirs.”
“They didn’t kick me out. I left. Don’t want to be where I’m not wanted.”
“Which is why you came to my cabin, the place you were kicked out of.”
“It made sense at the time. Probably because you weren’t here at the time to argue with. Or maybe I just needed a friend. But that’s right, we’re not friends. You made that pretty clear.” She goes to slam the door, but I catch it with my hand.
“I didn’t finish telling you about my time in the men’s cabin. I learned the best approach to resolving a disagreement was to apologize and then ignore the asshole.”
“Why apologize if you don’t mean it?”
“Because it gave us the ability to co-exist.”
“And that’s why you now live way out here on the outskirts of your pack. Totally alone. So you don’t have to get along with others?”
“And yet that seems to be working for you, giving you a place to retreat to when pack life gets too hard.”
“It’s like looking in a mirror, isn’t it, shifter?”
“No, actually. I got along with everyone, learned how to compromise. Never had any true issues.”
“Until Marla,” she says. “Why then?”
That’s when I shut up.
She grabs me by my shirt, pulls me inside, and shuts the door. “If you’re going to lie to me or avoid the truth, we might as well do it where it’s warm. I’m still a bit sensitive to the cold.”
I have this urge to wrap my body around her, to keep her warm, but that’s the worst thing I can do right now. Once I touch her, I won’t be able to stop.
“Whatever you’re cooking smells delicious. Not that it really matters. I’m so famished I’d even eat mushrooms.”
A dainty eyebrow kicks up. “Then you’re in luck. Mushroom stew.”
When my face falls, she laughs, then throws in a handful of chopped carrots. “Oh, you are easy to tease. Relax. It’s beef stew.”
Her laughter and smile make my wolf purr and other part of me rise. I pull out a chair and sit down, where she can’t see how fucking easily she stirs me and my wolf.
“Want to tell me about the fight?”
“Not a fight exactly. They said some things about me. All true.”
They. Before it was one woman, now it’s they, plural. “What things?”
She pulls out the other chair and sits. “I want you to teach me to do what you do.”
For a moment, I flash on Marla sitting right where Angel is now, asking me to teach her how to infiltrate. I thrust the image from my head. Angel’s not Marla.
“What I do? Cooking?”
“I’m being serious, Garrett. I want to learn everything you do as a retrieval expert.”
My hackles shoot up and my back straightens. I’ve been down this road before with Marla. If I had never trained her, convinced her to work in the cookhouse or with the kids instead, she’d still be alive.
“No,” I say with absolute finality.
“I need this, Garrett. I’m a disaster as a shifter. You’ve seen it.”
“What are you talking about?”
“After you rescued me from the truck. I noticed your wolf glancing at every paw print I left in the snow, but you never said anything.”
“You were injured, unable to focus.”
“Don’t do that. Don’t make excuses for my lack of skill. I’ve been with your pack for nearly a month. I’ve healed enough for you to see how I move.”
“There’s no need for stealth inside our territory.”
“You don’t get it, those are skills I should still have.
Look at what happened with little Alex. I should have been able to walk out onto that ice and reach him before he fell in, but I didn’t know what I was doing.
The ice cracked that much faster because of me and he nearly died.
Because of me! Do you understand what that’s like? ”
Flashes of Marla’s bullet-riddled body upon the funeral pyre pop into my head. “I know, better than anyone. Which is why I’m not going to teach you my skills.”
She leans back, putting distance between us. “I thought I could count on you.”
“I won’t contribute to your death.”
“I nearly lost a six-year-old. And it’s more than him. Do you know how the WSSO caught me?”
I shake my head. “I didn’t want to stir up memories of that day, of what happened to you… and your pack. But I’m listening, Angel. Anything you want to tell me, I’m listening.”
She takes a deep breath, wiping at the tears.
“I was on a supply run with one of our scouts. Ronin. He was driving the truck while I tallied up the receipts and did some paperwork on the ride from town. We were a few miles from camp when a tree fell down on our truck. It was scary, but not something we thought twice about given the heavy rains. We both got out, gathered up the perishables and figured we’d send back some of the teens to collect the rest of the goods when we got back to camp.
“We didn’t know what was happening at the time.
Not until the first shot nearly took Ronin’s head off.
So many shots. I don’t remember dropping the packages or shifting…
just running. As fast as I could. Instinct said to run home, to safety.
Except it wasn’t safe. The scent of death and humans reached me long before I entered camp, but I wasn’t thinking straight.
Panic drove me and I ran right into mayhem.
WSSO guards walking from body to body, shooting the few that moved or moaned. ”
“I don’t know how long I stood there, in shock before I ran, or what got me moving again.
I can’t even tell you what direction I took.
My wolf must have been in control at some point, but maybe not…
I still don’t know, but I recall thinking if I took to higher ground, a place where humans couldn’t follow, I’d survive.
My pack trained the scouts and border guards to be light on their feet, not leave tracks or any physical signs the enemy can track, even how to use the wind to their advantage…
but they didn’t train the rest of us, especially not the women.
I’d been assigned to supply management. Learned everything from budgeting to how to make shifters happy when I had to say no to their requests.
None of that helped me survive, Garrett.
Even though my wolf took the most arduous path we could find, they still caught me.
With a fucking taser and a net dropped from a helicopter. ”
“I’m so sorry, Angel. For all of it.”
Anger quickly replaces tears. “I’m tired of being the one someone always rescues.
The next time someone comes for me, I don’t want to be helpless.
I don’t want to be shoved into another fucking dog cage and used to trap innocent shifters.
If you’re not willing to teach me how to do what you do, then…
” She swallows hard. “I guess I’ll have to ask Damien if someone else will train me.
Even if it means formally becoming a border guard to justify them spending the time training me. Mason said his mate is a border guard.”
“Takara used to be, before she had kids, and for the White Wolves, same birth pack as Hayden. It’s a very different culture down there.” As I’m talking, my Angel’s expression grows more distant. She doesn’t think I’ve heard her, that I’m taking her seriously.
I lift her onto my lap and hold her tight.
“Baby, I promise you no one would ever fucking touch you again.” The border’s not the place for her.
She may have the drive to learn, even acquire the skills, but she’s not a loner, or a fighter.
She belongs with other shifters, where she lights up.
And with the recent activity along the border, I’d rather have her near, where I can protect her…
at least until I teach her what she needs to stay alive.
“Don’t make me beg for help.”
“Never beg. I’ll train you. Everything you said is valid. I should have thought of it myself. You’ll stay here with me, where no one will bother you and I’ll teach you everything you need.”
Her arms tighten around me. It’s hard not breathing in her scent, getting caught up in a female who has more courage than anyone I know.
I’ll make sure she’s never vulnerable again.
With her hands locked behind my neck, Angel throws me a quizzical look. “Are you sure you want me staying here while I train? You’re the one who worried about others judging me for associating with you.”
“That still worries me, but this is important to you.”
“Don’t let it worry you,” she says with a determination that makes her eyes shine. “I don’t give a damn what others think about me. And I’d be so damn proud for them to talk about us in the same breath, Garrett, because you’re a wonderful male whose only flaw is that he cares too deeply.”
“That’s my only flaw?” I flirt because as long as I’m talking, I can’t be kissing her, which is what I want to do more than anything right now.
“More or less,” she says with a smile that quickly disappears. “I won’t stay where I’m not wanted.” She looks around my small cabin, then swallows again. “Not with this pack or with you.”
My wolf claws me, not in disgust or anger, but panic—a sentiment I share. The very thought of her leaving utterly terrifies me.
Despite all those promises I made to myself, I kiss her. She opens for me so readily. When I hold her head steady and slip my tongue in between those lush lips, a velvety tongue meets mine. Our kiss turns into the most erotic dance of my life. There is no Angel or Garrett at this point, only… us.
And my wolf purrs like he’s floating on a cloud in heaven.
He is. We both are. That lilac scent caresses every part of my soul…
until she eases out of the kiss. A smile teases her lips.
No confusion, no disappointment or vulnerability.
Only strength, certainty… and acceptance for everything that I am.
I don’t have to hide who I am from her. Not any longer.
Angel grips my shirt and pulls me into her, her lips sinking against mine to continue a kiss that ended too soon. Her body molds to mine and I let my cock press against her bottom. There’ll be no more hiding how hard she makes me, how she wakens every part of me.
My wolf’s no longer just purring. He’s eager to taste his female… our female. And yet it’s too soon. My heart and body are racing ahead of my brain.
I break the kiss as suddenly as it started, and lean my forehead against hers while I catch my breath. “I don’t want to take advantage of you.”
“And here I thought I was taking advantage of you.”
I laugh, with a freedom that has eluded me for years, not just the weeks I’ve known Angel.
“Will you stay, with me, Angel? Let me train you. Anything to keep you from leaving our pack.”
“This isn’t my pack, Garrett. It’s yours. I don’t know if I can ever fit in here, but I’ll stay with you. At least for a while.”
I can’t push for more or let my desire get in the way of what is important… keeping her safe. And right now, that means training her. Maybe, if I can build up her confidence, she’ll decide to stay and make this her pack.
If not, I’ll go with her.
My wolf bites me deep and hard at that thought.
I pull Angel into my arms and hold her tight while I still can, because I know exactly what my wolf is saying, and he’s right.
I can’t abandon my pack. I’ve sworn an oath to my alpha and to every shifter here.
They are as much my responsibility as Angel is, which means I have only one option here… convincing her to stay.
Or lose the only female who’s ever made me feel whole.