Chapter 23
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
ANGEL
Istare up at the ceiling because it’s safer than looking at Garrett lying on the floor in front of the fireplace. Three layers of blankets, pillows, and a roaring fire to keep him warm… I thought after our kiss, he’d be happy to share his bed with me.
“You’re still awake, aren’t you?” he asks.
“How can you tell?”
“Your breathing isn’t relaxed.”
I turn onto my side to find him watching me, those teal eyes enough to seduce any woman, especially one who can’t forget that kiss. That blood-stirring, knee-buckling kiss that had my nipples pressing so hard against my shirt I was sure he’d feel them against his chest.
Maybe if I had leaned in against him, pressed my lower half against him…
“Can’t sleep. It’s cold up here. No shifter to warm me.”
“Is that an invitation, darlin’?”
“Do you really need to be invited to your own bed, Garrett?”
“Don’t ask me to answer that.”
That subtle growl beneath his words, the one he’s trying to hide, does things to me… everywhere.
“We could share. Like we did in that hunting cabin.”
“That was by necessity. Starting a fire would have signaled our position.”
“Are you saying I should join you by the fire?”
Silence.
I sigh. “You’re still in love with her, aren’t you?”
“Who? Marla?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t think I ever loved her. We’d been friends a long time. Her loss hit me hard. It was so… senseless.”
“All death is senseless.”
The light from the fire dances over the broad expanse of his back, drawing my eyes to every ridge and valley as he turns onto his side. Although I enjoy the view, I wish he’d face me.
“Is it the kiss, then?” I push, because I’m a fool who can’t let this go. I’m falling for the shifter… Hell, I think I’ve already fallen.
“I shouldn’t have done that,” he says.
“Why not?”
“You ask a lot of questions, Angel. Go to sleep.”
“Easier said than done. It’s cold up here.”
“You’re not going to let it go, are you?”
“Nope.”
A delicious shiver travels down my torso as Garrett rises from the floor and stretches, those enormous chest muscles on full display in the firelight. I don’t dare look down at his lower half, even though he’s wearing sleep pants.
He grabs the three blankets and heads straight toward me. My wolf’s stirring inside, as is all of me. I’ve never been this nervous before, maybe because I’ve only been with Ronin and we never connected.
Maybe it’s the anticipation of being intimate with Garrett, but I’ve never yearned for a male’s touch like this before. I’m just about to lift the blankets to invite him into the bed, when he stops.
“Garrett?”
“Now you’ll be nice and warm.” He tosses the three blankets he’s carrying on top of me, then has the nerve to tuck them under the mattress, locking me in.
“I don’t understand.”
“Goodnight, Angelina.”
Angelina…
He grabs a sweater and leaves the cabin. No shoes, no explanation… nothing.
For a second, I stare at the door, wondering what the fuck just happened. Confusion morphs to anger. I won’t be looked down on—especially not by him.
I kick at the damn blankets until I free myself. I don’t know what’s going on here, but I can’t let him just walk away like that.
My wolf agrees. As soon as I open the door, I shift and dart out into the night, in search of him.
I can’t find his trail and scenting the wind proves useless. The wind, the pine needles, even the snow should have a scent, but it’s all so dull, as if someone took a picture and drained all the color, leaving nothing but black lines on a white piece of paper.
I don’t know what direction Garrett took, but I doubt he went toward the main camp.
He avoids his packmates, only entering the heart of their pack when he’s called in by his alpha.
Which doesn’t make sense. He’s good with people, knows how to talk to them, to relate.
Even when he’s at odds with his alpha, he never seems to hold a grudge. What then, makes him avoid his pack?
For those few sweet hours after Garrett returned, I’d pushed Tiberius’s remarks aside. Now, they’re back—with a vengeance. Blaming me for those shifters that got left behind was shitty, but he was right. And no amount of training with Garrett, nothing I will do in the future, will change that.
For over a month, I’ve stayed with his pack, focused on fitting in because that’s what Garrett suggested. I trusted him… still do. But he doesn’t see what Tiberius so clearly pointed out: this pack welcomes new shifters, sure, but they don’t forget—or forgive—easily.
And those shifters Garrett left behind? He sacrificed them, to save me. Does he think about them when he looks at me? That I’m the reason they were left behind?
My wolf wanders down a well-traveled path we’ve never taken before.
I catch dozens of scent trails. Some belong to shifters I’ve met, others I don’t recognize.
The scents lingering on the snow and trees are so faint, they must be days, if not weeks, old.
No one’s traveled this way in some time.
And yet my skin prickles and my wolf growls, low, with a hint of worry, as if she senses someone nearby.
When I turn back the way I came, I catch a scent that doesn’t belong.
My brain is playing tricks on me. My wolf stops growling and her hackles relax, as if we’re among pack.
I guess we are, to a certain extent, just not our pack.
Then again, she doesn’t need to figure out the complexities of a certain male shifter whom I can’t get out of my mind.
She likes Garrett, and to her, that’s all that matters.
If only life were that simple.
That’s when moonlight bounces off an object in the dirt. I shift to human form, and pick up a hair clip with a pink bow half-buried in the snow. I brush it off, wondering who it belongs to.
A hand goes over my mouth and I’m dragged off the path, spun around, and pinned against a tree. My heart is racing, but I can’t scream. I don’t know if it’s fear or shock.
Bright teal eyes hold me.
“You have a lot to learn, Angelina.” Garrett pulls his hand away, and steps back.
“Why did you scare me like that? And why are you suddenly calling me Angelina?”
“It’s less personal.”
“I don’t understand what’s happening between us, Garrett.”
“Nothing’s happening between us. That’s the point. There is no us. I won’t enter your bed, I won’t let you seduce me with your scent, your sweet smile, the sway of your hips, or even your lousy cooking.”
“My cooking isn’t lousy.”
“There will be nothing between us, except a lot of training. Hard training. Tonight proved you need it.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I’ve been following you for the last twenty minutes to test how attuned you are to your environment. You never caught my scent, even when you were downwind. You even went the wrong direction to return to the cabin. You have the instincts of a human.”
I wince at the insult. “There is no wrong direction out here.”
“Sure there is. Pack is safety. You veered away from the path, intentionally putting woods between yourself and the pack.”
“I caught a scent I thought I knew.”
“And that caused you to abandon the path?”
“I wanted to find you.” I almost say nothing more, because of how stupid it sounds in my head, but I won’t let him chastise me further. “I figured you’d be where other shifters weren’t.”
“That’s the first thing you’ve deduced right.” His voice calms slightly. “We can build on that, after you learn some basics. Twenty fucking minutes following you….” He shakes his head. “You gave me so many opportunities to attack you.”
“You said I didn’t need stealth inside your pack’s territory. That I had the pack to protect me.”
“That was before I realized just how vulnerable you are. How bad your instincts are. Training won’t be easy, but you will learn enough to escape the enemy. I only have one condition. You will follow my rules. Out and inside my cabin.”
“And if I don’t?”
His lips tighten. “I guess you’ll do as you threatened earlier. Find another to train you.”
“I want you, Garrett.” Fuck. That came out wrong. “To train me. I want you to train me.”
“You agree to my rules?”
“Without knowing them?” I ask innocently.
He glares.
“Yes, fine. I agree.”
“You’ll stay with me. Training will go better without the distractions of pack around.” He takes a hard step closer until he’s mere inches from me. That heady scent of male musk threatens to turn my bones to jelly, but his glare sobers me.
“I’m not throwing idle words at you. As long as you stay in my cabin, you will keep your distance from me. If you can’t, then you’ll find another place to live, even if that means sending you to bunk with the other unmated females, where you belong.”
I advance on him, getting up in his face, that sensual musk no longer a distraction.
“Don’t you dare tell me where I belong. Or better yet, take your own advice and be with your pack, Garrett.
Your pack. Not mine. You know them, you talk highly of them, but then you avoid them every chance you get.
Maybe you should be taking some lessons from me. ”
“What? How to socialize?” He laughs. “You avoid them as much as I do.”
“Because I’m an outsider here. Your pack doesn’t know me. They’re suspicious of me, my past, hell, everything. And I don’t blame them for that. It’s to be expected. That doesn’t make it any easier, but at least I’m trying. Unlike you.”
“I have my reasons.”
“Let me guess. Marla. Every move you make is because of your guilt over her.”
“That’s not true. Not any longer.”
I poke him in the chest. “Listen here, Garrett Black, I don’t know all the details of that day, but I know you weren’t even present when she was killed. From what I’ve learned, your packmates don’t blame you for her death. The only one who blames you is you.”
“Stay out of it, Angelina.”
Fuck, I hate when he calls me that. It angers me. One look in his face, and I see that’s exactly what he’s trying to do. Anger me so I’ll be too mad to tempt him, too mad to do anything but train during the day and ignore him at night. He wants to play games? So be it…
“Marla was an adult. Whatever she did, was on her. You don’t get to blame yourself for her actions. She went out that day of her own accord. You’re doing her memory a disservice by wallowing in this guilt that doesn’t belong to you. And it’s affecting more than you, but you don’t see it.”
“I see it, more than you can understand.”
“I don’t think you do. Your alpha’s on edge around you.
I used to think it’s because he’s wound tight, like most alphas, but I’ve caught glimpse of Damien around others in the pack.
Yes, he’s the serious type, but he knows how to chill, too.
Except around you. And now this guilt of yours is affecting me.
You think I’m trying to seduce or use you.
That’s not who I am. I like you, Garrett.
I really like you. But if you don’t feel the same about me, that’s my problem, not yours.
I can’t force you to like me. Quite frankly, I don’t want to be with a shifter who has no interest in me.
It’s a one-sided relationship that can’t go anywhere. ”
“Good, then we understand one another.” He turns away from me to end our little discussion, but my wolf and I aren’t going to be walked over, not by his pack, and certainly not by him.
I grab Garrett by his shirt, to keep him from walking away. “We can keep things professional between us, but don’t you dare try to shame me for my feelings just because you can’t own up to your own.”
“I’d never shame you, and you know it. But you tempt me, even when you’re not trying, and we both know that as well.”
With an exaggerated release of his shirt, I storm down the path toward camp where I may or may not still have a bed with my name on it.
I’ll hold my head high as I enter the women’s cabin and take the first open bed I see, until the other women drag me from it.
And if they do, I’ll knock on Tess’s door and pray Damien doesn’t answer.
I can just envision it now… me standing there naked and pitiful, barely able to get the words out as I ask for a place to stay.
“Wrong way, shifter,” Garrett calls out.
The amusement in his voice doesn’t anger me, not when the pain from knowing he’s letting me walk away consumes what little hope I had for us, as friends, if nothing more.
As always, I take his words to heart, trusting in them—in him— and change direction. A few hundred yards later, I glance up at the moon to check my bearings. “This can’t be the right path,” I mumble out loud.
“Not to camp, no.” Garrett’s behind me, hanging back at a safe distance.
“It’s the path to my cabin, where you’ll be staying while I’m training you.
The regimen involves night maneuvers, which would cause alarm in the main part of camp.
You want me to train you, Angel, this is how we do it.
How I train any shifter who asks, so don’t think I’m giving you special treatment. ”
“You sure you want me in your cabin?”
“I can handle sharing close quarters. The question is, can you?”
I stare him straight in the eyes. “You made your stance perfectly clear. Now let me make mine. I lured dozens of shifters into the WSSO’s trap.
That only happened because I got caught.
I don’t intend for that to ever happen again.
Nor do I lure shifters for fun, that includes you.
If you can’t understand that, I’ll find someone else to train me. Is that clear, Mr. Black?”
Garrett nods, his eyes still locked on me. Then he shifts to his wolf, and bounds towards his cabin, leaving me to follow or not. He doesn’t really care.
But I do.
I’ve found a new purpose to my time with his pack, and it doesn’t involve Garrett Black… beyond what he can teach me.