Chapter 14 #3
“I don’t believe so,” he says. “There are numerous layers of guards keeping you in. You have given the alpha the scare of his life and I do not think he is going to relent anytime soon.”
“But I am bored.”
“Your cell is more comfortable than that of your companions,” he says.
I feel sad hearing those words. My guys deserved better than what they got for acting on my behalf.
But what am I going to do? I have been so thoroughly bred and punished I ache when I walk.
I can’t go and get them out, and trying would probably only make their lot worse.
“And where’s my dad?”
He tightens his lips, and I know he is forbidden to tell me.
“When I do come out,” I tell him. “I’ll let you pick out an outfit for me.”
“A suitable one, madame?”
“A suitable one,” I agree. “You can make me look like ambulatory linen, if that’s what you want to do. But tell me where my dad is.”
“Why?”
“Because I want to know.”
“I do not dare risk the alpha’s ire where you are concerned,” Fescue says.
“Why would my ire be in play?” Rex comes striding around the corner, black shirtsleeves unbuttoned and rolled up to his elbows, forearms flexing like two powerfully sexy pythons. I feel a tremor of arousal that my body would not be able to bear if I was to pursue it.
Fescue looks at me, encouraging me to confess to save the both of us.
“I was asking where my father is,” I tell him.
“That man is not your problem right now, nor will he ever be again,” Rex says, his handsome features thunderous with disapproval as he mentions my father and finds him, ironically, disdainful.
I think he’s here. I think he’s allowed the man to be on his land.
“If he is here, he shouldn’t be,” I tell Rex. “He’s more dangerous than you think. He’s worse than you saw when you rescued me. Don’t bring him in. Don’t try to fix him.”
“There are medications…”
“There’s no fucking medication for evil,” I burst out with such intensity that both Fescue’s and Rex’s brows head for their hairlines at equal pace.
“You think he’s disturbed? You think he just needs the right treatment?
It won’t do anything. He likes the kill.
And he likes to consume. And I don’t think there’s a medication that can take that prey drive out of him. Ever.”
“What do you want me to do with him?” Rex asks the question softly and plainly.
I can’t bring myself to answer. The simple thing, the proper thing is to end my father the same way he has ended hundreds of people. But I could never bring those words to pass my lips.
“I don’t know,” I say, sounding much weaker than I intended to. “I’m just saying he is dangerous.”
Rex crosses over to me, wraps his arms around me, and holds me against his body.
“I know,” he rumbles. “I have this under control. You don’t have to worry anymore.
That’s the deal. That is what it means to be mine.
You never have to worry about that man, or anything else, ever again.
All you need to think about is being a good girl and having my babies. ”
He makes it sound so easy, but my brain does not believe in easy things.
“What did you do with my pack?” I ask the question because I want to get away from the topic of my father. Rex really thinks he can do something with him, which is wild.
“I sent your boys home. Laura will remain here with us. She has not been much in the way of trouble, and you do need a companion.”
“Can we hang out now?”
“I’ll send her in,” he says, sparking excitement in me.
I may as well be in a jail cell just like the boys were for how little freedom I have at the moment.
I know better than to complain about that, though.
I’m sure Rex would whip my ass for the ingratitude and audacity if I started insisting on free rein of the place.
Fescue and Rex give me some space for a moment, and I feel as though I can breathe more deeply as something like a sense of normal starts to creep around the edges of my life.
It will be good to see Laura again. She was there, at the mine. She came with them to find me. Her loyalty is proven beyond a shadow of a doubt and I owe her so much.
“Hey, boss,” she grins as she comes into the room.
I give her a big hug, which is not like me usually, but she accepts it and squeezes me back.
“Thank you,” I say. “For coming. You didn’t have to.”
She gives me a quizzical look as she pulls away. “Of course I had to,” she says. “You’re my boss.”
“I mean it,” I say seriously. “Thank you for coming for me.”
“I would always come for you. Now. More important, we need to start planning your wedding,” Laura says, beaming. She’s bouncing around as if she has a reason to be excited, but I really can’t see why.
“He hasn’t proposed to me.”
“Of course he hasn’t, but he will. You know he will. You’re probably already pregnant with his baby. So we should be thinking about venues, and themes, and promotional opportunities. Would you consider a branded sweet bar?”
I can’t think about any of this, much less a branded sweet bar. Branded with what? Our Runaway designs? That would be tacky. Or maybe it would be cool.
“What kind of sweets?”
“Well, I was thinking we could do what those ladies on the reels do and buy a lot of sweets in bulk and then set up sweet tables and have them be branded at like corporate events and things? We could do themes. Like yellow, or silver, or red, white, and blue. Basically, you get the candy and it’s in these colors… ”
She keeps talking and I listen because it’s so good to hear someone talk about something that isn’t my dad eating people, or me running away, or even the alleged wedding, because even that has been lost in her enthusiasm in the concept of a sweet bar.
“Are you going to wear a veil?”
“What?”
“A veil. Are you going to wear one? Because there are some amazing ones, but if we need to find lace, then I think we should do that soon because we could get something custom made, but lace takes like a year to make, maybe three years…”
“I could have had like three kids by then. Maybe four.”
She frowns. “Okay, and what does that matter?”
“I don’t know.”
My life is shifting around me. I thought the most profound change that would happen to me would be turning into a wolf. I was terrified of that, and then it happened and I found power and freedom and horror in it.
Laura snaps her fingers in front of my face. “Where did you go?”
“Huh?”
“You get this faraway look when you’re not paying attention, and you have that look now.”
“I don’t know. I was thinking about what it was like to shift, I guess.”
“What was it like?” She is curious now. “Did you eat that guy?”
“No,” I sigh. “I didn’t eat the guy.”
“I wonder who ate the guy,” she says. “They really thought you ate the guy.”
“I don’t know. I didn’t sit around and wait to see what came out of the forest to eat him.”
“Are you sure you didn’t?”
I look at her. “What are you saying?”
“You might not remember,” she says. “You might have thought you didn’t, but…”
* * *
Rex
I have barely left the girls alone together when I hear a commotion. Fescue and I were going to attend to some pack matters while the guard kept watch, but the second I sense the energy shift, I spin on my heel and go back to the bedroom.
“Don’t say that!” I hear Nicky’s voice raised. She sounds furious, almost feral. Her voice has a shaking, growling note to it that can’t possibly fit the circumstances in which she finds herself.
When I enter the room, Laura is backed up against the wall, eyes wide, shaking her head.
“I didn’t mean to suggest, I just thought that…”
“Well, don’t think!”
I go forward, take my mate by her shoulders, and draw her back. I do not think she understands the force of the energy she is emanating at this point. Her fury has taken over, and a shift may not be far away if she does not calm down.
“What’s wrong?” I turn her to face me, and gesture behind her back for Laura to leave. The girl takes the direction without further prompting, scuttling out of the room as quick as she can.
“People think I ate that man!”
She sobs against my chest as I pull her close and wrap my arms around her. “It doesn’t matter what they think,” I tell her. “You are above speculation. You are my mate.”
“But… what if I did?”
I lean back a little, put my thumb and forefinger on her chin, and tilt her head gently up so she has to look at me.
“Frankly, my dear,” I say, pulling a line from an old classic. “I wouldn’t give a damn. A frightened, hungry, freshly shifted wolf on the run does many things. That’s why we tried to contain you. But you didn’t want to be contained.”
“So it’s my fault,” she sniffs.
“Not what I am saying. You have already been punished for what’s your fault. Remember?” I slide my other hand down her back and pat her ass gently to help jog her memory.
“Oh,” she says. “Yeah.”
“But you will have to learn to keep your temper around those who question you, because being questioned is a big part of running a pack.”
“I know that,” she says. “It’s just when I realized Laura thought that about me, when I thought she knew me better… I feel like I’m going crazy, Rex. I feel like I’m not myself, and I’ll never know myself.”
“You are coming to know yourself. All of yourself. And I think it is a good thing that your father has emerged. You will come to know him too, not as a scared child horrified by his actions, but as a woman who is building her own family. You will understand him, too.”
“I already understand him. He’s a psycho.”
“Yes. Probably. Definitely. But you are not. And that is what matters. No matter what you did, or did not do.”
The truth is, I think she probably did take a few bites of the driver. It’s hard not to when you’re savaging someone in wolf form. The killing bite is, after all, a bite. And the blood that flows between your jaws is going to find its way inside you.
“You think I did!” she gasps as if she’s just read my mind, which of course she hasn’t. It’s just her fear talking.