Chapter Ten
The texting started when she was halfway to Bridger’s house.
The calling started five minutes out.
She hated the name that was lighting up the screen right now. What could Seth want?
Orion’s name showed up on the next call, and this one, she couldn’t ignore. He was her Alpha.
She could see Bridger’s house from here. He was getting out of his truck in front of it. She was in a place where the negativity of the McIver Pack shouldn’t be able to reach her, and now she was realizing how easy it had been for them to reach her all along.
She accepted the call. “Why aren’t you picking up my calls?” Seth asked.
Kit closed her eyes as a wave of dread filled her belly.
“Hello!” he barked. “You’ll pick up for Orion, but not for me, your mate.”
“You aren’t my mate. I have told you that a dozen times.”
“Well, according to the message we just received, your pairing fell through, and you remember the rule.”
“Your rule. Not Orion’s rule.”
“You were promised to me, Nakita.”
She hated the way her name sounded in his voice. She swallowed down a growl and gripped the steering wheel tighter. “I have to go.”
“Go where? I hope you mean you are headed back here. You failed the pairing just like I told you, and Orion told you and everyone else here. We’ve already had a Pack meeting, and you will be reprimanded when you get home for what you’ve put us all through.”
“What have I put anyone through? My decision on who I pair with is up to me. I didn’t hurt anyone.”
“You don’t think abandoning this Pack is hurtful? Seriously, Nakita? Are you fucking serious right now?”
There was a murmuring in the background, and static as someone scuffled for the phone. Orion spoke into the phone. “I want you to come home. Now.”
Bridger was waiting on the porch, his head cocked, his eyes full of confusion.
The scene was picturesque. The sun was shining brightly, and the grass behind his modular home was waving in the breeze.
The leaves on the trees were full and thick, and everything seemed so crystal clear.
Bridger looked so handsome in that power stance of his.
“I’m not in your Pack right now,” she said softly. “You can’t use Alpha orders on me.”
Bridger was heading this way. “I really have to go.”
“I order you not to hang up on me!” Orion roared. “I’m coming to get you. Where are you?”
“Why do you want me to come back so badly?” she asked.
“Because Seth wants you. You know this. He’s been open and patient.”
“Patient,” she murmured as Bridger opened the passenger’s side door, a question on his lips.
He looked at the screen of her car, and then leaned on the open doorway, silent, listening.
“I’ve told Seth he is not for me so many times, and no one listens to me.”
“Because you are promised to him.”
“By you, but you don’t have a right to tether me to anyone.”
“Stop! Talking!” Orion roared.
She flinched and closed her eyes. All Pack meetings ended up in yelling matches. She hated that part.
“Who is this?” Bridger asked, and ooh his voice was full of venom as he sat down slowly in her passenger seat. His frame was so big, he didn’t fit in the small space and had to keep one leg out of the car and outstretched.
“Who am I? Who the fuck is this?”
“You first, prick.”
“I’m her Alpha!” Orion barked.
“Mmm. Here’s how this is going to go—”
“You don’t call the shots—”
“Now I do,” Bridger said. He didn’t yell it, but there was a wave of power that came through his voice that stole the breath from her lungs.
“My name is Bridger Thomas.” He tipped his head toward Kit.
“She’s with me now. She isn’t coming home until, and only if she feels like it.
No one will push her into a pairing, and no one…
and I mean no one…will ever fucking talk to her like you just did again.
” The last of his words died into a growl, and chills rippled up her arms.
“I know who you are,” Orion gritted out.
“Great. Then you know I’ll gut you in your sleep and won’t lose an ounce of guilt over it. You yelled at Kit. Pray you never run across me. Do it again and I will come find you, and I will kill you, and we both know the truth you hear in my voice right now. Have I made myself clear?”
“Nakita, you’re making a huge mistake.”
“It’s mine to make,” she said softly, her fists clenched against her thighs. “Tell Seth I will never choose him.”
Orion’s sharp inhalation of breath said he was furious, but he didn’t yell at her anymore or go off on Bridger.
Bridger reached forward and touched the button to end the call, and for a couple of minutes, they sat in silence. Bridger shook with anger, and the air stayed heavy. Even from here, looking at his profile, she could tell his eyes were glowing yellow.
“Who are you?” she whispered.
“I’m Bridger,” he murmured automatically.
“How does Orion know you?”
He blinked and looked out the open door, his hand holding the top of the open frame. He rubbed his chin on his shoulder hard.
“Bridger,” she whispered, barely able to breathe. “Who are you that you can pull an Alpha off his anger with just your words?”
Bridger shook his head. Shook his head. Looked at her for a split second and shook his head again. “We’re having a good day.”
He’d stopped shaking, but his grip was still iron on the door frame of her car.
“I think…I think I need to know.”
Bridger inhaled deeply and leaned back against the seat, face closed off as he stared straight ahead. “I went crazy.”
“What do you mean?”
He didn’t respond.
“Bridger, whatever it is, it’s going to be okay.”
“I went crazy when Amelia died.” He glanced at her and he looked like he wanted to choke on those words. “She died because of me.”
“You killed her?”
He nodded.
“Explain, Bridger,” she pleaded, tears burning her eyes.
“She was human,” he murmured. “Fuck, we were so young. My wolf fell for her from the very first time I saw her. We got married. I did all the human traditions. I asked her dad for her hand. Her parents were like my parents. Holidays and traditions with them, the works. My wolf was so easy to manage, because she owned him, and she was full of kindness and goodness.”
“Bridger, what happened?”
“I was welding. I was on a night crew. We had just started trying for a baby. My life was perfect.” He swallowed hard and covered his face with his hands.
“I can still see her face. One eye was bright green from a wolf that was killing her, and one eye was that pretty blue from when she’d been human.
Her body rejected the wolf. I didn’t know.
Fuck, I didn’t know.” His voice was full of agony.
“I couldn’t tell her parents how it was at the end.
They asked. They wanted to know, but I couldn’t ever tell them.
I couldn’t put the vision in their heads.
I didn’t want them to remember her that way.
To remember her the way I have to remember her.
” He slid his hands up to his hair and gripped it.
His eyes looked wild, and raw, and vulnerable.
“You Turned her?”
“No. God, no. I would’ve never. She found someone who did, but they didn’t know what the fuck they were doing.
They maimed her and left her to Turn on her own.
She drove all the way to me—” His voice cracked.
“Fuck.” He moved his hands to his face again.
“She drove all the way to my workplace, just bleeding out because she knew she was dying. She wanted to be with me.” A sob took his shoulders.
“I held her on the side of a highway while she died in my arms. The wolf killed her. She would’ve never tried to Turn if it wasn’t for me.
It’s my fault. Her parents say it’s not my guilt to carry, but there has to be someone to blame.
It’s me.” His voice trembled on the last part of it.
Tears streamed from her eyes to her cheeks as she imagined the horror that had happened to him.
The trauma. This man…this wolf…had lost his mate in the most horrific way she could imagine.
She’d seen a Turn that had gone wrong before.
It was torture to go that way. She flinched at the vision of him cradling his mate’s dying body on the edge of a highway.
“I went crazy after we buried her. I tracked down the guy who had Turned her and I Challenged him. Killed him. It kicked off a bloodlust I had no control over. My wolf had lost his owner. His sense of purpose. His sense of right and wrong. He’d lost the good.
” He inhaled a shaking breath. “I left here and I went from Pack to Pack. I did anything they needed. I was a weapon for hire. The bloodlust grew bigger and I didn’t care.
I didn’t feel anything for three years. The Elders got ahold of me on year two and aimed me at any enemy they had. And I was happy to do it.”
“Oh my God,” she whispered as she realized what he was saying. Amelia died ten years ago. Bridger had settled out of his reign of battle seven years ago. She knew who he was.
“You’re the Mad Wolf,” she whispered.
“You know, someone was supposed to kill me.” He slid an emotion-filled look to her. “Someone was supposed to be bigger. With every Challenge, I was ready. I waited. I wanted to be done. I wanted to be gone. I wanted to be with Amelia, but no one ever ended me.”
“Why did you come back here?”
“Gina and Matt asked me to come home.”
“Amelia’s parents?”
He nodded. “I owed them. Whatever they wanted, I would’ve done it. Whatever they want now, I’ll do it.”
And she understood so much more about him now. Why he had taken his time with mourning. Why he still cared for her family. Why he was so afraid to fall for a woman again. Why it had taken ten years for him to kiss another.
She would’ve wanted to die too.
Kit couldn’t stop the tears. She reached over and gripped his hand tightly.
“I’ve killed.”
“I’ve heard stories of the Mad Wolf. I know.”
“I’ve killed,” he said again, leveling her with a golden-eyed look.
“I know,” she whispered. “If you’re waiting for me to judge you, I won’t.”
A slight frown took his eyebrows. “Kit,” he said softly.
“Bridger, it’s not up to me to forgive you. I’m a werewolf. I’m not human. You’ll have to look for a woman to punish you for your sins somewhere else, if that’s what you need. I’m a werewolf. I understand when the wolf goes for the bloodlust. Did you Challenge according to our laws?”
He nodded once.
“Did you attack anyone from behind?”
“Never.”
“Were they fair fights?”
He shrugged. “I was fueled with something they weren’t.” Not rage, but agony.
These damn tears were blurring her vision of him. “Who have you told?”
“No one.”
“Does your Pack know?”
“Vic does. I don’t even think he’s told Lyric though. He has called me the Mad Wolf before when it was just me and him.”
She nodded. “He was angry when it happened?”
“Yes. He was trying to pull his wolf off a fight with me. He said it softly, and to himself, but I heard it. ‘We aren’t fighting the Mad Wolf.’”
“You aren’t just dragging the ghost of Amelia, are you?”
He shook his head slowly back and forth.
She squeezed his hand tighter, and he looked down at where their skin touched. “How can you stand to touch me?”
“I know you now. Now, you are Bridger Thomas. You have that nice house, and you pay for gas if a woman needs help. You pay for hotels if she needs a place to stay. You have friends here,” she said, gesturing to the clearing of homes. “You have the love of Amelia’s parents still. They’re good, yes?”
“Yes,” he uttered truthfully.
“Then why should I beat the shit out of you for your past? It’s not my place.”
He dropped his gaze, and then did something that stunned her.
He reached over and unbuckled her, then dragged her across the console and settled her in his lap.
Her legs were bent and hanging out the open door, and he was holding her so tightly against him, swaying slightly back and forth… back and forth.
“No one will hurt you,” he said low, and it sounded like an oath. “I won’t hurt you.” Another oath, his words dripping with truth.
She was cradled in the arms of the Mad Wolf.
Tonight, that would hit her. He’d been a vigilante for two years, used as a weapon to stop disputes before they became territory wars.
She didn’t know all he’d done for the Elders, but the way he’d been spoken of all those years ago was with reverence and fear.
He was a boogeyman but never went after the throat of the innocent.
And cradled her in his arms, with the words of admission on just how he’d had his heart broken hanging in the air around them, she understood what could drive a man to become a weapon.
His heart had died the night he’d lost Amelia, and he’d had to regrow it over time. No wonder it had taken him so long. No wonder it had been so painful.
She respected him.
Bridger the Mad Wolf.
She knew in this moment that she wanted to be better. That she wanted to be good for him. That she didn’t want to replace Amelia, but she wanted to give Bridger a reason to stay steady.
She knew that admission was special. He hadn’t shared that with anyone else ever, she just knew it. Kit kissed the side of his neck in a silent thank you for letting her in, and his arms wrapped more tightly around her.
This morning, she could’ve left and gone back to Alabama, to Orion, to Seth, to a toxic Pack where she would wither until she was nothing but a shell of herself. She would’ve never known the depth of the man who held her, but now?
Now, she was thankful he’d had a plan to make her stay.