Chapter 4 Jax
JAX
The silence after a crash is heavier than the noise itself.
One second, there’s the screech of rubber on asphalt, the scream of an engine pushed past its limit, and the sickening crunch of metal hitting water.
The next, the swamp swallows the sound whole.
The crickets stop. The bullfrogs go quiet.
Even the wind seems to hold its breath, waiting to see what dies and what crawls out of the muck.
I stand on the very edge of the embankment, my paws sunk deep into the cooling mud. The Wolf is high in my blood, adrenaline pumping through my system like liquid fire. I saw the car swerve. I saw the driver yank the wheel to avoid hitting me.
Stupid.
Only a tourist or a death-wish idiot drives sixty on these roads in this fog. And only a lunatic does it this close to the Truce line.
I shake my massive head, the fur along my spine bristling. The car is nose-down in the black water of the bayou, the taillights glowing red under the surface like dying embers. It’s sinking fast. The heavy silt of the bottom acts like quicksand—once it grabs you, it don't let go.
Shift, I command.
The Wolf fights me. It wants to run. It wants to hunt the thing that disrupted our patrol. But I can't pull a driver out of a sinking wreck with paws.
I push the change. It hurts. It always hurts. Bones snap and reform, muscles tear and knit back together in seconds. The pain is a familiar friend, a sharp, blinding heat that scours my mind clean. I rise onto two legs, naked and covered in swamp slime, gasping for air that tastes of wet decay.
"Dammit," I growl, my voice raw.
I slide down the embankment, mud slicking my skin. The water is waist-deep where the car went in, black and smelling of gasoline and duckweed. I wade out, the cold biting at my skin, but my internal temperature is running too hot to care.
The car is listing to the left. The driver’s side window is shattered—punched in from the outside, looks like.
I grab the top of the door frame. The metal groans.
"Open up," I grate out, bracing my feet in the muck.
I haul back. The hinges scream, sparks flying even in the damp air, and the metal shears. I rip the door clean off and toss it into the reeds.
I reach inside.
The dome light is flickering, casting a strobe-light effect on the interior. There’s a woman slumped over the steering wheel. Blonde. Small. She looks fragile, like a bird that flew into a window pane.
I don't feel pity. I feel irritation. If she dies on my territory, the paperwork with the Sheriff is gonna be a nightmare. And if she’s one of them—a human pet for the leeches up at the plantation—this is a trap.
I grab her arm. Her skin is cool, damp with sweat and bayou water.
I yank her toward me, intending to drag her onto the bank and shake some answers out of her before I dump her on the roadside for the cops.
Then the wind shifts.
It hits me just like a sledgehammer to the temple.
Scent.
It’s a complex, chaotic mess of olfactory data that shorts out my brain. First, the top notes: Ozone. Old dust. Dried roses. Vampire.
My lip curls back instantly, a growl vibrating deep in my chest. She smells like Belle Rêve. She smells like the rot that lives in that house, the cloying, ancient stench of things that have been dead too long. Enemy. Threat. Kill.
But then, underneath the chemical stink of formaldehyde and fear... there’s something else.
Something rich. Something spicy, like burnt sugar and copper.
Mate.
The word isn't a thought. It’s a biological directive. It slams into the back of my skull, overriding the logic centers, bypassing the hatred, and wiring directly into the Wolf.
I freeze. I’m standing waist-deep in freezing water, holding a woman who smells like my worst enemy, and my soul is trying to tether itself to hers.
"No," I whisper. The word is a plea. "No, that ain't right."
The car shifts, sinking deeper. The water laps at her chin.
The instinct to kill wars with the instinct to protect.
My muscles lock up. I’m paralyzed. If I save her, I’m bringing a vampire—or a vampire-lover—into my den.
If I let her drown, the Wolf will tear my mind apart from the inside out.
You don't let the Mate die. It’s the one law that supersedes the Truce.
She moans, a soft, pained sound.
That breaks the deadlock.
I snarl, cursing the Fates and their twisted sense of humor, and haul her out of the car. She’s light, dead weight in my arms. Her head lolls against my bare shoulder. Her wet hair plasters to my skin, and the scent is stronger now. It makes my mouth water. It makes my stomach turn.
I drag her up the embankment, my feet slipping in the mud. I don't stop until I reach the hard-packed earth of the road. I drop her—none too gently—onto the grass.
I back away, breathing hard. My chest is heaving like a bellows.
I need to ground myself. The Wolf is clawing at the back of my throat, demanding I lick the bayou water off her face, demanding I rub my scent onto her skin to cover the stench of the Leech.
I jam my hand into the pocket of the discarded jeans I stashed in the brush before my patrol. My fingers grip the cold, rough iron of the railroad spike.
I squeeze.
I put everything I have into the grip. The rusted edges bite into my palm. I squeeze harder until the skin breaks.
The sharp, hot sting of metal slicing flesh cuts through the haze. Iron is poison to magic. It’s clarity. The pain centers me, pulling me back from the edge of the feral cliff.
"Jax!"
The shout comes from the tree line.
Two wolves burst from the brush. Beau, my second-in-command for this patrol, and Remy, my Beta. They’re in human form, naked and streaked with mud, clothes bundled in their arms.
"We heard the crash," Beau says, breathless. He’s young, reckless, with hair the color of straw and eyes that miss nothing. "Saw the car go down. Is it a Hunter?"
He stops. He smells it too.
His nose wrinkles, disgust rolling off him in waves. "Leech," he spits. "She smells like the Crypt."
Remy doesn't speak—he never does—but he moves to my left, his dark eyes narrowing as he looks from the woman to me. He sees the tension in my shoulders. He sees the blood dripping from my clenched fist.
Beau takes a step toward the woman. "Damn bloodsucker must have missed the turn. I’ll handle it. We can toss her back in the water before the Sheriff comes."
He reaches for her.
"Don't touch her."
The voice doesn't sound like mine. It sounds like gravel grinding in a mixer. It’s low, lethal, and vibrating with a threat that promises immediate violence.
Beau freezes, his hand inches from her arm. He looks at me, confused. "Jax? She’s a stray from the plantation. You can smell the rot on her from here."
"I said back off."
I step between them, placing my body as a shield. My eyes feel hot, the vision shifting into the gold-tinted spectrum of the Wolf.
Remy makes a sharp, guttural noise in his throat. He steps in front of Beau, pushing the younger wolf back. Remy signs quickly, his hands moving in the sharp, truncated dialect of the pack.
Alpha is unstable. Eyes.
Beau looks at my face and pales. "Jax, man. Your eyes are gold. You’re shifting again."
"I'm fine," I lie.
I’m not fine. I’m burning. Every instinct I have is screaming at me to rip Beau’s throat out just for looking at her.
"She’s... complicated," I grit out. I open my hand, letting the iron spike drop into the grass. My palm is a mess of red, but the pain is fading too fast. The healing factor is kicking in.
I look down at her.
In the moonlight, she looks even worse. Her skin is translucent pale, her clothes are soaked and ruined. But it’s the thumb that catches my eye.
There’s a cut on her hand. Fresh.
The scent of her blood hits the air.
It destroys me.
If the vampire scent was a slap, this is a gunshot. It’s rich, metallic, and undeniably powerful. It sings to the predator in me. It calls to the empty spaces in my chest that I’ve been trying to fill with violence and duty for ten years.
But it’s wrong. It’s mixed with the chemical tang of the enemy. She bleeds, and it smells like home, but her skin smells like a graveyard.
"What is she?" Beau whispers, stepping back. He smells the blood now too. "That ain't... that ain't normal human blood, Jax."
"No," I say. "It ain't."
I kneel beside her. I reach out, my hand hovering over her neck.
I want to wrap my hand around her throat and squeeze until she wakes up.
I want to bite her. I want to know why the universe decided to bind the Alpha of the Roux pack to a creature that reeks of the very monsters who slaughtered my father.
This is a sick joke. A cosmic error.
I brush a wet strand of hair off her cheek. Her skin flushes at my touch, a pink bloom of heat rising to the surface. Even unconscious, her body reacts to mine.
"We can't leave her," I say, the words tasting like ash.
"Jax, you can't bring her to the cabin," Beau argues, his voice rising in panic. "It’s almost the Truce. If the Duvals find out we have one of theirs..."
"She ain't one of theirs," I snarl, snapping my head up to glare at him. The gold in my eyes flares, pushing him into submission. He drops his gaze, baring his neck slightly.
"She’s mine."
The word hangs in the humid air, heavy and absolute. But I don't say it with reverence. I don't say it with the joy a male is supposed to feel when he finds his other half.
I say it with pure, unadulterated hatred.
I scoop her up into my arms, her head falling against my chest. The contact burns.
"Remy, get the boat," I command. "We’re going deep."
I look down at the woman in my arms—my Mate, my enemy, my problem.
"You better pray you're worth the war you're about to start, chérie."