ROMANCE: Mason (Bad Boy Alpha Male Stepbrother Romance Boxset) (New Adult Contemporary Stepbrother Romance Collection) (161 page)

“You don’t mean that,” he said.

“Don’t tell me what I’m thinking,” I sneered. “I’ve had enough people in my life make my choices for me. I’m done. I can’t do this anymore.”

“Can’t do what anymore?” he asked and the anger was sucked right out of his voice.

“This. Us. This thing where I’m always in a cage being told where to be and what to do, who to be. And I’m tired of it. My mother wanted me to be a witch. My father wanted me to stay away from them. You’re a werewolf and pulling me away from anything that’s out there.”

“I’m keeping you safe,” Colt said, his voice brittle. “Your father was too.”

“Maybe my mother wasn’t the person I had to be kept safe from. Did anyone ever ask?”

I knew I was being ridiculous. I was being harsh and unfair, and I was going out on a limb, something one person had said five minutes ago and now I let it override everything else I’d been told my whole life. But she hadn’t been a threat. She’d been nice. Why would she have done that if there wasn’t some truth in it?

I was confused. I felt trapped, pushed into a corner, and Colt was pushing the hardest.

“I’m leaving, Colt. I’m going home. And you’re not coming with me.”

“Gemma…  Don’t do this. I lo--” He took a step forward but I held up my hand.

“Don’t Colt. Don’t say it. I can’t.” I turned my back to him and stayed that way until he left the room. When I heard the door click shut behind him, I finally let down my guard, dropped the expressionless mask, and crumpled to the floor.

I’d done this before, hadn’t I? Run away from everything I knew. I could do it again. I could survive again.

I had to.

Colt

Losing someone was always like losing a limb. It’s phantom would itch and you couldn’t scratch it. You would reach for a cup with the arm you didn’t’ have anymore. It was like that without her. My routine carried on because I had nothing else to do, but after training I didn’t have a room to report to. I didn’t have her to turn to when I wanted to point something out.

And I couldn’t make sure that she was okay. That was the worst of all.

It wasn’t like it had been when I’d been fired, either. Then, I hadn’t been able to come near her, but I could still keep an eye on her, make sure she was safe, and my life was still protected with the knowledge that we were okay. It had wrapped around us like a cocooned and wrapped me in the blanket of knowledge that no matter what happened to me, my official job, I would still have her in some way or another.

No that was gone. I was untethered, and I felt it every minute of every day. She didn’t want me anymore. Why? Because her past had had too many dark corners with answers to questions she hadn’t wanted to ask. That was the way I saw it.

I couldn’t protect her anymore, because she didn’t want it. She didn’t want me.

And to be honest, I didn’t give a damn about it. I made a promise a long time ago to man that fought for what was right – not the kind of right the made you look good, but the kind of right that made you know you had done right – and I’d promised him that no matter what, I would take care of her. I would keep her safe.

I wouldn’t fail him now. Not because I’d promised him and that was something I wasn’t willing to go against, not because my sense of integrity and loyalty went bone deep, but because somewhere along the line of keeping my word and fulfilling my duty, I’d fallen in love with her.

And that was something I couldn’t just get rid of by walked away. I couldn’t just shake it off like a job I was fired from or a change of mind.

I’d stayed behind in Reno after she’d left. I’d done it because she’d been very serious about going home without me. I’d stayed just long enough for her not to know that I was following her, and then I’d changed. I’d shifted into wolf form faster than I’d ever done before. My bones had stretched out from underneath my fur, naked before the fur caught up. The change had ripped through me like a hurricane, and I’d felt like I’d been trampled. But I hadn’t had the time.

The flight from Reno was just over an hour to Los Angeles. I couldn’t very well run to Los Angeles, it would take me way too long. At the end of it I hid at the airport until she left, and then I got on the next flight. And it was hell. Staying behind watching the person I love fly away, the woman I’d married. The woman that I had to watch over, it was hell. There was no other way to say it.

When I finally got back I was about thirteen hours behind Gemma. The sun was already low on the horizon, a golden orb that dragged the colors of day with it as it sank below the trees. I went home only to get dressed and dump my bags, and then I set off to Beverly Hills to check on her. When I got to the Mansion the lights were on and it was quiet, a home settling down for the evening as any other. I paced in front of the gate. I wasn’t going to ask to be let in. My ego could only take one rejection a day.

I turned to walk away, when the gates groaned and then slowly opened. I ducked out of site behind a bush on the opposite side of the road, and watched the car peel out with Claude at the wheel. The back windows were tinted so I couldn’t catch a glimpse of her.

Where was she going? She shouldn’t have been anywhere, not that I knew of. No schedule she’d had when I’d watched her. I knew it was wrong to follow her. The last thing anyone wanted when they’d just broken up with someone was a stalker on their trail. But I did it anyway.

I followed the car. It was easier in the city, with traffic and traffic lights slowing them down, but still once or twice I was scared I’d lost them before I managed to spot the black car again.

Finally they pulled up in front of a house with a big gate. Claude rang the intercom and leaned out of the window, announcing Gemma and showing his face to the camera. The gate rolled open, and the car drove through onto a winding drive way. When the gate closed again I walked up to the gate, making sure to stay out of view of the camera. I was planning on hopping the wall and just spying on her. There were rules. Unspoken ones, about how I was supposed to act. But she had some sort of death sentence on her head. I knew it. So I was going to break them.

The wall was tall, but no fencing lined the top. Maybe barbed wire on the other side, but I was willing to try.

I touched the wall, and a hum flowed through my fingers and into my blood. Magic. Dark, ugly magic, and it  was strong. This wall had a spell on it. I let go of the wall and it was hard, like it had been electricity, but I managed to break it. I took a deep breath, feeling the panic build up inside of me like a wave.

I touched the wall again, and the same hum flowed through me. Definitely magic. The type that was meant to keep people out. Humans? Maybe. Supernatural creatures? For sure.

I stepped back and tipped my head up, looking at the top of the wall. Who needed electric fencing with a spell like that? I stepped back looked up and down the wall, and finally turned around, walking away a bit before I decided to stay and watch the gate.

What was Gemma doing in a house that had spells all over the outer wall? Why did they let her in? And why hadn’t I known about any of this?

The last question made my hands itch. I wanted a fight. I wanted something that would release some of the tension and frustration that ran through my veins with the same kind of hum as that spell. I wanted them to give my wife back to me, dammit.

I sighed. I wanted that wife to want me.

After I’d waited for what felt like hours I finally got up. I was stiff from staying in one position for so long, and I was chilled to the bone. Night had fallen but I felt darker inside than it was on the outside.

I walked home, feeling like my body was made of lead. The apartment was cold and empty, and when I opened the door I felt like I wanted to be anywhere else. Scratch that. At the Mansion. This apartment was never supposed to be permanent. I’d gotten it for the short while I’d been suspended, sure it would lift somehow. After that I hadn’t needed it at all.

Walking in there now as like walking to into a life I’d never planned for myself. A life I never wanted. In fact, it was pretty horrible.

I sat down on the couch in front of the television, staring at the black screen, feeling sorry for myself, when I sensed something. I didn’t know what it was. Something dark, foggy like I struggled to think. My back was up right away. I was ready for a fight. Ready to change. I could feel the animal ripple under my skin, ready to dig its teeth into something.

I closed my eyes and shut out the world, focusing on what I was feeling. I felt the shadow move from one part of my apartment to the other, like a cloud passing through. A laugh echoed through me, but nothing audible. Nothing that I could call a laugh. It felt like a laugh more than it sounded like one. And it wasn’t a happy kind of laugh either. It was a smug one. Malicious.

I jumped up and turned in a circle, looking around me. I didn’t know where it was coming from. I just had the sickening feeling that it was all too late. She was gone, probably in the clutches of the witches by now because I had failed. Because I’d failed her.

I clutched my head. What was I going to do now? I pawed at my head, my nails raking through my hair. The wolf inside me growled and snapped and I wanted to let it out. I wanted to get out of the apartment, the skin, that was suffocating me and run. But something drew my attention from my insides and back out. Out of my body and then out of my apartment.

I ran through the door and down the stairs, into the empty street. The buildings blocked off the light from the moon, and it felt like the shadows weren’t just around me but inside me.

Three people stood across from me on the other pavement. They were tall and skinny, with pale skin and limbs so long and graceful it was hard to imagine they were human at all. Long silky hair blew gently in the breeze of the two that were female. The male swayed softly like with the lack of hair the wind was catching and swaying him instead.

I knew what they were no more than two seconds after I saw them. Witches. It got my back up, and the rage pulsed under my skin, but then one witch glanced over her shoulder, saw me, and went back to their huddled conversation like I didn’t matter.

They weren’t here because they’d wanted to call me out. It was a coincidence that they were on my pavement. Only their magic had drawn me out, nothing more. A deep growl rumbled at the bottom of my throat and I was ready to jump them, to do some damage. To take from their skin what I’d lost in Gemma. But they turned and started walking away. I was in wolf form in no time, not taking care to save my clothes or anything. I heard the rip of my clothes as I tore out of them, and the wolf was on the concrete, shaking itself out.

I ran after the witches.

“It’s following us,” I heard one witch say now that I could hear better. Her voice was bright, like chimes in an empty room. Pure and beautiful. But deadly all the same.

“Just leave it, it will go away eventually,” the male said like I was a stray dog. It took the wind out of my sails just a little, and I followed at a slow trot.

“Shouldn’t we do something?” the other female asked with the same pure voice. She sounded unsure. I guessed she was younger. I could take her easily, my first mark in the attack, I decided.

“He can’t do anything now,” the male said to her. “It’s done.”

His words stopped me in my tracks, frozen. It’s done. Was he right? Had I lost Gemma enough that they could do the rest? They didn’t even care that I was around now, where before they’d come looking for a fight and carried it through.

Now I was nothing. I took a deep breath and changed back to man form, because it didn’t matter what shape I was, heartbreak felt the same either way.

Gemma

I wasn’t going to miss him. I wasn’t going to wake up every morning and realize how empty my bed was without him, even though he’d spent so little time sleeping next to me. I wasn’t going to notice how wrong the other guards felt around me now that he was gone. I wasn’t going to wonder how he was and notice how dull everything had become.

I was going to keep telling myself I didn’t need a man. And that was what was going to be the truth.

The moment I’d left Reno I’d felt his absence open up like a void in my chest. One that was  hole but I still couldn’t seem to breathe. A man had been across the aisle from me on first class on the way home, and I’d noticed his hands. How much they weren’t Colt’s hands, small and incapable. Human.

When he’d glanced at me he’d done a double take because he’d recognized me, known who I was. And I’d put in my headphones because if Colt were here no one would have bothered me and started at me the way that man had been doing.

I sat on my bed now, my guards all around like sentries. And still I felt ungrounded. I took a deep breath and looked at the ring he’d gotten me. Then I shoved it under the bed. I didn’t want it. It reminded me of him, the onyx in the middle the color of his eyes. The white gold around it a reminder of the protection he’d always been. The jewel representing me, the center of his universe.

I got up and got dressed into long black pants and white button down blouse. High heeled boots. Bullet proof make up. I wanted to look my best so that I didn’t keep feeling like I was crumbling. I dialed Claude’s number.

“I want to go out,” I said. “Can you have the car ready in ten?”