The Wolf's Surrender (10 page)

It would probably send him running as far and fast as he could, Mia knew. So she kept her hands curled loosely into themselves.

Finally, Jenner said, “You can trust me, Mia. I won’t hurt you. And I didn’t say anything about what happened this morning because I guess I didn’t know what to say about it. Not that you’d know it, but I’m not normally one to take advantage like that.”

“You weren’t taking advantage,” she admitted. “I wanted it, too.”

She felt him tense against her, and knew she’d somehow said the wrong thing. It was amazing, how quickly all that lovely warmth could become a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach. She heard his sigh, and knew their moment was over.

“I think you’d better get situated again,” Jenner said, gently easing her away from him. “There are a couple of things I need to tell you, and this isn’t the best way to do it.”

Mia went, though every inch of her body seemed to protest at being taken away from him. She climbed back into the passenger side, buckled herself in, and took a quick look at where they were parked. Jenner had pulled to the side of the road in a pretty, residential neighborhood, where well-kept saltbox houses lined the streets. A pretty blonde woman jogged by the truck, giving it a curious look. When she saw Jenner, there was a bright smile of recognition, and she gave a wave as she passed them. Jenner raised a hand in greeting as well, and Mia wondered how much gossip they’d just managed to create. After all, no one here knew her. Yet, at least.

Mia took a deep breath, trying to prepare herself for what she knew would be an unpleasant discussion. “Okay,” she finally said. “What do you need to tell me?”

He frowned at the steering wheel, collecting his thoughts, she supposed. Her initial impression of Jenner, of a deep pool that was only calm on the surface, hadn’t left her. Mia couldn’t help but wonder about what went on beneath the quiet, watchful façade.

Finally, he spoke.

“No matter how you feel about this morning, I take responsibility for it. Because the fact is, I should know better. I’m not...there’s no possibility of anything happening between you and me. I’m sorry, Mia. I know I gave you the wrong idea. That’s on me.”

Mia watched him and tried not to be hurt, though the words twisted in her gut like a knife. It was for the best, she told herself. So much easier to protect her secrets when there was no one very interested in prying. Still, to be rejected the one time she’d allowed herself to let go, even a little, was a wound far deeper than she’d expected it might be.

“Okay. Fair enough. And I guess I appreciate your honestly,” Mia said carefully. “But, I mean, what is it? Was the kiss that bad?” She was a little afraid of the answer...but she wanted to know.

Jenner gave a short, sharp bark of laughter that had no humor in it at all. “No,” he said. “No, believe me, that is
not
the problem.” From the heat in the quick look he gave her, Mia was inclined to believe him. It made her feel slightly better, though she was as confused as ever.

“Then what? Girlfriend? Wife?” she guessed, barely choking out the last word. Jenner seemed to find the idea of it just as awful as she did, though she wasn’t actually sure that was a good thing overall.

“Uh, no. None of the above. And that’s the thing, Mia. I plan on keeping it that way. My position in the pack is powerful, and pretty damned dangerous. I hunt things that humans don’t know exist, things that would destroy everything my pack has built and then some. It’s not the kind of job that lends itself to a stable home life, so I like to keep things simple.” When he turned his head to look at her again, his golden eyes were guarded, inscrutable. “More than that, I’ve tried the relationship thing. I don’t want to get into it, because it’s long ago over and done. But you’ll have to trust me when I say I’m not cut out for that kind of thing. Some wolves never take a lifemate. I’ll be one of them.”

Mia saw the grim resolve stamped clearly on his handsome face, and felt a shiver of fear. She no longer wondered what a Lunari did. On some level, maybe she’d known all along. The connection between them was so strong, Mia couldn’t muster much surprise that there would be this sort of tie as well. It should have been a comfort, that fate had brought her to a man who hunted the things that would seek to harm her. But her gifts made her vulnerable, attractive to the darkness that lurked at the periphery of the human world. And Jeff’s bite had opened a crack through which those things had begun to whisper, somehow.

Jenner would understand about shadows after all. Just as he would understand that she was a perfect vehicle for them to destroy everything he cared about.

Mia would have shaken her fists at the heavens, if she’d thought it would do any good. As it was, all she could do was try to accept things as they were. Wretched and impossible, as usual. She sighed softly as she buckled herself back into her seat, watching Jenner put the truck back in gear and pull back onto the road. Connection or no, this wasn’t going to work. Jenner wasn’t interested—or not interested enough to cross the boundaries he’d set for himself long before she got here.

It was better to know, she told herself. It was almost always better to know.

Even if it didn’t feel that way right now.

“I’m going to assume this means you’re not going to be involved with my initiation,” Mia said, surprised to hear the words falling from her own lips. It wasn’t like her to be so blunt. But then, recent events had left her without a lot of room to dance around things. Everything right now was important.

As she’d expected, Jenner shook his head.

“It wouldn’t be a good idea. For either of us. Don’t worry, though,” he said gently. “It might be awkward, but the situation could be a lot worse. There’s a Silverback contingent that’s coming in to help us catch Gaines. You won’t lack for candidates, and trust me, any man you choose will be honored.”

The strangeness of Jenner trying to make her feel better about the situation was momentarily outweighed by her surprise.

“I thought I would be joining the Blackpaw.”

Jenner kept his eyes on the road. “Well. Since Gaines was a Silverback, they’d technically be responsible for you. But you were here when it happened, and nobody’s going to push it. It’s completely your decision.”

Very sensible. Inexplicably infuriating. Mia couldn’t think of anything to say to it, so she chose silent brooding instead.
Her
decision? That was a joke. She had fallen victim to one of the oldest rules in the book, best articulated by the Stones: “You can’t always get what you want.”

The solution, of course, was to stop wanting him. But that was unlikely to happen if she didn’t start thinking of him as a potential friend instead of a potential lover, and if she didn’t find some other werewolf to focus her attention on.

Mia watched, only half paying attention, as they turned onto the Hollow’s old-fashioned square. She let the prettiness of it distract her from wallowing, admiring the way even new buildings had been styled to match the old, wondering what sorts of fun little dustcatchers she might find to buy behind the gleaming windows of the little shops. Even in the truck with the windows up, she could pick up the mouthwatering scents drifting from the few mom-and-pop restaurants littering the square. She hadn’t been imagining how strong breakfast had smelled this morning, she realized. Her nose really was substantially more sensitive. Her stomach growled its agreement.

Idly, she wondered if werewolf females gained something akin to the Freshman Fifteen. God, she hoped not.

Jenner pulled into an open space in front of a squat brick expanse of the square. Directly in front of them was a scatter of wrought iron tables, and beyond those, a restaurant over which was mounted a brightly painted sign that read Jana’s Cupboard. Mia could see that the place was bustling.

“Here we are,” Jenner said. He reached to turn off the ignition, but his hand stilled just before he closed his fingers around the key. He looked at Mia, and she could see he was struggling with something he wanted to say to her. She waited, and finally, he got it out.

“Look. We haven’t exactly gotten off on the right foot, you and me.”

Oh, hell. He was going to apologize. If there had been any wind left in her sails, this would have taken care of it. She’d suspected it as soon as he’d caught her in his arms last night, and now, despite everything else, she knew: Nick Jenner had a heart. Probably a fairly big one. And now he was going to unwittingly torture her with this revelation, since that heart was forever off limits to her. That it was also off limits to everyone else was beside the point.

Desperate to keep him from revealing anything else endearing about himself, Mia put her hand in front of her, gesturing him to stop.

“Don’t worry about it,” she said, hoping she sounded convincing. “We’re good. Consider this a fresh start. Truce over...” She sniffed the air, and her eyes nearly rolled back into her head with pleasure. “Homemade spaghetti. God.”

Jenner didn’t look entirely convinced. “You’re sure?”

No, she wasn’t sure. Not about her anger, but about her ability to control her reactions to him. A single day wasn’t enough time to develop much past lust. And yet she couldn’t shake the feeling that Jenner could be far more important to her, was already far more important, than a simple object of desire. She had felt his heart pounding in her own veins, had heard his blood calling to hers.

Then take it
, whispered that awful, seductive voice.
Take his blood and join with us...

Inwardly, she recoiled. On the outside, she smiled as reassuringly as she could manage. “You stopped me from chewing up the upholstery in your truck. That alone earns you a do-over. Okay?”

He smiled back, but it quickly faded. His eyes were deadly serious. “I’m not good for much, and I’ll definitely piss you off again,” he said. “But you can trust me to protect you, Mia. If nothing else, I can give you my word on that. Gaines is dangerous, I won’t lie.”

Slowly, she nodded. “I know,” she said.

“And I’m even more dangerous.” She saw it then. He let her see it, the raw power, the hunger and instinct swirling in the depths of eyes that glowed like embers. But instead of feeling fear, the way she had when she’d seen what lurked inside of Jeff, Mia felt something completely unexpected: raw desire.

“You’re safe with me,” Jenner said, even as the blaze of his eyes faded to what passed for normal once again. “Okay?”

“Okay,” she said. But as he slipped out of the truck with the same animal grace he did even the most mundane things with, Mia was anything but okay. It had nothing to do with Jeff Gaines, and everything to do with the surly, difficult, and entirely honorable man who’d sworn to protect her.

She wanted him. Badly.

And she had begun to fear that her desire might make her the most dangerous creature of all.

Chapter 9

S
he was all Jeff could think of, when he could think at all. But those moments seemed to be getting fewer and farther between, interspersed with lengthy periods of grey where he had some vague sense of moving from place to place, going through the motions of living while grappling with a terrible, fathomless hunger that increasingly threatened to consume him.

In his more lucid moments, Jeff sometimes thought he’d been a fool to take the deal the shadow had offered him. But it was far too late to go back now. All he could do was hope that the Shadowkin held up their end...and that Mia’s blood truly was the key to everything he’d ever wanted. It was a shame he’d have to kill her to get it. But at this point, his trail had a high enough body count that it would hardly be his worst transgression. And he could no longer afford to indulge his conscience, if there was anything left of it.

Jeff Gaines lay curled on a dirty little cot, sweating and shivering with fever. All he could think of was getting Mia back. That, and destroying the wolves who’d dared lay a finger on her, who had taken away what was his. It was supposed to be over by now. All he’d been through, all he had yet to go through, and the key to it all was gone.

He’d ruined it all. The way he could always be counted on to ruin whatever he touched.

Stupid,
the old familiar voice whispered in his head.
Worthless. Pathetic. Is it really any surprise?

Jeff closed his eyes and willed that voice away. His father, the miserable old bastard, had been dead five years now. His voice, however, the voice of all Jeff’s deepest fears and disappointments, had remained, unwanted but unyielding. The good news was that it now tended only to manifest when he was at his lowest points, the moments when he was hanging on to all his hard won control by what seemed like a gossamer thread.

The bad news was that this was one of the most important weeks of his life, and his father’s disapproving baritone was trumpeting away in all its full-throated glory. If he couldn’t get a handle on himself, and soon, this did not bode well. Not at all.

“You all right, Jeff?” Pete Burns, a burly ex-con whose interesting array of violent freelance work had drawn Jeff’s attention over a year ago, cracked open the bedroom door and eyed him warily.

“Sick,” Jeff growled. “Probably something I ate. Need to sleep a little so it can pass.”

The mention of illness was all it took to send Pete running. “You got it,” he said, and vanished, pulling the door shut behind him and filling Jeff with a relief he knew couldn’t last. Burns and the four others he’d helped recruit were all bunking at the cabin now, restless and waiting for their orders. They had been promised supernatural strength, incredible power...and Jeff knew that if he didn’t start delivering, there would be trouble. They were no match for his strength, of course. Not yet. But if he killed them, there was an ever increasing chance that he would leave evidence. That he would forget something important. Hell, who was he kidding? Lately, it wasn’t just a chance, it was a likelihood. He didn’t need the police after him. There had been too many slips in the last few years, and the cops might put two and two together.

Even before he’d found a woman stupid enough to turn him into one of the beasts he’d been fascinated with since his youth, there had been an animal inside of him, always fighting to get out. The shadows had known, though. On his many lonely childhood treks into the woods, they had become his constant companions, first playful and cajoling at first, then more demanding as he got older. They’d told him where to find the Silverback bitch, how to ingratiate himself. Just as they’d told him when it was time to go.

When he’d wormed his way into the Silverback, where his money and his background had made him instantly acceptable, he’d had no idea just how far removed from his fantasies these modern werewolves were. So cautious. So concerned about being discovered, when it was humanity who should still be fearing
them.
The Shadowkin had been right, about everything. He would help bring a return to the darkness, a return to the chaos the wolves had once thrived on. And in return, his own tortured soul would be set free, transformed yet again and reborn in a shower of blood.

That was, if he could hold it together long enough to get Mia back from these pathetic Blackpaw. The Silverback were beginning to arrive, too, though he was less worried about them. Tomas was weak, an ineffectual leader who had neutered his own power. Jeff was standing here because of it. He’d made a mistake in the way he’d left, had only barely restrained himself from tearing out the older wolf’s throat in front of his fawning sycophants, knowing he would be merely exiled. But if Tomas tried to deal with him one on one, the Silverback Alpha would get a very nasty surprise.

Silverback. The memory of their faces, of the friendships he’d had to play at with them, had his claws biting into his palms as Jeff curled more tightly into himself. The Silverback were, by and large, soft and lazy. Entitled, by virtue of their pedigrees. Having grown up in the human equivalent of that world, he knew and understood the type. Not these Blackpaw, though. Of all the stupid places he could have stumbled into, this was one of the worst. He hadn’t paid enough attention to territorial boundaries, to the homes of the other wolf packs, during his short time as a Silverback. He’d been thinking secluded...not
this.

The door to the bedroom slammed open so hard that it bounced against the wall, and a man with a lean, hungry look about him rushed in, his thin face flushed from exertion and excitement.

“I know where she is!”

Jeff didn’t think. He moved on pure instinct, raw emotion. In a swift series of movements he had landed in front of the newcomer, grabbed him by the front of the shirt, and lifted him off his feet to glare directly into his face, all before the man could do more than blink.

“Where?” Jeff snarled. “Where is she?”

Sy Wicks dangled helplessly from his fingertips, staring wide-eyed. It occurred to Jeff a little too late that such a display might be counterproductive. But then again, a little fear, in his experience, tended to go a long way.

“Caught sight of her in a truck downtown...big guy brought her, dangerous looking. A g-guard. They had dinner, then left. I followed them. She’s...she’s at his house. Outside of town, in the woods. She must be staying there.”

Sy’s voice was rushed, gasping. When he was finished, he simply hung there, looking pleadingly at Jeff. Slowly, and after taking a moment to suppress the urge to hurl the man across the room, Jeff lowered Sy’s feet back to the floor and let go. No violence. Not yet. And not until he had the proper outlet for his rage.

He couldn’t afford any more mistakes.

“One guard,” Jeff said, a terrible smile slowly spreading across his face. Sy took a step back, while Pete watched warily from his position on the couch. Jeff didn’t care. One guard? Pathetic. Taking Mia back would be easy. And it had to be her. He’d known from the moment he saw her, felt the magic shimmering around her. She was too stupid to realize the power she had, but that stupidity was to his benefit. Mia would have her useful moment, whether or not she ever realized the true extent of what she was. The possibilities inherent in what he had made her, if only for a short time. Jeff felt an unexpected pang as he imagined her face, beautiful, irresistibly genuine, her interest in him real in a way he’d only rarely experienced. Unnerved, he pushed it aside. Caring about a woman whose only true use was as a tool was more than ill-advised.

It was sloppy.

He could not abide sloppy work. If his cold bastard of a father had given him nothing else, he’d given him an appreciation for meticulousness. Of course, the old man hadn’t done any of that hard work himself. He’d inherited the family fortune, and then set about letting the world at large know that nothing, and no one, would ever be up to his high standards.

The thought of his father set off another shooting pain in his head. Jeff winced, and had to fight not to stagger as he moved farther into the common area of the little camp. He needed to be alone again, in the dark. To hear the soothing voices of the shadows...his kind.

“That’s great news, but it’s not worth anything before sunset. Until then, I need to rest,” Jeff said. “It’s been a long couple of days, and I’m not...feeling myself. When I get up, we’ll talk strategy.”

He didn’t miss the look Sy and Pete shared. He knew that look. It was one he’d seen on the faces of many through his life, friends, teachers, his own parents, before he’d learned to hide what was festering beneath. But it would all be fixed soon, cured.

Finally, he was making his own destiny.