Deadly Crush (Deadly Trilogy, Book 1) (17 page)

“Dominic, she needs to know what’s
happening,” Jeff pleaded.
 
It was the
first time he’d spoken in awhile, and honestly, I had kind of forgotten he was
even there.

“Shut up, Jeff,” Dominic snapped.
 
“This has nothing to do with you.
 
She’s our problem now, and if you still want
us to protect your wife, you’ll stay the hell out of our way.”

Where
the hell did that come from?
 
Dominic could be cold.
 
I knew that.
 
I’d seen it, but this … this was more than a little cold.
 
Jeff inched back a little before he could
catch himself.
 
Just hours ago I would
have sworn they were close.
 
Really
close.
 
They were so much alike, the way
they spoke, the way they held themselves.
 
It was as if they were related.
 
But just like everything else that confused the hell out of me, it
pointed back to Jade.
 
Jade.
 
That girl was going to be the death of me.
 
I was sure of it.

I glanced over to Dominic and said, “I’ll
think about it.
 
That’s all I can give
you right now.
 
But I promise I’ll
consider your request.”
 
He offered a small
smile and then I shifted my gaze to Jeff.
 
“You know, I’ve been thinking,” I said.
 
“You’re the only person in this town that would have the ability to leak
the information of a new alpha.
 
Even
with my slip up yesterday.
 
You’re the
only one that could have gotten it to them.”

Jeff sat up a bit taller and glared
fiercely at me.
 
“My alliance has always
been with this pack.”

I narrowed my eyes.
 
“Three of the cougars attacked one of my
wolves on the outside of town today.”

“Shit.
 
Who?”
Dominic asked.

“Trevor.
 
He’s fine.
 
The cougars aren’t,
though.”
 
I hunched over in my chair,
leaning my elbows on my knees and leveling my glare on Jeff.
 
“There’s something that just doesn’t add up
here.
 
Why didn’t you change your
daughter and why are you so intent on her being part of my pack?”

For a moment, I didn’t think Jeff was going
to answer me, and white-hot rage simmered in my veins.
 
He must have noticed the change in me because
in one breath he blurted, “Our pack would have used her.
 
She’s young.
 
They don’t take mates the way you guys do.
 
Women are a community possession.
 
I couldn’t let that happen to my baby.
 
As far as they know, Jade and my wife died
three years ago when their bodies rejected the change.
 
Dominic, please talk some sense into
him.
 
Jade needs to know what she’s
gotten herself into.”
 
A small tear
snaked down his cheek, and dripped off his chin, soaking into his sweater.

“Nothing has changed,” Dominic said
icily.
 
“We aren’t friends.
 
I have always tolerated you for Jade’s sake
only.
 
I can see through you, Jeff.
 
You only want her to know because you want
her to hate Aidan more than she is going to hate you when she finds out what
you are and what you’ve done.”

Jeff bolted up from the bed.
 
Red rushed to his cheeks and he balled his
fists.
 
“I haven’t done anything!”

Dominic slid off the desk and stretched
lazily before he closed the distance between them.
 
“I watched you do it,” he snarled and then hauled
off and punched Jeff.
 
Jeff grunted and
he dropped back onto the bed, out cold.

~ JADE ~

I’m a werewolf.

I laughed.
 
I’d been laughing since I heard Aidan drive away.
 
Marcy was sitting on the couch looking at me
as if I was a nut case, and well, I probably was.
 
This wasn’t really something to laugh about,
but the irony of me becoming a werewolf, well, it was just funny in a sick kind
of way.

Once Aidan left, Marcy had promptly showed
Trevor to the bathroom so he could get cleaned up and then she had made her way
back to me.
 
The cut was supposedly from
screwing around with some of the guys, but I wasn’t sure if I believed
him.
 
When he’d said it, his heart rate
had picked up, and the scent that pulsed from him smelled like a lie.
 
It was tangy and salty and it just didn’t
feel … true.
 
But whether he was lying or
not, didn’t really matter.

I sat in Dad’s recliner, feet up, arms
sprawled over the armrests, staring at a lot of nothing.
 
My stomach was starting to ache, but the
laugher just kept coming.
 
I figured it was
a form of shock, although it really didn’t feel anything like shock.

“Jade, what the hell did he mean about you
smelling like sex?” Marcy blurted out.
 
She was clasping and unclasping her hands nervously as she watched me.

My laughter died fast, and my cheeks
burned.
 
“Um … well … dammit, Mac, if you
hadn’t shown up …” I let my words fall short, and heat flushed over my
skin.
 
I didn’t want to admit what he’d
done to me, just by being in the room, or how much I wanted to run after him
right then.

“You want him?” she asked, and her eyebrows
shot up.
 
“After the coffee shop, you
still want him?”

I sighed and something pressed against my
stomach, as if it was trying to chew its way out.
 
“More than ever, and I hate it.
 
He makes my body burn and tingle.”

“Maybe it’s part of the change,” she
offered.
 
I thought she was trying to be
helpful but she wasn’t.
 
There was so
much disgust in her voice that I felt sick for even considering him.

“It’s not part of the change, but it is
normal,” Trevor said, walking into the living room.
 
He glanced at me, just a quick look, before
he dropped his gaze to the ground and made his way over to sit with Marcy.
 
He had scrubbed the dried blood off his face
and had replaced his torn sweater with one of my dad’s zip-up hoodies.

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
Marcy shouted.

“Mac, I’ve had a bad day,” Trevor
snapped.
 
“Don’t push me.”
 
He went to put his arm around her and she
smacked it away.

“You’ve had a bad day?” she said, jumping
up from the couch and glaring down at him.
 
“My best friend is turning into a werewolf.
 
She’s lusting after some jackass alpha.
 
My boyfriend thinks he has a right to treat
me like dirt.
 
You think you had a bad
day?
 
Stop being so goddamn selfish,
Trevor, and answer my damn question.”

I bit back another laugh.
 
I wanted to jump up and clap.
 
It wasn’t often that Marcy got mad, but when
she did, it was an awesome sight.
 
And
for her to finally tell off Trevor, well, I had never thought it would
happen.
 
Her petite frame was all puffed
out, and she balled her fists.
 
She
looked as if she was ready to haul off and punch him.

“When there is an unclaimed male alpha,
female wolves get a bit crazy,” Trevor said, looking up at her with barely
concealed rage.
 
He held her stare for a
moment before he shifted it to me.
 
“Jade, your inner-wolf is reacting to him.
 
It’s natural.”

“Clearly, I’m missing something,” Marcy
said with a noisy huff.
 
She dropped down
beside Trevor again, and this time when he tried to pull her into his arms, she
let him, but then that was Marcy.
 
She
didn’t know how to stay mad, and Trevor knew it.
 
I was a bit disappointed.

“Why did Erika come after me and why did
she call me her alpha?” I asked, once they were settled.
 
Marcy cuddled into his side and rested her
cheek on his chest as if she hadn’t just blown up at him.

“She did?” Trevor asked, as if his brain
couldn’t understand what I was saying.

“Yeah, and Aidan kind of freaked out about
it.
 
He said I wasn’t an alpha and I
needed to learn my place.”

Trevor chuckled.
 
“He’s threatened.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I said with
a groan.
 
Aidan, threatened?
 
I didn’t believe it.
 
Not for a second.

Trevor shook his head and chuckled
again.
 
“You don’t get it.
 
You make him nervous.
 
You make all of us nervous.
 
Even before you were bitten, you’ve always
projected power.
 
You’ve always been
dominant.
 
It’s why you’ve never been
recruited.
 
Ray didn’t want someone who
would stand up to him.
 
And everyone knew
if you were changed, you’d make your way into the alpha pair.”

“The alpha pair?”
 
Marcy questioned before I
could, and shifted her head so she could look up at him.

“Packs have alpha pairs, or they’re
supposed to,” Trevor said, as he brushed some hair out of her eyes.
 
“Two alphas.
 
One male and one female.
 
We’ve never really had that.”
 
He shrugged a little as he looked back at me.
 
“There’s always been an alpha pair, but
the females have constantly cowered behind the males.”

“Hold up,” Marcy said, and sat up a
little.
 
“Are you trying to say that
Jade’s the alpha?”

“Not yet, but I think she could be.”

Marcy looked at me with wide eyes, and she
made a gurgling sound from the back of her throat, as she choked on whatever
she was about to say.
 
She started to
cough, a wet and painful sound, and Trevor rubbed circles into her back.

I sat up slowly, pushing on the footrest of
the recliner until it clicked, locking into place.
 
I was pretty sure that this was where I was
supposed to crack.
 
I sure felt like I
was going to crack.
 
Me … an alpha.
 
The idea was almost laughable … almost, and
if it weren’t for the rush of energy that shot through me at the thought, I
probably would have actually laughed.
 
And what the hell was an alpha pair?
 
I had an idea of what that might entail, and I was suddenly a bit
ashamed, enough that my skin began to tingle at the thought of being paired
with Aidan.

I stood up abruptly.
 
I needed air.
 
It was too hot.
 
I was starting to
sweat.
 
It beaded up on my forehead and
ran down my back.
 
I spun on my heels
without a word and darted for the door.

Trevor got there before I did.
 
“Where are you going?” he asked.
 
He folded his arms over his chest and leaned
against the door.

“Out,” I snapped and tried to shove him out
of the way.
 
It was like trying to move a
thousand pound boulder; he didn’t move an inch.

“I can’t let you do that, Jade,” he said
with more than a little caution.
 
He eyed
me hesitantly.

“You’re going to stop me?” I growled, and I
was stunned at the viciousness that coated my voice.

Trevor unfolded his arms and grabbed my
shoulders firmly, pushing me back a step.
 
“Jade, don’t make me call Aidan back here.
 
He has more important things to deal with
than your change.”

That hurt.
 
Really hurt.
 
Even if I didn’t
want to admit it, part of me wanted to be the most important thing on Aidan’s
mind.
 
I deflated like a popped balloon.

I didn’t go
out.
 
Not because I thought Trevor would
actually stop me if I pushed the issue (or at least that’s what I had been
telling myself) but because I knew if I had left the house, I would have ran to
him
, and I really didn’t want to do
that.
 
I sent Dominic a slew of text messages,
begging him to come over, but he still hadn’t replied.

Marcy had given up trying to talk to me
hours ago.
 
She was curled up on my bed,
snoring softly, and Trevor lay beside her.
 
He pretended to sleep, but I knew he wasn’t.
 
I could feel him watching me through
slitted
eyelids.

I sat on the window seat in my room,
watching the stars slowly fade into the gray-blue sky of predawn.
 
My bones ached, but in a good way.
 
I could feel the change coming, and it scared
me.
 
It had only been about forty hours
since I had been bitten.
 
The change
shouldn’t have been happening this quickly.
 
But it was.

I had expected it all to be unbearably
painful.
 
It had always sounded
painful.
 
Bones
snapping and reshaping.
 
But each
time a bone began to crack, a rush of steamy adrenaline pumped through me.
 
It was like a high and I was actually
starting to crave it.
 
So far, only a few
bones here and there had tried to reshape, but as soon as they snapped, they
quickly mended back in place.

My stomach was a tender ball of knots, and
every few minutes a burst of heat rushed over my skin as course hair sprung out
and receded again.
 
My nails were the
only thing that stayed constant.
 
They
had morphed into claws about an hour ago and had yet to change back.

“We should go outside,” Trevor whispered,
sitting up, and sliding off the bed, careful not to wake Marcy.
 
“I’ve been timing it.
 
It’s only about seventy seconds between each
break now.”

“I’m not ready,” I said, looking back out
the window.
 
During the last twenty
minutes, an increasing number of wolves had been gathering along the edge of
the woods in my backyard.
 
At first, it
was just one, a rusty brown one that sat at the edge of the tree line watching
my window.
 
But as the
minutes ticked by, more gathered.

“You are ready, Jade,” he said, although I
didn’t believe him.
 
I rolled my eyes
dramatically, and he laughed a little awkwardly.
 
I knew Trevor didn’t like me, and I couldn’t
stand him most of the time, but it was kind of
nice
having him here.
 
He
shuffled in place for a second and then grinned at me.
 
“You’re going to make an awesome
werewolf.
 
You just need to let it out,”
he said, as he fished his cell phone out of his pocket.

“What are you doing?” I jumped up from the
ledge and rushed over to him as he tapped the screen.
 
Panic gripped at my throat, and my heart
jumped in my chest.

“Calling Aidan.
 
He …”

“No, please don’t call him,” I said, a
little desperately, cutting him off.
 
“Trevor, please.”

He cut me an apologetic look and raised his
hands helplessly.
 
“He told me to call
him when you started to shift, Jade.
 
I
don’t have a choice.
 
I can’t ignore a
direct order from him.
 
He’ll throw me
out of the pack.”

Right then, I caught a scent.
 
It was a scent that I knew, one that I would
have recognized anywhere, and one that made sparks race over my skin, and birds
take flight in my stomach.
 
I looked back
out the window and my breath caught in my throat.
 
“He’s already here,” I whispered, locking
eyes with the black wolf.