Deadly Crush (Deadly Trilogy, Book 1) (4 page)

“We’ve got to get going,” Dominic
said.
 
“You ready to defend your title
and start the games?”
 
There was laughter
in his voice, and when I shifted on the bed to look at him, he was giving me an
odd kind of look.

“I’m defending the title against you?” I
asked, forging my voice to sound cool and uncaring, as if he was a pesky flea and
nothing to worry about, but in all honesty, out of all the males I had met so
far, Dominic was the one I worried about.

He didn’t answer.
 
His eyes were dancing with amusement and he
chuckled as he rose from his chair and headed for the door.
 
But then I guess his laughter was enough to
answer my question.

“I won’t go easy on you,” I said, sitting
up.
 
“I might not have meant to take over
this pack, but I do intend on keeping it.”
 
Part of me wanted to launch at him right then and there and end this … whatever
this was that was brewing between us, but I couldn’t.
 
No.
 
I
wouldn’t.
 
I was going to do this by the
rules.
 
Every male had a right to
challenge me once I overthrew the alpha.
 
That was the point of this ceremony, and I needed to defend the title
with honor and witnesses, not in a brawl in a grungy motel room.
 
Tonight, I would either be taken down or I
would remain standing.
 
I intended to
remain standing.

Dominic stopped at the door and glanced
over his shoulder at me.
 
“Hurry up,
man,” he said with a smirk.
 
“Let’s get
this over with.”

~ JADE ~

The walk home was
quiet.
 
Too quiet.
 
I took the trail that cut through the
woods.
 
It ran from the school right past
my house.
 
It was probably just Dominic’s
insinuated threat that Erika was lurking about, but the whole way home, I was
on edge.
 
At every bend in the path, my
heart literally stopped until I could see that nothing was hidden around it,
and the hair on the back of my neck stood on end, sending prickling shivers
down my spine.
 
After the first two
minutes or so, I was seriously kicking myself for not taking Aidan (or Dominic
for that matter) up on the ride home.

Me
and my stupid pride!
 
That’s pretty much what it all boiled down
to.
 
I was too proud to ask one of those
stupid dogs for help.
 
And Aidan, well, I
couldn’t think of a good excuse for that.
 
Stupidity was pretty much all I had there.

I wondered if Aidan knew about the
werewolves.
 
I was pretty certain that he
didn’t.
 
If he did, he wouldn’t have
faced off with Dominic as he had.
 
I
thought about telling him, warning him to stay clear of the pack, but each time
the words ran through my mind, all I saw was his smirk and laughing eyes.
 
He’d probably think I was a lunatic.

“Jade, where have you been?” Marcy yelled
from my porch step, as I stepped out of the tree line.
 
“I’ve been waiting for hours.”
 
She raced over to me, throwing her arms
around me in a too tight hug.
 
“Don’t
scare me like that again.”

Laughing, I pried her too tight arms off of
my waist.
 
“Really,
Mac?
 
Hours?”
 
To say she was a little dramatic would have
been a complete understatement.
 
Marcy
was one of those all or nothing kind of people, and she applied it to every
aspect of her life.
 
There was never a
middle ground with her.
 
And that was one
of the things I loved about her the most.

She wrinkled her nose at me and tucked her
long blond hair behind her ears.
 
“Okay,
maybe it was only ten minutes.
 
But it
felt like hours.”
 
She grabbed my hand
and dragged me over to the porch swing.
 
“Did you hear the news?” she asked, as she plopped down, taking me with
her.
 
The swing creaked and cracked under
our weight.
 
She didn’t even take a
breath for me to answer before she huffed and muttered, “No, of course you
didn’t.
 
I shouldn’t even know yet.”

“What news?” I asked distractedly, noticing
that the oversized driveway was empty, and the house was quiet.
 
I glanced at my watch, 4:15.
 
Where were my parents?

“If I tell you, you have to swear not to
breathe a word,” she said, giving me a stern look.

“Of course,” I grumbled and rolled my
eyes.
 
Marcy had been going through this
gossip phase.
 
It started about a month
ago, and each day since, there was another big piece of ‘news’ that I couldn’t
breathe a word about.
 
It usually
consisted of who was dating who, or what one of the
she wolves
had worn; a bunch of useless information, really.
 
But like I said before, she was an all or
nothing kind of person, and gossiping was no different from anything else.
 
At least her information was harmless to
those she talked about.
 
Marcy didn’t
have a malicious bone in her body.
 
I
leaned back on the swing, getting comfortable, and waited to be bombarded with
whatever had sparked her interest today.

Marcy leaned into me; her vanilla spice
lotion tickled my nose, and she whispered, “Ray is dead.”

If Marcy had wanted my attention, she got
it.
 
“Holy sugar sticks!” I shrieked, and
I swiveled on the swing, making the chains creak.
 
My eyes felt as if they were bulging out of
their sockets.
 
“He’s dead?
 
You sure he’s not just on a bender
again?”
 
It wasn’t uncommon for the
pack’s alpha to disappear for a few days (or weeks) when he started drinking
again.
 
Clearly, Dominic wasn’t kidding
when he said the pack was stressed.

I felt sick.
 
Guilt washed over me in nauseating waves of
hot and cold.
 
Had Dominic been reaching
out to me because he needed a friend?
 
Did I want to be that friend?
 
Yes.
 
No.
 
Yes.
 
Maybe.

Marcy held a finger to her lips and
shushed
me, and then she began wrapping
a chunk of her hair around her finger, a nervous release she did often.
 
That’s when I noticed her puffy, bloodshot
eyes, and her wrinkly T-shirt.
 
Marcy was
a girly girl.
 
She always looked perfect,
and come to think of it, unless she was sleeping, I was pretty sure that I’d
never seen her in a baggy T-shirt before.
 
She tried to smile, but I could see through the act.
 
Her lips were tight, forced into an
exaggerated curve.
 
If she had been wearing
red lipstick, she would have resembled a demented clown.

She leaned into me again, dropping her
voice even lower, as if she was worried someone would overhear her.
 
“I overheard Dad talking about it at the
station this afternoon so I snuck into his office and …” she let her words fall
short and visibly shuddered before whispering, “I saw the pictures from the investigation.
 
Ray had bite marks all over him.
 
You know what that means, right?”
 
Her eyes were as wide as quarters and that
creepy smile twisted at the edges of her lips again.

I just sat there, staring at her
speechless, and a small shiver rushed over my skin.
 
A new
alpha,
a voice in my head whispered, but I couldn’t believe it.
 
“Impossible,” I said, more firmly than I
felt.
 
“We would have known already if
someone had challenged Ray.
 
The pack
doesn’t keep that stuff a secret.
 
Are
you sure the pictures were of him?”

Marcy pursed her lips and glared at
me.
 
“Of course I’m sure.
 
I do work there.”

I rolled my eyes.
 
I didn’t think a co-op class was classified
as actually working anywhere.
 
Well,
maybe it kind of was work, but really, she had only been doing it for a week
now.
 
There were two detectives in Dog
Mountain, Marcy’s dad being one of them, and he wanted her to follow in his
footsteps.
 
Or at least that’s what he
said, but truthfully, I thought it had more to do with her mom walking out on
them last year than career training.
 
He
wanted to keep a closer eye on her, and what better way than to have her spend
half of the day on the job with him.

A gust of cool wind blew over us, rustling
the leaves in the towering oak tree that sat in the front yard, and I shivered
again.
 
Fall was coming.
 
I could feel it in the air, crisp and
fresh.
 
It wouldn’t be long now before
the leaves changed.
 
They were already
starting; a small hint of red and yellow tinged the oak and maple trees
surrounding my yard.

“I’m just saying,” Marcy said with a
shrug.
 
“He was a werewolf.
 
I highly doubt it was a
random drunk man falling into a ditch and being mauled to death by a
wild animal
kind of thing.”
 
She
arched a puffy brow at me then and asked, “What took you so long anyway?”

“Erika stole my clothes and left me pretty
much naked in the gym locker room,” I said absently, my mind reeling with the
threat of a new alpha.
 
The recruiting
would start again and then the power struggle; all of the wolves fighting each
other for a higher standing in the pack.
 
I had seen it happen twice in the last seven years, and each time had
been worse than the last.

Marcy gasped and grabbed my arm.
 
“You’re kidding.”

I let out a strangled kind of laugh.
 
She was wiggling about on the swing, dying to
hear the gossip.
 
“Nope, and out of all
the people who could have come by, it was Dominic that brought me my stuff
back.”

“Dominic?
 
Really?” she squealed.
 
“Please
tell me you two have worked it out, and the two year silent treatment is over.”

With a long and drawn out groan, I said,
“Mac, seriously, he’s a jerk.”
 
I cut her
a look that I hoped showed how much I disapproved of the way she still idolized
him.
 
“You need to forget about him
already.
 
It’s been two years.”

Marcy, unlike me, had nothing against
Dominic or the pack for that matter.
 
It
made no sense to me.
 
It was their fault
that her mother left, even if it wasn’t intentional.
 
Marcy’s mom had never been okay with the
whole werewolf thing (not that I blamed her) and last year she finally cracked
— literally.
 
She started doing drugs,
drinking, and then a few months later, she just up and left without even saying
goodbye.
 
But, instead of blaming the
pack, Marcy blamed her mom.
 
I guessed
there was something rational behind her blame, but seriously, shouldn’t she
hate the wolves just as much?

She smacked my knee playfully.
 
“I miss him, and he’s really not that
bad.
 
He hasn’t changed as much as you
think.
 
If you’d just give him a chance …”
She looked at me, giving me one of those
I
feel sorry for you
looks, and said, “I think he misses you, too.”

Misses me.
 
The idea of Dominic missing
me made the hair on the back of my neck and my arms stand on end and a small,
but very noticeable, chill prickle over my skin.
 
I tried to pretend that the shiver was from the
brisk wind, but it wasn’t.
 
My stomach
twisted and jumped; my body was alive with a craving — a longing — for him, one
that I was beginning to think time would not dampen.

“Have you heard anything about a new
alpha?” I asked, steering her back to the important stuff.
 
My palms were starting to sweat, clammy and
cold.
 
My heart was aching.
 
It was as if with every frantic beat, a hand
gripped onto it, squeezing it tight in my chest.
 
The last thing I wanted to think about was
the gaping hole that Dominic had left behind when he walked out on Marcy and me
two years ago.

“Nope.
 
Nothing,” Marcy said.
 
“The pack’s not talking.
 
Dad won’t say a thing.
 
I even tried to bribe him with that father
daughter day he’s been begging me for after he caught me looking at the
pictures, and still, nothing.
 
He won’t
even tell me when it happened.”
 
She
looked me square on and leaned in so close that our noses were almost touching.
 
“They’re trying to cover it up, Jade.
 
Dominic came into the station and Dad
actually shoved me in a closet so I wouldn’t be seen.
 
He hid me from Dom.
 
Our Dom,” she paused for a second, and her
skin turned a pasty white.
 
“Dominic
doesn’t want a single breath spoken about Ray’s death.
 
Shit, I really shouldn’t have told you.”

No
shit,
I thought.
 
Why the hell would they want to cover it up?
 
It made no sense.
 
Alphas die.
 
It happens … sometimes.
 
And Ray
was a class
A
douche bag.
 
Why did Dominic care if people knew or
not?
 
He didn’t even like Ray and he
never tried to hide it, not for a second.

Right then, I felt all kinds of
guilty.
 
It rushed over me like a flash
flood, cold and wet.
 
I started to sweat,
my stomach turned, and for a second I thought I was going to be sick.
 
Since when did I become such an insensitive
bitch?

“Jade,” Marcy whispered and shook my hand,
as if she was trying to get my attention, and she ripped me from my
thoughts.
 
“Jade, please don’t say
anything.
 
Not even to Dominic.
 
Please.”