Deadly Crush (Deadly Trilogy, Book 1) (7 page)

Dominic crumbled at my words as if I had
hauled off and punched him, and I almost felt bad — almost.
 
He jammed his thumbs into the front pockets
of his jeans and leaned against the counter, his shoulders hunched, and his
gaze dropped to my stomach, as if he couldn’t look me in the face any longer.
 
“I had to prove myself.
 
They would have eaten me alive if I showed
weakness, and you know it.”

“Don’t give me that crap,” I snapped, and
banged my mug down on the counter.
 
“Being a friend isn’t being weak.
 
You’re just like the rest of them.
 
You don’t give a crap who you stomp on.”

He groaned.
 
It was the annoyed groan this time.
 
“I’m trying to fix things.
 
Stop being so stubborn.”

“It’s my natural defense, Dom,” I said,
giving him a dirty look, “the one I use against idiots, bullshit, and stupidity,
and since you’re here …” I waved my arm around, in an exaggerated gesture in
his direction.

He smiled a sad sort of smile, and it
caught me off guard.
 
My stomach dropped,
and my eyes prickled.
 
I quickly blinked
the tears away.
 
There was no way he was
going to see me hurting.
 
Mad was one
thing, but seeing me in pain … it wasn’t happening.

“You haven’t called me Dom in years.”
 
His voice was soft, just barely a whisper,
and I may have been mistaken, but I was pretty sure his eyes looked a bit
misty.

I couldn’t even begin to count how many
times I had wanted to have this conversation.
 
How many times I had sat up all night waiting for him to call and
want to fix things
, but now that it was
actually happening, it was the last thing I wanted to hear.
 
“It’s too late to fix things.”
 
I sighed, frustrated and angry and hurt, and
I turned my back on him.
 
“Just get out.”

I didn’t hear him move, and when the front
door slammed, I jumped.
 
Seconds later,
his engine rumbled, and then his tires squealed as he peeled out of the
driveway.
 
My body shook, my fingers
trembled, and with him gone, it was even harder not to cry.

~ AIDAN ~

I was a wolf and
she pretended not to see me.

Jade sat on the covered porch of a large
log house, rocking back and forth on one of those dainty-looking, wire porch
swings.
 
She stared at what appeared to
be a sketchbook in her lap.
 
From where I
sat, just past the tree line, in clear view of anyone who may have passed by, I
watched as her blackened hand made sure and gentle strokes across the
page.
 
Every few seconds her hand would
pause, and her head would tilt in my direction as she stole a glance, but she
never once made eye contact.

That was a mistake.

If I had been any other wolf, she would
have looked submissive.
 
And submission
would not get her to where I was starting to think she should be.
 
It would only put her at risk.
 
But as I watched, it was clear that this was
not actually submission.
 
It was
power.
 
A cool and calm
remoteness.
 
She did not look as
if she was giving in.
 
Rather, it was as
if she was too important, too high in the ranks, to pay me any attention.
 
She was above me.
 
And my inner-wolf craved her attention and
acceptance.

It was an odd feeling; one that I was not
used to.
 
She should have been the one feeling
this way, not me.
 
It was maddening, and
confusing.
 
She wasn’t even one of
us.
 
And in all honesty, part of me
didn’t want her to be.
 
The strength she
emanated was intimidating.
 
Crippling.
 
What would
it be like if she was part of the pack?

That morning, I had woken up determined to
avoid her.
 
There was no point in knowing
her.
 
Not now.
 
The games had started.
 
The challenging females had made themselves
known.
 
Getting to know her now would
only put her in danger.
 
I had sparked
her interest, when we first met.
 
Her
scent had given her away and she wouldn’t give in easily; I was certain of
it.
 
And letting her know she had caught
my attention would only make it harder.
 
Jade didn’t strike me as the backing down type, and that would be
deadly, definitely, maybe.
 
This was my
life now, and for the most part, it was a life that I wanted.
 
And she was just a girl.

But
Jade
… she
seemed to weasel her way back into my thoughts at the least expected
moments.
 
I wouldn’t say that I liked
her, but she was undeniably intriguing.
 
But then, that could have had something to do with Dominic hounding me
last night to stay away from her, or maybe it was the way she had fought back
yesterday.
 
Whatever it was, she had
caught my attention and refused to let go.
 
And no matter how hard I tried to pretend that I had never met her, my
brain wouldn’t let me forget.

For a few minutes, I had successfully
pushed her out of the forefront of my mind, or I had until Dominic had shown up
late for our meeting this morning.
 
Not
just a little late, but thirty minutes late.
 
At first, I had thought that his hard eyes and pasty looking skin was
directed at me, but then he had placed a hand on my shoulder and said,
‘Sorry I’m late.’
 
Except, it hadn’t been his words that had
given him away, it had been the scent on his hand.

It was a scent that I knew, or that I
thought I knew.
 
Almonds with a splash of
fruit punch.
 
It tickled at my memory,
like a niggling reminder of something that stayed just out of reach.

And it was because of that scent that I had
found myself as a wolf, sitting under an oak tree, outside Jade’s house.

I hadn’t known where I was going until I
had arrived here.
 
The rain had
temporarily stopped, but by the look of the blackened sky, it was bound to
start again.
 
My fur was drenched from
running through the sodden woods, and I was starting to get cold, but I
couldn’t make myself leave.

What was it about her that made Dominic so
uptight?
 
I had to know.
 
Each time her name had been mentioned last
night, whether it was by me or one of the girls bragging about their little
stunt, he had stiffened, each muscle visibly coiling beneath his skin.

I stalked closer, inch by inch.
 
I didn’t want to scare her away, but I had to
get closer.
 
Every animal instinct I had
was insistently urging me to get her attention.

“Dominic, if that’s you, you can screw
off.”
 
She didn’t look up as she spoke,
and her hand continued to move deftly across the page, stroke by sure stroke.

Her commanding tone stopped me, pinning me
in place.
 
Who was this girl?
 
I felt
myself shrink, crouching lower and bowing my head.
 
My brain was screaming at me to show my
dominance, but my inner-wolf shrank anyway.

I whimpered.
 
I tried to swallow it, choke it down, but I
couldn’t, and Jade’s head snapped up.
 
Her
stare was piercing, penetrating, and I bowed my head further.
 
Who was
this girl?

I didn’t move.
 
I couldn’t move.
 
When she finally dropped her eyes back to the
page, my legs were trembling beneath me.
 
I needed her approval.
 
I didn’t
think as I bounded up the porch steps.
 
I
whimpered again, and sat beside her, pressing my soaking wet body against her
leg.

Jade stiffened, and a gasping sound hissed
from her lips.
 
I nosed her notebook,
pushing it until it slid onto the swing beside her, and put my head on her
lap.
 
As I looked up into her big brown
eyes, for a moment I thought she was going to push me away.
 
She certainly looked as if she was
considering it.
 
But then, she smiled, a
thin, tight-lipped smile, and placed a soft hand on my head.
 
“I know, buddy,” she said, stroking my
fur.
 
“I miss you, too.”

~ JADE ~

It felt weird
speaking to a wolf.
 
I didn’t know if he
understood me, but with the way he watched me, I thought he probably did.
 
I buried my hand in his coarse fur,
scratching his back, and he pressed into me further.
 
He was soaking wet, and as he leaned against
me, my jean-clad leg absorbed the moisture and the fabric clung to my calf and
knee.

I wanted to say more.
 
I wanted to yell at him, and laugh with him,
and hug him.
 
I wanted my Dominic back
with every fiber in my body.
 
This was
the most attention he had given me in two years.
 
I had tried so many times to talk to him, and
he always pushed me away.
 
This was my
chance to get it all out, but instead of talking, I wrapped my arms around his
neck and hugged him, as he littered my face with sloppy kisses.

It seemed like only yesterday that he was
bitten.
 
The memory was still clear in my
mind, cemented there, unwavering and unyielding.
 
We were walking through the park, after watching
a stupid horror movie.
 
Dominic was a
Freddy Kruger
fanatic, me, not so
much.
 
There was just something about
dying in a dream that made my skin crawl.

Late night walks after scary movies were
kind of a ritual of ours.
 
It gave me
time to unwind and reassure myself that it was only a movie.
 
We were walking, arms linked, looking up at
the star-speckled sky, when Dominic had stopped short and said, “You hear
that?”

I smacked him playfully with my free hand
and said dryly, “Not funny, Dom.”
 
He
gave me an odd look, one that I really didn’t understand, and then started
walking again.

One of the things I had always loved about
our friendship was that we had never needed to fill the silence with pointless
conversation.
 
We could spend hours just
being together, doing our own thing without talking.
 
And that night had been one of those
nights.
 
It was peaceful and perfect.

“Jade, there’s something I need to tell
you,” Dominic said, after we had walked for at least twenty minutes.
 
That was when I had noticed how stiff his arm
was in mine, as if I was holding onto a steel pipe.

“Mmmhmm,” I mumbled, hugging myself closer
to his side, trying to keep myself out of the chilly fall wind.
 
But instead of holding me closer, he only
stiffened further.

I stopped short, looking up at him.
 
A muscle in his neck twitched under his skin,
throbbing like a heartbeat.
 
His face was
lined with crevasses, branching out from the corners of his eyes and lips like
wild vines.
 
“Ray wants me to join the
pack,” he blurted, all the words running together.

It took me a long minute to understand what
he was saying, but when I did, sweat began to trickle down my back.
 
My stomach sank, and a chill rushed over my
skin.
 
For a moment, I thought I was
going to be sick.
 
I could taste the sour
bile rising, burning up my esophagus.
 
“You can’t.
 
They’re a bunch of
jerks, Dom.
 
You can’t.”
 
My voice screeched on the last word, loud and
piercing.

“I know,” he said.
 
He hadn’t needed to say more; I understood
everything he wanted to convey in those two words.
 
They would eat him alive.
 
They were hard on him now, and we both knew
they would be even worse if he was one of them.
 
The pack had changed drastically since Ray became the alpha.
 
They were vicious, even toward their own, and
Dom … well, Dom had a soft heart.

But Dominic never had a choice, not really.

The chilly night turned bitter.
 
I remembered thinking that Erika must have
been following us the whole time, waiting for the perfect moment to step out
from the trees.
 
I heard the crunch of
gravel before I saw her.
 
She stood in
the center of the winding path with a purely evil smirk.
 
The moonlight casted an unnerving silvery
glow around her, making her black jeans shimmer in the light.

“Dominic, you have been summoned,” Erika
said.
 
Her voice rang out, splitting
through the silent night.

I moved in front of him without thinking,
trying to block him from her sight.
 
Thinking about it now, I realized that it would have never worked; he
was half a foot taller than I was, but at the time, all I wanted to do was to
hide my Dom.
 
“No, you can’t have
him.”
 
My voice was strong, giving no
indication of the twisted knots in my stomach.

Erika threw her head back and laughed.
 
She locked her eyes with mine, and her skin
rippled.
 
Snaps and pops echoed through the
cool night, and hair sprouted along her exposed flesh.
 
Her face hazed over,
distorting and shifting.
 
Her legs
snapped back, her arms extended and thinned.
 
My stomach rolled as another deafeningly loud snap reverberated around
me, and she dropped to all fours.

“Dom, run!”
I yelled, glancing behind me, but he didn’t move.
 
I shoved him, trying to push him into
action.
 
It was as if he didn’t even
notice me; all he did was
stare
blankly at Erika.

A snarl ripped through the air, and I
snapped my gaze back to where Erika had stood, just as a white wolf lunged at
us.

Dominic hadn’t screamed.
 
He hadn’t made a sound.
 
It had been as if he had known all along what
was about to happen.
 
As if he had
already given up.
 
Before I could move,
her teeth were imbedded in his thigh.

That had been the night that I had lost one
of my best friends.
 
The
night he had left me stranded.
 
Erika held onto him until her muzzle was stained with red.
 
She let go, and chomped down three more
times, before sitting down on her haunches, and staring up at him, his blood
dripping from her muzzle.
 
After an
agonizingly long moment, she barked once, and swung her head toward the trees.