Outcast (Supernaturals Book 2) (14 page)

Annoyed, I turned my ringer off in time for the phone to start vibrating. I turned that off too. Ryan did the same, and for a long moment, the room was silent. I started to say that we might report the calls, but when I turned to see that the lustful look had returned to Ryan’s eyes, the thought faded.

He stalked me back to my bed. I was crawling backward across the sheets and letting my eyes go from his face to his erection and back again, when my home phone started to ring. Ryan froze with his hand on my knee and looked at me in confusion.

“What?” I asked, ignoring the ringing phone.

“You have a land line?”

“Yeah. I got a package deal with my internet and cable. I figured it might come in handy if for some reason I didn’t have my cell.

Sighing loudly, he stood straight and headed to my living room where the phone continued to ring. I followed on his heels, paying more attention to his ass than the phone.

He picked up the cordless phone and read the information on the phone. It was the same unknown name and number that came up on our cells. He hit the end button and flipped off the ringer.

“Do you have another phone anywhere?” he asked.

“Nope.”

“Good. Now, where were we?” he asked, bending down to kiss me as he palmed a breast.

No sooner than we started back down the hall when what sounded like every phone in the building started going off, startling us.

Ryan cussed again but went to my bedroom to dress. Throughout the building, we heard muffled swearing and people leaving their apartments to talk to their neighbors. Within fifteen minutes, the police were back and the ringing had all but ceased. Most people had given up and turned their ringers off, but a few were determined to get an answer from whomever was on the line.

Ryan and I didn’t admit that our phones had gone off before anyone else’s. A few people told the officers that they thought they heard a few rings before the massive ring, but they couldn’t tell from which apartment, and they understood that those rings could have been a coincidence. 

By the time the police left, saying that the incident was probably a prank by someone who was way more tech savvy than they should be, Ryan and I had slunk back into my apartment exhausted. The mood wasn’t gone, but we were too terrified of starting again and causing another round of commotion. We were both positive that the phones had started ringing because we were on the verge of having sex.

“Someone has to be watching us,” I said, leaning against my window frame and looking out into the night. “Someone had to know what we were about to do. The timing was too perfect.”

“I think you may be right. I’ll look into it in the morning. Come on, let’s go to bed.”

“Look into it how?” I asked, giving him a puzzled look.

“I don’t know. Maybe I’ll hire an investigator. All the problems the two of us have been having aren’t fluke events.”

“I don’t think so either,” I mumbled, curling up next to him in the bed. The feel of him cradling me, comforting me, protecting me was almost better than sex.

Chapter 16 ~ Frustrations

~~~Ryan~~~

I hated that the only thing we did that first night after finally reuniting was sleep. I could smell her arousal as we crawled under her blankets, but I knew she was more scared and annoyed than turned on, so I didn’t try anything. She cuddled close to me, and I knew she could feel my erection, but she didn’t initiate anything either.

I fell asleep thinking about what she had said. Someone was watching us. Her instincts were spot on. I hadn’t sensed anything until after the cops had arrived, but as we had stood outside of the building with a half a dozen other people talking to the police, I had felt eyes on us. I just didn’t know to whom those eyes belonged. Sophia would be my first choice, even if I hadn’t smelled her, but she was overseas…wasn’t she?

The first thing I did that next morning after Leigh dropped me off at home before she went to work was call Leigh’s dad to let him know what was going on and to see if he could find out who was behind it all. The thing with the cell phone had to be magic. I’m sure some tech savvy person could figure it out, but a moderately powerful witch could do it as well.

“Are you sure my daughter’s all right?” her father asked me for the hundredth time during our conversation.

“Yes, but I think she would be even better if she knew the truth…the whole truth. The cell phone thing was more than a bit suspicious.”

“No. She already feels enough like an outsider. If she finds out we aren’t human then we’ll have to tell her that she’s adopted. We’ll have to tell her the bizarre circumstances surrounding her adoption and the repercussions of her mother and I adopting a human infant, which will only make things worse...make her feel worse. She’ll never feel as if she is part of the family.”

“She doesn’t feel that way now, and she never will as long as you keep her in the dark and stay with the Pine Hollow pack.”

“I know, but we don’t have anywhere else to go.”

“We both know that is a lie. You could always go to Daniel’s pack. He isn’t that far from ours. He would take you in. He would accept you.”

I had been talking to Daniel’s son, Devan, on and off for a few months about everything. I met Devan through his brother Darius, whom I had met a few years back, and once I had understood that I couldn’t stay with my pack any longer after watching the way they had treated Leigh, I had called him. The Sullivan pack was suspicious, of course, since very few people leave a pack they’re born into, so Devan and I had been conversing almost daily while his father investigated the Pine Hollow Pack and me.

Devan had been the second person I called after leaving my pack. I had told him that I was interested in joining his pack, but I had to get my mate first. He said his father was a bit leery about me, but when Devan had told his father, Daniel, that my mate was human and told him about how my pack had treated her, Daniel had agreed to let us in on a trial basis.

“How do you know that? Just because he said he would take you and Leigh in doesn’t mean he’ll take the rest of us. I don’t know him. I don’t trust this situation. Just because you’ve heard some rumors that he has a human living with him doesn’t make it true, and it doesn’t mean he is okay with my daughter being there. I’m done watching people mistreat my daughter. No one has ever seen proof that a human lives freely within their pack. Besides that, it would start a war between the packs if we relocated. Even worse, we could anger Daniel if we told him we knew about the human and the entire thing was made up.” The man was failing miserably at making up excuses as to why he couldn’t leave Pine Hollow when it all boiled down to fear.

“It isn’t a lie. I know it isn’t. I’ve heard too many things about Dimitri’s wife to believe that he not only married human, but is also mated to her.” Devan had never confirmed or denied the allegations, and I hadn’t been brave enough to come right out and ask him.

“That isn’t possible,” Mr. Alexander said, sounding defeated.

“I know it is.”

“Ryan…”

“I know what I feel, sir. Your daughter is my mate.”

“But how is that possible? She isn’t a shifter. She isn’t supernatural at all.”

“It isn’t unheard of.”

“Yes, it is. We’ve heard stories that it has happened in the past. But they are stories. Nothing more.”

“Stories that I tell you are based on fact. I don’t know why we haven’t heard of one of our kind mating a human in thousands of years, and I don’t know why it is starting now, but I believe Dimitri’s wife is human and I know your daughter is my mate. All the signs are there.”

“I don’t know. I…”

“Please, sir, do this for me. Do it for Leigh. She isn’t safe here. Someone’s harassing her, and I fear it’s going to get worse. I need a safe place to take her. We both know that Pine Hollow isn’t that place. Our leaders or, at the very least, mine or Sophia’s family are probably to blame for all of our troubles.”

“Okay. Bring her to her childhood home. Not to the Sullivan pack. I’ll think about contacting Daniel once she’s safely here.”

“Fine,” I said, wishing he wasn’t so stubborn. I would have defied him and taken her to the Sullivan pack if I didn’t feel as if I owed him everything after how much he helped me get away from Pine Hollow.

“When do you plan to bring my daughter home?”

“Just as soon as I convince her to move. If I could tell her our secret that would make things easier…”

“No. Not right now. If we have to move. If Daniel lets us into the pack, then you can tell her. You’ll have to tell her. I’m sure they won’t let her in if she doesn’t know.”

“It would be easier if I…”

“I said no. She’s my daughter. I say when she finds out her life is a lie.”

“I’m her mate, her future husband, and I say she already knows her life is a lie. She simply needs someone to confirm it.”

“Ryan, if you tell her, I’ll…”

“You’ll do what? Have me fired? Go ahead. Give her another reason to hate you when I tell her the truth.”

“Wait until you absolutely have to. That’s all I’m asking. Tell her when you have no other choice. I would prefer you wait until you can get her home where her family is.”

“Are you sure your younger children see her as family?”

“Yes.”

“You had better be sure. If I bring her there and one person even acts as if they are going to insult her, look at her the wrong way, report her to the Council, I’ll take her so far away from you she’ll be dead a hundred years before you find her, do you understand?”

“I do. We’ve been talking to the kids. I promise they don’t hate her. They don’t know her, but they don’t hate her. They only acted the way they did because they thought it was how their mother and I wanted them to act.”

“You had better hope so.”

“Listen here, boy…”

“I’m not a boy. And I’m not the one who has treated his eldest daughter like shit most of her adult life. I know you’re sorry for it. I know you want your daughter back. But you need to know that she’s more mine than she’s yours. If you want to be a part of her life, you will help me find out who’s harassing her, and you will help me keep her safe from everyone. For doing that, I will keep your secret safe for as long as I can. Are we in agreement?”

“Yes.”

“Good, now I need to let you go. My mate’s calling me.”

I took a few deep breaths to calm my wolf, who was scratching at the surface of my skin, begging me to release him—I needed to go for a run soon to give him some release—before calling Leigh back. She was crying, and I was instantly on alert. “What’s wrong?” I all but growled as I grabbed my wallet and keys and headed toward the door of my apartment.

“Whe…where…are…yo…you?” Her tears were painful to hear, and I wanted to destroy whatever it was that was making her cry.

“Leaving my apartment. Where are you?”

“I’m at home. Please come. I need you.”

“I’m on my way. Stay on the phone with me.” I switched the call to my earpiece once I was behind the wheel. For the entire drive, all she did was cry in my ear. At the heartbreaking sound, I had to mentally restrain myself from speeding to her house. The last thing I needed was for a cop to pull me over. I could feel my teeth shifting, my eyes shifting, and the hairs on my body elongating. I had to get a grip before I got to her. A cop pulling me over would not help calm my nerves or my wolf.

Bounding up the steps to her apartment two steps at a time, I ordered her to open the door because I was nearly to her. The second I saw her, I swooped her into my arms, kicked the door closed behind me, and carried her to the sofa where I cradled her in my lap and let her cry. Her never-ending tears worried me, but I let her get it out of her system before carrying her to the bathroom. I sat her on the toilet, wet a washcloth, and cleaned her face.

She blew her nose, and I was shocked she would do that in front of me. I’d never had any girl do something so personal with me in the room. Yeah, I’d seen them dab their nose or run their knuckle over it if it itched, but she blew, really blew her nose. It made a honking noise and everything.

“What?” she said when she saw me looking at her in surprise. “I wasn’t going to let it run down my face. I do want you to kiss me sometime in the near future, and you won’t if all you see when you look at me is white snot.”

She pulled more tissue from the toilet paper roll and blew her nose again.

“What?” she said for the second time. Looking at me as if I were the one acting strange.

“Nothing. Are you ready to tell me what happened?”

She looked at me for a long moment then decided that what I was thinking didn’t matter and said, “Yeah, but I need a drink first.”

She got up and went into the kitchen for a beer, and I followed her, patiently waiting. I wanted to scream at her to tell me already. I feared someone had hurt her somehow. She hadn’t looked physically hurt, only emotionally, but that could be just as bad.

After drinking half a bottle of beer, she turned to me and said, “Mrs. Weston is dead.” Tears streamed down her face, but she didn’t sob. I tried not to look confused at her words. I didn’t know a Mrs. Weston. She wasn’t any family member I could recall, and I was sure I knew most of the Alexander family. Leigh didn’t know she was adopted, so it couldn’t be anyone from that side of the family.

I hadn’t been in town long and didn’t know everyone Leigh knew, but if it was someone so close to her that her death could hurt her so much, she should have told me about her. The thought that Leigh had kept someone so important to her a secret from me hurt me.

Seeing the look of confusion on my face that I hadn’t been able to hide, she said, “Do you remember me telling you about the woman I was ghostwriting a creative non-fiction piece for?”

“Yeah.” That I did remember. She hadn’t said much about it because it was a huge secret. Mrs. Weston must have been the woman.

“She’s Mrs. Weston. I had worried that I hadn’t heard from her in a few weeks, so I went over to see her. When I got back from the wedding, Mrs. Weston and I spent about two weeks working on her novel, but then her daughter had come into town. Mrs. Weston said she would call me two weeks ago to resume our meetings, but she never did. At first, I figured her daughter had simply stayed longer than planned, so I waited. Finally, today I decided to go by and see her. She died two days ago. The family hasn’t announced it yet. Why, I don’t know. Her daughter answered the door when I got there and told me.

“She was so hateful toward me. As if it was my fault. Apparently, Mrs. Weston had a heart attack while writing down some notes for me. Her daughter made it clear that I wasn’t to finish the novel and that all payments to me were to stop. Like I cared about that. I loved that old woman. We would sit for hours talking about her love life, her children, my family. We were friends. I tried numerous times to get Mrs. Weston to stop payments because half of what we did while I was there was gossip and because she was grossly overpaying me for what little progress we were making. I promised I would still come. That I wasn’t coming only for the money, and she said she knew that, but she also knew I needed the money and to shut up and take it.”

Leigh took a breath, finished her beer, and then continued. “Her daughter told me I had ten days to turn over any files I had and told me that her lawyer would be sending me a notice stating that if anything came out in the future about Mrs. Weston, then she and her family would sue me. The funny thing is that everything is still at Mrs. Weston’s house. I used her computer to type up notes and work on the piece. God love her family, but I can’t see why her daughter is so worried. Mrs. Weston didn’t have any deep dark secrets, or if she did, I didn’t know them. She had two lovers—both relationships read like fairy tales, and that was why she wanted to tell them.”

After another long pause, Leigh said, “I know she was old, and her death was coming, but it still hurts.”

“I know, baby,” I said, because there wasn’t anything else I could say and pulled her into my arms.

Leigh wouldn’t admit it, but I could tell in the month that followed that losing the money she was getting from Mrs. Weston had put her in a financial bind. She worked as many hours as she could at the bookstore and spent a great deal of time looking for another job.