Thunder (Alpha Love - a Paranormal Werewolf Shifter Romance Book 3) (16 page)

“We have to call the cops.” Sofie’s voice doesn’t sound like her own, she doesn’t recognize it. It sounds too calm, too measured to belong to her, especially considering the way she feels like she’s about to collapse.

Her words manage to find their way through to Ashton. The haze that has settled over his vision slowly fades away, like he’s forced the shock out of his system. He doesn’t have the luxury of coming apart at the seams.

He shakes his head. “We can’t. No cops.” He doesn’t look at her as he says the words. Instead, he takes a look around the room, looking like he’s cataloguing everything, making a mental note of what it is that has to happen. Without saying anything else, he goes into the bathroom and she hears the sound of water running. She doesn’t follow him, too tired to move. She turns around so she’s not facing the body in the corner of the room. Her legs give way underneath her, and she sinks down onto the bed, her head in her hands as the tears from the fear and the shock and the horror of it all come pouring out of her. She feels a hand on her shoulder, and she flinches away from it. She knows that it’s Ashton, but she can’t bear to be touched right now, not by anyone, even him.

“It’s okay. It’ll be alright, Sofe.” His voice is low, calm and completely certain. He’s gathered himself together. He moves his hand away from her and turns around, shielding her from the hurt in his eyes at the way she shrank from his touch.

“Alright?” She looks up at him, as if he’s gone mad. “How is it going to be alright? You’ve just killed a man! How can you think that anything will be okay?” She wipes the tears away from her face, reaching for her cell. “I’m calling the cops.”

Ashton’s big hand closes over her smaller one. His knuckles still have traces of blood on them, despite having washed them. It makes her think of one of Shakespeare’s plays that she’d studied in high school. Lady Macbeth kept washing her hands because she could still see the blood of her King on them, the King that she had killed.

Ashton takes the cell out of her hand. She doesn’t even try to hang onto it. “We can’t call the cops.” His voice is reasonable, responsible. “If we call them then you’ll have to explain your relationship with our recently deceased friend and that will open up a whole can of worms for you. Besides, I don’t think an orange jumpsuit is quite my style.”

“You’re making jokes? You’re making jokes at a time like this?” She shakes her head, she can’t believe how he seems to be taking killing a man in his stride.

As if he knows exactly what she’s thinking, he crouches down in front of her, lifting her chin up so that she has to look at him. “That man was here to hurt you.” He looks at her for confirmation and she nods. “He was hurting you, threatening you. He was about to cut your face for Chrissakes. Look at your arms. Look at them!”

Sofie dutifully obeys, taking in the red welts on her shoulders and her wrists. The bruises there are already forming. She remembers how the Collector squeezed her and shook her so hard, banging her head against the wall. She tentatively reaches up and touches the back of her head. There’s a sticky mess and when she pulls her hand away she sees that her fingertips are dark red with her own blood.

Ashton takes in her injuries with concern, looking like he wants to go back and start pummeling the man again. “He wasn’t a good man. How many people do you think he’s done this to? How many people do you think he’s hurt, killed even? Do you think he would even have hesitated to do the same to you?” Ashton knows that he’s being harsh, pushing her when she’s already in a fragile state, but he can’t stand the way she’s looking at him, her eyes filled with disappointment. As he’s justifying his actions to her, he’s doing the same to himself.

Sofie tries to process everything that he’s saying to her, but it’s hard to get to grips with it all. She knows that Ashton wants her to be okay with this, that he wants her to be on board. So she does the only thing that she can think of. She nods. Ashton waits a beat, checking that she’s not about to have a breakdown, then he pulls his cellphone out of his pocket, pressing the speed dial button.

“What are we going to do?” She asks the question because she has to, but she’s under no illusions. She knows that she’s not going to like the answer

Ashton looks over at her, as he puts the phone to his ear. “What we always do. We’re going to take out the rubbish”. Then, he turns away from her and starts barking orders down the phone.

Sofie can’t follow what’s being said, his voice is too low. However, from the way he’s speaking, it’s clear to her that he’s talking to Gus. She thinks to herself how Gus is the one that had mauled the child-killer in the woods that night, only a few days ago. Plus, he was the one who hid the body, the body that was later to be found by Shale. Gus is the fixer, the one that does what needs to be done, the one that buries the bodies.

She starts shaking uncontrollably as she thinks about what they’re doing. Not only have they killed a man, but now they’re going to cover it up. They’re going to get rid of the body. It’ll be like it never happened, like he never existed. No one will know what happened to him. But, they’ll know—her and Ashton. They’ll know what they did here today. It’s their secret, and she can’t help but see the irony in it. She’d been desperate for him to share something with her, to show that he trusted her. She hadn’t planned that their first secret would be something quite so awful.

Ashton hangs up the cell and looks at it as it sits in his hands, perhaps wondering if he’s doing the right thing. This wasn’t the first time he’d killed a man. He and the pack were charged with performing the justice that the law and the courts couldn’t. Once they had proof that a violent criminal was walking free, they did what had to be done. It was that simple. That’s the way it had always been. And he’d never had to think twice about it. He’d always known that it was the only way things could be.

Lupo, The First, he had been charged by the white wolf to protect nature from man and man from himself. That’s what the werewolves had been doing since the beginning. It was their birthright; it was their reason for being. This guy was a scumbag, and he was there to hurt her in any way he could. They had to get rid of him.

Ashton had a fairly good idea of who he was. Sofie had talked about the
less than legal
guys that her father had owed money to when he died. He wonders,
But why hadn’t she told me how much trouble she was in?
I could have helped her, could have protected her.

As soon as Lindsey had told him that Sofie was in danger, he had known what he was going to do, what he was prepared to do. He hadn’t expected the wolf to take over so completely. It wasn’t the first time it had happened, but it was the first in a long time, in a lifetime almost.

The sound of teeth chattering brings him out of his reveries and back into the motel room. He races over to the bed where Sofie has started to shake like she’s been dropped in a vat of ice. Her skin is cold to the touch, and there are beads of sweat forming on her forehead.

“Sofie, you’re alright. You’re just in shock. Breathe with me, baby. Breathe.” He coos to her gently like you would to a frightened bird, stroking her hair back from her face, gathering her up to him, trying to warm her.

Sofie looks up at him, trying to control her panicked breathing, trying to stop the quaking that seems to have taken over her whole body. She locks eyes with him and sees the concern and the warmth in his eyes, and it’s enough to keep the shakes at bay, at least for a little while.

“We have to go now, running girl. Gus and the others will be here soon to clean things up. But we need to go and get you somewhere safe.” He lifts her up off the bed, her arm around his neck. Then, she turns into him, her head against his chest.

“Why did you come here? How did you know?” Her voice is drowsy, the shock giving way to exhaustion.

“I would have been here earlier if I’d known what was going on. Why didn’t you tell me?” There’s no anger in his voice, just pain, a wish that she had let him help her sooner.

Sofie doesn’t reply, she can’t. She’s curled into him, letting his strong arms hold her, protect her, and keep her safe. Soon, she’s fallen asleep. Ashton looks down at her beautiful face. Sleep has chased away the fear and pain that had been written on her features, and she looks like she’s at peace. He holds her tighter to him, ducking his head to nuzzle her cheek, catching her scent.

“I came here because wherever you are, that’s where I’ll be, running girl. I couldn’t stay away even if I wanted to.” He whispers in her ear, wishing that he had the courage to say the words to her that he so desperately wants to. It’s not lost on him that he can fight, lead a pack, live a life that he hopes his forefathers would be proud of, but he can’t tell a woman that she is his world.

Sofie wakes up with the mother of all headaches. It’s so piercing that for a few moments it’s impossible to think of anything else. Then, it all comes rushing back to her. She bolts upright and looks around, recognizing Ashton’s bedroom instantly.

Her brain tries to think how she got here but the last thing she can remember is Ashton telling her that they had to leave. Images of the Collector, his face close to hers, his knife on her cheek bombard her. And then there’s the memory of checking his pulse, the mass of blood and bone that was once a person crumpled on her motel room floor.

Now, she really does need to be sick. She stumbles out of the bed and runs as fast as she can into the bathroom, kneeling down and spewing her guts. She stays there, emptying her stomach until there’s nothing left. She dry heaves like she hasn’t expelled everything she needs to. But, of course, she hasn’t. It’s not food that she’s trying to get rid of; it’s the memory of what happened. However, that won’t disappear down the toilet bowl with everything else.

She gets up from the floor and takes a look at herself in the mirror. Her eyes are bloodshot, her face tear-stained. Her hair is matted, and she can feel the dried blood on the back of her head as she gingerly touches it. She washes her mouth out and freezes at the sound of footsteps outside.

“I picked up some sweats from your room. They’re just on the side in there.” Ashton’s voice is earnest, like he’s trying to tell her more than the banal.

She doesn’t answer, unable to separate the man on the other side of the door from the one who she witnessed beating a man to death with his bare hands. She looks over at the rail, and there are her clothes, neatly folded. She catches sight of herself in the mirror again. She looks out of place, like she doesn’t belong there. She feels dirty, like she needs to wash everything that has happened off of her.

Her brain moves into automatic pilot as she turns the shower on as hot as she can stand it. She steps out of her dress and her underwear, stuffing them into the trash can. She knows that she has no intention of ever wearing them again. She’s about to take the necklace that Ashton had given her off, but something stops her.

Under the water, she imagines everything is coming off of her; the argument with Ashton that morning, nearly losing Darwin, her dinner with Luke, her conversation with Lindsey, the appearance of the Collector, and his death. It’s hard to believe that all of these things had happened in just one day. In less than 24 hours, her world had imploded.

The water is pink around her feet as she washes the blood out of her hair. She feels the sting of the shampoo against the cut on her head, but it’s not deep, she doesn’t even think it’ll need stitches. She rinses Luke’s touch off of her—and that of the Collector. She wants to believe that when she walks out of the shower she’ll be done, as if it can clean away all of the shit. However, she knows that it can’t. There are some things that stick.

Sofie wraps herself in one of Ashton’s over-sized towels and hugs it to her. She can smell him on it, and it creates a physical ache in her chest. No matter how hard it is for her to admit, she knows that what he did, he did for her, to protect her. She thinks back to how different he had seemed in the motel room. She had been afraid of him then, but she’d still trusted him, trusted that he wouldn’t hurt her, that he was a good man. She still trusted that now.

She pulls her sweats on, and the person that looks back in the mirror looks more like her. She pads softly into the family room, following the sound of Ashton’s low voice as he’s on his cell. “Yes, she’s fine. She’s up and around already, Linds. Not tonight, she’s had a rough day. Come over tomorrow.” Ashton catches Sofie’s eye and smiles when he sees her. It’s a smile that’s full of warmth and feeling and relief.

Sofie doesn’t smile back. She’s not quite there yet. “That’s how you knew what was happening? Lindsey saw something?” She takes a seat on the couch, not feeling strong enough to stand and having no intention of playing the damsel in distress again.

Ashton nods, looking at her nervously. “It was different to anything she’s experienced before; but, she knew that you were in danger.” They stare at each other awkwardly in the silence that follows. “How are you feeling?”

Sofie snorts. “Like I’ve just had the worst fucking day on record.” She shakes her head, wondering how to even begin to tell Ashton how she’s feeling.

“Well, that sounds about right.” He nods in agreement and tentatively walks over to her, looking like he’s asking for permission.

She knows that he’s probably as nervous as she is right now. He needs to know that she’s not afraid of him, and she needs to show him that. She nods towards the seat next to her on the couch, and he fills it immediately. He’s close to her, but not close enough to touch. He’s giving her space, and she is silently grateful for that.

“I have a few questions to ask, and I really need you to be honest with me, Ash.” She claps her hands together, interlacing her fingers, forcing herself to say what she knows she needs to.

He doesn’t say anything, and she chooses to take that as tacit agreement.

“Is it all…done? At the motel.” She can’t bring herself to say anymore, but she doesn’t need to.

“Gus is finishing up now. It won’t be long.” He doesn’t volunteer any more information, and Sofie is grateful for that.

“You know who he is, don’t you?” She doesn’t look at Ashton, as she asks the question, still ashamed of the sins of her father.

“I’ve got a pretty good idea.” He turns towards her, taking her clasped hands in his, warming her though. “Why didn’t you tell me that those guys had followed you here? Why didn’t you tell Lindsey that’s what the money was for?” He squeezes her hands, gently, trying to communicate how much he wishes that she had been more open with him.

“Because it was my problem, and I had to deal with it. It wasn’t anything to do with you.” Sofie blinks her eyes against the tears that she can already feel coming. She has been holding them back for so long that now there’s no stopping them. “I was ashamed. I didn’t want you to know the kinds of people I was mixed up with, the kind of people that I’m never going to get away from.”

Ashton reaches out and catches a tear as it spills over her cheek, wiping it away for her and hooking his finger underneath her chin, making her look into his eyes. “You have nothing, nothing to be ashamed of.” He makes sure that she’s hearing him and that she understands how serious he is. “This isn’t on you. Your parents’ mistakes aren’t yours. You’re just the one that’s had to clean up after them.” Sofie shakes her head like she wants to disagree with him, but Ashton won’t let her. “You’ve been dealing with this on your own for a long time. Let me help you.” He cradles her face in his hands so tenderly.

“How? There’s nothing that you can do. There’s nothing that anyone can do.” Sofie wipes her tears away. “They’ll know that something has happened to the Collector—that’s what I called him. I never knew his name, never needed to.” Sofie shrugs, only now realizing how ridiculous that sounds. She wonders if there’s something disrespectful about not knowing the name of a man that you’ve seen killed. “They’ll come after me. You don’t hide from people like this; you can’t.”

“Do you trust me?” He asks the question as if it were the most straightforward thing in the world. But both of them know how much he’s asking her.

She doesn’t have to question it, she knows the answer. “Yes.” It’s barely a whisper, but it’s full of meaning—for both of them.

Ashton’s shoulders relax visibly, as if he had been afraid of what her response might have been. “Then, trust me when I say that it will be okay. We can fix it, together.” He caresses her cheek, softly, like he doesn’t want to hurt her, and she leans into his touch. “Okay?” He looks her in the eye, needing an answer.

“Okay,” she smiles at the man who has just offered to play the role of her white knight, the man that has offered to share a load that she has been carrying on her own for so long.

He reaches behind her head, pulling her close. She winces, as he manages to hit on the spot where the Collector had split her head on the wall. “Sorry,” he whips his hand away like a flash. “That bastard.” He shakes his head, clenching and unclenching his fists, looking for all the world as if he would kill the man again if he were here. He breathes in and out a few times, settling himself.

Sofie watches him regain control. There’s something else she wants to ask, that she needs to ask. She takes hold of the rock on her necklace, and the gesture is not lost on Ashton.

“Before you got there, tonight. Before you…” She stops herself from saying the words, seeing the way that Ashton’s eyes start to cloud over. “Well, something happened. Something that I can’t explain. But I’m guessing that you can.” She looks down at the rock she’s holding in her hand. It looks exactly the same as it had when Ashton first gave it to her, but now she knows that it’s far more than just an unusual piece of jewelry. “What does it do?”

Ashton narrows his eyes at her as if he’s trying to figure out what it is she’s asking. But Sofie hasn’t missed the flicker of surprise that passed across his features before he could re-arrange them into something more neutral. “Do? It doesn’t do anything. It’s a necklace.”

Sofie’s not in the mood for games and says, “Don’t bullshit me, Ashton.” Her voice is even, but there’s no escaping the strength behind it. “When Lindsey saw me with it she acted like it was something more than just a trinket.” She pauses, wondering if she should say the rest. “She told me it belonged to your mom.” At the mention of his mother, Ashton has to work harder to keep the bland look on his face. “When the Collector was getting closer, when it looked like he was going to…” she gulps air as she remembers, “going to cut me. Something happened. The necklace did something.”

Ashton takes one look at the earnestness in her face and makes a decision. “What happened?”

“I don’t know. I can’t explain it.” Sofie chews on her lips, knowing that what she’s about to say is going to sound crazy. That’s before she reminds herself that she’s sitting across the couch from a werewolf. “The rock…it got really hot, and then there was this burst of light that came out of it, and the next thing I know the guy is flying across the room.”

Ashton’s expression of shock tells her that this isn’t what he had expected. “It worked.” His words are barely audible, like he’s saying them to himself, but Sofie has no intention of letting them go.

“What worked? What is it?” She looks down at the black stone in her hand, wondering if she had been wise or stupid not to take it off.

Ashton sighs deeply, raking his fingers through his hair. “It’s special.”

He doesn’t say anything else, and Sofie has to resist the urge to hit him over the head with the nearest available object. “Really? I’d kind of figured that out already! What is it? What does it do? And don’t duck and dive with me anymore, Ash. You asked me if I trusted you, and I told you I did. Now, it’s your turn.” She looks at him, her eyes pleading for an answer.

He exhales deeply, looking up at the ceiling. “Running girl, I’m not sure if I’m ever going to get used to all your questions, or the way that your brain keeps firing at light speed—even though you can barely stand.” He takes hold of her hand, stroking it almost unconsciously. “I told you that the rocks, the trees, the earth in the canyon, that it’s all special; it all has properties. Well, the rocks are about the most powerful thing in the whole place. What do they do? They do a lot.”

He holds up his hand, as he sees that Sofie is about to interrupt. “One of the things that it does is protect the wearer. When you told me you were going to see that douchebag boss of yours, I wanted to try to keep you safe from him.” Sofie thinks back to how the rock had felt like it was heating up when Luke was getting closer to her, more violent. But Ashton’s words lead her back to the conversation at hand. “I wasn’t even sure that it would work on you; it’s only supposed to work on weres or on other supernaturals.”

“Wait, wait, wait. Hold up.” Sofie raises her hand, indicating for him to stop mid-flow. “What do you mean—
other supernaturals
?”

Ashton winces, like he’s said too much, and he was really hoping that she was just going to skip over that part. “Alright, but this really is a conversation that’s too long to have in the middle of the night so you get the summarized version.” He looks at her with a warning, and she nods eagerly, hanging on his every word. “Okay, here goes. There really are things that go bump in the night. The bedtime stories that people tell their kids…they come from somewhere…they’re not just made-up.” Sofie’s eyes widen as she takes this in, her mind already spinning with questions. But Ashton hasn’t finished yet. “Werewolves aren’t the only creatures from fairy tales that roam the Earth.” Sofie feels her mouth drop open, and she can’t do anything to stop it. Gently, Ashton lifts her jaw to close it, looking at her with amusement. “That’s all you’re getting for tonight on that subject, running girl.”

She’s about to protest when she decides to let him off, there’s another question that she’s more eager to ask. “Does it do anything else? Apart from protect the wearer?” She remembers the way that Darwin had gotten so angry with her that morning in the office and how it was as if he couldn’t stop himself from looking at the stone.