Page 16

“Hey.”

“Fuck,” Kade murmured, turning away from Cash. He’d just wanted to be alone out here by his firepit.

“I told the guys you’re busy today. King can operate the excavator.”

Kade nodded, head turned away from Cash. He rolled his eyes closed and muttered a curse as he heard the chair next to him creak. “I need some time, man.”

“Is it Jess?”

Kade nodded.

“What’s going on?”

How could he explain that she’d ripped the insides out of him? How did he explain he was going to have to figure out how to walk the damn earth pretending to be alive when he died the second he’d finished reading her letter? How did he explain that he had bonded to her and didn’t know how to take it back?

How did he explain he wasn’t enough?

“It’s been a couple days since you’ve seen her,” Cash said.

“Are you watching me?”

“Yeah. I am. That’s what friends do.”

Kade made a tick sound behind his teeth and shook his head, keeping his damn animal eyes aimed at the woods.

“She left. She wants to be Promised to someone else.”

Cash went silent, and still. The quiet lasted so long that Kade thought perhaps he’d left. He looked over at the chair, and Cash was still here, elbows resting on his knees, eyes on Kade. He looked like he was about to cry.

Kade sat up and shook his head, angry. “Don’t fucking do it, man. I’m barely hanging on here.”

“That hurts,” Cash said low.

Kade just sat here, shaking his head. No one understood. Cash was paired and it had stuck. He would never know what it felt like to have a mating bond stretched so thin. “I wish Seth would’ve never sent me that video of her,” Kade said. “She was going to make the same goddamn decision either way, and I got chewed up in the process and I wish he wouldn’t have ever even let me know she was still in Sister’s Edge. I can’t save anyone who loves their cage.”

“Maybe it’s not a cage to her,” Cash said. “Maybe it’s just home.”

“I’m home,” he gritted out angrily. “I’m home. Fuck that place, fuck that cage, I am home. I was supposed to be her home!”

Cash rubbed his knuckles across his cheek and Kade couldn’t watch it. He couldn’t watch his friend tearing up. “You’re being weak,” he gritted out, desperate to get Cash to stop with the emotions.

“Nah, that’s you.”

Kade jerked his pissed off attention to Cash. “Don’t get me worked up right now, man.”

Cash stood. “You want to fight? Do you need it? Would that make it better if we bleed each other?”

Kade considered pummeling the shit out of Cash, but his friend was standing here, tears in his eyes on Kade’s behalf, and he’d never seen him cry before. He was hurting for him. Kade couldn’t punish him for that. Not now.

Cash pointed a finger at Kade. “You’re weak for sitting here pouting and not doing something about it.”

“What do you want me to do?” Kade demanded, standing. “Go take her?”

“We did it before.”

“And do what with her? She doesn’t want to be here! She doesn’t want to be with me! She doesn’t want this goddamn bond!” he yelled, ripping at his shirt.

Cash pulled out his phone and turned it toward him. A picture of the night at the bar was pulled up. In it, Jess was sitting in Kade’s lap. Her cheeks were flushed after just having sung a karaoke song with Harley, and she was smiling at him. He was grinning too, in the middle of talking to her, and her eyes were locked right on him. She looked happy. “She sure was good at pretending.”

Cash huffed a laugh. “No one is that good.” He turned to leave and made his way down the porch stairs.

“What are you saying?”

“Go figure out why the hell she really left.”

“She wrote me a note. She told me why!”

“Oh yeah?” Cash yelled, turning on him. “Why did she put it into a note, Kade. Did you think about that? Why didn’t she tell you in person?”

“Because…” He shook his head, searching for an answer.

“Because she didn’t want you to hear the lie in her voice when she pretended you weren’t enough. You are. You want to fix it? Fucking fix it. You didn’t build that bond by yourself. That ain’t how it works.”

Cash spat on the grass and walked away.

Kade was pissed. He hooked his hands on his hips and yelled a curse, and then dragged his glare back to where Cash had disappeared around the corner of his cabin.

Was he right?

He ran his hand down his beard. He hadn’t shaved in a while. A quick pace across his porch and back didn’t settle anything inside of him.

Fucking Seth.

Heart beating hard against his sternum, Kade pulled his phone out of his back pocket. Seth.

He still had the unknown number Seth had texted from.

Kade still had a connection to Sister’s Edge.

He just stared at that open text thread for a few moments, considering doing something so stupid.

Hope was dangerous for a man like him, but he did want closure. Destroying doubt would make it easier to break this damn bond.

Is Jess okay? he typed out. He hesitated, his finger hovering over the send button. Screw it. What did he have to lose? Send.

Kade waited for a full minute to no answer and then squeezed his phone until the thing threatened to crumble. He needed to walk.

Kade jogged down the stairs and headed for the tree line. Maybe a Change would steady him out. Or perhaps a Change would destroy every tree that stood in Wreck’s Mountains, he didn’t know. He’d never felt like this.

His phone rang, and he frowned at the screen. Oh shit, it was Seth’s number.

“Hello?” he answered in a rush.

“Hey. I got your text.”

Okay. What now?

“Um, Jess isn’t okay,” Seth said somberly.

“What? What’s wrong?” he asked, jogging for his truck.

“I messed up.”

“What did you do?” Kade demanded. “What’s wrong with Jess?”

Seth was quiet.

“Seth, you dumb motherfucker, tell me what’s happening!” Kade’s voice echoed through the clearing.

“Samuel killed Tanner.”

“No shit.”

“If you didn’t do it, why the fuck did you let us do you like that!” Seth yelled through the phone.

“I don’t have time for this, Seth. Water under the bridge. I’ve moved on—”

“We were friends. You let me believe you killed him!”

“And now you’re what? Mad that I didn’t? Go take that up with Samuel. I got burned, man! The whole Crew burned me. Including you. What’s wrong with Jess? You fucking owe me!”

“She’s stuck.”

“Stuck how?”

“Stuck as the animal.”

Whatever he’d been expecting Seth to say, it hadn’t been that. “What happened to her?”

“Derek called a crew meeting and Connor slapped her for talking back. I was rushing Samuel, because she’d just told us all that you hadn’t killed Tanner, so I didn’t see the slap. I heard her face hit the table though. I did look over just in time to see him cut her hand, and he crushed her hand around the hilt of the knife and made her cut him too. Broke her fingers.”

“No,” he choked out, sagging to his knees in the grass.

“She made the room heavy, like the roof was coming down on us, and the way she looked at him…and then he went flying. She didn’t even lay a hand on him, and he went flying through the wall, and Tawk was trying to stop her, but she went tiger and followed Connor right through the hole he’d made.”

“Did she kill him?”

“No. Kade…she ripped his hand off.”

Kade froze. He just sat on his shins there in the grass, staring at the back of his cabin, with no words.

“Did you hear me?” Seth asked.

“I heard you.”

“She didn’t just rip it off, man. She fuckin’ ate the hand he’d made her cut.”

Kade pursed his lips against a smile and cleared his throat.

“Are you…are you laughing?” Seth asked.

Kade clenched his fist around his own scar. She hadn’t bitten his hand off after she’d done her Promise Cut.

“It’s kind of funny if you think about it,” he murmured.

“That’s because you didn’t witness it. I’m traumatized. Connor didn’t even have time to Change, and he was screaming, and holding his arm, and Jess turned on the entire Crew and kept them back.”

“So they couldn’t help him?”

“So they couldn’t help him,” Seth murmured somberly.

Kade shrugged. “I bet no one will smack her again or try to force a Promise on her.”

“No one wants to touch her with a ten-foot fuckin’ pole man. She’s using some kind of power to keep people back. It took a dozen of us to get her animal into the basement at Derek’s.”

“You put her in the cage?” he barked out.

“You weren’t there! She’s on a rampage! We’re all cut up just trying to muscle her down there, and she kept blowing us into walls. No one can Change into their animals. She clawed everyone and we aren’t healing right. The whole Crew is limping. You want her? Derek said to come get her. He said he’ll pay for your gas money. He said to bring enough tranquilizers to fell Godzilla and a big trailer to haul her away in. He said he doesn’t want any witches in the Crew anymore. He’s booting Samuel out too.”

Kade was pursing his lips against the laughter that threatened to bubble up his throat. Little hellion. God, he loved her.

He loved her.

He loved Jess.

The smile faded. “Tell everyone to stay away from her. I’m on my way. If this is some kind of trap, you should know I will end every last member of Sister’s Edge, and there will be nothing left of your legacy.”

“It’s not a trap. Come get the witch.”

Kade hung up the phone and leaned his head back. He closed his eyes against the sunlight and blew out a steadying breath.

“Can we go get her now?” Cash asked.

Kade didn’t even flinch. Nothing surprised him with that freaking eavesdropper now. “I’ve got to pick up a trailer in town.”

“For what?”

Kade opened his eyes and allowed a smile at Cash. “Her tiger is back.”

Cash’s eyebrows shot up. “She’s a tiger?”

“Yeah. A big one.”

“Holy crap this is awesome,” he yelled, slapping his leg. “How big of a trailer? Ten foot? Fourteen foot? You know what, fuck it. We’ll figure it out. Can we get hamburgers on the way? I’m starving. I have a coupon for a free milkshake from Burger Mini’s. Let’s stop at Burger Mini’s. I’ll pay for your milkshake—” Cash kept blabbing as he walked away at a crisp pace, and Kade pushed up to go grab his keys.

Jess’s animal was back. Her animal was keeping her safe.

He couldn’t help the smile on his lips imagining Connor screaming over the painful lesson he’d learned.

Her animal had avenged her. Atta girl.

It didn’t matter if nothing had changed between them.

It didn’t matter that he was headed to free her again, knowing he still wasn’t a match for her.

She was growing, and changing, and her animal had come through for her when Jess had needed her to.

Whatever happened next didn’t matter. Kade was so damn proud of her.