Page 11 of Fae Devoted (Fae Touched #3)

T he timer dinged.

Johnnie grabbed a kitchen towel and removed the tray of molasses cookies from the oven.

Setting the sheet pan on a wire rack, she hummed an old country tune and sprinkled sugar over the warm batch; Jacob liked them sweet.

Next, she untied her apron and hooked it over the pantry door.

In its previous life the narrow space was meant to hang coats and jackets, but Johnnie decided to put it to better use.

The day after she talked about repurposing the tiny closet for more essential things like five-pound bags of chocolate chips and pastry flour, Jacob appeared at her door with a set of shelves and a power drill.

Cookies cooling, she walked the short distance into the living room and removed the cherry-red painted tray from the upholstered footstool-slash-coffee-table, sliding it underneath the overstuffed loveseat.

She shoved the yellow-striped ottoman to Jacob’s side of the sofa; his legs were long, and her couch was small.

Hands on her hips, Johnnie inspected the tiny but cozy one-bedroom apartment decorated in soft creams and bright splashes of color.

The kitchen was clean. Paper plates, napkins, and a large bag of potato chips were on the countertop, beers chilling in the fridge.

After going into the office for a few hours to catch up on paperwork, she’d showered, applied a bit of makeup, and even curled her hair.

There was nothing left to do except wait for Jacob to arrive with the pizza and think.

Johnnie hadn’t seen him since the night of the party. She assumed the urgent business which brought Samuel racing back to Chess and put Jacob in a foul mood for the rest of the party, was keeping him busy at work. But now, she wasn’t so sure.

As much as it hurt to consider, it would be foolish for Johnnie to ignore the possibility that her majority status and Jacob’s disappearing act were connected.

The timing was too coincidental. Unfortunately, it made perfect sense if you counted his reaction to Ross at the majority party as nothing more than an overprotective beta.

If Jacob truly didn’t feel anything for her beyond friendship, then he wouldn’t want to discourage an unmated Ferwyn by sending the wrong signals.

Gestures like bringing Johnnie food as though he were the one doing the courting would discourage the interests of other males.

“Friends,” she mumbled, karate-chopping the teal, floral pillows on her couch. The diluted descriptor of their relationship sounded as inane whispered aloud as it did spoken silently in her head.

Jacob wasn’t only her pack beta. He was her confidant, companion—and the star of her every one of her sexual fantasies. He awakened something inside her that couldn’t be defined by human terminology. The potent chemistry simmering between them—the pull —was more than simple friendship.

It has to be.

The past two days without him had been miserable, and if they were any indication of how it would feel if she were mistaken about…everything, then Johnnie was in big trouble.

“I cannot fall in love with a male who isn’t my truemate.” She rubbed at the pang in her traitorous chest, her heart stubbornly refusing to listen to her head. “I won’t. I can’t. Not again.”

It’d almost broken her the first time.

The knock on the door was a welcome reprieve from her turbulent thoughts, even though the cause of her internal struggle was waiting on the other side of it. Sifting her fingers through the loose waves of her hair, she took a calming breath and called, “It’s unlocked.”

Johnnie retreated to the kitchen. Jacob would let himself in.

“You remembered no anchovies, right?” she asked.

The slap of a cardboard box on the ivory granite peninsula along with the familiar, indignant grunt made her smile.

She reached into the fridge for a longneck.

“Good, I’m starving. Even if I pick them off my side of the pizza, I can still taste those nasty little buggers.

I don’t know how you can stand,” she turned, and her breath caught in her throat, “…them.”

Jacob’s jaw was covered in day-old stubble, a plain white t-shirt clinging to his wide chest and broad shoulders.

His arms were outstretched and spanned the width of her tiny, U-shaped kitchen, a hand on each counter.

Wearing a pair of worn jeans and scuffed black boots, he stood with his hip slightly cocked and his muscular torso tilted forward.

Although his stance was relaxed and his clothing casual, Jacob exuded a level of innate dominance that demanded lesser alphas lift their chins in deference.

Yet it wasn’t his size or the instinctual recognition of a predator in close quarters that devastated her senses and sucked the oxygen from her lungs.

It was that Jacob was close enough to touch. Close enough to smell .

The spicy fragrance of Christmas trees and newly fallen snow enveloped her like a warm blanket, blocking the other scents in the room.

And despite what anyone said about Ferwyn males all smelling alike, Johnnie could pick Jacob out of a lineup blindfolded.

It took considerable willpower to resist burying her nose in his shirt and sniffing to her heart’s content. Instead, she offered him a beer.

Jacob accepted the drink but didn’t open it. Didn’t even glance at it. His intense gaze roved over her face as though seeing it for the first time—or storing it into memory.

“What’s wrong?” Her nose might not be as sensitive as a Ferwyn male’s, but Johnnie recognized sorrow and regret when she smelled it.

His gaze lowered, expression shuttering as his focus switched to the necklace resting in the open V of her sweater. He pushed off the counter and grasped the heart-shaped pendant he gave her between his fingers, rubbing the pair of silver wolf silhouettes with the pad of his thumb.

“Jacob?”

“I have to go.” He released the necklace, then outlined its design with a tanned fingertip before dropping his hand to his side.

“Now? But you just got here, and…” Johnnie’s stomach clenched, then descended to her toes. “Oh.”

“Yeah.”

“When do you leave?”

“In a few hours.”

Pushing past him, she gave him her back, crouching in front of the cupboard Jacob helped her paint a light turquoise when she first moved in.

She fumbled for a plastic container, then straightened, stacking the molasses cookies inside.

“Then I guess I should pack these up for the trip. I’m sorry there aren’t any chocolate chips in the freezer for you to take, but there’s two dozen peanut butter in there if you want them. ”

“Jo—”

“I know they’re not your favorite,” she said, throat aching with unshed tears, “but beggars can’t be choosers, right?”

His hand settled on her hip, and the warmth of his palm seeped through the thin fabric of her long cotton skirt. That damn, obstinate, back-stabbing organ beneath her ribs pinched with longing, and she had to fight the urge to arch against his chest, wanting to soak in his heat.

“I have a twin brother,” he began, tone strained as if the words were dragged from his throat. “Jeremiah.”

Have not had .

“A twin brother,” she echoed like a trained parrot, spinning around to face him.

“You know I was once an outcast? That I chose to leave my birth Clan?”

Johnnie bit her cheek and nodded. Everyone knew.

Samuel was still a young Alpha when he found Jacob wandering the Mississippi River as a wolf, so wild and broken only the strength of the pack bond enabled him to return to human form.

But Jacob never talked about his origins or the reason he left his home, not even to Johnnie.

“Jeremiah wasn’t only my littermate.” His hand tightened on her waist. “He was my Alpha.”

Loyalty to family and pack was ingrained in a shifter’s bones, the connection vital to their wolf’s mental stability.

Voluntarily losing an Alpha in tandem with a littermate would have ripped any Ferwyn male apart.

It was a miracle he didn’t turn feral under the stress of the additional loss.

A miracle he was standing there with Johnnie at all.

“I’m so sorry.” Slamming against his chest, she slid her arms around his middle, molding her body to his, trying to absorb his pain. What could have happened in Jacob’s past for him to decide to leave behind blood kin?

“Long time ago,” he rasped, setting his unopened bottle next to the forgotten cookies.

“You’re still allowed to miss him, regardless of the number of years you’ve spent apart.” Johnnie locked her wrists behind his back. A Ferwyn’s inherent need to provide solace to a grieving clanmate had nothing to do with how tightly she held on.

“Jeremiah is missing.” His arms closed around her, chin settling on the top of her head. “He disappeared two weeks ago.”

“But you know where he is now. That was the vital information you said you were waiting on at Chess. You’re going after him, aren’t you?”

Another grunt, his calloused fingers absently stroking the sliver of skin exposed by her cropped sweater.

“Can you tell me what happened?”

“He was declared a rebel, then outcast by his príoh.”

“Your brother joined the Knights of Humanity as a pack Alpha?” Johnnie asked him softly. Gently. The guilt in his voice as recognizable as the slight mildew scent assailing her nose.

“Yes.” A heavy pause. “And no.”

“ Yes, he was a part of the KoH, but no, he wasn’t an Alpha at the time?” She feared Jeremiah’s situation was worse than first imagined.

“He was compromised.” The scent of pine sharpened along with a smell that reminded her of scorched popcorn. Jacob was angry. “Magically.”

Incapable of hiding her shock, her mouth fell open and her head drew back with a jerk, dislodging Jacob’s chin.

It was common knowledge the spell used to push the Dádhe into attacking humans at Chess was cast by a witch, but an Anwyll’s magic couldn’t supplant the bond a shifter held with their Alpha.