Page 25

Broody: I’ll leave you be. I won’t bother you again.
As the waterworks start, I drop the phone on the table with a loud crash. I can hear my mom asking me what’s wrong in a worried way. My thoughts are louder than her worried questions, no matter how loud they are. How could I not have known how Jaxon felt? I don’t even check my messages. His texts are a lot like the mood swings I’m sure he’s going through. Some texts are nice, some are angry, some are sad, and some are sweet. There are a lot more texts, but I can’t read them all without getting more and more angry with myself.
Jaxon never let me be upset when we were together, and now I’m making him unhappy. What kind of soul mate am I if I turn him down when he needs me? My sniffles finally stopped, and when I looked up, I saw my mom and Maisie looking at me with sad eyes.
Maisie asks, “Why are you sad, Calla?” She is clearly confused about what made me so upset.
I smile sadly at her. “I just miss Jaxon,” and that’s the truth. I made up my mind that I’m going to see him tomorrow. I know that if I call or text him now, I won’t say the right things and won’t be able to explain how sorry I am. My mom seems like she wants to talk about my tears that have now dried up, but I shake my head a little to let her know that I don’t want to. She respects what I want and starts a new conversation.
The food smells and tastes that used to be so good now taste like bland prison food. I shouldn’t enjoy it anymore now that I know Jaxon feels as bad as I do. It finally hit me how far apart we were when I started reading his texts. I’m going to text Jaxon to meet me at Steamy Bean Cafe after my morning classes. I hope he still wants to see me. I wouldn’t want to see me after I ignored him. I never even let him explain. I’m scared of how much he cares about me, but what if he finds out I’m not a good partner and decides to break up with me?
I worry about Jaxon for the rest of the night. I don’t think about it when I brush my teeth and take a shower. I won’t say much for the rest of the night. I keep thinking about all the ways our conversation tomorrow could go, and they all involve Jaxon rejecting me and getting mad at me. My last thoughts before I fall asleep are of Jaxon. They’re not happy thoughts this time, and my dreams show that.
******
At a corner table at Steamy Bean Cafe, I’m waiting for Jaxon. I texted him that I wanted to meet him at noon, and he just said “K.” I don’t know if I should read anything into this, so I’m just going to focus on how happy I’ll be when I see him.
I missed him so much in the last few days that I don’t even care that he’s a werewolf. I still have a lot of questions about his species and how he knows we’re mates, but I know I’ll find out eventually.
The front door’s familiar jingle makes me look up excitedly to see Jaxon come in. He has a look on his face that I can’t figure out, and I’m not sure what it means. He has always smiled at me, and his lack of emotion is strange. A loud crash echoes through the Cafe as he walks toward me. I instinctively duck my head in fear, but when I look up, I see that the shop’s windows have been broken and there are hundreds of pieces of glass on the ground.
All the other people in the cafe are screaming and running toward the exits, and my ears are ringing with the noise. Some are even jumping through the holes in the wall where the windows used to be. I look for Jaxon instead of the exit like everyone else. My eyes are racing around the room. I look through the crowds of people running until I see Jaxon in the corner with his back to me.
I scream, “Jaxon!” hoping he can tell me what’s going on. Is it a bomb? Something otherworldly? I can’t see anything in this, and I can’t do anything to protect myself, so I look for the one person who makes me feel safe.
Jaxon can hear me better now that everyone else has gotten away. It feels like a hundred years have passed in the seconds before he turns around. When he finally turns around, I’m not paying attention to the weird blue fog creeping through the Cafe or the broken glass cutting into my feet. I can’t stop thinking about the huge silver knife that is stuck in Jaxon’s stomach.
There is blood coming out of his mouth. The sight is horrible, and I run over to him right away, crying. He falls to his knees, and I can catch him before he hits the ground. I don’t know what to do with my tears and his blood. Isn’t he supposed to be able to heal really quickly or something?
I don’t know if pulling the knife out of him will make things better or worse. “Jaxon! Oh my god… Jaxon, can you hear me?” I yell at him, but all I can see are his dead eyes looking back at me. He’s not here anymore.
********
When I wake up, I’m screaming and covered in sweat. But not all of the wetness is from sweat; I also can’t stop crying. Did I dream that Jaxon is really dead? I know how to stop the tears, and they just keep coming.
Jaxon’s point of view
The last few days have been hell. In fact, they’ve been worse than t*****e. I can handle physical pain. I can’t handle it when the love of my life looks at me like I’m a monster. Like I’m exactly like the thing that attacked her a few nights ago.
I want to kill that nasty vampire just for thinking about it. I’m surprised I haven’t killed it yet. Ezra has been making me wait, hoping that by leaving it out in the UV lamps for a few days, it will be weak enough for us to question it. I say “it” because the vampire is scum and doesn’t even deserve to be thought of as a living thing.
I made the decision to stop texting Calla today. I told her that I would leave her alone unless she got in touch with me. This means that I will be a creepy stalker for the rest of my life. I can’t live without her, so if the only way to keep her in my life and keep her safe is to keep an eye on her from a distance, then that’s what I’m going to do. I don’t want to hurt her any more than I already have, even though it hurts me to leave her alone.
I’m so mad at myself for making her scared. I shouldn’t have moved in front of her like that or hit the vampire so hard. Her lovely hazel eyes shouldn’t have to see all that blood. She shouldn’t have been targeted in the first place, and not knowing who sent the vampire makes me so angry that only my mate can calm me down, and he’s not comfortable around me. How ironic this is.
I clench my jaw and fists tightly to try to keep the angry beast inside me in check. When I feel strong emotions, my body needs to make up for it by changing into my midnight black wolf, which won’t help. I do ten times more damage in that shape, and my room is already a mess.
I remember how many times I turned to violence to deal with my anger when I saw the broken dressers, the seven holes in the walls, and the ripped comforter on my huge bed. I need to let off some steam, but punching bags doesn’t help. I end up breaking them anyway after a few punches, and it’s much more satisfying to feel something break, shatter, and tear in my hands.
Holding Calla, my cute little friend, would be the best way to let go of my anger. Just thinking about how she looked at me last time—scared, broken, and hurt—
I hit the wall eight times in a fit of rage. I growled because my feelings don’t go away like I want them to. A soft but steady knock on the door tells me that someone wants to come in. After smelling that it’s just Ezra at the door, I say, “Come in,” in a rough voice, letting him in.
Ezra is one of the few people on Earth who can come up to me when I’m angry and not get hurt in some way. Anyone else would be dead if they got in my way while I was trying to catch my wolf. When I turn into a wolf, anything in my way is pretty much dead.
“Oh great, more holes,” Ezra says with a smirk as I breathe deeply to try to calm down enough to answer.
I grumble, “Why are you here?” while holding my hurt hand. I don’t even notice the pain; my heart hurts too much to care.
“Um, the whole house can hear the growling and the loud punching,” he says to me. I don’t even have the strength to feel bad. “You know it’s two in the morning, right?”
“I know,” I manage to say through my teeth. If he doesn’t leave me alone right now, I’m going to grab his neck and-
Ezra asks with a knowing smile, “Do you want to go question the vampire for answers?” He knows I’ve wanted to t*****e the bastard who dared to touch my friend, but the rules for catching vampires say we have to give them a few days in the cells under UV light to weaken them before we question them. Vampires are very strong and hard to kill, just like werewolves. They don’t get hurt very often. Just like us, the only way to kill them is to cut off their heads or rip out their hearts.
The vampire has been weakened by the UV lights for almost three days, so it should be a lot weaker than when my pack warriors caught it. Just right.