Page 13
thirteen
ASPEN
I couldn’t help but stare at him as he drove down a dirt road. Trees whirred past us, but my wolf wasn’t even interested in them. She just kept purring at the man in the seat next to me.
Heat was definitely approaching.
“Have you ever taken a human mate?” I asked, unable to stop the question from bubbling out.
“No. Have you ever seen a wolf go rogue?”
I blinked. “No.”
“The ones who go rogue are all mated to humans. It’s not the way we’re made. Immortal wolves aren’t supposed to make vows to mortal women. It fucks with their minds, and eventually, breaks them.”
“Why don’t you have laws against it, then?”
“How would I enforce them?”
It was a good question.
“And my father tried that. The moment he announced that it would become illegal, there was a massive surge of men claiming human females. It’s not a problem for us to fuck them, or even necessarily have pups with them, but claiming them goes against what our wolves can handle. Wolves mate for life.”
Oh.
Wow.
“How would we fix the problem, then?”
“Figure out how to make female wolves ourselves. Remove humans from the city entirely. Make sure everyone understands that if they choose a human mate, they choose an early death when they inevitably go rogue.”
If those were the only options, I could never tell anyone what I could do. As soon as he realized I could turn women, he’d use me exactly the way I had always thought someone would.
I needed to be careful. Really, really careful.
“Then you should’ve asked me to give my blood to the doctor,” I said.
“Not until I’ve made you mine.”
So there was an expiration date to his protection.
As soon as the bond was sealed, he would stop keeping me safe.
…Which meant I should probably figure out a way to drag out the time before we sealed our bond.
“So you don’t have a human mate. I’m sure you fuck groupies sometimes, though,” I said, staring out the window. “Are any of them attached to you?”
“Of course not. You’re aware that I’m a difficult male to be attached to. My wolf is worse than me. He typically only gives me about ten minutes with a woman before he decides he’s ready to bite her head off for smelling wrong.”
He clearly didn’t have that problem with me.
His grip tightened on the steering wheel. “How many males have you fucked, other than Silas?”
“I don’t see how that’s any of your business.”
His jaw clenched, and he let out a slow breath. He was trying to calm himself down. Or calm down his wolf. “I’ll trade you for the information. Something you’ll want to know.”
“What kind of information?”
“If I tell you that, you won’t have to trade me.”
“Fine. You go first, though. And if yours isn’t juicy enough, I’m not sharing.” My answer to his question wouldn’t make him mad. It would probably cool him down, so I wasn’t opposed to sharing it. I just wanted to know what he had to tell me.
“Hunter came up here for a security tech conference a few months back.”
“Here, as in, your cabin?”
I hadn’t smelled Hunter there.
“No, he stayed in a hotel room. No one uses my cabin but me. It’s the only place I go to get away.”
“Okay. And?” I prodded. If that was his juicy information, he was going to have to try again.
“While he was here, he caught a wolf’s scent.”
I leaned toward him. It was against every werewolf law for a wolf to live outside Crimson River, and highly unsafe on top of it.
“A female wolf’s. He was looking for her scent in the forest when he found you. He thought you were her, at first. We assume she was on vacation here or something.”
“Well, I’ve never been here before.”
“As soon as he got close to you, he could tell you weren’t her,” Enzo agreed. “She smelled like ink and coffee. You’re all chocolate and pine trees, without the perfume hiding you.”
“Chocolate and pine trees?” My nose wrinkled.
I smelled like a tree to him, and he liked it?
Enzo made a noise of agreement. “Fucking delicious.”
“Wait, so there’s another female wolf out there?” I asked, realizing quickly what that meant. Not just for me, but for her.
“Yup. Hunter’s been fixated on her scent ever since he caught it. He’s run every inch of our forests since then and hasn’t caught another whiff, but we didn’t consider that she could be hiding her scent. He’s started running in the forest again since, looking for smells strong enough to conceal hers, and researching anyone as tall as you are that lives with a pack.”
Holy crap.
I wasn’t alone.
There was another woman like me out there.
Another woman with a wolf. Maybe more than one.
As quick as the excitement hit, dread followed.
Another woman living in hiding.
Another woman being hunted by one of the Savage brothers.
“Whoever and wherever she is, he should leave her alone,” I said.
“That’s not possible, Princess. I didn’t believe him the first time he told me he couldn’t stop looking for her, but now I get it. If I had caught your scent in the forest and you slipped away from me, my wolf wouldn’t rest until you were in my arms. I don’t know whether or not fate is involved, but my wolf chose you the first moment I smelled you. There’s no going back from there. Not for me, and not for Hunter.”
I stared out the window, not replying.
He didn’t want to hear that I still thought Hunter should leave her be.
“Heat alone puts her in danger,” Enzo said. “You don’t trust our pack, but you’ve been safe with us, haven’t you? The same can’t be said for a female wolf on her own, whether in Crimson River or in Greenview. If the wrong man had been out for a run and stumbled upon Silas’s shack at any point during your heat, you could’ve been hurt. You could’ve been taken from me before I ever met you. What if Hunter’s female doesn’t have a Silas or a Fletcher to help her?”
“Werewolves are always born in multiples.”
“What if her siblings are all sisters? What if there are a few of these women out there, hiding?”
There could definitely be situations worse than mine, and I could admit that. Even if I didn’t want to.
“I see your point,” I finally said. “My life could’ve been worse.”
“I’m not saying things were easy for you, Princess, but there’s no way to guarantee that this woman isn’t living through hell. You still think we’re the bad guys, but we haven’t really done anything but protect you. Eventually, you’ll see that.” He cleared his throat. That conversation was over. “Now, you owe me an answer.”
There wasn’t any way I could convince him his information wasn’t juicy enough.
It was.
I doubted that anyone else in their entire pack other than Clay knew what he’d just told me.
“I haven’t been with anyone else,” I admitted. “All the men in the city are werewolves, and they could’ve realized what I was if we hooked up.”
Enzo let out a relieved breath, and his grip on the steering wheel loosened. “So I don’t have to kill anyone else.”
“ Anyone else ? If you killed Silas, you are not touching me tomorrow.” I grabbed my phone and sent him a quick message.
Me
Are you alive?
“I didn’t kill Silas, or anyone else you know. It was a figure of speech.”
I shot him a look.
Until I heard that from Silas himself, I wasn’t going to believe him.
Luckily, I heard back quickly.
Silas
I’m fine. Why?
My shoulders relaxed.
Me
Enzo said something suspicious
The king. His name is Enzo. Not sure if you know that
Silas
I know
He personally dropped off a gift basket for me yesterday
Me
He what?
A moment passed, and a picture came through.
I tapped on the image, zooming in. It was a store-bought gift basket wrapped in shiny cellophane, and had a bunch of different kinds of snacks in it. It had clearly been assembled before it was purchased.
Another image came through, this one of a premade card. The typed words on the inside had been scribbled out, and it said on one side:
Sorry about the injuries. Thanks for protecting her for me. I owe you one.
The other side said:
But if you ever touch her again, I’ll feed you your own intestines before I rip out your heart.
-Enzo
I blinked.
“Who are you texting?” he asked me.
“I was making sure Silas is alive. He says you gave him a gift basket yesterday. And he sent me a picture of a card. You do know that you can’t thank someone and threaten to kill them at the same time, right?”
“It wasn’t at the same time. I wrote it on the other side of the card.”
I groaned.
Me
He’s not going to hurt you again. I’m sorry
Silas
It’s fine
Be careful with him
Me
Thanks
I exited the message and set my phone down. “Don’t give people gift baskets after attacking them. It’s weird.”
“How else was I going to apologize?”
“A text saying that you misunderstood our relationship and had no intention of hurting him again would’ve been plenty.”
“He’s still sitting in bed while he heals. Snacks are more useful than a texted apology.”
“He said he was already better.”
Enzo snorted. “When I went after him, all I knew was that he fucked you every month for years , Princess. He wasn’t getting off with just a broken nose. I’m sure he told you he was fine so you’d back off.”
“I guess.” I grimaced, looking back out the window.
Tense silence stretched between us.
It was quite possibly the most uncomfortable moment we’d ever spent together.
Enzo finally blew out a breath. “I shouldn’t have attacked him. It wasn’t one of my best moments. I’m sorry.”
“Are you going to do it again?”
“No. You don’t want him.”
I scowled. “I’m being serious, Enzo. If someone brushes up against me at the Lodge, are they going to die? Do I need to walk on my tiptoes everywhere I go out of fear that you’re going to murder anyone who smiles at me or helps me find tortillas in the grocery store? Do I need to ask everyone I know to pretend I don’t exist if I ever bump into them? Do I need to spend my life afraid of who you’re going to kill for being nice to me?”
“No to all of those.” He said it easily, but there was a beat of hesitation.
I made a sound of exasperation. “This is messed up.”
“Theoretically, forming a mate bond will prevent more… overreactions.” His voice was grudging with that last word.
At least he’d admitted it was an overreaction.
He added, “You’ve got to understand, my wolf has been trained to kill first and ask questions later. There’s no way to know when a rogue will go rabid. We have to kill them even when we know they’re innocent, or we risk finding out that they’ve slaughtered an entire pack’s worth of women and children, creating more rogues in the process.”
I grimaced.
It was horrible, but I couldn’t tell him he was wrong for doing it. Killing werewolves who had become nothing more than ticking time bombs in animal form was gruesome, but what else could he do?
“Yeah, I guess,” I said, biting my lip. “Why do you think a mate bond will change your reactions?”
“Unlike me, my father was able to think rationally when there was a risk to my mother. He was more violent than I am, but my reactions have been much worse than his were. I think sealing the bond eases up on those instincts. I remember the way his scent was woven through hers even when they hadn’t been together in weeks, so that might be part of it. I’m not entirely sure.”
So it was a theory, but one he had evidence in favor of.
I bit my lip harder. “How do you feel about not sealing the mate bond under the next full moon?”
“Not a chance.”
I sighed. “Enzo…”
“Princess, I’d prefer to give you more time, but my wolf is fucking obsessed, and my pack and my city need to come first. I can’t give them the time and attention they need while I’m this out of control because of the mating shit going on here.”
My argument deflated, slowly but surely.
With the way we’d been talking, I’d actually started to feel like he might like me. I shouldn’t have let myself forget that he was only there because his wolf didn’t give him another choice. And that I was only there because neither of them had given me a choice.
“Alright, fine,” I said quietly. “We’ll seal the bond so you can focus again. I understand.”
“Thank you. I know you’re pissed with how things have gone, but I hope we can be friends. This might not be the mate bond you always wanted, but there’s no going back for either of us. It’ll be better if we can get along.”
“I never wanted a mate bond. I just wanted?—”
“Freedom,” he said.
I blinked.
“You told me you wanted to be a bird when you were high on pain pills. Because birds are free.”
Ah.
Lovely.
“I thought I dreamed that,” I said.
More like I hoped I had dreamed it.
“You didn’t. I already talked to my brothers about it.”
“About me being high?”
“No, about you being free. After the bond is sealed, you’ll have a car. You can get a job doing whatever you want in town, after you clear it with me. As long as it’s not at a sex club or something. I wouldn’t handle that well.” He glanced at me.
I rolled my eyes at him.
“You’ve already got your own bank account. Hunter put it together for you, under your new name,” Enzo added.
“New name?”
“Savage.”
Wow.
I’d forgotten that the wolves had a law in place that made their mate bonds with humans work the same legally as weddings.
Aspen Savage.
That would definitely take some time to get used to.
“You’ll have a guard,” he added. “That’s nonnegotiable, but you’ll like him.”
“Bold assumption. There is only one male wolf I genuinely like, and he’s not part of your pack.” I held up one finger. We both knew I was talking about my brother.
“Just trust me.”
“I don’t.”
“But you’re starting to.”
Maybe a little, but I would never admit it to him.
“I tried to buy you a crown, but Clay said you’d rather have the money,” he said. “You told me you wanted one of those when you were high, too.
“Clay is right.”
He chuckled. “Even without a guard or a crown, no one will dare touch you with my scent on your skin. The whole city is afraid of me. You can do whatever you want and be whatever you want.” After a pause, he added, “Other than a sex worker. I don’t have anything against them, obviously, I just?—”
“You almost killed Silas for sleeping with me, Enzo. I don’t need a summary of your possessiveness.”
He grunted.
“Can I have my own room? Or rent an apartment away from the Lodge?” I asked.
“Other than that, too.”
“So I agree to seal the bond with you, live with you, and spend heat with you every month. In exchange, I get to be slightly more free than I was before?”
“Yes.”
“Sounds like a decent deal to me. Friends it is.” Despite my words, I looked out the window, not sure I could make eye contact with him.
It was a good deal. It really was.
It was just highly unexpected after the way he’d been doting on me since I got injured. And that threw me for a loop. A big one.
“Good.” He pulled into the parking lot of a cute little diner and got out. I tried to open my door, but he grabbed it before I could, and lifted me out.
“If we’re just friends, I should be allowed to walk when I want to,” I pointed out.
“We’re just friends, but our wolves are mates. My wolf’s going to take care of you whenever he can.”
I considered arguing, but decided against it.
What he offered was still more than I ever would’ve let myself hope for.