Ashwood Falls Volume Two (7 page)

“How do you know that?”

Keegan’s voice made them both jump. Addyson scrambled off the bed to stand in front of Will, blocking him from the Alpha. Keegan raised a brow. “I’m not going to hurt him, Addy.”

Her heart quickened at the nickname he’d given her, the one he used to calm her when she was afraid and started to freak out.

She folded her arms over her chest and glared. “I take it you already knew about the rebel rogues.”

Keegan’s lips twitched. “I just found out. Will, answer the question.”

Will got off the bed to stand next to Addyson. “I picked up small objects when they let me out of my cell. A few of them held memories and conversations about breaking away from the Pack.”

Keegan’s stern look softened, and he nodded. “You don’t happen to have the names of these rebels, do you?”

Will smiled back at the Alpha and said, “Only one. Sable. She’s leading the group.”

Keegan’s brows dipped. “Are you sure?”

Will nodded, and Addyson shook her head at the same time. “She’s Felix’s daughter and the Beta of the Pack. Why would she go against him?”

“I’m not sure, but I don’t think it’s out of the good of her heart.” Keegan growled. Addyson couldn’t have agreed more. She’d witnessed Sable’s ruthless leadership.

After a short silence, Keegan said, “You need a run.”

She snapped her gaze to his at the command in his tone. Her very short fuse just got shorter. “Is that an order?”

One corner of his sensual mouth lifted, and damn it if she didn’t melt a little. He held his hand out to her and softened his expression. “Come running with me.”

She shook her head, trying like hell to not be effected by the male in front of her. “I’m fine,” she lied and moved to walk around him. She needed some air, without Keegan around. She needed to be alone to think.

The truth was that she didn’t know how to handle the male. He was too much and everywhere she turned.

“Addyson.”

Her name on his lips gave her pause. He spoke it on a purr as he followed her to the living room, and damn if she didn’t want to kiss those lips. But what would that do to her? Would it finally break her to have so much skin contact with the male who ignited the flame within her?

Oh, God. He was too much male right now.

She turned toward the door and slid the stone slab aside. She bolted through the opening, not paying attention to what, or who, might be in front of her and ran right into a solid mass. Instinctually she reached out and made skin-to-skin contact with Blaine, Keegan’s eldest son and the new leopard Alpha of Ashwood Falls.

Images slammed into her mind’s eye, taking her to the place Blaine had been in this particular vision. He was running through the forest, panic raging through his veins. Every breath, every step, and every thought he had at the time was now hers. It always happened like that. Without her shields, her mind was open to everything the person felt, saw, smelt, and tasted.

She jerked back from Blaine, only to have her knees give out. Tears streamed down her cheeks as she crumbled to the ground. The vision didn’t stop because she broke the contact with Blaine. No it played on like a horror movie she was unable to turn off.

She barely heard Keegan’s feral growl, warning everyone to stay away from her.

Her head ached, and she tried desperately to control the speed of the vision and push away the harsh, painful emotions that felt too real to not be hers.

The vision was a mess of images, and she couldn’t make sense of it. Flashes of Keegan’s face, marred with anger and horror, then a glimpse of a brunette woman with tears in her eyes and a gun raised to her temple.

She felt arms come around her and lift her then the scent of oak and spice filled her senses. Keegan. She inhaled deeply. The pain eased as she felt him move with her cradled to his chest.

The images slowed, finally. Before the flood shut off, she realized that the woman was Keegan’s mate. Oh, God, Blaine had watched his mother kill herself.

She wasn’t sure how long Keegan held her in silence, but she allowed herself to drink up the masculine heat of him. It soothed her and her cat in a way nothing had ever done.

And she knew why. She’d always known.

Whether she wanted to admit it or not, Keegan was her mate. Her own protectiveness rose to the surface as the vision replayed in her mind, this time without the heavy, heart-crushing emotions.

The visions were always like that. The initial impact slammed into her with so much force it left her a quaking mess on the floor. She hated that anyone had to see her like that, hated that her mind was broken.

Before she was captured by Onyx and forced to use her powers until she wasn’t able to shield from them any longer, she’d had a mental wall in place that blocked out the psychic impressions from others. The constant use of that power overloaded her senses.

Felix Darwin got off on her pain as he thirsted for more information on Ashwood and their allies. Never allowing her the much-needed rest between visions, he forced her to touch objects over and over until she was no longer able to block anything or anyone from her powers.

If she refused, which she did often, Felix found creative ways to punish her.

She shuddered and let out a soft whimper. Her cat curled up in a ball and shook inside her. Keegan’s arms tightened around her, bringing her back to the present.

As much as she wanted to wrap her arms around this male and relish the peace he seemed to give her, she wasn’t naïve enough to believe he was offering anything more than an Alpha would for any one of his submissives when they needed him. She pulled back, only to have him draw her closer into his body.

Her leopard whined.

Keegan dipped his fingers into her hair and massaged her scalp. She groaned at the intimate caress and gave into the need to be cared for by this male, even if it meant she was sending her heart false hope.

After a few more moments of silence, Addyson took a shaky breath and wiped her tear-soaked cheeks. “Where is everyone?”

Keegan wiped hair from her forehead. “Outside.”

She sagged in relief. It was bad enough for Keegan to see her this way. She didn’t need, nor want, an audience. She also didn’t want to move from her very comfortable spot where her head rested on Keegan’s chest. The
thump
,
thump
of his steady heartbeat soothed her.

Too bad he had his shirt on...

Squashing that thought, she focused back on the vision and drummed up the courage to tell Keegan what she’d seen.

“I saw your mate,” she rushed out and didn’t move while she waited for his reaction.

He tensed under her, and she felt a tinge of pain spark from him. She wasn’t empathic, not really. She felt others emotions through touch and she could sense others’ feelings by just being around them. However, she couldn’t influence emotions like a true empath. Yet she could see through the wall Keegan hid behind. She could see his pain. She could also see that he was on the path to healing that wound.

Addyson so wanted to help him move forward. She didn’t care how long it took, she’d help him and wait for him. He was her mate after all.

“What do you mean?”

She swallowed hard. “I saw how she died.”

****

F
uck, fuck, and fuck!

Keegan gently eased Addyson off his lap and stood to pace the living room. His heart pounded inside his chest as the buried pain surfaced, putting his leopard on alert. A whirlwind of thoughts and questions invaded his mind, the number one being how Blaine would have known about his mother’s suicide.

Sparing a glance at Addyson over his shoulder, he cursed again. Her red-rimmed eyes and tear-streaked cheeks didn’t hide her compassion and concern.

Damn it, she’d felt his pain. Or was it Blaine’s?

Hell, whichever the case, she now knew the truth. Apparently Blaine did, too, but Keegan would deal with his son later. Right now he had to face the past with the woman of his future.

Talk about ripping off the bandage off.

“What did you see?”

Addyson wiped her eyes and sat straighter on the sofa then smoothed out the hem of her lavender top against her jeans. Keegan forced himself to be patient with her. She was a submissive after all. If he pushed, her cat would make her bare her neck and submit totally to him.

He didn’t want that. He wanted the woman who possessed a fire within her that he guessed no one had seen but him.

So he waited. When she did speak, she lifted her gaze to his. “I saw the two of you through Blaine’s eyes. You and Cate were arguing. No, not arguing.” She swallowed again and averted his gaze as she whispered the next sentence. “You were pleading with her to come home.”

He closed his eyes. It was the nightmare he’d had since that night. “She’d been feeding information to Felix for years. One of my soldiers told me they smelt a rogue on her. I didn’t want to believe it, but something gnawed at me to find out. So I waited for her to return from her evening walk.”

Addyson lifted her gaze back up to his, waiting for him to finish. Keegan ran a hand through his hair. “She was upset, as if she’d just had an argument with someone. Felix’s scent was all over her.”

Addyson gasped and quietly asked, “What did you do?”

He sighed and sat down in the chair across from her. “I was so angry, and the thought of another male’s scent on her, my enemy at that, made me lose control over my leopard. It’s all a blur really. I confronted her about his scent and what the soldier said. I’d just come off patrol and still had my gun in my chest holster. In my rage, I didn’t expect Cate to reach out and take it. She ran into the forest, away from the den.”

Addyson nodded as if piecing the rest of it together. “Blaine must had heard or felt the distress and followed. He found you begging her to return home, but she said she’d betrayed the Pack and...”

She cut off her own statement with a sob. “Oh, Keegan. I didn’t mean to. I didn’t know...”

He crossed the small space between them and cupped her face in his hands. “You did nothing wrong. I was the one who pushed you when I knew that you’d run from me. I knew Blaine was at the door but didn’t think I’d frightened you enough to run outside.”

She stilled and stared into his eyes. The male in front of her made her feel things she hadn’t in a very long time. Things she’d didn’t remember feeling, ever. “You don’t scare me. You’re dominance does. I’m not sure how to react around you, to your leopard. If I’m to touch you, to comfort you. Especially since you’re my mate.”

His chest tightened as he peered into her violet eyes and let her words settle in his mind. She was his mate. He’d known that from the moment he found her in the forest. Yet to hear the words on her tongue made something inside him tighten and his leopard purr. Not wanting to think about anything else, he leaned in and brushed his lips against hers.

She gasped as their lips touched, but didn’t draw away. He took that as an invitation and hardened the kiss, sliding his tongue inside her mouth. Her tongue tangled with his, intensifying the need rushing through him.

Keegan slid one hand down her back then slipped it under her shirt. When his fingers touched her bare skin, he heard her sharp intake of breath. He also sensed the colliding emotions of fear, desire, and confusion building inside her.

Breaking the kiss, he drew back and peered into her gaze. “Are you okay?”

She looked down at her hands pressed against his chest and shook her head. “It’s too much. The touching. It’s too much right now.”

He nipped at her nose, drawing a smile from her. “Then I’ll have to make sure to desensitize you.”

She looked back up, her eyes grew round, and he heard her pulse kick up a couple of beats per second. “How?”

It came out barely a whisper, but he heard it. “By touching you and playing with you more.”

“Oh.” She looked around, as if searching the room for something, or someone.

With his finger under her chin, he gently urged her to meet his stare. “You’re right. We are mates, and you’re mine to keep and play with.”

He stood and took her hand. “I’ll draw you a bath so you can relax while I talk to my son.”

A
ddyson eased down into the bath and sighed as the warm water flowed over her too-sensitive skin. She sank down under the water until it touched her chin, and she closed her eyes.

...and you’re mine to keep and play with.

Keegan’s words drifted through her mind. There was a promise and a demand in those words. She was old enough to know that once an Alpha saw something he wanted, he got it.

Well, hell, Addy, you had to go and challenge him
.

That’s exactly what she’d done when she confessed she knew they were mates. And he answered. That was something she hadn’t expected, especially with the subject of his dead mate hanging between them.

Then there was that kiss. Never in her life had she been so turned on. Her skin felt as though it were on fire where his fingers touched. It was all too much, sending her senses into overdrive. She’d lost the ability to breathe for a moment, and it scared the hell out her.

Flashes of the Onyx soldiers touching her overwhelmed her and stole the pleasure she’d felt with Keegan.

Taking a deep breath, she pushed the ugly, evil thoughts out of her mind. She’d lived too long with the ugliness, and she refused to let it cloud her now.

It appeared that Keegan was her future, and she wasn’t going to let Onyx win at destroying what little happiness she could have. Her happiness lay in Ashwood with Keegan.

As long as she could figure out away to help him heal.

With a purpose, she bathed, dried off, dressed, and headed to the living room, where the males were in a heated discussion. Most likely about her vision.

Addyson entered the living room on silent bare feet, but Keegan knew the moment she entered the room. He stopped speaking and turned to her. Addyson fought off a gasp at the intensity in his gaze. His brown eyes held swirls of gold, indicating his leopard wasn’t far from the surface.

She took an involuntary step back, making him turn his body to face her. When he started to walk toward her, she froze. Her leopard whimpered in her head, but the woman held his gaze. Normally, submissives didn’t look their dominants in the eyes as they were being stalked. It was a sign of aggression and the dominant would see it as a challenge.