Deadly Pack (Deadly Trilogy Book 3) (16 page)

I glared at my father and said, “You have three seconds before I let her kill you.”

Dad’s mouth opened, and then closed.  He wiped some blood from the corner of his lips
and said, “You’re making a big mistake, Jade.”  And then he shocked the hell out of me.

He shifted.

And it wasn’t into a big cat.

He shrunk in size, foot by foot.  Bones broke, and wings, big feathery wings, sprung from his back.

I blinked and when my eyes opened again, a hawk hovered in front of me.  He beat his wings a few times slowly, holding in place, and then he flew out the back door, which was still wide open.

~ JADE ~

It took another three minutes for Aidan to show up after my father flew —
oh my God, he flew
— away.

Mark and I had ushered everyone outside, away from the death and the blood, and that was where we were waiting when Aidan drove up.  He wasn’t alone.  Car after car pulled up into the driveway and onto the grass, and soon our whole front yard was filled with pack members.

Three minutes too late to help.

Aidan got out of a car, so did Beck.  He was looking at Beck, laughing at something he’d said.  He glanced at the house.  His eyes caught mine.  He smiled, waved, and then his smile turned scary, somehow.  It was all sharp edges and contorted curves.  Forced.  Wrong.  His gaze darted to Mom, sitting on the steps with Marcy huddled in her arms.  Then to Mark standing behind them with a hand on Mom’s shoulder.  Then to Erika and the other women, who were standing on the grass off to the left of the porch.

His nostrils flared; I thought he was probably catching the scent of the enemy, or maybe he could smell how freaked out we all were.  His brown eyes came back to me, and his face went blank, completely and utterly blank, except for his eyes.  His eyes were filled with emotion, so much emotion that they were almost scarier than his smile.

“Jade, are you okay?”  His voice was hesitant, as if he really wasn’t sure how to assess the situation.  I was sure it looked a bit strange, all of us hanging out in front of the house.  I was sure he could see the blood splattered on most of us, and Marcy and Mom were sobbing quietly.

No, I’m not okay.
 
I just saw my dad change into a bird and there are dead werecougars in my house.
  That’s what I wanted to say, but what I did was shrug and my voice was all wrong, small and sad and weak, when I said, “I think so.”

Aidan took a step, and then he was running, colliding into me, locking me in a breathtakingly tight embrace, so tight that I couldn’t even get my arms loose and hug him back.  “Tell me you’re okay,” he said.  His voice was tight and growled, and his grip got impossibly tighter.

People were moving around us.  Opening the door, going into the house.  Growls.  Voices.  Some shouted.  Some whispered.  It was suddenly loud, really loud, and it wasn’t until Aidan loosened his grip, and I snapped my gaze up, that I realized I hadn’t told him what he wanted to hear.

“I’m okay,” I said, and damn, but there were tears in my voice.  I swallowed hard and blinked fast, and when I tried again, my voice (thankfully) was stronger.  “We’re all fine, but um ...” I bit my lip, and looked to the front door.  I opened my mouth, about to tell him what had happened, and probably more importantly I was going to tell him that I’d let my father get away, but what came out was completely different.  “I think we need a new bed, and we definitely need to rip out the nasty carpet in the living room.  They’re both covered in blood and, um, there are kind of three dead cougars in human form in the house.”

He cupped my face in his big, warm palms, and brought my eyes back to his.  “Don’t care about the bed or the carpet, sweetheart,” he said, a small smirk playing at the corner of his lips.  He shook his head as if he couldn’t believe I was worried about those things.  “I don’t care if the whole house needs to be torn down and rebuilt.  You are the only thing that matters to me.”  And then he kissed me, and it was full of passion and fear and need, and I was clutching onto him, and him onto me, and for those few seconds, I completely forgot that the pack were all standing by.

But then it ended, and he decided to let me breathe again, although it was a ragged breath at best.  He brushed his thumbs across my cheeks and his expression changed to serious.  “Tell me what happened,” he said, and with those four words, reality came crashing back.

I told him everything.

Mom put her overcooking to use.  With Dominic’s help (she refused to go back into the house, not that I blamed her), they fed to the pack the food she’d already cooked.  They’d found a long, plastic folding table in the garage, along with what I thought had to be a year’s supply of throwaway plates and cups, and set it up in the backyard.  It was loaded with a mix of fruit, eggs, bacon, and pancakes.  There were also a lot of steamed vegetables, batches of cookies, and muffins, and I even spotted the ground beef that had been in the freezer and all the fixings for tacos laid out.

While they were setting up the feast, Aidan explained why he’d brought the pack along with the two cougars from the diner, who were currently tied and gagged in the garage, home.  He had a plan — a plan that was already in motion.  And although the plan was no better or worse than Erika’s idea, I really didn’t know how to feel about him sending Landon out with only two other wolves, without even telling me first.

I tried a few times to tell him about Erika’s idea, except I didn’t think he was listening.  He was excited and kind of hyper, and he kept telling me how
huge
it was that my dad was a full shifter (not that I had any clue what that meant) but it seemed to explain a lot to him.  I also had to admit that even though he was excited and it was kind of hard to keep his attention, I hadn’t tried overly hard to make him listen to me either.  Replacing one semi-okay plan with another semi-okay plan didn’t make a whole lot of sense, and Aidan was pretty busy trying to organize everyone, so yeah, I didn’t really try too hard to get it out.

When Aidan went to help pull the dead from the house and load them in the truck, I snuck away.  I needed a moment, or maybe ten, to pull myself together.  I was feeling pretty shaky and really confused, and I was just plain tired.  Tired of fighting.  Tired of being scared.  I was also tired of caring about what happened to my dad.

Numbness would be better
, I thought.  And right then, I was also feeling pretty numb.

I was standing on the back porch watching my wolves practice their fighting techniques, when I felt his hands grip my hips, and his chest press against my back.  It was a familiar scene in front of me.  One I’d participated in countless times, except it had been Jared barking out the instructions, not Beck and Craig, and I’d been the wolf getting my butt kicked.

Aidan’s breath was warm against the back of my neck, sending small shivers along my skin.  His hands were resting lightly on my hips, holding me close against him.  He didn’t say anything for a long moment and when he did, it was a whisper in my ear.  “How are you holding up?” he asked.  He seemed a little calmer, but I was pretty sure he was just trying to mask the excitement he was feeling for my benefit.

“I think I’m pretty much numb,” I said, and then, not wanting to explore that topic any further, I continued with, “
Thankfully Mom won’t go back into the house so the cooking has stopped.  And the pack’s eating everything she already made so it looks like we won’t have to go shopping for a freezer.”

Aidan chuckled, a deep, throaty sound that made my knees soft.  “I have some good news for you,” he murmured, as his lips grazed the side of my neck with gentle presses that made my stomach flutter a little.

“Oh, yeah,” I said.  “What’s that?”

He leaned back against the house, pulling me with him.  “The team and I are good.”

I tilted my head back to look at him and rolled my eyes.  “Yeah, I noticed that.”  And I had, pretty much the moment he’d gotten out of the car and I saw him laughing at something Beck had said.  I didn’t think I’d ever seen Aidan laugh with one of the enforcers, and I knew I’d never seen one of them try to make him laugh.  But them getting along (even if it was awesome) was not really important.  Not after finding out my father was not what I thought he was.

Silence fell and I leaned back, resting my head against his shoulder.  I felt sick to my stomach and tired, really, really tired.  I was trying really hard to stay relaxed against him, but cold panic kept jerking at my muscles.  I knew, just knew, that he had to hate me for letting my dad go.  How couldn’t he?  If I were him, I’d probably hate me, too.  And once his hyperness wore off, he would.  I was sure of it.

My hands were shaking, so I folded my arms across my chest in an attempt to hide it.  I pulled in a breath, let it out, and broke the silence.  “Tell me I didn’t screw up.”

Aidan actually laughed.  “You’re kidding me, right?  Of course you didn’t screw up.”

“Now say it like you mean it,” I shot back, shocked, and well, it hurt, like a lot, that he was laughing at me.  I tried to wiggle out of his arms, but he held on, his hands moving from my hips to coil around my waist with relentless strength.

“You found out that he can shift into more than just a cougar,” he said, an animated pitch coming out in his voice.  “That’s something, Jade.  It’s huge, actually.  A piece we didn’t have before.  It explains so much.  Like why I couldn’t pick up his scent.  He’s not just one animal, he could be any of them.  All of them.  It confuses the smells, hides them, and changes them.  I should have figured it out.  We had a full-blown shifter in my dad’s pack when I was seven.  If anyone screwed up, it was me.  Again.”

I wasn’t entirely sure what he was talking about, but I knew he was trying to be reasonable, trying to make me feel better.  And it was a super nice gesture.  It just sucked, though, that it didn’t help my trembling hands.  “For the record, I’m not sure what you’re talking about with the more than one animal smell thing and I only found out that he could do that because I let him walk away.”

Aidan didn’t try to explain the animal/smell thing.  Instead he gave me a little squeeze and said, “He’s your dad, sweetheart, and your mom was here.  I imagine
that if it were my dad and my mom was there, I’d do the same thing.”

“No you wouldn’t,” I said.  I swallowed a bubble of panic and tried really hard to make my voice sound reasonable, just like his, and when I spoke again, I even thought I succeeded, sort of.  “You hate your father.”

“But I love my mother.”  Again with the reasonable tone.  “On the plus side,” he continued with a smile in his voice, “we now have a good reason not to put off ripping out that nasty ass carpet.”

“Yeah, I guess.”  I was starting to feel drowsy and almost content leaning against him, but it was hard to completely relax with the sounds of the wolves training in the yard.  A constant reminder of what was still to come.

Aidan chuckled and kissed the side of my neck, just below my ear.  “What was Erika doing here?”  He kept it at a bare whisper, as if he wasn’t sure he’d really meant to voice the question out loud.

“I tried to tell you earlier,” I said.  “She had an idea.”

“Erika.” He sounded surprised and I tilted my head to the side to see his forehead scrunched up.  His eyebrows rose as he looked down at me.  “Erika had an idea?”

“Yeah.”  I dropped my head again and rested it on his shoulder, and then with a long sigh, I told him the idea.

Aidan said nothing when I finished, and I wasn’t entirely sure what to make of the change in his scent.  It was still heavy with that hyper excitement, but there was something else there now, something I just couldn’t place, spicing it up.

His arms dropped from my waist and I slowly turned around.  His face was set, deep in thought, and when he met my eyes, he gave his head a little shake and laughed, a startled kind of sound, and said, “I like it.”

“You. Like. It,” I repeated slowly, narrowing my eyes.  “How can you like this idea?”
  But I already knew the answer,
I thought
, because it really was a great plan.

“It could work, Jade.”  He was staring down at me, but I didn’t really think he was seeing me.  His eyes sort of hazed over and his expression intensified to what I thought of as his
thinking face.
  He leaned forward and kissed my cheek absently, and then he walked away.  He made it about ten steps before turning back and sending me a quick, unreadable glance.  “Come on, Jade.  Landon’s going to be back anytime now.  We need to get ready.”

I wasn’t sure what
get ready
meant, but I followed him on aching legs down the steps and into the yard, figuring I was probably about to find out.

~ AIDAN ~

The yard was as busy as a mall before Christmas.  Pack members were gathering in clusters, some looked excited and some right out worried, but all of them were here, and they were all ready to move the second Landon got back.

There was a good size group of them in wolf form, training with Beck and Craig.  They were like drill sergeants, breaking out training exercises, over and over.  It was amazing, seeing the pack work like this.  Together.  As a unit.  When they did, they looked as if they could take down anything in their path.  And I was counting on just that.