Deadly Pack (Deadly Trilogy Book 3) (9 page)

“Some of us might have wanted to see you crash and burn,” Beck said to Aidan, as if he were the one who had spoken.  He reached for a creamer, opened it, and dumped it into his coffee.  “But we’re loyal to the pack.  You know that.  We’ve proven that to you.”

Aidan nodded.  “Yeah, you have.  But you’ve also proven that you can be swayed, and I can’t risk that happening again.”

Landon lifted his shoulders in a lazy shrug.  “Do what you need to do, man,” he said.  “We won’t fight it.”

“That’s it?”  Aidan asked.  He sounded surprised, and honestly I didn’t know why.  They weren’t the
talk about your feelings
type.  Honestly, I was just happy it was going better than I thought it would.  No one was yelling or growling.  Eyes weren’t flaring and I didn’t see any skin shudders.  They might have looked pissed off, but at least they were keeping their inner-wolves in check.

Craig slammed his coffee cup down, the contents sloshing up over the side.  “Did you expect us to beg?”

There goes staying calm,
I thought more than a little bitterly.  I glanced around quickly, hoping no one noticed the rise in Craig’s voice, and was glad to find no eyes staring in our direction.

Mark swore softly and cut his brother a look that clearly said,
shut up. 
Craig saw it.  He merely lifted his shoulders in a shrug and took a gulp of water.

“No, I didn’t.”  Aidan sighed.  “She sees something good in you guys.  I’m just trying to see it, too.”

“Aidan,” I snapped, and I cut him a dirty look.  “You’re not making this easy.”

“Don’t think there’s a way to make this easy,” said Mark.  He reached across the table, taking my hand, and gave it a little squeeze.  He held his gaze steady on mine.  “What do you think about all this?”

That was a good question, and I didn’t answer right away, taking a minute to gather my own thoughts.  When I spoke, I kept my voice at a whisper, making sure no one would overhear.  “I think that we’re having a service for your brother tonight and that your head might not be in the right place.”

Mark held my gaze for a moment before nodding and letting go of my hand.  “Fair enough.”

“Fair enough?” Craig snarled.  “You’ve got to be kidding me!”  He turned his glare onto Aidan, tiny flares of gold spread through his eyes.  “Haven’t you taken enough from us?  My dad, my brother, my girl.  Now you want to take away the team, too.”

“Craig, no one is taking anything away,” I murmured.  “We just …”

“Save it, Jade,” he growled.  “Save your damn sympathy for someone who actually wants it.”

Aidan’s scent suddenly flared and his fingers stopped their lazy trail on my neck.  His body stiffened.  I glanced up at him and opened my mouth, ready to tell him to chill out, but the words died on my tongue.

His eyes were starting to change.  Little speckles of gold dotted the soft brown.  But he wasn’t looking at Craig.  He was staring at the entrance of the diner.  His face was rock hard, his jaw clenching and unclenching.  He moved in his seat slightly, his chest pressing against my shoulder, and I felt the vibration of his soft growl before I heard it.

He nudged me and jerked his chin, signaling me to let him out of the booth.  The guys were already standing, their focus fixed on the doors as they swung open.

~ AIDAN ~

“What’s wrong with you guys?” Jade asked.  She was looking at me and the team as if we’d all lost our minds.  “Sit down.  You’re going to make a …” Her voice trailed off as she sucked in a long, slow breath.  Her upper lip started to curl up into a snarl, and her gaze snapped to the door as it banged shut.

“Let me out, sweetheart,” I said roughly.  I didn’t want to push her out of the way, but damn, I would if I had to.  I wasn’t going to let them anywhere near her.  My inner-wolf clawed at my chest, anxious and unnerved.  Low growls erupted from the guys as they started to move from our table toward the door.

“You’re not going anywhere,” she hissed, pushing against my chest.  “Sit down, guys.”  She didn’t take the chance that they wouldn’t listen to her and used the full force of her new scent to bring their focus back to her.  When she had their full attention, s
he placed her hands on the table, fingers splayed wide, and said, “Sit.”  Her tone was all command.

The guys didn’t waste a second in obeying her.  They slid back into the booth quickly, taking their seats, but their gazes never left the doorway.

No one in the restaurant seemed to notice the soft growls that rumbled around our table.  Utensils continued to clank against plates.  Mugs slapped against tables.  People chatted.  Just like any other morning at the diner.  They didn’t have a clue about the threat.

I glanced back at the entrance.  The two men had stopped just inside the doorway.  Both of them were in their late thirties, clean shaven, and dressed in jeans and bright orange hunting jackets.  One was tall, gangly looking and the other, shorter and stubby.  Their gazes drifted over the busy restaurant before coming to a rest at our table.

The tall one pulled out a cell phone, thumbed the screen, and brought it to his ear.  He kept his eyes on us the entire time.  His lips moved, but I couldn’t make out anything other than the vague tone of his voice over the clatter from the other patrons.

The call didn’t even last a minute and he shoved his phone back in
to his pocket.  The waitress appeared in front of them, menus in her hand, but they waved her away, and took up a post just inside the doors, as if they were waiting for friends to show before grabbing a table.  And I figured that’s exactly what they were doing.  Waiting for friends.

“Jade,” I said sternly, shifting in the bench seat to face her.  “This place is packed.  We have to …”

Jade cut me off.  “Aidan, there are only two of them.”  She waved a hand in their direction.  “Not really what I’d call threatening.  Even if that phone call he just made was for back-up, the guys can handle it.”  She huffed out a breath through her nose and folded her arms over her chest.  “And we’re in public.  You can’t go all wolfy and attack them here in the diner.  People might be used to seeing wolves around town, but they never see the violence.  You’ll just freak everyone out.”

I let out a frustrated growl and she gave me the eyebrow.  It was just one, lifting on the right, and matched with the look in her eyes, it clearly said,
I dare you to argue.  You know I’m right.

Jade, the freakin’ voice of reason.  When the hell did that happen?
  She was more of an act first type, and besides that, she’d also been an emotional mess all morning, yelling at me one second and close to tears the next.  But now, there wasn’t a single trace of nerves in her scent.  She was focused.  She was thinking.  And she was completely in command.

Her gaze swept over the room before returning back to me.  “Stop looking at me like I’ve grown another head,” she said with a little laugh, placing a hand on my cheek.  “You knew damn well they’d try again after last night.  You even told me so this morning.”

“Exactly,” I said.  I was losing patience, so was my inner-wolf.  My skin felt as if it were crawling.  Coarse hair darkened my forearms, and I was certain my eyes were a nice shade of gold.  “Which is exactly why you need to move that cute butt of yours before I move it for you, sweetheart.”

I glanced back at the entrance.  The men still hadn’t moved.  They were leaning against the wall to the side of the doorway, with their gazes locked on our table.  Waiting.

“What happened last night?” Landon asked.  He sounded concerned, but his scent screamed guilt.

I leaned forward, rested my forearms on the table, and glared at him.  “If you’d bothered to answer your phone, you wouldn’t have to ask.”

The others shifted uncomfortably in their seats, making clear efforts not to glance at Jade or me.  But Landon … he was going to argue with me.  I could see it.  He even muttered something, but his words were lost in a growl that ripped from his throat.

Jade smacked her hands on the table.  “Enough,” she said, quietly yet fiercely.  She waited a second, making sure we were listening, and then with certainty she said, “They’ll come to us.”

“What are they waiting for?” Beck asked.

“I’m guessing they’re waiting for more to show.”  She pulled out her cell phone and started tapping out a message.  Seconds after she sent it, her phone chirped with a response.  She smiled, looking extremely proud of herself, and she glanced up.  “At least half the pack will be outside in five minutes.  The rest won’t be far behind, so chill out.  We are not going to cause a scene in front of this many people if we don’t have to.  It wouldn’t be good for our image.”  Her smile faded and she glared at me then, long and hard, before shifting that glare around the table.  “We’ll finish our discussion later.  Got it?”

The guys nodded and mumbled what sounded like an agreement.  It never failed to shock me how quickly the team responded to her orders.  It confused me, amazed me, and troubled me all at once.  But then, most things to do with Jade left me feeling like that.

“Who’d you message?” I asked, wrapping my arm around her shoulder, attempting to look calm, but I wasn’t sure if I succeeded.  My inner-wolf was going crazy within me.  He wanted to defend our territory.  He wanted to protect our mate.  He wanted blood.  And sitting here doing nothing, was putting him (and me) on edge.

Her response was an eye roll, as if the answer was obvious, and she said, “Dom.”

Jade had been right.  The cougars came to us.  It took another three minutes for the men to finally push off of the wall and make their way over to our table.  It seemed to take forever for them to reach us.  They moved slowly, with a cocky self-confidence that seemed out of place since it was just the two of them and there were six of us.

“You’ve got a good step up out there,” the tall one said with a sly smile when he reached us.  “Good, but not great.  It only took about an hour to slip through your patrols.”

“Wait until you try to get back out,” Mark drawled with a lazy grin.  He lifted his mug and took a sip.

“Don’t see that being much of a problem,” the short one said.  He grabbed a chair, spinning it around, and straddled it, resting his arms on the top of the backrest.

I growled.  Their scent so close made my skin crawl and it took everything in me to sit still and keep my arm around Jade.  My inner-wolf was jerking against my skin.  That guy really needed to stop eyeing Jade’s cleavage or he was going to find himself dead shortly.  She was barely showing any skin, dressed in jeans, her plum zip-up hoodie, which was open with a form-fitting black tee underneath.  The neckline scooped barely below the crease of her breasts, but the way he was looking at her chest, it was as if she had nothing on.

Jade wiggled against me and I felt the shudder of her skin as she pressed her back to my chest, facing them.  She pushed her palm against my knee as another growl bounced around my chest and she snapped the fingers on her other hand, drawing the man’s attention away from her chest.

“What can we help you with?” she asked sweetly, as if she was genuinely interested, but she didn’t quite manage to hide the growled roughness of her inner-wolf in her tone.

“You’re Jade, right?” the tall one asked from his spot behind the jackass in the chair, arms folded.  “Jeff’s daughter?”

“That’s me,” she answered with another sweet as sugar smile.

The one in the chair let his eyes drop to her chest again, and my inner-wolf pressed against my ribs.  “Do it again,” I snarled.  “Check out her chest again, and I swear, you’ll be dead before you can suck in one more breath.”

“Aidan, baby, chill,” Jade said, looking over at me.  Her eyes were screaming at me to rein it in, but her tone was still sugar sweet.

The team was watching her curiously, and by their soft chuckles, I thought that they were probably getting a kick out of her sweetness, which we all knew was a joke.  It wasn’t that Jade wasn’t sweet.  She could be — sometimes — but I thought the fluttery eyelashes were pushing it a little.

I smirked at her, forcing my inner-wolf back.  “Jade, sweetheart, I’m completely chilled.”

I knew what she was trying to do with her sweet and innocent act.  She was buying us time for the pack to show.  It was probably smart.  No.  It was definitely smart.  There were too many people here.  Too many witnesses to drag them out back and beat the shit out of them like I wanted.  Doing something like that would probably ruin the werewolf/human relationship in Dog Mountain.

There was a beat of silence and then the chubby one in the chair said, “Your dad’s pretty worried about you.  He sent us to bring you back home.”

I laughed at that.  So did the guys.   But Jade didn’t.  She gave him a look that was a little sad and a lot concerned.  “What did you do to get on my dad’s bad side?”

The tall one shook his head in confusion.  “Not on his bad side.”

“Really?” she said.  “It seems to me you have to be.”  She sighed and her frown deepened.  “I just can’t think of any other reason why he’d send you guys in here while I’m with my mate having a meeting with our pack enforcers.”

~ JADE ~

I almost felt bad for the two men in front of me.  Almost.  They glanced at the guys, their faces turning a sickly shade of gray.  Obviously my father hadn’t bothered to tell them who I’d most likely be with when they tracked me down.  It made me hate him even more.  I knew he didn’t have much concern for human life, but really, did he not even care about his own pack?