Storm Shades (12 page)

Ashton races through the woods. He thinks about shifting, but he knows that Sofie was awake when he left her, and he doesn’t put it past her to follow him again. He didn’t want to take any chances, not when everything had changed so much so quickly. He wanted to tell her, he wanted to tell her everything, but not yet. No one outside of the pack knew, getting her involved could turn their world upside down. But, wasn’t that what she’d done to him?

When he reaches the towering tree, the oldest tree in the woods, he stops, sniffing the air. He knows that his sense of smell is stronger than Gus’s, stronger than all of the others. He can tell just from the air that Gus is about one minute in the other direction. He turns around, scanning the wood to make sure that Sofie hasn’t decided to go all Nancy Drew on him again. He can’t help but smile when he thinks about her. He’s still grinning when Gus arrives and tries to put on a more commanding expression.

“Now I know why you said it wasn’t a good time.” He smiles, sniffing the air around Ashton knowingly. At this distance, it shouldn’t be hard for him to pick up the scent of a woman on him.

“Why the urgency? I thought you and Bear were dealing with it. Expected you guys to be half way to Colorado by now.” Ashton folds his arms, looking askance at his second-in-command.

“We’ve dealt with it. No one is going to find it, and we didn’t need to cross the state line.” Gus looks pleased with himself.

“Alright. But are you sure that there’s no chance of Bobby’s body turning up anywhere? We can’t afford that kind of risk, especially not now with Shale hanging around the canyon.” Ashton finds his mouth twisting around the word of the corporation that seems hell bent on destroying whatever lies between it and its pot of gold.

“It’s done, chief. No one’s going to find Bobby, not ever. He’s gone.” Gus sounds confident, and he’s never let Ashton down. He has no reason to think that he will now.

“Good work, G. Let’s talk in the morning.” Ashton turns to go, but Gus moves quickly, taking hold of his arm to stop him. Ashton’s eyes flash bright. “Do we have a problem?” He looks pointedly at the hand that is holding onto his arm.

“You know that
she’s
one of them. Or have you forgotten?” Gus has a wild look in his eyes, and Ashton wonders if Bear has been a little too free and easy with his stash of moonshine. Alcohol has a more rapid effect on them because their metabolism is so fast, meaning they get drunk a whole lot quicker, but it also doesn’t take long for them to sober up.

“I haven’t forgotten.” Ashton’s voice is cold, and his blue eyes look like they could freeze fire.

“You have her scent all over you.” Gus sniffs at the air in disgust.

Ashton could easily break free of Gus’s grasp but that isn’t the point. He’s the alpha and the pack should respect him at all times. It looks like whatever Gus has had to drink has turned that part of the pack law a little fuzzy.

“Are you questioning me?” Ashton uses his alpha voice, the one that means he doesn’t even need to open his mouth. His words resonate in Gus’s mind like an echo. “Have you forgotten your place?”

“No, Pack Master.” Gus hurriedly releases his leader and steps away, looking down at the ground and then kneeling. “I worry for the pack. That is all.”

Ashton can feel the anger inside of him start to fizzle away, like the dying embers of a fire. “Gus, get up.” He walks over to his friend and pulls him up. “The pack is my number one concern. I will always protect our people. It is what I have sworn to do. Nothing has changed.” He lays a hand on Gus’s shoulder. As he does, he sees his pupils go back to their normal size, signaling that the alcohol has left his system. That combined with the shock on Gus’s face at what he’s just done tells him that their argument is done.

“Forgive me, Ash. I should never have questioned your leadership.” Gus looks like he’s about to get down on his knees again, but Ashton keeps him standing.

“Gus, you are a good man and a good friend. I know that you meant no disrespect.” He pats his second-in-command lightly on the back. “Change is coming. I can feel it in the wind. I’ve sensed it.” Ashton says the words out loud that he has been keeping to himself for months.

“The dreams?” Gus knows how Ash’s abilities work.

“They started a few weeks ago.” Ash admits, rubbing his hands through his hair. He suddenly feels exhausted, as if all the sleepless nights have caught up with him.

“How bad?” Gus has never been a man of many words, but he knows the right ones to use.

“Bad,” Ash’s reply is bland. “There’s an image that keeps recurring. As soon as Shale rolled into town, I knew that whatever the dream is trying to tell me, it’s about them.”

“What did you see?” Gus leans against a tree, stretching out his tired muscles.

“Rivers of oil. Rivers of oil and blood.” Ashton looks grimly at his friend.

“What about the girl? Does she remember anything?” Gus asks the question he’s been wanting to ask since he arrived.

“She saw Bobby. I had to tell her something. But she doesn’t know about us. She’s smart though. It’s not going to be long before she starts asking more questions.” He rubs his temples, trying not to focus on how he’s going to answer them.

“And when she does, what are you going to tell her?” Gus looks at him with concern, but this time not for the pack, for his friend. “You like her...a lot.” It’s not a question but a statement of fact.

Ashton doesn’t try to deny it. “She’s...I don’t know. There’s something about her that just...” Ash sighs deeply, frustrated at how he can’t articulate anything about how he’s feeling. “Yeah, I like her...a lot.” He smiles ruefully at Gus.

“Do you trust her?” Gus doesn’t beat around the bush; he goes straight for the jugular.

“I don’t know yet,” Ashton replies truthfully, wishing that he had another response because he knows what comes next. “Which means that I can’t tell her anything. I won’t risk the safety of the pack.” Ashton looks up at the stars and wonders, not for the first time, why he had been born an alpha.

There was an alpha born to every generation. It had been that way since the beginning. From the moment he took his first breath, his fate was sealed. He was trained by his father, the Pack Master, and taught that his foremost concern, above everything else, was the pack and its safety. They were his responsibility. Everything else came second, even his personal wants and desires. That’s what it meant to be an alpha.

Gus looks at him with a compassion that doesn’t quite seem to fit his hard features. They don’t have to share a mental link for him to tell that his friend is in deep. “You care about her, don’t you?”

Ashton smiles at Gus’s typically understated way of putting things. “Yeah, I do. She’s different, different from anyone I’ve ever met.” He rubs his temples, wishing that things could be simpler, wishing that—for just once—his life could come before the pack. But he knows that is a pointless wish.

“‘Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.’” Gus recites the words from memory and looks pointedly at Ashton.

“Ain’t that the truth. Seems like Shakespeare knew a thing or two.” Ash smiles, but it doesn’t reach his eyes. There’s nothing more to think about. He knows what he has to do and isn’t left with another choice.

He doesn’t run back to the house, instead he walks, slowly. He needs the time to process what’s going on in his mind. He thinks about sleeping with her, earlier that night. He had claimed her while he was still inside of her. If she had been like him, then that would mean they had mated for life. But she wasn’t like him and therein lay the problem. No one outside of the pack knows about them, and it has to remain that way, especially when they were entering such a difficult time, a time of change, a time of danger.

As he approaches the house, he sees there’s a light on, and he half-expects to be faced with a barrage of questions from Sofie over where he’s been. She definitely keeps him on his toes. He isn’t used to having to answer to anyone and is always the one in charge. However, Sofie has changed that. She seems to have turned his world upside down in no time at all.

He walks into the house prepared to tell whatever lie he has to, but instead he finds Sofie asleep on the couch. She looks so beautiful, lying there so peacefully. But that’s not what makes him stop dead in his tracks. In her hands is their book,
The Origin
. It was passed from alpha to alpha. His father had given it to him as he had been given it by his father before him. This was how it went all the way back to the son of the first, the son of Lupo. He had written down their rules, written their story so that they would never forget their purpose.

Ashton sits down next to Sofie’s prone body, shifting her so that he can hold her as she sleeps. She makes adorable moaning sounds as she wriggles to get comfortable again, and then she falls silent. Ashton strokes her silky chestnut hair and feels the heat of her body against his, trying to commit it all to memory. He breathes in her scent, the smell that drives him crazy and makes him want to make love to her, protect her, argue with her, laugh with her all at the same time. He doesn’t try to sleep. He knows that the darkness is going to be gone soon, and in the morning, everything will be different. In the meantime, he holds her close to him, wishing that the night would last forever so that he never had to let her go.

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As the light of morning floods into the house, Sofie stretches out, her eyes blinking open. She looks around her, expecting to see Ashton, but she is alone. She could have sworn that she felt his arms around her as she slept. But perhaps it had just been a dream, something that wasn’t real. That was becoming a recurring theme in recent days.

The house is silent, eerily so, and Sofie begins to wonder if Ashton had returned from wherever he ran off to during the night. She scans the room for signs of him, and her eyes settle on a familiar book on the shelf in front of her. It’s unmistakably the same book that she fell asleep reading the night before, the fairy tale about the first werewolf. Seeing it sitting there on the shelf confirms her suspicions. Ashton had come back; he just hadn’t come back to her. She begins to feel like a house guest who has overstayed their welcome and hurriedly pulls on her mud-stained clothes that she finds strewn around the floor. She follows the smell of coffee into the kitchen and starts opening cupboard doors, trying to figure out where he would keep the mugs.

“They’re just above the pot.” Ashton’s voice and sudden arrival makes her whirl around, jumping like she’s just seen a ghost.

“Jesus H Christ! Sneak up much?” she teases when she’s recovered her breath.

However, Ashton doesn’t smile in response. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you.” His blue eyes are cold, distant even.

“Is something the matter?” Sofie looks at the man that she went to bed with last night, but it’s as if it were a different person standing in front of her. He’s as gorgeous as ever, his hair perfectly disheveled and his clothes clinging to him in all the right places. However, something is different. Something has changed.

“No, nothing at all.” Ashton reaches the mug for her and pours out her coffee. “Cream?”

“What?” She looks at him as if he’s speaking a foreign language.

“Cream in your coffee?” He hands the mug to her, as she shakes her head wordlessly. Their fingertips touch as she reaches out to take the drink. Instantly, she feels the fizz of the connection that draws her towards him, the magnetic pull that cannot be denied.

However, instead of coming towards her and taking her in his arms, kissing her, Ashton pulls his hand away, as if he’d been burned. She sees darkness pass over his eyes like a cloud on a sunny day, but it’s gone as quickly as it had appeared.

“When you’re done, I’ll take you back to the motel. I’m guessing you guys will want an early start now that the weather has cleared.” It’s the longest sentence he’s said, and it tells her all the wrong things. Without waiting for a response, he walks back outside, the screen door slamming behind him.

Sofie leans against the counter, sipping the scalding coffee and not even really registering that it’s burning her tongue.
How is it possible that after the night we spent together that he can behave like this? It’s as if he doesn’t care about me at all, like the things he’d said to me weren’t true. He’s treating me like a groupie who doesn’t understand that the party is over. I can’t believe that last night wasn’t as special for him as it was for me. There’s something else in play here, something that he’s not telling me.
However, Sofie has never been one to just go with the flow and accept her lot. So, she decides to do what she does best, ask questions and find the answers. She slams the coffee mug down onto counter, spilling dark liquid onto the worktop and storms out of the door.

She finds Ashton sitting on the steps of the deck, whittling a piece of wood to within an inch of its life. He barely even raises his head, as she plants herself in front of him.

“Why are you behaving like such an asshole?” Her hands are on her hips, and her dark eyes are flaming with anger. She realizes it probably wasn’t the best way to start the conversation, but she was pissed, seriously pissed.

Ashton doesn’t take his eyes off the wood and the knife in his hand. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” His tone is even, and his calmness only serves to infuriate her even more.

“Are you kidding me right now?” She throws her hands up in the air. “Last night was...”

“Great, it was great.” Ashton finishes her sentence for her, but the word he’s chosen isn’t anything close to what she had experienced in bed with him.

“Right,” she agrees doubtfully. “So why are you acting like this now? Like you couldn’t give a crap?” She tries to keep the hurt out of her voice, but it’s harder than she thought. She can feel her heart beating like it’s trying to escape from her body. She doesn’t remember the last time she felt so vulnerable, probably when she found out about her parent’s accident and all the problems they’d left her with. But she can’t think about that now—if she does it’ll push her over the edge.

Ashton’s shoulders move with the force of his sigh and, finally, he looks up at her, his blue eyes cold. “Sofie, we’re both grown-ups. I figured, being a big city girl and all that you didn’t expect a proposal of marriage every time you slept with a guy.” He tries to smile, but it turns into something closer to a grimace.

Sofie feels the tears prick at the back of her eyes, threatening to make their way down her face at any moment. His words are worse than a slap. They’re like a hand around her throat that clenches harder and harder, making it difficult to breathe.

“You’re telling me that last night was what? Just a bit of fun?” She strangles out the last word, struggling to keep it together.

“Didn’t you have fun? Is that such a bad thing?” Ashton’s eyes go back to his whittling, looking for all the world like this is a conversation he’s used to having with his admirers every Saturday morning.

Sofie swallows hard, forcing the tears back behind her eyes.
I’ve already been way too vulnerable in front of this guy. He doesn’t deserve my tears, not even one. How had I gotten it so wrong? Am I really that gullible or is he just a really good liar?
Her head is too full of questions with no answers, and all she wants is to get out of there as quickly as she can; but, first of all, she has to have the most embarrassing of all embarrassing conversations.

“Last night...we didn’t use protection.” She can’t look at him as she says the words, but she wants to slap herself for being so careless. She didn’t have sex with random men that she had just met, and she most certainly didn’t have sex without a condom.

“No, we didn’t.” Ashton keeps his gaze fixed on the floor. “Do I need to be worried about you finding your way back here in 9 months?”

Sofie can barely breathe she’s so frustrated at his words
. How can someone that only a few hours before acted like I was the moon and the stars, suddenly treat me with such disdain? But this is the cold light of day, and there is no moon and there are no stars.

“No, you don’t have to worry about that. I’m covered on that front. But do I need to be worried?” She crosses her arms in front of her chest, wishing that she didn’t have to have this conversation, but knowing there is no way around it.

“If you’re asking me if I’m clean the answer is yes. I wouldn’t have slept with you—not like that—if I wasn’t. Jesus, what are the men like that you usually have sex with?”

Sofie presses her eyes shut, cringing inwardly. “Well, I don’t usually have sex with people I don’t know. I appreciate it takes a little of the mystery out of the will I or won’t I contract venereal disease, but hey, that’s just me!” She knows that she’s babbling, but she can’t seem to stop. She needs to get out of there, fast, before she makes any more of an idiot out of herself than she already has. “I’ll call a cab. I don’t want to waste any more of your time.” The words are acid in her mouth. As she tries to go back into the house, his hand on her arm stops her. She wants nothing more than to let him take her in his arms, but she shakes him off. She wants the man that she was with last night, not the one that she’s woken up to this morning. “Don’t touch me,” she says in a low, level voice, and Ashton lets her go immediately.

“I’ll take you.” His eyes soften. For a split second, Sofie wonders if he really is as good a liar as he’s pretending to be.

“I’d rather make my own way.” Sofie knows that there’s no way she can handle being trapped in a car with this man, not with all the emotions flying around her body. At least in a cab, she could curl up on the back seat and let the tears come, holding them in was starting to hurt her chest.

“Do you have to argue with everything I say? I’ll get my keys.” He looks at her, as if he thinks she might run away while he’s inside the house, but she’s had enough adventures in the woods to know that plan would be the worst possible idea.

She takes a few deep breaths, looking up at the bright blue sky. There’s not one cloud in sight. The air is warm and has that fresh smell you only get outside of the city. It was a perfect morning, except for the fact that Sofie felt like her heart had been torn in two.

She gets into the truck, slamming the door hard, angry with herself for being so stupid. She wasn’t a teenager. She knew that you didn’t fall in love with someone in a couple of days. Whatever she was feeling, it wasn’t love, and it wasn’t heartbreak. It was just disappointment, disappointment that she had been so wrong about someone that had seemed so right. That’s what she keeps repeating to herself.

As they drive in silence, Sofie keeps her gaze fixed out of the window, watching as the tears start to blur her vision. All she wants is to get out of that car and never see Ashton again, that would be a good start to making herself feel better. She doesn’t want to speak to him, to see him, even to hear his name.

But Ashton has other ideas. “About last night...in the woods...”

Sofie feels him cast a sidelong glance at her, but she keeps facing away from him. “Don’t worry. I’ll keep you and your little group of vigilantes’ a secret. I won’t turn you in.” She can’t even bring herself to care about what she had witnessed the night before; it pales in significance to what she was feeling now.

“Thank you.” Ashton’s voice is gentle, and it seems like he wants to say something more. Sofie feels her whole body tense, as she waits to hear what’s coming next, willing him to say something that will explain or even erase the way he’s been acting all morning. But nothing comes.

The drive to the motel seems to take hours, but it can only have been about twenty minutes.
There’s nothing so excruciatingly awkward as sitting in a car with someone you’ve slept with and not exchanging a word
, she thinks. As Ashton pulls into the parking lot, she mumbles her thanks and goes to jump out of the truck.

“This isn’t how I wanted things to be.” Ashton’s admission stops her in her tracks. The gentleness has returned to his voice, and it sparks a small fire of hope in her.

“Then, why are you doing this?” She looks at him, her eyes sparkling with tears, and she tries to read in his face whatever it is that he’s trying so hard not to say.

He shakes his head, like it’s not a question he can answer, raking his fingers through his dark blonde hair, still wet from his shower this morning. “I’d really like us to still be friends.”

Sofie’s mouth hangs open as he says the words that every woman dreads hearing after having sex with someone. “Just a tip,” she replies sarcastically, “don’t sleep with women that you just want to be friends with.” She hops out of the car, slamming the door hard.

“Sofie!” The voice makes her freeze.
It can’t be
, she thinks,
not now
. Her gaze scans the lot and sees the stretched limo with the windows blacked out and there it is, the license plate she was hoping not to see. SHALE 4. As if this day couldn’t get any worse, Luke Calambor steps out of the car. “Sofie, good to see you.” He walks towards her holding her at arm’s length and running his eyes over her. She has to rein in her temptation to pull away from him.

“Mr. Calambor!” Sofie tries to sound bright. “We hadn’t realized you would be coming to the site so soon. What a great surprise!” She hates herself for putting on this show for him, but she knows that it’s safer to have him in a good mood than a bad. She’s seen him lose his temper, and she’s resolved not to be on the receiving end of that particular treat again.

“Well, after Dr. Grey told me about those samples you sent her, I couldn’t stay away. That’s what I’ve always loved about Jennie—she’s such a reliable employee.” Luke smiles at her in a way that brings to mind a snake.

“Jennie came to you about the samples?” Sofie tries not to sound so surprised, but that didn’t sound like the person that she knows, the person who she had trusted.

“Of course. That’s protocol.” Luke looks at her, as if challenging her, but Sofie remains silent, not wanting to give anything else away. “I didn’t want to waste any time. The PR girls think we need to start drumming up support for the drilling ASAP.” Luke sounds so excited and, almost unconsciously he starts running his hands up and down Sofie’s bare arms, making her skin crawl. Luke was a handsome man, he had that preppy, moneyed presence about him, but his greed and his sense of entitlement was enough to counter-balance his looks as far as Sofie was concerned, not to mention the fact that he’s married. Something over her shoulder catches his attention, and his hands stop their stroking, his expression hardening. “Who’s your friend?”

Sofie follows his eyes to Ashton’s truck, which is still stopped only a few feet away from them. He’s gripping the steering wheel like if he lets go he might fall off, and he’s staring at Luke with an intensity that would make most men take a step back. But Luke seems to be enjoying having an audience, he smiles at Sofie, going back to stroking her arm.