The Wolf's Surrender (9 page)

Chapter 8

M
ia rode shotgun in the pickup on the way to dinner, trying to study Jenner without looking like she was doing it. She was looking for some sign, some faint and barely detectable sign, that he realized he had a living, breathing human in the truck with him. Unfortunately, Jenner was inscrutable, driving with his eyes straight ahead, both hands on the wheel. He was as silent as a ghost.

He’d been that way all afternoon, and it was slowly driving Mia out of her mind.

He’d surprised her with the news that she’d be staying with him for the time being. Surprised and, truth be told, a little dismayed. She needed to be clear-headed about what was happening. Being around Jenner was not exactly conducive to that state of mind.

“Where are we going again?” she asked absently, more to break the oppressive and continuing silence than out of true curiosity. She didn’t really mind finding out when they got there, mainly because she was too hungry to be picky.

There was a barely intelligible grunt given as a response. At least he’d wanted to get out of the house, even though the decision had only been made after he’d stood in his nearly bare pantry for a good ten minutes trying to figure out an expedient way to feed her. Mia was glad that some things about single men seemed to be universal, and that the tendency to only have beer and junk food on hand was one of them. Hopefully, getting out in town would ease this unpleasant tightness in her chest.

Or at least, she could find more things to distract herself from it. With one more glance at Jenner’s stony profile, his eyes fixed on the road ahead of them, Mia sighed and turned her attention to another problem on what was shaping up to be a long list of them. Tomorrow, Sunday, she was going to have to start unraveling the threads of this mess, beginning with giving herself cover for staying here for at least the week. It didn’t seem like Jenner and his buddies would accept anything less, and she was still too short on knowledge about this werewolf thing to comfortably skip town. Unfortunately, it looked like her banked vacation days were going to take a serious hit.

The thought made her sick to her stomach, which gave her an idea.

“Stomach flu,” she muttered.

“What?” Jenner looked sharply at her.

She looked over at him, at the sudden concern stamped onto his bold, handsome features, with a sort of rueful amusement. Nothing like the mention of vomit-inducing germs to get a guy’s attention. Especially when the guy in question was taking you to dinner.

Those sparks her temper had been shooting off started to catch.

“Oh,” Mia said, careful to keep her tone impassive. “Are we speaking again? I was trying to figure out a plausible excuse for being out of work all this coming week. Because otherwise, I’m going to get fired.”

He turned his eyes back to the road, but not before she saw a hint of guilt in his expression. It wasn’t nearly as satisfying as she’d hoped. But at least her comment had broken through Jenner’s silent brooding. She wished she wanted to do more than snarl at him now that it had, but an afternoon of being made to feel like a perpetrator instead of a victim had taken its toll. And to make matters worse, Jenner didn’t appear to understand her frustration.

“We did talk about the job thing, Mia,” he said without looking at her, sounding as though he was lecturing a difficult child. “You’re not going to want to stay alone in the city after...all of this. And what do you mean, are we speaking again? I didn’t think we’d stopped.”

Mia slowly tucked a lock of hair behind her ear, inhaling deeply. The anger reared its head before she could talk herself out of it, before she could silence it. The speed with which her mood went from irritable to furious would have shocked her, if she’d been able to do more than cruise on the dark fire that flooded her system at Jenner’s words. Everything she’d been put through since last night, the betrayal, the violence, and then the havoc Jenner’s very existence seemed to play with her emotions, coalesced into a singular fury and directed itself at the nearest available target.

She struggled to get out the words in something less than a shout.

“What I mean,” she said, her voice quavering only slightly with the effort, “is that ever since you kissed me earlier and then took off, you’ve barely said two words to me. Since I didn’t throw myself at you, and since I’m assuming you helped decide to keep me at your house until this mess is worked out, it would be great if you could stop treating me like I’ve got the
plague
.”

There was a moment of silence that stretched out painfully. Finally, Jenner managed one word.

“Oh.”

That single word burned right through her. Especially because Jenner didn’t seem inclined to immediately add to it. It wasn’t like her to let her emotions get the better of her. But there was something more, something unfamiliar fanning her feelings like a prairie fire in a high wind.

“Oh?” Mia snapped. “That’s it? You kiss me senseless, take off, pretend it never happened, and when I call you on it all you can say is
oh?
”

Jenner slid a sidelong glance at her, a slight frown marring his brow.

“I’m trying to figure out what to say about it that isn’t going to make me sound like an ass. I didn’t realize it had pissed you off so badly.”

“You didn’t realize...”

Mia repeated those words in astonishment, trying to calm herself down a little. But...he hadn’t known? Did he think she just wouldn’t
care?
Her skin tingled, her pulse quickened. And still, the emotional tsunami inside her continued to build. All she could do was ride the building wave.

The world suddenly seemed too bright, every tiny detail standing out in sharp relief. Sensory input, far too much of it, crashed into her system. All she had to cling to was the anger. When she finally managed to reply to him, her teeth felt strange in her mouth. Sharp.

Somehow, she still had the strength to suppress the urge to bite. Barely.

“You don’t know what to say about it? How about either, Mia, I’m interested in you and would like to do that again sometime, or Mia, it was a big mistake and we should probably forget about it. There. Two ready-made options. Pick one. Just stop ignoring me as though I’ve done something
wrong!
”

Her voice had thickened and changed somehow, her words coming out in a roughened, growly version of her normal voice. Jenner gave her another look, and Mia noted that a lot of the color seemed to have left Jenner’s face.

“Mia, you’re going to want to take a few deep breaths. It’s okay.”

Now she did bare her teeth at him. “No! It’s not okay! Don’t you think I have enough to deal with without you playing with me? The kiss, the theatrics with Kenyon, pretending to be concerned...what, you figure you can string me along just enough so that I’ll let you take me to bed on behalf of the pack? I’m good enough for a quick screw, but too pathetic to get really interested in, right?”

Even as the words poured from her mouth, some still-sane part of her recoiled in horror from what she was saying, from the fact that she was giving voice to her deepest insecurities and darkest suspicions even though she knew they were probably unfounded and almost certainly unfair to both of them. But she felt like she was catching fire inside and out. All she had was fear and fury, and Mia was helpless in the face of them.

Through a reddish haze, she could see that Jenner looked appalled. “Mia, calm down, seriously, you’re going to—”

“Don’t tell me that!” Mia snarled. “I don’t even know you!” The heat beneath her skin had spread all over her body and was becoming unbearable. There was a terrible itching. Her canines lengthened to become dagger sharp, and she had a wild urge to snap at Jenner. She growled, straining against the seatbelt. Rational thought vanished, and for just an instant she forgot there was such a creature as Mia.

There was only beast.

Her head fell back as she fought back to some semblance of human thought, but her grasp was slipping already. She wanted to run, to claw...to
howl
. Her heart galloped in her chest. Jenner’s scent filled her senses, and she could hear another thundering rhythm, catching up to and then matching her own. It was his heart, Mia thought, stunned in the small part of her mind that hadn’t been consumed by this inner storm. She could hear his heart...how was that possible? The sound of it was a drumbeat in her head. And she wanted...she wanted...

Jenner’s voice was more urgent now, and full of concern she didn’t want to hear. The fury came from nowhere, was everywhere. How dare he be concerned about her? How
dare
he? If he cared, he would put his hands on her...take her...join with her...

Or you could just drink his blood,
suggested a new, sinister voice that whispered through her mind.
Open his throat, open all their throats, turn the forest red with wolf blood and open the doors to me, to us, open them wide...

“Mia—”

A sharp bolt of pain sliced right through the center of her, blinding white in its intensity. Mia threw her head back, her cry that of a wounded animal. She arched sharply in the seat, stiffening as though she had an electric current running through her body. Finally, the rational part of her mind managed to get a word in, strained though it was. For a moment, fear had the upper hand, allowing her to speak.

“Help...it hurts...” she gasped.

“Damn it. Hang on.”

She barely registered it when he pulled the truck over to the side of the road, slammed the shifter into Park, and then ripped off his seatbelt. Another wave of pain crashed through her, and she only dimly felt Jenner drag her into his arms.

At the contact, so intimate as Jenner wrapped himself around her, the storm within her fell instantly silent. It was the strangest thing: one second, she’d been a human hurricane. The next, she had gone limp and shaking against Jenner, her body slicked with cold sweat. Wrung out and wanting nothing more than the comfort of the warm buzz their physical connection created within her, Mia clung to him. Unthinking, Mia nuzzled into Jenner, wanting nothing more than to get as close as she could. She was shivering uncontrollably, her heart fluttering like a panicked bird inside her chest.

“Shhh,” Jenner soothed her, and she felt his hand rubbing gentle circles into her back. “Just breathe, Mia. Just breathe.”

“Trying,” she gasped out. Her teeth began to chatter as heat became bone-chilling cold. Her head was still full of the sound of her own thundering heart. But beneath it, she could still hear the sound of Jenner’s, slowing, calming. Mia focused on it, willing her own heartbeat to match it. The response was quick, both a surprise and a relief, as its frightened and erratic rhythm slowed and steadied. Then there was only one sound, one soothing drumbeat, neither heart distinguishable from the other. For the moment, the strangeness of it was secondary to Mia’s relief at being able to speak and think like normal again.

Then, it was just her, curled into the lap of an utterly inappropriate man. But the memory of that sinister voice, not Jeff’s but someone or something
other
in her mind, kept her there even when she knew she should let him go.

“Wh-what was that? What happened to me?” she asked.

His voice rumbled against her ear through his chest.

“I’d say you were pretty pissed at me.”

She would have laughed, but she didn’t seem to have any laughter in her. “I’ve g-got a t-t-temper, Jenner,” she said, shaking. “But not like that. Tell me the truth. What just happened?”

The soothing circles he was making on her back continued, lulling Mia. His voice was contemplative, without a hint of the fear that had all but consumed her. That helped, even if his words didn’t.

“Getting angry tends to wake up a person’s wolf side,” he said. “I should have warned you. If you’re not expecting it, and don’t know how to control it, you can throw yourself into a shapeshift without meaning to. If nothing else, now you probably understand a little why it’s so important to have the support of your pack when all of that instinct and power wells up, trying to get out.”

Then she did hear concern creep into his voice, and it went a long way toward healing whatever residual bad feelings were left over from her raging at him.

“You damn near just turned into a wolf in my truck. And if you had, I wouldn’t have been able to reach you. No one would. If you change, with no pack, even if it’s before the full moon, it’ll break you. That’s it.”

“Oh, God.”

“It’s not going to happen. Now that you know what’s at stake, I know you won’t let it. It’s all right.”

She didn’t really feel like it was. Not at all. But Jenner’s faith in her, however unwarranted it might be, soothed her.

“I’m so sorry,” Mia said. “I really was upset, but that was kind of...beyond.”

“You’re telling me. I’ve never made a woman so angry she turned into a wild animal.”

Mia shivered and kept her head tucked against Jenner’s chest, more out of mortification now even though Jenner had sounded slightly amused. The waves of cold that wracked her body were ebbing, replaced by nothing but a liquid warmth that seemed to flow like water from Jenner into her. It felt wonderful, even if nothing else about the situation did.

“There’s a first time for everything,” she said, and was slightly mollified to hear the deep rumble of Jenner’s laughter. “It hurt,” she said more softly. That was something she hadn’t understood. Hadn’t counted on. His voice softened.

“Only the first time. Your body hasn’t done it before. After that, it’s much, much better. Gets to be as natural as breathing. Trust me.”

Her anger seemed to have burned up in whatever her now-treacherous body had just tried to do to her. The shadows of her hurt, however, remained.

“I’d like to trust you,” she said. “But you’re not exactly making it easy.”

He was quiet for a time, continuing to rub her back. She knew she should stop him, but couldn’t quite make herself. With her immediate terror gone, she could feel the life pulsing in his veins, could already begin to hear the singular song that was Jenner’s in her mind. She wanted to spread her hands against his bare skin, to let the dark song of her blood mingle with his, the way she’d always imagined she might be able to with a man. Even her grandmother’s most dire warnings had never stopped her from dreaming of it. The magic would bind them, body and soul...and he would know what she was. Or at least, he would know she was much more than a newly minted werewolf.