At First Sight: A Timber Wolves Companion (4 page)

I normally wouldn’t put much faith in anything a scorned wannabe girlfriend says about a guy, but as we closed the distance between us, I thought Ashley’s assessment of Jase’s character might have been pretty accurate. He had a girl pressed up against a car, his tongue more than halfway down her throat while his hands massaged her flat butt. I’m all for getting up close and personal with someone you’re into, but not in a parking lot filled with curious on-lookers.

Either he was too distracted by hormones or his sense of smell was really weak because we were only a few cars away before he tensed and stopped trying to eat off the poor girl’s face. At least he didn’t have to look around to find me. His eyes instantly narrowed in our direction, moving quickly from me to his sister and back again.

“What are you doing here?” he growled.

Awwww… Look. The little coyote thinks he’s a big, bad wolf.

No, I couldn’t think that way if this was going to work. Jase wasn’t just another less dominant Shifter. He was Scout’s brother.

“Well, I was walking to my car,” I said, purposefully misinterpreting his meaning. I hoped to have a normal, human conversation, especially since the entire school seemed to be milling idly around our section of the parking lot, but he wasn’t having it.

“I meant here at this school, in this town.”

Like every other question I couldn’t fully answer, I gave him as much truth as I could. “We thought it would be a nice place to settle down.” It had lots of woods to run in and was just far enough away from the Pack to have some privacy. Or so we thought. Of course, we also thought this would be just another recruiting stop. I looked at Scout and something in my chest swelled to the point I thought I might choke on it. “I had no idea it would be this nice,” I said, somewhat embarrassed to hear all those swelling emotions evident in my voice.

I didn’t really have time to dwell on it, though, since Jase took some sort offense to my affections. His fist snapped back. I was trying to decide if it would be better to take the punch or block it, but before I could come to a conclusion, Scout moved. She moved fast - faster than a human had any right to be - and ended up between Jase and me. I just barely had time to move her before his fist slammed into her face. As it was, the jab hit her on the shoulder, knocking her off balance. She was down on the ground before I had time to catch her.

I am not my brother. Liam is so dominant his wolf constantly resides close to the surface. It takes effort for him to react like a normal human. Not me. I’m more human than wolf, and even when the wildness wakes, I can usually override it without much thought. But when I saw Scout on the ground and knew it was Jase who put her there, I couldn’t hold back my reaction anymore than you could stop the wind from blowing. My fist swung around with full force and hit its target - Jase’s nose - with absolute precision.

Two guys grabbed my arms and pinned them behind my back, and because I had already done what I needed to, I let them.

Jase’s voice was filled with venom as he told me to stay away from Scout, but I only listened long enough to realize he cared more about controlling her life than her. Who the hell punched their sister and then left them on the ground?

“Scout, are you okay?”

“I’m fine.” But she wasn’t. I could smell her blood, and it was driving me crazy. I didn’t like the idea of her hurt, even if it was just a sore shoulder and some scratches.

“Don’t talk to her!” Jase the Idiot bellowed, and I had to fight my instinct, which was to throw off his friends and break a few more bones in his face. The asshole didn’t even help her up.

“Go home, Alex,” she said, pulling herself off the ground.

“Scout--”

“Please, just go home,” she said, cutting me off. “You’ve done enough already.”

She was wrong. I hadn’t done nearly enough, but I would. Scout was my destiny, and no one, not even her brother, would come between us.

Talley

“Stupid, clumsy cow.”

I quickly righted myself and let go of Ashley Johnson’s arm. “Sorry,” I muttered, my face flaming from both the insult and the guilt over accidentally hearing her thoughts. “There was a backpack--”

“No problem.” A fake smile twisted her lips. “Hey,” she said, “are you and Scout taking that Shakespeare class?”

“Yeah, I’m heading there now.”

Ashley showed all of her cosmetically bleached teeth. “Great! Me too! I’ve just got to run to my locker first. Save me a seat?”

“Sure.” And the sad thing was, I would, even knowing it was just an attempt to make me look stupid. It became one of her favorite “tricks” right after she and Scout became mortal enemies. She would go on and on about how she wanted the two of us to still be friends and ask me to meet her after school or save her a seat at lunch. Then, when the time came, she would ignore me, laughing with her new popular friends about what a pathetic loser I was.

Maybe she was right. Maybe I am a pathetic loser, but I still had faith in Ashley. So okay, she turned into a classic mean girl character last summer, even going so far as seducing Scout’s boyfriend while at a party
at Scout’s house
, but I understood why she was that way. If my mom had a string of affairs and was known throughout the county as the Gold Digger and my dad had married my babysitter, I would probably go a little crazy too. No matter how she acted now, she was still the Ashley who stayed at my house for a week in middle school because both of her parents had gone out of town, each thinking the other was taking her along for the trip. Every time she sneered in my direction all I saw were her tear-stained eyes when she asked me why her parents didn’t love her like they were supposed to.

So, I walked into the theater knowing I would save her a seat. I wouldn’t be obvious about it, and I certainly wouldn’t wave her over the moment she came through the door, but if she wanted to sit by me, there would be an empty spot waiting.

I went all the way up to the front row, knowing no one else would venture up so close. My positioning served a dual purpose. For one, I would be sure to have a seat open next to me in case Ashley needed it. Secondly, and more importantly, with no one else sitting nearby, I wouldn’t accidentally bump into them and hear what was going on in their head. We weren’t even halfway through the day, and I already felt like my brain was going to melt inside my skull from all the new and unwanted information I had bouncing around in there. Unlike most Seers, my Sight hadn’t come on slowly as a tweenager, growing in strength throughout my teen years. No, I was completely latent and considered a failure by my parents until this summer. And when my Sight came, it didn’t creep upon me, giving me time to adjust. Instead, I got slammed over the head with the ability to pull thoughts and emotions off of anyone with the smallest of touches.

For the first week, I wouldn’t venture out of my bedroom. My brain was on overload. I actually thought I would have to become one of those hermit people who never leave their houses for fear of the outside world. I had already talked my mom into homeschooling when Jase intervened. He showed up at my house one afternoon, demanding I see him like he was the Pack Leader or something.

“You’re coming to school,” he said the moment he walked into my living room. No “hi”. No “how are you doing, Tal?”. Just a command he had no right to make.

“I can’t,” I said. “You know I started Seeing while you were at basketball camp.”

“Yeah? So?”

“I’m a Soul Seer, Jase. And it’s strong.” So strong I thought I might break under the weight of it. “I can’t brush up against someone without pulling things out of their head. Things I shouldn’t know. Things I don’t want to know. It’s too much. I can’t do it.”

He stood there studying me for a long minute. I hadn’t seen him since the beginning of the summer, and he had grown an inch or two taller and put on more muscle. My mom had gone on for ages about how I magically transformed from a little girl to a young woman overnight, but I never paid much attention to her. I still looked the same as I had in second grade, just bigger. But with Jase, I saw it. He left at the beginning of the summer the same boy I made mud pies with in the back yard and returned someone else. Someone bigger, stronger, and more mature.

Well, maybe not so much more mature as more stubborn.

“Stop being a wimp.”

“Jase!”

He walked over to where I was sprawled across the couch and towered over me, his well-defined arms crossed over his chest in a mimic of Toby’s I-am-Pack-Leader-and-you-will-listen-to-me stance. “What am I thinking right now?”

That you can bully pitiful Talley into doing whatever you want?

“I don’t know. I’m not touching you.”

He took a step closer so that his leg was almost, but not quite, touching mine.

“And now?”

I looked at the fraction of an inch that separated us. “You’re still not touching me.”

“Exactly.” I could tell from the smirk on his lips that he thought he just won the debate. Problem was, I didn’t have a clue what his argument was.

“Sorry, Jase, but I’m not following.”

“Here. Let me help,” he said in a tone I knew was supposed to mock the way I always insisted on helping when he was ready to give up on a homework assignment. “Do you know where I’ve been today?” he asked, dumping himself into my mom’s sewing chair.

“Not really…”

“Everywhere.”

Well, that narrowed it down. “That’s an awful lot of place to be.”

“I’ve been to Wal-Mart, Piggly Wiggly, and The Strip. Saw thousands of people--”

“In Timber?”

“Okay,
hundreds
of people. And do you know how many I touched?”

“Jase--”

“None. Not a single person.”

Ah, so this was his argument. I let out a sigh without meaning to. “It’s not the same--”

“Of course it’s the same.” He leaned forward, his elbows on his knees. His intense green eyes were focused on mine. “You don’t have to touch anyone. You’ll be careful, pay attention to what you’re doing, and avoid as much contact as possible. And when you can’t, you’ll just deal with it.”

“Jase--”

“You’re stronger than this, Talley. You’re not a coward who hides in her house and is afraid of her Sight.”

I didn’t agree. I am a coward and am in no way strong, but somehow I found myself consenting to give it a try. My first few trips out of the house had given me enough hope to actually show up this morning, but school was more of a challenge than a visit to the mall. There was no way to maneuver the halls of Lake County High without jarring against dozens of other people. I had a moment of panic during first period when I seriously considered calling Mom and asking her to pull me out, but then I remembered Jase’s face when he told me I was capable of dealing with this. He believed it, and I wanted to believe it too. So, I stayed.

And I was going to power through this day, this week,
this year
. I could do it. I just had to be strong.

I was snapped out of my self-motivational pep talk by a familiar figure dropping into the seat next to me. My best friend looked like she was ready to forcefully remove someone’s head from their shoulders, which wasn’t new and different, especially at school.

“How is your last first day of high school going?” I asked, giving her an opportunity to get the rant she was storing inside off her chest. I didn’t have to be a Seer of any sort to know she would take me up on it.

“It has sucked, big time. Jase totally hogged the bathroom all morning. Then, he insisted on picking up Nikki Anderson, who made us wait fifteen minutes in the car while she painted on her perfect face. And, of course, Jase then made me ride in the back seat of
our
car so that he could stare at her unnaturally perky boobs as he drove us to school.” The mention of Nikki Anderson’s unnaturally perky breasts made my stomach drop. I try not to be jealous of all the skinny, pretty girls that populate our school, but some days it’s harder than others. “Ashley Johnson is in my AP English class, and Mr. Beck is a complete tool who refuses to call me Scout. And, remember that guy I told you about from The Strip? Mr. Tall, Dark and Insane? His brother is the new guy.”

My stomach dropped another few inches, or maybe even an entire foot. Scout’s Mr. Tall, Dark and Insane was a Shifter, one who wasn’t supposed to be on Hagan Pack Territory without permission from Toby, which he didn’t have. In a moment of complete insanity, Jase had confronted him. Toby hadn’t followed up because he thought the guy was just passing through and giving Jase a hard time, but if he had a brother going to our school…

“There’s a new guy? What’s his name?”

While I may have just come into my Sight, I’ve been in a family of Seers and a member of two different Packs my whole life. I knew the name of most of the Shifter families in the United States, and all of the ones who lived in the states surrounding Kentucky. Maybe he was someone the Pack knew and had given passage to without bothering to inform me. If not, and he was banished, well then I would probably recognize that name, too.

“His last name is Cole.” The Cole Pack? I’d never heard of them. “I don’t remember what his first name is though. Some really generic “A” name. Alan? Andrew?”

I could feel him behind us before he spoke. “Alex,” he said. “Should I call you Scout or Miss Donovan?”

I turned around to face the new, unwelcome Shifter. With the way his Dominance was making chills run up and down my spine, I expected a large, serious man with a chip on his shoulder the size of Nebraska. What I got was a guy with dimples.

A guy with dimples who was looking at Scout like she hung the moon.

Scout’s body, covered in blood. Arms cradling her against his chest.

The flash of memory caused bile to sting the back of my throat.

It’s nothing,
I reminded myself.
Just a crazy hallucination. You don’t See the future.

It sounded good in theory, but considering the similarities to the guy in the not-really vision I had over the summer and the new Shifter in town, I had a little trouble believing myself. Panic was a living thing inside of me, clawing at my heart and using my stomach as a trampoline.

You don’t See the future. You’re a Soul Seer.

A Soul Seer! That was it! There was a simple way to wipe away all this doubt and fear.

“I’m Talley,” I said, holding my hand out. Alex’s smile didn’t falter as he took it, or when my fingers spasmed in response to the amount of Dominance I could feel through our connection.

A flood of images bombarded my brain.

She’s a Seer,
I heard in my head just as Alex said aloud, “Nice to meet you, Talley. Cool name. Very non-generic.”

“Thanks,” I said, still trying to filter through all the information he was throwing out at me. The magnitude of it was about to drive me to my knees. “My mom went into labor with me at O’Talley’s restaurant. It was the only thing her post-childbirth, drug addled mind could come up with when they asked her for a name.” The story wasn’t true, my mother was nowhere near O’Talley’s when she went into labor with me, but it gave Alex the information he needed on who I was. O’Talley’s was the place where my father always met with any Shifter who wasn’t part of the Matthews Pack.

If that information meant anything to Alex, he didn’t show it. His attention immediately went back to Scout, whose scowl would have been more impressive if you could ignore the way her eyes were practically sparkling as she looked at him.

While the two of them bantered about, I concentrated on making sense of what I pulled from Alex’s brain. I hadn’t purposefully tried to take thoughts from someone since my first experiment with my mom and Toby once my Sight manifested. I hadn’t been prepared for the chaotic flood I got for my efforts. I couldn’t discern any one thought or image, but I could pick up on some emotions. Adoration. Hope. Joy. Love. And all of them were aimed at Scout.

Well, that was an interesting turn of events.

I glanced over to see Scout once again facing the stage. Or, more accurately, she wanted everyone to think she was facing the stage when in truth she couldn’t stop casting furtive glances over her shoulder at Alex, who was now roped into a conversation with Ashley Johnson. Although, from where I was sitting, he was sneaking more peeks at Scout than she was at him.

Scout and Alex sitting in a tree. K-i-s-s-i-n-g…

I coughed into my hand to hide the giggle bubbling up from my throat.

This was great! Perfect, really. Scout needed this so bad. After the whole Ashley-and-Dalton-hooking-up-in-Scout’s-bed debacle, she had been very gun-shy about dating. Actually, gun-shy might be too tame a word. She was phobic. She wouldn’t even talk about boys and dating. Every time I tried to mention a guy I thought would be good for her, she would roll her eyes and then proceed to listen to some really loud, angry music for a few days.

But she wasn’t rolling her eyes at Alex. And I could almost hear the sappy love songs playing on her iPod.

I looked over my shoulder to get a better look at him, since checking out the guy your best friend is falling in love with is the obligation of BFFs everywhere. He was cute. More than cute, really. His eyes were the color of a sky before it storms. His hair was a nice, rich brown and had that artfully messy look guys pretend they don’t use a ton of product and time to acquire. Even just sitting there, listening to Ms. Ryder’s enthusiastic description of the course, he had a hint of a dimple showing. He was tall, which was good since Scout isn’t exactly a petite girl, and his hands--

Covered in blood. Blood everywhere, but none of it was his. It all came from her stomach, which no longer had enough flesh to look like human skin.

Bile once again surged in the back of my throat. I dug a fist into my stomach to keep from getting sick all over the place and closed my eyes.

Scout. Blood. Someone who looked like Alex, but wasn’t.

Okay, closing my eyes was not a good idea.

I concentrated on Ms. Ryder’s red boots as they pranced all over the stage, hoping the bizarreness of seeing a teacher in red cowboy boots would keep my brain from snapping back to that horrid not-really vision. Thankfully, it worked. I spent the rest of the hour following those boots with my eyes and trying to decide what to do.