Predator Girl (A Paranormal Romance) (17 page)

The strict undertone in his voice said he asked for more than privacy. He was hinting at his neutral status, like he knew my wolves were butting heads with his former pack. How much had Jared told him?

“Right then.” Looking appeased, the old wolf stretched, hands resting on a twisted wood cane. “I am off to collect dinner. Should I bring back enough for three?”

Jared and I exchanged glances. In his eyes, I could see the unspoken words: it’s up to you. I bit my lip. Part of me wanted to go home.
Needed
to go home. Now. A loss like we experienced would send my wolves into an uproar; and with it being Rex’s fault, all hell would break loose.

Then there was part of me that wanted to stay. To betray a warlock’s hospitality would be pretty much shooting yourself in the tail. They remember those without manners as do faeries. I might never be allowed back here should I offend the old magic wolf. Plus, I was still so tired—weak and needing to sort out some things.

I smiled. “Dinner sounds great.”

“Wonderful. I shall be back.”

With that, Arasni leaned his cane up against the tree and sauntered into the woods, as if he didn’t need it.

I watched him until he was out of sight then turned back to Jared, who gave me this odd, feeble smile. He had a faraway look in his eyes, and I couldn’t help but wonder if he, like me, was thinking about the night we’d spent together. I had cuddled him like a child with her toy. It was kind of embarrassing. I’d been wrapped around him like a snake.

“Jared, you okay?” I asked, hoping he wouldn’t bring it up.

“Yup. I’m, uh . . . I’m just glad you’re all right.” He scratched his head, glancing over his shoulder, his forehead pink. “There’s a lake behind the orb tree. It’s not a five star shower, but it’s the closest thing you’ll probably get. ’Cause you’re a girl, so, I thought you might want one.”

Touching my greasy hair, I looked past Arasni’s home. A grove of baby birch trees covered the hillside, and through them I saw a glittering oasis. I must have looked like something the goblins dragged in. A swim in the lake sounded good. Plus, it would allow me time to myself. Time to think.

“All right. I’m going for a swim.” I narrowed an eye. “No following, you hear?”

He snorted, holding back a real smile. “Yeah. Okay.”

“I mean it.”

“I bet you do.”

I pointed two fingers at my eyes, then at him before starting away. He laughed, shaking his head. As I climbed over the roots of the globe tree, I restrained my own smile.
He has a cute laugh.
Really, Jared had that bubbly, almost kiddish laugh like my dad. It was adorable compared to Rex, whose laugh was deep and somewhat hyena-like.

Rex.
My smile dropped into a frown.

I hadn’t died. Brilliant news, except that I hadn’t prepared for the
after,
the should-I-survive part. I had a big blank spot in my mind where a strategy should be. I had given up, no longer worrying about the pack, because I wasn’t going to make it. My last thoughts hadn’t been of them.

They’d been of you-know-who. I’d given in to my human half, given in to my heart’s desire in that desperate, depressing moment; and now I couldn’t get the barriers back up. They were only halfway there, unstable. It was scary, the thought that Jared now had some power over me.

I sunk into the lake, scatterbrained. The clock was ticking, and my eighteenth birthday was now a whisper. The last twenty-four hours had me questioning my loyalty. Near-death experiences really do make you think. The direction of my life was about to land me with a mate I didn’t love, and while it had sounded like a bearable sacrifice before, it didn’t now. Not with Jared intervening.

I pondered what it would be like to change. What sounded better: a life among the pack, where true love would never exist but freedom always would, or a life among—I couldn’t believe I was saying this—humans, where freedom was limited but true love possible?

Because you’re an idiot, Jared, that’s why.

“Why so glum, young hunter?”

I startled at the voice. Arasni held two pheasants by their ringed necks. A pair of dead tree snakes hung over his arm. “You look perplexed, my friend.” He raised an eyebrow. “Where is Alpha Ilume?”

“Avoiding me,” I grumbled. Tossing the stem of the plucked flower, I sat up and glanced down the hill. Twilight had turned the lake into a sheet of diamonds, blinding me like the sun, making Ilume impossible to find.

“I see.” He blinked at the lake. Dropping the kill behind me, he gathered broken branches from nearby trees. “And may I ask why?”

“Um.” I didn’t want the old man involved in my romantic problems, but it seemed rude not to answer. “It’s complicated.”

He made a funny chuckling noise. He bent to pick up a twig, beard curving up around his mouth. “My mother is a witch and my father a Jackal. Can it really be more complicated than that?”

Touché. “Hey, at least they were both Otherworlders. They might’ve come from two different sides of the track, but we . . . we pretty much come from two different worlds.”

“You and Ilume?” He snorted. I watched as he dropped his collection of sticks in a faerie ring. The mushrooms grew and swayed. Curling around the pile, their tops turned bright red.

My whole body seemed to blush. I cringed, disliking having to speak my thoughts. “Yeah. Me and Ilume.”

Her name came out a whisper, like I was afraid she’d hear me talking about her.

Sparks ignited as the mushrooms brushed the debris. Tiny flames, no bigger than those of a lighter, began smoking around the ring. Arasni hummed in thought, pulling a silver knife from his pants pocket. As he began to make a skewer out of a pine limb, he said, “’Worlds apart’ seems a bit drastic. I think you two are much closer than you realize. Just because a match is different doesn’t mean it’s wrong or impossible.”

“It is,” I sighed, falling back. Dandelion seeds puffed into the air as I hit the ground. “She’s betrothed to the alpha male. If she denies him she’ll lose the pack.”

It was obvious, Ilume’s dedication to the wolves. No way on earth would she leave them for someone like me, although the other night had me wondering.

The sound of Arasni’s knife on the branch ceased. The skin around his eyes grew tight and wrinkled. “Have you heard of a man known as Rich Nylref?” he asked quietly.

I blinked at him, digging in my memories. “No, but it sounds familiar. Why?”

His lip twitched, making his beard ripple. “Rich was a Finder, a researcher who studied the wolves for many years at a close range. He had a lab in Jackal territory, and someone found it. Burnt the lab and killed him, afraid of his research getting to the government. Don’t think you’re the only Finder who loved werewolves. His love for them ran deep.”

I wanted to correct him on that, but held my tongue—I didn’t love
werewolves.
I had eyes for only one. Although, okay, Aspen was all right and Hawthorn was a cool kid. And, yeah, so the wolves weren’t as bad as my preconceived ideas.

Arasni was plucking a pheasant when a shadow crossed the grass. I sat up just as Ilume appeared, damp hair waving around her shoulders. The spider-silk shawl Arasni had given her was turned into a skirt, knotted at the hip, while a long blade of faerie grass was wrapped around her chest—a makeshift tube top.

I tensed as she sat beside me, eyes fixed on the fire. “Hello,” she greeted. “Smells like bird. Cooking rotisserie style, are we?”

“Yes, my dear,” he replied, handing her his knife and a bent stick to carve. “A turned bird is a good bird in my opinion. Be careful. That knife is very sharp.”

“Don’t worry.” She flipped the blade open with ease, grazing the branch’s end. Tiny wood shavings began to pile up by her knees, as if she’d done this a hundred times.

I did not have fun trying to match her when she passed me the knife. The end of my rotisserie stick was dull, the point cricked, while hers was like an arrow, clean and straight. She didn’t comment—or maybe she didn’t notice—and I got annoyed after she proceeded to the snake Arasni gave her in less than five swipes. I had a pile of scales and several new nicks along my hands by the time mine was done.

Nobody spoke as dinner rolled over the fire. Arasni smiled, looking peaceful as his pheasant leg sizzled, turning golden. Every now and then he’d pull it out and give it a pinch, hum, then pop it back over the flame.

Ilume’s shoulders were tense as she rotated her snake. The beast was coiled around the end of her skewer, stuck through the tail and head.

I stared narrow-eyed at my snake. I hadn’t thought to curl mine up; I’d just stuck it through the mouth, hotdog style. The skewer hadn’t made it all the way through, so the end of the creature dangled, burning in the fire while the head pointed at me, raw.

She glanced at me out of the corner of her eye. I could feel the tension raging. I didn’t want to explain my temper to her, nor did I wish to tell her she had no off button. She’d take that wrong for sure.

“How is it, friends?” Arasni asked, breaking the silence.

“Good.” She nodded, pulling off strips of perfectly seared meat.

“Good,” I echoed, less enthused. I’d stuck to eating around the middle, my snake’s throat gummy while the tail was flavorless rubber. That was the last time I would eat snake of any kind.

“Very well, very well.” The old wolf nodded, pleased. Finishing off the leg, he picked up his pheasant and pushed the spare toward us. “Feel free to cook that one up if you’d like. I’m going to store the rest of this one for tomorrow and hit the fur.”

I cocked my head. “You’re leaving?”

“I will leave furs out for you and the candles lit.” He rose, brushing off his wolf cloak and taking his walking stick. “Goodnight, young friends.”

“Goodnight, Arasni,” Ilume and I said in unison.

He waved, heading for the orb tree, whose glowing blooms had gone dim as nightlights. I listened to the tree root lift and fall. Then the nerves hit home. Ilume and I were in the middle of the woods. No company . . . alone.

I shifted uneasily.
Got to get out of here.
While the solitary wolf man had been good to us, I couldn’t wait to leave. Just where exactly did he think Ilume and I would be sleeping? In the same room? Same floor? Bad idea. Very bad. Just looking at her now, two feet away, had me mesmerized. She was like a shiny object and I was a little kid—I
really
wanted to touch.

“So.” Ilume spoke and I about jumped off the ground, right out of my daydreams. “I’ve been thinking.”

“Oh. Really?” Uh oh. That’s a dangerous matter, women thinking.

“Yes.” She paused while chewing another bite of snake. Her fingers slowly twirled her stick around. “About when we leave tomorrow.”

“Okay.”

“I, um.” She wet her lips. “I’m letting you go.”

Silence. The fire crackled. I blinked at her.

Whoa. Did she just say what I thought she said? She was letting me
go
? “Wait, what?”

And here I’d thought she was about to declare me her pet again, tell me she felt the same thing I had the other night and that it couldn’t be.

“I think it’s for the best,” she murmured, eyes trained on the ground. “You need to go home and I have to deal with the pack. My birthday is barely two weeks away and Rex needs to be straightened out before then.”

My hands curled into fists. I knew it was coming. I knew she was going to say it, and yet—

“You’re still going to be his
mate
?” I hissed, shocked. “After all the bullshit he’s put you through? After he led the hunters into—”

“Don’t.” She squeezed her eyes shut. “That’s how it has to be, Jared. He’s still the alpha, and I’m the fiancée. I have to be his mate so that I can look over the pack, look out for the wellbeing of the wolves because he won’t, and they’ll be helpless against the Jackals without some kind of proper leader.”

She was trying to convince herself just as much as she was trying to convince me. I dragged a hand over my face, stressed. It was like the tracks in my head had been switched. Suddenly I didn’t want to leave, period. I wanted to stay here in the meadow with her or, if we had to leave, go wherever she wanted. Anywhere.

So long as it wasn’t home to
him.

“Can’t we just, I don’t know.” I shook my head, hating this, hating both Rex and the pack. “Stay out here for a week or something? Maybe he’ll think you’re dead. Won’t he take a different mate if—”

“Jared, stop, please,” she begged, the pain distorting her face. Tossing the last of her snake kabob in the fire, she raked her hands through her hair. “You don’t understand. I 
have
to go back to them! And you can’t go with me because, well . . .”

I finally just said it for her. “Because I want to be with you.”

She lifted her head. Her eyes went round, sparkly like the lake. “You do?”

“Well, yeah.” Oh, crap, was that not what she was going to say?

Her arms fell into her lap. She stared into space, dumbfounded.

I wanted to melt into the grass. Oh, hell. That wasn’t what she was going to say. Damn it, what was I thinking! Her face said it all: the shock, the bemusement. That wasn’t what had been going through her mind at all. But what else could it have been? Why else couldn’t I go with her?

I didn’t stick around to find out. Pissed and humiliated, I thrust my stick into the flames and hopped up, walking away.

“Jared,” she called. “Jared, stop it! Wait!”

I jammed my hands in my pockets, speed-walking for the hill.
Idiot, idiot, idiot.
I couldn’t believe I’d been wrong. I thought for sure we were on the same page! Was she just delirious the night she was attacked? Had the venom made her frickin’ loopy and that’s why she snuggled up to me?
You moron, Jared!
My heart was crippling, curling into itself like burnt paper. It was a horrible feeling, one I hadn’t had in years.