River Cast: Part Two in the Tale of Lunarmorte (4 page)

“
Aren’t you
happy with us, Jaeden?”

Oh boy, how to
answer that question?

She shrugged again, and
gestured for her to walk with her out of the alleyway. They were
supposed to be back at the basement loft half an hour ago. Lily,
Adam and Josh would already be there hitting the Wii. She doubted
Reuben would be there. He had gone on one of his disappearing acts
yesterday and probably wouldn’t be back for a few days. “I guess
I’m just ready to move on from here.” She indicated their
surroundings. “I mean it’s quiet now that the bad teeth know we’re
here hunting them. That vamp you killed back there is the first one
in days.”

Her answer seemed to cheer
Styx up, who was grinning from cheek to cheek, her little fangs
visible. “Well, that’s OK. We’ll just move. Reuben will be totally
cool with that. Ooh yay.” She bounced from one foot to the other,
clapping her hands like a perky cheerleader, “Maybe we can convince
Reuben to buy an actual loft apartment... you know… one with
windows!”

Jae laughed
and shook her head. “I don’t know. I sometimes think Reuben forgets
you guys can actually stand the sunlight. Too many episodes
of
The Vampire Diaries,
I think.”

“
He does
think that Elena girl is hot.”

Jae smirked. “So does
Lily.”

Styx sighed longingly.
“Ian Somerhalder all the way.”

“
Uh-uh.” Jae
scrunched up her face. “Too pretty. I prefer my men a little rough
around the edges.”

“
Like
Reuben?” The vamp giggled.

Jaeden laughed and punched
her arm playfully. Despite Styx’s matchmaking attempts, she enjoyed
the young vamp’s prattle as they wandered back to the apartment.
Her chatter about anything and nothing was soothing to her,
allowing her thoughts to settle nowhere and be at peace for the
moment.

“
Ah home
sweet home.” Styx chuckled as she pulled the building’s main door
open. “But not for long.” Her blue-yellow eyes twinkled happily at
the exciting thought of moving up and on.

Jaeden snorted. “One can
only hope.”

“
You know I’m
thinking we should go abroad. Like Rome, or Egypt or something. I’m
betting there a lot of bad teeth over there.” She continued as they
headed down the hallway to the loft, her small hand clasping the
door handle, “I mean, all that culture and beauty. The bad teeth
would want to rip that sh-”

Styx suddenly stopped as
the door slid open, her doll eyes wide, rose-bud mouth parted in
shock. Jaeden felt her heart thump loudly in her ears as she dared
to step by the vamp and look inside the basement. The blood rushing
to her ears as her heart escalated drowned out any
sound.

How had he found
her?

***

Ryder felt like smirking
at the shocked look on Jaeden’s face. All along he had not wanted
to believe the information on the little bit of paper Marion had
handed to Lucien and then Lucien to him. He knew the girl had been
through a lot, a Hades lot. But she knew the rules inside
out.

You did not hunt other
supernatural races.

If he hadn’t witnessed the
horrific situation Jae had been in with Caia’s uncle Ethan, he
would have been yelling at her by now. But he had seen only a
fragment of the damage committed to a girl who had once been the
most spunky, vivacious kid in the pack. He wasn’t going to condemn
her for this stupidity. He was going to put her in the truck and
leave this mess in the past where it belonged. That was if she ever
made a move into the apartment towards him. He frowned as her blue
eyes flickered towards the vamp kids who sat on a dilapidated old
sofa looking terrified.

“
They’re
fine. No harm done.” He smiled cheekily, holding his hands up in a
surrender gesture. And he wasn’t lying. After they had come home to
find him there, they had attacked, but quickly saw reason after he
blocked and outmanoeuvred all three of them. And that tall chick
had game, he inwardly winced, recalling her near blow to his
groin.

He waited patiently.
Jaeden didn’t respond.

Finally, she took a
tentative step inside the apartment, her slender hands gripping the
tiny female vampyre behind her, pulling her inside before she
calmly slid the door closed. Ryder waited as she turned back
towards him, her face expressionless.

She was different, he
suddenly realised.

It wasn’t just that her
manner had changed. She used to be a bundle of energy, always in
motion, her sentences forever flowing into one another. Now she was
cool and aloof, a reserve in her gorgeous blue eyes that had never
been there before. Ryder shrugged off an uncomfortable, unwelcoming
feeling as his eyes drank her in. Jaeden had grown up... and the
effect was well...

She was hot.

Crap.

“
What are you
doing here?” She finally asked, softly, warily.

Ryder decided now wasn’t
the time to mess around.

“
I’ve been
sent to return you to the pack.”

Her eyes narrowed
instantly, her body shifted into defence mode. “I don’t want to go
back.”

For the
hundredth time, Ryder wondered why Jaeden couldn’t stand to be
around her pack. When anything got to him that badly, all he wanted
to do was
be
with
the pack. The bubble of irritation under his skin threatened to
vocalise itself, but he checked it at the last minute. “I’m afraid
you don’t have a choice,” he replied evenly. “It’s either the pack
or imprisonment.”

Her mouth fell
open.

Finally. A
response.

“
What?” She
growled, her lykan distorting her voice.

Ryder chuckled, crossing
his arms over his chest. “What, you didn’t think you could break a
major Coven law and not have to deal with it?”

The look of panic shot
through her eyes but only briefly - Ryder watched in amazement as
the look was literally shrugged out of existence as she walked
towards him, her shoulders drawn back defiantly. The girl really
had become something, he mused, enjoying the panther-like way she
moved.

“
Why am I not
arrested then?”

“
Because of
Caia.”

“
Ah.” Jae
nodded, smirking at the irony. “They need her, and they know that
throwing away the key on me would piss her off.”

Ryder gave a brief
nod.

“
Hmmph.”

What the
Hades did that mean?
He wondered in
annoyance.

“
I guess I
have no choice.”

“
None
whatsoever.”

***

It was weird seeing Ryder
again.

His entire
presence filled the cab of the truck, as he drove them out of the
city and towards the pack. The fact that he was singing
Sweet Home Alabama
didn’t help the matter.

Jaeden groaned and
burrowed deeper into the passenger seat. She couldn’t believe it.
How had she gone from being a Rogue Hunter one minute to being...
what... Ryder’s babysitting job?

“
Sweet Home
Alabama! Yeah! Where the skiiiieees are sooo blue! Sweet
Home...”

Oh goddess
help me
, she whimpered. He was so out of
tune.

“
Alabama!
Woo! Swe-”

“
RYDER!” She
exploded. It had to be made perfectly clear that his singing was
not acceptable. “If I am to survive a road trip back to the pack...
I’m going to need you
not
to do that.”

“
Lynyrd
Skynyrd?”

“
Nope.”

“
Sweet Home
Alabama?”

“
Nope.”

He looked at her in
confusion, his warm hazel eyes round, his usually sexy grin
missing, and replaced by a near-childish pout. “Then
what?”

“
Singing.
Ryder. The singing.”

“
Excuse
me?”

Jaeden nearly choked on a
scoff, “Please tell me you are not delusional enough to think that
you can actually sing.”

He looked genuinely
affronted. “I will have you know that my voice has been praised by
many lovely ladies.”

“
Wow, you
really must be good in bed, cos’ they been a-feeding you a crock of
crap.”

“
What?!”
Ryder huffed, glancing from her back to the road. “Well...
what?!... you know, I have been drop-kicked by a lykan on steroids,
had an actual samurai sword sliced through my shoulder, and been
shot in the chest with buckshot... but that shit there
really
hurt.”

A silence descended upon
the cab.

And then Jaeden erupted.
She was laughing so hard she could barely breathe, and the longer
she laughed the wider Ryder’s grin got. When at last her giggles
dissipated, she felt exhausted and mildly uncomfortable for having
really laughed for the first time since Ethan.

“
That was
nice to hear,” Ryder said quietly. “Even though I was being
completely serious.”

The smile he threw her was
soft and coaxing, and for the first time since she had seen him
tonight, she remembered why he had been her big school-girl crush.
The wolf was gorgeous, no question. She looked away, trying to make
out the passing landscape in the dark. Reuben was going to be
seriously pissed off when he returned and found her gone. As it was
the goodbye had been harder than she had ever wanted it to be. All
this time she had thought she had truly cut herself off from
people, but no. The sight of Styx crying had still done her in,
leaving her with painful regret at having not been able to put a
comforting arm around the girl and tell her she was sorry, and that
it would all be OK. She had left Lily to do that, who had glared at
her the entire time she packed, stonily refusing to speak to her.
Josh and Adam had said their goodbyes, their eyes nervously
returning to Ryder as they had done so. She wondered what the lykan
had done to them before she got there.

So she had left them. Styx
was sad. Lily was pissed. What did they expect her to do? Fight the
Coven? Were they crazy?

No. She was going home.
Where she belonged.

What?!

A languorous, melting
sensation spread through her body, and a tension she had gotten so
used to being there she had forgotten it existed, slipped out of
her mind. She felt like she had been sleeping for the last few
months and now found herself awake, a rush of feelings, so in
contradiction to what only minutes before she had been so sure of,
washed over her.

She wanted to go to the
pack. She wanted to see her parents.

Wow. She was so sure she
hadn’t wanted that at all.

Here’s hoping
the telekinesis doesn’t kick in then huh
,
she thought wryly, utterly confused by her sudden desire to return
to the pack.

“
Hey,
Jaeden?”

“
What?” She
asked, without looking at him, trying to hide her sudden
disorientation.

“
Earlier when
you said about Caia being angry at the Coven if they locked you up,
what did that sarcastic noise you made mean?”

Jae rolled her eyes. “What
did you think it meant? It meant why the Hades would Caia care if
they locked me up? We knew each other for all of five
seconds.”

The growl that rumbled
from Ryder’s chest alerted her. Oops, perhaps she had a made a
mistake.

“
You
ungrateful pup.”

Yup. Definite
mistake.

“
Caia risked
her ass to save you from Ethan, and don’t give me any crap about it
being her fault you were there in the first place, because it
wasn’t. It was mine and it was Lucien’s, and it was your father’s.
It was the pack’s fault we didn’t protect you. But Caia.” Ryder
shook his head in anger. “That girl did everything she could. She
risked everything to find you! And don’t you forget it.”

She wanted to scream at
him; wanted to rail and rage that he had no idea what she had been
through, so how dare he?! But in the end she knew he was right. No
matter how much she wanted to blame Caia for Ethan taking her, deep
down she knew if there was one person in this world she might count
on, she was guessing it was Caia Ribeiro. Ryder obviously thought
so too, and obviously had a lot of respect and admiration for her.
A sneaking feeling swept over. His defence of Caia was quite
vehement. Did he... did Ryder have a thing for Caia? For some
reason the thought irritated her more than his condescending
lecture.

“
Point well
received,” She sniped. “And just so you know I thanked Caia for
saving me. I thanked Sebastian too before you bring that
up.”

Another tense silence fell
between them, until finally Ryder heaved a sigh. “Look. I’m sorry.
I didn’t mean to-”

“
Why don’t we
just sit in silence for a while, hmm?”

He nodded and seemed to
relax more into his seat.

And just as Jaeden felt
herself drifting to sleep, Ryder chuckled.