Reign: A Royal Military Romance (76 page)

J
ake stood
at the crime scene, restless and itching. The body lay in the street, still, surrounded by police officers and a small crowd of curious people.

“She was walking home from roller skating,” another officer said to Jake.

“It was a bear,” Jake said. “I can tell you that much.”

The body was small and female, with a dark brown pixie cut. She didn’t look older than mid-twenties, and despite his misery, Jake felt a deep pang for the girl.

Was this his fault, he wondered? Was he being a coward by refusing the shift and fight Violet?

I could end this
, he thought.
I could end this, no problem.

He felt a prickle begin below his skin.

“Any chance you could tell what kind of bear it is?” asked the officer.

Jake knew exactly what kind of bear it was. He knew he had to fake some uncertainty, though.

“Those claw marks are pretty wide,” he said. “That’s a big bear paw.”

“Witness reports say it was a grizzly,” said the officer. “But there are no confirmed reports, you know...”

“Didn’t it walk down the street the other day?” Jake asked. “No one confirmed that report?”

The officer shook his head.

Jake sighed and put his hands on his hips, pretending to waffle back and forth. His whole body itched and burned, and it was all he could do to focus on what he was saying.

“It could definitely be a a grizzly,” he said. “Claws look big enough, and—“ he bent closer to the poor girl’s neck, wincing as he did “—so does this bite.”

“This poor girl,” whispered the officer next to him, and Jake felt another pang of guilt stab through him. “How do we get this bear?”

“Officially, you need a permit to shoot it,” Jake said, beginning to give the talk he’d given so many times in the last few days, on autopilot. “That takes a little while, and then there’s the problem of tracking it out of town, shooting it in the right place...”

The cop just looked at the dead girl. “And unofficially?”

“Unofficially, shoot the fucker,” Jake said.

“I wish we knew a thing about tracking bears.”

Then, Jake had an idea.

“What if you tranquilized it instead?”

The officer looked over at him.

“And did what?” he asked.

“There’s a big grizzly population in Montana, pretty far from civilization,” Jake said, slowly, the idea just forming as he said it loud. “We could rehome it there. That way, we could officially give you the forest service’s full resources.”

There was also a big shifter pack in Montana, Jake knew. Moreover, they didn’t get along at all with the Alaska pack — generations ago, one brother had murdered another and then left for Montana, starting another pack there. The pack had grown, and every so often, when two shifters met, there would be an explosive fight before everything simmered down again.

In short, Violet would be at the bottom of the pack and miserable, if she wasn’t just killed outright.

He thought it was a fitting punishment.

“Anything to get that thing out of Evergreen,” the cop said.

* * *

“
T
ell me the truth
,” Ariana said. She and Regina and Boone were sitting in the living room now, a fire going in the fireplace, the three of them drinking tea. It was late but there was no way she could sleep, not with Jake out there, with a dead person, among the police and jonesing to shift.

“He’s bad,” Boone admitted.

“How bad?”

“This is exactly what Violet was trying to do,” said Regina, softly. The morphine had already worn off but she’d refused more, and she touched her bandages gently. “Make it so he can’t control when and where he shifts, or what he does when it happens.”

Ariana swallowed and stared into the fire. “And everyone in town is on edge, ready to shoot any bear they see,” she said darkly.

“Pretty much,” Boone said.

“What can I do?” asked Ariana.

“We need to get him far away,” said Boone. “When he comes back I’ll take him far out to somewhere.”

“He won’t hurt you?”

Boone shrugged, but his face remained stoic. “He might try,” he said. “I’m sure I’ve had worse.”

Regina looked up at him through her eyelashes. For a moment, Ariana thought she saw a spark of something.

“You shouldn’t go,” she told Boone. “It should be me.”

“It’s dangerous.”

“He won’t hurt me.”

Boone looked at Ariana for a ling time, his face impossible to read.

“You don’t know that,” he said at last.

Yes, I do,
she thought.

H
ours later
, Ariana jerked awake when the front door opened. Boone and Regina were gone, probably to another room, and the fire had died almost all the way down.

She heard someone stumble inside, breathing hard.

It was Jake.

Ariana jumped up. She’d fallen asleep on the couch, trying to wait up for him, and she slipped on her shoes and went to the door.

He was there, leaning hard against the wall just inside the door, which was still hanging open.

“Jake,” she said, softly.

He looked up at her, and she gasped. It was like he didn’t even recognize her. Ariana’s heart clenched in her chest, and a twinge of fear wormed its way into her heart. Was he too far gone already?

“Babe, stand up,” she said, kneeling down in front of him.

Jake swallowed hard and looked past her, then at her. He didn’t say anything, but his shirt was drenched in sweat and now he’d gone white. She picked up one of his hands, and it felt clammy.

He’s a time bomb
, she thought.
If what they said is true, he could lose control any moment
.

She knew that if she were smart, she’d leave the cabin, go somewhere else for a little while. Boone and Regina could handle it, even if they might get hurt in the process.

Jake’s eyes went unfocused, and he swallowed convulsively.

She couldn’t just leave him like this, alone, set to destroy the cabin he’d built with his own hands.

“I’m taking you somewhere so you can shift,” she said.

He looked at her again, and started to talk.

“Don’t...” he said.

“Don’t argue,” she said. “Just stand up. I can’t lift you.”

“I’ll hurt you,” he whispered.

“No, you won’t,” she said. “Now stand.”

A
riana’s hands
shook as she steered his huge truck through the narrow, winding two lane roads, barely avoiding the trees. Jake had turned bright red again and he was breathing hard and covered in sweat. They’d barely spoken during the car ride, and she could tell that Jake was completely focused on staying human, just for a little while longer. She wished she could help, but she didn’t know what to do besides drive faster, far away from Evergreen and the national park, heading toward an old lumberjack camp he’d told her about in his painful, halting voice.

“Turn here,” he told her through gritted teeth.

Ariana slammed on the brakes and her headlights picked out a tiny dirt road through the forest, barely more than two dirt ruts. She swung the wheel around, the tires slipping just a little as she made the hard left, and then drove as fast as she dared down the little track, branches smacking into the truck as she did thirty, thirty-five, forty through the deep woods.

“There’s a clearing at the end,” he said, his breath coming in ragged gasps. “Once I’m out of the truck, you turn around and you leave, understand?”

She risked a glance over at him. There were tears standing in his eyes, and his knuckles were white where he was holding onto the door handle.

For the first time, Ariana was truly terrified. She knew that Jake didn’t want to hurt her, she believed it with all her heart — but now, she realized that he might not even have a choice in the matter.

The clearing came into view, and Ariana gunned it, skidding the truck around on the grass. Jake was out before she’d even stopped, and as he ran at top speed for the woods, she could see the fur sprout from his back as his gait became more loping.

Before she could see anything else, her foot was back on the gas pedal and she was gunning it for the main road. By the time she got there she was sobbing, her hands were shaking hard, and her face was covered in tears.

I have to keep going
, she told herself, turning onto the asphalt.

Just keep going, that’s all you can do
.

Ariana looked over at the empty passenger seat of the truck, and saw the door handle. It had cracked straight through where Jake had been hanging on.

She covered her mouth with one hand and let the sobs wrack through her body.

A
t the cabin
, Boone and Regina were both sitting at the kitchen counter, mugs of coffee in their hands. They didn’t look surprised that Ariana was there, but they did look relieved.

“He’s gone?” Boone asked.

Ariana’s heart seized in her chest. It sounded like Boone was asking if Jake dead.

“I just dropped him off in the woods,” she said.

“Where?”

“An old logging camp, half an hour away.” She sniffled and grabbed a paper towel to wipe her face with. “Twenty minutes if you drive like the devil’s chasing you.”

Boone nodded in approval.

“He’ll be fine,” offered Regina. “If he’s far enough away, he can’t get back to civilization before he comes to his senses.”

“He’ll be able to get home, right?” asked Ariana, her voice sounding small and miserable, even to her.

“Of course,” Regina said. “He got here from Alaska, didn’t he?”

“I guess that’s true,” said Ariana.

“There’s coffee,” said Boone. “Then we should talk.”

Ariana didn’t want coffee, she wanted to head into her bedroom and go to sleep until Jake came home to her, safe and sound. She wanted to be wrapped in his arms again, to finally tell him she loved him, and for him to be okay, not the terrifying shell of Jake she’d just dropped off in the middle of nowhere.

She felt tears rising up in her eyes again.
How could I have just left him there?
She thought.
Everyone in this county wants to shoot a grizzly bear, and I just left him all alone—

“Hey,” said Boone, gently. He reached out and touched her arm. “Come on. Get some coffee and sit down. Jake can take care of himself.”

“I’m sorry,” Ariana said, and then walked to the coffee pot, trying to stifle her sobs.

“Poor thing,” she heard Regina say softly, behind her.

What a condescending bitch,
thought Ariana, pouring coffee into a mug.
Where does she get off?

“No thanks to you!” she said, loudly. A small part of her brain knew it wasn’t a great idea to go mouthing off to a lady who could turn into a grizzly bear at any moment, but fuck
that
. This was
her
house, she could say what she wanted.

“I had
nothing
to do with this,” said Regina, her voice also rising.

“You’re not exactly helping the situation.”

A stool scraped back. Ariana turned around to see Regina standing, even though she looked like it was painful.

“This is all Violet,” said Regina. “Try focusing your energy on that, not on some innocent bystander.”

“Innocent my fat ass.”

In between them, Boone stood, holding his hands out. “Stop it,” he said in his deep, soft voice. “I know that you two have your differences, but this is a bad time to hash them out.”

The two women glared at each other.

“Regina’s right about one thing,” he said. “This is all Violet’s doing. We stop her, we solve our problems.”

Ariana looked away and took a long drink of her coffee. Outside the cabin, the sky had turned purple and then lavender, the sun coming up over the mountains to the east.

“Okay,” she said. “First we get a gun.”

Regina and Boone exchanged a glance.

“What?” Ariana said. “You’ve got a better idea?”

Part of her knew that she should be nicer to them — Boone, in particular, was only trying to help — but she was terrified for Jake and had barely slept the night before, so she was in no mood.

“We might not need to kill her,” Boone said.

“Which might bring the whole Alaska pack down on your head,” Regina explained.

“I’ve been listening to the police scanner, and apparently there’s a plan to tranquilize her and move her to Montana.”

Ariana sipped her coffee again. “Why do you have a police scanner?”

Boone ignored her question.

“We just need to find her and get her in public,” he said.

“You make it sound so easy.”

“They’ve posted officers and rangers with the tranquilizer guns around town,” he said.

Ariana tilted her head back and drained her coffee, staring at the bottom of the mug for a couple of seconds. Then she put it down, looking from Regina to Boone and back.

“And I’m the best bait.”

“Jake killed her mate,” Regina said.

“She killed him,” Ariana said. “She smothered him with a pillow.”

“That’s not how she sees it,” Boone said. “I’ve known Violet a long time, and she’s not the forgiving type.”