Seeking Pack Redemption (7 page)

“Y-you did?” His voice emerged hesitant. Once the
guy with all the answers and jokes, he didn’t know how to act.
How to reply.

“Yup. I was going to bake a coconut cream pie.”

“My favorite.”

“I know. I figured you’d end up making some
smart-ass remark, and I was going to throw my portion in your face.”

A rusty chuckle made his frame shake. “What a
waste of pie.”

“Not really, because in my plan, you threw yours
right back. And then”— she turned her head until she whispered against
his ear —“I was going to lick it off you.”

“You are a wicked girl, sweet cheeks,” he said,
turning until their lips hovered a hairbreadth apart. He inhaled her scent, not
understanding how she could still want to be close to him. How she could
forgive him.

“I’ve been learning from the best,” she said,
letting
herself
lean in that last millimeter to touch
his mouth. Their kiss was slow, sensual, and bittersweet. It brought tears to
his eyes knowing that despite what he’d done, she still cared for him.
I love you so much,
Bailey.

A part of him knew he should move away. He didn’t
deserve a reward, but she wouldn’t let him go. She deepened the kiss as the
thump of steps approached, and he couldn’t find the willpower to push her away.
Desperate for this last chance, he clung to her, and when she bit his lip, he
wanted to shout because he knew she did it on purpose. She marked him. Despite
everything, she wanted him as a mate. He managed to nip her back just inside
the lip before the door burst open.

Blood hit his tongue. Opening his eyes wide, he
stared into her equally alert gaze as the shockwave of their joining hit. It
was done. He and Bailey were mated, no matter what happened next.

“Isn’t this cozy?” a familiar, gravelly voice said
with an evident sneer.

Bailey turned from
Jaxon
to face the monster. A need to protect suffused him.
Jaxon
pushed up off the floor and stood in front of her, every inch of him bristling
with an instinct to keep her safe. “Let her go,” he valiantly said.

A chuckle that sent spidery tendrils to touch the
edge of his mind, made him inwardly recoil, and Roderick’s eyes glowed
brighter. “Aren’t you still just the comedian? Stand aside, boy. You’ve
completed your task for the moment. I won’t
be needing
you now until the bitch whelps. And wasn’t that kind of you to bind her to you
before I had a chance to order it.”

“What do you want with us?” Bailey demanded,
standing to face their captor. God, how he loved her brave nature, even if she
chose to exercise it at the most foolish of times.

“I want my own pack, of course. One not bound to
me by force, but because they’re mine. Born and bred for one thing: to serve
me.”

“You’re sick.”

“I prefer to think of myself as a visionary. And
you should thank me. As the mother of the future ranks, you get to live, along
with the pup here
who
so kindly brought you. I’m sure
he’ll be more than happy to play stud.”

“Never,”
Jaxon
growled.

“Really?”

Roderick never moved, but
Jaxon
still dropped to his knees, screaming as he clutched his head. The pain . . .Hundreds
of little nails getting driven into his skull.

“Stop it!” Bailey cried.

“Why? The sooner he learns my will is the only one
he should own, the better.” The agony increased, and
Jaxon
thought he would retch from it. How could anyone stand this level of pain?

An alarm sounded, startling them all. Roderick’s
face creased, and his eyes went blank.
Jaxon
stopped
screaming but still knelt on the floor, chest heaving,
the
lingering pain making it hard for him to focus. Sensing Roderick’s inattention,
Bailey grabbed at him and pulled.
Jaxon
stumbled to
his feet, dizzy, his mind clouded. They didn’t make it far. As she went to go
around Roderick, the monster’s hand shot out and grabbed her arm.

“Going somewhere?”

Bailey tugged but got nowhere. Still not quite
recovered from the torture,
Jaxon
nevertheless lunged
at Roderick. He never completed the move. With a scream of extreme agony, he clutched
his head instead.

“Come, my pets,
it’s
time
to leave. It would seem my son and his ragtag rabble of dogs have stumbled upon
us.”

As Roderick dragged Bailey, his mate and one true
love, down a corridor lit by bulbs dangling from strings,
Jaxon
howled for her. Stumbled to keep up, arms stretched to stop her, to save her .
. .

Jaxon
lunged up from the mattress, reaching for Bailey.
And
grasped only thin air.
The ache in his heart matched his tears. Once he
would have laughed at a man who cried, but now, now he just wished he could
find a way to stop the hurt.

Kill Roderick. It’s the only solution.
Kill the one who took
away his life and his love.
Maybe if I
kill enough, the pain will finally go away.

Hugging
her superbly large stomach, Bailey waddled to the front porch her mates built
her and surveyed them as they worked on their newest present to her—a
gazebo. She still hadn’t quite figured out what one did with the octagonal
structure, but she didn’t tell them that, not when they seemed so darned
determined to give her one. Boredom plus power tools made for some interesting
projects, she’d discovered.

Next on
their agenda, they’d informed her, was a play structure for the baby. Never
mind the child wouldn’t be big enough to play on it for at least a year or
more. Apparently their child would need one. And the list went on.

Truly,
though, she couldn’t complain. How many women had three men determined to make
her life as wonderful as possible? Sometimes she couldn’t believe her luck, but
as her new best friend Dana had said, “Three is so much better than one.
Especially all at once.”

But in her
mind, four was the magic number.

Absently,
she ran her tongue over the inside of her bottom lip, the small, ridged scar
from the small bite
Jaxon
had given her—their
mating exchange—tingled again.
Where
are you, my missing mate?
She’d told her guys about binding with
Jaxon
in the cell. They’d accepted it and then never spoken
of it again. Betrayal wasn’t something they would forgive. However, she found
it harder than them to forget the man with the beautiful smile and dancing
green eyes. She relived over and over his death, his final words. She dreamed
of him sometimes, calling to her, his spirit so broken and despairing. She woke
from those dreams shivering, allowing whichever man she slept with to comfort
her.

What she
didn’t tell her men was her belief that
Jaxon
lived—along with Roderick. Truthfully, she was pretty sure they already
suspected given the fact they never let her out of sight and the way the
security for the compound never abated, even after that final battle.

A part of
her knew with a certainty that bore no foundation except her gut that one day
Roderick, that evil creature, would return. But next time, she’d be prepared
for him. She went everywhere with a sharpened stake and vial of holy water. And
she wasn’t alone.

The pack
would eventually have their revenge.

But what about
Jaxon
?
What would happen to
her fourth mate when the monster was defeated? He’d betrayed the pack by
handing her over to the vampire. Anger at him would have been the logical
choice. Her mates certainly had no problem hating him. She didn’t find her own
emotions that eager to join the “Hate
Jaxon
Club.” Instead,
she missed him and his easy smiles. Hated knowing that even if Roderick were
killed, he wouldn’t be accepted back into the pack.
Lycans
weren’t the most forgiving bunch. If
Jaxon
did
survive and they eventually put the horror behind them and vanquished the
monster, how could she get them to take her fourth mate back?

Gavin,
Wyatt, and Parker loved her, and, oh, how she loved them, too. When it came to
her safety, though, they were absolutely psycho, especially with the baby
getting so big in her
belly,
the flutters of its kick
felt when they placed their palms on her taut skin.

Even if
the pack forgave
Jaxon
, her mates never would. They would
never trust him—a dilemma she worried about even though she didn’t yet
have proof her fourth mate lived.
I know
in my heart he does, though. And he’s fighting, fighting for a way to remove
the danger to me.
To redeem himself in my eyes.
I just
wish I could tell him that he doesn’t have to. I love him no matter what
happened in the past.

She just
hoped she got a chance to tell him.

*
* * *

With
Jaxon’s
caution about Roderick and his mental powers ringing
in his ears, crazy as it sounded—
like
I’m going to believe in a mind-controlling vampire-
Lycan
—Trent
waited by the edge of the woods with his friends. The stink of wolves
who
’d foregone bathing and something acrid, a stench
borderline putrid and yet somehow familiar, burned his nose and made his beast
fidget in his mind. But he couldn’t shift, not yet. He’d need hands to open the
doors. However, just in case, he was ready to go furry, stripped naked with his
clothes tucked up a tree. Someone with a video camera would have a blast if
they saw him tiptoeing through the underbrush, his man parts swinging free.
Lycans
, though, would think nothing of it, because nudity was
a regular part of life. After all, the budget for new clothes only went so far.

So, naked
as the day of his birth, he waited for the signal. Darren and Marc also waited in
their own spots, silent and covered in a hunter’s perfume—a.k.a. fucking animal
piss, which made his eyes burn—to mask their scent. For a wolf, hiding
seemed almost shameful. Trent preferred bold actions and straight-up
confrontations. Looking his target in the eye then ripping out their throat. Of
course, in the past, most of his victims were dumb animals, but still, even
when he’d joined those rogue hunts and helped take down
Lycans
,
babbling freaks who practically foamed at the mouth, he’d preferred the
straight-up kill, the kind where he could look his target in the eye to the
option of taking them out from afar via sniper.

Lycans
fought and killed by the claw. Except for
Jaxon
, who’d tucked his gun, loaded with silver bullets,
into his pants with a taunted, “In the war of numbers, I prefer to even the
odds.”

Trent
still had a hard time believing everything
Jaxon
claimed.
A vampire controlling wolves.
A bunch of
crazy rogues all working together. It didn’t seem likely. But the closer they
got to the abandoned hunting camp—a grueling eight-hour trek uphill that
involved them wading in water to muddle their route, constantly spraying
themselves to avoid detection, killing two sentries they found wandering—the
more he couldn’t deny the number of scent trails.
A dozen,
eighteen, more than twenty.
Shiiiiit
.
That is a
lot of fucking carnivores in one place.

Maybe
Jaxon’s
plan to draw them off and kill a few with his shiny
gun wasn’t so preposterous, if he managed to get them to come out and play.

As he waited,
Trent listened for the promised distraction. He almost smiled when he heard it.

“Hey, you
mangy, fucking
furballs
. I hear Roderick’s been
looking for me,”
Jaxon
shouted brazenly as he
strutted up to the edge of the camp. “Here I am. Now, who’s still got enough
balls to try and catch me? Hell, to make it sporting, I’ll even stay in my
human shape.”

At first
there was no answer, although Trent caught a flicker of movement at one of the
intact windows.

“Meow.
Meow. Here, pussy-pussies. Are you all too busy chasing your tails?”
Jaxon
made more cat noises. Still nothing. What would he
try next?

Oh, he didn’t! He did!
Trent held in a chuckle
as
Jaxon
whipped his dick out and pissed on the
ground, whistling merrily as he let his spray dance in the dirt, probably
spelling his name. And that finally made the rogues snap. If there was one
thing they couldn’t stand, it was another marking their territory.

A snarl sounded,
followed by several more of varying pitch. With a taunting laugh and a jiggle
before he stuffed his dick away,
Jaxon
ran into the
woods, a stream of wolves, eleven by his count, slavering and snapping after
him.