The Catalyst (10 page)

Being on the other side of things, where Cain was
someone she could rely on, was different and disconcerting. She’d
gotten used to darting past him when going to Golatha Falls on her
trips with Cole through the dimensions. The last time, she’d been
about to go into labor. She hadn’t realized it was so close. The
baby had been early.

She’d been pissed at Cole for something stupid she
couldn’t remember now and had ended up alone in the Georgia forest,
giving birth to the pup and dying shortly after, unable to survive
the rigors of giving birth to a preternatural species when she was
only human.

In her last moments, as she’d bled to death, she’d
thought of how foolish it had been to be so anxious of Cain when it
wasn’t him, but her own offspring that would do her in. The pup
needed her, but she couldn’t stay no matter how hard she fought to.
She’d closed her eyes and apologized to Cole. It was her fault all
of this had happened.

“Jane?”

She shook herself out of memory lane and glanced up.
The demon looked concerned, something she still didn’t trust wasn’t
a trick. “Hmmm?”

“This will be your tent. I know you’ll want to spend
most of your time with Cole and the pack, but there will be times
when you may want to be with other demons, those who will
understand you better. This is your home anytime you want to be
here.”

“Um, thanks.” A part of her wondered if this was all
a dream. Maybe the angel was messing with her head, giving her
images and hallucinations that weren’t real, all a fantasy to help
her let go. She waited for something horrible and morbid that would
shake her and shatter the illusion. But nothing epic happened.

The inside of the tent was as bright and colorful as
the outside. Lots of cushions. Sweet treats, like gourmet chocolate
and fancy alcohols. Looking around, it was clear this was a place
meant for seduction. It drove home what she was now.

A flashback of her time with the vampires surged
through her. Those assholes passing her around, treating her like a
whore. And now? She could pretend the tables had turned, but she
needed to have sex for survival now, or at least health. She needed
it like humans and therians needed food.

She thought she’d gotten over all the vampire crap.
But no, she’d just been so happy with Cole she’d allowed it to go
into hiding. Now she was faced with her past once again. It would
never be behind her. The blessing of reincarnation would have been
forgetting it all. Now she’d never forget. This would be her final
form to live out eternity in.

“Hey.” Cain’s hand was on her shoulder. The caring
look on his face was so different from the dangerous and
inappropriately jovial demon she was used to. “I want you to stay
here. I’ll bring Cole to you so you can feed.”

All Jane could do was nod. The tent flap dropped and
she heard him speaking low to a couple of demons, instructing them
to guard her and not let her leave or let a human male near her, no
matter what she did. Or else.

The thought of sleeping with another man—even as
hungry as she was—disgusted her. The demon part of her wanted to,
perhaps. But the Jane part of her recoiled at the idea.

A couple of hours later she revised that thought. She
was ready to dry hump just about anything. She’d pulled seduction
attempts with the guards to try to get a nice hot piece of male ass
in her tent, but it did no good.

One of the guards arched a brow. “Doesn’t she know we
don’t do our own kind?”

“Hey, I’m standing right here,” Jane said, rubbing a
breast against the demon’s arm. Some part of her was revolted by
what she was doing, but another part was intent on getting fed and
getting fed now.

The other one shrugged. “You know how they are after
they’re first turned. Reason doesn’t penetrate the lust and
hunger.”

“Why won’t he just let her feed? Did she do something
to piss him off?”

“Who knows? But I wish he’d hurry up. I don’t want to
babysit all day. I’ve got my own dinner to hunt. I found this great
club in L.A. where the women are just… wow. It’s like they take
care of themselves just for my dining pleasure.”

The other one chuckled, and Jane growled and went
back into the tent. It sucked having all this seduction power and
it being totally useless.

***

Cole hadn’t slept right in months. His face was
gaunt, and he knew from the few times he’d passed by a mirror on
the way to the bathroom that dark circles lived under his eyes.
Mara and Blake had started bringing him rabbits, like he was a pup
just learning to hunt. He’d picked over them, then went back to the
alcohol. It was the only thing that could make him forget for five
minutes.

He knew it wasn’t right leaving the pack to fend for
themselves without a leader, leaving Blake to do all the heavy
lifting, but he’d never felt grief like this before. It swallowed
him up, consumed him. It was a bottomless pit, and he just kept
falling with no end in sight.

When he trudged out of his private den to the pack’s
common area, grasping a bottle of whiskey by the neck, he felt a
rush of guilt at the way his pack cowered from the waiting demon.
They couldn’t fight Cain; he’d just go noncorporeal. He was an
unfair fighter that way.

“What do you want?” Cole slurred. “Coming to collect
your debt for the portal charms?” The question of who owed whom
wasn’t something he cared to get into at the moment. But if the
demon were coming to collect, he was tempted to spill the truth
about how they’d become allies in the first place. Let Cain kill
him for it. It would be a more merciful end. Then he could see Jane
again.

“Jane is alive.”

The wolf’s head jerked up; his gaze narrowed. “Cain,
stop fucking with me. I know she’s gone. I felt the bond break.”
Even drunk he wasn't that big of an idiot, and he was in no mood
for the demon's mind games.

Cain moved across the space between them so fast,
Cole almost took a step back. He cursed. It wouldn’t do for anyone
to see the alpha stepping back from anyone. Including a demon.
Drunk or not, such an act would seal the suspicions that he wasn’t
up to leading them anymore. Blake could have challenged him for
alpha and won a hundred times over. It would have been an easy win
for anyone right now. But they hadn’t because they pitied him. And
maybe that was worse.

The incubus snapped his fingers in front of Cole’s
face and yelled back at no one in particular. “Someone get me some
coffee. I need your leader sober.” When they jumped at the order
and one of them scampered off, he turned back to Cole. “And what do
you feel now? Are you too drunk to feel the bond is back?”

Cole was so drunk it was possible none of this was
happening.

“Your mate is alive, and if you’d lay off the bottle
for five minutes you’d know that. You would have felt it the moment
she was brought back.”

Cole’s mind raced. It was too much to hope. Jane,
alive? The pain over the loss of his pup flared anew. But, Jane—she
might be okay.

Mara returned with a tall mug of black coffee. He’d
refused the bitter brew on the multiple occasions they’d already
tried to ply him with it. But now he drank it down greedily, hungry
for the clear head he’d need to feel the bond if it existed. The
thing about therians was, everything was
more
for them. They
got drunker easier, and got sober more quickly, depending on what
they were given to facilitate it.

A moment later, Cole was back. Though malnourished,
his senses were sharper, everything whooshing into clarity. And
with it, he felt the bond come back to life.

“Oh God.” The wolf turned away from the pack. He’d
let them witness a great many weaknesses from him in the past
months, but crying wasn’t going to be one of them. He struggled
with himself for a moment. Once he’d found his composure, he turned
back to the demon.

“Where is she?”

Cain shifted his weight from one foot to the other.
It was such a small movement that most didn’t notice it. They were
too busy being scared of him. But Cole noticed. Cain was full of
bravado and swagger. If he let the tiniest thing slip, it meant
some big shit was going down.

Cole braced himself. “Perhaps we should take this
outside.” This wasn’t pack business. It was Cole’s business.

The demon nodded and the two of them strode past the
frozen pack that was just starting to reanimate itself, the noise
volume increasing as Cole and Cain moved away from the group.

***

An hour later, Cole was in wolf form, hunting. It was
something big all right. Cain wouldn’t let him in the demon
dimension until he’d fed. He said Jane would need him at full
energy. For the first time in a long time, he was hunting in the
Cary Town forest with no concern for whether the Preternatural
border patrol found him.

As he tracked the bear, the voice in his mind
chanted:
Jane’s a demon. Jane’s a demon. Jane’s a demon.
Despite his possessive nature, at the moment he could care less if
she’d fed off an entire college football team. The most important
part was that she was alive. She was back. But was she still his
Jane? Still the woman he loved?

Cole took the bear down with a growl, but the animal
wasn’t prepared to go quietly. Ordinarily a bear was no match
against a werewolf. Today, odds were about even. Just what he
needed while his mate starved in the demon dimension.

The two rolled on the ground for awhile, snapping and
growling at each other. If he’d fed regularly, Cole wouldn’t be so
weak. He finally got the upper hand and ripped into the bear’s
throat with his fangs. The large animal struggled a little longer,
then slumped and died with a whimper.

He ate everything. Nothing was wasted. He couldn’t
afford it right now. When he shifted back to human form, he felt
better than he had in months. He reached up to touch his face. It
had already started to fill out, the gauntness gone. He wiped the
remaining bear blood off his mouth and sucked it off his
fingers.

He jumped as Cain stepped out from behind a tree.
“You’re such a creepy voyeur aren’t you?”

“Yeah, that’s me. Watching a werewolf eat a bear
without the slightest bit of table manners really does it for me,”
Cain drawled, his voice thick with sarcasm.

Cole snorted, but when the demon turned to go to the
portal point, he followed. Cain stretched out his hand and a
shimmery film appeared in front of them.

“Wait.”

The demon looked up. “Yes? Your mate is starving, I
hope this is important.”

Cole looked down at the ground, feeling like the
ultimate ass for saying it, especially to Cain. “What if she’s not
her? What if too much is different? I’m not sure I can handle what
she’s become. A demon is… a lot.”

“Well, you’ll have to figure it out and work it out.
There are trade-offs. No situation is perfect. But it’s a lot
better than what you had. You have your mate for eternity, never to
be separated again. A few minor inconveniences in that road are
nothing.”

It was weird getting a pep talk from the demon, but
now that Cole had started, he couldn’t stop. “We were happy before.
Why couldn’t they just send her back as she was?”

“Oh yeah? Explain to me how Jane, with a human
lifespan who would age differently than you, die, and then leave
you a mopey bastard for centuries is a better outcome. I’d love to
hear it.” He crossed his arms over his chest like he was ready to
settle in for story hour.

Cole wanted to say there was no way he’d last
centuries, he’d just euthanize himself, but he remained silent. The
demon had made his point. It had always lurked in the back of his
mind that he was going to lose Jane. He’d known the mating mark he
gave her wouldn’t make her age at the same rate he did. It was
something he’d planned to think about later. Later had come too
soon. Cain was right, but it didn’t make any of this easy.

“Time to man up and take care of your woman,” Cain
snarled, stepping through the shimmery film.

Cole took a deep breath and followed him.

Cain growled when they reached the tent. “Oh, heads
are going to roll. I told them to guard her tent.”

But Cole wasn’t listening. He pulled back the curtain
to see Jane, rubbing her naked parts against a still-clothed human
male. Her eyes glowed as she looked up at her mate with a trace of
guilt. “I’m sorry, I was…”

Cole wasn’t listening. He’d already shifted into wolf
form, rolling around and snarling until he could get out of his
clothes. When he’d fought free of the clothing, he pounced on the
man, his paws on the guy’s chest to hold him down.

The man started to scream like a little girl. The
pansy display helped tamp down the jealousy just a bit.

“Wait! Don’t. He’s just human. Just some college kid.
It’s not his fault. I was hungry, I couldn’t help it. But I didn’t…
nothing happened.”

They both knew the true ending to that sentence was
“yet.”

Cole looked up at her, growling, frustrated he
couldn’t yell or argue with her in this form. He’d been too angry
at seeing another man near Jane, that he’d lost all reason,
shifting without intending to. He eased off the poor schmuck who
had gotten between a werewolf and his mate.

Before he released him, the wolf swiped out and
sliced the man’s cheek, causing three deep gashes to appear. He
bent and licked up the pooling blood before backing off of him. The
man scrambled to his feet, clutching his cheek and backing away
while Cole continued to growl. He wanted it to be clear he hadn’t
yet decided to let him live.

An attractive succubus appeared in the doorway of the
tent. She wore a slinky dress made entirely of gold-colored beads
that left nothing to the imagination. Every time she moved, beads
parted to show an expanse of flesh. A thigh. A breast. A peek at
her navel. She had wavy, black hair and bright violet, mischievous
eyes.