The Rift (30 page)

I was starting to feel a bit dizzy from
hunger and all of the new information he was pummeling me with. “So
hungry, Jed.”

He pulled me back to his side and we headed
to the kitchen. Lionel was there, at the counter, chopping
something. Thad was sitting at the table with Tessa on his lap.
“You slept with her?” Lionel asked as soon as we walked in. “I
thought I told you to hold off on that.”

Jed shrugged. “Her argument was more
convincing than yours.”

“This is fun, guys,” I said. “But I’m
starving. Any chance I can get something to eat?”

“How are you feeling now?” Lionel asked,
ignoring me. Tessa smiled at me and shrugged, obviously unwilling
to leave Thad’s lap.

“I can sense what she’s feeling, but that’s
all I’ve noticed so far,” Jed said.

He might be able to sense what I was feeling,
but he obviously wasn’t paying attention at the moment. I tried to
escape his grip around my waist to go to the fridge, but he held on
tighter.

“Huh, that’s not the usual reaction,” Lionel
said. “It may have something to do with your supernatural
abilities. Were you able to sense emotions before?”

“Um, Jed, do you think you could let me go?”
I asked. Jed’s grip eased up a bit, but not enough for me to step
out of the circle of his arm.

“No,” Jed said to Lionel. “I’ve never had any
sort of empathic ability before.”

“And can you sense what I’m feeling?” Lionel
asked.

“Hello,” I said, in a loud voice. “Starving
here. Do you think you could let go of me, Jed?”

“I did.” Jed looked at me, his eyebrows
raised in surprise. I looked down at his arm and he followed my
gaze. “Oh, sorry.” He let me go and I walked over to the fridge,
but before I got the door open, he was beside me again, his arm
tight around my waist.

Lionel chuckled. “That’s more usual.”

I looked at Lionel, suddenly starting to
panic. It was sweet that Jed didn’t want to be away from me, but it
was getting a little ridiculous. Jed growled and let go of me,
taking a step back. “I’m sorry, Kels,” he said. “It hurts to not
touch you. And when you stepped away from me I started to panic. It
felt like my heart was going to burst out of my chest.”

“I warned you,” Lionel said, going back to
chopping his vegetables. “Just wait until another male tries to
touch her or speaks to her.” He shook his head. “Thad, I’d keep my
distance if I were you.”

I glanced at Thad, but he was laughing too
hard to be worried about Jed hurting him. Glad my life was fun for
everyone.

“And how long does this last?” I asked.

“Jed’s still a very young wolf. We usually
forbid contact between newly turned wolves and females for the
first year after they’ve been turned.”

I was finding it harder and harder to
breathe. I mean I loved Jed and I wanted him around, but this was a
little too weird. “How long does it last, Lionel?”

“With an older wolf, it usually lasts a week.
The younger the wolf, the longer it lasts. Jed is only a week old.
I’ve never known a wolf that young to choose a mate.”

“Take a wild guess,” I said through clenched
teeth.

“Two or three months.”

I could feel Jed’s sigh on the back of my
neck. “You might have given me those details when you warned me not
to sleep with her.”

Lionel looked at the two of us and burst out
laughing. Once he’d gotten control of himself and wiped the tears
from his eyes, he shook his head. “I was curious, okay. You’d
obviously chosen her before you were turned, so it followed that
your wolf would choose her, too. I wanted to see if your bond
behaved any differently.”

“I was a science experiment to you?” Jed
asked.

“You still are,” Lionel said. I looked over
my shoulder at Tessa, but she was covering her mouth, trying not to
laugh. Thad’s face was in her neck and his shoulders were
shaking.

“I thought we were friends,” Jed said, his
jaw clenched.

“Oh, we are, Jed, but you’re mom and my dad
were friends once, and that didn’t stop her from hooking him up to
machines and running tests on him to figure out why reapers don’t
reap wolves.”

“So this is payback?”

Lionel tensed and dropped his knife onto the
counter with a clatter. “This is business, Jed. I thought you’d
understand that.”

Something flashed across Jed’s face, and I
was sure there was more to their story. My stomach rumbled again,
and the tension between the two men vanished.

“You two sit,” Lionel said. “I’ll get Kelsey
something to eat.”

Jed led me to the table and sat down across
from Thad and Tessa, pulling me onto his lap. “I’m sorry, Kelsey.
If I’d had any idea.…” he said in a low voice.

“No, you tried to tell me, and I wouldn’t
listen.” It was nice sitting there on Jed’s lap, his strong arms
wrapped around me, but because I knew I couldn’t, I wanted to sit
in my own chair. When Lionel placed a ham sandwich in front of me,
I had to lean over awkwardly to eat it.

“Um, do you think I could sit next to you?” I
asked.

Jed’s arms tensed around me, but he grunted a
yes. I pulled the empty chair next to us close and slid into it. I
was still touching him from hip to knee and he put a hand on my
thigh, but I could tell he was uncomfortable. “This is not a good
feeling,” he said.

“Do you want me back on your lap?”

He shook his head and looked so forlorn that
I forgot all of my discomfort. “No, I just don’t like feeling this
way. My brain knows it’s fine if I’m not touching you, but the rest
of me.…I can feel myself going into panic mode, and I can’t control
it. How are we going to be able to function for the next three
months like this?”

I put my free hand on his and smiled. “It’ll
be okay. There’s no one I’d rather be attached to in this way.”

He forced a smile, but I could tell he wasn’t
convinced. “I’m pretty sure you’re going to hate me after two
days.”

“Then I’ll just have to kill you.”

Lionel laughed, but Jed’s smile faded. “I’m
serious, Kelsey. I really want this to work, and being connected
like a pair of ice dancers was not part of my plan.”

I was shocked that he was speaking so openly
in front of Lionel and Thad, but I was also touched. “Ice dancers?”
I said, latching onto the part of his speech that made the least
sense.

Jed gave me a wide-eyed look. “Because they
can’t be more than two arm lengths apart for their entire
performance, and they are touching for most of the routine.”

I continued to stare at him, unable to
picture him as a fan of ice dancing.

“Jed and I were really bored one summer and
watched a lot of TV. We became addicted to the sport of ice
dancing,” Tessa said.

“Where would you even find such a thing to
watch?” I asked. If I ever turned on the Olympics, I turned them
right back off when ice dancing came on.

She shrugged. “I don’t remember. It was the
summer before the winter Olympics and there were competitions on
TV. I think we might have rented some shows, too.”

Jed was listening to our conversation without
seeming to care. I reached up and touched his cheek, then leaned in
and kissed him. “I love you, Jed. I’m not going to blame you or
hate you for something you can’t control, especially since we both
know it’s temporary. If, however, you make me watch ice dancing or
listen to that elevator music you like, I may have to
reconsider.”

“You’ll learn to love it. Full-immersion is
the method I’m thinking of using,” he said.

I dropped my hand back down and picked up my
sandwich. “No ice dancing, Jed. That is non-negotiable. I’d rather
stick a hot poker in my eye. At least then I could be sure I’d
never have to watch ice dancing, no matter what you did.”

“You could just walk away from the T.V.,”
Lionel said.

I chewed my bite and looked at Jed. “I
couldn’t do that when I knew how much it would hurt him.”

“I came here to kill wolves not be exposed to
all this lovey-dovey bullshit,” Lionel said with an eye-roll for
emphasis. “My point is he would have to follow you, Kelsey. You
hold the power in this equation, because you can walk away and he
can’t.”

“Thanks for that,” Jed said.

Lionel went back to stirring something on the
stove. “I like her better than you.”

I finished my sandwich and climbed back onto
Jed’s lap. He sighed with relief and wrapped his arms around me.
“So what’s the plan? Jed can’t leave my side, but he said he’s
staying with the pack to learn how to be a wolf, right?”

“I’m staying with Wraith,” Jed said. “Four of
his reaper friends were able to reap wolves from his pack, and he’s
already had two rogues show up on his doorstep asking to join him.
Apparently, word has gotten out that he’s more tolerant than he
used to be and is not requiring violence or illegal activity from
his pack.”

“Why not go to the West Coast pack?” I asked.
“You do know Caleb reaped Jeremiah, right?”

I could feel Jed’s nod against the back of my
neck. “Yeah, I know. But Yvonne made a deal with Wraith. If you
choose to partner with him, she’ll let you out of your
contract.”

I swallowed hard. I’d already decided I
didn’t want to partner with Wraith, and my reasons hadn’t changed.
“If you explained your situation to Yvonne wouldn’t she let us stay
together, at least–?”

“No,” Jed said, his tone hard. “I haven’t
told her we’re a couple and I don’t want to. She’d just use it as a
way to punish me.” He sighed. “She’s not actually a bad person,
Kelsey, but the job is her life, and I think she takes my change
personally. She thinks I became a wolf to get away from her and
that hurts her.”

I tried to wrap my mind around what he’d told
me and found I could do so without too much difficulty. I’d never
believed Yvonne was a good or kind person, but I could believe she
loved her son and wanted him to stay near her. “Could we go to the
West Coast Pack? Maybe Lionel could make a deal with Yvonne like
the one Wraith has with her.”

“I don’t deal with the devil,” Lionel said,
his tone hard.

“And he doesn’t have anything to offer her,”
Jed said. “Yvonne might be convinced that the West Coast Pack is
the best place for me, but she wouldn’t let you go. She’ll want you
mated with someone else, now.”

“I won’t agree to it. She shouldn’t be able
to manipulate us all like this.”

Jed dropped his forehead against the back of
my neck. “Kelsey, you’re killing me here. Will you do it? Will you
accept Wraith’s offer?”

“What about Caleb? How do you think he’s
going to take you and me being together?”

“Caleb is a submissive wolf,” Lionel said.
“Jed is not. Caleb will do what he is told, or he will die.”

“You think it will be that easy?” I
asked.

“No,” Jed said. “But it’s the best option
we’ve got.”

“Tucker,” I said, wishing for him and his
advice with everything I had. “Tucker, I could use your help
here.”

“Kelsey, please…” Jed started.

Tucker popped into the kitchen, and I smiled
at him and raised a finger, before I twisted on Jed’s lap and took
his face in my hands. “I’ll go wherever you are, Jed, that’s not a
question, okay? I’m just trying to figure out our options.”

He sighed and nodded. “Thank you. I know I
must seem like a creepy stalker boyfriend, but my brain is in the
backseat right now.”

“Sure, Jed. I knew you had the creepy,
stalker instinct all along, but I love you anyway.”

He pushed me away a bit without pushing me
off his lap. “Good thing you’re so cute,” he said. “Because you’re
not funny at all.”

I leaned in to kiss him on the nose, but he
pulled me down to his mouth. A throat cleared behind us, and I had
exert real effort to drag myself away from him. I’d never been big
on PDA, but I kind of forgot where I was when he kissed me like
that. “As happy as I am that you two emotionally stunted idiots
have finally gotten together,” Tucker said, as I turned to face
him. “I’m pretty sure you didn’t call me here to watch you make
out.”

I filled Tucker in on what Jed had asked me
to do. “You know the situation with the reapers, so I wondered if
you had any advice for us.”

Tucker leaned forward in his seat and place
his hands over mine. “I think Jed’s right and the only option for
the two of you to be together is if you both join Wraith. That
said, you’re going to have to figure out how to deal with the
reaper situation in town or find a new place to live.”

I called Wraith to discuss what Tucker had to
say about the current reaper situation. He said he’d be right over,
and we stayed in the kitchen to wait. I was finishing my second
sandwich when Doctor Veronica walked in, looking like she hadn’t
slept in a while. Her hair was down, instead of up in its usual
French twist, and there were dark circles under her eyes. For the
first time, I realized she was younger than me and I wondered if
she needed a therapist of her own to help her deal with everything
she’d seen in the past few days.

“Good morning, everyone,” Doctor Veronica
said. “Kelsey, I’m not sure how much longer I’m going to be
staying, so if you’d like to talk?”

Thad chuckled. “Therapy on Jed’s lap ought to
be interesting.” He placed a hand on my arm and gave me a
sympathetic look. He knew how much I’d been struggling. He also
knew that as much as I hated the therapy, it was helping me.

I smiled up at him and turned to look at
Doctor Veronica, but I was suddenly on my ass on the floor and Jed
was on top of Thad, an arm across his throat. “You don’t get to
touch her anymore,” Jed said, his voice a growl.

I leapt to my feet to pull Jed off Thad, but
Lionel was already there. He yanked Jed up like he was a paper
doll. “Stop,” Lionel roared in a voice so commanding and deep, I
assumed it had to be his alpha voice. Jed dropped his gaze to the
floor, but his whole body was tense. Lionel placed him gently down
on his feet. “Calm down. Thad isn’t trying to take your mate from
you, but if you act like this every time another man touches her,
she’s going to leave on her own and I wouldn’t blame her. I know
it’s hard, but you have to be stronger than your instinct. You have
to be stronger than the wolf.”