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"Nah. No reason to tell him, and better if I didn't."
Better? Or just easier? We lay in silence for a moment, eyes still open.
"I--"
I was about to say, "I want to know," but did I? Really, did I? What would I be saying? That I wanted all the details in advance? That I wanted to help him plan it? Help him carry it out? My stomach twisted.
Clay wouldn't want that either.
Did it make me a coward if I agreed I was better off not knowing? Worse, did it make me a hypocrite? I could acknowledge that Clay was capable of doing horrible things to protect the Pack, and I didn't disagree with the final result... but I didn't want to think about it too much?
"Go to sleep," he murmured. "I haven't decided anything. I don't plan to for a while."
"But... when you do. Don't--" I lifted my head, his hand falling from my chest. "Don't do anything behind my back, okay?"
His lips tightened.
"That came out wrong. I just meant... I want to know. I don't want to find out after the fact. I'm not Jeremy."
He nodded, kissed my shoulder, then pulled me down again. After another wide-eyed minute of lying there, neither of us bothering to fake sleep, he said, "Are you okay? With earlier today?"
He meant Tesler, the attempted rape.
"I'm... okay for now."
He knew that meant that I wasn't really okay, just temporarily so, having slapped a bandage on the wound to staunch the bleeding while I tended to other things.
When I'd smelled mutt tonight, I'd had a moment of panic, thinking it was Tesler. An Alpha could not run from a threat. An Alpha could not have weak spots a mutt could exploit. I thought I didn't. Now I realized I'd been wrong. At a serious threat of rape, there'd been a moment when my fight response shut down, flight instinct taking over. I couldn't let that happen again.
When I said I was okay for now, Clay didn't ask if I wanted to talk about it. He looked for the answer in my face, then said, "Later, then?"
I nodded, curled up against him and closed my eyes.
CONTROL
THE ALARM SOUNDED at seven. Our first call went to Jeremy, updating him on the situation, getting his opinion of my decisions, then talking to the kids. We had a few muffins to tide us over, then dealt with our anxieties in the way we knew best. We headed downstairs to the gym.
THE BEST THING about hotel gyms? They're almost always empty. I'm sure plenty of business travelers insist on booking a place with a gym, so they can spend twenty minutes in there, then congratulate themselves for sticking to their routine between cocktail parties and room-service binges.
When we arrived, there was one guy coming out of the pool change-room and heading for the weights. By the time I was dressed in my sweats, he was heading back in, not even having broken a sweat.
We started with the punching bag. I held it while Clay worked out his right arm. It didn't take long before he got bored of that and wanted a more active partner. We started slow, Clay throwing punches and me blocking them, working into it, not wanting to get too involved in case someone came in.
After about twenty minutes with no one even walking past the door, we swung into full sparring mode. I worked on Clay's reflexes now, feinting and lunging, trying to trick him into leading with his left. After four years of this, though, it's tough to catch him off guard in a structured environment. Finally, he grabbed my wrist and flipped me onto the mat, signaling rehab time was over.
When I rolled up, he danced away, grinning.
"Uh-uh," I said. "Someone comes in and we're wrestling, however innocently, it's going to draw attention to us, and we can never afford to draw--"
I wheeled, trying to kick his legs out from under him, but he spun out of my way. We faced off. I lunged, then feinted, managed to get hold of his arm and threw him over my shoulder.
He hit the mat with a whoomph, and lay there, winded, shaking his head. "And that wouldn't have called attention to us, darling?"
"You starte
d it."
He dove for my legs. I pranced back out of the way and kicked. He caught my leg and down I went.
