She couldn’t let him in—not like that, not after everything he had done to her. It didn’t matter what sort of nice words he had said to her. He had forced her to marry him, and he had yet to apologize for it. She needed to remember that.
Jasper didn’t argue the point, but she could see the confusion on his face, his hands by his side. She could see the longing in his eyes, too, as if he wanted to resume their embrace as desperately as she wanted to. She wanted his hands on her again. She wanted to throw caution to the wind and lose herself for a night.
If she did, though, what then? What would happen the next day, or the day after that?
She stepped back, keeping her eyes on him. It wasn’t until her calves pressed against the bottom step that she turned andascended the stairs, her heart pounding in her chest, threatening to burst out at any moment.
She could feel Jasper’s eyes boring into her back long after she had disappeared from view.
Chapter 11 - Jasper
Camden snarled, tossing the pages on the desk, scowling down at them as if they had personally offended him.
“This is useless,” he growled. “How the hell is this asshole still eluding us after all this time?”
“Tell me about it,” Cillian huffed. “The last time it took me this long to track a guy, I was a kid who didn’t know what the fuck they were doing. I haven’t taken this long to find someone since the early days in the military.”
He sounded personally offended, as if Lucas's managing to avoid him for this long was a grave personal insult. Knowing Cillian and his pride when it came to tracking people, Jasper wouldn’t be surprised if that were actually the case.
“The guy is a ghost,” Franco muttered.
“He’s smart,” Camden clarified. “There’s a reason Sier picked him as his second in command. But he’s also arrogant if he’s bold enough to try and snatch someone from town. He’ll make a mistake soon enough. And when he does, we’ll be ready.”
A mutter of agreement rippled through the shifters clustered in Camden’s office, though it might have come across a fraction half-hearted.
Jasper glanced down at the map again, staring at the wide circle that spread out from the town at its center. Several X’s were scratched into the paper at various locations. Different elevations, different density of forest, different terrain—they had looked into all those facets in their hunt for Lucas, but so far, none of the places they had searched had shown any sign of the asshole. At this point, they had scoured the easy places for Lucas to hide, followed by the slightly more difficult. They had gonethrough practically everything in a five-mile radius. The only places they hadn’t searched were the places that were nearly impossible for them to get into in the first place.
“If this were any other situation, I would say that we should expand the search radius,” Jasper said. “That’s the only explanation I can think of at this moment.”
“That’s a ways out, though,” Camden said. “Do you really think he would try to kidnap Nikki if his hideout was that far away?”
Jasper shrugged. “It’s either that, or we start trying to dig into some of these overgrown areas on the off-chance Lucas has been living in the bramble for the past several months.”
Tapping the map, Camden considered, his eyes narrowed in concentration. “We should look into both options. Cillian, have a couple of people start expanding the search radius. Get another couple of your guys to start looking in those hard-to-get spots. Use people who aren’t going to complain about getting twigs in their fur and who know how to handle saws.”
“Easy enough to do,” Cillian said. “I can think of a couple of guys who fit the bill.”
A knock sounded on the door. All four of the shifters turned toward the door, the conversation dying.
“Come on in,” Camden said.
A tiny figure peered around the door. Alice, Camden’s secretary, gave a nervous smile. Jasper couldn’t tell if the anxiousness came from intruding or because of whatever she had come to tell them.
“A Mr. Clark is here to see you, Alpha Hughes,” she said in a small, lilting voice.
“Clark. Donovan Clark?” Camden asked.
Alice nodded.
Cillian, Jasper, and Franco all looked at one another, not bothering to conceal their surprise. Donovan Clark might have been making a lot of noise in town, but he hadn’t ever come to the pack house to complain to Camden at his office.
Camden let out a low groan and rolled his eyes. “Just what we need right now,” he muttered. “Yeah, go on, let him in.”
Alice disappeared. A moment later, the door opened again, and Donovan strode into the room. He was large, even by shifter standards. His burly frame barely fit through the doorframe when he stepped into the office. His dark hair and beard were both peppered with gray. Scars laced his forearms and hands, gained from both hard work and from scrapes in his wolf form. Dark eyes glittered with shrewd intelligence, and his lips were pressed into a thin line.
Donovan gave Camden a respectful nod. That didn’t stop the crackling unease and tension that seemed to saturate the room as the two men sized one another up.
“Alpha,” he said.
