AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Chapter Twenty-Six
Jasper
“Slowdown,”Edieyelledover the wind.
I spun back to her.“Keep up,” I shouted, throwing my arms out and letting the gale buffet against my body.She glared at me as she battled against the wind, which only made me feel more reckless.“The faster you move, the faster we’re alone.”
She shouted something in reply, but it was lost on the wind.“Come on,” I said, putting an arm around her.It was easier to fight the wind together, and I didn’t care who saw us.
I’d woken up that morning from a hot, blurry dream where she was writhing beneath me.My waking hours were filled with stress: the parade of people who wanted me to make decisions for them seemed to never end.I did not appreciate that I couldn’t rest for wanting her, even when I was asleep.I needed to tell her.I had to tell her she was my mate, and I needed to make her mine.
Then walked into the dining room and saw her with her head together with Dr.Fucking Ethan Barnes.We’d grown up as part of the same pack.I’d always thought he was a good guy, and I felt sorry that he never found his stone.
Now it seemed obvious he was a total asshole.
Sure, my mother liked and trusted him, and he’d been a valuable asset to the pack when he could have found a new life far away from Twisted Pines.Sure, he was actually a match for Edie intellectually, and he could offer her the normal life I could never give her.She wouldn’t have to hide him from her mother, oh no.“We’ve been working very closely,” he’d said, in that smarmy, slimy voice of his.
There was no way I was going to let him--or anyone else--make moves on my mate.
Edie opened the door to her cabin and we blew in, sighing in relief.Even with the door closed, we could hear the low drone of the wind battering against the cabin.I looked around and realized that, instead of her father’s research about shifters, the cabin had become a sort of medical war room tracking my mother’s illness.She’d moved the furniture into a corner and was using the dining table as a desk.
“I needed a space to work,” she said defensively.I don’t think she realized how much it resembled her father’s living room until she saw it through my eyes.
“I would have thought Dr.Barnes would let you work with him at his clinic,” I said, putting a little stink on his name.
“He doesn’t have room,” she said.“Besides, this cabin is designed for a romantic getaway, and that’s not why I’m here, right?I’m here to work.”
I didn’t quite know how to handle her, so I bought some time by looking at the incomprehensible charts and graphs she had on the walls.My eye was drawn to a series of drawings.“What are these?”
“Dominic had them in his notebook.He let me make copies.”
They were sketches of my mother, all recent enough to have been done in the last year.They tracked her decline from a full-cheeked, athletic woman with sparkling brown eyes to the bony, sallow woman she was today.Seeing it laid out like that had emotion rising in my throat.“Are you getting any closer to having an answer?”
“There are still things we can do,” she said.“But we’re no closer to finding out what is causing her fatigue.I just looked at her lab results, and everything is well within the range of normal.”
I nodded.I’d been so busy the last few days that my mother’s illness would drop from my mind for hours at a time, until it reared up to slap me in the face.The practical, planning part of me knew I needed to think about what would come next if the worst happened.It would all depend on who won the fight for Alpha.The new leader might want to keep me and my brothers on, or she might want to exile us and start fresh with her own supporters.
Even considering it felt like a betrayal to my mother.I’m not much for magical thinking, but when it came to my mother’s health I wasn’t taking any chances.“You said Dominic did these?I knew he could draw, but I didn’t know he was this good.”
She crossed her arms over her chest.When my eye floated down to the way her button-down shirt gaped, she dropped her arms.“Is this why you wanted to talk to me?”
“No.”I ran my hand over my hair.It was still in place, though I felt frazzled.“About the other day.”
When I didn’t continue, she raised her eyebrows.“You’re going to have to be more specific.”
“When we were in the woods, by the stream.When we kissed.”Stars, I felt as nervous as a teenager.
“I’m sorry about the Hen’s Teeth.I didn’t know.”
I blinked, lifting my hand to the spot on my chin.Though the ointment helped, I could still feel the burn where she’d touched me.“I couldn’t shave this morning,” I said ruefully.
“I asked Dr.Barnes to test it.I wonder why it affected you but not me.”
“I’m not here to talk about the Hen’s Teeth.”
She swallowed.I’d only turned toward her, but she had a wary look on her face.“The wolves?”
“We never found them.No, I’m here to talk about the kiss itself.”
