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That’s not us.
Fate can’t be so cruel as to give me the perfect mate and then give me… Paxton.
“Tasha.” His voice is barely more than a low growl now. “Stop ignoring me.”
I peek over my shoulder at him to find him scowling. He’s so painfully handsome, it’s a shame he has such a bad attitude all the time. And I hate that he’s about to make me do something I’m going to wind up feeling bad about later.
Lie.
“I think one of us should stay up and keep watch the way wolves in packs do. Surely your sister’s friend would have had someone following her just in case. It seems too easy that they’d let her get away on her own before they actually checked your cabin.” She actually confided in me that she’d been forced to crawl out of a bathroom window to escape the two wolves they left guarding her, but Paxton had gone to get her a glass of water—begrudgingly leaving us alone—when she mentioned it, so I’m counting on him not knowing.
His scowl deepens. “You’re not keeping watch. Go back to bed, and I’ll stay up.”
Even though he played right into my hand, I still feel a sting of resentment that he dismisses me so easily. As if it’s unreasonable to think I could take a turn keeping watch. He’s the one who left me alone with Zeke, forcing me to prove I can defend myself just fine.
I don’t say a word about it as I carefully maneuver around him, leaving him to play watchdog. If I learned anything from being with the Sovereign Pack, it’s that no one is really interested in being questioned.
No matter how open and kind they pretend to be at first.
I’m just passing the sweeping staircase around the corner when someone whispers my name. I glance toward the darkened stairs and can just barely make out Leah’s wild blonde hair clipped messily to the top of her head.
I change directions and head toward her out of curiosity.
“Come upstairs with me, sweetheart.” Her voice is still low like she doesn’t want anyone else to hear. I’m not sure how much I trust Paxton’s judgement about who is safe and who isn’t, but I know I’ve been in this house long enough that she could have come after me already if she wanted to.
The fact that she hasn’t means she’s probably actually the person I trust the most here.
I pick my way carefully up the staircase behind her. She pauses at the top of the stairs to wait for me. I’m grateful for that, considering it’s almost pitch black in the upstairs hallway.
“A lot of people don’t understand me.” Leah’s tone is considerably calmer than when I met her, more subdued. “The whimsy isn’t for most people, sure, but it’s really my solitude they don’t understand.” She wraps her arm around mine and carefully guides me forward. “Some shifters are built for it.” She hesitates before adding more quietly, “Some aren’t.”
I’m not sure where she’s going with this, so I stay quiet and just hear her out. I have a feeling there’s been plenty of times in her life when she didn’t have a voice of her own. I won’t be one of the people to take it from her.
She pauses next to an open window, with just enough moonlight seeping in that I can see the closed door we stop in front of.
And she finally gets to her real point.
“I don’t believe that you, Tasha Jarreau, are meant for solitude. I think you deserve to take your second chance.”
10
Tasha
I’m still mulling over Leah’s words as she opens the door in front of us and steps in ahead of me. I follow her, my view blocked by her hair momentarily as she flips the light on.
Then she steps aside and I gasp, taking in a sight that blows my mind. Paintings. They cover every inch of the room. Stacks of them leaning everywhere. It’s a big room, but there isn’t an inch of wall space visible anywhere thanks to dozens of hanging canvases. It takes me a minute to really take it all in before my eyes land on something troubling.
“Is that me?”
I gape at an entire section of her wall featuring paintings that look uncannily like me. Me in human form. Me in wolf form. Me studying, gardening, staring after a retreating figure that looks suspiciously like Jimmy. It sends a shiver up my spine to see my own face memorialized like this.
“I didn’t know until…” Leah trails off, offering an apologetic, grim smile as she walks to a sheet-covered canvas.
My jaw drops wide open as she reveals the painting underneath. Some of the details are missing, as if this one isn’t quite finished, but it’s detailed enough to be uncomfortably intimate. She’s captured the moment a shifter marks another as their mate.
Not just any shifters.
Paxton.
