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Chapter 8
Day 158 of the re-emerged Hat Island pack, Tuesday, Nov. 12, Penticton
Jessie liked Titus. He was salty, good-humored, and told great stories about Ryder growing up among a bunch of bewildered old men. She didn’t have time to get the jitters.
Who was she fooling? She was well past jitters. She was in a full-form freak-out. While she joked and teased Titus, she found herself doing a check of her bonds and barriers. The soaker hose was working; no one had their faces pressed against the plexiglass barrier screaming at her. The Alpha was still raging though. And, she thought, her eyes narrowing, plotting something.
She thought she should be able to tell what he was plotting, but she couldn’t. Maybe if she loosened the barrier wall she could, but she wasn’t about to do that. The vileness that seeped into her nap when the barrier fell made her sick to her stomach.
She touched her mate bond and got a blast of goodwill. Her shoulders relaxed a bit. She thought she might have been freaked out about a mate bond to a biker if they weren’t facing catastrophe after catastrophe.
“Where did you go?” Titus asked, amused.
She blushed. “Checked my mate bond,” she admitted. “But the Alpha? He’s planning something, Titus. I can feel it. But I can’t tell what. Not with the barrier in place. And I’m not letting it down.”
Titus nodded. “To be expected,” he said, seemingly unworried. “But we’ve got Benny Garrison, once one of the most infamous intelligencers in the world, doing our plotting. Just leave it to him to script it all out. And then we just say our lines.”
Jessie laughed. “In theworld?” she asked. “Really?’
Titus let out a long breath. “Yeah,” he said. “Doubt Benny knows how far his rep spread. But Alphas gossip like crazy. And Tom Garrison was tapped in —he probably did a fair amount of spreading his son’s reputation himself. Benny was often loaned out to other regions for investigations. And he did work for Tom when Tom needed a guard unit for a trip. Worries me a bit that Tom didn’t take him this time. But Benny was all involved in the Hat Island pack starting up when Tom left. Guess Tom didn’t think he could leave that.”
“Is Benny like his father?” Jessie asked, more to keep the conversation going than because she cared. Now Ryder? No detail too small there.
“In many ways,” Titus agreed. “But.... Tom grew up a long time ago, in a different world, in a stable pack with loving parents. He enlisted — I won’t tell you which war — and then found that he liked intelligence work. Benny didn’t get that stable core. He grew up in Cambodia, and by the time he was 13, he was in Thailand as part of the resistance to Pol Pot.”
“Thirteen,” she repeated. She thought about herself at 13, just going through her first shift, playing happily with friends, enjoying school. Would she have survived if she’d been thrust into the Alpha’s house then? Probably not, she conceded. Those stable years allowed her to have a sense of who she was separate from who the Alpha wanted to make her into.
“He’s somewhat of a chameleon,” Titus said. “He becomes who he is expected to be, who someone wants him to be.” He grinned at her. “Makes him successful with the ladies.”
She snorted. She’d seen that. “Charming man,” she agreed. “Ryder seems blunter around the edges.”
“Because he had that safe-home upbringing,” Titus agreed. “His mother is an amazing woman. I can’t wait for her to meet you.” He grinned as if that thought amused him, and Jessie wondered why. “For all that Ryder has Tom’s restlessness and dominance, he’s not as devious as either his brother or his father. He’s pretty straight-forward.”
OK, she could see that. And that might be why Ryder appealed to her in ways that Benny hadn’t. Benny was amusing to watch, but she didn’t want to embrace it. Ryder? She’d been attracted from the beginning.
The mate bond may well have started earlier, she thought. No one really understood them. And then she realized Titus seemed to think Ryder would take her home to meet his mother? His human mother. She set that aside. She’d panic later.
“I think we should swing by the motel, reserve some rooms,” Jessie said, changing the subject to more practical matters. “And maybe I can use a bathroom. I don’t want to piss my pants when I’m confronting that bastard.”
Titus grinned, and obligingly pulled into the parking lot of the motel they’d stayed at before. He stayed in the pickup, and she hopped out to go use the bathroom and make the reservation. Benny had been right, she thought. Riding with Titus had been useful. He’d given her a lot of good tips.
The clerk seemed a bit nervous, but he made the reservations, and agreed that Ryder could come in and pay for them later. “Already gone to the bar,” she said with a laugh. The clerk started, and looked out the front window, but he didn’t say anything.
Jessie frowned. She used the bathroom and considered the clerk’s reaction. Stay alert, she told herself. She felt Ryder question where they were, and she sent a verbal response, along with a picture of the motel. She wasn’t sure what was getting through. But it was kind of fun — like some kid’s game....
