Chapter 26
CADE
“Can I ask you something else?” she said a little later.
“Only if you answer my question about why you refuse to shift.”
She rolled her eyes. “I’ll take a dare rather than do that.”
“I’m teasing. You needn’t take a dare.”
Her chin tilted stubbornly. “Give me a dare. When I agreed to your stupid game, I meant to follow the rules.” She winked at me. “I suppose it'll be some sexual thing. Good luck trying to think of something I wouldn’t eagerly do.”
“I refuse to be so predictable.” I thought for a moment. “I dare you to come with me the next time I go hunting.”
Her face changed. She went pale for a moment before looking pissed off. “If you think you're going to force me to shift in some underhanded fashion—”
“Not running as a wolf hunting. Pheasant hunting. With Barney. And a shotgun. No shifting. You and me’ll hunt ourselves some dinner.”
“That sucks. You know how much I hate hunting. I won't shoot a gun. I won't kill a bird.”
“You don't have to. You just have to be my hunting partner. There’ll be no blood on your hands, I promise.”
She hesitated.
“You can still change your mind and answer the question.”
She shook her head violently, her dark strands of hair scattered across her shoulder. “I’ll go hunting.”
“Fine. I’m gonna hold you to it. Now what was your question?”
“OK. This is my question—I heard some talk today about a murder. Who got killed?”
Damn. Had the other members of the pack been gossiping? Well, there was no harm in her knowing. I hadn’t told her because I hadn’t wanted to worry her.
“You mean the guy who got his throat torn out last month?”
“I guess. I overheard some pack members discussing it. Somebody was killed by a shifter? That’s something you’ve never mentioned to me.”
“It’s not a secret. I didn’t think you were interested in pack business.”
“A murderer on the loose sounds like something more than pack business to me.”
Okay, she had a point. There had been some discussion at the Council meeting today about the killer. I hadn’t realized the talk had continued during the socializing afterwards, but since I hadn’t told anyone to exclude Jess from pack business, I couldn’t really fault anyone.
It emphasized how messed up our situation was, though. When the alpha wolf takes a mate, it’s expected that she’ll become an intimate part of the pack. Hell, if we were ordinary wolves in the wild, the alpha and his mate would be the primary mating pair and would produce the young wolves that the rest of the pack would help raise.
Maybe our marriage had been intended as temporary, but Tom’s conditions in his will had trapped us more neatly than we’d realized. Everyone had expectations of us. Hell, I was beginning to have expectations.
“What do you want to know about it?”
“Who got murdered and why do you suspect a shifter?”
“A man was killed. A human. He was a drug dealer and thug who belonged to one of the local motorcycle gangs.”
She raised her eyebrows. “The MCs again? Could that be a coincidence?”
She was quick. “Seems to be. The guy didn’t have anything to do with our pack, as far as I know. The dead guy, Jock Nichols, was a dealer, so we thought there might be a drug link. But there’s no evidence at present that any of the young idiots in our pack were buying from him.”
“So no one in the pack does drugs?”
“I wish that were true. But there are other dealers. As far as we know, none of us had any kind of relationship with the creep. We’re thinking that the killer might be a lone wolf. Somebody passing through the area.”
“Could it have been any other kind of shifter? Like a bear?”
“I don’t think so. I saw the body. It actually happened that night when I was first at your place. Remember I got that phone call and had to leave? That was Jake, and I went to join him at the hospital morgue.”
When I said this, Jess turned white. She dropped back against the pillows looking as if she felt faint. Maybe I shouldn’t have mentioned the morgue? “What, babe? Are you okay?”
“That was the first time we hooked up?”
“Yeah, awesome night. So?”
She pressed her palms together. Her hands looked shaky. What the fuck?
“You’re sure this man was killed by a wolf shifter? Absolutely sure?”
“Yeah. If the killer had been someone else, there’d be no reason for our wolf pack to investigate.”
“It couldn’t have been a grizzly? Or, or anything else?”
“Anything else like what?”
She looked away. Her skin was flushed and I could see from the way the pulse fluttered at her throat that she was agitated. What the fuck was going on with her?
I tried to get her to tell me, but of course she wouldn't. Silence and secrets had fallen between us again.
JESS
I didn’t dare fall asleep. For the first time since I’d starting sharing my nights with Cade, I wasn’t wearing the Highland Choker. After the way he’d hassled me about my refusal to shift, the last thing I wanted was for it to happen involuntarily.
Which could happen. It had happened to him. Did he think I hadn’t felt it? He’d nearly shifted to his wolf and I hadn't even minded. He was damn sexy in any form. The only thing I’d minded was that he’d wanted me to shift, too.
My cousin must have been wrong about fucking being a stress reliever. I was having lots of sex, but my darkling self felt closer to the surface than ever. The rough way we tended to have sex didn’t help—it brought out the wilder parts of me.
If it should happen by accident when we were together, he might be in danger. His wolf was powerful and strong, but my darkling might be stronger still. I could hurt him. I could maybe even kill him. He didn’t realize he was harboring a monster at his breast.
And now I’d learned that someone had been murdered by a shifter. What if that killer was me?
I lay awake while Cade slept by my side, trying to convince myself that I’d had nothing to do with this stranger’s death. I didn’t know anybody from a motorcycle club. I couldn’t imagine where I might have met such a person, let alone stalked, attacked and killed him.
I don’t think I’d have worried about it at all, except that the murder had occurred on the same evening I’d returned to the ranch with blood on my hands. The conditions had been right that day for my demon to emerge. I’d been crazy stressed out over Grandpa, and I’d had no sex for weeks. I hadn’t even pleasured myself.
If my darkling self had run into a cheap thug, as Cade had termed him…if he’d mocked or insulted me…or if I’d liked the smell of his blood, maybe I’d assaulted him? If he’d fought back and pulled a knife or gun, I’d probably have ended him. Darklings liked violence and had no problems killing, especially in self defense.
But all I could really remember about that experience was waking up under the oak tree behind my grandfather’s ranch. With the taste of blood in my mouth.
My one consolation was that if I had done such a horrible thing, it wouldn’t have looked like a wolf attack. No, the investigators would have been worried about things even more mythic than werewolves. The dead guy would look as if he’d been bitten and drained by a vampire.