Chapter 5
A loud banging woke Jenni from a sound sleep. At first, she thought she’d dreamed the noise, but then it happened again. She sat up and rubbed her eyes, and realized immediately that she wasn’t in her home under the park. She was in the hotel!
“Jenni Brisban, open this fucking door immediately,” Caesar said, his voice a loud growl through the door.
“Shit!” She gasped and hurried from the bed, scrambling to find her dress and pull it over her head.
“What the fuck is going on? Who is that?” Devlin demanded as he turned on the nightstand lamp and got out of bed.
“It’s Caesar. I wasn’t supposed to stay here tonight, but I fell asleep. Damn it!”
“How did he know you were here?” Devlin pulled his trousers on and headed for the door.
She grabbed his arm but he twisted from her grip and went to the door, slamming the security bar open and twisting the handle. He pulled the door open and said, “Do you have any idea how loud you are? We were asleep.”
Jenni stood in the center of the room, her bra, panties, and heels clutched to her chest, and her cheeks hot with blush.
“I’m sorry, Caesar.”
Devlin shot her a sharp look. “What are you sorry for? We’re consenting adults. There isn’t anything wrong with what we did.”
“You don’t know anything about our people,” Caesar said.
Behind him, Jenni saw Jupiter and Xavier. They wore expressions that were identical to Caesar, a mixture of worry and displeasure. Before she’d left to meet Devlin, she’d sworn to Caesar that she’d return to the park before midnight. She had zero memory of falling asleep with Devlin, but she shouldn’t have trusted herself. Her plan had been to only make love to him once and then leave, but they’d been naked and holding each other after the first time, and she’d been unable to go anywhere but back to the heavens.
“Look,” Devlin said, stepping into the center of the doorway so she couldn’t leave without pushing him aside. “I don’t appreciate you storming over here like Jenni’s some wayward child. She came here of her own free will. You should respect that.”
Jenni could tell that Caesar was walking a fine line of fury, and although she was proud that Devlin was standing up for her, and definitely a little turned on by his aggressive stance, she’d messed up and had to be accountable for it.
Putting her hand on Devlin’s shoulder, she said to Caesar, “Let me say goodbye.”
“Jenni,” Devlin said. She put her finger on his lips and he narrowed his eyes but didn’t say anything else.
“Be quick,” Caesar said.
She pulled Devlin back into the room, even though with their superior hearing every male would know exactly what she said. “I’m sorry I have to leave like this. I promised I wouldn’t stay the night.”
“Why does it matter? Why can’t you stay here?”
She wanted to cry or yell about the unfairness of the situation, but it wouldn’t fix anything. “Because I can’t, Devlin, I’m sorry. There are things about me that I can’t share with you right now.”
He crossed his arms over his chest and looked down at her. She was surprised by the abrupt coldness she saw. “I won’t try to guilt you into staying.”
Her eyes stung with tears and her mouth went salty. “Devlin.”
“Go on, Jenni. Your friends need you, apparently more than you need me.”
She saw him shut down. Saw the moment that he shuttered his feelings, and her lioness roared in dismay. She pulled open the door and looked at Caesar pleadingly, but he shook his head. He put his big hand on the door to hold it open, and the nearly imperceptible growl she heard from him told her that her time was up.
She grabbed her purse from the couch and looked at Devlin. “I’m sorry,” she said, knowing that the words were utterly, pathetically useless.
He didn’t answer her, but she hadn’t really expected him to. She left the room, hugging her purse to her chest. The door shut with a bang that made her heart clench in grief. It sounded like a coffin lid closing. A terrible sort of final sound. Not the beginning of something, but the sad, awful ending of it. Handing the park’s SUV keys to Jupiter, she hung her head and followed her alpha out of the hotel. Her lioness was wrecked, anxious to go back to the room and tell Devlin everything – what she was, why she couldn’t stay outside of the zoo. But there was no way that Caesar would allow her to do that in public, let alone with a male who had just shut her down so coldly.
She climbed into the second row of the other SUV. Xavier drove and Caesar sat in the passenger seat, while Jupiter drove the other SUV behind them.
“I’m sorry I messed up,” she said, trying not to fall into a weeping ball.
Caesar was silent for a long moment, and she wondered if he was pondering her punishment. She’d broken a rule, and even though Devlin was her soulmate, rules were meant to be followed for the safety of them all, and she couldn’t go breaking the rules willy-nilly.
“You scared the fuck out of us,” he said. “If it weren’t for the trackers on the GPS, we wouldn’t have known where you were. It was foolish to meet him at the hotel.”
“I hadn’t planned to stay.”
“But you did.”
“What’s going to happen to me?”
He turned and looked at her. “You told me earlier that he’s your soulmate. Are you certain?”
“Yes.”
He blew out a breath. “This is getting more and more difficult.”
“What is?” she asked.
“Soulmates. Earlier I would have suggested that you could bring him to the park to reveal your nature to him, the way that Justus revealed his bear to Trina. But the male that we left in that hotel room is pissed six ways from Sunday, and I won’t allow you to reveal yourself to him until you’re certain he’s not walking away.”
Her heart panged. “I think he wanted me to fight to stay with him.”
“But you knew you couldn’t,” Xavier said. “Which makes what happened tonight something that shouldn’t have. You should have been more careful, Jen, plain and simple.”
“I’ll be sure to remind you of those words when you get all twisted up meeting your soulmate,” she muttered.
With a snort he said, “You do that.”
“Am I in trouble?”
“Yes. You’re in your shift in the paddocks this weekend. I don’t care that you have found your soulmate, we need to be in our shifts and put on a good tour, whether they’re VIPs or regular park patrons. You’re unable to leave the park for twenty-four hours.”
She opened her mouth to protest that Devlin was only going to be in town until Sunday night, but she snapped it shut with a click, knowing that arguing wouldn’t do any good. Once Caesar made up his mind, that was it.
“Fine.”
She stared out the window, her mind turning as she tried to figure out how to fix things with Devlin. He was angry, and she didn’t blame him. They’d shared an amazing night. Even though she hadn’t planned to fall asleep, it had felt so good to be in his arms, snuggled up in the dark. She wanted all her nights to be with him, but aside from the glaring fact he was human, he also had a job and a promotion waiting for him on Monday, several states north. She hadn’t been willing to stand up to Caesar to spend the night with him, and she wondered if he’d even considered leaving his job for her.
Probably not after what happened.
She hated to admit it, but having a human mate was trickier than she’d anticipated, and she was afraid – deeply, truly afraid – that she’d lost him forever, and she’d only just gotten him.
* * *
Jenni lifted her phone from the apron pocket to check for an answer to her many texts and phone calls to Devlin, but the screen was blank. Every time she looked and saw that he was ignoring her, it was like a hot knife in her heart.
“I can’t believe he’s not returning your calls,” Trina said, coming to stand next to Jenni at the counter. Jenni was bagging taffy in half-pound decorative bags to put on the shelves in the main room. She’d barely been able to concentrate on watching the scale and printing out the labels. All she could think about was that she was losing Devlin.
“What if he went back home already?”
“He’s still at the hotel. I talked to our parents and they said he’s holed up in his room and refuses to come out.”
Jenni blinked at the tears that stung her eyes and gave Trina a watery smile. “I guess it’s a good sign that he didn’t leave.”
“Yeah. He’s just mad. Men are… well, they’re idiots,” Lexy said, joining them. “Devlin probably expected you to stand by him, but it’s because he doesn’t understand things, and he’s taking it personally.”
“Do you want us to go talk to him?” Trina asked.
Jenni shook her head. “No. I’m reaching out and he’s rebuffing me. If he wants to be like that, then it’s on him.”
“Oh, honey,” Lexy said, giving her a light hug. “I’m sorry he’s being an ass.”
“Well, that’s nothing new,” Trina said.
Jenni gave Trina a half-smile for the attempt at humor. “He’s mine. If he walks, then I’ll just be alone.”
“It’ll be okay,” Trina said, stepping to her other side and making it a three-way-hug.
Jenni wanted to believe it, but she wasn’t so sure. Her lioness snarled unhappily, and she turned her attention back to the taffy and tried to put thoughts of her soulmate from her mind.
By the time she needed to leave to get ready for the VIP tours, she’d found it nearly impossible to put Devlin out of her mind. He was firmly entrenched and under her skin, and no matter what she tried to think about, it always came back to him. Which was heaven and hell at the same time.
“I’m gonna go,” she said, as she finished tying curling ribbon on a gift basket she’d created to put in the shop with a variety of sweets.
“Thanks for today. I hope you feel better,” Lexy said.
“He’ll come around,” Trina said, smiling hopefully.
Jenni hung up her apron and nodded. “See you tomorrow.”
She walked out of the shop and followed the path to the employee cafeteria, where she opened one of the commercial refrigerators and grabbed a plastic container of sliced apples with a cup of peanut butter. She dipped the slices into the peanut butter, eating as she wound her way down to their private area, and then up into the lions’ paddock. She came out of the hidden entrance in the floor and popped the last peanut-butter-laden slice into her mouth. Caesar was in the shed, and so were Mercer and Justus.
Mercer gave her a one-armed hug. “You okay?”
“I’ll be fine.”
“Did he call you today or try to come see you?” Caesar asked.
She shook her head.
“Human males are idiots,” Justus said. “He should have come for you and demanded to see you immediately. It’s what I would have done.”
“Yeah, but that’s the point, right?” Mercer said. “He’s human and they don’t do things like we do. He probably thinks Jenni chose us over him and he’s all butt-hurt about it.”
“Shit, guys,” she said, tossing the empty container into a nearby trash receptacle. “Can we talk about anything besides my love life?”
“Sorry,” Mercer said, giving her an apologetic smile.
Caesar glanced at his watch and said, “We need to shift, the first tour will start soon.”
She stripped and shifted, wanting to get out of the shed and into the open space of their paddock, which had been created to mimic the Sahara. She knew exactly where she wanted to go – straight to her favorite rock for a nap, and then seeing if there were any tasty rabbits or small rodents she could chase for fun.
Caesar tapped her nose. “You have to be visible to the tours, even if you’ve found your soulmate. No laying on the rock all afternoon.”
She let out a gruff sigh and grumbled at him, which just made him smile.
“I love you, Jenni. You’re like a daughter to me, and I just want you to be safe. I want that for all of us.”
She nodded and bumped his knee with her head. He held open the shed door for her and she padded out, ignoring the desire to head right for her napping spot. Behind her, Justus and Mercer came, and then Caesar. She stretched, sinking her claws into the dirt and flicking her tail, and then she joined them.
It was going to be a long day.