28 – Jaggar’s Office

Jaggar led Leilani through the maze of shelves in Canyon and Timber’s massive office. The bunker, they called it.

Leilani headed one way, while he headed the other. She kept ahold of him, but for a very different reason than she had been all night long, he thought. She pulled at him. “There’s a break room this way,” she said.

“But my office is this way.”

“Your office…” She thought about it and her face lit up. “Do you think we can get to it?”

“Let’s see.” They skipped through the door, with only light pain behind his eyes. The tunnels were empty. He scented deeply, reading the traffic that had been through there in the last twelve hours. Only Burton, Canyon, and Timber. Good. He led her to the left, then pushed in through his office door. This place held good memories and bad, but it was an integral part of who he was, and he would not hide that from his mate. Something had changed between them. Every time he thought she would turn away from him, she turned toward him instead, which was what had given him the courage to do what he had done, to leap from the train trestle, fully expecting her to know it, and to find a way to bring him to the meadow. She’d witnessed some of his darkest moments and still accepted him, and he refused to let her face her feelings alone, after he’d seen hers.

“This is it,” he said, opening the door so she could go inside. He closed the door, then leaned against the wall as he watched her pick her way over his things, smiling softly, remarking to herself occasionally. She touched everything on his pin-neat desk, then opened his filing cabinets, and ran her hands along his computers. She went to his bookshelf and took out volume after volume, flipping through pages here and there, reading a few lines before she put the books back.

She turned to face him, then caught sight of his recliner and the blanket and pillow on it. “You sleep in that?” she said.

He shrugged. “Sometimes. I don’t sleep a whole lot, actually.” Ever since he’d been in the military, he’d rarely slept a full night, choosing instead to nap, hating the feeling of being “away” from his right mind for so long. The nature of his beast and his work did that to him too often.

“I don’t like to sleep either,” Leilani said, looking away from him, her voice soft. “The drugs they gave me made waking up scary. It would sometimes take me hours to remember who I was.” Her tone was matter of fact, but the words staggered him emotionally. Leilani made her way back to his desk and picked up a piece of paper. He pushed off the wall to get close to her and read it over her shoulder. The last thing he’d been working on, before they’d found Leilani and he’d been suspended.

With a wince, he remembered that this was not his office anymore. His mind wanted to repeat his mantra, to take him to church, to take him away from the present and deposit him in some place where he was both more and less than the male he knew.

He resisted it. The beast was not with him. There was no pain, so if he used his mantra at that moment, it would be nothing but a crutch. A way to avoid reality. He’d done enough of that for a lifetime.

But facing reality came with a price. He saw no way out of the mess they were in. Anger surged inside him again, that familiar anger and bitterness that he’d felt his entire life, but this time he had nowhere to direct it but at himself. It was enough to make him clench his fists and turn away from his mate… for her own good.

“What’s wrong?” Leilani said, hurrying to him. “What happened to you? Why do you look so angry?”

He shook his head, not seeing any way out, knowing he had to make that clear to her. He pulled her to the recliner and sat her down, kneeling and bending his head to her lap, much like he’d done in the cabin after he’d bandaged her foot. “Lele, I have to tell you something.”

Her breathing came faster and shallower, like she was scared. He hated to hear it, hated to feel her anxiety in his own chest.

“Do you know what I did?” he asked.

“What do you mean?”

“That I killed Joel.”

Leilani sucked in a breath. “You what?”

“I killed him. I knew what he did to you as soon as I saw you both. I… I struck out at him. Or maybe it was partly the beast, or both of us together. I don’t know anymore.” He dropped his head into her lap again, and now the tears came. “I don’t know who it was or how it happened, exactly. I only know I would do it again, and so I’m guilty of it, completely and totally guilty. I’m going to be kicked out of the KSRT. I might go to jail. I won’t say I did wrong, but I will say I didn’t follow the rules, and so I have to pay.”

Leilani didn’t speak for a long time, and when her hands found his head, softly touching him there, his tears flowed harder. They wrenched out of him in a way he hadn’t allowed himself to cry since childhood. But he saw no way out, and the only thing he could do was mourn that. He’d stolen her future by avenging her past, and there was no changing that. He’d been wrong and he couldn’t fix it, wouldn’t fix it if he could. Sometimes wrong was all you had.

“We’ll stay here,” she said softly. “Me and you.”

He shook his head, knowing instinctively that wasn’t possible. Eventine was… different. It wouldn’t work for them. They were already borrowing time. “We can’t, Lele.”

“Then we’ll go back in time,” she said fiercely. “You can stop yourself from killing him. I’ll take you.”

He shook his head again, looking into her eyes. “The only way I won’t kill him is if he never does it to you, don’t you understand? I regret doing it, but I won’t be able to stop myself from doing it again, no matter how many times we go back in time.”

Tears tracked down her face as she wiped his away, staring into his eyes. “There has to be a way,” she said.

He shook his head ‘no’. “There isn’t.”

“I won’t believe that,” she said. “We’ll figure it out. I don’t care what I have to do.”

She leaned forward, grasping his face on both sides. “We’ll just leave. Even if you can’t get your job back, they have to understand why you did what you did, someone can convince them. We’ll figure it out, and then we’ll leave, me and you.” She didn’t know where they could possibly go or even how they would get there, but he would.

“Your sisters…” he said.

She shook her head. “I don’t know them. I won’t miss them. I’ve had my doubts about all of this anyway-” She broke off, staring over his head. “But I don’t anymore,” she finished softly. She looked at him again, her expression intense. He loved seeing the amber color of her eyes instead of that swimming silver. “You’re my mate,” she said simply. “I go where you go, I do what you do. If we are with my sisters, great. If we’re not, great.”

“You can’t mean that.”

“Of course I can,” she said, her voice filled with fire. “I do.”

***

Leilani meant every word of it. She held her breath, watching Jaggar as he thought about what she’d said, doubt and dismay playing over his face. He was thinking about her sight, maybe, or about how she couldn’t seem to think or stay in one time in the Ula, unless she was holding onto him. He could be considering how hard it would be to be her mate. When they left the meadow for good, she would be blind again.

“I understand if you don’t want me,” she said suddenly, pushing the words out. “I’m blind, I’m unstable, I’m…” She trailed off, so many words playing through her mind, words that she’d always thought had fit her, but now she wasn’t so sure. Words like weak, sick, unhealthy, undeserving, wrong, bad. But back in the meadow, her mind clear and whole, she could almost see how that wasn’t so. How she’d been whipped around by a life that only could have been muddled through. Had she done the best she could? Even if it wasn’t very good? Had it still been her best? Maybe. Things were different now. She was different now. Maybe…

His face was stricken with emotion. He grabbed for her hands. “No, it’s not that. I want you so much.” He swallowed thickly and searched her eyes. “Like you said, we’ll figure it out. I wish you could see, but it doesn’t matter to me if you never can again. You’re my mate,” he said, almost like he didn’t dare to believe that she was, or dare to believe that it meant the same thing to her as it did to him.

“Mate,” she repeated, running her hand down his cheek. “I barely believed it yesterday, and now I can’t stop thinking about it.”

“I barely dared to believe it,” he whispered. “Even though I knew it.”

“Why?” she asked.

“I’m older,” he said, shaking his head. “You’re young. You’re innocent. You’re beautiful and thoughtful and sweet. Why would I get a mate so perfect?”

Leilani stopped breathing for a moment, willing her heart to still beat while she tried to drag in a breath. Perfect? She was anything but perfect. How could he even use that word to describe her?

She shook her head, pulling her hands away, some sort of panic building inside her. “I’m not perfect,” she said. “I’m…”

“Perfect,” he finished, and he leaned into her, kissing her lips once, sweetly. “Perfect for me.”

Perfect for him. That she could almost buy. That, she could understand, because didn’t he seem perfect for her, too? She liked that he was so much older than her and had so many experiences where she lacked so many. She liked that he was stoic and dangerous and so big and strong and that he had the beast inside him. She liked the beast. She liked his wolf half and his cat half and his tendency to think so hard he lost himself. She liked his intelligence and his competence and his absolute surety in himself.

She pulled him in close to her, letting her eyes close, wanting only that kiss again. “You’re perfect for me, too,” she said.

They kissed. It was wonderful, sending chills down her spine, then back up her belly. She pressed her lips against his, loving his warmth, his aliveness, how he could pull her into his arms and she fit there so perfectly. She probed his lips gently with her tongue, acting on instinct, wanting so much to taste him, to know him in every way.

He moved one hand behind the nape of her neck, cupping there, a snarl or a growl or some dangerous sound of deep contentment spreading through him. She would snarl back if she knew how, the moment pulling the desire from her. His tongue touched hers, and it was soft, so soft. She sighed instead. He snarled, she sighed, and she lost herself to him as surely as if they’d traveled to a time where nothing existed but the two of them. His other hand found her hips, and he pulled her body right up next to his.

They kissed for what seemed like hours, their hands exactly where they were, one of his on her neck, his other on her hip, both of hers on his shoulders, sliding up and down his neck, and his chest, and his face. She wanted to never leave, wanted to never stop, wanted to only live that moment for the rest of her life.

For just that time, they were two perfect beings, locked in a perfect embrace, the sins of their pasts and the unknowns of their future unable to touch them or influence them in any way.

Acceptance flowed freely from him to her, and she lapped it up like milk, taking it in, feeling it as surely as if he were repeating the words to her over and over again. You’re perfect, I adore you, you’re beautiful, I want to touch you forever, I’m glad you’re my mate.

Me, too, she thought. I’m glad you’re my mate, too.