Chapter 6

Anna

 

I hid outside, away from the twins, and away from anyone who would see the hurt and shame on my face. It didn’t take long before my pain burned away in the face of my anger. I took a deep breath of the cool night air and tried to get my temper under control. I never wanted to be the jealous girlfriend who got angry at any females that dared to speak to her man. But was I really the one in the wrong here?

I paced back and forth as I thought. Gemma was a visitor to our pack and she hadn’t had it easy in her life. Could I really blame her for enjoying the attention that the twins gave her? No. But she knew very well that they were with me, and I couldn’t shake my anger at how she was trying to undermine that.

My pacing slowed when I realized that I didn’t have to trust Gemma. I wasn’t in a relationship with Gemma, I was in a relationship with Mason and Jason. I knew that they loved me, and I knew that they would never do anything to betray me. My pulse steadied and I looked up at the moon cresting over the tree line. Gemma could try her best to tear us apart, but the bond we had couldn’t be broken. I was just going to have to give the guys time to see what Gemma was truly like. She couldn’t hide who she really was for long. I just hoped that she would expose herself sooner rather than later to the twins.

I even understood their instincts in stepping in between her and I. The twins would always step in to defend an underdog because they had been in that situation themselves. They had been unwanted and unloved for a long period of their most formative years. Gemma had picked up on that and was intentionally playing into their protective instincts by pretending to be the victim and making me out to be the big bad wolf.

I huffed out a breath of frustration. As much as I wanted to stomp back in there, demand that Gemma drop her act, and make the twins see reason, I knew that yelling at them wouldn’t make any of those things happen. I needed to clear my head and go to them once my temper had cooled.

I knew, deep in my heart, that the twins would listen if I sat down and explained how I was feeling to them. They had seen into my soul on more than one occasion, and I had to believe that they would do so again. I closed my eyes and let the cool night air soothe my heated temper as the breeze swirled around me. Tomorrow I would fix things with the twins.

I heard the sliding glass door open behind me and turned to see James step out on the patio. “Hey,” I said softly, checking to see if there was steam coming out of his ears. He seemed cool and collected, so he must not have gone through his dresser yet. Makes sense, he probably wouldn’t notice until he went to get dressed tomorrow. I inhaled his masculine scent as it floated to me on the breeze and I tried to push away the myriad of emotions that lingered after my fight with the twins.

James gave me a nod and came to stand next to me. I leaned back on the railing and reached for his hand but he avoided me. A flash of hurt burned through me and I swallowed down all the emotions that threatened to bubble up.

I was already feeling vulnerable and alone, but bursting into tears because James didn’t want to hold my hand would probably just make him run further from me. He must have picked up on my emotional state because I saw regret in his dark eyes. “I need to patrol,” he said gruffly, as he gazed out into the forest. “I want to check on the guards.”

I huffed but didn’t say anything, I just watched him as he slipped off his shoes. I had been planning on going on a run with the twins later this evening, and our fight just meant that I had even more excess energy that I needed to burn off. I narrowed my eyes at James as he ignored me. I might need to take a breather from the twins before I could figure out how to fix things with them, but James was right here in front of me now.

 I did the only sensible thing I could think of and took off my top.

“What are you doing?” James grumbled.

“Oh, I was just about to go patrol the perimeter,” I told him airily. I turned my back to him and unbuttoned my jeans. “I guess you can probably tag along if you’re headed the same way.”

James rolled his eyes and looked skyward in exasperation.

“I know, I know,” I said mockingly. “I am the least stealthy person that you have ever met in your life. Everyone will see me coming a mile away.”

He just looked at me as if to say are you done?

“But that means that they will be so busy staring at me that they won’t see you coming from behind,” I pointed out as I shimmied out of my jeans and turned back around.

His shoulders relaxed, and he looked at me thoughtfully. “Can you stay on mission?”

I reached back for the clasp of my bra and his eyes heated as I let it fall to the ground. “Can you?” I asked him defiantly.

His eyes trailed over my exposed flesh as he looked up to meet my gaze. “I can,” he said in a low voice that caused my lower belly to clench. I nodded as if I had no desire to jump on him and wrap my legs around his waist.

“Excellent, we’ll compare notes after,” I told him in my best throaty purr as I shimmied out of my panties.

“We’ll see,” he grunted before he pulled his shirt over his head. Before I could get even more flustered by a naked James I shifted and landed on all four paws.

“No chasing fireflies,” James called to me as I trotted across the patio.

“It’s winter,” I told him with the pack bond. “Everyone knows there aren’t any fireflies left.” I flicked my tail at him in irritation before I jumped down to the lawn. Now he was definitely going to get pounced once he shifted. I heard his belt buckle hit the ground not a moment later, so I turned to get into position.

He went to the opposite side of the patio, anticipating my attack. So, naturally I bounced over to his side. I made it there just as he leapt onto the ground but I was a couple seconds too late. I attempted to pounce him anyway, but he adeptly avoided me like the pro he was. I swished my tail, annoyed that he managed to elude me yet again.

“Follow the tree line to the oceanfront,” he told me with our bond. “We’ll see if Quinn’s paying attention.”

I huffed but headed in that direction. I wouldn’t mind sneaking up on Quinn. I froze in mid-step when I felt James’s presence abruptly vanish from my periphery awareness. I whirled around in alarm to see him trailing behind me.

He sent me a wave of reassurance. “I’m right here.”

“Why can’t I feel you?” I wasn’t even embarrassed at how panicked I sounded, I was that worried.

“I’m cloaking my presence so they won’t feel me coming.”

I circled around him, reassuring myself that he was really there in the flesh. I had become accustomed to being able to feel a person’s magical essence as long as they were in fairly close proximity. I hadn’t realized just how much I had come to rely on that sense until I was completely blind to it now. It was very disconcerting to see James but not be able to feel his protective presence. I don’t know how I ever lived without it before.

This reminded me of the inverted magic that Talen had been trying to teach me. He had shown me that he could hide pieces of magic and told me that someone could use it to hide their true magical nature, but he hadn’t mentioned that someone could hide their presence completely from me. If James hadn’t been standing right in front of me, I wouldn’t have known that he was there.

“I don’t like this.” I brushed up against him and inhaled his scent.

“I’ll be right behind you,” he said gently. “I won’t let you out of my sight.”

“I’m not worried about me.” I was a little insulted.

“I’ll be fine.” I could feel his amusement with his last message to me. But I couldn’t ever forget holding him in my arms as he bled out into the dirt not too long ago. The thought of losing James was too much to bear.

We made it to the forest and he melted into the shadows. I forced myself to keep moving and not to keep glancing back to where I last saw him. We were on pack land, the protective barrier was up and strong, and we had plenty of our wolves on the property. What could go wrong?

There was no way for me to hide like James did, so I tried to be as quiet as possible. Maybe I would get lucky and Quinn wouldn’t see me coming. I carefully put one paw down after the other, being cautious not to step on any sticks or dry leaves.

The forest was fairly quiet, but I could still hear the ocean waves crashing in the distance, the occasional cry of a lonely seagull, and the breeze rustling the bare tree branches and the fallen leaves. What I didn’t hear was the sound of another wolf in the vicinity. I kept glancing around me as I crept through the forest in order to maintain what the guys liked to call ‘360-degree security,’ but I didn’t see anything other than the occasional squirrel running for the safety of a tall tree.

What I really wanted to do was forget about all the concerns of the human world and just run. I wanted to be wild and free, surrounded by my pack the way it should be. I heaved a sigh. Traipsing through the woods alone wasn’t satisfying any of my wolf urges, and James wasn’t even really with me.  I perked up a little when I thought about what I might be able to get James to do after we finished our ‘mission.’ I wouldn’t be able to tempt him into playing or wrestling, but I bet I could challenge him to a race.

I felt the presence of another one of my pack mates nearby and stretched my senses to try to figure out who and where he was. I could easily recognize my six guys, but the others were a little more difficult since I didn’t spend nearly as much time with them. Austin had extended my pack bond to include the guys on Trevor’s team since they pulled security here so often. He wanted me to be able to reach out to them for help if I needed it. I think a part of it was that he knew they had zero interest in me as a mate because of their relationship with Sam.

That’s why when I heard a heavy weight drop behind me I jumped almost a foot in the air and whirled around in alarm. Quinn jumped me, and we wrestled for a moment before I used my magic to push him off me and hold him in place.

“Where did you come from?” I demanded.

“If you had looked up, you would have seen me,” Quinn laughed.

“What kind of a wolf climbs trees?” I asked defensively.

“The kind with a panther as one of their best friends,” Quinn told me, still laughing. “Sam got the drop on me a couple times before I wised up, don’t feel too bad about it.”

I pouted but released him from my magical hold. Quinn was right, I had been so busy looking down at my feet and around the ground that it had never occurred to me to look up in the trees.

“Don’t tell the other guys I’m out here,” I told Quinn. “I want to surprise them.”

Quinn gave a wolf snort to show how ridiculous he thought that was. “Okay.” He looked around suspiciously. “I’m surprised to see you on your own out here, none of the guys wanted to go on a run?”

I swished my tail in irritation and circled around him. “I can go out on my own if I want to, I don’t need them.”

Quinn shot me a look of pity. “Uh, huh. We’ll talk later,” he promised me. I watched curiously as he crouched and then leapt up to one of the lower hanging branches of the tree next to me. It was unnatural to watch an oversized wolf scramble up the tree and then pick a branch to lounge on. He was definitely spending too much time with Sam.

“James, you want to show your face?”

“No. I’ll get him on the way back. Keep going to the rocky overlook, I’ve caught some of the guys napping out there before.”

I sighed and trotted off in that direction, but this time I spent less time looking at my feet and more time eying the trees for surprises. I gave up on trying to be as silent and unseen as James. Instead, I thought about how James was cloaking his presence and if the others could do that as well. It seemed pretty similar to the inverted magic that Talen had been trying to teach me the other night.

Could I somehow use my magic to hide not just my presence, but also make myself invisible and scentless? There was so much that I didn’t know about magic. I felt a pang of longing when I thought about my mother. What would she have taught me if she had raised me herself?