Chapter 5: I’m on Your Side

Chapter 5

I’m on Your Side

Two women stepped in, the older one obviously Drew’s mom, and the other just as obviously Drew’s sister by her age and also the striking resemblance. They matched the well-appointed house in a way I distinctly didn’t: nice clothes, nice make-up, that overall perfectly-groomed and polished look that I didn’t understand how any human achieved.

Well, they weren’t human. Maybe that helped.

I stood there awkwardly, feeling extremely human and shabby, as they hugged Drew and made their way into the living room.

And then they both turned their terrifying focus on me. Somehow I managed not to shrink in on myself and try to disappear.

“This must be…Ash,” Drew’s mother said, without a trace of warmth. She looked me up and down with chilly dark eyes, her mouth tightening.

“Sorry,” Drew said, in a way that suggested he was apologizing to her…but looking directly at me, his own dark eyes worried and pleading. I locked my gaze with his and took a deep breath. He’d rescued me. I owed him. I could do this, even though I didn’t understand what the hell was going on and knew this woman would’ve been willing to leave me to die in a ditch rather than risk her family’s reputation.

Fuck. She really would’ve. That chilled me to the bone.

But Drew had already crossed the room to me and slipped his arm around my waist, his heat and strength pressed against my side.

I’m on your side. Period.

He’d asked me to believe him, and now he was proving it, literally. I leaned into his hold, hoping he couldn’t feel me trembling. He’d think I was such a coward.

“Ash, this is my mom, Jeanette, and my sister Alyssa. Mom, Alyssa, my mate, Ash.”

They both stared at me, Jeanette still looking like she’d just as soon be introduced to a piece of garbage, and Alyssa with her matching dark-brown eyes narrowed, one manicured finger tapping against the side seam of her very expensive-looking jeans.

“I didn’t realize he’d recovered enough to be out of bed,” Jeanette said at last, as if I weren’t standing right there. “You could have called me instead of sending that absurdly vague text message, Drew.”

A heavy silence fell, and I could feel Drew’s anger and annoyance in the sudden tension of his body, the clench of his hand around my waist that might’ve been painful if I’d been capable of feeling it.

My spine stiffened. Yeah, so I might be an amnesiac, magically-fucked-up wanted criminal who wasn’t even in Drew’s sport, let alone his league. Not to mention human.

But seriously? I was supposed to be Drew’s mate! His husband, basically! Which meant this was my house. Not really, of course. But she thought it was!

I lifted my chin and stared her down, hoping that if she wolfed out and tried to rip my not-groomed-enough face off, Drew would intervene.

“Well, you could’ve called before you showed up on the doorstep before breakfast, too, and yet here we are,” I said.

The silence froze into something that felt like icicles should’ve been forming on the end of my nose.

Alyssa let out a sharp crack of laughter and then coughed dramatically, covering her mouth and turning her head and hacking in a way that sounded incredibly forced. E for effort, although the sidelong glance her mother shot her would’ve had me ducking for cover.

“I beg your pardon?” Jeanette’s hand flexed. Claws trying to come out? No glow, though, so she couldn’t be an alpha. Were there female alphas? I had no idea. And I so, so did not want to find out the hard way. “I visit my son whenever I wish, and some of us have things to do with the rest of the day. Drew? You’re allowing him to speak to me like that?”

Drew had turned into stone beside me, it felt like, and the increasing pressure of his fingers on my waist let me know I’d definitely have a bruise, pain or no pain. Hopefully he’d keep his own claws in check, because I was pretty sure they’d go straight through my liver at that angle. Or my kidneys, or something. Anatomy clearly wasn’t my strong suit.

“We’ve only had a few hours to get to know each other again,” Drew said, his voice low, clear, and deadly, only with a faint undertone of…God, fear? I glanced up. No, not fear, although that rumbling vibration had resembled it. His eyes glowed gold, and that wasn’t fear—it was suppressed rage. “A call would’ve been nice, yeah. This isn’t the easiest situation, Mom. And he can speak to anyone however he wants. This is his home. Our home.”

Jeanette leaned back a little as if trying not to step back, cowed by Drew’s alpha anger. But her face twisted with fury of her own, and she opened her mouth—

“He has a point, Mom,” Alyssa put in, drawling the words like no one in the room had gotten to the point of near-violence. “You raised an alpha, right? A real alpha. Of course he wants some alone time with his mate in his own space.”

I stared at her in awe, at the way she brushed her thumb over her shiny red fingernails, frowning down as if doing nothing more than inspecting a flaw in her manicure. She glanced up at her mother through her lashes. Measuring.

And Jeanette deflated, given an out through her daughter’s manipulation. “Of course,” she said, still cold, still hard. But with a hint of relief bleeding through. “I’d never have birthed a boy who couldn’t grow into a true alpha.” She smiled tightly, looking at Drew—but not quite meeting his eyes, I didn’t think. “We’ll leave you to rediscover your bond, Drew. But call me. Regularly. Everyone will want updates.”

Had I imagined that slight emphasis on everyone? I didn’t think so, and it made my blood feel all cold and sluggish in my veins all over again.

That was what Drew had been afraid of, hidden under his fury. His mother might not be much of a threat on her own, but she’d come to inspect me. Us. Our bond. For Drew’s uncle and for the rest of the family, for the pack and its alpha.

To see if they could get rid of me?

I pressed closer into Drew’s side, wanting to burrow into him and disappear, the bravado I’d summoned for a moment completely gone.

“I’ll keep in touch,” he said. “And we’ll see you in a month.”

“A month?” Jeannette demanded. “That’s too long—”

“A month,” Drew repeated heavily. “At least. It was great to see you.”

Alyssa looked up at her brother, eyes intent. “You too, Drew. Call me.”

She didn’t put any emphasis at all on that casual throwaway, but she didn’t need to.

Drew didn’t leave my side, didn’t remove his arm from around me. And after a moment, Alyssa went and opened the door, ushered her mother out, and turned back with her hand on the door. “Call me,” she mouthed.

And followed Jeannette out the door, shutting it behind them quietly.

We stood there in silence until both car doors had opened and closed, until the sound of the car faded away into the distance. For me, at least. Drew could surely still hear it, and I waited for him to stop listening.

At last he let out a deep sigh and let me go, stepping away and running his hands through his hair, muttering under his breath too low for me to catch the words.

I wrapped my own arms around myself. “If you hadn’t been here, would she have murdered me and buried my body in the woods?” My voice came out thin and small and terrified, exactly the way I felt.

Drew didn’t turn, standing facing away from me with his head bent down.

“No,” he said, low and rough. “I told you, you’re pack whether they like it or not. But she might’ve bullied and terrorized you until you ran off to the woods and killed yourself just to get away from her.”

Strangely, that didn’t make me feel a whole lot better.

I shivered and hugged myself tighter.

Drew turned around at last, and his face made me feel even worse. He’d wiped away any trace of emotion, leaving it blank and hard and set.

“I owe Alyssa for that.” He paused. I nodded. “I don’t think like that, by the way. That being an alpha’s the be-all end-all of existence.”

“I didn’t think you did.” That was his takeaway? That I might think he had an inflated sense of his own importance to match his mother’s warped worldview? “Can we go back to the part where your mom hates me and wishes I was dead, even if she wouldn’t do it herself? And the mate you were supposed to have if you’d done what your family wanted?”

“Sit down, and I’ll get you some more coffee and something to eat—”

“No!” The word burst out with a force, fueled by my incipient panic, that surprised even me, and Drew’s eyebrows went up. “No, fucking tell me. Just tell me. I deserve to know what I’m in the middle of!”

That quiet grating sound, I realized, was Drew’s teeth grinding together.

“Fine,” he gritted out. “Fine. Fuck!” He turned and paced away from me, spinning back once he’d gotten himself under control, I thought. “My family’s rich. More than rich. Buying politicians, multiple private jets, that kind of rich. My uncle has two sons, one alpha and one not. My alpha cousin’s a fucking waste of oxygen, and the other one’s not an alpha, so of course he’s worthless.” Drew rolled his eyes, grimacing. “So my uncle wants to groom me to take over the pack. Hence choosing a suitable mate for me, a female alpha from a pack like ours in Virginia.”

Well, at least that cleared up whether werewolf women could have alpha magic, but I didn’t feel inclined to pursue the subject given the cold, bleak look in Drew’s eyes and the way his hands kept flexing into fists at his sides, as if he had to work to keep the claws in.

“I started my own small tech company in my last year of college. Network security. I thought that’d get me out of my uncle’s shadow a little if he couldn’t hold money over me, but of course it turned out all the clients I thought I’d gotten on my own, he sent me. I turned the company over to my second in command and left for a while to clear my head. Ended up blackout drunk in some shitty bar in northern Nevada, and I woke up in a cell down the hall from yours. And you know what happened after that. Any more fucking questions?”

The cold, biting rage in his voice struck me like a blow, so much more painful than it would’ve been if he’d hit me with those fists or speared me with his claws.

I stumbled back a step, my own hands shaking. The way he was looking at me…like he hated me. Like he blamed me.

Maybe I shouldn’t have purposely antagonized his mother, who clearly agreed with her—brother? Brother-in-law?—about what Drew’s future ought to look like.

“No,” I whispered. “No more fucking questions.”

Drew stared at me for a long moment, a muscle in his jaw jumping like crazy. And then he took a step toward me.

And I stumbled back again, nearly tripping over my own feet, catching myself at the last second on the banister since I’d backed myself all the way to the staircase. Drew made an aborted movement, arm out as if to catch me when I fell, and stopped dead when I let out a little whimper of fright I couldn’t keep in and cringed out of his reach.

“That was uncalled for,” he said in a low growl.

What part of what I’d done? I could think of a few things, but I didn’t know what to apologize for. What to say to abate his anger. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to—anything, whatever it is, I didn’t mean—”

“Not you! Fuck, Ash, me. What I said to you just now. I hate everything about this, except you. And I’d never hurt you. I don’t care how fucking angry I get. I was an asshole, and maybe I’ll be an asshole again, and I’m sorry. I’m still kind of—less balanced than I thought, I guess. But I will never, ever hurt you.”

A shaky laugh that sounded almost more like a sob hitched out of me, my eyes watering. “No, because no one can hurt me. Kill me, yeah, anyone could do that, because I’m so pathetic and weak. But you couldn’t hurt me even if you wanted to. Thank you, evil warlocks, right?”

Slowly, so slowly, Drew closed the distance between us, reaching out once he’d gotten close enough to touch.

I didn’t move. I didn’t want to startle him, for one thing, and for another…I knew he wouldn’t hurt me, I knew it, but Drew was a predator and had a family of predators who wanted to kill me, and I couldn’t get all my warring instincts under control. It left me frozen with indecision.

Drew brushed his fingers down my cheek, so gently I almost couldn’t feel it, stroked his hand along the curve of my neck, and let it rest on my shoulder, squeezing me just as gently. He bent down so he could look right into my eyes.

I let myself fall into his, taking a deep breath, savoring the warmth of his hand.

“I used you to get my family off my back,” he said quietly. “And—”

No, I couldn’t let that pass. Even as pissed as I’d been and as afraid as I’d realized I ought to be of the situation.

“You saved my life. Drew, you saved it twice—”

“Yeah, I did, and I also used you without your consent. They’re not mutually exclusive.” He stroked over my collarbone with his thumb, calluses creating such an odd sensation on my soft skin that wasn’t pleasure, wasn’t pain: friction, texture, heat. “You owe me, but I owe you, too.” He quirked a smile at me. “For putting my mom in her place earlier, too, when I didn’t have the balls. That wasn’t the smartest, but fuck, it was awesome. Ash, listen to me. Maybe once you owe someone enough back and forth, you don’t need to keep track anymore, okay? I trust you. I’m on your side, like I said. I wouldn’t hurt you, and I’ll keep anyone else from hurting you, and…can we be on each other’s sides? And trust each other?”

Can you trust me? He hadn’t asked that, but that was what he meant.

And that almost made me laugh again, because no matter how much part of me shied away from the alpha werewolf side of him, I couldn’t not trust him. Partly because I didn’t have anyone else, and partly because most of my mind and body wanted to curl up in his arms and let him do whatever he wanted as long as he kept me warm.

“Us against the world?” I asked softly. His eyes lit up, and I smiled after all, unable to hold it back. “I trust you too.”

His other hand came up to rest on my other shoulder, and he pulled me a little closer. I let myself be reeled in until I leaned against his chest, closing my eyes and breathing him in.

“Yeah, us against the world,” he murmured into my hair. “We’ve got a month without interference. We’ll make a plan, we’ll rest and regroup. We’ll figure out the deal with your warrant. It’ll be all right, Ash. I promise you.”

I knew that wasn’t a promise he could make. But I nodded against his chest anyway, and I smiled when he leaned his head down on mine and held me close, all my fears pushed away.