34. Chapter 34

Chapter 34

L ayla was still in a daze a few days later. Jackson had been walking with her every afternoon since she had seen him with her mother, but she was constantly losing herself in her thoughts. She couldn't appreciate being outside.

Her mother had been there all along.

Her mother was the red wolf that everyone had told her was imaginary.

And she was going to turn into a werewolf.

She looked up at Jackson, who seemed to have his attention on something else. Maybe all the chatter going on in the town that she hadn't been able to block out because she was distracted.

"What about Brit?"

"Rebecca disappeared before I could ask her anything, and I haven't found her again since. She only comes out when she wants to be seen."

Typical.

"Maybe I should bring Brit here—"

"She's safer where she is."

She called and texted Britney daily, and her sister seemed to enjoy the new residence. She hadn't mentioned her fear of her bodyguards and Jackson again, but she knew it would still be on her mind. She couldn't help wondering if it was because her sister was the same, and she sensed something different about them.

She needed to know if her sister would be like her. There was so much she would need to prepare to make sure they would both be safe wherever they ended up.

"The wolf gene might have skipped her completely," Jackson continued. "It happens sometimes with half-bloods. Or she might shift when she's eighteen. Or when she's older like you. Or not at all, even with the wolf gene. I don't know. You'll have to keep her close and watch her."

Brit would be eighteen before the baby was born. How was she supposed to watch her?

"Stop worrying."

She frowned as she fought to control her emotions. Jackson had told her everything because she'd argued that it was better for her that way. She didn't want to admit that she'd been wrong. Ignorance had been such bliss. Now on top of the guilt of what she had done to Jackson and his pack, she had all the anxiety for her sister and her rage for Rebecca. Not to mention the feeling that Jackson had betrayed her.

Which was stupid because Jackson didn't owe her anything.

"She'll be eighteen soon," she stated.

"I'm aware. I think we'll move there. It might be better for you in the long run if you don't give birth here."

Because he didn't trust his pack. That much was evident since they had attacked them in the garage.

"And then you'll take the baby and leave?" she asked quietly.

"Yes. I‘ll transfer all your money the day you give birth."

His answer hadn't changed since they'd made the deal. He stated it without hesitation and crushed her every time. She knew she had become attached to him the time she'd had to take care of him, but now it felt like it was more than that. The thought of being separated from him...

"How will I survive it?" she whispered.

"You knew you'd have to give me the baby when you agreed to this. Don't complicate things."

She hadn't been asking about being separated from the baby; she wanted to know if she would survive the pain of being far from him. But the way he said it so firmly confirmed everything. He didn't want anything to do with her.

She slowed her steps when the pain singed every part of her body. It felt like she was dying somehow.

‘Beg him!'

That voice. It had returned with a vengeance the day she had seen her mother.

Jackson stopped walking and looked back at her with a frown.

"I'm tired. I want to head back," she lied.

She didn't know if he could tell she was lying. He just nodded and turned so they could walk out of the woods.

"I've told Dylan to meet you at the door. There's something I need to check out," Jackson said.

"How do you talk to each other like that?" she asked.

Anything to get her focus away from the way she was feeling.

"Wolves in the same pack can communicate telepathically with individuals or the whole pack if they're close enough."

"Will I be able to do that?"

"Not with my pack, but you can do that with your mother."

Her steps faltered again.

So she'd been talking to her mother all that time? Was that real? The woman who'd abandoned her had returned and dared to offer her advice as a wolf?

Her fists clenched, and she increased her speed.

"What did I do now?"

"Nothing," she snapped.

She took a breath and calmed herself. She was angry with Rebecca, not Jackson. It was unfair to take it out on him. Her moods had been all over the place lately; thinking about her mother made things worse.

"Cain wants to know why you're lying. You keep scaring him; he doesn't know how to be around you anymore."

"Cain?"

She was sure she hadn't met anyone called Cain.

"My wolf."

She stopped and turned to look at him, her eyes wide.

"You can talk to it?"

"Him, not it. And yes, though I tend to ignore him because he talks too much."

That voice in her head.

Her breath caught when she realised what that meant. All that noise in her head, all the stupid suggestions...

‘Not stupid.'

She almost jumped out of her skin. To think she had schizophrenia was one thing. She'd even accepted that all of that had to do with her wolf blood. But for it to be privy to her thoughts? It felt like a violation.

"What happened?" Jackson asked.

"I..." She just finally realised that she wasn't losing her mind. "Nothing."

It had been one realisation after another. The past few days, she'd replayed every interaction she'd ever had with the red wolf, all the conversations. And then, once Jackson had brought her to the packhouse and all the changes had started, she'd started hearing the other voice, so different from the one she'd always heard when she saw the red wolf.

She was a wolf.

Holy shit.

Though she had mulled over her mother's words for days, that fact sunk in as she started walking again.

She was going to turn into a monster. Like her mother. Like Jackson.

Like her baby?

"Wait. Why do I still have to leave?" she asked. "Back at the hotel, you said I'd have to leave because I'm a half-blood, and no one would accept me. If I'm going to be like you and the baby, why do I have to go?"

Jackson didn't look at her, but she felt something like repulsion coming from him. And that made her remember that he didn't want her there.

"Even when you shift, you won't be like us, Layla. You heard what your mother said."

That Hunters would always be after her? Weren't they after all the wolves? Her heart started to crack, and the pain she had been trying to hide from returned.

And only then did she acknowledge that she had been hoping to stay because somehow, in all that mess, she had fallen in love with Jackson King.

The man who only wanted the baby she was carrying for him.

Though he was doing all he could to teach her how to live like a wolf, he had made it very clear that he would not be part of her life.

"Right. Yes, sorry," she answered.

She didn't speak to him the rest of the walk back. She pushed all her emotions down until she was numb. It was the only way she could stop herself from falling apart.

Jackson stopped at the foot of the front steps and turned to face something in the distance. She almost didn't notice the change in the air until she saw him tense. His eyes started to bleed red, and she swore he looked slightly bigger.

"Take the ladies to our bedroom and lock the door," he growled.

Something was happening. Was this the reckoning? Was this the day he would be punished for killing the man who'd been sent to carry out the law?

"Jackson?"

"Go," he growled again, and then he started running.

It wasn't until she watched him strip as he ran and changed into the beast she had met once before that another horrible thought hit her.

Was this the last time she would see the man she had just admitted she loved?