“I already know,” I said, and let my eyes trail down his lean body again. “Grew up here, remember? I’ll shift in three days unless my blood rejects it, and in that case, I’ll die.” His muscles looked deliciously strong, and as I descended the stairs, moving closer to him, I could feel the heat radiating from his sun-kissed skin.

“You won’t die,” he said. He started to smile. I saw a hint of it touching his full lips, but it vanished quickly. “I can already smell the wolf coming from your skin. You’ll shift.”

“Huh,” I said. He was watching me closely as my foot fell on the last step. I wanted to run at him, but I fought against it. What had Dominic said? Don’t back down? I tried to imitate Dominic, keeping my head high, and my shoulders back. I pictured his strut and his confidence, and I channeled it. Honed it in and projected it.

Aidan noticed. His face lost a little color, and he sucked in a loud breath. “I’m not going to tolerate you stepping over me. If you want to be part of my pack, you better learn your place.”

“Who says I want to be part of your pack?” I purred. Purred! I almost laughed at myself. I really wasn’t the purring type. Blunt and direct was more my style. But this guy … I licked my lips. Completely involuntary, I swear, and my eyes raked over him again.

He arched a brow and smirked … a little. “Your hatred towards me is a bit much, don’t you think?”

Hatred? Clearly, he was misreading me. He squirmed a little and his face went a bit whiter. And I grinned. I couldn’t help it. I had never had a guy squirm from my stare before and I had to admit, it was a bit exhilarating. “Actually, no, I don’t,” I said, playing along. “You lied to me.”

He sighed, a frustrated kind of sound. “You never asked, Jade. You just assumed I was human. I never lied.”

We were only a few feet apart now; just a couple more steps and I’d be able to run my hand over his chest. I shrugged lazily and took another step. “Lying by omission. It’s the same thing, genius.”

He chuckled. The sound was like velvet. Soft and strong and it made my knees go weak. He noticed that, too, and chuckled again. “I can’t omit anything that I wasn’t asked about.”

I was about to tell him that he was being an ass-hat. What a stupid cop-out. And by the look he was giving me, he knew exactly how stupid he sounded, but I didn’t get a chance, because Marcy came barging through the front door.

“Jade, I’m so sorry. Dom made me leave this morning.” She slammed the door behind her, turned around, and ran smack into Aidan’s chest. “Oh,” she squealed, surprised. She took a step back, realized whom it was, and then she gave him the dirtiest look I had ever seen. She put her hands on her hips and narrowed her eyes further. “What are you doing here?”

Aidan gave her a quick once over and said, not cruelly, but with a definitely uncaring tone, “Trying to decide if I want her in my pack or not.”

Marcy gasped, and hopped another step back. “You can’t ban her.”

He smiled and then laughed uneasily. “Yeah, I can. It’s not an automatic entry. She wasn’t recruited. She picked a fight and got bitten.”

“I didn’t pick a fight,” I said, folding my arms over my chest. My bottom lip jutted out, and I hated myself for it. Really? Was I really going to pout about this? Technically, I had picked a fight. I could have walked away. But still, hearing him say it, seeing that look on his face, it was as if he thought I was nothing more than trouble.

“Aidan, dude, you’re being a douche bag,” Marcy blurted. Aidan’s eyes flared, and her hands flew up in surrender. “Settle down, boy. I’m all about team werewolf, but she hasn’t even shifted yet. Can’t this, you know, wait? Maybe you could come back tomorrow or something?”

Aidan didn’t even think about it before he shook his head and said, “Nope, someone’s got to stay with her.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” Marcy said, standing a little straighter, and she fixed her glare back in place. She was aiming for fierce, I was sure of it, but right then she looked more like a little kitten testing out her claws.

“I mean a pack member, Mac,” he said with a groan. “Someone needs to monitor her just in case …”

“You said …” I started, but Aidan promptly cut me off.

“Things can always go wrong, Jade.”

“Trevor,” Marcy blurted. “Can he stay with us?”

Aidan gritted his teeth and it almost looked as if he was trying to find a reason to say no, but after a moment of consideration, he fished his phone out of his pocket. He scrolled through his address book, tapped on the screen, and then brought the phone to his ear. “Trevor, come to Jade’s. I need you to stay here with the girls.” There was a long silence and Aidan stiffened. One by one, deep lines began appearing on his forehead. “When?” he asked. Another pause. “How many?” He must not have liked the answer because a growl slipped out, and he turned his back on us. “Just get here,” he snapped, and then he shoved his phone back into his pocket.

“What’s wrong?” I asked, although even to my own ears my voice didn’t sound like I cared. His back was stiff, the muscles under his skin coiled and bulged, and the urge to touch him again was unbearable. I took a step, moving toward him, and he spun around.

Aidan’s eyes were golden. Not a speck of the delicious brown left. Strands of course hair littered his cheeks, and his skin looked as if it was crawling. Seeing him on the verge of shifting awoke something in me. Something … deliriously physical. My muscles began to ache in an amazing kind of way and prickles ran over my skin. It was as if my body wanted to shift with him. Anything to be closer to him.

“Jade, you will not let anyone other than Trevor and Marcy through those doors. Am I clear?” His voice was a deep growl, and his eyes held me with such intensity that I couldn’t move.

“Crystal,” I whispered.

I couldn’t say how long we stood there watching each other. It could have been seconds or minutes or hours, but it didn’t matter. Right then, I could have stayed there forever, lost in his shimmering eyes.

“Trevor’s here,” he grumbled, shattering the perfect moment into millions of sharp edged shards.

There was a loud bang on the door, and Aidan turned away from me, grabbed the handle, and pulled it open.

Trevor looked … rattled, and there was a jagged rip across the front of his blue sweater. There was also a gash along his right cheekbone that looked as if it was starting to heal. It was still a bright pink, and there was dried, crusty blood along the edges.

“What happened?” Marcy shrieked and rushed over to him. She started fussing over his sweater and his cheek, making a bunch of anxious gasping sounds.

Trevor grabbed her hands, holding her still, and exchanged a long look with Aidan that I couldn’t even begin to understand. And then Aidan glanced at me and said, “By the way. You’ll need to learn how to control that.”

“Control what?” I asked and hated the pout I heard in my voice. He stepped out the door, keeping his back to me, and I hated that, too. He was leaving, which was a good thing, maybe, kind of. Well it should have been, but darn it, I didn’t want him to go.

He glanced over his shoulder, and winked. “Your lust. Your scent is screaming sex.” And then he walked out the door, shutting it quickly behind him.

CHAPTER 20

~ AIDAN ~

It was easier leaving than I had thought it would be. My inner-wolf wanted Jade so badly that it took everything in me not to shift. With Jade’s enthralling scent and Trevor’s news, I really hadn’t thought I would have been able to walk out that door and leave her alone, but I did it. As soon as I shut the door behind me, I let out a pent-up breath that I hadn’t even realized I’d been holding, and I dug my phone out of my pocket. I fired off a text to Dominic telling him to meet me at my motel room and to bring Jeff. I had some question for both of them, and it was time that they started talking.

I got into my car, started it up, and pulled out of the driveway before I could change my mind. She was handling it all better than I had expected. She didn’t need me. And knowing that she didn’t need me, made it so much harder to deal with. I wanted her to need me.

But what I really needed was a shower. Preferably a cold one.

Jade’s scent had held a distinctly alpha quality to it, and she was responding to me exactly how I had hoped she would. I was an unclaimed alpha, and her inner-wolf had picked up on it immediately, even if she didn’t know that it had happened. Female wolves’ hormones tended to go a touch haywire when there was an unclaimed alpha nearby, and since she had liked me beforehand, well, it was all a little more … intense.

Thankfully, when I arrived back at the motel, the parking lot was empty. I darted into my room, and knowing I probably only had a few minutes before Dominic would get there, I stripped off my clothes and jumped into the shower, turning the taps as cold as I could stand.

The shower helped … a little. I had just turned off the ice water when I heard a thudding knock at my door. I got dressed in a rush and yanked the door open, and just as I did, Jeff’s fist slammed into my jaw.

I stumbled back a step, and a sharp pain shot through my face. What was it about the Shaws that made them want to hit me? Yesterday, Jade. Today, her father.

Dominic was on him in a flash, grabbing his arms and holding them behind his back. Jeff didn’t struggle. He stood just outside my door glaring at me.

“Okay, yeah, I probably deserved that,” I said, rubbing my aching jaw. The skin was already hot under my hand. “But I warn you, Jeff, don’t do it again. I’m not Ray, and I will not humor you.” I turned from them, padded over to the lone desk chair in my room, and took a seat before I said, “Let him go, Dom.”

“Yeah, you did deserve it,” Jeff said, shaking his hand out. “Don’t you ever try to kick me out of my own house again.”