The human’s voice was shaky as he continued. “Understand right now that if you choose to stay, I will be watching you. The first mistake you make, I’ll be on you so quick, you won’t know what hit you.”

“Forgive me if I’m not quivering with fear, Logan.” Seeing the surprise on the human’s face, Nick smiled. But it wasn’t a nice smile. “You don’t remember me? Because I sure remember you,” he rumbled.

The human cocked his head, studying Nick intensely. Then his eyes widened. Wariness crept into his expression, and the fear in his scent intensified.

“That’s right,” said Nick, his voice thick with anger. “I also remember how you get your kicks, just like I remember defending myself from you a number of times. Funny isn’t it that you say you hate our kind, but you sure enjoyed sexually abusing the shifters in that place?”

“What’s he talking about?” one of the humans asked Logan.

“I’m talking about the time that your leader worked as a guard in a shifter juvenile prison. Logan has a thing for young boys. I fought him off a number of times. Yeah…those aren’t good memories for me.” Nick gave Logan a pointed look. “So that presents you with a problem.”

“Are you threatening me?” Logan swallowed hard.

“I’m merely pointing out the facts.” Nick shrugged. “Trying to take me on always ended badly for you in the past. You simply might want to take that into consideration. It’s a smart man who learns from his mistakes. Speaking of mistakes…how’s your shoulder? Many people say that once you have an injury to the shoulder, it’s never the same again. That true?” On one of the occasions that the sick prick had tried to touch him, Nick had dislocated his shoulder.

Logan’s bitter expression confirmed that Nick was right. “How can what happened be abuse when you’re not people, you’re animals?”

Nick raised a brow. “So it’s bestiality that gives you your kicks? Wow.”

After a tense silence, Logan backed up a little. “I’ll be watching you, Axton. You’ll slip up, and I’ll be waiting.”

“Sure you will.” Nick’s expression warned him to move away. Logan wisely retreated, along with the others. Only when the humans had driven away did Nick move his eyes from the white van. Striding over to the SUV, he saw a scowling Derren lowering his window. “I take it you recognized Logan.” Nick’s words were barely understandable while anger was still bubbling inside him.

Gritting his teeth, Derren nodded. “All I wanted right then was to jump out of the SUV and rip his throat out.”

Nick sighed heavily. “I have more self-control than most people, but I nearly killed the bastard myself.”

“You were right not to,” said Derren. “There are too many witnesses. His time will come.”

“You know him?” Shaya asked Nick and Derren.

Forcing down his anger as best he could, Nick opened the rear passenger door. He didn’t move to let her pass, though. “Unfortunately, yes. You okay?” He knew his voice was still strained with anger, but he couldn’t soften it yet. He inhaled deeply, taking Shaya’s scent inside his lungs and using it to calm him. But the only thing that could totally calm him right then was the feel of her, and that wasn’t something he could indulge in.

Shaya nodded, wanting to know how he knew the human but conscious that his wolf was extremely tense right now. Revisiting what just happened would make things worse. “Fine.”

“Derren’s going to give you a ride home.” Nick didn’t trust himself alone with her while he was this wound up. The impulse to kiss her and hold her was too strong to ignore, especially when she would provide the calm he so needed.

The overprotectiveness got her back up. Making her even more pissed, Shaya found that she actually wanted to be with Nick and wanted to comfort him. It was instinctive—he was her mate, and something was clearly paining him. But that instinct made her want to slap herself. “He doesn’t need to—”

Nick ignored her. “Kent, do you need a ride home?”

“No, thanks,” he replied as he hopped out of the other side of the vehicle. “I have my MINI Cooper.”

Nick gave him a brief nod and then returned his attention to Shaya. “I’ll see you in the—”

Frustrated, Shaya went to get out of the SUV, but then she froze at the low warning growl that rumbled out of him.

“I can’t be around you right now, Shay. And I think you know why. But if you really insist on Derren not taking you home, I’ll do it myself regardless. The problem is I can’t guarantee I won’t touch you.” There was no way he’d let her walk home on such a cold evening. No mate would. When she opened her mouth to object again, he gave her a look that said he’d argue with her all night if he had to. Eventually she sighed and slumped in her seat. “Good girl. I’ll see you in the morning.”

“Go squat and piss up a tree, a**hole.”

He almost smiled at that. “Right.”

A few hours later, Nick was in his motor home tossing several pills into his mouth. These days, he took so many pills so often that he was surprised he didn’t rattle as he walked.

Derren shook his head from his seat at the U-shaped black leather dinette. “You didn’t tell me the headaches were happening so close together.”

Nick forced a careless shrug. “Why would I? It’s not important.”

“You can’t afford to be flippant about this, Nick.”

“The healing sessions worked, remember? As I recall, you were one of the people telling me not to let fear rule my actions and to go after Shaya.”

“I was also one of the people who heard Amber tell you the symptoms might return.”

Nick slumped onto the black leather sofa bed opposite the dinette, his eyes shut, pinching the bridge of his nose. Bruce joined him on the sofa and butted his shoulder, hinting for some attention. With his free hand, Nick began scratching him between the ears. “They’re just headaches, Derren. Bad, yes. Frequent, yes. But they’re still just headaches.”

Exasperation filled Derren’s voice. “Look, I get why you’re refusing to consider this might be something to worry about. And I get that you don’t want to let Shaya down again. But this is one time you can’t afford to risk yourself for other people. This is serious.”

Nick’s eyes flipped open. “You think I don’t know that? If at any time I’m convinced the symptoms are coming back and the healing sessions failed, I’ll leave. I don’t want Shaya being my caregiver. Unless that happens, I’m staying where I am.”

There was a short pause before Derren sighed. “Fine. Off topic, do you think Logan will be smart enough to leave you alone?”

“Nope. He has a score to settle—not just because I dislocated his shoulder once, but because I always managed to fight him off and intervened many times he tried abusing other shifters. Plus, I’m guessing he knows just how badly I’d like to hurt him. It would suit him if I retaliated, and he probably thinks that it won’t take much to make that happen.”

“You think he’ll spend his time trying to rile you, trying to get a violent response from you to support the extremists’ argument?”

“Think about it: If he can rile me enough to attack him, he can present an argument to the court that an alpha male who spent time in juvie isn’t reformed after all, that he’d attacked humans again. That will go a long way to proving that the current way of dealing with offending shifters isn’t working and that some changes are necessary.”

Derren shook his head, blowing out a breath. “Shit, Nick, you really need to leave this place. Any shifter with any sense is keeping a low profile while the court hearing is due.”

“I said Logan wants a reaction—I didn’t say he’d get it.” No matter what Logan or the other humans did, nothing would provoke him enough to retaliate. Not simply because being cooped up in a prison again would most likely send his wolf totally over the edge, but because behind bars would count as leaving Shaya again. He couldn’t do that. Nor could he add fuel to the current fire created by the human extremists—he would be letting down his entire race if he did that.

Derren rested his arms on the cherry wood table that the dinette framed. The wood ran throughout the entire motor home. “What if Shaya doesn’t come around? She’s angry, Nick.”

“She has a right to be.”

“No, she doesn’t, but she thinks she does because you haven’t told her everything. Right now, when she looks at you she sees a person who rejected and abandoned her. She sees someone she can’t rely on and who has every reason to suffer. When she finds out she put you through shit you didn’t deserve, she’s going to be pissed with you, and she’s going to feel guilty when it’s not her fault. That’s not fair to either of you.”

“You don’t like her, do you?”

“I don’t like that she’s not willing to give you a second chance.”

“Wait until you find your mate,” said Nick with a half smile. “Any emotion you feel is magnified tenfold, particularly pain. She’s right to be so reluctant.”

Derren gave him a “whatever” look. “I still say you should tell her everything.”

“I heard you. Now, are we playing poker or what? I’ve missed kicking your ass at it.”

“There’d be no sport in winning against a guy whose head is pounding so badly that he can’t even see properly. But as I don’t have a particularly fussy conscience, let’s play.”

CHAPTER FIVE

Finding Nick again waiting by his car with a Starbucks coffee for her the next morning, Shaya thought he looked a lot calmer. She, by contrast, wasn’t so calm. “You know, you and Derren are unbelievably alike. Neither of you can take a hint, and neither of you pay any attention to what other people want.” She still snatched one of the coffee cups, though.

As always, Nick and his wolf were amused by the snippy side of her nature. “Such charming manners.” When he tucked a stray curl behind her ear, she predictably slapped his hand away.

Shaya went to take a sip of the coffee but then stopped. “Wait, this isn’t the one you’ve been drinking out of, is it?”

“You ask that like I have an infectious disease or something.”

She shrugged. “I just don’t like sharing straws or glasses or cups with other people.”

“Really?”

“It’s one of my quirks.”

He raised a brow. “You have others?”

“Yes. I paint my nails when I’m extremely pissed off. I sleep diagonally. I have a serious issue with birds. I always lose my pens. And I hate using public bathrooms—I would rather hold it in until I get home. Even using the one at work is hard.”

Laughing, Nick opened the passenger door and gestured for her to hop in. Bruce was inside, lounging on the backseat. “I’ll give you a ride to work again.”

“I’m perfectly capable of getting there by myself, thanks.” In honesty, though, the offer was tempting since she was exhausted after another restless night—stress was a bitch. Not even going for a run in her wolf form in the wooded area behind her house had helped.

“I’ll even let you drive.”

That had her attention, and his smug smirk said he knew it. “Yeah, right.”

“Why wouldn’t I?”

“Because boys are weird like that—they don’t like anyone else even touching their car.”

“You’re my mate. What’s mine is yours.” He dangled the keys in front of her, watching her try to wrestle back her eagerness. But then movement in his peripheral vision caught his attention.

As his expression switched from playful to alert, she followed his gaze. Three males were gathered at the end of the street, casting subtle looks their way. “Aren’t they the rebels?”

Sensing her wolf’s nervousness, Nick closed the small distance between them. “It’s fine.” They didn’t appear to be looking for trouble, but he wouldn’t risk Shaya’s safety. “Well, are you driving or am I driving?”

Shaya regarded him curiously. “You’re not going to turn into an overprotective caveman and shove me in your car because strange males are lurking nearby?” It would be a typical reaction for a dominant male wolf.

“No, but I am hoping you’ll do the sensible thing and accept a ride.”

She wanted to, but that might insinuate to him that he was making progress with her. “I like to walk.” Rather than explode, he shrugged one shoulder.

“Then we walk.”

“I didn’t mean—” She growled. “Do you have to be such a pain in the ass?”

Cupping her chin, he ran his thumb over her bottom lip and seized her gaze with his. “Shay, I don’t know what those guys want, but I do know that I have no intention of letting them harm you. If that means pissing you off this morning by sticking by you as you make your way to work, that’s what I’ll do. I need to know you’re safe.”

She could point out that he had no right to appear after six months and appoint himself as her guardian, but that would be futile because he’d stick to her side no matter what she said if he believed her safety was at risk. Arguing with him would be fruitless and would only make her even later for work than she already was. “If I’m going to suffer your company this morning, I’ll do it in the comfort of your car. You drive. I want to drink my coffee.”