that was quickly dashed away when I heard footsteps coming after me. I fished my keys out of my pocket, ready to get in my car and go home, when a hand landed on my shoulder.
“Shan, stop!”
I turned, knowing as I looked at Jai that he didn’t realise he was using his alpha whip. The force of his will had me pinned to the spot. I fought it, but my muscles couldn’t obey my brain’s frantic commands.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t know they were going to… I wanted to…”
Frozen I might be, but I got to experience the singular pleasure of seeing Jai Heller lose his cool. Those big hands, comfortable shearing sheep and tying ropes, pulling fish from the river and gutting his kills with a brutal efficiency, now clawed at the air, the muscles in his shoulders bunching under his nice snap button shirt. I refused to look away when his eyes met mine, ready to blame it on his voice pinning me to the spot. “Shan, you know I’ve—”
That was it. To this day, I don’t know how I did it, but I shook off his pulsing will like it was nothing, a strange rage rising within me.
“I know…what? That you slept with me graduation night and then basically stopped talking to me? That I used to hover around you like some pathetic little puppy, so desperate for your attention, but I didn’t after that night? That afterwards, I went down to the pub with the girls, thinking I’d see you again and I did, walking right into Laurel Maitland’s arms? And then so, so many girls after that. I stopped hanging out with Jaz. What could I tell her? That seeing you, hearing about you and your…escapades hurt too much? That I didn’t just lose you, I lost my best friends as well?”
I watched every single one of my words land, wondering if he flinched like that because of what I was saying, or because he’d so rarely heard someone talk to him in that kind of tone. His mum did, so did his sisters. But me? I was just a pale little ghost hovering in the orbit of his dark star.
Jai was a beautiful boy growing up. Skin bronzed brown and long, nimble limbs, it had deepened over time. Now he was a man, a powerful figure with long, hard muscles. The product of thousands of years of honing, he was a warrior in jeans and a plaid shirt. But if I looked at him longingly, so did many others. So, so many others.
“Shan…” he said as I turned to unlock the car, his hand slamming down on the roof when I opened the door. “Rob warned me off, all right? That night… He told me to stay away from you, until you were older. We don’t get free rein, you know that. I…”
I turned around slowly, his words reverberating around in my head until I could barely make sense of them.
“Shan, I wouldn’t have… I thought we could start something. See how it went. You weren’t pack, but they seemed to accept you because of your nan and I…” He shook his head, grabbed my hand and held it to his chest. “None of this means shit. You don’t want me? Tell me to piss off.”
“Piss off,” I croaked out.
His grin was swift and rueful. He paused and looked me over with a quick eye before nodding.
“I guess I deserve that.” He stopped still, standing tall, casting me in his shadow, and wasn’t that a fitting metaphor for our relationship? “Pretend none of that stuff happened.”
“I can’t.”
“The girl who wrote all those crazy stories in her journal when she was supposed to be doing her maths work can’t imagine things?” He shook his head. “If none of that had happened, if you’d never seen me go off with… If I said I had permission from the alphas to see how things would go with us, what would you have done?”
“I’d have watched you and waited,” I said with absolute certainty. It’d been what I’d done anyway. “I’d have looked for some sort of confirmation in your actions that all your talk wasn’t bullshit.”
His smile was bright, his nod thoughtful, and for a moment, he just stared at me.
“That I can work with. Will you watch me, Shan? Watch me try to make it clear to you, that we’re…”
His words died away as he just stared at me, until he moved forward, slowly enough that I