He nodded to her just before she turned and disappeared down the trail. Already he missed her. God, he was losing his mind.
Bring her back.
Jaxon shook his head hard. Shut the fuck up, Titan. She belongs here.
A wave of nausea threatened to make him gag on that thought, and before he could stop Titan’s imaginings, a picture of them driving from town to town flashed through his mind. Endless road trips, her smiling from the passenger’s seat of his truck, and him fucking her relentlessly in cheap motels. But Titan had made a misstep with that image. What kind of life would that be for a girl like Annalise? She’d come here to settle. She wasn’t a nomad, and if she said her cat needed a crew, she sure as hell wasn’t a rogue.
Jaxon was stuck in an endless cycle of roaming and spending a few days with the Gray Backs. Roaming, Gray Backs, roaming, Gray Backs, times infinity. He couldn’t stop. He’d tried and failed a hundred times.
Titan would ruin Annalise. Her cat needed stability, and all he had to offer was chaos.
He muttered a curse and stood, made his way to his truck, shaking his head. When he looked up to grab the door handle, Ben stood there against the door of his ride, arms crossed, eyes blazing gold, lips curled back to expose teeth that were too sharp at the canines.
Jaxon startled hard and skidded to a stop. Damn cats could sneak up on anyone. It made him want to bleed the alpha. Typical Titan.
“Move,” he rumbled in warning.
To Jaxon’s utter surprise, Ben did. Immediately. Jaxon narrowed his eyes suspiciously and climbed into his truck, but Ben slid into the passenger’s seat and demanded, “Drive, Grizzly.”
Now Jaxon didn’t like being told what to do in general—that was the Gray Back in him—but he was pretty damn close to panther territory and Ben had control over Annalise’s future. Not bothering to hide the growl in his throat, Jaxon hit the gas and eased them onto the abandoned logging road he’d found earlier.
“I forbade her to see you, and you have her breaking my rules immediately.” Ben’s voice shook with fury.
“If you Change in my truck, we’re going to have a huge problem,” Jaxon warned him.
“What is it about her? What do you want with her?”
“She ain’t your cat yet.”
Ben slammed his open palm against the dashboard. “I lost two already! In a year, I’ve lost two, Grizzly. You are rogue. You aren’t an alpha, so you can’t understand what it does to a man like me to lose crew. I want her.”
Red rage boiled up through Jaxon’s chest, and he slammed on the brakes so hard the truck skidded sideways before it lurched to a stop. “What the fuck do you mean, you want her?”
“I’m paired up. Bonded. I have my family built. I don’t have a complete crew yet, though. My animal…I need more. I need Annalise under me.”
“Great. If that’s what she wants, I’m good with it. So why the fuck are you telling me this.”
“Because tonight I got a call from someone I haven’t spoken to in a lot of years, someone who changed my life when I was a cub. Someone who told me before I went into Apex, and before my panther got stripped from my body, that I would get my animal back someday. Someone who can see the future, gave me hope, and got me through that goddamned facility on the days when I just wanted to give up.”
“Beaston,” Jaxon murmured. Why was Beaston involved in this now?
“Yeah. Him. The seer from your crew called me and told me I have to let Annalise go. And when I asked him why? He said one word before he hung up.”
“What word?”
“Jaxon.”
“Jesus,” Jaxon uttered on a breath. So she was it then. Annalise was his. A mixture of relief and utter disappointment spun inside of him like a slow-moving tornado. Relief because she felt important, and if Beaston said she was his, then she was, and that was that. But nothing had changed over the past few hours. He was still a nomad, still a rogue, and would still hurt Annalise and She-Devil with the life he required to stay steady.
“Why couldn’t you have just left her alone?” Ben said quietly. He didn’t smell of rage anymore, and the raw waves of power weren’t pulsing from the alpha’s body any longer. He sounded defeated.
“How did you lose your cats?”
Ben twitched his head and made a ticking sound behind his teeth. “None of your business, Outsider.”
In this moment, Ben reminded Jaxon so much of the alpha he’d grown up under, Creed. He was strong, firm, but quiet with the hard stuff, and never let outsiders know about the inner workings of his crew. So he waited. Time was the only thing that had ever loosened up Creed, and the same worked here in the dark woods that bordered Red Havoc territory, in his truck, with the sound of the dinging seatbelt warning the only noise to break up the heavy silence.
At last, Ben murmured, “I had a female named Winter. I worked on her for three years to pledge, but she never attached. It was a failure. She fit here, and I couldn’t get her to commit. I had to let her go find a better life in Kane’s Blackwing Crew. It ripped my guts out to say goodbye, knowing I was really letting her go to another alpha. To a crew who weren’t panthers. I’ve had to put down cats before. It changes an alpha’s soul when you can’t fix one, when the only help you can offer is ending their suffering and protecting the world from the poisoned animal inside of them. Those kills are dark marks against your soul. And saying goodbye to Winter felt just as awful. I thought that was the worst it could get.”