“N-no, I’m not thinking about him.”
“Your pants are in serious danger of catching fire there, Annalise. Even if I couldn’t hear the stutter or the false notes in your voice”—Jenny pointed to Annalise’s face—“you’re stroking your lips like a weirdo.”
Oh, God, she really was. She yanked her hand from her mouth.
“Ben busted you two last night, just so you know you didn’t get away with anything. He sees everything that happens in and near his territory.” Jenny arched her delicate eyebrows high and gave her a serious look. “Careful with the grizzly. Ben and the boys can’t handle other dominants in their territory, and I don’t know if your instincts are firing on all pistons yet, but your boyfriend? He’s a frickin’ monster. It’s like a wasp in a hive, girl. You don’t want to get these boys all riled up. You’re gonna get blood on their hands if you aren’t more careful.”
“Jaxon was defending himself just fine yesterday,” Annalise muttered, feeling defensive.
“Oooh,” Jenny drawled out. “He has a name to you. So real feelings attached, too?” Jenny hugged her white towel to her chest and shook her head. “You’re gonna give my mate gray hairs prematurely. I’m calling it now. You’ll be worse than Lynn.”
Annalise cast a quick glance back toward the cabins sitting quietly in the gray dawn light in the shadow of the Appalachian Mountains. “Which house does she live in?”
“None of them right now. She’s in the treehouse. Lynn has some stuff she’s working through, but if she comes back to us, she’ll live there.” Jenny pointed behind them to the cabin right next to Annalise’s, second from the front.
Well, okay. Maybe Lynn was crazy, but Annalise was actually relieved that there might eventually be another girl in the crew. “Admission,” Annalise said softly as she pulled open the door to the bathroom, which looked like a little log cabin. “I don’t have any girl-friends anymore.”
“Welcome to the club,” Jenny said, pulling a toothbrush from the bag on her shoulder. “That’s one of the pitfalls of getting your ass bitten by a panther shifter. Girls are harder to come by in the big cat community. It’s a boys’ club. Sometimes the ladies don’t make very good monsters, if you know what I mean.”
“Yeah, actually, I completely get what you’re saying. I make a terrible monster.”
“Oh, my God, the worst,” Jenny said with a giggle as she started brushing her teeth at the sink. Around a frothy mouth of toothpaste, she said, “I saw your claw marks on Barret’s face, remember? Those were deep and intentional. You went after your own people and gave your back to a Gray Back grizzly. You’re crazy.”
Annalise’s frown deepened so much it made her forehead hurt. “Thanks.”
“Lynn’s crazy, too, and so am I, so don’t get your panties in a twist. You’re a black leopard, right?”
That question left Annalise completely baffled. “No. I’m a panther.”
“Yeah, but there are two kinds of big cats that fall under the panther shifter category. Get it? Cat-egory?” Jenny spat toothpaste in the sink and dipped down to fill her mouth straight from the faucet. She gurgled, spat again, and then said, “I saw your spots. We’ve only had one black leopard in the crew before, and he was a douche-canoe of the highest level. I’m a Jaguar. The boys are all Jaguars too, and so is Lynn. All black big-cats are called Panthers. But you’re a rare one, Miss Ma’am.”
Huh. Well that actually answered a burning question she’d had about her spots. Cool. A black leopard. “Can I play twenty questions?”
“Let me guess,” Jenny said, making her way into one of the shower stalls. “The boys haven’t explained anything to you.”
“I asked questions the first couple days but gave up when Anson answered everything with ‘your momma.’”
“Ha!” Jenny blasted out a laugh that echoed through the bathroom. “And asking Greyson would’ve gotten you the silent treatment. And Barret would’ve probably just tried to bite you. That man is a savage. Did you ask Ben anything?”
“No.” Annalise made her way into a stall of her own and pulled the curtain closed. Living out here was like living at a campground, and as she watched a spider drag its waterlogged body across the shower floor toward the drain, she thought perhaps she would never get used to this. “Ben feels big. It’s hard to explain. It’s like, when I’m around him, it’s hard to breathe and my chest gets all tight and my panther wants to rip out of my skin and fight him.”
The water turned on in Jenny’s stall. “Good God, you really are crazy. The first part of your story was normal. That heaviness you feel from Ben? That’s his alpha mojo. You should feel that. That’s what he uses to control the crew. Sounds bad, but they need all the guidance Ben can give them. He collects the broken souls, the C-Teamers, the big cats no one else wants. Some crews live closer to civilization, but we live out here for a reason. This place is Ben’s attempt to rehabilitate problem shifters.”
Annalise stripped out of her clothes and turned on the water as hot as it would go. “Well, that’s noble of him. I guess that’s why he is fine with me here.” Honestly, she didn’t really like that she’d been let into Red Havoc territory because she was broken.