Tears welled up in her eyes as she opened the door slowly and took a picture of her brother leaned up against the car, arms crossed, glaring at her. And then she did something that would hurt her for always because it would hurt someone she had grown to care for deeply.
She sent the picture of her brother and typed out, The distance you felt was real. I have moved on. It’s moving day. I’m moving in with him. I’m so sorry. Send.
Shoulders heaving with her emotions, she rushed to the kitchen sink and dropped her phone into a bowl of water that sat inside. If she didn’t cut herself off completely, she would get weak and crawl back. She would drag both of their hearts through this because she couldn’t help herself. Jaxon was her addiction. He was happy moments when she’d been struggling to find them before. Even if he was full of secrets and closed off half the time, he still felt steady.
Hands shaking, she clenched them at her sides and forced herself to leave the phone drowning in the water. It was done. No more leading him on, no more pretending she could have a normal life with someone like him.
It was high time she, Annalise Sutter, accepted that she was a shifter.
She couldn’t depend on Jaxon to keep her steady now.
If she wanted any kind of stable life back, she would have to depend on the Red Havoc Crew.
Chapter Two
“Son of a bag of dicks,” Jaxon muttered as he looked over the steering wheel of his truck to what definitely resembled a moonshiner’s camp. This was not at all the hotel he’d been told Annalise would be at. He’d been duped.
Jaxon rolled down the window halfway, scented the fresh Virginia forest smells, and promptly gagged. It smelled like cat piss. Mother fucker.
As seven different revenges played across his mind, he connected a call back home to Damon’s Mountains.
“Hey, Jax!”
“Bash, please tell me you didn’t send me straight into panther territory to find Annalise.”
There were a few moments of silence before the best stalker-slash-hunter in the Boarlander crew lowered his voice. “Your mom made me not tell you. She’s scary.”
Jaxon scrubbed his hand over his face tiredly and then strangled the wheel with his free hand. “Is she there?”
“No?” The brawler bear shifter didn’t even try to hide the lie in his voice.
“Bash!”
“She’s been waiting for you to call me. We’re eating Twinkies and drinking beer on my front porch. Your dad and brother are here, too.”
“Hey dickweed,” his twin brother, Jathan, called through the line.
“Oh God, this is my nightmare,” Jaxon muttered.
“I had a nightmare last night, too,” Bash said solemnly. “I dreamed that I accidentally told you that Annalise was a panther shifter, and your mom made the grocery store stop selling pizza rolls like she said she was gonna do, and I couldn’t figure out how to special-order the pepperoni ones, and they would only deliver cheese ones—”
“Give me the phone,” Ma muttered across the line. There was a blast of static and then, “Hey, baby boy.”
“Ma, what the fuck? She’s a panther?”
“First off, don’t use the word fuck with me unless you do that curse justice. Second, I had good reasons for keeping her big-catness quiet.”
“Just…” Jax counted to three in his head and prayed for patience. “Please tell me what’s going on.”
“Okay, pinky swear me you won’t get mad.”
“No.”
“Fine. I accidentally made Bash research her when you first started talking, and I know how you feel about dating shifters, so I accidentally kept it a secret that she wasn’t human. Did you bring the green M&Ms?”
Jaxon blew out a soft, steadying breath and did another three-count before answering carefully. “Why would I bring her candy right now?”
“Orange M&M’s will make her boobs grow, but I’ve seen a picture of your girl, and she’s got plenty. You don’t need those. Green M&M’s will make her horny. You’re welcome.”
Jaxon stared defeatedly out the window, shaking his head as he watched a pair of birds on a low-hanging branch. His ma, Willamena Madden, aka Willa Barns, aka Almost Alpha, aka Second of the Gray Back Crew was a handful on a good day. But right now, she was being ridiculous.
“Hey,” Jathan crowed in the background. “Remember that one time Jaxon dated a panther shifter for four months and didn’t even know it?” The slap of hands sounded, and Jaxon could just imagine him high-fiving his dad. This was the worst day ever.
A freaking panther shifter? He wanted to kick everything. He’d been epically lied to, not only by the girl he’d been talking to for months, but by his family and Bash. And now several things Annalise had said or hinted at made sense. She’d been asking him more about shifter stuff lately, like she was testing him. He’d thought she had figured out he was a grizzly shifter and had been avoiding her questions like the plague. His views on his animal were…complicated.
And now his views on Annalise were pretty damn complicated, too. If Bash was right, and she was here, she was in the heart of a notoriously private, violent, and reclusive crew of panthers. Jax’s bear was a brawler, but he didn’t know enough about this crew to go in there guns blazing and asking what the fuck Annalise meant by ditching him all the sudden three days ago. He knew the picture she sent was of her brother, but she’d gotten rid of her phone or something and hadn’t picked up in days.