“I’m really sorry,” Annalise said in desperation. “I didn’t know he was a shifter! And I cut off from him and everyone else in my old life when I came here. I don’t even know how he found me!”
“He has some of the best trackers in the world in his crew,” Greyson said softly. “You got yourself hunted, and you put us in the middle.” He sighed and pushed off the wall he’d been leaning against, then leveled Ben with a look. “I’m with Barret. She has to go. These mountains are a panther safe haven, and she’s too big a risk to what we’ve built here.” Greyson followed Barret’s lead and left. At least he didn’t slam the door, so there was that.
Anson followed without a word, just a narrow-eyed glare for Annalise. And then it was just her and Jenny and Ben, drowning in silence.
Annalise cleared her throat delicately. “I’m really sorry I fought you. I don’t have good control over my animal—”
“Annalise, stop,” Ben demanded. “You apologize too damn much. I can tell you say sorry when you’re trying to keep from getting hurt, but you’re a fuckin’ panther now. Don’t mess up. Don’t make it to where we have to hear your apologies.”
“Ben,” Jenny said low.
“I don’t know what I’m gonna do with you,” he said, his blond brows arched up high. “You were already on a trial period, and you went after me and my crew on day three, woman. Day three! And the boys aren’t wrong. You brought a damn Barns grizzly up here after you.”
“I don’t understand what his last name or family have to do with any of this,” she huffed in frustration.
“You wouldn’t because you don’t know enough about your kind! You got bit. That sucks. It’s a shitty way to become a shifter. But you should’ve started researching immediately. You weren’t careful, you made some kind of bond with the exact type of shifter we try to keep out of these mountains, and you attracted him here. I’m gonna think on this. I have to take my crew’s wants into consideration, Annalise. Until I make a decision, I forbid you to see Jaxon Barns.” Ben’s eyes flashed with anger before he repeated, “I forbid it.”
Fury blasted through every cell in her body, burning her up instantly. Annalise stood in a rush and strode for the door before she gave into the urge to cuss him out. She was grown and had parents, so she sure as hell didn’t need some asshole alpha making rules like he was her damn father, instead of a man she barely knew, who was the same age as her.
He was being unreasonable and prejudiced, and it wasn’t fair, because yeah, she’d been thinking about Jaxon since the second she recognized the man in the truck. Not just thinking about him either, but thinking of how she could see him. There was a history and a connection there she couldn’t explain to these jerk-offs who wouldn’t listen to her anyway. Who would just make fun of her and tell her to turn her heart off like it was a light switch. She didn’t work like that. She’d tried and failed.
Three days since she’d texted with Jaxon, and she felt like her guts had been ripped out. Loneliness had been her only companion, and she wanted that high that Jaxon had given her for all those months. The one that staved off all those thoughts of what she’d lost—her relationship with her parents, and all of her friends. Hell, she couldn’t even eat in public and talk to strangers, because her eyes glowed, and she snarled uncontrollably, and Changed on a dime. She’d been cut off from everyone but Samuel, and he had his own busy life. Jaxon had been the only constant while she’d spiraled down into this awful, unfulfilling, solitary existence.
And now she had three billion questions for the man who had been hiding the same exact monstrous secret that she had, but she was forbidden to see him? From the man who had taken the sting, and the edge from her soul-deep loneliness?
It felt like she was losing everything all over again.
Burning tears welling up in her eyes, she jogged down the stairs and bolted for her cabin. She just wanted to be inside where nobody could see the breakdown that was coming. Anson and Greyson were talking quietly near Ben’s truck, and their eyes tracked her as she fled. Annalise ripped her gaze away from them and ran up the three porch stairs that led to her cabin. She was the first on the row. The door made a deafening sound as she slammed it behind her, and inside, she left the lights off so she could fall apart in the dark. It was evening, and only gray light filtered through the bay window near the small kitchen.
With a sob, she rested her forehead against the door and regretted throwing her phone in the water at her old home. She’d been so stupid. How could she have forgotten that re-reading their old messages had been medicine for her soul? When she was having a bad day, she’d watched the videos he’d made of him driving through a small town or through the woods while he talked to her. She missed the timbre of his voice and his country accent. She missed how confident he was in each syllable, missed imagining the man behind the camera as hers. She missed reading all of their silly conversations, but most of all, she missed the occasional ones that had been real. The ones where he had exposed something important about himself that made her fall a little harder for him.
But Jaxon was a ghost. He hadn’t been real until today. He’d been this elusive high she could get when she looked at her phone, but today, he had become a flesh and blood man. And now she wanted to see if his arms would feel as strong around her as she’d always imagined. She wanted desperately to see if he could make her feel as safe as she’d assumed.