I forbid it.
Annalise pushed off the door and wiped her eyes furiously with the sleeve of her sweater. Ben had forbidden her to see Jaxon. He hadn’t forbidden her to talk to him.
Annalise still hadn’t had a chance to replace her cell phone, but there was a landline in the kitchen. She locked the door and made her way to it, then hopped up on the counter. Feeling utterly reckless, she dialed the number she’d memorized by heart.
This was against their rules. They’d never talked on the phone, only texted. Twice she’d accidentally called him, and he’d rejected the call both times. Please let the third time be the charm.
It rang. And rang. And rang. When the voicemail came on—some generic woman’s robotic voice telling her to leave a message—she slammed her back against the wall and dialed again.
They owed each other answers, dammit.
“Hello,” came the angry, growly voice at the other end.
“Please tell me it’s you,” she whispered in a rush.
The line went silent. So silent that she checked she hadn’t accidentally hit the button and hung up on him. “Please,” she repeated.
After what felt like years, he murmured, “It’s me.”
“Why didn’t you tell me, Jax? Why didn’t you tell me you were a shifter?”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I asked first.”
“I don’t know!” There was a loaded pause and then, “Are you crying?”
She kept it quiet, but her shoulders were shaking and tears streamed down her damp cheeks. Annalise rolled her head back against the wall and stared at the exposed rafters of her cabin. When she could get words past her tightened throat, she squeaked out, “It’s just really fucking good to hear your voice.”
“Baaaabe,” he murmured. “Fuck. Where are you? I can come back.”
“No, you can’t. I’m forbidden to see you.”
“But you can talk to me?”
“No. I don’t know. I didn’t ask, I just called. I had to. Jaxon, you looked sooo…”
“So what?”
She swallowed hard as she remembered his dark hair and eyes, his height, his tattoos. “You look even better in person than in the picture you sent me.”
He heaved a sigh. “Dammit, Anna, I’m so mad at you right now. I’m just pissed. You pretended you were moving in with another man. And you’re a freakin’ panther. If you were any other shifter…any other one…”
“What? Finish it. If I were any other shifter, what?”
“This would be do-able. God, I don’t date shifters. I never have. I want a human mate. But you sunk your damn claws in me before I knew what you were, and now my head’s all messed up.” His voice was so gravelly. No wonder he hadn’t wanted to talk to her on the phone. She would’ve figured out he was a shifter just from talking to him. “Panthers don’t go outside of their species to date, Anna. You live by a whole different set of rules than the rest of us. We were dead in the water from your first shift. Do you understand?”
“No,” she whispered. “I don’t understand any of this, Jaxon. I’ve only been this…this…monster for six months.”
“What?”
“I got bit.”
“Fuck, Anna!” Static blasted across the phone, causing her to wince away from the painful sound. “I need a minute,” he said.
The line went dead.
She had never heard such fury in a man’s voice before, and it left her shaky, and gripping the phone harder, like it was a lifeline. It felt so damn good to hear someone be angry on her behalf for what happened to her. She’d been alone with her fury for so long. Slowly, she settled it back into its cradle and slid off the counter. The conversation had ended so abruptly she didn’t know what to do with herself. Was she supposed to call him back in a minute? Did he mean a literal minute?
When Samuel got worked up like this, she’d learned to give him as much time as he needed, so after a minute passed, then five and then ten, she decided to keep herself busy and give Jax a big chunk of time to work through whatever had pissed him off.
Bear shifters had bad tempers.
Well, so did panther shifters. Were all shifters just angry beings in general? Thanks to She-Devil, all signs pointed to, hell yes.
Absently, Annalise wiped down the already shining two-seater table with a damp rag. She’d cleaned this place from top to bottom over the last few days, just avoiding the hell out of the crew, who, if she was perfectly honest, intimidated and scared her. They were all this tight-knit group of foul-mouthed, burly, growly, giant mountain men. The alpha’s mate, Jenny, would be nice to get to know, but she’d stayed closed off and spent the days in town with her son, Raif. The boys had mentioned another female in the crew, but they made the she-panther named Lynn sound like she was crazy. Not just typical emotional-woman-on-her-period kind of crazy, but certifiable. Annalise didn’t even want to meet her if her animal was even more psychotic than She-Devil.
She’d wanted to tell Jaxon what had happened over the last three days so she wouldn’t feel alone with this insane living situation she’d found herself in. This wasn’t supposed to be her life. She’d done well in school, been raised in a perfectly normal two-parent household with her brother, gone to college, had normal boyfriends, normal friends, got a normal job at a post office in her hometown right after graduation. Her life had been set on a path of utter brown-colored normalcy since the day of her birth. Until the bite.