Page 38 of Heartless

“Enough. I mostly just nap on the couch. It just feels… wrong, with Jasper so sick. But maybe I could try sleeping if you were in here with me.”

She shook her head and sank onto the side of the bed. “Of course. We can even get the girls and have a big old puppy pile. But first, tell me you’re okay. You look… shattered.”

I gave her a wan smile and sat beside her. “I feel it. But Jasper’s worse. He looks like a ghost, Marnie. You know how he always seems to walk around in his own little pool of sunshine? Well, it’s like a cloud came over and sucked it all out of him.”

Marnie put her arm around me. “He definitely brightens the place up. I’m so sorry, Vail. You must have been freaking out when the Denners went after him.”

“It was terrifying. There was so much blood, and he was so still, I thought he was already dead…”

Her face hardened suddenly, a glimpse of a Marnie I’d only seen as an alpha wolf. “If the Denners are trying to take out our Clan Alpha, then we’re already at war.” She looked around – not so much at the room, as at the cave. “I’m glad we’re here. We get Jasper back on his feet, and then we take the fight to them.”

I could feel the tension rising in her with every word, and then a bolt of pure alpha power shot out of the arm she’d slung over my shoulders and sizzled straight down my spine. “Whoa!”

“Sorry!” She scrambled to her feet, holding her hands up like she didn’t know who they belonged to. “Stressful situations and new alpha power are a volatile combo.”

So was losing your alpha powers, but I didn’t want to focus on that for a moment. Instead, I patted the bed, and when she sat back with a sheepish smile, asked, “So the initiation went well?”

“It started out great. We went into the woods and all these alpha jerks who’d made my life hell had to kneel in front of me. There was a script they had to follow - about having my back and always treating me like one of their own – but I’ll believe that when I see it.” She huffed and gave a half shrug. “Anyway, then we did an alpha circle. I’d heard about them before, but it was nothing like the stories. Every single one of those jerks had to give me a little of their power. Even Reed. It was like… grabbing onto an electric fence, while bungee-jumping off a cliff at the same time. Total rush, but it left me jacked up and kind of crazy. Everything felt so intense, like I was coming out of my skin, only not in a normal, shifter way. Reed said it was my alpha brain trying to make sense of my new power.”

“Sounds a little scary.”

A shiver swept over her skin, sparking off a few more mini charges, but she didn’t seem to notice. She was lost in her thoughts, nibbling on her lip. “It was. But then we went for this pack run. It was snowing really bad and everyone was hyperalert from the Denner attack, so a few of them weren’t keen, but Reed said it had to happen. I’d earned it.” Her face was suddenly wistful. “It was kind of like playing a packball game blindfolded. The cold, the adrenaline, the thump of feet all around you, even though you’re moving too fast to see much. But it didn’t matter, because I could sense them… And that’s the closest I’ve ever felt to really belonging to a pack.” She squeezed my fingers. “Except for with my shifter sisters, of course.”

“Of course,” I echoed, but I could still feel the tension coming off her. “Did anything else happen?”

“Not really.” There was an odd note in her voice, and her gaze dropped away. “Reed said it’s tradition for the new alpha to spend the night outside, but because of the snow, I was allowed to stay in this little cabin in the middle of the woods. I have no idea who uses it, but it was cozy enough. Anyway, that’s about it.”

“So no alphadouches in robes, drinking blood and howling at the moon?” I teased.

“I think I was the only moon-howler,” she muttered, and I was about to probe her a little more, when there was a knock at the door. I hadn’t closed it, so I slid off the bed as Liam stepped into the room.

“The alphason is out front. He’s demanding to speak with his mate.”

I was starting to see why the enforcer liked his big dudes with guns so much. “Tell Callum I’m not interested in talking to him.”

“Not that alphason,” Liam said with the faintest grimace in Marnie’s direction.

I spun on her, wide-eyed, but one look at her face said it all. “I think you left out a few details, Marnie.”

She groaned and slapped a hand to her face. “Stupid alpha brain!”

Chapter Twenty – Reed

Tracking Marnie to the Clan Caves wasn’t exactly hard, but the look of outrage on her face was going to take some getting used to. My last memory of her was falling asleep beside me around midnight. She’s been sneaking in every night since her initiation, and I was kind of getting used to seeing her next to me on my pillow. In fact, it was quickly becoming the high point of my day. But I was finding the afterglow kind of lost its shine when the other person also snuck back out in the middle of the night.

“Tell me you didn’t put a tracker in my clothes,” she said as she stormed into the front chamber of the cave, with Vail hot on her heels. Both females looked worn out, although there was a familiar energy sparking off Marnie that had my wolf pushing up through my skin. “Haven’t you alphadouches learned anything about invading someone’s privacy? If I wanted you to follow me here, I would have sent an invitation!”

“How exactly did you know she was here, Alphason?”

I ignored the Clan Enforcer, who was hovering behind the females like I was some kind of threat. “You snuck out,” I said to my red-faced mate, inwardly cringing at the edge in my voice. It sounded a lot like hurt, which was not how I’d planned to play this at all.

But if Marnie heard it, she wasn’t about to cut me any slack. “I got a text from the Clan Enforcer,” she said through her teeth. “I didn’t wake you, because it said I needed to keep it to myself. I didn’t know what it was about, but it was urgent.”

“You could have woken me. Given me some excuse.”

Her mouth pulled into an unhappy line. “You wanted me to lie to you?”

Of course, I didn’t. But cutting me out of things wasn’t sitting well, either. Which was kind of ironic, because I would have done exactly the same thing in her position. My dad was constantly texting me in the middle of the night with information I couldn’t share, even with my own lieutenants. So what was the issue? That she’d snuck off, or that something was going on that I was deliberately being left out of?

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