Page 62 of Rogue Games

I say nothing, unable to either confirm or deny. Maggie suffered so badly at my father’s hands and did so much to protect us, even though we weren’t her blood. I owe her my loyalty, even if it’s killing me right now to hurt Jamie.

“Margaret, wasn’t it?” she asks, fearlessly making eye contact with me.

“Maggie,” I reply.

Jamie watches me closely, and I see a flash of something dangerous in her eyes when I still don’t address what we both know. That Maggie is her mother.

She knows I know. And she knows I’m all but lying to her face.

Her demeanour changes, and with a haughty flick of her hair, she marches on, remarkably superior for a woman wearing no panties. She stays that way, shut off from me, wrapped up in whatever thoughts are running through her head, the entire way back.

Even though she’s angry with me, I want her to like me. Or at least know that I’m a good man, trying to do his best. Right now, she thinks I’m the devil.

As we trudge up the hill, and the packhouse comes into view, Jamie starts to pick up the pace, pulling further away from me. Amused, I watch her stomp ahead, her body fuelled only by stubbornness and anger.

“Where do you think you’re going?”

Twirling around to glare at me, she gestures to her outfit and dirty skin. “To get a shower and a change of clothes. Where else?”

Her jaw hangs open when I shake my head. “No. You’re not going back to your room. Not until Samuel’s been caught. I don’t have all day to babysit you, and my staff are run ragged as it is.”

I don’t want to be away from her, but that’s not the reason I’m doing this. I can’t have her running into Maggie before I speak to her. And I definitely won’t risk her being attacked again.

“I don’t need a babysitter,” she hisses, her one good hand clenching into a fist as I saunter closer.

“I think you’ll find that you do. Don’t forget, I caught you in the act once before, Jamie.”

Her cheeks flame at the memory of me catching her snooping, and I smile, enjoying her reaction. It’s pretty impressive how pissed off she looks drowning in my black T-shirt, her legs still covered in streaks of mud.

“I said you could stay on my territory, but you’re still out of the competition. You’re not staying with the others.”

She grits her teeth and glares at me. “Where am I going then?”

Tipping my head down a narrow path that cuts off into the woods, I motion for her to follow me. “You’re staying with me.”

29

JAMIE

“You don’t live in the packhouse?”

Dean turns back to face me with a frown when I come to a stop at the bottom of the steps. “You know that I don’t.”

He’s smart. I figured that out when the girls were encouraging him to dance with a strange she-wolf. If Lynn is living in the alpha suite, he’s not living with her. He doesn’t carry more than a passing trace of her scent. I wouldn’t have let him touch me otherwise.

“Don’t you like being around your wolves?”

Wolves are pack animals. Typically, they live together until they start a family. Even then, they rarely venture far from the rest of their pack. That’s why being made to live as a rogue is such a cruel punishment, generally reserved for the most heinous of crimes.

Not for children, who’ve done nothing except have their mother torn away from them by her new mate.

“No, that house doesn’t hold many fond memories for me. And I like my own space.”

Oh.

For a moment, I don’t move, debating how much of a fuss to kick up, as he opens the front door and holds it open for me to enter. My wolf is eager to check out his den. The large but not obnoxious log cabin in front of me has a long wraparound porch, and a view of the lake that’s indescribable. In any other situation, I’d be practically giddy to sit out here with a book, and a hot mug of tea.

“Then why are you letting me stay here?” I ask, a small, pathetic part of me hoping he’ll say something sweet, something to get us back to the closeness we had this morning. That’s the Dean I want to see again.

---