Page 25 of Destined Prey
Rhett averted his gaze. “Well… I don’t know which kind of animal killed the calves last month. Lost three calves in the west pasture. Almost lost another and a cow, but they survived.”
“It could have been wolves, or coyotes,” Jack pointed out. “Real ones, or shifter ones.”
“Goddamn it, Jack, stop with the shifter bullshit!” Rhett shouted. “You’re scaring me, and I don’t mean ’cause I believe in those things, but ’cause you seem to!”
Jack laughed. He couldn’t help it. “Listen to me.” He leaned forward, elbows braced on his knees. “I do. Idobelieve in those things, because Ben was out in the corral, only he was a coywolf, and I heard him in my head. I passed out, but I saw him, heard him. He was under the bed when you were in my room. Then I saw him, and he shifted. Isawhim turn from man to coywolf to man again. I didnothallucinate it. He’s a shifter. Shifters exist.” Jack touched his neck, and the heat of arousal began to build in his groin. “And we had sex, because I want him, like I’ve never wanted anyone or anything.”
“I can’t believe this,” Rhett muttered, shaking his head again. “No way. I don’t believe it. I don’t know what you’re up to, or why you’re lying to me—”
“Let’s go.” Jack was up like a shot. “Get the truck keys. We’ll go find Ben. He told me where his auto shop is. He’ll show you. What’s the worst that will happen? Either you’ll see that I’m telling the truth, or you’ll find out I’m lying or crazy.”
Rhett seemed to consider Jack’s proposition for a moment before agreeing. “Okay. I don’t know why you’d lie to me, Jack. Could you have a brain tumor or something?”
Jack gawped at his brother. “You’d rather me have cancer than for shifters to be real? How fucked up is that?” The words came out sharper than he intended, but God, the idea cut deep. He’d finally seen something that explained all the wrongness thrumming in him and Rhett wanted to file it away as disease instead of possibility.
Rhett’s cheeks turned ruddy. He didn’t reply.
“Rhett, why would I lie? Is the world going to be such a horrible place if I’m right?” Jack couldn’t keep the pleading tone out of his voice. “You told me once that you believed there areother life forms out in space, maybe even here on Earth with us. How is this different?”
“We were kids when I said that,” Rhett muttered. “And no, I wouldn’t want you to have cancer. That just seems a lot more likely than what you’re telling me, and it scares the shit out of me, because I don’t want to lose you.”
“You’re not going to lose me,” Jack promised. “I’m here, and I’m not going back to New York, and I’m not going to die anytime soon.” He hoped. “Look, it’s hard for me to believe it, too, and I saw him change.”
“And had sex with him,” Rhett added, not looking at him. “Did you at least use condoms?”
Jack tried not to get grossed out by his brother asking him about safe sex. “We didn’t have anal sex. You don’t need to know the specifics anyway.”
Rhett paused with his hand on the office doorknob. “I thought sex meant penetration.”
“A—I wouldn’t tell you what we did together because ew, gross, TMI, bro,” Jack said. “And B—everyone has their own definitions of sex, I guess. To me, if you get off with someone, even if they don’t come, it’s sex.”
Rhett opened the door and left the room. Jack followed. The floor creaked under their boots, the old familiar sound clashing with the new reality Jack carried inside him. It was disorienting. Home hadn’t changed, but he had, and he didn’t know how to bridge that gap with Rhett.
It wasn’t until they were in the truck that the doubts began clamoring in Jack’s head.Ben, I don’t know if you can hear me. I don’t know if I’m losing my shit or if this is all real, the hearing-each-other part, I mean. I know what you are, who you are, that’s real. I need your help here. Rhett saw you leave. We’re coming to your shop, and I need you to show him, tell him the truth. Please. He thinks I’m crazy. Or that I have a brain tumor.
Jack thought that message to Ben over and over on the drive to town, but he never heard even a buzz back. The silence gnawed at him worse than Rhett’s disbelief. It was like pressing his hand against glass and finding nothing on the other side. He told himself it didn’t mean the connection was gone.Just…quiet. Please, let it only be quiet.
Chapter Fifteen
Ben was in a quandary. His hurt feelings had to be set aside. They weren’t doing him any good. They sat in his chest like gravel anyway. Useless weight. Wanting Jack didn’t give him license to be reckless with everyone else’s lives. He forced his jaw to unclench and breathed until the urge to turn the truck around faded.
What he needed to do was decide whether or not to cooperate with Jack. As much as he wanted to, he didn’t respond to Jack’s pleas for help. If it’d only been his own life on the line, Ben wouldn’t have hesitated to expose his kind to Rhett.
But there were others at stake—his family, his pack, shifters as a whole. If human society discovered them, there’d be a slaughter and shifters would be eradicated. Humans always feared what they didn’t understand. All he had to do was remember the way Jack had looked at him and the words Jackhad spoken, both of which reinforced Ben’s hesitancy to be honest with Rhett.
Ben couldn’t make such a decision on his own. He needed to talk to his alpha, to Casey, and to the rest of their pack. Pack first. That drumbeat had kept them alive this long. He repeated it until his pulse matched the rhythm and his hands stopped shaking on the wheel.
Time was an issue, however. If Jack and Rhett were driving to the auto shop, Ben was going to be lucky to beat them there as it was. He’d shifted as soon as he’d reached his truck, but he’d been parked on a dirt road along the opposite side of the ranch where Jack had let him out.
Ben tugged at the collar of the T-shirt he’d put on. “What to do, what to do. Fuck. Fuck!” He grabbed his cell phone out of the cup holder below the radio, then swiped across the screen. He pulled up Casey’s name and pressed the green call icon. After tapping to turn the phone on speaker, Ben waited through three rings before Casey picked up.
“What’s up? Did you get to talk to Jack?” Casey asked right off the bat. Just hearing Casey steadied him a notch; the calm in his brother’s voice hit like cool water on a burn.
Ben groaned. “It kind of turned into a clusterfuck.”
“Oh yeah? How’s that?” Casey’s calm voice did little to settle Ben’s nerves.
“He knows what I am,” Ben rushed out before he could change his mind. “I was in a compromising position and had to show him. Then we had sex. Then he said some things, and I shifted and left.” Saying it out loud made the whole mess feel even more backwards. Heat, then fear, then flight, all the wrong order for anything that was supposed to last.
