Page 21 of Fated Protector

"Go talk to Pa and the Council. I'll keep an eye out here and deal with the mess upstairs.”

My beautiful, amazing, unwanted mess.

He shakes his head at me and starts walking away. Suddenly, I remember his earlier words. "You said there was another attack?"

He stops and looks over his shoulder. "There was," he murmurs, a touch of sadness in his tone. "Victor Lamplight is dead." With that, he takes off, leaving me alone with an unclaimed Mate and the fate of New Orleans swirling around in my confused head.

I trudge back upstairs, frustrated even though my ridiculous heart is aching to see Anna again. But when I open the door, she glares at me with a frown on her face and a leather book in her hand. "Care to explain this?"

CHAPTER12

Jack has my book— theCreature Compendium, the one that I had wanted to read. He took it from the bookstore the other day.

I wouldn't be so mad if he hadjusttaken the book. But what makes me so angry, so frustrated with his secretiveness, is that there is an entire chapter filled with two sets of notes. One set is written in a messy, slashed hand, and the other is written in my aunt Sasha's curly, neat script. Jack's name is part of every note. And the chapter’s topic? The Rougarou.

Anyone who grew up in Louisiana knows the legend of the Rougarou. Our particular brand of werewolf is a large creature that haunts the night, prowling through the Bayou and local swamps. Their behavior is attributed to everything from ransacking houses at night, to stealing naughty children, to punishing Catholics for breaking the rules. According to this book, Rougarous are real, although I don’t know how many of those legendary behaviors are true. I’ve never seen an angry werewolf go after someone for misbehaving during Lent.

"What is this?" I ask, shoving the book in Jack's face, barely giving him time to come through his front door. "What are all these notes?"

He keeps his face calm, but I see the flash of fear in his dark eyes. "Ain't nothing. Notes that me and Sasha were working on.”

"But why?" His relationship with Sasha doesn't make any sense to me. Whatever they were to each other goes far beyond a teenager working in the stock room.

Jack tosses his keys on a side table and sprawls out on his ratty sofa. He gestures to an equally shabby armchair across the room. I sit down reluctantly, and he begins to speak.

"Sasha and I used to do research on supernatural topics. It was a…hobby of ours."

"A hobby," I repeat, raising an eyebrow. “A hobby is building model cars or windsurfing. A hobby is not researching monsters.”

"Not every supernatural is a monster, Anna.” His jaw works, and his eyes burn into me. “We both took it on ourselves to try and make life better for some supernaturals. A crazy idea, maybe, but it was ours all the same.

“There was a Rougarou that we both knew. He was set to be the alpha of his pack when his father died. The Rougarou hated the idea of not being able to choose his fate. He had no desire to take over the pack, no desire to spend his life fighting and leading and dying. No desire to raise a family like that. All he wanted was to be left alone in peace and quiet, to live life the way he wanted.”

Jack is silent for a moment, staring off into space, his fingers tented. "Sasha and me, we got the idea to help him out. For several years, we looked into all sorts of possibilities. We tried to use spells to deter the passing of the alpha title. It just happens—he ain’t got no choice—so we thought maybe magic could block it. There was nothing. We even toyed with turning him human, but that didn't work either."

"Were you able to help him? Did you find anything?" I asked, my voice quiet now that the anger was ebbing away.

He shakes his head and folds his hands in his lap. "Not a damn thing. The poor bastard is stuck with his fate. There's not a thing he can do about it."

"I am sorry that you weren't able to find anything," I say. For the first time, Jack looks utterly broken, as if he's never failed at anything before this. I cross the room and sit down next to him, taking his hand in mine. He inhales sharply, and I swear his skin grows warmer where it presses against mine. "But why did you take the book?"

"Regardless of all our notes, it is one of the best books on different species." He looks away, but his fingers tighten around mine before he blurts out, "Anna, do you know anything about fated Mates?"

I cock my head at him, confused by the topic change. "No?"

He takes a deep breath and continues—his hand trembles in mine. "Among supernatural beings, everyone has a fated Mate. There's someone out there, someone whose very soul is threaded to your own."

"That sounds beautiful," I say, and the corners of his mouth turn down in disagreement.

"There's nothing beautiful about it. You don't choose your Mate. Fate chooses it for you. Once the Mate bond is realized, you're in love forever. And it's not with someone you choose."

But…" I bite my bottom lip, unsure whether my next words will aggravate him or not. "Isn't that just the same as falling in love? We don't really choose who we fall in love with. It just happens."

He turns to me slowly, a tendril of his brown hair falling over his forehead. I want to sweep it away, but I keep my hand still. "I never thought of it that way. Makes it sound a little less dire, I suppose."

"So you don't have a Mate yet?" I ask, and for some crazy reason, my heart begins to beat faster. What if he does? What if he has already found his forever person, and I’m just someone he’ll forget as soon as I return home?

Jack tenses and the room is quiet for a very long time before he says, "No. Not yet."

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