“I appreciate the offer,” Lydia said steadily, “but the thing is, Reeve, I’d rather die. So the only time you’re going to touch me is when we fight.”
His face flushed a dark, furious red. “You think you’re so great? You think I can’t have anyone I want?”
“I’m sure you can have someone who’s desperate. But I’m not.”
That was a lie, but at least it made his face get even redder.
“I’ll kill you.”
“Maybe. But you’re not going to do it today. Now, I’m going to tell you for the last time: get the fuck off our land.”
His angry flush only intensified, and his scowl twisted up into something truly hideous, but he did finally turn to walk away.
He did look over his shoulder to get in the last word: “Clock’s ticking, Lydia.”
Lydia opened her mouth to throw out some meaningless retort, but a sudden idea knocked everything else out of her brain. By the time she pulled herself together again, Reeve was already back in wolf form and loping at a good clip.
Fine, he could have his last word. She almost owed it to him. Against all odds, he had actually helped her out.
She shifted back so she could run back to her grandmother’s at a breakneck speed her human body couldn’t match. She barreled into the bedroom, breathing so hard she almost drowned out the sound of the beeping monitors.
Ruth’s still-keen gaze fixed on her. “You’re all keyed-up. What happened?”
“I thought of something.”
Very, very few people would have noticed the flicker of relief on her grandmother’s face, and Lydia was glad she was one of them.
“About time,” Ruth said. “What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to get a co-alpha. Someone who’s bigger and stronger than I am. Reeve will have to take us both on to gain control, and I can make the odds a hell of a lot worse for him this way.” It was a wild, improbable plan, but it was the only one she had, so she was going to make it work. “I’m going to get a mate.”
2
Case Jackson’s Saturday started off on a bad note. If anyone had asked him last night what his plans were, they would never have included waking up in a small town drunk tank and coping with a splitting headache.
What the hell had happened? He hadn’t had more than two beers in one night since college.
“Oh, you’re up.”
Case struggled to lift his head and look in the direction of that sound. The cheap fluorescent lights felt like they were stabbing into his eyes.
The voice came from a toothpick-skinny deputy who barely looked old enough to drive. He had his thumbs hooked into his belt loops and was obviously trying to look tough, but Case’s first impulse was to give the kid a sandwich and tousle his hair. He decided not to tell him that.
“I’m up,” Case said. “How did I get here?”
“We scraped you up off the floor along with your friends in there.”
Case reluctantly twisted his neck around to look at his fellow drunk tank residents. They looked vaguely, fuzzily familiar, but that was it.
“I don’t think I really know these guys.”
“You knew one of them well enough for him to crack your head open with a bottle,” the deputy said.
Huh? Case touched his throbbing head and instantly regretted it: his hair was crusted over with dried blood, and the bruises and split scalp underneath it all flared up with fresh pain at the tiniest bit of pressure.
Well, that explained the headache, anyway. He didn’t have a hangover, he was concussed.
“Not to tell you how to do your job,” Case said, “but I feel like you should have maybe taken me to the ER instead of jail. I’m covered in blood.”
