So she had left them. Styx was sad. Lily was pissed. What did they expect her to do? Fight the Coven? Were they crazy?
No. She was going home. Where she belonged.
What?!
A languorous, melting sensation spread through her body, and a tension she had gotten so used to being there she had forgotten it existed, slipped out of her mind. She felt as if she’d been sleeping for the last few months and now found herself awake, a rush of feelings, so in contradiction to what only minutes before she had been so sure of, washed over her.
She wanted to go to the pack. She wanted to see her parents.
Wow. She was so sure she hadn’t wanted that at all.
Here’s hoping the telekinesis doesn’t kick in then huh, she thought wryly, utterly confused by her sudden desire to return to the pack.
“Hey, Jaeden?”
“What?” she asked without looking at him, trying to hide her sudden disorientation.
“Earlier when you said about Caia being angry at the Coven if they locked you up, what did that sarcastic noise you made mean?”
Jae rolled her eyes. “What do you think it means? It means why the Hades would Caia care if they locked me up? We knew each other for all of five seconds.”
The growl that rumbled from Ryder’s chest alerted her. Oops, perhaps she had a made a mistake.
“You ungrateful pup.”
Yup. Definite mistake.
“Caia risked her ass to save you from Ethan, and don’t give me any crap about it being her fault you were there in the first place, because it wasn’t. It was mine and it was Lucien’s, and it was your father’s. It was the pack’s fault we didn’t protect you. But Caia.” Ryder shook his head in anger. “That girl did everything she could. She risked everything to find you! And don’t you forget it.”
She wanted to scream at him; wanted to rail and rage that he had no idea what she had been through, so how dare he?! But in the end she knew he was right. No matter how much she wanted to blame Caia for Ethan taking her, deep down she knew if there was one person in this world she might count on, she was guessing it was Caia Ribeiro. Ryder obviously thought so too, and obviously had a lot of respect and admiration for her. A sneaking feeling swept over. His defense of Caia was quite vehement. Did he... did Ryder have a thing for Caia? For some reason the thought irritated her more than his condescending lecture.
“Point well received,” she sniped. “And just so you know I thanked Caia for saving me. I thanked Sebastian too before you bring that up.”
Another tense silence fell between them, until finally Ryder heaved a sigh. “Look. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to-”
“Why don’t we just sit in silence for a while, hmm?”
He nodded and relaxed in his seat.
And just as Jaeden felt herself drifting to sleep, Ryder chuckled. “I heard this really funny joke on the radio the other night. You want to hear it?”
She shrugged.
“I’ll assume that’s angry teenage girl gesture for yes.” He smirked. “OK. So one day, there’s this koala bear up in his tree smoking a joint, and this little lizard walking past looks up and notices. “Hey,” the little lizard calls, “What’s up?”
“Nothing.” Shrugs the koala. “Just smoking a joint, getting stoned. Wanna join?”
“Sure,” says the little lizard, and he slithers up the tree and starts getting stoned with the koala.
A little while later, the little lizard says his mouth is dry and he needs a drink, but on the way down the tree, he leans over too far and falls into the river. A big crocodile sees it happen and swims over. “What’s up?” he asks the little lizard. “You OK?”
“Sure.” The little lizard nods. “I’m just too stoned from smoking some joints with the koala bear.”
“Joints?” The big crocodile’s eyes lit up. “I gotta check that out, man.” So the big crocodile swims out of the river and takes a wander into the trees until he reaches the one the koala bear’s in. “Hey!” he shouts up.
The koala looks back down at him and shouts, “Fuuuck duuude! How much water did you drink?!” Ryder slapped the wheel of the truck, laughing as he finished the joke. “Ah man, that’s funny.” He shook his head, wiping at a tear in the corner of his eyes. “It kills me.”
Jaeden hadn’t said anything. She had managed to hide her answering grin to the joke by looking out of the passenger window.
“What?” Ryder huffed. “Come on that was funny! That was comic gold right there.”
She shrugged, enjoying teasing him. “It was OK. Kind of elementary.”
“Elementary? It’s an effing joke.”
“Whatever.”
His groan could probably be heard for five miles. “Aw this is going to be a looong drive home.”
Jaeden hid her grin with her hand. Teasing and arguing with Ryder was the most normal she had felt in a long time. She sneaked a glance at him again, and a rush of old feelings hit her like a battering ram. She remembered how just the thought of him had sent butterflies into chaos in the pit of her stomach, back when she had been naively carefree; how just daydreaming about him had gotten her through her boring history class; how she had promised herself that when she turned eighteen, she would finally let Ryder know that his mate had been under his nose the whole time.
A golden peace whispered through her briefly with the memories.
Goddess, she had made a mistake leaving the pack. Instead of running from them she should have let them fix her. And maybe she would have felt infrequent bursts of that golden peace she felt momentarily with Ryder, until one day she didn’t feel so broken.
A hollow regret formed in her chest. Running from the pack was probably the biggest mistake of her life. She had been so afraid of her family not understanding who she was. But that wasn’t an excuse was it? Why had she done it?
She held in the gasp of pain her confusion and regret created, and kept her face turned from Ryder. A single tear escaped, trickling slowly down her smooth cheek, feeling like a heavy stone scoring her skin.
It was the first tear she had shed since she had left the pack.
This time she did gasp. She was cracking, the steel armor she had put up around herself rusting off, and all because she was with one of her pack? Coins on Ryder’s dash began to shudder and Jaeden flinched, willing her telekinesis into control.
“Are you alright?” she heard Ryder ask, and there was a deep concern there.
“Yeah,” she managed in a shuddering breath, and she turned to him wide-eyed. “Yeah, I think I’m going to be.”
He smiled gently in answer, seeming to understand.
4 - Wants and Fears
The smell of coffee, eggs and crackling bacon rushed up her nose to taunt her olfactory senses, causing her stomach to roll in uneasy waves. She followed Lucien, who was being led by a waitress to a booth at the back of the roadside diner.
“Here you go, hon,” the young woman purred, handing a grease covered menu to Lucien, the look in her eyes indicating that if he wanted he could order her off the menu. Caia slid into the booth, ripped edges of maroon leather catching on her jeans. Of course the waitress didn’t even glance her way, let alone give her a menu. Good thing she wasn’t hungry, huh.
“What are you having?” Lucien asked, as he managed to fold his huge frame into the too-small-for-him booth.
“I’m OK.”
“Caia, you have to eat.”
“I’m not hungry.”
“At least have some coffee and a sandwich.”
“I don’t think I could keep it down.”
“I’m ordering you a sandwich.”
“Fair enough. Hope you can afford new upholstery in the truck.”
He grimaced. “Maybe just the coffee then.”
As his eyes wandered over the menu his expression changed, a big wolfy grin spreading across his face. “I, on the other hand, am going to have a burger. A huge, juicy, meaty burger with a hunk of melting cheese, maybe some thick mayo and-”
Caia felt herself turn green. “Stop, I beg of you.”
The portal to the Center was just over a five hours drive away. They’d left at sunrise and would be there in a few hours’ time. The thought of actually meeting Marita and Vanne, of actually taking a real part in the war, was causing not only the sickening butterflies in the pit of her stomach, but trembling, cold shakes that ran through the top of her skin, sending the hairs up on her arms and her teeth into chattering madness.
The drive so far with Lucien had been fraught with tension. The cab in his truck seemed smaller somehow. She could hear and feel every move he made, her eyes wandering to his strong hands and sinewy forearms every time he reached for something. Tingles shot through her each time she caught a glimpse of his strong profile (or when he turned to smile at her, his hard silver eyes softening to smoke the way they only seemed to do around the people he really cared about), and momentarily her nerves over the Center were obliterated and replaced with new nerves, sad achy nerves over Lucien, over the stupid mistakes she had made when she learned he had been keeping things from her. In the end it had turned out there were more important things in life than petty grievances. And as it turned out her grievances had been petty in comparison to what happened to Jaeden and to Sebastian.
Hindsight sucked.
In fact hindsight should be assassinated.
Lucien was frowning over having being stopped in his meat salivation. “You sure you’re OK?”
She nodded mutely.
His eyes narrowed perceptively. “Last time I’m asking. I’m a guy after all.”
Caia laughed. Olympus forbade anyone considered him sensitive or considerate. “Some coffee will be fine. I’m just a little nervous, that’s all.”
The waitress returned and Lucien gave her their order. When he was done she gave him a huge come-get-me smile and then turned unexpectedly to Caia. “He your boyfriend?” she asked loudly.
Her mouth fell open at the woman’s brazenness, and she looked back at Lucien to find him grinning smugly, enjoying the interlude, and waiting in amusement for Caia’s answer. He quirked an eyebrow at her as if to say, ‘See... I’m hot.’
She glared at him and turned back to the expectant waitress. She smiled sweetly at her, checking her nametag. “Oh no. He’s all yours... Melissa, is it?”
Melissa grinned. “You’re not dating?”
“No. Never. Not gonna happen.” She turned that sweet smile back on Lucien, whose smirk had been replaced with a glower. “I would have to be paid-”
“OK, she gets the picture,” he snapped and turned to Melissa. “Can we just get our order please?”
Melissa nodded absentmindedly. “What are you doing later?”
“Going to France.”
She giggled. “Yeah, right. Seriously, you want to, like, do something?”
“I’ll be in France.”
The waitress lost the grin, straightened up from the table and sent him a dirty look. “If you don’t want to go out with me just say so.”
As the girl flounced off, Caia chuckled. “You’re so getting a loogie in your coffee.”