TWENTY-FIVE

Mac didn't believe us.

I didn't blame her at all. She probably thought I was being drugged or held against my will or brainwashed or something. Because the idea of Jameson being a fucking werewolf was so far fetched that even I still questioned it.

"I thought you were Team Edward," Mac said teasingly, sipping at her milkshake.

I sighed, feeling really exposed being out in public. Jameson was right next to me, but I had a constant chill running down my spine. Not like when I first met him, more ominous. Daunting. He grabbed my hand under the booth, lacing our fingers together and squeezing softly.

"Mac," I said pleadingly, "I'm serious as a heart attack. I swear on my life, we are not kidding you."

Her eyes narrowed, clearly swayed from the seriousness of my face. I waited for her to say something, looking at her manicured nails. "Prove it."

I sighed again. "He can't just turn into a wolf in the middle of the diner, Mackenzie," I said, getting frustrated. Clearly we didn't have much time and I was more antsy than Jameson. I tried to think of something to prove to her that he wasn't a fucking human, eyeing the knife on the table. "Cut yourself."

"Excuse me?"

I picked up the knife and held it out to her. "Prick your finger until it bleeds," I said and yeah, wow, I definitely sounded like a psychopath.

"Babe–"

When she just stared at me like I had three heads, I let out the third sigh and sucked in a breath, holding it tightly in my left hand. Mac looked bewildered when I closed my eyes and slid my finger over the knife myself.

Mac gasped and covered her eyes. "What the fuck is wrong with you?" she cried, catching the attention of the people in the booth next to us.

I didn't reply, only wiped the drops of blood that came out of my finger on my napkin and held it up for Jameson. He hesitated, looking at Mac apologetically, before taking my finger in his mouth.

Mac watched between her own fingers in horror as he closed his lips around my index. I must have lost my fucking mind. I had to have. Her eyes flickered from my face to Jameson's, over and over, until my finger was released from his mouth.

I looked it over, nodding to myself before showing it to Mac. She snatched my hand and brought it closer to her face, her eyebrows furrowed. "What the fuck."

She went through five degrees of emotions. Confusion: she started to ask eighteen questions but stopped herself short after the first word. Realization: she gasped and dropped my hand on the table with a bang, looking at Jameson with wide eyes. Suspicion: she picked up the knife and inspected it as if I had taped a ketchup packet to the back to stage a slice. Amazement: her jaw dropped to the floor while she spoke a mile a minute while not actually saying anything of value.

And finally, dumbfounded: she looked at the two of us with her lips pressed together, pushing her milkshake away and avoiding eye contact with Jameson.

"Don't worry, he's a nice wolf," I rolled my eyes.

"Uh, okay," she breathed, looking at my finger again for good measure. "How . . . What . . . What."

I looked at Jameson and he was just kind of sitting there amused. Without thinking, I leaned on him. He didn't miss a beat and wrapped an arm around my shoulders. Mac was still processing this and, as entertaining it was, I had to move this along.

"I would really like to give you three to five business days to wrap your head around the wonderful world of werewolves, but we have some shit going on and we need your help."

She held her face in her hands and stared at us. "What could I possibly do for you?"

"Julianna's a werewolf, too," I said.

Mac's jaw dropped to the floor once again. I knew this would be difficult. Everything about this was such a mess and I probably shouldn't have dragged Mac into this. If anything would happen to her, I would never forgive myself. Ever.

"Her family is threatening Jameson and I, long story, but I need your help to get Julianna alone. I don't know what happened between you two but this is an emergency and I wouldn't ask if I didn't think it was important."

She blinked her eyes hard, presumably trying to wake up from this dream. "Okay," she finally said. "I'll text her."

"You can't tell anyone," Jameson said. Mac bit her lip and nodded. "Seriously."

I wouldn't count on that. Unfortunately, Mac was terrible at keeping secrets. She'd ruined Dylan's sixteenth birthday surprise, which made me so angry at the time. We'd planned for weeks and with just one slip of the tongue, Dylan knew about the entire thing in a matter of seconds. Not to mention, if by some stretch of the imagination and it wasn't her that Dylan had had a crush on senior year, she would have spilled that, too.

But would it be so bad if she told Dylan? If Jameson and I were in it for the long run, he'd have to find out eventually, right?

I sighed once again. This was a mess.

~:~:~

We waited anxiously. There was only a day and a half before we went back to Texas so the sooner we spoke with Julianna the better.

Turned out, Mac couldn't be trusted with the secret. I knew she would tell Dylan. It was only a matter of time. Unsurprisingly, he texted me later that night and asked if I was doing okay, which was a dead giveaway of Mac's big mouth.

Jameson and I sat on my mom's couch. I winced when I bit the inside of my lip too hard. He watched wordlessly and I wished I could hear his thoughts.

I knew I was being selfish. All the anxiety I had was building and building and all these new fears weren't helping. Before Jameson turned up in Texas, I hadn't had to worry about someone hurting me or the ones I loved. Well, maybe I did, but it was a more passive fear. Now I knew. There were bad people in the world who wanted me dead.

But I knew Jameson worried, too. He didn't voice his concerns like I did, but it showed on his face. In the way he bit at his nails and the way his eyebrows were permanently pushed together, zoning out into the carpet or the wall.

I couldn't keep acting like I was the only one worried here.

"Does Hernandez have pack in Texas?"

Jameson frowned. "Not where you live, but a little ways out, they do," he said. I stretched out my legs to put my feet on his lap. Without hesitation, he started rubbing my sock-clad feet. "Have you heard from Mac?"

He would have known if I did, but I didn't say that. "Not yet," I said quietly. Nobody was home because it was Monday. Mom was at work and the kids had school. They didn't get a lucky break with the teacher work holiday. We went back home tomorrow night, so my family intended on spending all the time they could with me.

However, I couldn't commit to that if I had werewolf business to attend to. We shouldn't have come back here.

"Times like these are when I wish I was part of a pack, myself," he grumbled, eyes trained on his hands. "My parents were, when they were alive. But they were a vicious, violent pack. Matt and I wanted nothing to do with it when we were old enough to understand what they really did. So we left."

I wasn't expecting him to open up to me like this. "What does that mean?" I asked curiously, slowly crawling over the couch so I could settle on his lap, instead. "You can just leave a pack like that even if you're born into it?"

Jameson wrapped an arm around my waist and put the other on my thigh. "Well, kind of," he said with a sigh. "It's less leaving and more just getting shunned out. My parents pretended to hate us for leaving for public appearance, but they were indifferent to the choice. They knew that the pack did some fucked up shit and wanted us to get away if that's what we felt was right."

I kissed him. I don't know why, it just felt right.

"So what does that make you now?"

"I guess ages ago I would be considered a rogue wolf," he said, curling his nose up. "But times have changed and wolves are often turning their backs on old traditions, so it's not as unheard of."

I thought about that. Sure, if he had a pack to back him up, maybe the Hernandezes wouldn't be as big of a threat. But it was hundreds versus one. The thought made my heart drop in my chest. Hundreds versus one.

He nuzzled his face into my neck comfortingly, pressing a kiss to the flushed skin. I wasn't sure what the next few days would bring. These moments, these soft moments with Jameson, were everything. If I was going to die to snarling werewolves in the near future, I wanted my last few days to be filled with these moments.

Lazily and sweetly, I met his lips with mine. It didn't require words, but the two of us knew what this was. It only confirmed that he was just as worried as me, that he wasn't sure if we'd be okay.

"How do I become a werewolf?" I asked, my lips still ghosting over his. He froze, his hands resting still on my waist.

"You don't," he said plainly.

I frowned, pulling away. "Why not?"

Jameson sighed, reaching up to run his fingers through the hair that rested on my forehead. I stared at him curiously. "Because you're too good for this world, Petals," he said in nearly a whisper.

"I don't care," I said. I was growing a bit impatient.

"I would have to bite you, which I don't want to do," he said with an eye roll. "Mate or not, I do not want you to have to stop living your life to be like me. Everything would be different, Cade. You'd be more susceptible to danger–"

"Yeah, well, then I'd be able to defend myself like you can," I pointed out, pushing against his chest to look at him. His hazel eyes searched my face closely, his lips pressed together in a firm line.

Jameson sighed again, running a soft hand up and down my thigh over my jeans. "It's a big commitment, babe. I don't want you to turn and then change your mind about me," he said, making me furrow my eyebrows. "If somehow me and you don't work out, then you'll have to go about being a lone wolf by yourself and . . . I can't do that to you."

"Why wouldn't we work out?" I mumbled. I knew I was unnecessarily hurt about that, when he was just being realistic. With all of the anxiety I'd been feeling lately, I was overly emotional and sensitive.

He leaned forward and captured my lips in another kiss, this time pulling my knee up and settling it down on the other side of his leg so I could straddle his lap. Jameson brought his arms around my back, running his hands all the way up to where they were gripping my shoulders from behind. I kissed back eagerly, using this fine distraction to keep me from thinking so fucking hard.

I whimpered when he pulled away. "You know I didn't mean it like that, baby boy," he said, his voice hushed. I pecked his mouth. "Let's talk about this later, okay?"

After nodding and giving him my best sorry eyes, he kissed me again. I tried not to think about everything going on. His lips were mesmerizing enough to distract me from my everyday life and problems, but when it came to this? How could I not think about it?

Maybe I could get drunk. That would do the trick.

"You're not getting drunk," he mumbled against my mouth. I giggled, pulling at his hair hard enough for him to hiss. "Check your phone, please."

Sure enough, Mac had sent a screenshot of Julianna agreeing to meet with her tonight. I relayed the message to Jameson and he touched my legs comfortingly.

However, I hadn't thought about what exactly I'd say to her.

She was as powerful as Jameson. One wrong word and she'd have her daddy take down my family. But I saw the longing looks she gave us after we shut her out. There had to be a part of her that still cared about us. If anyone could get through to her, it was Mac amidst their unresolved problems.

"Alright, well, we're on for tonight."

"If anything goes wrong tonight," Jameson said softly, "I might have to shift and . . . I don't want you to see. I want you to look away."

I looked down at his shirt. "Would you kill her?"

"Not if I can help it," he said. "I don't like to kill."

I bit my lip, looking away. "Have you ever had to kill anyone? Wolves or people?"

"Yes," he said quietly. "Only when they attacked me and Matt. It was just one guy. Young, too. I could tell by his wolf . . . I don't want to have to resort to that again."

We sat for a moment, thinking about that. The fact that he killed somebody wasn't as unsettling as I expected and that scared me. He had taken a life from the world at the expense of his brother and I understood that. If I had the means and capacity, I'd kill for my siblings, too. I just hoped it would never come to that. As I looked at Jameson with his jaw tightened and his eyes downcast, I wondered if I'd kill for him, too. It seemed so soon, so rushed. But that instinct that came from what I presumed to be our mate bond made it seem so easy.

"One more thing," Jameson said, catching my attention from a freckle on his neck. "If things go south, I want you to go to that place you brought me when we first met. The one with the willow trees. You'll be safe there, okay?"

I bit at my bottom lip. "Things won't go south, though, right?"

His expression switched from one of concern and hesitance to complete reassurance. "Of course, Petals. Nothing bad is going to happen."

I almost believed him when I laid my head down in the crook of his neck, inhaling his scent like I needed it to breathe, but I felt his heart pounding beneath his chest. He was as sure as I was that this meeting would go well, which was little to none. But if nothing else, I trusted Jameson. He was going to do what was right for us and for my friends and family. And I was fairly certain that didn't include starting a war with the biggest pack in Louisiana.

All I knew was with his arms around me, his warmth covering me like a blanket fresh from the dryer, I knew I was in good hands.