“What happened to her? Before she joined your pack, I mean,” Eric said, then added, “If you don’t mind me asking.”
Jayna didn’t answer right away. “Megan’s house caught on fire a few days after she turned eighteen. She woke up when she smelled smoke, but by then the whole place was already burning. She tried to get the rest of her family out, but they’d already succumbed to smoke inhalation and she wasn’t strong enough to carry them.”
“Shit,” Eric whispered. “Did any of them make it?”
Jayna shook her head. “No. A firefighter found Megan on the stairs beside her little brother. The guy got them out, but it was too late for her brother. Her parents and her older sister died in the fire too.”
“That had to be hard to deal with.”
“Yeah,” Jayna agreed. “When she woke up in the hospital a few days later and they told her, she didn’t handle it well. She blamed herself for being too weak to save them. She threw a chair through her hospital window and jumped out—from six floors up, onto the parking lot pavement.”
“Damn,” Eric hissed.
“Yeah. Damn.” Tears filled Jayna’s eyes like they did every time she thought about what had happened to Megan. “Megan should have died immediately, but the fire had brought on her change and the werewolf inside wouldn’t let her die. She was hobbling her way onto the freeway when Liam picked up her scent. I don’t know how he used to do it, but he could tell there was a werewolf in trouble. Somehow he realized that he couldn’t save her though—that I was the only one who could.”
Eric frowned. “What do you mean?”
Jayna shrugged. “Megan wanted to die, and she would have kept trying until she found something that worked. So Liam had me stay with her 24-7 for weeks. That was when our bond formed, and with it, she somehow found the will to live again.”
Jayna wiped away the tears, remembering those long, dark days, when suddenly Eric was there at her side and his arms were going around her. She didn’t stiffen or feel the sense of panic that usually came when a guy got in her space. She just felt warmth.
She relaxed against him, wrapping her arms around him and resting her head on his chest. A few more tears slipped out, but she decided to ignore those in the comfort of the moment.
But on the heels of that warm, comfortable feeling, another sensation crept in, and Jayna’s heart started beating faster as her jaws and fingers started tingling—like she was on the verge of shifting. She wasn’t stupid. She knew what was happening. She was aroused—so aroused it was almost bringing on an involuntary shift. The intensity of it scared her.
She tried to breathe through it and get herself under control. She’d had sex in the years following Darren’s attempted rape—more to convince herself that she was normal than because she wanted it. The sex had been mechanical and meaningless, a way of assuring herself that Darren hadn’t broken her.
But she wasn’t feeling anything mechanical or meaningless now. Right then, she wanted to have sex with Eric. She wanted it with a hunger that literally had her shaking.
She shouldn’t have even been thinking about something like that after telling him Megan’s story.
Jayna took a step back. Then another. Eric didn’t follow. He simply walked back over to the counter he’d been leaning against before, giving her space to collect herself. Her mind raced to find words that would fill the silence dominating the large, open space around them and the sudden cool gulf that separated her from Eric.
She ran her hand through her long hair. “So, um, what’s your plan now that you’ve gotten yourself into the building?”
It was a lame segue out of the uncomfortable situation, but her mind wasn’t working at full efficiency just then.
“It’s simple really,” Eric said, as if the elephant in the room didn’t even exist. “Every time we figure out where the Albanians are planning to strike, we get a tip to my pack mate, Cooper. He’ll make sure the info gets to my alpha, who will make life damn hard on Frasheri, Kos, and their pet omegas.”
She frowned. “That might work once or twice, but don’t you think they’ll figure out someone in this building is ratting them out at some point?”
“The fact that there’s a gang of mobsters trying to take over control of organized crime in Dallas is about the worst-kept secret in town,” Eric said. “Frasheri and Kos have to know every rival gang and thug in the city is watching this place, waiting for them to make another move. We just have to make sure it looks like one of their rivals is tipping off the cops. It shouldn’t be too hard since we were waiting for you at the warehouse the other day.”
Jayna wondered how SWAT had known they’d hit the warehouse, but she didn’t ask.
“How do we make sure that none of my pack gets caught in the crossfire between the cops and the Albanians?”