“I forbade her to see you, and you have her breaking my rules immediately.” Ben’s voice shook with fury.
“If you Change in my truck, we’re going to have a huge problem,” Jaxon warned him.
“What is it about her? What do you want with her?”
“She ain’t your cat yet.”
Ben slammed his open palm against the dashboard. “I lost two already! In a year, I’ve lost two, Grizzly. You are rogue. You aren’t an alpha, so you can’t understand what it does to a man like me to lose crew. I want her.”
Red rage boiled up through Jaxon’s chest, and he slammed on the brakes so hard the truck skidded sideways before it lurched to a stop. “What the fuck do you mean, you want her?”
“I’m paired up. Bonded. I have my family built. I don’t have a complete crew yet, though. My animal…I need more. I need Annalise under me.”
“Great. If that’s what she wants, I’m good with it. So why the fuck are you telling me this.”
“Because tonight I got a call from someone I haven’t spoken to in a lot of years, someone who changed my life when I was a cub. Someone who told me before I went into Apex, and before my panther got stripped from my body, that I would get my animal back someday. Someone who can see the future, gave me hope, and got me through that goddamned facility on the days when I just wanted to give up.”
“Beaston,” Jaxon murmured. Why was Beaston involved in this now?
“Yeah. Him. The seer from your crew called me and told me I have to let Annalise go. And when I asked him why? He said one word before he hung up.”
“What word?”
“Jaxon.”
“Jesus,” Jaxon uttered on a breath. So she was it then. Annalise was his. A mixture of relief and utter disappointment spun inside of him like a slow-moving tornado. Relief because she felt important, and if Beaston said she was his, then she was, and that was that. But nothing had changed over the past few hours. He was still a nomad, still a rogue, and would still hurt Annalise and She-Devil with the life he required to stay steady.
“Why couldn’t you have just left her alone?” Ben said quietly. He didn’t smell of rage anymore, and the raw waves of power weren’t pulsing from the alpha’s body any longer. He sounded defeated.
“How did you lose your cats?”
Ben twitched his head and made a ticking sound behind his teeth. “None of your business, Outsider.”
In this moment, Ben reminded Jaxon so much of the alpha he’d grown up under, Creed. He was strong, firm, but quiet with the hard stuff, and never let outsiders know about the inner workings of his crew. So he waited. Time was the only thing that had ever loosened up Creed, and the same worked here in the dark woods that bordered Red Havoc territory, in his truck, with the sound of the dinging seatbelt warning the only noise to break up the heavy silence.
At last, Ben murmured, “I had a female named Winter. I worked on her for three years to pledge, but she never attached. It was a failure. She fit here, and I couldn’t get her to commit. I had to let her go find a better life in Kane’s Blackwing Crew. It ripped my guts out to say goodbye, knowing I was really letting her go to another alpha. To a crew who weren’t panthers. I’ve had to put down cats before. It changes an alpha’s soul when you can’t fix one, when the only help you can offer is ending their suffering and protecting the world from the poisoned animal inside of them. Those kills are dark marks against your soul. And saying goodbye to Winter felt just as awful. I thought that was the worst it could get.”
“Who was the second cat?”
“A panther named Brody. He was the reason for Winter leaving, and then seven months back, he up and left his mate, right after she’d given him a cub. He left me. He left the crew. And then he did something terrible.”
Dread dumped into Jaxon as a sudden, horrifying instinct reared its head. “What kind of something terrible?”
Ben rolled his head against the headrest and leveled Jaxon with a dead-eyed stare. “Brody is a rare one. He’s a black leopard. He had spots in his coat.”
Now it was Jaxon who wanted to slam his hand on the dashboard. He almost didn’t want to hear the rest. He wanted to kick the alpha out and drive back down to Ben’s little Po-Dunk moonshine camp and load Annalise in his truck and take her far away from here. But he needed to know about the fucker he was about to start hunting. “What did he do?” he gritted out through clenched teeth as he strangled the steering wheel.
Ben inhaled deeply. “Brody Turned Annalise into a panther. She won’t talk to me about it. She refuses, so I know it was bad. Brody ruined that girl’s life. The blood he spilled, the pain he caused, and that wild animal constantly snarling to rip out of her skin? That’s on me because Brody was my crew, and I lost control of him.”
Realization slammed into Jaxon’s chest. “That’s why you really need her. Redemption.”
“You can’t be a part of my crew, Grizzly. Not ever. I won’t allow it.”
“I don’t want to be a member of your little kitty-squad, asshole.”
Ben scratched his jaw in an irritated gesture. “The Gray Backs have the best trackers in the world.”
“Yeah, including me.”
“You learned from Beaston? From Bash? From your dad?”
Jaxon dipped his chin once.
“I can’t find Brody,” Ben admitted quietly.
Jaxon huffed a pissed-off breath, slammed his head back against the headrest, and stared out into the woods illuminated by his headlights. “You won’t let me near Annalise, but you want to use me to avenge her. I don’t need a kill mission from you, Panther. I was already going after him.”
“Bring him to me alive, and we’ll talk about Annalise’s future.”
“No deal. She belongs with you. I’ll kill the fucker, slowly like my animal requires, and I’ll bring you proof. And then you let Annalise into your crew because she told me something tonight that put me out of the running.”
“What did she tell you?”
“That her animal needs something steady.”
“And that’s not you?”
Jaxon shook his head, wishing to God he was different. That he was better. That he was worthy of a woman like Annalise. “Not even close. Last name.”
“Brakeen.”
“Last place you tracked Brody Brakeen to?”
“South Dakota. Annalise lived in St. Louis, though. I think the bite happened there, but it was six months back. He could be anywhere.”
“What happened to his mate and cub?” Jaxon asked, feeling sick to his stomach.
Ben shoved the door open and got out. And right before he slammed it, he said, “Lynn is Red Havoc business.”