“No,” Jax said, stunned.
“Her cat…she’s broke as fuck. The name She-Devil suits her. Since the day she came to me, she’s been shifting in her sleep. I’m guessing that’s why she had herself locked in that cage room at nights, to protect the outside world from She-Devil. As far as we can tell, Annalise isn’t there at nights, Jax. She’s just a wild panther, running on instinct.
She-Devil screamed again, and something about the agony called to Titan.
“At first, we took shifts. We each took turns Changing with her and keeping her in the territory, keeping her safe. I thought if She-Devil claimed the territory and learned the boundaries, she would settle, and we could eventually stop shifting with her at nights. Maybe even trust her eventually. But there’s a bachelor pride of lions way too damn close to our territory, and after you left, She-Devil started taking her body any time. Not just when she was sleeping. She’s shifting four or five times a day right now. You leaving didn’t do what I had hoped it would. It broke something inside of her cat.”
“What do mean?” Jax asked, troubled down to his bones as he watched his mate fight with her own crew.
Ben signed and arched his gaze to Jaxon. “She’s calling for you.”
Jax squatted down and watched her brawl in the dark. Dominant badass she-panther, she was fully engaged with the biggest one, Barret, right now, and not backing down an inch.
“Jax…what you’re watching right now? She’s taking Second.”
“Oh, my God,” he murmured, standing and linking his hands behind his head. Ma was the only female holding Second in a crew right now, and what had he done? He’d gone and found himself a she-shifter as dominant and badass as her. But unlike with Ma, She-Devil wasn’t a stable member of the crew. A high rank for an uncontrolled animal would cripple Red Havoc.
“Why did you bring me here to watch this?” Jax asked.
“You know why.”
Jax lost it and shoved him backward against a tree. He pulled the alpha by the shirt and slammed him back against it a second time for good measure. He knew why this fuckface was letting him witness his mate taking Second. “You gonna put her down, Ben? You gonna kill her?”
“For the good of my crew.”
“Fuck you. I’ll rip you from throat to dick and make you watch me piss on your intestines before I’d allow it. Call your panthers off her, or your mate will be a widow tonight.”
Ben looked sick, but shook his head. “We’ve been at this for days, Jax. We’re exhausted. There’s no sleep happening. She will bring the lions on top of us. She will deplete us, and when she’s sitting on that throne as Second, with power over the boys, she’s gonna to wreck us from the inside out. No one will be salvageable.”
Jax was gonna kill him. He was going to snap his neck, and then he was going to Change and murder the panthers at war with his mate. And then after he roared his victory over their carcasses, he was going after the lions. He didn’t give a single fuck if he died for this. He couldn’t let her be put down. She was his to protect.
“You came from a crew under Creed Barnett,” Ben said low.
The sound of the panther fight and the roar of a lion pacing the territory line made Jax dizzy. Kill them all.
The question confused him. With a frown, he asked, “So?”
“So, I always respected him for taking in the broken shifters. That’s what I’ve done. I know how hard it must’ve been for him because it’s agony for me.”
“Spit it out, Panther.”
“I need help, or I can’t save this one.”
Chest heaving, Jax pushed off Ben and took a few steps back. He paced the trail, eyes on the panther fight. The biggest panther was slinking away, totally mauled with claw and tooth marks. She-Devil had no blood matting her fur. She screamed again, and it sounded triumphant.
Annalise had just taken Second. Shit.
What was he supposed to do? How could he help her?
In his pocket, Jax’s phone rang.
The name on the caller ID drew gooseflesh on his entire body.
Beaston.
Jax brought the phone slowly up to his ear, eyes on his mate as she went to war with the other two panthers.
“Jax, bring her to me,” Beaston said in that low, gravelly, feral voice of his. “Bring her home.”
Chapter Ten
Aching muscles woke Annalise. When she cracked her sleepy eyes open, only dark gray light filled the room. She hadn’t been sleeping well, and every cell in her body was on fire. She-Devil was killing her.
The scent of Jax’s cologne and fur brushed her senses, and she struggled up onto locked arms in her bed.
He sat in the corner, no chair, just sat with his back against the wall, his knees bent, elbows resting on them, hands linked behind his head, black hair mussed and looking like he hadn’t slept in days. He was the most beautiful thing she’d ever laid eyes on.
“Tell me you’re real,” she murmured. “Tell me you brought my heart back.”
Without a word, Jax stood up to his full height and sauntered over to her, then slipped under the covers behind her and pulled her against his chest. His lips stayed gentle on the back of her neck, and then he did something beastly and perfect. He sank his teeth into her skin there so hard and fast, she had no time to flinch.
As quickly as he’d bitten her, he released her torn flesh and licked the warmth that trailed down her back. Over and over he ran his tongue until the pain eased and the bleeding stopped.
My monster. Mine.
Feeling raw and broken and so ashamed she’d let him claim her before she explained how doomed she was, she turned over in his arms and snuggled as close as possible to him, just to selfishly absorb the feeling of safety he gave her before she admitted something that would make him run.
He wrapped his arms tight around her back. So warm and strong, his pecs were hard against her cheek.
“Everything is going to be okay,” he murmured in the darkness before dawn.
That was the most beautiful combination of six words in the English language, but for someone like her, they couldn’t ever be true. “It’s not,” she said. “I hurt people. I can’t stop hurting people. I don’t have any control of the cat. I never did.”
“It’s okay. I’m going to take care of you.”
And because she needed to purge her soul to the man she trusted more than anyone, she told him her deepest, darkest secret. “A man named Brody asked me on a date. And afterward, he kissed me at my door like a gentleman. And when I said goodnight and tried to shut the door on him, he forced his way in, took me to my bedroom, and hurt me.”
Against her, Jax went rigid, but stayed silent.
“And while he was hurting me, he bit me. She-Devil came out immediately.”
“He’ll die for what he did,” Jax murmured. “I’m already hunting him.”