“Well, I don’t have a choice. There’s no cure.”
“Yes, there is. Ben didn’t always have his panther. I researched him. He was in Apex, some genetic cleansing lab that stripped animals out of shifters. Most of the time it killed them, but sometimes it worked. It worked on Ben. He didn’t get his panther back for years after he was in that lab. I don’t want you to kill your cat. I want you to own her.”
Something about his impassioned speech made She-Devil draw up a little. She wasn’t pouting anymore. She was listening. And Annalise felt a surge of pride in herself. Maybe she could do that someday and be the woman Jax deserved. He deserved a strong mate. He had faith in her, wanted her to be a badass, wanted her to be a better shifter, and it was strong motivator right here, right now.
He drew her palm to his lips and pressed a kiss there, then said low, “Don’t talk about killing her anymore because if you did that, you wouldn’t be you.”
“Okay,” she whispered.
He looked down at her journal again before she realized what number they were on.
“Twelve,” he said, “Marry Jaxon and have a dozen of his…” He paused and grinned before he continued. “Monster bear-panther babies.”
“Oh, my gosh, now I’m really embarrassed,” she said, burying her face in her pillow. “That was a joke. Don’t run away from me.”
“Oh, no, I’m not running. I’m gonna put at least two dozen monster babies in you,” he said, punching out his words through his soft laughing. “Okay, number thirteen.” He stopped talking, so she looked up at him. He wore a frown again as he read it silently. He inhaled sharply and read. “Thirteen, live happily ever after in the woods with a bunch of gross boys who I’m pretty sure are making moonshine on the mountain behind my cabin.” Jax scratched his lip with the back of his thumbnail. “My cabin,” he repeated. “Does Red Havoc feel like a den? Like a home?”
“Yes,” she said, confused. “That was the point of me moving out there though, right?”
Jax nodded and offered her a sad smile. “You found your place.”
“My place is with you.”
“A rogue.”
“So…I’ll be a rogue, too, then.”
His frown deepened, and he wouldn’t meet her eyes. “I want to show you something.”
Ah, there was that subject change he’d been so damn good at in their text messages. She knew from experience there was no turning him back to the subject that had run him off in the first place. With a sigh, she said, “Okay, Jax, show me.”
Chapter Fifteen
Annalise stared up at the tree house high in the branches of a sturdy oak. The wood was worn, old, and gray from its battle against the elements. But some of the planks of the house had been replaced with new wood, and recently if the scent of lingering sawdust was anything to go by.
She squeezed Jaxon’s hand and looked up at him. “You’re giving me something important, aren’t you?”
He dipped his chin once.
“What does it mean to you?”
“When I was a kid, maybe seven or eight, I started having these urges to leave my trailer at night. My parents would be so pissed when I came back and would ask where I’d been all night, but I couldn’t tell them. There wasn’t an answer. I just…wandered. Eventually they got used to it. Sometimes Jathan would come with me, but he got bored of walking the woods in the dark. As I got older, Titan wanted to wander farther, and the urges got worse. I had to leave during the day, too. Take breaks from work to go…anywhere. Beaston built this treehouse a long time ago. The kids I grew up with, Harper Keller, Air Ryder, Aaron Keller, Wyatt James, Weston Novak, my brother, Bash’s kids, Beaston’s kids, all the kids who grew up in Damon’s Mountains…this was like a hideaway. Countless hours were spent playing here and shifting in these woods, learning how to depend on the other kids around us. Like a miniature crew. The next generation. But for me, those lessons on how to be a crew slid right over me. I would come here more and more when I knew nobody would be here. Late at night, when everyone was asleep in their trailers, I would wander for hours and usually end up here because home didn’t feel like home, and I had nowhere else that Titan felt a connection to.”
“What are you saying, Jax?”
When he looked back down at her, his eyes were glowing green. “I’m saying, you found a steady home in Red Havoc. My cabin, you said. This treehouse is the closest I ever got to my cabin, and as we speak, Titan is asking me to leave these woods and roam.”
Flap, flap, scritch, scratch.
Annalise jerked her attention to a branch by the tree house. A large raven sat there, one dark eye on her.
Flap, flap. She ruffled her wings, then scraped her shiny black beak against the bark of the branch under her.
Flap, flap. The raven spread her wings and dove straight for Annalise.
She-Devil stayed inside of her skin as she ducked away from the dive-bombing raven at the last moment. The bird arced low to the pine-needle blanketed forest floor and then lifted just enough to land on a man’s arm.
Annalise startled badly. She hadn’t heard him approach, and there was something quite scary about the way he stared at her. Like he could see right through to her soul with those glowing green eyes, the same color as Jax’s. The man’s head was canted like a curious animal, and even from way over here, she could feel dominance wafting from him. Monster, She-Devil warned, but she didn’t push for a Change. She was still uncertain after the fight earlier.
The man’s hair was chestnut-colored and mussed on top. He wore jeans and a navy sweater that clung to his rigid musculature.
“Beaston,” Jax greeted him. “I was wondering where you were. You asked me to bring her to you, but you didn’t show up at the river.”
“I was there at the river,” Beaston said, giving his attention to the large raven on his forearm. He ran a knuckle down its chest. “I wanted to watch her first. Watch the panther. She-Devil.”
The way he said her animal’s name so intimately drew chills up Annalise’s spine.
“I’ve seen you a long time.”
“I-I don’t think we’ve met,” Annalise stammered.
“Sure we did. Don’t you remember the night you were bitten?”
Pain slashed through her head as something tugged right at the edge of her memory.
No, She-Devil pleaded.
“I was too late,” Beaston said, his eyes still on the raven as he petted her. “I’m always too late. I wanted to fix you before you got broken, but fate never lets me win. Jax calls you his Anna. Did you know?” Beaston slightly lifted his arm with the raven on it. “This is my Ana. You two are alike but different. Black feathers. Black fur. She was in a cage once, too.” Beaston slid that eerie green gaze to Annalise. “Strong women don’t do well in cages. I was there that night, just too late.”
Flashes of her fighting Brody as he dragged her into the bedroom blasted across her mind.