In less than twenty-four hours, Asher was back on the jet, flying back to the city. The trip had been shorter than he could have imagined. His pilot tried not to show his shock at being woken up in the middle of the night and told to fly back so fast, but Asher knew the man was probably wondering what on earth was going on. Asher hadn’t even had the energy to fake an emergency to explain the abrupt change in plans.
His mind was too disturbed to think straight. He was wondering what was happening. He had left the Red eyes bar feeling as though all the light in his life had gone off. It was as though a cold hand had gripped his insides and twisted until there was no more blood flowing in him. There was no bounce in his step. It wasn’t the first rejection of his life, but it certainly felt like the worst. For some reason, a reason he couldn’t even begin to explain, Mia’s rejection hurt more than the one he had received just months before.
Asher frowned and stared out the small plane window into the dark sky. He could almost see the blank stare Mia had given him reflected in the glass. Even when he had risen from the stool and made it clear he was leaving, she hadn’t reacted or stopped him.
He had definitely imagined his impulsive trip back to the shitty town ending very differently. Asher chuckled to himself and shook his head. He had definitely imagined a more pleasant experience. One involving more smiles and perhaps some moans of pleasure.
The short flight back was spent with Asher lost in his thoughts. However, as soon as his plane touched down, he snapped out of it, determined to return to his life and forget anything to do with Mia, the bartender. Just then, his phone rang. A glance at the screen told him it was a call he really didn’t want to take, but he knew he had to.
“Layla?” he said in greeting once he picked the call.
“Where the hell are you? You barely came back and next thing I hear...you order the jet to be fueled up and get ready to take you God knows where. Asher? I don’t like this. You left for three weeks... I understood that. What is this now?”
Asher rolled his eyes and waited till the woman ran out of steam and finally shut her mouth. “Are you done?”
Layla was seething. He could tell from her breathing, which he could hear through the phone. She clearly didn’t like his tone. Unfortunately, he didn’t care much, but he decided to tell her, anyway. “I’m back in the city... just landed. So cool your horses, no need to throw a tantrum.”
“Where did you go?” Layla asked quietly, tactfully ignoring his words.
That was not a question he wanted to answer, especially not now when he was still reeling from his encounter with Mia. He cleared his throat. “Nowhere you know.”
“What kind of answer is that, Asher? If you don’t want to tell me... fine. But you can’t keep doing this. I was worried. Hell! I have been worried for weeks! I know things were ugly, and you needed some space, but bro, come on.”
He sighed. He did feel bad about that. “I know. Dave told me. I’m sorry to have stressed you, it was not my intention. I just needed some time.”
It was Layla’s turn to sigh. “I know. I’m sorry for everything.”
Asher nodded, even though she couldn’t see him. He knew Layla was sorry about the whole thing. He didn’t hate her for it; she had done what she thought was best, and even though it was a bitter pill to swallow and it still churned his stomach every time he thought about it, he was grateful.
***
Her wolf tore through the woods, its paws crushed fallen leaves and dry twigs. Fur ruffled with the wind blowing across its body. Its eyes glowed. The sound of heavy breathing and a low growl mixed with the cries of every creature that made the woods a home. The wolf’s muscles screamed with exertion, but Mia continued to push it to run faster.
The sky was already morphing from the pitch dark of the night to the gray that announced a new day. A new day that didn’t hold any promise. She had been running for hours, determined to find release. It never came. The reality of things remained clear in her head.
The wolf was agitated. That was an understatement. It threw its head side to side, then looked to the fading moon and suddenly howled. A second after the act, Mia mentally shook her head and growled. What was she thinking? Thoughts of Asher Deavan had made her so restless and antsy she had practically forgotten she was a runaway werewolf being chased by two packs, and she had just howled.
A wolf’s howl had the same function as a GPS tracker. It could be heard for miles. And each howl was unique to a wolf, like a fingerprint. If any of her old pack members searching for her were within range, they would not only know it was her, but they would know where she was.
Mia turned around and started running back to the small town she was living in. Another growl of anger towards herself left her throat. She realized she had to cover her tracks. Mia immediately changed course and started towards the river she knew ran miles from the town.
She pushed her already exhausted wolf hard and fast. It had been a careless slip to howl in the woods. One she hadn’t done before she met Asher Deavan. Careful had been her middle name for months, but now, just three encounters with the human and she was a confused mess, making careless mistakes that could cost her everything she had fought so hard for.
When the river came into view, she wasted no time and jumped into it. The cold water felt great on her wolf’s overheated body and gave her head some much needed clarity. But it did nothing for the ache in her muscles. She needed a hot bath for that. Unfortunately, she wouldn’t get one until she had covered her tracks sufficiently before heading back to her apartment.
The cold water in the river made sure her scent wouldn’t be tracked. Walking through the river ensured she left no paw prints. She gave herself another mental slap for finding herself in the situation.
It took her an extra hour to get back to her apartment. She was exhausted and pissed. A long hot bath later, she felt no better. With a few hours to kill before she had to get to the bar, she decided to take a nap.
~~~
Maybe she should have given Asher a chance, Mia thought for the hundredth time after she hadn’t seen him for four nights. He was truly gone. It wasn’t surprising considering how she had addressed him, but it was still hard to believe. She gave herself a hard mental slap.
She worked the bar robotically, her mind completely distracted for hours. It was a good thing the job had become almost second nature to her. She could do it with her eyes closed, so the patrons were safe and happy with their usual drinks. They barely realized anything different about her.
She heard the door to the bar open; she registered it vaguely in the peripheral of her mind. There was no hope that it would be Asher, so she was less than enthusiastic. Almost absentmindedly, she took a whiff of the air to know who had entered. Her dazed state evaporated in her heartbeat. She raised her eyes slowly. “No.” Her worst nightmare materialized before her eyes.
The bar was full. The usual patrons in various stages of intoxication occupied every available table and space. Mia assessed this in a split second. Calculating the probabilities and chances of escape. Small, seemingly insignificant, and very crucial facts aligned themselves in her head. One, the packed small bar would buy her some time. And second, the entire place smelled of alcohol and like a poorly ventilated sweaty room. But she knew if she could catch his scent, it wouldn’t take him long to catch hers. In conclusion, her chances were not good at all. Connor stood at the door. His muscular build and tall height put him well above the majority of people in the bar. He hadn’t yet looked her way. His wandering, studying eyes had his face turned towards a small table of noisy drunks in the back, but Mia knew it was him. Not only from his scent, but she could never forget that face. The head enforcer of Blue creek pack was one of those people a
Was it wrong that he hated her as much as he desired her? Asher wondered. His thoughts floated in and out of his head as his heart pounded at the rhythm of his feet on the treadmill. When he thought about it, he actually hated Mia for the desire she had awoken in him. A desire so strong and consuming, it made him crave her more than his next breath. He had never known such a desire in his life; it pulsed in his blood with energy. Never knew it was possible to want someone so much, someone who didn’t even want him and had made it painfully clear on more than one occasion. He replayed their last encounter several times in his head. “... there could never be anything between us. So, you should go back to wherever you had disappeared to...” her words repeated themselves in his mind. And each time they hurt, just as they had the first time, he heard them from her lips. Lips he wanted to taste. Lips he imagined wrapped around other parts of his anato
While Asher had been back in the city, he had thought his mind had exaggerated the state of the building Mia lived in. But now Asher realized his mind had sugar-coated it. His mind had tried to make it less horrifying. The sight of the dilapidated two-storey building in front of him made him shudder involuntarily. To make matters worse, unlike the first time he had seen it, there was no security light in front of the building. That gave the entire place an eerie look. Forget horror movies and ghosts, Asher thought. He was almost expecting a cannibal serial killer to jump out of the shadows and send him into the afterlife in a heartbeat. It still failed to make sense to him how any sane person would live in such a place. He understood financial constraints and hard decisions, but where did self preservation and survival instinct feature in this equation? He remembered something he had learned in school about Maslow’s hierarchy of n
He waited for her to let go of her control; she was halfway there, but then her sanity came back to her. How could she let go when letting go meant so much more than he thought? He didn’t have the barest idea what being intimate with her would result in. Unlike humans, werewolves bonded with their partners on a far deeper level than he would be able to understand. And she couldn’t exactly explain it either. She couldn’t exactly start an explanation about mating bonds just like that and definitely not while she was naked, lying beneath him. He couldn’t claim her or bite her, but she still knew sex with Asher Deavan wouldn’t be just a roll in the hay. An act that could be dusted off the next morning and forgotten. She shouldn’t let it happen. Asher kept a close eye on her. When he saw that she continued to hold back, lost in her own troubled thoughts, he brushed his lips against her skin in a light kiss. His warm breath fanned over her skin. He f
Asher blinked. It must be a trick of his eyes. It was not possible for her eyes to glow like a cat; he thought. But even though he reasoned it out in his head, he raised himself on his elbows and stared at her. “Your eyes…?” The words died in his throat; he couldn’t finish the question. He wasn’t even sure what he was asking. Asher gave his head a shake. When he looked again, her eyes were normal. He blinked again. What had he seen? “Mia?” he started, but she interrupted him. “Sorry I woke you.” Something in her voice got his attention. She sounded panicked. And now that he wasn’t wondering about the strange glow in her eyes, he realized she looked rather nervous. Her hands were clenching and unclenching repeatedly. She bit her lip and stared at the window before looking back at him. She looked like someone about to bolt. He sat up properly. “What is going on?” Every nerve in him became alert to the need to protect Mia.
The jet ran down the runway, gaining speed and getting ready to take off. Mia Held on to her seat with a tight grip. It was her first time on a plane. Werewolves preferred to keep their feet closer to the ground. And who could blame them? Something about the small tube shaped tin floating in the air thousands of feet above the ground made her wolf agitated. She wouldn’t want to imagine what would happen if she lost control of her wolf for even a second in the tight sealed space they sat in. Mia took a deep breath and tried not to think about it. She had to remind herself that this was an escape. The jet took off and after a few minutes; it leveled and the seatbelt sign went off.Mia released the breath she had been holding. Asher unbuckled himself and looked at her. “Hey, are you ok? Why didn’t you say you were a nervous flyer?” Sure, let’s go with that explanation, Mia thought. It was far better than the one about her wolf clawing
Connor felt like a dog chasing his own tail. He didn’t want to even imagine what the other werewolves with him were thinking or whispering behind his back. He had a group of four of his pack wolf shifters with him, ordinary betas who served as soldiers of the pack. The five of them had been tasked with finding Mia and returning her to the pack, but he was in charge. It was him that made the decisions, and him who got the unpleasant task of informing the alpha every time their lead went cold. And another lead had definitely gone cold. He felt like breaking something. He would have preferred to be in a bloody, gruesome, bone breaking fight right about now, then to accept that the alpha’s daughter had yet again outsmarted him. He had been so certain that he had her after catching her scent in the bar. That had been two nights ago. They had searched every inch and under every rock in the town they thought she could hide in and had come up with noth
Mia reached for her bag, which she had dropped by the door at the same time Asher’s hand wrapped around her arm to stop her. She was so angry; she was literally vibrating with the effort it took to hold her wolf back. “Let go,” she told him harshly through her clenched teeth. “Give a guy a chance to explain before you shoot him,” Asher responded quietly. He positioned himself so his front completely made contact with her back and cornered her against the wall next to the front door. It was a daring move, considering what he had seen her do to the two guys who had attacked her outside the bar the very first night he had met her. He had little doubt she could push him back and leave any second. The fact that she didn’t do exactly that gave him a tiny glimmer of hope. He sighed quietly and tried to reason with her. “Let me explain, it’s not what you think.” “You want to explain that?” She jerked her head in the direction of the kit