Lord of the Grrr's (18 page)

"Don't get any ideas," she said firmly before turning to head for bed. She had just wanted to show him her gratitude for doing his best to rectify the situation.

For the first time in a long time, Jean allowed herself the smallest sliver of hope.

Maybe. Just maybe, everything might work out.

Chase

It seemed impossible to believe that Jean had been staying with him for three weeks now, and the only time she had shown any hint of interest was when she had kissed him on the cheek. Not even after she had tried to go back to Seattle and come running back after just a day had there been any indication of her letting down her guard around him.

Oh, things had been good. Very good. The two of them were getting to know each other in a way that he had never experienced with a woman before. They truly were becoming friends first, and learning a lot about each other. She hadn't talked much about her past though, relying on him to do much of the reminiscing any time the topic came up. He was content to let it pass for now, since he could tell she had trust issues when it came to men. Although she hadn't outright admitted to that, it had become fairly obvious.

Living in close proximity to someone made it hard to cover up a lot of things. So far Chase had been lucky that his wolf hadn't launched another attack, seemingly content to let him do his own thing, as long as she was nearby. He was surprised that it wasn't trying to influence his hormones as much as usual, though he still walked around in a near semi-hard state on a daily basis if Jean was within twenty feet.

It made for some awkward moments, such as now, in the middle of a baby shower for Harper. He had excused himself for a moment to adjust and try to force it down, but nothing was working. It was killing him slowly to be in such close contact with a beautiful woman, one he could not touch because of his own mistake. There were days where he caught himself almost wishing he would lose control to his wolf, simply to end the pain of being near her, but never
with
her.

"Jean, this is Harper, Harper this is Jean." The two of them had never actually met in all that time due to an unbelievable set of circumstances. The pack had begun to joke that the two of them were actually the same person, as they had never been seen in the same room at the same time.

"They
aren't
really the same! Well shit, Ethan, I do believe you owe me twenty dollars!" Bryce crowed his delight as he slapped Ethan on the back, all of the pack joining in on a good-natured laugh as the two women looked back and forth suspiciously.

"You know Jean, perhaps it's best if we don't ask," Harper commented, shaking her head wryly. "Now, come sit over here and talk with me." Jean did as she was told, sitting down next to Harper as the two girls began to converse.

"Hey, Chase, you oaf. Get lost. Girl talk time, okay?"

"Yes ma'am," he said with a mock bow in Harper's direction before departing the vicinity, giving Jean a nod that told her he would stay close by. With her fears assuaged, the woman he wanted to be his mate turned and smiled at Harper as the two of them began to gossip.

Although he had made it seem as if he were at ease leaving Jean with Harper, it couldn't be anything further from the truth. He wasn't scared of leaving the two girls together, or even with any of the other guys in the room. It was nothing external that had him unnerved, but the one thing he could no longer control.

His wolf was getting stronger, and there was nothing that he could do about it. Chase tried everything he could think of to develop and tune his mental strength, to help prevent any lapses. He tried yoga, meditation, and anything in between that he could think of or come across. Yet despite his best efforts, none of it seemed to make a difference. Each day he woke up, he ran through a multitude of exercises designed to keep himself in control.

"What's bugging you, Chase?"

Chase whirled, his heart skipping a beat as Jake came up behind him without making a noise. He had been so absorbed in himself and his internal dilemma that he hadn't even noticed the approach of his alpha.

"I'm losing it, boss," he sighed after a long moment of contemplation. It hurt to admit it, to flat out say that he had reached his limit and was beginning to break down.

"What makes you think that?"

"The little things. This morning, for instance, it opened the link. I almost wasn't able to shut it down in time. How much longer before I miss it?"

"Oh," Jake said, suddenly much more contemplative of his longest friend.

When a shifter wanted to go from one form to another, they reached into their mind and found the link that connected them to their animal soul. By opening the link, or the bridge, they could change their bodies into one of any number of animals, be it wolves, bears, lions, and more. It was generally an easy transition and one that was completely controlled by the human mind. When they wanted to shift back, it was a simple matter of reaching inside and closing the door.

The human mind was incredibly complex compared to that of a wolf. Immensely strong, there was rarely any issue closing the door behind it, and keeping it locked. What Chase was learning as he neared that inevitable age of thirty-five, was that while his human mind wasn't weakening, it tended to get distracted.

That alone shouldn't have been an issue, but the wolf was getting smarter. It seemed that it had learned to unlock the door from its side. If he ever got caught while distracted, it could shift at any point, and cause immense amounts of trouble before he would be likely able to get it under control.

If
he could get it under control.

While he had said to Jake that it was the little things in an effort to downplay his own concern, the two of them knew that it was not a good sign at all.

"Anything else?"

"It's gotten to the point that she can't be more than twenty-five, thirty feet away from me."

"That close already? That's not good."

"Tell me about it," Chase muttered, cracking a beer handed to him by Ethan as he approached the pair. A look from Jake had him moving on quickly, however, keeping the pair alone for the time being.

"How are things progressing between the two of you anyway?"

"Good. I think. She's definitely more comfortable around me, and I feel like she can see we're a good fit. But something is holding her back. I'm just not sure what that is."

"It sounds simple, but you need to find that out. If you still think she's your mate, then—"

"She
is
my mate," Chase growled, not liking the tone of voice he heard come from Jake with that last comment. Jake may be the pack leader, but Chase was not going to back down when his own decisions were called into question.

"Very well. But you need to have that conversation with her Chase. Soon. Please don't make me force the issue."

It wasn't a threat, just a simple statement of his intentions. Jake had to do what he thought was best for the pack, and if that meant forcing the truth out of Harper, Chase knew he would do it. That was not the way he wanted to do things, so he would have to ensure it happened before things got to that point.

"I'll take care of it before it comes to that. The other day she didn't turn around when I took my shirt off at home. We laugh together, cry together, tell silly jokes. It has all the signs of a relationship except for the lack of intimacy. It'll happen."

Chase wasn't nearly as confident as he made it seem, but appearances had to be kept up. The sharp glance that Jake sent his way told him he was unsuccessful in his attempt, but Jake didn't say anything about it. Taking another sip of his beer, Chase glanced over at Jean once again.

She really is stunning
.

As if she could hear his thoughts, Jean's head swiveled toward him, a weird look on her face. He smiled at her, enjoying the way the sunlight coming through the window behind her played off her hair, highlighting the faint traces of red that ran through it. The white summery dress she was wearing beautifully accented her curves in a way that drove him wild.

Jean's eyes tightened as she looked at him, almost as if his mate knew what he was thinking. He continued to look deep into the steely gray eyes of his feisty other half. If she could just understand what she meant to him and how perfect the two of them were together.

"What's on your mind?" Jean asked, having gotten up and walked directly at him as he became lost within his own mind.

"I was just admiring the way you looked in that dress with the sun on you," he replied without hesitating, wanting to tell her just what was on his mind. There would be no dancing around the subject this time. "You really are the most beautiful woman I have ever set my eyes upon."

His voice was tight and he told her exactly what he thought without trying to lighten the mood. To her credit, Jean managed to blush without giggling, accepting his words as truth. The way the red crept down her neck toward her chest was enticing, but he managed to catch himself and return the intense stare that she was directing his way.

"They look great together, don't they?" he asked, inclining his head in the direction of Harper as she cuddled up to Jake. The other wolf had smoothly moved away from Chase when Jean approached him. Chase gave him a silent nod of thanks that his alpha correctly interpreted with his own small gesture.

It was then that he realized Jean was still staring at the other couple, her eyes pointed in their direction but her gaze focused on a point a million miles away. Realizing that something momentous was going on within her head, he tried as hard as he could not to move a muscle, even taking slower, deeper breaths as he allowed Jean the moment to herself.

"She told me how happy and excited she is to be having a child."

Seeing as he wasn't sure how to reply to that, or if he was even supposed to, Chase simply kept quiet and nodded along with her. She was building to something, but he wasn't sure what. The silence stretched onward, to the point that he began to wonder if she was expecting him to speak.

Then, in a way that was visible to him, she steeled herself and began to speak.

Jean

Make damn sure you're prepared for the consequences of those words!

The thought ricocheted around in her brain, causing the words that were forming to disappear for a moment before she found the courage to continue once again. Chase deserved to hear this from her, so that he knew why she was so distant and unreliable.

"Do you want us to end up like them, Chase?"

"Yes." He didn't hesitate, his voice strong and full of confidence. Jean could never fault him in that; he definitely knew what it was he wanted, and had not been afraid to go after it. If anything, she thought to herself, he was a little too aggressive in chasing it.

"I can't be that person for you. That kind of love and tenderness, I can't give that to you," she said slowly, doing her best to remain calm as she put words to what restrained her and gave her nightmares.

"What do you mean?"

"I'm broken. Damaged goods. I don't know how to love. Hell, I don't know if I'm
capable
of love. Maybe I was once, a long, long time ago. But not these days."

"Why not, Jean? What happened?"

"I was twelve when my parents got a divorce," she explained, telling him about how the experience had traumatized her, the frequent trips to the divorce lawyer and how she had run out of his office any number of times screaming and in tears."It's not something I can do."

"Jean, we're not your parents," Chase began, but she cut him off before he could say more.

"I know that, I really do. But it makes no difference."

"It does, actually," he replied somewhat hotly, not happy about being cut off nor what she was saying. "My kind, we mate for life, Jean. We don't get divorced, we don't cheat. It's not in our nature."

"Your kind," she said softly, his words striking yet another chord within her. "Can you and I even, you know, have children?"

"Harper is pregnant." He stated the fact bluntly, as if she should have known better before asking such an absurd question.

"I'm telling you Chase, I can't be that perfect woman for you. It's not in the cards. I don't know how."

"I'm scared too," he whispered, admitting to her one of his own fears, just as she was admitting hers.

If she wasn't getting frustrated at him for not understanding, Jean might have found it endearing. Why couldn't he understand that she wasn't the right fit for him? Her flaws were numerous and clearly visible. Why did he insist on pretending as if they didn't exist?

"What are you hiding from me?"

"I'm sorry?" He recovered quickly, but not fast enough. The look that had passed through his eyes was unmistakable. It was shot through with guilt. There was something hidden there, something he desperately did not want her to know or find out. Frustrated, she just shook her head and turned to leave.

"I love you, Jean."

He had said it. There it was. The words she dreaded to hear. Sighing, she closed her eyes, rolled her shoulders to loosen some tension, and without looking back, walked from the room. She could picture the look on his face, and it hurt her to do it, but it was for the best if he hated her, if he got so mad that he never wanted to see her again. Her eyes filled with water, threatening to flood her cheeks, but she managed to hold it together until she reached the stairs, taking them swiftly as she fled to the washroom.

Once there she hid for several minutes, fixing her makeup and drying her eyes.

"Why did he have to say that?" she muttered, frustrated that it had come to him saying the phrase and her walking away. She should have diffused the situation from the start, never giving an opening to begin with. If she had managed to do that, then neither of them would have been put into such an awkward situation.

"I'm worried about Chase."

"What do you mean?"

The voices were coming from outside the doorway as two people made their way up the stairs, past the washroom she was hiding in and into the study down the room. It sounded like Holden and one of the other wolves, perhaps Kevin, but she didn't know their voices well enough just yet to pinpoint who without a face. Cracking the door slightly, she tried to listen in.

"He's fallen so hard for her, but you just know she's going to keep rejecting him. That's one cold woman he's found."

"Yeah, I really hope he doesn't do anything stupid either," Kevin said as they turned in to the study.

Doing her best to remain quiet, she crept out of the bathroom, but maintained her distance as far as possible, even if it meant having to struggle to hear. She knew how good their hearing was, so she would have to hope that the general sounds of the gathering covered up any noise she was making.

"He mentioned to me the other day that if he reaches his birthday, he wants us to be on guard. I don't know if I could do it Holden. I mean shit, it's Chase we're talking about here. Do you really think it will come to that?"

"With the way she keeps shutting him out, never giving him a chance? I'm not excited about it, but I think we need to prepare for that eventuality."

"If only there was some way we could convince her to give him a shot, to see that he's a good guy. I know he bit her, but we know that wasn't him, really. She must be able to see that he wouldn't harm a fly if he can avoid it. So what does she have against him?"

"I don't know Kev, I don't know. Perhaps it's not him that she hates, but someone in her past? She could be assigning blame to him, or even to herself, for something that doesn't even apply to the two of them."

"What a load of horseshit. She's not stupid. She must be able to see that they work well together. We all know she finds him hot too, or else they wouldn't be in this situation. What more do you need to make a relationship work?"

"Effort. Both sides need to be willing to work for it, and right now I'd say only Chase is up for that."

The voices faded as the moved farther into the room. She heard glass clink together, so she assumed they had cracked a beer or something, and the conversation shifted into quieter tones, to the point she could no longer hear.

Still, Jean was feeling embarrassed at the way the two of them so dispassionately threw aside her reasons for not letting herself fall for Chase.

Don't be an idiot, you've already fallen for him, you're just scared and don't want to admit it.

Okay, so perhaps she was scared as well, conceding the point to her inner voice with a grimace. That didn't mean she should automatically throw herself at Chase though. Just because she liked him didn't mean that overruled the way she knew it would end.

Thinking of the end got her wondering once more what the two men had meant by their conversation. What was going to happen on Chase's birthday? She knew it was coming up — only a short period of time away in fact. The other made it sound like something traumatic was going to happen then.

She needed to know what.

Taking control of her spine and giving it a backbone once again, Jean held her head high and marched downstairs, seeking out Chase. She was certain that whatever was surrounding his thirty-fifth birthday was also what he had been hiding from her all along. It was serious, and if she was to give him a chance, she needed to know. It barely occurred to Jean that she was thinking in terms of how it would affect their relationship.

"Chase, what happens when you turn thirty-five?" she asked him point blank in the middle of the room, ignoring the stares as the guests all turned to watch.

Chase turned white immediately, looking around the room as if to find out who had spilled the secret. He tried to take her shoulder, to guide her out of the center of attention, but she was having none of it, shaking off his hand.

"What the hell are you hiding from me? You claim that I'm your mate, but you can't share this with me?"

The silence was deafening. Feeling more confident that he would tell her this way, she waited with her arms crossed. Finally he began to speak, his words making her feel worse than before.

"A lot of men, as they grow older, begin to lose their hair. At one point, it goes from thinning to bald in a very short timeframe," he swallowed hard as she stared at him, understanding his point but not how it related.

"The same process happens with a shifter, but with their sanity. As I get closer to my thirty-fifth birthday, my wolf grows stronger, and I grow weaker, more fragmented. It was in a moment of weakness that my wolf slipped through and tried to claim you. As I get older, it will only get worse. I can expect to go insane, and quite possibly die, before I'm forty."

She opened her mouth to speak, trying to understand, but he wasn't done.

"The only way to avoid such a fate is to find your mate before then. If a shifter claims their mate, the bond between the two parties stabilizes things, allowing everyone to continue to live normally. Without that stabilizing factor, things go downhill."

"Oh." Words didn't seem to describe the gravity of the situation. It would explain why he had been so nervous, and why his friends were so scared she would reject him.

"How have you managed to be so polite and proper these past weeks with that sort of timeline looming over you?" she whispered, in awe of his restraint in not trying to complete the bond with her.

It must have taken inhuman amounts of willpower to resist. There had been so many times he could have just taken her, but he hadn't, instead waiting for her to open up to him, hoping desperately that she would.

"I do it for you, Jean. Ever since you waltzed into my life and stole the spotlight, I've done it all for you. I don't need anything else to keep me going."

This time tears did fall as she stared at him, unwilling to believe that someone such as he could truly care for her, to show that sort of control, all because of how he felt. She wasn't worthy of that sort of love.

"You are," he said, somehow catching on to her thoughts. "You make me laugh, you listen to me when I'm stressed, and everything in between. You may not know how much those things mean to me, but trust me, it's a lot. Add in the fact that you're the most beautiful woman that I could ever imagine, and I have a hard time not falling for you. I love you Jean," he said once more, in front of the crowd.

This time, though, she didn't run. How could she flee from something she didn't know was going to come to pass, when Chase refused to run away from something that was certain? He deserved better from her.

"I love you, Chase Hewitt. I can't believe I'm saying that, and I don't know if I can live up to the imaginary woman you believe me to be, but I'm going to try my best."

"Well, I intend to have a lot of fun proving you wrong while we find out," he said with a smile. She smiled through the tears, a half-sob half-laugh escaping her lips as he walked over to her, embracing her as people smiled and made appreciative noises.

"Sorry," she said in Harper's direction, not having meant to steal the show.

"Hah, get out of here you two. You have a lot of talking to do I'd say," the hostess said by way of reply.

"We've done enough talking, I think," Jean said, taking Chase's hand and pulling him along with her as several catcalls and giggles sounded behind them from the assembled group of friends. She didn't let go of his hand until they had exited the house.