Dannika Dark - Seven Years

She squealed a yes.

Punishment served. Once Maizy got wired and tired, Denver was never going to give her sugar again. Especially when her magic wand made an appearance and she started whacking him on the head to transform him into a prince.

He acted nonchalant, so I hauled my bag I’d brought with me into Jericho’s bedroom. Austin had a point. Staying in the same room with Maizy was too risky. Even though I had no recollection of turning into a wolf, I knew I must have been dangerous by the scrapes I’d put on Austin.

“Well, well,” a familiar voice said from behind me as I was bending over and making up the bed. The door clicked shut and I peered over my shoulder. “That’s the position I like the most,” Jericho said, holding the door up with his shoulder blades and staring at my ass.

“Long night?” I asked, noticing the hickeys on his neck. I tried to avoid looking at the shiner on his eye because I felt responsible. On the other hand, it didn’t appear to have been of any hindrance to him getting laid.

He stripped away his graffiti T-shirt and tossed it onto a pile of clothes on the floor. There were more hickeys, and mostly around his navel area. I guessed groupies liked staking their claim on a rocker with their mouths.

“You sleepin’ in my bed, Goldilocks?”

“I can’t stay with Maizy for obvious reasons. Austin told me you guys have more control over your wolf and I’m new to all of this.”

He moved his mouth around as if he were sucking on a piece of candy. “You’re taking it pretty well.”

I shrugged. “I’ve always had to be the rock in my family; I guess it’s not in my nature to go apeshit over finding out I have paws and a tail. I’m handling it the best way I know how.”

“Denial?” Jericho snorted and tossed a set of keys on his dresser. “I can say this because I’m his brother, but maybe you should stay away from Austin.”

“Why?”

His eyes hooded behind the long strands of loose hair that had fallen free from the band he’d used to tie it back. “A girl like you wants a man who can control his temper. Austin’s not quite there yet. He’s good, real good. We’ve watched him grow up and become alpha material, but he has a switch in there and if you flip it the wrong way, then look out.”

“Everyone has that switch,” I argued.

“When Wes died, that switch stayed flipped for a long time.”

Then I got it. Jericho thought I was going to push Austin over the edge again and tear apart the pack—that I’d hurt him the way Wes did by dying.

“We’re not tight like that, so you don’t have to worry.”

He glanced down at the floor. “My brother’s socks are lying on top of your lacey bra. That’s pretty fucking tight.”

A sudden knock rapped on the door and it cracked open. Jericho anchored his feet to the ground and pushed it closed with his back.

“Let me the fuck in,” Austin growled.

When the door opened, Austin looked between us. He gripped Jericho by the back of the neck and guided him out into the hall before shutting the door behind him.

“What’s this about you seeing Lorenzo?”

I stayed quiet. It seemed like the best way to avoid a fight and Austin had an agitated look on his face.

“Well?” he pressed, looming above me and closing the tiny gap of air between us.

I placed my hands behind me on the bed and gave him the “so what?” silent look.

“Always so difficult,” he finally said in a softened voice. “Even when you were a kid.”

“You were mean to me.”

He tilted his head, rubbing that thick jaw of his. “When I was eight or twelve I might have been a jerk, but after puberty…”

Austin actually blushed and when I smiled, he turned around and stared at a Led Zeppelin poster.

“Lorenzo is searching for my mom. He doesn’t seem like a bad guy, Austin. I don’t have any reason not to go out with him, and no one else is calling on me.”

He rocked on his heels and I stood up, unzipping my bag and grabbing my purple hairbrush. I stood in front of a dirty mirror and combed my hair, which hung just past my breasts. Guys liked my straight hair and invariably commented on it, so I usually wore it down. Otherwise, I didn’t think there was anything remarkable about me. My eyes were the color of bourbon, my cheekbones high, and I had a few faded freckles on the bridge of my nose. My slim figure received a number of compliments, but I wasn’t ample in either department. I worked what I had (my legs being my best asset), but always wished I had larger breasts or curvier hips.

“You don’t trust that I can handle this and find your mom?”

“The more help I can get, the better, is all I’m saying, Austin.”

He spun around, arms folded. “I have to take a trip tonight and I want you to come with me.”

“I can’t leave Maze.”

“Denver and the boys got it taken care of. Shifters are protective of kids, even if they aren’t our own. It’s why Prince stopped his car for Maizy and didn’t keep driving. You can trust my pack. They’re older and have their wolves under control. They’ll fight to the death to protect her, if that gives you any comfort.”

And it kind of did. “Why do you want me to go with you?”

He flexed his jaw, staring at me in the mirror. Then his eyes slid down and I knew it was that heat word again. Austin didn’t want me in the house with his brothers.

“Okay, so where are we going?”

The “we” in my question satisfied him immensely. “Oklahoma. It’s about a six-hour drive and we’re staying overnight,” he said, looking at his watch. “We should be back tomorrow before dark.”

“What do you have to do?”

“Talk to someone” was all he’d tell me.

The Challenger’s motor purred along I-35 until Austin turned off at the exit and changed direction. Maizy hadn’t revealed much about her adventure outside of what we already knew. What detailed information could I expect from a girl her age?

I had purchased all kinds of beef jerky from a gas station just outside Gainesville. Austin had merely watched as I piled the individually wrapped sticks on the counter. I’d never really liked jerky very much, but the long car trip was grueling and I was famished.

“Craving?” he asked with a twitch of his lip.

I ignored him, paid the cashier, and stuffed the bag in the back seat.

Austin played a few old songs that brought some forgotten memories to the surface. We laughed and shared stories, finding out little snippets about each other we had never revealed back in the day. When Aerosmith came on, it brought back memories of a camping trip we took to the lake one summer with a group of friends. I was stuffed in a tent with three girlfriends while Wes and his buddies camped closer to the wooded area. In the middle of the night, my friends decided to sneak over and raid their tent. What can I say? We were seventeen. I didn’t go because my favorite Fleetwood Mac slow song had come on my portable radio. I walked to the shore and sat down, watching the moonlight slide over the waves like icing.

I still remember that night so clearly in my head. Feeling the warm summer breeze in my hair and listening to the water lap up on the shore as footsteps approached from behind, competing against the squeals of the girls and complaints of the boys in the distance. Austin had sat beside me that night, wearing his leather coat and denims with a hole in the knee. He didn’t say a word. We just sat together and watched the waves until the song played out.

Of course, he was smoking a cigarette and looking all Joe Cool Badass while I was wearing a ponytail and pink pajama bottoms with strawberry designs. Nothing happened between us. It was just one of those beautiful moments in life that means something for reasons we can’t explain.

Austin had quit smoking since then. You can always tell when you get up close to someone or check out the car ashtray and find loose change instead of cigarette butts. Strangely, he was even cooler now than he had been before. Maybe it’s because back then he was trying hard to be somebody, and now he finally was that somebody.

“Does this mean I’m not going to age?” I asked, staring out the window as a billboard went by.

I felt his eyes on me in the dark interior of the car. “It slows. I’m guessing you’ll look this way for a while.”

I shifted uncomfortably in the seat and pulled my legs up. After a few scrapes of my fingers through my long hair, I put my feet back on the floor and tried to recline the seat.

“What’s wrong?” he asked. “You need to go to the little girl’s room?”

I laughed because he was serious. Then in the quietness of the cab, it just struck me funny and I laughed some more. When I felt him giving me the “what the hell is wrong with you” look, I completely lost it.

I went into Beaker mode.

Austin smiled wide with warm eyes that crinkled around the corners. He chuckled as I let out an exhausted sigh and rested my head against the seat.

“I’ve missed your laugh,” he said.

“Only you, Austin. Only you.”

“Wes said it was the very best thing about you.”

I teared up and smiled, curling up on my side to look at him. “Why did he say that?”

Austin shrugged and rolled up his window. “He said it was uniquely you, and he was right. Wes didn’t have plans after school and that’s why he took the job with your dad. But he always knew you were going to be somebody. He also said you made the best chocolate-chip cookies and could bake your ass off.”

“I still can,” I bragged, lightly touching his arm and smiling. Baking sweets had always been a passion—I just never had any opportunities to show off my skills outside of Naya’s parties. I had perfected my cookies down to an art.