The Exiled Alpha's Human Mate

CH.12 - What's Out There

Evan's POV

I smell them before I see them.

It cuts through everything, through her scent that's got me stupid, through the salt and the diesel of the harbor, a thread of something that doesn't belong. Sweat. Leather. Cigarette smoke gone stale in clothing. And under it, faint but there, the chemical tang I've been smelling around the crew's places for weeks now, the one that clings to the fighters after Will's done with them.

Someone from the crew is out here. Watching. On Anna's road, in the dark, near her house.

"Get inside," I tell her again, and I hear how it comes out, hard and flat, and I don't have room to soften it. "Now. Please."

She doesn't move. Of course she doesn't. She plants her feet and lifts that stubborn chin and her eyes have gone gold, angry, and even now, even with the danger crawling up the back of my neck, some part of me registers it and aches.

"Not until you tell me what's going on," she says. "You don't get to show up on my dock and then order me around like-"

"Anna." I step in close, closer than I've let myself get, close enough that her scent floods me and the wolf surges up hard, and I lower my voice so it won't carry to whoever's standing in the dark. "There is someone in the trees past your house who does not belong here, and I need you behind a locked door before I go find out who. I am not ordering you. I am begging you. For once in your life, please, listen."

Something in my face must reach her, because the anger flickers. She glances toward the dark stretch of road, then back at me, and I watch her weigh it, watch her decide whether I'm playing her or telling the truth.

"You can smell someone," she says slowly. "From here. In the dark."

Too much. I've said too much. I straighten and step back and put the cold on like a coat.

"I heard something," I say. "That's all. Get inside."

She keeps looking at me with those gold eyes like she's reading a page I didn't mean to leave open. But she's not stupid, and the danger's real enough that even her stubbornness bends around it, and finally she nods.

"Fine. But this isn't over." She backs toward her gate, still watching me. "You're going to explain. All of it. The smelling, and the eyes, and the thing that happens when I touch you, and why you keep turning up. I mean it, Evan."

"Get inside and lock the door and I'll consider it."

"You'll do it."

"Anna."

"Going." She's at her door now. She pauses with her hand on it, and for a second the anger drops off her face and there's just a girl on a dark step looking at me with something soft and frightened and unwilling to leave. "Be careful. Whatever you're about to do. Whoever's out there."

The door closes. The lock turns. I hear it, and only then does the knot in my chest ease, and I turn toward the dark and let the cold thing in me come up the rest of the way.

The wolf's already there. He came up the second I smelled the intruder, and for once he and I want exactly the same thing, which is to put ourselves between that smell and the girl behind the door. It's a clean feeling, terrible and clear. I've spent three years afraid of him. Right now I could use him.

I move off the dock and up toward the tree line without making a sound. The suppressants keep him down but they don't take the senses, not fully, and I follow the smell the way you'd follow a rope in the dark, hand over hand, until I'm in the shadow of the pines above her house and the smell is strong and fresh and right there.

A man. Crew. I know him by sight, one of Will's, a lean one with a rat's face who runs errands and doesn't fight. He's got a phone in his hand, screen dimmed, and he's standing where he can see Anna's house, her lit windows, her front gate, and everything in me goes very cold and very quiet.

"You're a long way from the docks," I say.

He jumps half out of his skin. Spins. Sees me, and his face does something complicated, fear and then a nasty little smile.

"Evan." He pockets the phone too fast. "Didn't see you there. Just having a smoke."

"No, you weren't." I don't raise my voice. I've learned that the quiet scares people more. "You were watching that house. Why."

"Free country." He tries the smile again. "Nice night for a walk."

I close the distance between us in a way that isn't quite human speed, and I watch him clock it, watch the smile fall off his face, and I get close enough that he can see whatever's in my eyes right now, because it isn't nothing, I can feel it, the cold silver thing the wolf brings up.

"Why are you watching her house," I say again.

"Orders." It comes out of him fast, the bravado gone. "I don't ask questions, man, I just get told go stand where the swim girl lives and see who comes and goes. That's it. That's all I know. Will said"

"Will told you to watch her."

"Not Will." He catches himself, but it's too late, and the fear's got his tongue loose now. "Above Will. The new guy. The money. Will just passes it down. They wanted eyes on the girl, I don't know why, I swear, they don't tell me why, they just say the girl matters now and to watch who she's with."

The girl matters now.

The words land in my gut like a stone dropped down a well. I've been telling myself Anna is safe as long as no one knows what she is to me. That was the whole plan. Stay cold, stay away, give no one a reason to look at her twice. And here's a crew rat in the trees above her house telling me that someone above Will, the new money, the backer I can't get a read on, has already decided the girl matters.

Which means they know. Somehow, already, they know she's connected to me. And they're watching her to get to me.

"Who's the backer," I say. My voice doesn't sound like mine.

"I don't know, man, I swear on my life, nobody knows, that's the whole point, Will keeps it locked up tight"

"When did they ask about her."

"This week. After the party. After you..." He stops. Swallows. "After the fight. Somebody at that party saw the way you looked at her, I guess, and it went up the chain, and now here I am freezing my ass off in the trees. That's everything. That's all I've got. Please."

After the fight. After I lost control in that ring in front of a hundred people and then a girl's voice pulled me back and I looked at her like she was the only thing in the world. Someone saw. Someone always sees. And in one careless moment I painted a target on the one person I was trying to keep out of all of this.

I let the rat go. He scrambles off through the trees, and I stand there in the dark with the pine smell and the sea below and Anna's lit window glowing warm through the branches, and I understand that the plan is dead. Staying away doesn't protect her anymore. It never did. They're already watching her. The only question now is whether I keep her in the dark about all of it, alone and unaware that there are eyes on her house, or whether I do the thing I swore I'd never do and pull her into the truth.

She asked me to explain. The smelling, the eyes, the touch, all of it.

I look at her window for a long time.

Then I take out my own phone, and there's a message waiting from Will, sent twenty minutes ago, and my blood goes cold reading it.

the fight's moved up. tomorrow night. the backer wants to watch you personally. don't be late, and evan bring your head screwed on. he's very interested in you. very interested.

I stand in the dark under Anna's window and I understand, finally and completely, that whatever's coming, it's already here, and it has already found the one thing I have left to lose.