The Exiled Alpha's Human Mate

CH.14 - Collision

Anna's POV

"I'm not going anywhere with you," I say.

The man's smile doesn't move. That's the thing that scares me, more than his size, more than the cigarette he flicks into the gravel and grinds under his boot. The smile just stays exactly where it is, like it's painted on, like whatever's behind it isn't connected to it at all.

"Come on, now." He takes a step closer, and the last of the light's gone off the water behind him, and the harbor is empty in every direction, the net sheds shuttered, the boats all in, not a soul to hear anything. "Nobody wants any trouble. Somebody just wants to have a friendly conversation about all these questions you've been asking. That's all. You come have your conversation, you go home, everybody's happy."

"I have my conversations in daylight. With people I know." My back's against the brick and I make myself not press into it, make myself stand off it, because the second he knows I'm afraid this gets worse. My heart is slamming so hard I'm sure he can see it in my throat. "So no. I'll pass."

His hand comes out and closes around my upper arm.

It's not rough, exactly. That's almost worse. It's just certain, the grip of a man who's done this before and expects it to work, who's bigger than me and knows it and isn't in any hurry, and the moment his fingers close I feel how completely the size of him overrules the size of me, feel the whole ugly arithmetic of it, and a cold spike of real fear goes through me for the first time.

I do what Caleb taught me. I don't pull back, I twist, hard, toward the thumb where the grip is weakest, and it almost works, I'm half free, and then his other hand comes up and he's not smiling anymore and I know with total clarity that I am in genuine trouble, alone, at the dark end of the harbor, and that being clever and stubborn is not going to be enough this time.

And then he's gone.

That's how fast it happens. One second his hands are on me and the next there's a sound, a solid wet crack of impact, and the man's not in front of me anymore, he's on the gravel six feet away, and Evan is between us.

I didn't see him arrive. I didn't hear him. He's just there, suddenly, filling the space where the man was, his back to me, and everything about the way he's standing is wrong for a person, too still, too coiled, weight forward like something about to run or spring. The air's changed around him. I can feel it on my skin.

"Get up," Evan says.

His voice is what stops my breath. It's low, and it's calm, and it is the most frightening thing I've ever heard, because there's nothing human in the calm. It's the flat quiet of the ring, of the boat, of the boy who went somewhere far away while something else drove.

The man gets up slow, one hand to his mouth, and there's blood on it, dark in the failing light, and I watch him look at Evan and I watch the exact moment the bravado drains out of him and something older and more animal takes its place. Fear. Real fear. The fear of a man who's just understood he's badly misjudged the situation.

"Evan." He spits red into the gravel. "Didn't know she was yours. Nobody said. We were just told to bring her in for a..."

"Who told you." Evan doesn't move. "Who wants her brought in."

"You know I can't..."

Evan takes one step, and I don't see what happens exactly, only that it's fast, faster than the fight in the ring, faster than anything, and then the man's back against the shed wall with Evan's forearm across his chest, and Evan still hasn't raised his voice, and somehow that's the worst part.

"I'm going to ask you things," Evan says, quiet, right up close, "and you're going to answer them, because the alternative is that I stop caring whether you can walk home. Who wants her."

"The backer." It comes out of the man in a rush, the same word the rat in the trees gave up, the word that turned Evan to ice on my dock. "The new money. That's all anybody knows, I swear to God, Will passes it down, we don't get names. But they've had eyes on her since the party. Since you. They want to know what she is to you. That's it. That's everything. They just wanted her brought in so somebody could look at her, ask her some questions, see if she's..." He stops.

"See if she's what," Evan says.

"Leverage." The word drops into the dark and sits there. "Whether she's worth anything. As leverage. On you."

For a long moment nobody moves. The sea hushes behind us. Somewhere far off a gull calls and goes quiet.

Then Evan lets him go.

"Tell whoever sent you," Evan says, stepping back, and his voice has dropped even lower, gone somewhere I've never heard, "that if anyone touches her, if anyone comes near her, if I see one more of you standing in the trees outside her house, I will stop being the fighter you make money off, and I will become a problem none of you know how to handle. Do you understand me."

The man understands him. I can see it. He nods, fast, and then he's gone, half running, stumbling into the dark toward the road, and the sound of him fades, and then it's just the two of us at the dark end of the harbor and my heart going like a hammer and Evan with his back still to me, breathing hard, his hands, when I look, curled into fists at his sides and shaking.

"Evan."

He turns around.

And for a second, in the last grey light, something's wrong with his face. His eyes catch what little light is left off the water and hold it, too bright, too pale, a flat silver shine that doesn't belong on a person, there and gone so fast I can't be sure I saw it at all. It's the same thing I thought I saw in the ring, the same thing on the dock, a trick of light and adrenaline and the dark, except it keeps happening, and I keep being the only one close enough to catch it.

"Are you hurt?" he asks. His voice is wrecked, scraped raw, fighting for calm and losing. "Did he touch you?"

"No. He grabbed my arm. That's all. I'm okay."

He closes his eyes. Just closes them, like he's getting hold of something, and when he opens them again they're ordinary, dark in the failing light, whatever I thought I saw gone like it was never there. His shoulders drop. He looks, all at once, unbearably tired.

"You have to stop this," he says quietly. "The questions. The digging. Whatever you think you're doing, you have to stop, because these people don't play, and I can't..." He stops. Drags a hand down his face. "I can't always be the one who gets there in time."

"Then tell me what's going on." I step toward him, and I'm not afraid, that's the maddening thing, I should be terrified after what I just watched and I'm not, I'm just certain, the way I've been certain since the water, that there's a truth here and he's standing on top of it. "Someone's watching my house. A man just tried to drag me off in the dark. You put him down like he was nothing and you moved so fast I didn't even see it. Don't tell me to stop and then tell me nothing. That's not fair and you know it."

For a long moment he just looks at me, and there's a war going on behind his face, something that wants to be said pushing against something that won't let it.

"No," he says finally, and the cold comes down over him like a shutter. "It's not fair. Almost nothing about me is. Go home, Anna. Lock your door. Stay away from the cannery, stay away from the crew, and stay away from me. That's the only thing I can give you that actually helps."

He steps back, and the space he leaves is cold, and everything in my chest strains after him like a line pulled tight.

"You keep saying that." My voice doesn't come out as steady as I want. "Stay away from me. Like there's a real reason. Like there's an answer you're not saying."

"There is." He's already turning to go, already melting toward the dark. "And you should thank me for not telling you what it is."

Then he's gone, fast, swallowed by the shadows past the sheds, and I'm alone at the dark end of the harbor with my arm aching where the man grabbed it and my heart going like a hammer and the pull in my chest screaming after a boy who just walked into the same night that terrifies him, telling me to run the other way.

I don't run the other way. I stand there a long time, turning it over.

He moves too fast. He smells danger in the dark. His eyes do something in bad light that I can't explain and can't unsee. He put a grown man on the ground without breaking stride and then begged me, actually begged me, to stay away for reasons he won't name.

There's an answer. He said so himself. There's a real answer, and he's guarding it like it could kill us both.

And I have never, not once in my whole life, been able to leave a locked door alone.