Vamp, Wolf, or Shifter 2: The Prophecy

Bluffing

Cooper’s POV

I know I’m being unreasonable here. I know that if what Finn says is true, the Pewter Pack is in danger, and I shouldn’t be wasting their time by flirting with their… whatever Marie is in their weird wolf hierarchy.

I can’t help it, though. The moment I heard Clive say she was at the gate, I lost all sense of normalcy and reason.

I had almost let myself forget how much I missed her.

It’s not just her appearance—though, goddamn, is her appearance more than enough reason to miss her. She’s only gotten more gorgeous in the two and a half years we’ve been apart. She’s clearly been working out—she always had torturously sexy curves, but now she’s got a fit, tight frame that makes her even more irresistible. Her facial structure has changed, too; her cheekbones and chin are more acutely defined. Almost… piercing.

Not unlike her personality.

She looks sad, too, though—almost as sad as I've been feeling since the split—which is another reason I'd really like a moment alone with her.

“Cooper,” she says, which tells me that she must still be mad at me—she always used my nickname when things were good between us. We’ve made it to my bedroom, and I didn’t miss the way her eyes skirted around it when she stepped inside—lingering particularly long on the bed. “We don’t have time for whatever this is.”

Marie and I never spent much time on my bed. I wanted to, of course—would have had to be utterly insane not to want to—but I was pretty confused back then. It was hard for me to accept my feelings for a member of a species that’s supposed to be my species’ sworn enemy, and even harder for me to get past my feelings for Quinn which were, at one point, all-encompassing.

They aren’t anymore, for the record. Seeing Quinn after all this time did move me, too, but in the way you might feel when you see an old sister or cousin again. I love her—I’ll always love her—but I stopped being in love with her a long time ago.

“Are you with him?” I ask Marie.

I know Jason. I got to know the Pewter Pack pretty well when Max, Julia, and I came to live with them and, of course, when we defeated Aidan and Alaina. I never picked up on any sort of romance between them before, though. So what changed?

I’m no expert on wolf feelings, but I know the basics: that I’m her true mate, but that, if she wanted, she could reject me as her true mate with the hopes of finding a new one.

I never asked her why she hadn’t already rejected me before we ever started dating. After all, assuming she came into her feelings when she hit the age of seventeen, that means she would have spent close to a year going to the same school as me without uttering a word about it. Until we got to know each other due to the strange circumstances surrounding Quinn’s guardianship, she didn’t seem to have any intentions of getting to know me. So why not just reject me?

I don’t know the answer, but I’m starting to fear that she finally did it.

She isn’t looking at me with the same desire I’m looking at her with. Those dark, gorgeous eyes of hers—irises so dark, you can hardly see where her pupils begin—are cold and distant. She doesn’t want to be here.

“Am I with who?” she asks me stiffly. “Jason?”

I give a sharp, impatient nod.

She crosses her arms. “I fail to see how it’s any of your business, given that we haven’t spoken in years.”

Touché, I think grimly. I’m not ready to let it go, though. “I thought your true mate had to accept your rejection for it to work.”

She’s full-on glaring at me now. “There’s a psycho vamp b***h with a powerful guardian headed straight for my pack’s compound, Cooper. Is now really the best time to have this conversation?”

I know she’s right. I may have become estranged from the Pewter Pack over the years, but they’re still like a second family to me, and the last thing I want is for them to be hurt by someone like Alaina Hayworth—especially baby Julia.

I shudder at the reminder of her name—and of the way Max reacted when I told him about it. He’s never forgiven Quinn for letting his girlfriend Julia die, so he was disgusted that Quinn had the "audacity" to name her first-born child after her.

I wasn’t disgusted. It’s just hard for me to think about Julia.

Point is, I know that I should drop the bullshit and go tell Quinn and Dean that I’m willing to help, but I don’t. I’m too stubborn, and too desperate to know what, exactly, she did to get over me in a way I obviously haven’t gotten over her.

“Answer my question,” I tell her, “and I’ll help your pack.”

She curses under her breath. Marie was always quite a bit feistier than Quinn—more hot-headed. It’s as maddeningly sexy as everything else about her. “You’re such an asshole.”

I shrug, not bothering to deny it.

“I don’t believe you,” she says. “I think you love Quinn and you’ll do whatever it takes to help her, whether I answer you or not.”

There it is again—the reason for our downfall. My “love for Quinn.”

I tried to tell her she was wrong back then—I really did. She saw my face when I found out Quinn was pregnant, and she thought it meant I was still in love with her. I wasn't, though. I was devastated because of the name she had chosen for her daughter, not the fact that Quinn was pregnant.

Unfortunately, Marie didn’t believe me. Comes with the insecurity that wolves feel when their “true mates” are incapable of feeling the same way they do, I think. I saw Quinn and Dean go through it, too. It’s hard, but it’s not a reason to give up.

“I do love Quinn,” I tell her, because it’s true. “But I haven’t been in love with her for years. And I want to know the answer to my question.”

I’m bluffing, of course. She’s right—I’ll help them no matter what.

But she doesn’t need to know that.

She groans. Her chest gives a delightful little vibration when she does it, and the leather top she picked out—one I distinctly remember complimenting on more than one occasion—allows me to appreciate quite a bit of that vibration.

Did she wear it for me?

“You’re right,” she concedes. “You would have had to accept my rejection.”

I resist the urge to jump up and down with glee. I don’t resist the urge to smile, though. “Then you aren’t with him.”

She puts a hand on her perfect hip and raises a thick, dark brow. “I didn’t say that.”

My smile falters. Is she messing with me? Why would she be with someone if she had such intense feelings for someone else?

I think of the conversation we had the one time things got really heated between us.

I don’t want to rush this, I told her, even though I wanted very much to continue. Like I said, I was confused. I want it to be special for you.

It isn’t my first time, she told me. So don’t sweat it.

It’s hard to explain how crushed I felt by those words without sounding like an asshole. I wasn’t a virgin, either, after all, and she wasn’t my true mate, so why did I care so much?

It was because I was jealous, of course. It was because even then, before we had remotely figured out what exactly we were to each other, I hated the thought of anyone else being with her.

Still do.

“Can we please go back now?” she asks. “They could show up at the compound any second, Coop.”

As soon as she uses the nickname, she frowns. It was an accident, I can tell. It wasn’t an intentional phrase of endearment.

It still makes me smile, though. It gives me hope.

“Yeah,” I say, stepping back toward my bedroom door. “Let’s go.”

- - - - -

“I won’t force anyone in the coven to help you,” I tell the group a few minutes later, after we’ve regathered in the living room. “But I will tell them the situation and leave it to them to decide whether or not to come.”

“Can you do it quickly?” Dean asks impatiently. “Kind of time-sensitive.”

Dean is such a tool. Really, I’ll never understand what Quinn sees in him. I mean, sure, he clearly loves the s**t out of her, and he’s a decent leader, and, okay, a decent fighter, too. Probably an okay dad. Still—total tool.

“Sure,” I say, rolling my eyes. “I’ll do it as soon as you leave, and I’ll have the group at your little compound within the hour.”

Dean gives a little growl in response to my use of the word “little.” Which, of course, only makes me smile.

“Will you come?” Quinn asks me hopefully.

I don’t even have to think about it. Frankly, this has been one of the easiest questions I’ve ever had to answer.

I don’t look at her when I say it, though. I look at Marie, instead.

“Of course.”