“Sari. Sweetheart. Don’t be silly. How could anyone choose Scout over you?” The words were like dust in his mouth. If she believed him, Jase would demand to be acknowledged as one of the finest actors of his generation. “I don’t know who is telling you this crap, but they should be flogged for stressing you out.”
“Don’t worry,” Sarvarna cooed. “If it’s discovered that he’s lied to me, he will be. But Jase?”
“Yes, your highness?”
“If not, if he’s right, please know that no matter how much it pains me, Toby won’t be alone in facing my wrath.”
Chapter 3
“We need to talk.”
Talley stumbled over her own feet, nearly dropping the notes she was trying to organize.
“Good grief, Jase. You scared me half to death.” He must have been waiting for her just outside the door to her Spanish lab. She’d barely stepped out into the hall when he appeared as if out of thin air.
They sped down the hall at a pace a bit too brisk for her short legs until Jase abruptly stepped in front of her and stopped. His eyes narrowed as his nostrils flared. She wrapped her arms around herself in defense, although what she had to be defensive about she wasn’t sure.
“What is that?” he asked, jabbing a finger at her shirt.
“I think it’s a Doctor Who, Sherlock, and Supernatural mash-up.”
The muscles in Jase’s jaw bulged. “Where did you get it?”
Talley sighed. She had planned on getting rid of Walker before Jase even knew he existed. For some reason, Jase didn’t react well to her parade of suitors. One of them had carried the mark of Jase’s annoyance - a black eye - until the full moon.
“I had an accident at lunch.”
“An accident?”
“I took a Dr. Pepper bath. Walker let me borrow his shirt.”
Jase’s lips pressed into a thin line. “You know Walker is a Shifter, right?”
“It did come up.”
There was a time when Jase would have exploded at her, but the past year had changed everyone. He was still angry, even without touching him she could see the wrath boiling just beneath the skin, but instead of throwing a tantrum, he kept his voice calm and controlled. “And how long has Walker been here?”
“Two hours, maybe?” Talley made a point of looking at her watch. “I got the impression he’d just got into town, and apparently I’m not that hard to find.” She wondered if there was some sort of tracking device on her since all the visiting Shifters seemed to have no trouble locating her on a campus filled with 28,000 students.
“He just got here?” He looked skeptical, but accepted Talley’s nod of confirmation if his willingness to continue walking was any indication. “Which pack?” he asked as they descended the back stairwell.
“Helkamp.”
Jase’s eyebrows scrunched together. “Helkamp?”
“Tiny pack down in Arizona. I think they have three Changing, including Walker.”
“Three Shifters make a pack?”
“Where two or three are gathered together as Shifters, there is a pack.”
“Nice try, Tal, but I do know my memory verses. Doesn’t your mother have some very strong feelings about bastardizing the Bible?”
Talley flinched, more affected by this new caustic version of his anger than the screamfests he was known to throw on occasion since starting to come into his own dominance. At least when he was screaming he was too busy attracting as much attention as possible to think about the best way to hurt the object of his anger. He knew what mentioning her mother and any of her mother’s “strong feelings” would do to Talley. She couldn’t believe he would be so cruel.
And she hadn’t even been purposefully trying to paraphrase the Bible. Unlike Jase, Talley didn’t grow up attending Sunday morning worship services and memorizing key verses. No, the Matthews practiced some old time religion. At least, her mother told her it was old. There really was no way to tell since most of the world was ignorant of Shifters and Seers, and therefore a religion practiced by just a small percentage of their numbers was basically unknown. While the Donovans focused on Jesus’s love and sacrifice, the Matthews saw God’s son as a footnote. Talley had been forced to read the Bible from cover to cover when she was eight, but most of her religious upbringing didn’t come from those pages. Instead, her mother relayed stories about the sacred duties of Shifters and Seers and holy aspects of the Alpha Pack. It was this belief system that led her mother to turn Scout, Jase’s sister and Talley’s best friend, over to the Alpha Pack in July. Jase made zero effort to hide his hatred for the woman and became enraged any time Talley came to her defense.
Things hadn’t always been this way between the two of them. There was a time when Jase would have apologized for hours if he thought he’d hurt Talley’s feelings, and while he was never Mrs. Matthews’s biggest fan, he did respect her. There were times when Talley wondered how she didn’t get whiplash from how quickly everything had changed.
Once they got to the bottom of the stairs, Jase threw open the door with enough force to make it bounce off the wall and scatter little bits of brick onto the grass. The sun was bright and hot, the temperature shooting past ninety degrees. The humidity seemed even more suffocating with the knowledge that it should be gone by now, allowing autumn to come sweeping in to save them all from melting into tiny human puddles on the sidewalk.
“I assume Walker is on his way back to Arizona now?”
Talley reached up to worry a lock of hair. “Ummmm….”
Again Jase stopped in front of her, but this time she hadn’t been paying attention and almost plowed into him. He stepped to the left just in time, recoiling from their almost-touch like it was a venomous snake ready to strike.
“He’s still here?”
“I have his shirt,” she said, pointing to it as if he was going to forget which shirt she was talking about.
“How is it the noble Mr. Helkamp happened to be on hand at just the right moment to give you his shirt?”
“I wasn’t paying attention when he came up, and he startled me.”
“And he gallantly gave you his shirt out of remorse.” Jase’s eyebrows were doing an annoying arched thing as he looked around. “So is there now a random Shifter wandering around campus half naked?”