| |
Past one a.m. and with a head full of jumbled questions, Katana called time on this confession session she’d found herself in. She jumped up on Altair and urged him forwards in the general direction her instincts told her to go.
So annoyed and feeling betrayed by Jacques, she didn’t care if she ended up lost; she just needed to move and help soothe the restless energy refusing to settle inside her.
Katana didn’t care for the fact that Ashley trudged alongside her, quiet and lost in his own thoughts. She realised, as they picked their way through the undergrowth, that he still hadn’t told her exactly what he was doing out here.
“You still haven’t told me why you’re out here,” she said, looking down at him from her position on Altair. “I know the whole hunter thing was a lie.”
A bolt of tension ran through him, pulling his shoulders square and clenching his jaw. After a few tentative steps over a soft patch of mud, he cleared his throat and replied, “Gregory sent me out here.”
Katana felt like she should have been surprised, but after learning what she had already, it washed over her like another trivial fact in a web of lies. “For what purpose?”
“Well, um–” he lifted a hand and scratched the top of his head “—technically speaking, for you.”
That warranted being still. Katana brought Altair to a halt and glared down at Ashley. “Excuse me?”
Ashley took a good few seconds before he looked up at her. When he did, his eyes burned such a fierce emerald green, what he said next almost became of complete inconsequence to her. “Well, Gregory thinks the only thing that may kill us, that our only weakness, is a soul-mate. He didn’t quite prepare me for you though. He just said I’d know you when I saw you.”
Silence hung in the air. So astounded by this matter of fact admission, Katana didn’t quite know what to respond with. After a long, drawn out minute, she finally whispered, “What?”
“Gregory told me that you’re mine. He found out what case you’d been assigned to and sent me here first. I...I was tracking the werewolf that killed the girl—that’s why Jacques picked up on my scent. He’d ripped out my heart and killed me about fifteen minutes before you arrived.”
Katana leaned on the small horn at the front of her saddle. Frankly, she needed the support it offered, no matter how small. “Soul-mate?” As the words left her mouth, Katana found herself giggling. After a few giggles, she erupted into splutters of laughter. “How ridiculous. This isn’t some fairy tale.”
“No, but I assure you it’s very real.”
“Of course it is,” she said, snorting. “What are you expecting? That I’m going to kiss you, see stars and love hearts, and confess my undying love? Pah!” She nudged Altair forwards, shaking her head. “Nothing but absolute bunkum.”
“Really?” he said, shouting after her. “Bunkum like the marvellous little story you’ve been brought up believing?”
“Hey.” She pulled Altair back to a halt. “Just because my entire belief system has now been uprooted and scattered into a million pieces, that doesn’t mean you can start manipulating your own shit into my head in an effort to make me believe what you want me to believe. From now on, this is a seeing is believing life for me.”
“I’m glad you said that.” He stopped at her side and reached up with both arms. With his six foot plus height and Altair’s pony sized frame, Katana was easily within his reach. He grabbed her face with both hands and pulled her down to him.
Before Katana knew it, his lips were on hers and she found herself lost to the odd romance of it all. Stars and love hearts weren’t present beneath her closed eyelids, but Ashley’s voice, his thoughts, and his memories were.
Everything about him as a person danced around in her mind. Images of him in pain, trapped inside Gregory’s lab, flashed in her mind’s eye. Then, passing moments of blood covered scalpels and various metal instruments, screams of agony, glimpses of others all subjected to the same. Everything of his horror inside that lab poured into her mind like a waterfall.
When Ashley broke their connection, she almost fell from her saddle. Full well knowing what he’d done to her, he caught her and helped her sit back upright. He said nothing, aware she needed time to process what had just happened.
Jacques padded up behind them and growled. “Some warning might have been nice.”
“Oh, quit your whining already,” Ashley said. “You’re like a love-sick puppy.”
“Give me an excuse to rip your throat out—I dare you.”
“You can rip it out fifty times over, but I’ll come back each and every time.”
“Doesn’t mean I won’t enjoy doing it again and again.”
“Hey!” Katana said, finally snapping back to reality. She turned in her saddle and glared at Jacques. “What the hell is your problem?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe Prince Charming here thinking he can just wade on in, spout off a load of lovey dovey trash and then kiss you without even asking permission.”
Katana’s jaw dropped. “What on earth crawled up your ass?” The memory of the previous night when she awoke to voices in the cabin sprung to mind. “That reminds me. Were you two talking last night in the cabin before I woke up?”
Silence.
“I’ll take that as a yes, shall I?” Katana glared at Ashley and then back at Jacques. “Is there something else I need to know? Did you know what he was here for?”
Jacques hung his head and stared at the floor. “Yes. I didn’t want him anywhere near you.”
“Why? What threat is he to you?”
“You’re mine,” Jacques cried. “Not his. Mine.” With that, he bolted into the dark forest, his white fur quickly becoming lost to the shadows of the night.
Katana turned to Ashley. “What the hell?”
“Don’t you get it?” he said, giving her a look of exasperation. “He wanted you for himself. He’s a regular guy trapped in the body of his shift animal, forced to hang around with you day after day. What do you expect from him?”
“’Forced to hang around with me?’” Katana snorted. “Thanks. I’m guessing you’ve forgotten it’s his job to hunt these damn things with me?”
“Job or not, it doesn’t make the truth of it all any easier to accept, does it? I mean, have you seen you?”
“What exactly does that mean?”
Ashley face-palmed himself. “I’ll chalk this down to being overwhelmed rather than having a specific moment related to your hair colour. He wants his own happily ever after with you, Katana. That’s why he doesn’t want me hanging around, staking a claim.”
Anger sparked inside Katana like the first strike of a match. “I’m not a possession, some toy that you can both fight over. I’m a person with my own feelings, opinions, and views. You’re both just as chauvinistic and pig-headed as my father. I’ll be damned before I end up with another version of him.”
“Like it or not, sweetheart, that’s the world you live in. You live in a world where men rule, and women are subservient. Maybe not as much as they were, but they still are. You can’t expect rules from an outside world that you don’t belong in to filter in here and change everything. It’s not going to happen. The success of your family business depends on the men doing their job. That means having a supportive woman at home. Like it or not, that’s your life.”
Katana snorted. “It’s damn well not going to be. It’s about time something around here changed and seeing as no-one else wants to bother with it, I’ll do it.”
As she nudged Altair forwards, another piece of the jigsaw in her head clicked into place. This was what Jacques had wanted—he’d wanted a change, knew it needed to be changed, and he’d pushed Katana in the right direction to getting something done.
Like or not, she’d been manipulated in some way or another to do exactly what someone else wanted.