Kanin

Somebody just threw a knife at me.

I reached up and touched the tip of my ear. I didn’t feel any pain, but there was blood on my finger now. I opened my mouth to say something, but nothing came out. I was appalled.

That’s when I saw him.

He was leaning back against a big oak desk, twisting two more knives in his fingers. My eyes traveled the length of him. From his black leather boots, long legs, flat stomach, a black t-shirt tight over broad shoulders, and his face.

The boy from the club.

He looked the same now as he did that night. His dark hair was perfectly messy, his face was set in one pensive line, but this time his stormy eyes were focused on me.

“You could’ve killed me!” I finally found the courage to speak. I wanted to sound angry and stern, but I think I sounded shocked instead.

“If I wanted to kill you, I would have.” He had an accented voice that was caught between nationalities. I’d heard that voice the night I was attacked, but I couldn’t remember what was said.

“You can’t just throw knives at people!” As soon as it was said, he threw another one. This one didn’t touch me, but it was dangerously close. “What is wrong with you?” I reached over, moving so fast I barely knew I was moving at all and pulled one of the knives from the wall. In a flash of anger, I let the blade fly from my fingertips. The boy didn’t even flinch as it sailed through the air towards his face. I hadn’t even been aiming at him, but maybe subconsciously I had.

Easily, the boy reached up and caught the blade just before it struck him in the face. He twisted it around in his fingers. He was impossibly calm, like he dealt with this sort of thing every day.

“Nice throw.” Cade said from behind me, amused.

I didn’t say anything, still utterly appalled that my ear was bleeding and I’d thrown a knife at someone. I didn’t even know I could do that. My hand shook at my side, I fisted it to keep it from showing.

“What do you want?” The boy said, directing his question to me.

That snapped me out of my trance, “what do I want? You kidnapped me, remember!”

“Kidnapped is a strong word.” Cade grumbled behind me.

We all ignored him.

“Yes, I suppose we did.” The boy with the knives answered, looking impossibly bored as he leaned back against his desk.

“Why?” I crossed my arms over my chest. “Because of my father?”

“So, you do know what he does?” The boy sat his knives down beside him and crossed his arms over his chest.

“Yeah. He kills werewolves.” There was a beat of silence around me. “But I have nothing to do with that. I just found out about it.”

“You have everything to do with it.” The boy narrowed his eyes at me.

“How?” I questioned.

Something flashed in the boy’s eyes, something I couldn’t quite place. “What did your father say to you?”

“That he killed some werewolf so now you guys want to kill me as well. Take revenge.” I answered hesitantly.

The tension in the air was so thick I could cut it with a knife.

“Yeah, I guess you wouldn’t know the whole truth.” The wolf before me said.

“What do you mean?”

“It’s not important right now.” In two quick steps, the boy was in front of me. His stormy eyes stared into mine. I couldn’t even see the monster in them like Cade’s showed. I felt a flare inside of me, unwelcoming and frightening. “You go on believing what Thomas Abbott told you. That’s fine. For now," His jaw clenched, but he was otherwise very calm. Too calm. His eyes flicked behind me to the other two wolves hovering behind us. “Get her out of my sight.”

Cade reached forward and grabbed my arm. He pulled me away from the boy and back through the door. The door was slammed in our faces.

“I’ve never seen anyone piss Jax off quite like that.” Trent said, a hint of laughter in his voice.

That was him angry? He’d looked incredibly calm to me.

“Who was that?” I asked curiously, still staring at the closed door before me.

“Darlin’, that was our alpha.” Trent answered.

Excuse me?

He couldn’t be more than twenty-one or twenty-two at the most. How could he be an alpha of the entire pack? He was so young.

“I think he liked you.” Cade teased. “But don’t worry, Princess, Jax is like that to everyone.”

I couldn’t put it into words, but something about him made me feel uneasy. But it was also so much more than that. It was like a fire lit inside of me when he was close, but it was a burning fire. He awoke something deep within me that I didn’t even know was there. He made me feel afraid, angry, confused. And I’d only just met him.

“This way.” Trent ushered us away from the office, away from the angry alpha with his dangerous knives and stormy eyes. With each step away from him, my heart slowed its pace. Breath started returning to my lungs.

What was happening me?

“You hungry?” Cade’s voice entered my day dream.

I didn’t realize just how hungry I was until he said so. My hand went to my growling stomach.

“I’ll take that as a yes.” He laughed. I followed Cade down the steps and into the gourmet kitchen. He offered me the seat at the bar and I took it. “So, what do you fancy, Princess?”

“Anything I want?” I questioned, leaning forward on my elbows to peer at him.

“Just this once.” Cade squinted, leaning close to me across the granite counter tops.

I held my chin in my hand, thinking, “garlic grilled cheese?”

“A what?”

“You don’t know what a garlic grilled cheese is?!” I smiled. “You’ve never lived!”

“I’m sure I haven’t.” Cade answered.

“What you do is take two pieces of bread and smoother garlic butter on them instead of regular butter.”

“And that’s good?” He seemed curious.

“It’s amazing!” I beamed. “I’ll give you half.”

“Deal.” He stepped away from me and dug around for the ingredients. I watched him put a pan on the glass top stove. He spread the garlic butter on two pieces of Texas toast. Then he took out sliced cheddar cheese and placed the sandwich on the heated pan.

When he was finished, he cut the sandwich in half and gave me one. I waited until he bit into his, smiling when his face lit up. “Good, huh?”

“You’re right, I’ve never lived.” He laughed. I noticed how his eyes lit up when doing so, which in turn brought a smile to my own face.

I suddenly couldn’t understand how this boy standing in front of me was the same brown wolf from the attack. This boy was light and funny. That wolf had been angry and blood thirsty.

“When you said ‘the wolf wants what it wants’, What did you mean?” I questioned, my half of the sandwich forgotten on the plate before me.

Cade cleared his throat, his jaw twitching. I could tell he didn’t like to discuss it. Everyone around him just already knew. He never had to speak about it.

“You don’t have to tell me, if you don’t want.” I said, not wanting to push him too far.

“No, it’s fine.” He pressed his hands on the granite and leaned close to me. “It’s like the wolf runs off pure instinct. It’s an animal. When I’m the wolf, I don’t have feelings and emotions like I do now.”

“You’re wild.” I finished.

“Exactly.”

“Are you all like that when you change?”

“Pretty much, yeah.” He nodded. “Everyone in this pack is like that. Except one.”

"One?” I asked, suddenly curious.

“Jax.” He said quietly. “He’s like eerily calm, all the time. Even in his wolf form. It’s actually kind of scary.”

“How does he control it?”

He shrugged, “who even knows. His father sure wasn’t like that. That man was mean.”

“Was his father an alpha?”

“Sure was.” Cade nodded.

“What happened to him?”

Cade’s whole demeanor changed in less than two seconds. He was no longer open. He was closed so tightly and quickly, I’d barely seen it happen. “You done?” He asked, quickly changing the subject. He took my plate before me. I still had a few bites left, but my appetite was gone.

I could tell I’d touched on a very sore subject. I wasn’t going to press it. Who knew what could happen if I made him upset. In the movies, all the werewolves could shift if they got too angry. For all I knew, that could be the truth. I didn’t want to find out.

I watched Cade from behind, his muscles in his shoulders working to wash the dishes that were in the sink. He looked tense.

“So is it just you guys then? The three of you?” I questioned.

“Oh, no.” He answered, turning around to look me over. “There’s a lot of us. This is just the alphas house.”

“The alpha has his own house?” I was appalled. This whole mansion was just for Jax?

“It’s passed down in his family. It was his fathers and his grandfathers, and so on. It’s a tradition in the pack for the alpha to live here. His family to.” Cade explained.

“Where do you live?” I asked.

“There’s four houses on the alphas property. All of them owned by his family. Jax’s family is sort of rich.”

“So, where’s Jax’s family then? Are they away?”

Again, Cade turned tense and closed off. Another sore subject. “He has no one left. Just him.” His voice was quiet, his eyes shadowed over with emotion. I could almost see that a memory, a dark one, was replaying in his mind.

“Oh wow, that’s sad.”

Cade didn’t say anything else about it, just finished the dishes and moved towards me. He took the seat beside mine, spinning it to face me. “We’re not a typical wolf pack.” Cade started to explain. “With other packs, they’re like family. They do just about everything together. Our pack is...complicated.” He sighed. “We don’t have a lot to do with each other.”

“How come?”

Cade’s smile finally returned to his face, something I was glad to see. “You sure do have a lot of questions.”

I blushed, “I’m curious.”

“You know what curiosity did to the cat, right?”