My heart dropped to the bottom of my stomach. “And?”
“I told him to take his demands and shove them up his ass, and I’d be waiting to receive his death challenge. Then I hung up.”
Chapter Twelve
I barely slept that night. Max acted as if he wasn’t worried, so I tried not to worry either. I kept reassuring myself that from what I’d seen, Kray wasn’t anywhere near as tough as he thought he was. Would he even dare to follow through with a death challenge? If he was as weak as he seemed to be, that would be suicide.
When I woke up the next morning, Max wasn’t there. I got up and walked outside to find Max standing on the front porch, on the cell phone, again. As soon as I came outside, he hung up.
Frustration boiled up inside me. “Max, I really can’t take any more of this secret squirrel stuff,” I said. “Who are you talking to?”
To my surprise, he held up the cell phone and showed me the last number on the phone. Battle Construction Company.
“Huh? Why were you hiding it then?”
“I wasn’t hiding it, you’re just being paranoid. Come on, let’s go for a drive. It’s a beautiful day,” he said.
“Coffee. I need coffee,” I protested. “I’m a beast without my first coffee cup.”
“I know that’s right,” he said, and he followed me inside so we could brew the precious nectar that turns me semi-human every morning.
After coffee and a blueberry muffin, he dragged me outside in my pajamas and urged me into the pickup truck. As we drove, his fingers skimmed over the inside of my thigh. I bit back a whimper and squirmed in my seat. I’d been too distracted and worried for sex the night before, and now I found myself craving Max more than a chocolate sundae. And I love chocolate sundaes.
“I will molest you right here by the side of the road if you keep teasing me, Mr. Battle,” I said.
“I will gladly let you molest me, and then I will molest you right back, Mrs. Battle,” he said.
I have to admit, I was starting to love the sound of that. Mrs. Battle. It felt so right. So homey and comforting.
“By the way, what’s up with Flint Battle and women?” I asked him. “He seems like he’s had some secret heartbreak. Is there anyone you could fix him up with?”
“He doesn’t need any help in that department,” Max said. “I know what you mean, though. For the last year he’s barely dated. He went on vacation somewhere, came back, and he’s never been the same when it came to females. He doesn’t want to talk about it though, so not much I can do to help.”
We drove for miles and miles, the truck bumping along a dirt road that was hemmed in by pine trees so tall that it was like driving through a green tunnel.
“Mr. Battle, are you taking me deep out into the woods so you can take advantage of me?” I demanded.
“Mrs. Battle, I’m wounded that you would accuse me of such a thing. As if I need to get you out in the woods to do that.”
We finally stopped driving, and he climbed out of the truck. I climbed out too.
“Now, we shift,” he said.
We stripped right there and folded up our clothes, and tossed them in the bed of his truck. Then we shifted and ran through the woods. We leaped through berry bushes and over fallen, lichen covered trees, weaving through the Aspen and pine. We ran for miles. Finally, we stopped by a crystal clear lake, and shifted back into human form, standing there naked on the mossy ground.
“This is the location of the future Battle compound,” he said. “This is where the new pack will live.”
Max’s father was an Alpha, and so was Max. Max, in his late twenties, had reached the age where he needed to leave and start his own pack. There couldn’t be two Alphas in one pack; a pack could only have one leader.
The area was so beautiful, deep in the forest of Ponderosa pines, with the mirror-glass of the lake spreading far off into the distance. It was also forcing me to think of the future, a future that might not include me.
He pulled me up against him. “Why so quiet? Don’t you like it?”
I took a deep breath. Time to stop hiding from the painful truth. “Maxwell, I’ve got about a week and a half left,” I pointed out to him.
“What do you mean?”
“A week and a half until the full moon, and Camille can mate and then she’ll be carrying her mate’s cub and nobody can force her to go back. What then?”
He looked puzzled. “Well, I thought I would keep having lots of hot sex with my wife, while we planned out our new compound. I was going to leave you in charge of the interior decorating, unless you start getting too frilly on me, and then I might have to put my paw down. What were your thoughts?”