Darkness Sheds into Light {Watty 2012}

Chapter 19

“No.” she kept her head down leaving her face covered by her hair. “I don’t have a lot of control in animal shape. All the tests….I can get feral.” It wasn’t easy for her to talk about.

Jax recognized the big step she was taking by admitting that bit of information to him and the trust she must feel to do so. He hoped he wasn’t grasping at straws or the sight of her naked was frying his brain. He wanted her trust.  “It gets easier with every time you shift.”

She nodded and let the conversation fall to the wayside. In silence they moved over to the cave to hide. There were several to pick from and Ariana went for the least appealing for them to wait out the day. If the hunters came this far to look they wouldn’t suspect the smallest hidden passage for two shifters to hold up in. Smart thinking.

It wasn’t until they were in the shadows of the cramped space Jax realized she had been avoiding letting him see her face for a reason. Her eyes will still the panthers and her hands were shaking.

“Ariana…” he reached for her hand.

“I’ll be fine.” She turned away from him, her knees pulled up high to her chest and hair masking her expression again. “It’ll help if you talk to me.”

“About what?”

Her laugh was weak. “There’s a whole lifetime I know nothing about you can pick from.”

That hadn’t changed, she could still make him feel like a bumbling love struck idiot. “What have you remembered?”

“Just bits and pieces about us and some about Marc. I remembered Charlie’s and Julie’s face but not much else. I can’t remember anything about my so called father and I’m grateful for that one. Hal broke me down and trained me with zero emotion and that’s what I want to remember always.”

Jax wished he could forget Hal too, how much Ariana used to talk about him as her biggest hero. It’d hurt her to know how close she and Hal were once and how bad he turned against her. If she remembered that was up to her, he wasn’t going to tell her anything about it. “Your mom will want to see you. She’s been going crazy trying to find you. We told her the truth when you went missing and she checked every spot she could remember Hal mentioning.”

“Were she and I close?” Ariana asked softly, her head turning back toward him.  Her eyes were still too bright, still too close to the brink of insanity. He knew her animal wanted to claw free and find a fight to sink its teeth into. The animal in all of them was always hungry for action and he could only imagine how worse it was for her being enhanced. 

“Very close like mother and daughter, sisters, and best friends mixed into one. You always wanted her to be happy and pushed me away so many times for her. You were always willing to sacrifice your happiness for hers. When you love someone it’s always with everything you’ve got.” His voice dropped to a bare whisper as he remembered how many times he had been the one her love was given to.

She turned away from him again and lowered her head down to her knees. “It couldn’t have been easy.”

“What?”

“The epic cluster fuck between you, me, and Marc.”   

Jax hadn’t expected her to put it so eloquently and laughed. “Yeah it was a mess but it didn’t change how much I loved you.”

She tensed. “Jax---”

“I know it’s not easy to talk about and I now how different everything is now but it doesn’t change what we felt back then. You and Marc had gotten trapped in a cave during a full moon, his wolf and now we know your panther had been calling the shots. You didn’t have any control to stop it and I found away to accept that even though it felt like my heart had been ripped out.  You and I were working through it because true mates or not it’s always been me and you.” He couldn’t tell her about the baby that had made his choice to forgive her much easier; thinking about the baby wasn’t something he could bring himself to do.

The conversation abruptly stopped as they both picked up on footsteps nearing closer. He saw her head shoot up, her fiery eyes trained on the entrance of the passage. He leapt and grabbed her before she could go after the hunter or rogue patrolling the grounds outside.

Jax held her down into the dirt and piles of leaves piled in the far corner of the passage. “Shh.” His heart was in his throat as he listened out for the retreating footsteps and made sure they didn’t turn around. Ariana was trying to push him off and go find the fight her animal was craving. He pressed her deeper into the ground and in the process pressed himself all too close to her. Their legs were entangled, he held his hand over her mouth and his chest flat on hers. This was a true testament of will power. He was so close and if he just turned a little to the right he could be inside her, the warmth of the woman he first loved, the warmth he still dreamt about during fleeting dreams of a future he lost.

He closed his eyes tight enough to hurt and focused on the pain and not the want.

The heavy set of footsteps were gone and no longer in ear shot. Jax waited an extra minute for good measure before getting off of her and moving a good arm’s length away, the only space they really had anyway. “You almost got us killed.”

“I could’ve handled taking one out.” her eyes were still on fire, yellow golden flashes trained on his face.

“And when he didn’t return the others would come here to look; his last known location. Now this place is safe against farther searches and trigger happy hunters. I know you’re the combat soldier here but I know something about saving my own ass too.”

“You shouldn’t have done that.”

“It was a smart move to stay hidden---”

“You shouldn’t have held me down.”

“You were going to reveal us.”

“Next time knock me out or something less….” Her eyes were telling the story her words couldn’t. He hadn’t been the only one affected by their close proximity. 

Jax couldn’t stop looking at her. He knew she would’ve let him do all the wonderful things playing out in his head. It would’ve been so easy and that scared him. “We need to get out of here.” It wouldn’t have just been Christina he’d be betraying. There was Marc too who was involved in some kind of relationship with Ariana.

“Agreed.”