“Jade?” I said, pulling her attention away from Jared’s backside.

She looked at me, and her smile disappeared almost instantly. “Yeah?”

“Would you have fought?” I asked. I dreaded the answer. I wasn’t really sure if I could handle it, but I had to know. “Did I ever have a chance?” Do I still have a chance to make this right? I wondered, unable to voice the last question.

She smiled a little. “Yeah, I think I would have.” She rolled up to her feet then and glanced at Jared leaning against a tree at the edge of the forest. “I’ve got to go.”

“Jade,” I called, a little desperately, as she started to walk away. This wasn’t going as I had hoped, although I had to admit, it was better than I expected. She turned back; her face was blank — emotionless — as she waited to hear what I had to say. “I know it doesn’t mean much, but I’m really sorry.”

“I know, Aidan,” she said with a smile that didn’t even come close to reaching her eyes, and then she turned away from me. She took a few steps, and then glanced over her shoulder. “My dad called this morning. He’ll be home in two days.”

~ JADE ~

Jared watched me cross the backyard and it took everything I had not to lash out at him. What the hell did he think he was doing kissing me like that? Or better yet, kissing me at all? It was degrading, and overly wrong. What was it with these stupid dogs that made them feel the need to treat everything like a possession? I’d be damned if I was going to be part of a pissing contest between the two of them.

Sure, my mom had been watching from the window, but a smile or a peck on the cheek would have been more than enough to keep her thinking we were together. The fact that he’d been sleeping in my room (on the floor) for the last two days was more than enough as it was.

I could feel Aidan watching me and his eyes trailing along my back was the only thing that kept me from attacking Jared. I desperately wanted to turn back and tell Aidan that none of this was what it looked like. I wanted to beg him to believe that it was all an act for my mother’s benefit and tell him it was all part of the plan to deal with my father. But I couldn’t. No matter how much I wanted to fall into his arms, and tell him everything, I couldn’t. Not yet. He had to believe the act as much as everyone else did. It was the only way we’d be able to beat my dad at his own game. The less people that knew, the less likely my dad would be to pick up on it. As he said in the video, I was Aidan’s weakness, and I was beginning to believe it. Right now, Aidan needed to be strong, and when he was near me, he wasn’t. When he was with me, he was lost and confused and hopeful, focusing on fixing us instead of dealing with my dad and the cougars. And right now, I needed him to be strong. But not just me, the pack needed him to be strong.

Seeing him again was harder than I thought it would be. I had trained with Jared every waking minute for the last two days, just to avoid him. My body ached everywhere, and I was exhausted, but having Aidan lying beside me for those few minutes, gave me more energy than I knew what to do with. My body was alive, my skin sparking, and my inner-wolf did summersaults in my stomach, begging me to go back to him.

I stopped in front of Jared, and glared at him fiercely with my hands on my hips. He chuckled, and reached out a hand, caressing my face. “You okay?” he asked, and then dropped his voice to a whisper, “We still have an audience.”

“Nope, not really,” I said through gritted teeth, but I forced myself to lean into his touch. The hardest part about letting Jared touch me was the simple fact that my inner-wolf responded to him just as much as it responded to Aidan.

It was a different feeling with Jared, though. Wilder. Reckless. It made my heart thump, and my body come alive in an entirely different way, and I hated it. I despised how he made me feel. I loathed the way he spoke to me. And it made me sick that at times I wondered what it would be like to just let myself go, and become his mate. The thing that stopped me, though, was the lack of birds in my belly. Jared only spoke to my inner-wolf, but Aidan … Aidan spoke to my human heart as well. He made me feel … alive. Alive in a complete and utterly perfect kind of way.

He chuckled. It was infuriating, and I bit back a slew of nasty words I wanted to spit at him. “Wow, I never thought I’d see the day that a werewolf would make your heart go thumpaty-thump.”

“Me neither,” I snapped with a frustrated huff, banishing the thoughts from my mind. I glanced over my shoulder then, seeking out the person that had put me in this position. Aidan still sat on the grass, watching, with an utterly blank look on his face.

“Come on, kitten,” Jared said and pushed off from the tree. He slung an arm over my shoulder and he led me into the forest.

I let him. I didn’t have much of a choice until we figured out how deep my mom was in all of this. So, I snuggled into him, wrapping my arm around his waist, as we walked the trail.

As soon as we rounded the bend in the trail, and were out of sight, I said, “Seriously, you have to stop calling me kitten, and news flash — you and me are never going to happen.” I shrugged off his arm, and cut him a sideways glare. “And if you pull that kissing crap again, I’ll kill you myself. It’s bad enough that I have to lie to him and make him think we’re together. You don’t need to rub it in his face.”

“I don’t know about that,” he said with a wink. “I think you’re warming up to me. Oh, and it’s not just us today. Beck and I thought it’d be fun to see if you could stand up to both of us.”

“Bring it on,” I said, stifling the groan. My whole body ached from yesterday, but I’d be damned if I was going to admit it. And in all honesty, I knew it would be a good distraction. It would give me something else to think about other than Aidan and Jared and how crazy they were making me, and my inner-wolf. I smirked. “I can’t wait to kick your asses.”