“Have fun?” he asked, turning around and walking back to his desk the moment he opened the door. Her natural scent was mixed with coffee, donuts, and him.

Walker Helkamp, the seventeen year old son of Anderson and Jodie Helkamp. A senior at Hayden High School in Winkelman, Arizona. Football player. Honor student. His last girlfriend was a girl named Keyley who sang in the school choir and had an obsession with Sherlock Holmes. On the Shifter dominance scale, he was barely a step up from an Omega.

Not that Jase had made calls or done any cyber-stalking. It was beneath him, which is why he made another member of the Hagan Pack do it.

When Talley didn’t immediately answer, he couldn’t stop himself from turning to look at her. It took less than a second for him to decide that Walker Helkamp needed to die, that he would be the one to do it, and that he would never, ever regret that decision.

“What did he do?” The urge to grab her and pull her to him was beyond distracting. “If he touched you…” What was the word for ripping someone’s guts from their body? Eviscerate? That sounded like a good word. Whatever it was, he would do it to Walker.

Talley passed him without so much as a glance and dropped herself onto his bed. “Save your righteous anger. He didn’t do anything. Walker Helkamp is a great guy. Smart. Funny.” She swiped at a single tear streaking down her cheek. “He thinks I’m pretty.”

“He just wants to use you for your position.”

“No, he really doesn’t.”

“How do you know?”

Talley waved her spirit fingers at him. “Magic hands, remember?”

Jase wasn’t petty enough to feel raging jealousy, so there had to be another name for the emotion burning inside him. He just couldn’t think of what that might be. “If he’s so perfect, why are you sitting in my room crying?”

“I’m not crying,” Talley said, wiping away another tear. “And I’m in your room to discuss your phone call with Sarvarna.”

Jase leveled her with a stare. “Talley…”

“He’s gone, okay? You don’t have to worry about Walker Helkamp anymore, or ever again. He was a nice boy who actually liked me and didn’t care that I was an Alpha Pack Potential, and I used him for information and sent him away.” She plucked a ratty old sock monkey from its perch beside his pillow. “He’s not the bad guy,” she told the stuffed animal. “I am.”

“He’s gone?”

“Well, we just left the coffee shop a few minutes ago, but he’s leaving. We’ll never see him again.”

With Talley’s teary-eyedness, Jase figured doing a fist pump and yelling, “Yes!” at the top of his lungs might be a bad idea. Still, he couldn’t stop the “good riddance” from escaping his lips. Talley, however, didn’t respond. Her focus was entirely on the sock monkey in her hands. She looked at it as if she was waiting for him to open his mouth and spill the secrets of the world. Jase knew where her thoughts were before she spoke.

“Do you think she’s okay?”

“Of course.” She had to be. He wouldn’t be able to live with himself if Scout wasn’t okay. He had to believe that everything had gone as planned and at that very moment she was holed up in some undisclosed location with the most kick-ass Shifter Jase ever met. “Liam will take care of her.”

Talley turned the monkey around so it was facing Jase and moved his head up and down. “Scout can take care of herself,” she said in what Jase could only assume was supposed to be a monkey voice.

Jase got up and moved over to the bed, sitting as far away from Talley as was possible on a dorm bed. “Where do you think she is right now?”

“I don’t know. Maybe—”

“I wasn’t asking you. I was talking to Guido.”

The sock monkey turned to face him once again. “Bahamas. Sitting on the beach, soaking up the sun, and drinking frozen drinks she’s not legally old enough to imbibe.”

“Sounds just like my sister. Out there goofing off while the rest of us are working our asses off. She’s such a slacker.”

Guido tilted his head to one side. “Language, Jase.”

“Ass.”

“Jase…”

“Assy-ass ass-ass.”

“Stop it,” the monkey commanded.

“What are ya going to do, Orangutan Butt?”

The sock monkey turned his little head to Talley and nodded. She nodded back. Then, she slowly and deliberately raised a finger on the hand that wasn’t controlling Guido and starting inching it towards Jase. As he watched it drawing closer and closer to his skin, he imagined letting her do it. What would it be like for her to know everything going on inside his head? Would it be one of those and-the-truth-shall-set-you-free moments? Or would she be repulsed by what she Saw? Could he survive it if it was the second? Was it worth the risk if it was the first? He made his decision with only two inches separating Talley’s finger from his bare arm.

“Okay, okay. I give. I’m sorry for being such an ass and saying ‘ass’ an ass-million times.” The finger came an inch closer. “Okay! Fine! You win. No more potty words. Pinky-promise.”

Once Talley’s finger moved out of the danger zone, he leaned over so he could be face-to-face with the monkey. “You do realize it’s totally unfair to make Tal do your dirty work for you, right?”

Guido leaned in. “You do realize you’re having an argument with an inanimate object, right?”

The force of Jase’s laughter was enough to topple him onto his side. On any other bed in the world it would have been okay, but Jase figured the guy who had his mattress last year must have weighed at least 500 pounds and slept on the very edge of the bed. As a result, it had absolutely no support, which sent Jase on a collision course with the floor. On instinct, Talley reached out to stop him, and in attempt to avoid her touch, Jase twisted himself away mid-fall. He wanted to be impressed with his awesome Shifter dexterity, but he was too busy stringing together a collection of the world’s greatest non-cuss-word exclamations to describe his feelings about landing in the middle of the open pizza box.

“Sorry,” Talley said, her hands doing some strange dance in front of him, desperate to help but unable to do so without touching him. “Oh, Jase. I’m so sorry.”