Josephine's Secret

24. Shake

24. Shake: Archer's Pov

Chapter Goal: 290 votes

QOTC- who wants me to start doing end of story shorts again? (There's one in this chapter)

*7504 words

Nate and I barge into the house and quickly find our ways upstairs, ready to find Josephine and delete that video she has of us. When we get to our bedroom, however, the two of us freeze and decide to just drop it after seeing her peacefully sleeping on the bed. After Nate leaves the room, I go ahead and change into sleeping clothes before climbing into the bed next to Josephine. "Archer," she smiles, curling up to me when she senses my presence.

I know she's not awake, but it still puts a smile on my face hearing her say my name. I'm trying to talk to her more about the things she's going through her in her head, I just need to find a good time to do it. "What?" I ask when I hear her growl.

Soon enough though, I get my answer when she holds onto me tighter and starts putting her arm around my chest. "Hey, no groping." I gently push her hands off of me long enough to get into a more comfortable position.

I currently laying on my back, Josephine laying on her stomach directly on top of me with her head tucked under my chin. 'Get the blanket.' my wolf growls at me when we notice that our mate is shivering. Josephine likes being cozy; that's one thing I've noticed about her. She likes blankets and pillows and sinking into soft beds. 'Mate likes our bed. We keep our bed soft for her.'

According to Josephine, the best thing about being back home is my bed. That was literally her answer when I asked her what she liked most about being back here. Even though we had our talk about what we consider 'home', she still refers to here as 'your house' or 'Archer's house'. It's also always 'your car' and 'your room'. Sometimes she'll just call it 'the house' or 'the room', but she hasn't said that anything is 'ours' yet.

When she and Nate came home after going shopping, the only thing she brought back was a pretzel for me. There were no shopping bags full of clothes and I checked my bank account and saw that she didn't even use my card to get the pretzel.

About an hour passes and I'm still awake playing on my phone when I feel Josephine start to stir in my arms. "Stop.." she mutters. I turn off my phone and look at her, holding her tighter against me in attempt to calm her down. "Stop... no."

"Josephine." I call her name, shaking her a little bit.

"Stop!" she puts her hands on my chest and pushes away from me hard, bolting upright and having her hands ready to defend herself from an attack.

My immediate reaction is to reach out for her, but she moves back about a foot before I can get her ankle. It takes her a couple seconds to reel herself back into reality and when she does, her composure completely changes. "I'm sorry," she whispers, looking at me with wide eyes. "I-I didn't mean to."

She slowly lowers and her hands and rests them in her lap, still seeming a little confused on what just happened. I watch as she turns around and looks at the window, staring in that direction before turning back around and facing me. "It's okay," I tell her, pulling her towards me. "Do you want to talk about it?" she shakes her head.

"Do you think you should talk about it?" This time she hesitates, but still shakes her head in response.

She ends up laying down next to me, staring off into space as I eventually go back to playing my phone. I'm a little hurt that she pushed herself away from me like that, but I'm trying to remember that she didn't register that it was me trying to calm her down. That's another thing though, why did it take her so long to recognize me? Josephine and I haven't marked each other yet. We've come close to it plenty of times, but I always back off in fear that it'll scare her away or freak her out. "I'm sorry, Archer." she repeats after a little while.