by Sadie Moss
Carl’s bright green eyes narrowed. “Strand? The biomedical company?”
“Yeah.”
“Jesus fucking Christ.” The older man shook his head, his brows drawing together. “I’d tell you to quit joking if I hadn’t just seen you do it with my own damn eyes.”
“No joke,” Rhys said flatly.
“So why the fuck did that one attack my girl?” He jerked his chin toward me again, refusing to look at me or even use my name.
“It was an accident. Her wolf got agitated. But we won’t let it happen again.”
Carl scoffed. “How’re you gonna stop it?”
“They won’t!” I blurted. “I will.” Sucking in a deep breath, I turned to face Molly, who had been watching the whole exchange with an intent look. “I swear, Molly. I will never, ever let that happen again.”
I meant it too. Maybe I shouldn’t have promised something like that when my wolf was still so out of my control. But if it came down to it, I’d rather hurt myself than her, and I’d do whatever it took to keep my wolf from attacking.
She stared at me for a moment, and I gazed right back, trying to imprint everything about her into my mind. The soft honey color of her hair, the way her smile was both sweet and a little wicked, the kindness in her eyes that seemed to infuse her whole spirit.
She wasn’t old enough to be my mother by a long shot, but I’d started to think of her almost as a big sister. So many of my relationships throughout my life had been based on lies and manipulation, and the way Molly had helped me—helped all of us—with no expectation of something in return made the broken, dead parts of my heart heal over a little.
“I’m so sorry,” I whispered.
When she stepped forward, I almost jumped back. I hadn’t been expecting it, and I didn’t want Carl to think she was in any danger. But although the sharp-faced man still seemed angry and on edge, Molly’s hands were steady when she took mine in hers, squeezing them gently.
“You don’t have to be sorry. You didn’t ask for any of this. And you don’t have to leave until you’re ready.”
Chapter Twelve
I stared at myself in the full-length mirror on the door of the guest bedroom.
It had been a few days since my accidental shift, and although Carl had grudgingly agreed not to kick us out, everyone in the house was walking on eggshells.
My hair, returned to its usual chocolate brown color, tumbled over my shoulders. Four wide, pink scars ran across my left arm, and my right arm looked pale and slightly thin. Although Molly seemed stunned at the speed of my recovery, I felt weaker than I would’ve liked.
Lifting the hem of my tank top, I ran my fingers over the puckered scar on the side of my abdomen. I knew if I turned around and peered over my shoulder, I’d see the scar between my shoulder blades where Val had dug out the tracking chip Strand had implanted under my skin.
I felt like a patchwork person, stitched together and sewn back up, but somehow not quite the same as I had been before.
Would I be strong enough to fight with the men when they went in to rescue Sariah?
Would my wolf let me?
I could feel her inside me all the time now, growing more and more restless with each passing day. But I didn’t know what she wanted from me. I had no idea how to reconcile the two parts of myself.
I leaned closer to the door, staring at the golden pools of my irises and the dark pupils that expanded and contracted as my gaze focused. I could almost see the wolf looking back at me through my eyes, feel her scratching at my ribcage.
The door opened suddenly, colliding with my face. I yelped and jumped back, bringing my hand up to my stinging nose.
“Oh fuck!” West’s full lips pulled down in a grimace. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to—”
“No, no. I’m okay.”
I shook my head, trying to get my breath back. He’d startled me more than hurt me, and my heart slammed hard against my ribs.
West’s strong hands cupped my face, his thumbs probing gently at my sore nose. It was the first time he’d touched me or even looked directly at me in days, and I stood perfectly still as he examined me, as if any sudden movement might scare him away.
“You’ll be all right. It’s not bleeding or broken.”
His gaze caught on mine for a moment, and he seemed to remember himself suddenly. He stepped back, scrubbing a hand over his short black hair. His dark skin was smooth, his lips full, and his features perfectly symmetrical. He even had dimples on both sides when he smiled, although I hadn’t seen them much recently.
Not since my wolf had claimed him.
He cleared his throat awkwardly. “What were you doing?”
“Oh!” I blushed, dipping my head. “Just… looking. I wish I was stronger. I don’t know how I’m going to get back to where I was before the accident. And I was miles behind you guys already. I just want to be able to pull my weight in a fight, you know?”
A strange look passed over his face, and he cocked his head. “Alexis, we found the guy in the woods you bit and crotch punched—he’s the one who told us how to track down the vehicle they were transporting you in. I think you can hold your own in a fight just fine.”
“Yeah, but that was just adrenaline and fear. I don’t really have any training. And…”
I paused, wondering if I should put this on West. I knew he’d been avoiding me, and I didn’t want to push him to talk to me if he wasn’t ready.
But he tugged on my elbow, settling me on the bed before sitting down beside me. He still couldn’t quite meet my eyes, but he glanced at me as he asked, “What’s up?”
“Could you shift right now?” I asked, twining my fingers together. “If you wanted to?”
He cocked his head. “Yeah. Sure.”
“I can’t. And even if I did, I don’t know if I could shift back. My wolf won’t listen to me.”
The admission fell from my mouth like a lead weight. I felt like a failure saying it out loud, and part of me was afraid he’d tell me that’s exactly what I was. But instead, he sighed, leaning forward to rest his forearms on his muscled thighs.
“Sorry, Scrubs. I wish we could help you more.”
“Can I do anything about it?”
He tilted his head to look at me before shifting his gaze back to the floor. “I don’t know. The truth is, no two shifters are exactly alike. We’re all experiments, given different doses of whatever the fuck serum did this to us. In the San Diego complex, Strand never stopped testing. They were constantly trying new things, manipulating us, making us…” He trailed off, his expression darkening. Then he shook his head, dropping whatever he’d been about to say. “Anyway, different people’s bodies seem to react to the drugs differently. Some people never really make the transition work.”
Fear gripped my heart like an icy hand. I was glad West didn’t sugarcoat things for me, but his words made worry churn in my stomach. I’d hoped my problem was something all shifters went through, a natural part of the process. But how could it be when there was nothing natural about any of this?
“What does it feel like to you? Your wolf?” I asked.
He dropped his eyelids shut, like he was reaching deep inside himself, assessing what he found there. “It feels like the purest part of my soul. The part that knows exactly what it wants. That doesn’t ask or worry or second-guess.”
Since he couldn’t see me, I was free to stare at him without making things horribly awkward, and I did, soaking up his even, dark features, wishing I could use my fingers to trace the lines of his face. He was so strong, so powerful, but there was a gentleness in him too. My body and heart craved both.
“That sounds nice,” I murmured.
His dimples emerged as a smile tilted his lips at some private thought. “It is.”
“So what does your wolf want?”
I was openly prying at this point, but this was the most West had talked to me in weeks. I wanted inside the seemingly impenetrable fortress of his heart and
mind, and now that I saw a crack in the wall, I couldn’t help but try to slip through.
His eyes popped open, catching me staring at him. I blinked, turning my head to look away, but his next words froze me in place.
“You, Alexis. It wants you.”
The room seemed to shrink, as if the walls, the ceiling, and the very air around us were closing in, trying to force us closer together. I licked my suddenly dry lips, my whole body tingling.
“You—you have me. You’re my mate.”
West flinched at the word, the muscles at his temple rippling as his jaw clenched. His nostrils flared as his hand reached toward me with agonizing slowness, sliding through my hair to palm the back of my head. His pupils were dilated, and there was a wildness in his eyes as he seemed to fight some internal battle with himself.
“My mate.”
The word was a rough growl, a curse.
But before I could process that, he pressed his lips to mine, wrapping his other arm around me to haul me onto his lap. My knees ended up on either side of his lean waist, my body pressed tight against him as he crushed me to his chest. This wasn’t like the West who had kissed me back at the Lost Pack village. That West had seemed controlled, confident, unwilling to rush.
Now?
He kissed me like it was the last time he ever would, like an addict going back for one more fix before giving up their drug of choice for good.
I didn’t know why. Didn’t understand where this change had come from. But it hardly mattered when my body responded to his, lighting up like a spark under his touch. My breasts pressed against his chest, my nipples peaked and sensitive, and I felt the stiff bulge of his already hard cock between my legs. Our stupid clothes separated us, but I moved against him anyway, working my clit against his hardness, using the thick length to ease some of the intense, almost painful ache inside me.
He groaned, moving his hands to my ass to urge me on, pressing me harder to him as his tongue stroked against mine.
It felt like my wolf might tear out of my chest. The sounds of pleasure that escaped my lips were almost animalistic, soft grunts and whimpers that I hardly recognized as my own voice.
I needed this. I’d needed it since the moment I woke up on this damn bed and recognized all four men for what they were—my mates. But the circle was broken, the bond incomplete. And it would be until I became one with each of them, or at least as close to one as our physical bodies would allow. I needed to be connected to West, to feel him moving inside me.
Acting on instinct, I reached down between us, palming his thick cock through his pants. I squeezed it gently, making him buck his hips into my touch, then deftly moved my fingers up to work at his button and fly.
With a harsh growl, he stood, lifting me with him, and flipped me onto my back on the bed, crawling up to hover over me. I gasped in surprise before his mouth descended on mine, stealing all my breath. With courage born of desperate need, my hand moved down again, working its way inside his pants to feel the silky, firm heat of his cock against my palm.
When I stroked him, West moaned in satisfaction, delving his tongue into my mouth in the same rhythm as his hips pressed forward. My core throbbed with an aching need, and I released him for a moment so I could work the button of my own pants.
But before I could get them off, he suddenly tore his mouth from mine, rearing back to stare down at me with wide eyes. Then he scrambled away from me and off the bed, backing up until he was almost up against the door. His hands shook as he tucked himself away and zipped his pants back up.
He stared at me, chest heaving and dark skin ashen, as if he were looking at a ghost.
“West?” I rose up onto my knees, my heart still racing, my body still burning everywhere from his touch. I could feel the slickness that dampened my panties, but it was like a cold wind swept over me, chilling every part of me that had been warm. “What’s wrong? I thought you said your wolf chose me. That you wanted—”
He shook his head, the movement jerky.
“Sometimes my wolf is wrong.”
His hand groped behind him for the door, and before I could say another word, he wrenched it open and disappeared.
Confusion, frustration, and anger flooded in to fill the empty spaces in my heart his absence caused. In the suddenly quiet room, I collapsed back onto the bed, breathing hard. Then I rolled over, buried my face in the pillow, and screamed.
Damn the Strand Corporation and every one of their so-called ‘doctors’ for putting me through this.
Damn my wolf for wanting what she apparently couldn’t have.
And damn these fucking infuriating men.
Chapter Thirteen
“Does it hurt?”
Molly’s blue-green eyes cut to me curiously over the rack of clothes as she asked the question.
I blinked in surprise, but it didn’t take me long to figure out what she was referring to.
The shift.
“Oh.” I nodded, hefting my shopping bag higher on my arm. “Um, yeah. It does. A lot, actually.”
“What does it feel like?” she pressed, lowering her voice to a whisper so the girl at the front counter of the clothes boutique wouldn’t overhear.
“It feels like all my bones are breaking at once, and like my insides are stretching my skin. It’s awful, but as soon as the shift is done, the pain goes away.”
She nodded, chewing on her lower lip as she drank in my words.
Carl hadn’t been kidding about Molly’s obsession with weird or unexplained phenomena. Once she got over her initial shock and fear, she’d seemed more intrigued by me and the guys than afraid of us. Which was good, since Carl himself still seemed to teeter on a knife’s edge between accepting our presence and calling up Strand to report us himself.
I was still healing, but now that my cast was off, we had no reason to stay in Las Vegas—except that we still didn’t know where to go when we left. Sariah was being held in Salt Lake City, but none of the guys had been able to find a more specific location than that. It was possible we’d have more luck when we got there and could conduct our search in person, but even that prospect sounded like digging for a needle in a haystack.
Regardless, my mates wanted a few more days to keep an eye on Carl, to make sure he wouldn’t betray us the second we left.
Molly was the only one in the house who didn’t seem affected by my attack and the revelation that we were shifters. Carl watched us with angry suspicion in his eyes, my mates were all on edge, and I felt like there were live snakes in my stomach all the time. But Molly seemed to think we could all go back to how it’d been before that awful day.
Today, Carl was at the pawn shop and my four mates were working on tracking down possible leads on the Strand location in Salt Lake City. Molly had seen me hovering anxiously over their shoulders and insisted on taking me out shopping. No one in the house had thought that was a good idea, me least of all; but I hadn’t wanted to disappoint her after everything she’d done for me.
And to my complete surprise, I was actually enjoying myself.
This was my first girls’ shopping day ever, and it felt good to do something normal for once—even if that normalcy was just an illusion.
Molly had taken me to a string of shops near the Strip, enthusiastically making me try on an array of outfits. I’d held off on buying too much, although I did indulge in a few things. I had no idea what kind of clothes I’d need once we headed out on our rescue mission, but I sincerely doubted that cute sundresses and strappy sandals would be necessary.
I’d also bought some lacy underwear and bras at Molly’s insistence. She had beamed with delight as she declared that the guys would love them, and I’d turned red as a tomato and kept my head down as the clerk rang them up.
The small bag with my purchases hung off one arm as I flipped through the clothes on the rack. My stomach let out a loud growl, and Molly’s eyes widened.
“Hungry?” she teased.
“Yeah.” We’d
been shopping for a few hours, and I’d never expected it to take so much stamina.
“We can grab a bite before we head home. There’s a new Thai place I’ve been dying to try.”
As we stepped out of the shop, I turned to face her, lifting a hand to shield my eyes from the midday sun. “Hey, Molly. I don’t know if I ever said this, but—thank you.”
She paused mid-step, then gave me a gentle smile. “Of course, sweetie.”
After the truth came out, I hadn’t seen any reason to hold back, so I’d told her everything. She knew about my isolated upbringing at Strand, about the woman who’d posed as my mother, and about my rescue from the complex outside Austin. I was pretty sure that knowledge had something to do with her insistence on taking me out today.
She knew how much of life I’d missed out on.
“I can’t believe how okay you are with everything,” I admitted, falling into step beside her. “Do you think Carl will ever get over it? I’m pretty sure he hates us all.”
“He doesn’t hate you.” She shook her honey-colored locks as she led me down a smaller side street lined with a few boutiques and cafes. “Carl just doesn’t trust easily. And he trusted the four horsemen. It’ll take him a while to…”
She kept talking, but I lost track of her words as something caught my eye. A man had been leaning casually against the white facade of a building, but as soon as we walked by, he pressed away from the wall, falling into step behind us.
My heart picked up in my chest, slamming with dull thuds against my ribcage.
Don’t freak out, Alexis. Maybe it’s nothing.
My time on the run with the guys had made me paranoid and suspicious of every little thing. But with good reason—because even if the tracking chip inside me was gone, we were still being hunted.
Had Carl decided he didn’t want to deal with us anymore? That he didn’t want to risk my wolf emerging again and hurting Molly? Had he turned us in to Strand?
I turned my head slightly, peeking at the man behind us out of the corner of my eye. It wasn’t the blond Terminator, Nils, thank God. I didn’t recognize the guy, but that didn’t really mean anything. Strand probably had dozens—if not hundreds—of hunters I’d never seen.