by Ellie J Duck
My hands go to the site on my throat, the only one I couldn’t hide with my clothes because it’s too high up on my neck. The whole team’s eyes zero in on the four puncture holes and the dark bruise beneath it.
“It hurt,” I mutter. “I kept trying to wriggle away, to call for help… to do something, but it was like my body ignored the commands from my brain…. He told me he’d been anxious to see me again, that he was the one who tagged me. He said his name was Irving Novikov… After he bit me, he said something about me tasting too sweet to use up all in one sitting and said something about tapping into my thoughts and emotions…. then he said some creepy stuff that freaked me out and he…. he kissed me.”
“Yuck,” Tara exclaims while all four men in the room begin to snarl at the very idea.
“His voice went funny after that and he was telling me to do things, but I don’t remember what…. Then Hilton came charging in, shooting this close to me,” I say, holding my finger and thumb about an inch apart, “and Novikov disappeared.”
“Then what?” Greg asks.
“Hilton ran over. When the vamp disappeared, I could move again, but I was weak with blood loss. He was talking to you on the intercom about finding me, and you told him to get me back to the base while you guys dealt with the others… You said Tara was bitten….” I turn to Tara. “Are you alright?”
“I’m fine. The venom stings us and makes us delirious so I was pretty out of it by the time we got back here,” Tara waves away my concern.
“And you don’t remember anything else?” Hilton’s low voice asks, and I glance at him to find his coppery gaze fixed on me as though he knows I’m hiding something.
“You took your shirt off and wadded it up, told me to press it against the bite until the bleeding stopped.” I lie, praying that the trick we all discovered I had on the first hunt will hold true now and keep them from knowing the truth of what really happened and why Hilton can’t remember anything.
He nods a little, making me think he’s buying it.
“I found my shirt on the floor in my room with your scent and your blood all over it,” he confirms.
I nod too. “You shoved me in the car and drove like a madman all the way here. I actually didn’t think we’d make it in one piece and you kept snarling at me.”
I bite my lip then, wondering what to say.
“When we got here you pointed me in the direction of the first aid kit in the kitchen and stomped off upstairs. I didn’t see you again until this morning….” I lie, dragging my eyes away from his lest he see the truth in them.
“You left her to patch herself up after being fed on by a vampire?” Mitch says, scowling furiously at Tobias. “That’s cold, bro. You’ve got to get your shit together. Just because she’s human doesn’t mean you can treat her like dirt. Anna’s a part of this team! You should’ve made sure she put the right disinfectant on the bite and made sure the bleeding had stopped. Look at that bruise on her neck. That leech nearly killed her!”
Tobias scowls in return and I see a flash of guilt in his eyes.
“It wasn’t a big deal,” I intervene, feeling bad that Hilton’s being yelled at for something that didn’t even happen. “After how pushy he was about getting me into the car, I might’ve told him to shove it and thrown his shirt in his face even though it had my blood on it.”
“Still, though,” Brody grumbles, eyeing Hilton like he’s annoyed too.
“And you didn’t see me again after that? At all?” Hilton asks and for a terrible moment I fear he’s seen through my lies.
“No…” I say, hoping to hell my heart hasn’t begun to race. “I put some stuff on the bite and went to grab a shower because my skin was crawling after the things Novikov said to me. I guess I conked out pretty hard after that since I didn’t even wake when the team got home.”
He knows I’m lying. I can see it in his eyes. They are fixed on me and there is doubt in his expression, but he keeps his mouth shut.
“Leaving us with the question of why Tobias has no memory of anything after finding you in the warehouse and what he was doing for the next several hours…” Greg said grimly. “I’ll check the scanners and see if there are any reports of anything.”
“You think I lost it?” Hilton asks, looking horrified and just the tiniest bit afraid now.
“Nothing else could call for that kind of lapse in memory,” Greg says quietly.
“But I was still human. I drove her home…” Hilton says, and I can see that he’s deeply disturbed by the idea of having lost control of the beast inside his soul.
“That is odd, boss. If he lost it and shifted, he’d have done so the minute he stopped remembering anything, not after an hour drive back to base and telling Anna to patch herself up,” Tara comes to the rescue with some reason while Hilton looks ready to panic.
“What other explanation could there be? Especially since he said that he felt like he’d been hit by a truck when he woke up?” Summers argues.
“But Tobias has never lost control before….” Mitch says, also looking doubtful and concerned.
“He’s also never spent any length of time in close quarters with a human and come to her aid after she’s been grabbed, bitten and molested by a vampire,” Greg says, and I see the way Hilton’s expression darkens at that while the other three team members begin to look awkward and maybe a little tiny bit shocked.
“You think he….” Brody begins, his eyebrows raising slowly until they blend into his hairline and I wonder what they’re hinting at but not saying, sensing it has something to do with me.
“Lycans are more prone to it than any other breed of Shifter. That’s how they ran into so much trouble with the humans originally.”
“Only for that, I’d have to like her or care about her even a little bit,” Hilton’s voice is cold and angry now and I feel like he’s just ripped my heart out. I don’t know what they’re implying but it’s clear it would result in him losing control in a rage over seeing me hurt. My heart falls to the floor when I realize that while I’m carrying around the memories and the secrets of the best night of my life spent making love to him, he’s standing there claiming he not only doesn’t even passingly like me as a person but couldn’t care less about me or what happens to me.
I bite my lip hard enough to make it bleed and stare at the way my hand trembles around the half-full coffee mug I’m clutching, trying very hard to keep the pathetic whimper of pain from escaping my throat. I can feel the sympathetic gazes of Brody, Mitch and Tara, while Tobias growls in frustration for whatever expressions they’ve shot his way for being so cruel.
“That was uncalled for, Hilton,” Summers snaps and I realize even he has had enough of the way Tobias is so nasty to me.
“Maybe the vampire compelled you to do something,” I murmur very quietly. “Given what he compelled me to do, I wouldn’t be surprised. He sounded delighted when he saw you charging into the warehouse… and he did say something about being able to manipulate me and others through me… maybe he tried to compel you to attack me upon contact and it didn’t work.”
With that sentence ended on a broken whisper I set down my cup and leave the room, ignoring Summers when he tries to call me back and shaking Mitch’s hand off my arm when he reaches to stop me. I refuse to look at any of them and I hold my breath on the lump in my throat until I am tucked safely back in my room where it’s okay that the tears of shame and sadness leak from my eyes and trickle down my cheeks.
Chapter Ten
The team choose to give me my space when I don’t answer the door or come down to any meals for the remainder of the day, and even when Hilton comes to my door and calls through it in apology - no doubt on Greg’s orders - I stay silent and don’t come out. Part of me is screaming that this behavior is dramatic and childish and weak, but the rest of me is content to sit and wallow in the knowledge that the best night of my life was spent with a man who hates me. Hates me so severely that the idea of even having people th
ink he might care about me a little offends him.
I wallow in the pain of knowing how disgusted he would be to know what we did; in the anger over what Novikov did to me and how I hate that blasted vampire for putting me in this position. I hate myself a little too for having enjoyed being with Tobias and for the fact that, were I ever to be given the opportunity again, I would gladly let Hilton have his way with me all over again.
The lack of food begins to show and that is why, when I find myself out in the woods in the middle of the night, staring up at the moon and only dressed in Dad’s old jersey and my knickers, I am not at all surprised.
Alarmed, but not really surprised.
Somewhere in the dark of the night an owl hoots, drawing me out of whatever trance-like slumber I was in and I blink up at the glowing orb in the star-speckled sky. Vaguely, I wonder how I got here, and I peer around me despite the almost overwhelming darkness. I can barely see a thing and I realize slowly that I’ve not only sleep-walked from my bed around the building, but out of the base and into the woods.
My heart begins to race in my chest as I comprehend the potential danger of being out in the woods alone at night, especially given the fact that it’s the beginning of winter. I might be a hardened solider and more than willing to kill most things, but for the first time in many long years, I am one hundred percent unarmed. I run my hands over myself in the hopes that even in my sleep I thought to arm myself with a knife or a gun, or even something like a paperclip, but all I have is the oversized jersey that only just covers my butt, and the pair of cotton panties I’m wearing. Not even a bra with a knife tucked into it.
It’s as I stand there in the moonlight in the middle of the Idaho woods, wearing far less than I normally would inside, let alone outside, barefoot and utterly alone, that I realize there is a little more to my current problem. Sure, I got compelled into giving away my virginity to a man I suspect I’ve fallen in love with, one who happens to hate me. Sure, I found out I’m just a human in a world where there are things that defy logic and every science book I’ve ever read simply by existing. Sure, most of those beings would be pleased to see me dead.
But I get the feeling that despite all those things, I shouldn’t be having this type of episode. What I suspected as being just a head cold might, in fact, be something a little more. Reaching up in the dark, I absently rub at the bite wound on my shoulder where Hilton bit me while we were getting it on.
A sound behind me alerts to the fact that I’m not alone in the night and I tense for a moment before an arm I know too well wraps around my torso and a familiar cedar, mint and musk scent fills my nose as he wraps his hand around my mouth to prevent me from screaming. When I don’t even bother to struggle, he moves his hand, so I can speak.
“What do you want, Tobias?” I ask, aware of the way simply being touched by him has set my heart racing once more as memories dance inside my mind.
“The truth,” he replies, and I wonder vaguely what his deal is with coming up behind me in the dark like this. He doesn’t release me, even though there is no need for him to be holding onto me.
“I think you’re looking in the wrong place,” I reply evenly, not even wanting to think about telling him the truth.
“Oh, I don’t think so,” he disagrees, his voice a little husky in my ear.
“What are you even doing out here?” I ask, trying to get him off the subject before he can even start.
“I could ask you the same thing, but I think we both know you have no idea. I thought you were sleep-walking when you went past my door, but then you got out of the building. You do realize that you’re in my cage, right?” he asks me, and I try very hard not to tremble in his hold or to melt into his odd embrace.
“I don’t see any fences,” I say, glancing around the woods and wondering if he’s just messing with me.
“That’s because it’s a big cage designed to keep me from going insane as a wolf and hurting myself or anyone else by giving me woods to run in and animals to hunt. If we could see the fences I imagine I’d have hurt myself trying to escape when I shift every full moon. What are you doing in my cage?” he asks again.
“Don’t you think that if I knew, or had any intention of even leaving my bed, I’d have put on pants to do it? I didn’t even know this was a cage. I don’t know how I got here, and I don’t remember getting out of bed,” I begin hotly, getting annoyed at his condescending tone.
“You’re shivering,” he observes quietly, and I don’t know what to make of the fact that his arm tightens minutely around me, pressing me back against his warm body a little harder.
“I’m only wearing a jersey and panties,” I counter by way of explanation.
“I noticed,” he murmurs, and I wonder at his tone. “Why didn’t you come inside when you snapped out of it? You’re not even carrying a weapon…”
“I was thinking about it when you snuck up on me. Begging the question of what you’re doing following me?” I inform him.
He stays quiet for a little while and I wonder if he’ll answer me or if he’s just going to pretend it’s not weird that I’m out here and he’s following me.
“I didn’t mean it like that, you know?” he says cryptically.
“What are you talking about?” I ask, my shivering increasing as we stand there in the middle of the forest.
“What I said… I didn’t mean that I hate you or something,” he clarifies, and I realize he’s talking about when he said he’d have to like me or care about me to have had some reaction the others suspected him of.
“Sure sounded like you hate me,” I retort. “And it’s not as though you’ve been welcoming or accepting of me since I joined the team.”
“Doesn’t mean I hate you,” he answers, his tone short and telling me that even talking about this is annoying him.
“Then why don’t you tell me what you did mean? Because right now it seems like you lost your temper over not being able to remember what you did for a few hours and the team accused you of losing control. Which in some way meant you had to tell them and me that you don’t give a shit about me? As if I needed reminding?” I snap.
“If I didn’t give a shit about you, would I have come searching for you when the vampire grabbed you?” he demands, his arm tightening again, though this time in irritation.
“It’s not like I had a coms unit to know whether or not Greg ordered you to,” I retort. “But that’s really not the point. You don’t have to like me or even be nice to me, Hilton. That much has been made clear through your behavior thus far. It’s no skin off my nose if you don’t like me. So, what are you doing following me out into the woods in the middle of the night and why are you touching me?”
“I needed to talk to you and you’ve been hiding in your room after what I said the other day,” he shrugs, causing my body to move too since it’s pressed so tight against his.
“And you couldn’t wait until morning?”
“Given that my bedsheets and my entire room smells like you and I don’t know why. No. I couldn’t wait until morning. Besides, you were sleep-walking; someone had to make sure you’d be able to find your way back to the base without dying of hypothermia in the woods,” he growls quietly.
“Now you’re going to pretend you care what happens to me?” I demand, gritting my teeth and trying desperately to reign in the anger he so easily inspires in me.
I remind myself that it’s not his fault he doesn’t remember what we did. That he can’t be blamed for saying he couldn’t give a hoot about me and basically shattering my heart. He didn’t ask me or even do anything to encourage me to fall for him. He doesn’t know I surrendered my innocence to him.
“Get off me, Tobias,” I say quietly, the anger draining out of me and the sadness filling me again.
“You’re already shivering, if I let go your teeth will start to chatter and then you’re going to go blue. Your legs are already splotchy with cold,” he says calmly without releasing me.
&nb
sp; “Then I’ll fucking deal with it! Get the hell off me,” I snarl, my temper snapping again.
“Not until you tell me the truth,” he blackmails me, and I stomp hard on his foot in protest, regretting it when I realize that though he is as barefooted as I am, his whole body is a lot harder than mine. My feet are numb with cold and the feel of having stomped on his foot makes my own throb dully.
I struggle in his hold, trying to elbow him in the ribs and try just about every other move I know to get him to release me, all to no avail.
“What truth?” I snarl, breathing hard a few minutes later when he refuses to budge, and my resistance proves futile.
“What happened?” he asks, and I roll my eyes in frustration.
“I’ve already answered these questions Hilton. You got me out of there and drove back here like a madman before ditching me to take care of myself while you went upstairs. That’s all I know!” I lie to him, frustrated beyond belief.
“You’re lying!” he growls, and I gasp when he nips my ear lobe sharply in punishment.
“I’m not lying. You’d be able to hear it in my voice or smell it if I was lying!” I growl. “You’re a goddamn werewolf, you said so yourself that you could hear people’s heart rate blip when they lie.”
“And we both know you can somehow lie even to Shifters and get away with it! Tara proves it every day when she asks you outrageous questions and you effectively lie to her on all of them,” he snarls.
“Why would I be lying about this?” I demand. “Did you ever consider that maybe I can’t remember anything other than what I’ve told you? That you’re not the only one suffering some memory loss?”
“Yeah, I did. But if that were the case, you’d have the same time-frame of memory loss that I do, and you don’t. It also doesn’t explain why you’ve been hiding in your room for days, or why my sheets smell like you!” he says. “Care to explain to me how that happened?”