“You okay?” he asked low, the sudden look of concern on his too-handsome-to-be-real face making her suck in a sharp, burning breath. Of course he had to go and be caring on top of heroic and hot as sin. It was so unfair!
“I’m fine,” she forced through her numb lips. “I just… I don’t know how to believe in it. Even with the memories playing over and over in my head like some stupid horror movie.”
And better yet, she didn’t want to believe.
No, she wanted this all to be just some stupid nightmare that she’d wake up from back in her bedroom, wondering how she came up with something so scary and bizarre.
But as Vivian stared at the gorgeous werewolf sitting across from her, she knew this was no dream.
And even worse, Max Doucet wasn’t the only “creature” sitting in that booth.
Because she had one hell of a bad feeling that somehow she was one too.
Chapter Three
Forget You Ever Saw Us
Max wanted to ask Vivian to explain what she meant about not wanting to “believe in it,” hoping it would lead to some insight about what was going on with her mouthwatering scent, and the fact that she no longer smelled even remotely human. But as he pulled in his next breath, he knew they were out of time.
“Grab your backpack,” he muttered, rapping his knuckles against the table. “We’re getting out of here. Now.”
“Why? What is it?” She paled, her blue eyes going wide with fear as she quickly looked around them, trying to locate the threat. “Are they here?”
“No. This is something different.” He threw some money on the table to cover her meal and the tip, then quickly moved to his feet. “A group of shifters just walked in. They may not be here for us, but I’m not taking any chances.”
Taking hold of her hand as soon as she slid out of the booth, he started pulling her with him toward the nearby fire exit, trying to wrap his head around what was happening. He could scent two different types of shifters who had just entered the club—one Lycan and two bears—and even though they didn’t smell like the bastards he and Elliot had scented at the crime scenes, or the ones he’d fought back in the diner parking lot, he had a bad feeling. The kind he’d learned to listen to over his years as a Runner, and he sure as hell wasn’t going to ignore this one.
“Hey!” someone called out behind them in a deep voice, but Max didn’t even bother to turn around as he pushed Vivian through the doorway, then slammed the heavy door shut behind them.
“What the hell is going on?” she asked, as he hurried her through the dark parking lot, his grip on her hand tightening when he heard the door open again.
Son of a bitch!
“Hey, wait up!” one of the shifters called out, and Max made sure to keep her behind him as he turned to face the guy.
“Do yourself a favor, man, and go back inside,” he said, while the other two came through the door and joined their friend. “We don’t want any trouble.”
“What is she?” the Lycan asked, stalking toward them with a hot, hungry look in his eyes that made Max want to tear the dude’s throat out. “That scent is insane. We caught it all the way from out in the woods as we were walking past the club.”
“Stay behind me, Viv,” he scraped out, grateful that the club was at least isolated out on a country lane off the main highway, so if things turned ugly, he didn’t have to worry about foot traffic, just someone leaving the place to get into their car. And he fortunately didn’t see any security cameras mounted on the outside of the building, though it pissed him off that the club didn’t have better protection for the girls who worked there.
“I’m serious, man,” he growled, keeping his attention focused on the Lycan, since the other two seemed to be following his lead. “You’re not getting anywhere near her, so just turn around and forget you ever saw us.”
“Not gonna happen,” the guy drawled with a gritty laugh, licking his lips, and Max knew the dumbass was getting ready to make a move. He’d spent too many years as a hunter not to know how to read his opponents like an open book.
“Max—” she started to say at his back, but he lost the rest of her words because the Lycan started charging toward them, the two bears flanking their buddy’s sides. Hoping like hell that she was smart enough to stay back, Max cracked his neck as he stalked forward, ready to take the idiots down.
When not out on a Bloodrun, he and the other Runners constantly trained for hand-to-hand combat, often pitting a single Runner against as many as five or more opponents. So while fighting three wasn’t ideal, his body’s muscle memory kicked in with the first swing of the Lycan’s meaty fist. He ducked, avoiding the blow, then jabbed with his right arm, while nailing the fair-haired bear in the gut with a powerful side kick. The other one, who had a bushy beard and smelled like cheap whiskey, caught him on the jaw with a jarring punch just as the Lycan tried to nail him in the nuts, but he pivoted on his back foot, then hit them both with a series of jabs that had the skin across his knuckles splitting open.
Unlike the assholes back at the diner, these guys at least knew better than to release their claws and fangs in a public parking lot. But that didn’t mean that they didn’t fight dirty.
Thankfully, so did Max.
Just as the blond bear came at him from the left, the bearded one charged him from the right, trying to trap him in a pincer move while the Lycan went for a side kick in his gut. Kicking a cloud of snow into the blond’s face, he caught the other bear by his bushy beard and spun him toward the Lycan, who tripped over his pal.
“I’m gonna smash your pretty face into the asphalt,” the Lycan snarled, quickly righting himself and charging forward again as the blond tried to get an arm around Max’s throat.
“Vivian, get the hell back!” he roared, but the crazy woman wasn’t listening to him. No, she was too busy suddenly jumping on the Lycan’s back and yanking on his shaggy hair with all her might, riding him like he was some kind of bucking bronco.
Unable to believe she was trying to help him and desperate to reach her, Max threw the blond shifter over his shoulder, but only made it three steps before the bearded one slammed into his side. “Get your fucking hands off her!” he snarled at the Lycan, but the male wasn’t paying him any attention, his hands full with five feet and seven inches or so of furious female.
Unfortunately, it didn’t matter how pissed off Vivian was, because she was no match for a fully-matured Lycan. The asshole reached over his head and grabbed her by the arms, her phone falling out of her pocket and skittering across the lot as he literally threw her off of him. She hit the snow-covered ground with a breathless “Oomph,” her slender limbs shaking as she seemed to begin to vibrate with rage. Shoving her hair out of her face, she turned toward them as she slowly moved back to her feet, and Max could only gape as he got the bearded bear in a chokehold, unable to believe what he was seeing. It must have been some kind of trick of the moonlight, because it looked as if she were glowing from within, the burnished, golden radiance of her skin reflecting all around them in the snow.
But there is no moonlight coming through the clouds, his wolf pointed out. Remember?
Shit. The beast was right. So then how was she—
Before he could even finish that thought, Max found himself jerking his head back in shock, his eyes nearly bugging out of his skull as he watched Vivian pick the shifter up by the front of his shirt with one hand…and literally hurl his big-ass body through the air as if he weighed little more than a pillow. He crashed into the outside wall of the club, nearly ten feet off the ground, then fell onto the asphalt in a motionless heap, a cut behind his ear draining into the snow under his head, turning it garishly pink.
“Screw this shit,” the blond bear shifter muttered with a thick note of fear, not wasting any time getting back on his feet and hightailing it the hell away from there. Max shoved the other one away, and the guy quickly turned and followed his friend, running off into the woods.
“Damn it, my phone!” he hea
rd Vivian grumble, and as he looked her way again, Max was weirdly relieved to see that her skin had returned to its normal shade, since he didn’t know what to make of the whole “glowing” thing. While his friend Sayre’s power sometimes manifested as sparks, he’d never heard of any preternatural species turning radiant with golden light during a fight the way Vivian had done, and the idea that she might be something so unique was unsettling, to say the least. How in the hell was he meant to protect her if he had no idea what she was or why every goddamn non-human in the area seemed instinctively drawn to her?
“Great,” she muttered, scowling down at the phone that she’d picked up off the ground. “It’s completely shattered.”
“Who gives a shit about your phone?” he bit out, the guttural words like gravel in his throat as he shot into action and stalked toward her. “I told you to stay out of the way, and I know damn well that you heard me!”
She drew in a sharp breath, then lowered the phone to her side as she tilted her head back to glare up at him. “I’m not a dog, Max. I don’t have to obey your stupid orders!”
“Stupid? I was trying to keep you alive!”
The look in her beautiful eyes was one of utter confusion. “Why? Why would you keep risking your life for someone you don’t even know? It doesn’t make any sense!”
“I told you,” he ground out, keenly aware of the muscle that started pulsing in his rigid jaw. “It’s what we do.”
“And you do this job by choice?”
“Damn right I do. I wouldn’t have it any other way.” And that was the gods’ honest truth. If he had to be a Lycan, then Bloodrunning was the only career he wanted.
She looked at him as if she thought he were crazy, and since this wasn’t the time or place to continue their argument, seeing as how they needed to get the hell out of there, he turned without another word and walked over to the place where the Lycan had fallen after hitting the wall.
“Is he…dead?” she asked from behind him, sounding far less angry and more like someone who might hurl if he said yes.
“No,” he grunted, after crouching down and checking the guy’s pulse. “But I don’t imagine he’s going to regain consciousness anytime soon.”
“Someone’s going to call the cops when they find him, if his buddies don’t come back for him. Don’t you need to worry about him being taken to a hospital and… Oh, I don’t know. His blood being analyzed or something?”
“It won’t matter,” he said, moving back to his feet. “A shifter’s blood doesn’t give away any clues about his or her species.”
She blinked at him. “Seriously?”
“We never would have been able to stay a secret if it did.” Wrapping his hand around her upper arm, he started pulling her with him toward the back lot, where he’d parked beside her truck when he’d found it. “You wanna tell me what happened back there?”
“I… I don’t know.”
A gritty laugh rumbled up from his chest. “I’m not buying it.”
She looked away from him when he stopped behind their trucks, her jaw so tight it had to be hurting her teeth. “What aren’t you telling me, Vivian? How the hell did you start glowing like a goddamn firefly and throw a guy nearly twice your size through the air?”
“I swear to you, I d-don’t know!” she choked out, shivering so hard her teeth were chattering.
He cursed under his breath, hating that he didn’t have a clue what was going on. “Whatever. We’ll finish this conversation later. Right now, we need to get out of here.”
Digging into her jacket pocket for her keys, she glanced up at him. “Okay. I’ll follow you.”
His head went back, and Max looked at her like she’d just told him she could sprout wings and fly like a fairy.
“Seriously. I’m not stupid, Max. I’ll follow you.”
He studied her expression and those ice-blue eyes that seemed to shimmer between her thick lashes, trying to determine whether or not he could believe her this time. “Fine,” he finally muttered, hoping he wasn’t the biggest fool alive. “We’re going to find a cheap motel that isn’t sitting right on the highway, but I don’t know how long it’ll take. So stay right on my bumper the entire time.”
“And then?”
“We’ll grab some sleep. After that, I honestly don’t know. It depends on if we can make it more than an hour without any more assholes finding us.”
Taking the keys from her, he opened her truck’s driver-side door, and waited for her to jump in. “Just so you know,” she told him, as she tossed her backpack onto the passenger’s seat and climbed in behind the wheel, “I, um, don’t think we should go to the safe house.”
“Yeah?” he asked, studying her profile with a sharp gaze, wishing he knew what she was thinking.
“Um, yeah.” She licked her lips as he handed over her keys, and before he could ask her to explain, she blurted, “I don’t want to put Skye in danger.”
“Viv, they’re after her too, with or without you there.”
She frowned as she met his gaze. “You don’t know that. I’m the one who worked at that awful—”
“Hey, shh,” he murmured, his chest burning when he saw how hard she was trying not to lose it. “Elliot and I interviewed a guy who witnessed the last kidnapping in Philly. He overheard the two men who took the victim talking about their next targets, and they mentioned both you and Skye by name, as well as where you lived.”
She stared at him in shock. “Ohmygod. You’re sure he heard both our names?”
“Yeah, I’m sure.”
“Oh, shit,” she groaned, pressing her forehead against the steering wheel after going deathly pale. “I’m an even bigger idiot than I thought.”
“Hey, this isn’t your fault.”
A bitter laugh fell from her trembling lips, and she curled her hands around the sides of the steering wheel so tightly he was surprised it didn’t crack. “You have no idea what you’re talking about. And I messed up so bad. There could have been more of them waiting at the apartment for her after I ran. I… I just assumed—”
“That they were after you?”
“Yes! I thought I was getting them away from her, but I wasn’t. I… God, I should have gone to her.” Lifting her head, she looked at him with eyes that were shadowed by too many intense emotions to name. “But she’d left the diner. I didn’t know where she was, but I… I should have at least tried to find her. I’m such an idiot!”
“Stop saying that,” he grunted, hating the way she was talking about herself. “You did the best that you could with the intel you had. That’s all any of us can do.”
“No,” she argued, closing her eyes as she shook her head. “Skye’s freaking gorgeous. I… I should have known the bastards would want her.”
“How, Viv? Are you psychic? Can you predict the future? Because if you’re neither of those things, then how in the hell would you have known?”
She shoved her hair back from her face as she opened her eyes. “I don’t know,” she muttered, something in her tone telling him she was being less than honest with him. “But I meant what I said before. I’m not going there.”
He looked back at the corner of the building, thinking of the shifter they’d left lying unconscious on the ground. “You’re worried—”
“I just…can’t,” she blurted, cutting him off, the pleading look on her beautiful face impossible to resist.
“Okay, Viv. If you don’t want to go to the safe house, then we won’t. We’ll find someplace else to lay low until we sort this all out.”
She breathed out a huge sigh of relief. “Thanks.”
Jerking his chin toward the death grip she still had on the steering wheel, he asked, “You gonna be okay driving?”
“Yeah,” she said softly, forcing her hands to loosen their hold. “I’m fine.”
“Remember, stay right behind me. And if you see anything suspicious, or just get a bad feeling, don’t hesitate to let me know.”
She gave hi
m a puzzled look. “How? My phone got broken, remember?”
Thinking he needed to pick her up a new phone as soon as he could, he said, “Just flash your lights at me. I’m gonna be watching you the entire time.”
“You’d better be watching the road.”
He smirked. “Yeah, that too.”
“Good,” she murmured, reaching for her seatbelt.
“And Vivian.”
“Yeah?” she asked, looking over at him after clicking herself in.
“Whatever the hell you do,” Max muttered, “don’t run.”
Chapter Four
Suck it Up and Deal
Max didn’t take an easy breath until he had the motel room door locked behind him and Vivian, and he’d moved the chair that was pushed under the cheap desk in front of it for good measure. Then he opened the clip on the Glock he’d taken from his glove box and checked his ammo.
“If you have a gun,” Vivian asked him, sounding as tired as he felt, “why weren’t you carrying it last night?”
“We don’t normally use weapons when we’re out of our mountains, because they draw attention that it’s best to avoid. And…” His words trailed off as he turned his head to look at her, his eyes narrowing at the sight of her standing there in those tight jeans and snug-fitting thermal. Since tracking her down, this was the first time he’d seen her without the nylon jacket she’d just hung in the small closet, and the sight of her in the form-fitting top hit him like a physical punch.
Our mate is perfection, the wolf rumbled. Fucking perfection.
You’ve got that right, he silently muttered in response, forcing his hard gaze back up to her face and away from those mouthwatering breasts. Coughing to clear the knot of lust from his throat, he finally finished his explanation. “And bullets usually only slow down the kind of creatures we face. They rarely kill them.”
“Well, I guess I won’t bother getting a gun then.”
He lifted his brows. “You know how to use one?”
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