“You wouldn’t want anyone knowing you can shift again?”
“It’s a long story, but I’d rather keep it secret. Doctor-patient confidentiality.”
“I’m not bound by the Hippocratic oath, Mila. I have a Ph.D.”
“All I need is your word that you won’t tell anyone, including Blade.”
Anna smiled. “I can’t say I understand your need for secrecy on this, but I won’t tell anyone, including Blade, though he’d keep your secret if I asked him to. I’m just happy to help you.”
“You’ll be back to being the only human here,” Mila said, feeling like she was leaving Anna behind by consenting.
“All the more toe-warmers for me then!”
Mila laughed. “Deal.”
“Perfect. Tomorrow then. I’m not set up for the fix at the moment, and with the heat out, I’m going home to cuddle up to my own personal furnace.”
Thoughts of sleeping against Hayden’s chest returned. Four days ago, she had ventured to his cabin, full well knowing he wasn’t there. Being there, stepping inside and sitting on the sofa where he had held her while she slept, and being surrounded by his scent, comforted her.
That had been a particularly hard day. Reports of more virus-related shifter deaths out east had come in, and she had made no progress on the vaccine. She felt like a fraud and started to doubt herself. The way she had left things with Hayden only sent her fragile confidence into a downward spiral. She didn’t know what was wrong with her, what was bothering her, but she wished he’d return already. Damien said he expected Hayden to be gone two weeks, possibly more. When Vance had left for a mission she had always prayed he wouldn’t return, and as each day passed, her anxiety had skyrocketed, knowing that could be the day Vance would return.
With Hayden, she feared he wouldn’t return, or when he returned, he would no longer look at her, not in the way that said he cared about her. Her behavior had been shameful. She’d run from him, without an explanation or even a goodbye. Worse, however, was how she had failed to stand up for him when those shifters had accused him of awful things. They had surrounded him, weapons in hand, and she had backed away, running not for help but to protect herself from the truth.
Outnumbered though he was, Hayden would best them. She never doubted it. And that’s what scared her, that he was so strong and she was so weak. The Haydens of the world didn’t want shifters like her, not for blood-bonding at least. When he discovered her secret, he’d move on to another, and nothing she could do would prevent that.
* * *
HAYDEN
Frank yanked the bag from Hayden.
“Give it back,” Hayden said. Frank was holding it just out of reach, and Hayden was in no mood to play some child’s game to get the bag back.
“What’s inside?”
“If another inmate had grabbed something out of your hands in prison, what would have happened?”
“I would have grabbed it right back. Then they’d try to beat the shit out of me and found themselves in the infirmary instead with enough broken bones that they’d never think of even looking at me again.”
“And?”
“I’d end up in solitary for a month, maybe three.” Frank handed the bag back.
Nothing scared Frank like the thought of being put back in solitary, not that Hayden could ever do any such thing to his friend, but sometimes just the reminder was enough to rein in those lone-wolf tendencies of Frank’s that surfaced from time to time.
“What’s eating you?” Hayden asked.
“I could ask you the same thing.”
“This isn’t about me.”
Frank shrugged. “I’m just tired, eager to get home. We don’t belong in the city with all those humans.”
Bored, Hayden thought. Frank needed a good fight, but he had been warned to be on his best behavior this mission. There was too much riding on making the right impression with Mr. Sloan from the Department of Shifter Affairs. The government now had an entire division devoted to the ‘shifter problem’. Fucking fabulous.
Hayden shoved the bag at Frank. “Look if you must.” Frank had been doing nothing but sit around a lot of government buildings, coffee shops, and clubs with Hayden for the past week and a half as Hayden met with various officials. Hayden had been at their beck and call. He could swear the humans kept picking seedier locations to test his moral fiber, as if they expected him to go on some sort of sexual rampage at the strip club or snort the coke the one official offered him at a park, a few hundred feet from a school of all places.
Hayden certainly understood Frank’s need to get home where he could shift and run any time, day or night, without anyone raising a brow or screaming his head off in fear. They hadn’t been able to shift the entire time they were in the city, except in the hotel room and even that hadn’t gone well.
Hayden’s control over his wolf had slipped. His wolf had howled. Damn wolf didn’t like to be kept locked away for so long. Frank’s disliked it just as much, but his wolf had gone a lot longer trapped inside the shifter while he was in prison, and he knew not to howl. Prison had changed Frank in so many ways, but the shifter was right. They didn’t belong in the city, among the humans. But that hadn’t been the purpose of the trip. They’d been sent to find a way to work with them, to make them understand shifters weren’t their enemy, well not all shifters at least.
“Lingerie?” Frank said pulling a frilly red negligée halfway out of the bag.
“Why, Frank, I do believe that’s your color. Feel free to try it on.”
Frank dropped the lingerie back into the bag and shoved the bag against Hayden’s chest. “If I want juvenile behavior, I’ll find Blade.”
Hayden slung the bag over his shoulder. The last thing he wanted to think about was Blade.
“Still sore at Blade?” Frank asked.
“Just drop it.”
“He had Anna to protect.”
“I know. That’s why I didn’t say anything.”
“Then what’s bothering you if you didn’t expect him to stay and help you?”
Hayden slammed to a halt. “He didn’t believe me. Isn’t that enough? Of all the shifters to doubt me, it shouldn’t have been Blade. I’ve never given him cause, and he knows what it’s like being an outsider in our pack.”
“Yeah, he does.”
That was all Frank was going to say? Well, screw him. Without warning, Hayden dropped the bag, stripped, threw his clothing and shoes into the backpack, strung it crosswise over his chest and shifted. He broke into a run, without waiting for Frank to catch up. Even when the tan wolf caught up to him, Hayden kept up his furious pace.
After the three-mile mark, Frank nipped at his ankles twice, telling him to slow down. Damn it, but as much as Hayden wanted to stay mad at Frank, he couldn’t. The shifter hadn’t done anything wrong. Blade hadn’t either, for that matter. Blade had been distracted by Anna’s physical and mental well-being at that moment and nothing more. He hadn’t intentionally lashed out at Hayden to hurt him, but to warn him away from Anna. It was Mila Hayden was mad at. He just hadn’t wanted to admit it before.
Hayden stopped running. He was panting hard and walking in a circle. Frank maintained guard ten feet away, without a single yip or howl. Frank had the patience of a saint and would stay there all night until Hayden got his head straightened away. That gave him a moment to breathe.
With his head on his forepaw, Hayden’s wolf lied down, letting the snow beneath him cool his skin as he stared in the direction of home. His beautiful Mila had run out on him after he had claimed her, and he still wasn’t sure what to make of it.
In town, he had fooled himself into thinking she was just unsure of herself, nothing more. He had bought her the lingerie thinking she’d like it. Or did he buy it because he didn’t know what she liked, and it was a present that generally speaking was popular with the female shifters he had known in the past?
Hell, the more he thought of it, the more he realized what a crummy
gift it was. He hadn’t even bought her something that was special to her. Already, he was treating her like the weak shifters he had dated. They were the only ones who would consider a traitor like him. The strong female shifters wouldn’t look at him twice. Buying them nice gifts, well, that just seemed to be his way of ensuring the weaker shifters wouldn’t leave him, which was exactly what he was doing with Mila.
He wanted more from her. . . with her. Not presents to buy affection or loyalty. He wanted her to look at him as if his past meant nothing, as if she only saw the shifter he was inside, not the shifter of years ago.
Hayden shifted. He didn’t even bother to stand. Sitting in the cold hard snow seemed fitting somehow.
“Figure it out?” Frank asked.
“She’s going to leave me. Hell, she already has. I just didn’t want to see it.”
“What makes you say that?”
“She watched them surround me, and she walked away. She didn’t care to watch, Frank, because she didn’t care what happened.”
“You’ve been around Damien too much. You’re thinking like him, not like you.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“Damien can be quick to react, without thinking. You watch, observe, and think. Unlike Damien, you reserve judgment until you have all the facts. Then you act. World of difference there.”
Hayden had smelled her arousal in his cabin, from the moment she’d stood behind him and he had warned her he’d claim her one day. From that moment on, once he’d had her smell, and in his heart and mind, she was his. He’d never asked what she wanted.
Frank was right. Hayden hadn’t been thinking. On that walk back to her lab, he had grabbed her and raced to the nearest place they’d have privacy. Aloe’s house. And then he had stripped her and demanded she submit. Fuck!
“You claimed her already, didn’t you?” Frank asked.
Hayden didn’t say anything.
Frank offered him a hand up. “Sex is sex. It doesn’t mean anything, not like a blood-bond.”
Frank was wrong. It meant something, to Hayden at least. As for Mila, he had no idea what she was thinking, or if she had even wanted it. He didn’t recall her saying no or fighting him, but something had happened toward the end. She had shut down, barely able to talk. Except she had talked, a few words about a wolf in her pack, and he had assumed she had been hurt before. A bad break up or something. What if he had misunderstood? Was she still with that wolf? Had he destroyed her plans with him? Had he. . . God, no, he hadn’t forced her, had he?
“Hayden?” Frank gripped his shoulder—hard.
Hayden faced the guard but wasn’t focused enough to know what Frank wanted.
“I caught a strange scent. Stay here,” Frank said as he dropped his backpack and shifted.
Hayden did the same. They had already crossed into their territory and he sure as hell wasn’t going to let Frank go up against intruders alone.
* * *
MILA
“It’s only been a week,” Anna said as they walked down the hill to check on the progress of the new lab. “I told you it could take a few days before your shifter abilities were returned. Still have three days before the Running of the Moon. You might be able to shift by then.”
“I’m not worried about the run.”
“Then what? I realize I’ve only had the chance to give the treatment to Tess, but it worked. I’m confident you’ll be back to normal.”
That’s what she was afraid of. Why had she consented? Merely because she had been so cold? Stupid, stupid, stupid. She had been acting on instinct lately, even without her wolf to lead her down the wrong path. She’d let Hayden claim her. It had been careless, stupid and had felt so damn right. He’d be returning soon. What was she going to do about him?
“You won’t tell Hayden, right?”
Blue eyes dimming just a fraction, Anna nodded. “Are you sure you want to keep this a secret from everyone?”
“Yes. Please don’t ask me to explain. It’s. . . complicated.”
“So, you and Hayden, huh?” Anna said, not exactly smiling.
“It’s complicated.”
“You already said that,” Anna pointed out.
Anna had told Mila of her first husband, Kurt. Of all people and shifters, Anna would probably understand Mila’s decision.
“Hayden will understand,” Anna said. “He’s not a bad guy.”
That surprised Mila. “I thought you didn’t like him.”
“I never said that.”
“No, but I see how you flinch when he’s near, how you often leave when he comes close. You don’t like being near him, like most of the pack.”
“Is that how I come across?” she asked, her eyes going wide.
“Sorry, I don’t mean to stress you, especially now.”
“That’s Blade talking. Talk to me as Mila, or even Dr. Evans, but don’t parrot Blade. I can decide for myself when I’m stressed, and I’m not stressed!”
Mila ground to a halt and raised an eyebrow.
“Okay,” Anna said, softening her voice. “I’m a little stressed. But it’s because of the virus. If the virus comes here, this baby’s more prone than anyone.”
“Or. . . more protected,” Mila said, as a new idea starting to form.
The noise picked up as they rounded the corner past a clump of trees. Before them stood the completed exterior of the lab. The shifters on the construction crew had done a fabulous job. The lab looked like another house, which made sense since that’s what they built around here more than anything else.
“I have nothing against Hayden,” Anna said as they headed inside the new lab.
Wires were hanging from the ceiling and down walls in key locations. The shifters inside were upstairs, arguing over how to run some cables after a shifter had screwed up and cut a wire too short. Despite whatever the issues were upstairs, the place was fabulous. Anna and Mila would finally have a warm space to work with plenty of room for all the equipment they both wanted.
Mila wished Hayden were here to see this since the lab had been his idea. He’d return and see it soon enough, but coming here without him felt kind of empty. Just being in the camp without seeing him, hearing him, had made the past two weeks drag, despite how busy she had been working on the vaccine. And she was really close to finding the answer she needed too; she could feel it.
Anna placed a hand on Mila, guiding her back outside so they could finish talking away from the shifters inside. “Hayden’s never done anything to me. He’s always been a sweetheart, but when I look at him, especially when my mind is elsewhere, and I run into him or he just pops up out of nowhere, I see Drake. It takes a few seconds for my brain to catch up to my eyes and let me relax around him.”
It had been years since Mila had seen the alpha, so she didn’t remember his face too well. “So many here call Hayden a traitor. I thought perhaps you were just of a similar mindset.”
“Hardly. Just the trauma of my time w-with Drake. I’m working to get past it. I considered going to a therapist in Devil’s Peak, but. . .”
“You’re afraid talking about Drake would cause a therapist to break doctor-patient confidentiality just so he or she could tell the authorities about a shifter who in all honesty should be put down?”
Anna sucked in her breath.
“What?” Mila said, confused by Anna’s shock at her suggestion. “You wouldn’t want to put Drake down if you could?”
“I would, probably, maybe. It’s not something I want to think about. I didn’t think you’d be the one to suggest that so readily. Or is there no future between you and Hayden?”
Hayden? What did this have to do with Hayden? “What I meant was, exposing crimes or problems in the shifter community to humans violates that unwritten rule that all packs seem to agree on. My alpha, Truman, would have his enforcer hang a shifter up by his feet and claw him until he begged for his life if he ever went running to the humans for anything that could make shifters look ba
d or draw any type of attention. Male, female, doesn’t matter. I’ve seen it done.”
Anna sucked in another breath. “Your alpha did that? Damien would never do that. Or Callen I mean. Though, no, I don’t want to think about what Callen has to do as part of his job. It’s hard to reconcile the job with the shifter sometimes. My point is Damien doesn’t fear the humans, not like that. Hey, look at me talking about humans as if I’m not one! I forget sometimes.”
Mila smiled at that. She had forgotten there for a moment too. Anna had slipped into life here so seamlessly it was hard to remember she wasn’t shifter, even if she never shifted. That’s what Mila wanted for herself, to simply live with a pack and not be reminded of who she was.
“You could still get help from a therapist. Just make it sound like the attack was by a human.”
“They’ll want to tell the authorities.”
“Of course, but they can’t without your consent. And if they think Drake is human, they won’t be as inclined to break confidentiality.”
Anna considered it as they headed back up the hill. “I think you’re right. I’ll go to town on the next supply run, try to find someone.”
“And add folic acid to the list. Never mind, I’ll do it myself. I have a few other supplies you’re going to need when the baby is born.”
“We’re months away from that. And I plan to go into town to give birth, not here.”
“We should be prepared, just in case. Early labor, rockslides.”
“Seeing as how you’re planning to be here for the baby’s birth, I guess that means things are going well with you and Hayden after all,” Anna said, her smile wide as ever.
What was she saying? Stay here, live with a pack that didn’t string people up for talking to humans, work alongside shifters who built labs and went out of their way to help her be who she wanted to be? That all sounded so wonderful until she remembered she’d have to live with seeing Hayden all the time. See him, but not touch him. What happened two weeks ago couldn’t happen again, not if she wanted to stay and make a life here.
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