by T. S. Joyce
“I was supposed to, but I failed from the first moment I saw you.” Her voice cracked, and she cleared her throat. A few loaded seconds later, she murmured, “I asked you out because I was curious, I was drawn to you, and I told myself it was for the job, but it was because I liked you. And when you were late, I was hurt that you were standing me up, not because my trap wasn’t working, but because I thought you didn’t like me back. And this morning, when I woke up hungover as hell, the receiver was still on and I heard you telling Dalton and Kate how you didn’t trust me, how I wasn’t your mate. Not even close. And it’s okay,” she said thickly. “Really it is. I understand. I don’t even know myself anymore, and I feel like a complete monster who got sucked into this awful plot to hurt people. Actual. People. And I know I don’t deserve a second of your time. I just wanted to say that. I thought I wouldn’t get the chance to, but I wanted you to know, I understand.”
Chance ran his hand down the day-old scruff on his face. “What the fuck am I supposed to do with this, Em? It was one thing when I found out you were a Hell Hunter, but you bugged my freakin’ den. Dalton’s den.”
“Chance, I’m sorry. For everything, I’m so sorry.”
He hung up in a rush and barely resisted the urge to chuck his phone into the woods. Sorry? She was a much better hunter than he’d given her credit for. Who knew what kind of kill skills she’d amassed over her lifetime. He was suffocating. Linking his hands behind his head, he heaved breath, desperate to get enough oxygen into his lungs.
“Chance?” Kate asked quietly.
“Not now.”
“She’s a Hell Hunter?”
He ghosted a glance over his shoulder at Kate and Dalton, who stood pale and shaken on the porch behind him. “Yeah. I sure know how to pick ’em, don’t I?”
“Was it her who told you where the bugs were?”
“Kate, not now. I can’t have you up in my head, too. I have to make the safe decision for our pack.”
“Oh, Chance.” Kate’s hand was gentle on his shoulder, and he barely resisted the urge to flinch out from under her. He didn’t deserve the comfort right now. “Love isn’t safe, and it’s never a decision.”
“She’s Vega’s daughter, Kate,” he croaked out, feeling like the sky was crushing against his shoulders an inch at a time. “He trained her to be like him.”
Kate stood beside him with Dalton on her other side. “Chance, the woman I met yesterday was nothing like Vega. I would know. I worked with the man for years. Emily was nice. She watched us, was polite, and I could tell from the genuine smile on her face that she was having fun with us. If she is a Hell Hunter, well, I hope they are more like her and less like her father.”
“She’s denouncing her lineage. After last night, she’s up at Vega’s house burning all his stuff. I heard her tell her trainer she’s done with his mission.”
“Well, that sounds like hope to me, Chance.”
“And what if she flips sides again?”
Kate glared up at him and shoved the side of his head. “Then don’t let her, dumbass. I’m going to go barf and then eat some crackers and pickles. Quit being a chicken shit and pull Emily in close so she doesn’t want to hurt us ever again.”
“But—”
“Bye.” Kate gave a half wave over her shoulder.
Chance rubbed his head where she’d pushed him and yelled at her receding back, “You cuss a lot now.”
Dalton followed his mate’s escape with his eyes and grinned like she was the sexiest thing he’d ever seen. “It’s the hormones.” His cousin adjusted his dick.
“Fantastic. I’m leaving now,” Chance said, pointing to Dalton’s truck. “I’m going to borrow that.”
“Yep,” Dalton called, jogging inside after his wife. “Don’t get killed!”
Chapter Eight
Emily flipped the page on the ancient werewolf history book and scanned down the family trees of each pack until she reached Jeremiah, Luke, and Gable Dawson at the turn of the century. Chance’s ancestors were in here. Gable had fathered a son named Ukiah, and there was a detailed ink sketch of him on the other side of the page. Ukiah was half Ute and besides his long hair, was the spitting image of Dalton Dawson. Ukiah had gone on to marry a woman named Maya Jones, the daughter of a freedwoman and a white man named Trudy and Elias. Together, Maya and Ukiah had four sons. Clearly, Chance’s cousin had inherited more of the Ute looks than Chance had because the man she adored looked like a fair-haired Viking warrior.
There was a short description at a failed attempt by the Hell Hunters to kill off the Dawsons. Luke had born a hanging scar, and a woman named Kristina had burns from the fire the Hell Hunters had set to their cabin, but they’d all survived. Apparently, this wasn’t the first time the hatred of the Hell Hunters had hurt the Dawsons.
The door banged open so hard it banked off the wall and almost hit Chance. Emily startled and froze under the fire of his gaze. Chance opened his mouth, then snapped his teeth shut with a soft clack before striding right back out of the house.
Okay.
She made to stand, but his boots echoed across the porch again, and he reappeared in the doorway. “Don’t get up.”
Hovering her butt above the seat, she murmured, “Right,” then sat back down and folded her hands across the open book.
Chance’s chest heaved like he’d run a great distance. Rubbing his hands through his hair, he paced in front of the door, then left again, slamming it behind him.
The word, “Fuck,” echoed through the yard, and then he was back, pushing the door open more gently and looking a little less psychotic.
“Did you run here?”
“I drove.” He hooked his hands on his hips and narrowed his eyes, scanning the living room and kitchen, then back to the table where she sat. “I expected this place to be different. Darker with, I don’t know, flames painted on the walls and dart boards of our faces or something.”
“I burned those.”
Chance growled.
“That was a joke. No dart boards, but he did have an impressive stash of silver bullets.”
“I can’t just date who I want,” he said abruptly. “I have to pick a safe choice for my pack, a mate who will blend in and get along with the girls. One bad member, and the pack goes to shit, you understand?”
“Right. You don’t want to date a bad apple. I feel like we’ve already covered this so don’t let the door hit you where the good lord split you.”
Chance looked out the window as if he was judging the merit in an escape attempt. “You’ll meet my alpha.”
“You want me to meet Lincoln McCall? No thanks. I want to live.”
“You’ll meet him and explain who you are, and he’ll know what to do.”
“Know what to do about what? I’m not a threat to you. I just destroyed every last text the Hell Hunters had collected over the centuries.”
“Yeah? Then what is that under your hand?”
Heat flushed her cheeks at being busted. “These aren’t Hell Hunter texts.” She dropped her gaze. “I was researching you.”
Chances boots scuffled loudly as he approached, and he pulled the book out from under her hands. Locking his arms against the table, he went quiet as he read. “Holy shit. Em, do you know what this is?”
“Well, yeah. I was going to give them to your pack after I was done reading them. Between this one and the other two books, it’s a complete history of your kind. And not only werewolves, but each animal shifter. I found your ancestors, and I wanted to…”
“You wanted to what?” Chance said, dragging his gaze away from the book to her.
Clasping her shaking hands, she answered, “I wanted to know more about you.”
“To hunt me?”
“No! God, Chance, I’m not hunting you. Not anymore. I wanted to know more because I like you and I’m confused by all of this. I feel like everything I know about werewolves is a lie, and I was trying to research the truth so I won’t be part of the problem
anymore.”
“Oh.” Chance frowned and sat slowly across the table from her. Gently, he closed the book, rested his palms on top of the old hardback and said, “Then ask me.”
“Ask you what?”
“Everything. Ask me what you want to know and hear it from an actual werewolf.”
“Okay,” she said, sifting through the million questions she wanted to ask. “My uncle said you were evolving. It’s what brought my dad to the belief that he had to revive the Hell Hunters. He said your bite used to kill people, but now it doesn’t.”
“Vera and Kate think it isn’t werewolves evolving, but rather humans becoming immune to the venom that used to kill them. Now we use the bite as a kind of claiming mark, like other types of shifters do.”
“What’s a claiming mark?”
Chance cleared his throat and dropped his gaze to the corner of the book he was pulling at. “During sex, if a male chooses a mate and she chooses him back, he marks her.”
Warmth dumped into the apex between her thighs at the imagery. “Marks her how?”
“By biting her on the back. It’s a mark that says no other shifter can go after her.”
“And do females mark males?”
A wicked smile spread across his face. “Sometimes.”
“Right.” She clamped her thighs tightly together, but her sex pulsed once, the little beggar. “And how do you choose a mate?”
“The animal handles that part. He starts a bond that is hard to ignore.” Chance’s eye ticked. “It doesn’t always work out. Dalton bonded to a human mate before, and she didn’t choose him back. She lost a baby and bailed.”
“Lost a girl baby?”
Chance nodded.
“Because girls don’t survive. Or at least they didn’t until Vera fixed that.”
Another nod.
“Chance, in my dad and uncle’s eyes, Vera was part of the problem. She was on the list.”
“Vera was? Why?”
“Because she’s fixing every single thing that kept your numbers low.”
“Wrong. She’s fixing the things that keep us miserable. Our numbers will never be a problem. We’re resigned to stay secret. It works best for us this way, so we are careful with who we tell. Shifter law says we keep the knowledge of what we are to mates only, on pain of a kill order, given by Clayton Silver.”
“He worked for my dad. He works for my uncle still. My family has been funding him.”
“Yeah, we figured that out after he tried to manipulate Dalton into a Hell Hunter trap set by your dad last year.”
“The hanging scar on his neck?”
Chance looked sick. “It was close. Your dad had shifters helping him. Traitors. They hung Dalton, and I was a wolf, trying desperately to keep his feet propped up enough to let him breath through that fucking rope.” His voice shook on the last word, and he clenched his jaw, staring at his hands. “I had a cougar shifter on me, and I had to give my back to him and take his claws and teeth so I could save Dalton.” Chance leaned back and lifted his shirt to reveal his ribs. He exposed his chiseled chest and washboard abs, but it wasn’t his strong physique that ripped a gasp from her throat. Long red claw marks and puncture-wound scars decorated his torso.
“Oh, my God,” she whispered, horrified. She couldn’t even imagine the pain he’d endured.
Chance dropped the hem of his shirt back into place. “Vega, your dad, had dragged Kate inside the house, and one of his men was pouring gasoline on the outside. They were going to burn her alive if Link and the Silvers didn’t get to us in time. Dalton had been through so much, and I thought he would have to watch his mate burn with the last few breaths of his life.”
“That’s when you killed my dad.” The taste of the word dad was bitter against her tongue.
“Yeah. Dalton Changed and slipped the noose, and Link allowed him revenge for what Vega had tried to do to our family. To our pack. To Kate.” Chance lifted his lightened gaze to hers and murmured low, “Your dad went quickly. I don’t know if you need that for closure, but Dalton didn’t make him suffer. He just ended it.”
“Well, that’s good.” Emily pursed her lips and tried to wade through the wash of emotions roiling through her. Anger. Sadness. Regret. Relief.
“That’s good? Em, he was your father. You’re allowed to have feelings about it.”
“Feelings,” she murmured softly. “I spent the last year training to disable wolves with traps, to tie a hangman’s noose, to use knives to maim the main tendons of both animals and men, and the proper techniques on burning houses with people in them. Not monsters like my dad called them, but people. I have spent the last year feeling nothing but hatred, fueled by my ailing uncle so that I could get a job done. A job I am now realizing was a pretty word for murder. So I guess I should feel pity that my dad died alone and with a bitter heart, but all I really feel is that the bastard deserved what he got.” Her voice hitched, and her shoulders sagged with a sob she didn’t stop fast enough. “And I guess I feel like I’ll never be good again because I let Vega blood taint me when I should’ve stood up to the men in my life and told them none of this felt right. I’m the worst one for that.”
And Chance was there, standing beside her, hugging her to his hips and stroking her hair as her tears darkened the blue fabric of his jeans. “Shhh. You aren’t the worst one. You listened to what was fed you your whole life. You’re not bad.”
“I was going to kill you, Chance.”
“But you didn’t.”
“But I wanted to because that was the only way to avenge my father. I thought your death was the only thing that would make me okay again. That’s insane! How can you stand to touch me?”
“Because,” he growled, kneeling in front of her and gripping her arms too tight. “You aren’t a Hell Hunter anymore. Do you hear me? Fuck your Vega blood. You did what your father and uncle and all the Hell Hunters before you failed to do. You really looked at us, and you made your own choice. You bucked that awful tradition. The Hell Hunters end with you.” He jammed his finger at the book lying on the table. “We can write you your own fucking page in our history book because today is the day you ended the plague on our people. No more hanging trees, no more burning houses.” Chance cupped her face. “You’re better than all of them, Emily.”
She could see it there in his eyes and hear it in the inflection of every syllable. He believed the words he was saying, and a huge part of her wanted to believe in her goodness, too. She didn’t, but she wanted to.
Chance was absolving her of everything.
“I know I haven’t earned your trust yet,” she whispered, holding his palms against her cheeks just to keep his warmth there. “But I will. If it takes my whole life, I’ll make up for what my father did to your pack. I’ll protect you.”
A slow smile spread across his face and filled his eyes. “Truth.”
Chapter Nine
Chance skimmed through the last few pages of text of the biggest werewolf history book. He was still a little dumbfounded on how the Hell Hunters had come to possess it, and also, how they’d managed to provide such a detailed account of shifter history. He snickered at the second to last page and spun it around on the table, showing Em a pen and ink drawing of the genital structure of a “real werewolf.” It looked like every other dude’s dick. So interesting.
Her eyes went round, and the lingering smile dropped from her pretty lips. “That’s lewd.” She jammed her finger at the other page, a drawing of a wolf-man hybrid standing over a sleeping woman with his huge dick pointed at her butt like he was about to impale her. “Please tell me it’s not really like that!”
“What, a monster about to fuck an unknowing human in her sleep? You’ve seen my wolf. I look nothing like this, and sex in animal form is taboo for my people. This is the evil imaginings of a fanatic. Sex with an actual werewolf would bore the shit out of you if this gets your vagina shop open.”
Her cheeks were flushed with a pretty pink color he’d s
een on flowers at a store once. So fucking beautiful. “You don’t like me talking like that.”
“Or maybe I do,” she said, arching her delicate brows primly.
“Mmmm,” he said through a satisfied growl.
Clearing her throat, she cuddled her steaming mug of coffee closer to her chest and crossed her legs under the table, brushing his shin in the process and just about driving him mad. Pheromones and flowers—his new favorite scent combination. Did she realize she was putting out a smell meant to draw him to her? Humans didn’t have the senses he did. Pity for the males who couldn’t smell when a woman was aroused.
“I have plans for today.”
“Oh, yeah? You kicking me out?”
“No.” She blushed again. “I was going to invite you to go for a walk on my dad’s land.”
God damn, his boner was never going to go down. “You mean your land?”
A tiny frown took her brows, and she sipped her coffee, a stall tactic. “I guess it is my land now, huh? Dad isn’t here, and I’m paying for it.”
“His belongings are turning to ash in the yard. Too close to the house, by the way. Next time you go building a bonfire like that, push it out farther, and don’t make it where you’ll have to see that burn mark on the grass and think about the reasons they’re there for months to come.”
“I did that on purpose.”
“To torture yourself?”
“No, to deal with it. Finding out how close I came to losing all of the good in me is something I need to accept. It hurts…thinking about all the lies my dad and uncle told me, but it’ll hurt me worse if I don’t deal with my feelings and drag everything out for the rest of my life.”
“Poison,” he murmured.
She twitched her startled gaze to him. “Exactly. It’ll be poison.”
He inhaled a long breath, inflating his chest completely. He didn’t like the thought of her being so hard on herself every time she looked at that scorch mark, but if she needed this to deal with letting her past go, then more power to her. The more he got to know Em, the more he liked her and the more his wolf quieted. Dalton said this was how it would be. The animal would go quiet and pliable around his mate. Oh, sure, his protective instincts were up to Level Ridiculous, but right here, when there was no danger, looking at Em’s pretty blush, he could enjoy clear thoughts.