by Kate Douglas
His nostrils flared, his eyes going cold, hard, flinty. Marena swallowed hard and squared her shoulders. “Answer my questions,” she prodded.
“I picked up your scent a few miles back on the highway. I knew what you were and I followed you. I haven’t left because I can’t. So I suggest you grab your things and come with me.”
He spoke sternly, as if he expected no argument to his pronouncements. Unfortunately, he had no idea whom he was dealing with.
Shaking her head, Marena took a slow step toward him. Because in equal parts to her dismay and intrigue, she felt an inexplicable need to get closer. “Why on earth would I come with you when I don’t even know you? And you don’t know me.”
There was another pause and then he frowned, thrusting a hand into his pocket, and pulled out his phone. He looked down and began reading directly from the device.
“You’re Marena Kay Panos. Born in Summer’s Cay, Florida, now leasing a condo at Millennium Tower in San Francisco. Attended Penn State for undergrad, graduated tops in her class from Columbia Law. Holds an associate’s position at The Arrington Law Group in the complex litigation department. Owns a polar white Mercedes GLE SUV and possesses an excellent credit rating, which is commendable considering she’s only twenty-eight years old and has already managed to pay down more than half of her student loan debt.” The frown deepened after those last words and when he looked up she noted his thick eyebrows almost touching as he continued to frown.
“You should come with me now,” he added, as if she hadn’t heard him say that before.
“Who—Someone sent you all that information about me. Why? Who sent it?” she asked, very uncomfortable with him knowing so much about her when she knew so little about him.
To be fair, Marena figured, she now knew the most important part about this Phelan person. He was a shape-shifter, or a lycan as he’d called it. She wasn’t certain how she felt about that as she waited for him to respond to her questions.
Instead of answering, he—Phelan—moved to close the space between them quickly and touched her shoulders.
“We do not have time for all these questions. Whoever bit you may be looking for you. We have to move now,” he said rather forcefully, even though he didn’t make any move to drag her out of the room.
Marena was very aware of the fact that he could have probably succeeded at doing just that. She was glad he hadn’t tried and still very much alarmed at all that he’d said.
She opened her mouth to say no, to deny it, but her shoulder throbbed, as if in stark reminder. Marena didn’t know Phelan enough to trust him. She had no idea if he was in cahoots with Davis or had some other nefarious intention toward her. What she did know, however, was that whoever he was, she felt better around him than she did without him. That ought to count for something.
“Davis,” she murmured.
“Who is Davis?” Phelan asked, the name spoken in more of a growl than any form of the English language Marena had ever heard.
“Davis Sumpter, a partner at the firm. He . . . he . . .” Marena cleared her throat and looked Phelan directly in the eye. This would be the first time she verbalized this admission, the first time someone heard her side of what had happened that night. It amazed her that it would be this total stranger.
“He attacked me and I shot him, and then I must have fainted. And when I woke up the police were there, but Davis wasn’t. He was gone,” she stated quietly, recalling the conversation she’d had with Tammi just before she’d left her condo. “They think I did something to him. They’re going to arrest me for kidnapping or whatever charge they can come up with. I’ve already left a message for my lawyer.”
Now Phelan did move her toward the door, his face growing darker as he spoke roughly. “Your lawyer won’t call you back,” he said tightly. “Davis Sumpter is a Hunter lycan. I’ve got to get you back to the lodge and then we’ll figure the rest out.”
“What is a Hunter lycan?” she asked, once again ignoring his order to come with him.
Phelan sighed. “I don’t have time to go into all that now. Just know that—”
Marena shook her head and pulled away from him. “Just know that I’m extremely stubborn and full of questions. So if you want to get on with whatever it is you need to do, I suggest you answer me quickly.”
There was no mistaking his irritation, but Marena didn’t care. At least she didn’t while he was in his human form. Besides, she needed to know more about these lycans, especially if Davis was one.
“There are two groups of lycans,” Phelan began. “The Hunters and the Devoteds. The Hunters crave total dominance, but to gain that they have to be rid of the Devoteds, whose only goal is to coexist with the humans. Same old power struggle, different species,” he ended flippantly. “Can we go now?”
“I’m not going with you,” she replied. “I don’t know what the hell is going on. Davis is not . . . I mean, he’s . . . I thought he was just an obnoxious guy. But now you’re telling me he’s some type of hunter wolf, who bit me so that now I’m going to change into a wolf.” Even to her own ears the words sounded unbelievable.
Davis was in a man’s body, but last night he’d definitely had an animalistic look about him, a primitive air that gave him permission to do whatever he’d planned to do to her. And she thought about that pain in her shoulder again, the sickness she’d been experiencing since last night, and how, unexplainably, the moment Phelan had come in here and gotten close to her that sickness had ceased.
“What happens if I don’t go with you?” she asked him.
He ran a hand through his hair, causing the short wisps at the top to stick straight up. “I only know that it won’t be good. A Hunter wants to own its creation. He’ll want to find you and keep you.”
“Nobody ‘keeps’ me,” she immediately replied.
Phelan’s brows arched, his lips thinning. “He bit you, Marena. In just three weeks, on the night of the next full moon, you will become one of us. In the barest sense of our kind, you will be his lycan.”
“The hell I will!” she snapped.
Chapter 3
“Who the hell is Davis Sumpter?” Malec asked a half hour after Phelan and Marena arrived at the lodge.
The pack had converged on them as if they’d been lying in wait as soon as Phelan and Marena had walked through the door. He had scowled at Channing, as he knew that’s who he had to thank for the welcome party. The women, Caroline and Kira, had immediately come to Marena’s side, introducing themselves and welcoming her, while Marena had looked skeptically at each of them.
She hadn’t wanted to come with him; an innate need to stand on her own had held her still. Phelan knew that feeling all too well, hence the reason he’d been able to immediately relate to it. He also knew the second she’d changed her mind, opting to go with the obvious—he, for some reason, eased the pain of going through the change for her. Grateful that she was no longer trying to heave up her insides and wasn’t looking as if she might faint at any second, Phelan opted not to think too long or hard about the why. If he made her feel better, so be it; for the next three weeks he would make her feel better. Then she would have her shift and they could all move on.
But he didn’t want the pack to know about that part of the plan in bringing her here. He had a feeling they wouldn’t take it as nonchalantly as he did.
“Have a little rum in your tea, Marena,” Kira had said while pouring the dark liquid into Marena’s cup without waiting for a reply.
With a polite nod of thanks, Marena looked across the table to where Malec and Channing were sitting. Blaez, as the alpha of the pack, was seated at the head of the dining room table—the place where all their important meetings took place.
“He’s a partner in the firm where I work,” she replied.
It was Malec’s turn to nod. “And you had no idea he was a lycan?”
Caroline had smacked Malec’s shoulder, chastising him as she tended to do for being so blunt all the time. Ph
elan looked away from them at that point. He still wasn’t totally on board with the mating of Malec, Caroline, and Channing. Not that Phelan had anything against a ménage relationship; the lycans were a very sexual species, which meant they tended to have all types of relationships with one another whether it be threesomes, larger groups, male and male, female and female, or a mixture of both. You name it, their kind did it, without questions or explanations. But they did it with their kind.
Caroline had been a human. A veterinarian who had gotten swept into the lycans’ war and eventually ended up in bed with Malec and Channing. Two full moons ago, the betas had bitten her, turning her into a lycan and mating with her. In essence, they’d done exactly what Nyktimos had done in his rage against Zeus and what the god had done to Nyktimos’s father, Lykaon. That was how their species had been created, when Zeus had turned Lykaon into a wolf and killed all of Lykaon’s sons, except for Nyktimos, who had been safely hidden by Selene. When an angry and despairing Lykaon in his new wolf form came across his son, he’d bitten him, turning Nyktimos into a werewolf—a human who could only shift into wolf form on the night of the full moon. It was Nyktimos who had fallen in love with a human. He’d bitten that human and they’d had children, and the lycan species was born.
A species derived from jealousy and anger and destined to fight a war they’d never wanted or perhaps even understood.
No, Phelan wasn’t for continuing the long line of mistakes that had been made by his species; that’s why he’d stuck with other beings when it came to sex. Only Eureka had still turned out to be a backstabbing bitch who had scarred him in more than just a physical way.
So, to put it plainly, Phelan wasn’t happy with the threesome sitting across from him. But as that went, he hadn’t been thrilled about Blaez taking Kira as his mate, either. All in all, Phelan was just against these unions because he felt like they had no right to join and attempt happiness, not when the world around them was going to hell at the hands of a vengeful god.
“How would she know he was a lycan? We’re not supposed to wear the word tattooed on our foreheads!” Phelan snapped, unwilling—as usual—to hide his irritation.
“No,” Blaez interjected. “We’re not. Why did he bite you?”
Marena shrugged. “I don’t know. He was trying to attack me and I was defending myself. I told him to back off, to get out, and he kept coming forward. I didn’t notice the bite except for the excruciating pain and then I shot him.” She paused and swallowed deeply. “I thought I killed him.”
“You should have,” Kira quipped, her hand going immediately to Marena’s shoulder.
“Are you all lycans?” she asked then, looking around to each of them. “Do you live all the way out here together? Where did you come from?”
“Ah, there’s the attorney I read about on the Internet,” Channing said with a smile. “She’s ready to interrogate us now.”
Marena shook her head. “More like cross-examine,” she told him. “You’ve been interrogating me since I came through that door.”
“She’s right,” Caroline said, and came to a stand. “We should be doing more to welcome Marena. How about I show you to your room and you can freshen up, or get some rest?”
“That’s a great idea,” Kira added. “And bring your cup with you.”
The women were busily moving, not waiting for either of the men to interject. They’d helped Marena up from her seat and just taken a couple of steps to lead her to the only empty room in the house, the one right off the living room. But then Marena moaned. Phelan’s gaze went to her immediately. She’d been standing between Kira and Caroline, a slight contrast between Kira’s tall, curvy stature and very light complexion and Caroline’s equally voluptuous figure but with her darker skin tone. Marena’s skin was more of a golden hue, she was taller than both Kira and Caroline, and her body was definitely fuller, shapelier, more alluring than the other lycan females, at least to Phelan’s eyes.
He was out of his seat immediately, crossing the short space to get to her. The moment he put his hands on her arms and she looked up at him, he knew.
“Why?” she asked.
He shook his head slowly. “I don’t know.”
* * *
Kira looked to Caroline as Phelan and Marena walked away.
“Did you just see what I saw?” she asked.
Caroline nodded. “I did, but I’m not sure I understand it completely.”
“That makes two of us then,” Malec quipped. “Is she injured?”
Channing was already shaking his head as Blaez spoke. “It’s the pain of the change. The Hunter’s DNA is working its way through her bloodstream, preparing her body for all the changes it will have to endure before the next full moon.”
“Her temperature will likely rise and fall; her bones and muscles will ache. She’ll probably be nauseous and feel generally out of sync for the weeks leading up to her first change. The extent of the suffering will depend on the individual. A stronger, more stubborn human will fight against the changes, causing more pain and discomfort. A more amenable human that accepts the new life, both mentally and physically, might experience less of these symptoms.”
“I didn’t experience any of this,” Caroline said as Malec rubbed her back.
He’d instantly moved closer to her when Blaez spoke of the change, most likely because she’d just gone through it. But as Channing had gone into deeper detail about what they suspected Marena was experiencing, she couldn’t help but notice the differences. In fact, she’d felt just fine up until the night of the full moon when the only thing that made the change even more special was the lovemaking she’d shared with Channing and Malec throughout the day.
“Because we claimed you,” Channing replied.
He’d come to stand at her other side, flanking her with his strength and protection on one side while Malec covered the other. They did this frequently and she’d come to relish the feeling of being so important to both of them.
“And I accepted you,” she answered when Channing lifted a hand to tuck a curl of hair behind her ear. “I accepted both of you and this change in my life, so I didn’t experience the pain and suffering that Marena’s apparently going through. Somehow that doesn’t seem fair. That Hunter attacked her and she defended herself; now she has to face the fact that her life is going to be irrevocably changed. And because she hasn’t done that yet, she gets to suffer.”
Blaez spoke up next. “Marena did not want the bite from that Hunter and it was inflicted in anger and spite. He wasn’t her mate and his intention wasn’t to claim her, but to take and harm her,” he said seriously. “And now she’s paying for that. No, it’s not fair. It’s simply what is.”
Kira hissed in a breath and her alpha immediately went to her, cupping her face in his hands as her eyes closed. She was having a vision and they all waited to hear what she saw.
“It’s going to be harder for her than any of us can even imagine. He’s not dead and he’s not ready to let her go,” Kira whispered.
“So he does want to claim her?” Blaez asked.
Kira shook her head, her large gold hoop earrings slapping against Blaez’s hands. “I don’t know what he wants. It’s too dark, totally black, like a void. Only I can feel the evil, right here,” she said, bringing her fisted hand to the center of her chest. “I can feel his hatred like a hot ball right here.”
Blaez covered her hand with his own then, leaning down until his forehead rested on hers. “I won’t let it stay there,” he vowed. “I won’t.”
Caroline leaned into Malec and Channing’s embrace, hearing Kira’s words and knowing that the worst of this situation was yet to come. She worried about the future of the lycans and now about how Marena would handle all that was before her. Because unlike Caroline, she wasn’t in love with the one who had bitten her. Marena apparently didn’t welcome the change from a human to a lycan. And from the sounds of her explanation of things that had happened, she was now on the run not onl
y from the police but also from the Hunter who wasn’t ready to let her be.
Yes, Caroline thought dismally, the worst was still yet to come.
* * *
Phelan closed the door behind them as Marena walked deeper into the room. He’d switched on a light from somewhere behind her and she looked around. There was a large picture window on one wall, a warm burnt-orange-colored valance draped across the top. The floors were a light hardwood, the same color as the walls. The headboard to the bed was a darker wood with a thick beige comforter on top. It was a great-looking room, but it wasn’t hers, and Marena suddenly felt out of place. She turned, a little too fast, and felt everything swaying around her.
Phelan was there before she could reach out to grab hold of something to keep her upright and before she could open her mouth to call for help. Almost as if he’d known she would need him, just like when he’d shown up in her room at the B and B.
“I don’t know why this is happening to me,” she said, lowering her head and closing her eyes.
She didn’t want to look at him as his strong hands held her at the waist. The dizziness immediately subsided, as she’d known it would. Even the relief of that knowledge was shrouded in dread. “Why does the pain and weirdness stop when you are near, when you touch me?”
He inhaled deeply and exhaled very slowly. As if he were measuring the breath himself, because he had that type of control.
“I don’t know that answer,” he told her. “But as long as it will make you feel better, I will stay by your side.”
That was said matter-of-factly, as if he’d come up with an answer and that was the way it would be. Marena did not like that. She wasn’t used to that. And yet the commonsense part of her kept her tongue still. Denying that his proximity and touch were helping would be idiotic and unproductive, two things Marena definitely was not. If she was going to clear her name and get back to her job, she definitely needed to combat the physical issues that damned bite on her shoulder was causing.