“Like what?” His honey eyes bore into mine, he was holding his breath for my answer.
Giving up, I confessed what I was feeling, because I couldn’t remember a time since before my mother was gone when I felt this way. “Like you are my true home.”
Sighing in relief, his arms fully engulfed me, and he cradled my head to his chest, leaving a kiss on my temple. “Because you are mine too.”
In that moment, part of me understood—the unconscious part… “You risked everything—” My eyes widened, and I pulled away. “It was you on the tree that day, wasn’t it? Oh, dear God! I’m the one who hit you!”
Smirking, he nodded. “Now I know better than to mess with you. You have quite the swing... and all the resilience, strength, and kindness I need. You are already my perfect Alpha female.”
Part of me wanted to bask in his words, but my mind turned to the memory of Jimmy emptying his gun into one of the wolves and my heart jumped to my throat. “Your friend! Is he okay? Please tell me he didn’t die.”
“Don’t worry, George is safe.” His hand caressed my back soothingly. “Once the bullets were pulled out of him, he was able to self-heal. He’s tired and a bit banged up, but he is alive.”
Relief coursed through me, but it soon faltered. “Is my father dead?”
Muscles jerked in his jaw, arms and chest with the mention, but he swallowed the ire down, and nodded. “He tried to kill the Alpha’s mate, that is an unforgivable offence. He got what he deserved.”
“Oh my God.” My hands flew to my mouth while tears stung my eyes. “And my brothers?”
“Incapacitated,” he answered stoically. “One of them is destined to a bed for the rest of his life. The other two are in wheelchairs, and the third one will have to take care of his brothers from now on.”
Horror spilled from my eyes. “Why would you do such a vile thing??”
“Vile? They tried to kill us all!”
Pushing past him, I rushed to the door. “I have to go back.”
“Enough!” Pretty Boy’s voice boomed in the room, escaping through the open window at the same instant he gripped my arms and yanked me back. The command was so strong it reverberated through my chest. “I’ve had enough of this!” Whirling me around, he pressed me against the wall with his body. “You have to let them go!”
“How?” I gasped, glancing up at him. “They are the only family I’ve ever known.”
“But not the one you deserve. They are not your family, Aria. They don’t even know the meaning of the word.” Leaning closer, his expression softened, and he glanced at me hopeful. “I am your family now.”
The tears fell from my eyes, but I couldn’t. I just couldn’t. “I can’t be with you. You did this to them... They need me,” I whispered, feeling ashamed for some reason.
“Are you serious?” he barked. “You are going back to them after they risked your life and tried to kill you? To the ones who have hunted my kind for years?!”
“Because you kill innocent people!” I yelled back, remembering all the stories of people ripped to pieces by their claws. “You kill humans without remorse. You are the monster they say you are!” I regretted the words the second they left my mouth, but it was the hurt in his eyes that broke something inside me.
Stepping away from me like I had slapped him, he swallowed. “We have never taken an innocent life. Never. We were put on this earth to protect humans from Vampires and other evil creatures you could never even imagine, and that is what we do. Jack was far from innocent, and I will not apologize for killing him!”
“What about my mother?” I sobbed. “Was she evil too?!”
Shock rushed over his features. “Is that what they told you? That we killed her?” Turning around, he plunged his hands through his hair, processing my words, then faced me. “I saved your life, I bared myself to you in every way, hoping you’ll claim me as your mate too, and this is what you do? See me as a vile beast?”
Taking a pair of pants from the bed, he walked to the door, but halted, returning to my side.
“You know what the worst part is? Even if I told you the truth, you wouldn’t believe anything but the lies they have spewed to you.” Pretty Boy shook his head, seeming disappointed. “I hoped we still had time, but I’m truly lost to you, aren’t I?”
Throwing the pants away, he transformed into the wolf instead, strutting his way back to the door. Glowing yellow eyes found me before he left.
“Perhaps your family was right,” he spoke in a deeper voice while tears fell from my eyes. “Maybe we have no right to kill, to seek justice from evil by taking its life no matter what form it takes. Maybe I am the monster they made me out to be in your eyes, but then again, I’m not the one with your father’s head mounted on my fireplace.”
He ran out of the house, leaving me shocked as the image of the wolf’s head in our living room flashed my mind.
“Dear God!” I gasped, revulsion and sorrow mixing in my belly. Jack had killed Pretty Boy’s parents and mounted the head of his dad on his fireplace as a trophy. Pretty Boy was right, the shifters weren’t the monsters.
What had I done?
Wiping the tears from my eyes, I frantically looked around me for something I could wear. I needed to go after him. How could I be so wrong?? My eyes stopped over a pretty blue dress he had left for me on the bed, probably hoping I’d change into it after we ate.
Taking it, I undressed and noticed Pretty Boy had removed the bandages from my torso. Reaching for my stomach with trembling fingers, I felt how smooth my skin was. The gunshot marks had completely disappeared... his blood had truly healed me. Unforgiving, more tears fell as regret crushed me, and I put on the dress.
How could I be so blind? How could I hurt him so badly after everything he had done for me? Rushing down the stairs barefoot, I pulled the door open and stopped in my tracks, finding Violet with a young boy standing next to her.
“I’m going to kill him!” Violet roared after taking one glance at my distressed state and tears. “The one thing I told you not to do!!” she yelled at her brother, thinking he was there, and walked past me. “Come down right now, or I swear!”
“He’s not here,” I yelled, rushing in after her. “It was me,” I confessed, feeling terrible. “I didn’t know, Violet. They lied to me; I had no idea!”
Pulling me into her arms, she attempted to help me calm down. “I’m sorry, Aria. You’ve had such a difficult life. I can’t imagine how hard this is for you.”
“I hurt him,” I admitted, “and he rushed out of here as a wolf.”
“You didn’t know,” she agreed, attempting to guess what had happened. “You have to forgive him too. He’s waited so long for you to be here with him, he doesn’t know how to wait anymore.”
Handing me a pill she pulled from her bag, she opened a bottle of water and asked me to drink. When I began to calm down, my attention turned to the boy. He seemed familiar somehow, with light blond hair and big soft blue eyes.
“This is Charlie, our cousin,” Violet introduced. “He’s twelve.”
“Charlie?” My eyes widened. “Holy fiddlesticks! You are the beautiful wolfdog—I’m sorry. You are not a pet, of course you are not a pet. I didn’t know about you either.”
“It’s okay,” he shrugged. “I liked the beef jerky.”
A chuckle escaped me, but it turned into tears when I looked back at Violet. “I need you to tell me the truth. Please?”
Hesitation clouded her expression. “I can’t tell you my brother’s name. He needs you to figure that out on your own. Only then you will realize who he is to you. He needs that, and so do you.” The urgency and significance behind her words was hard to miss, even when I couldn’t understand it.
Swallowing, I felt her squeeze my hands reassuringly, but I wasn’t sure she would want to even look at me after I said what I had to say. “I have to ask this, so forgive me for insulting you too, but I need to know the truth… Did your kind kill my mom?”
Understa
nding fell onto her like a bucket of iced water, and dread marred her face. “You didn’t tell my brother that, did you? Please say you didn’t.”
I couldn’t lie to her. Shame sliced through me. “That is what my brother told me.”
Sighing, she nodded. “I understand, you had no one else to believe. No. We did not kill your mother. She tried to stop your father from killing our parents, and he shot her to get her out of the way. I’m so sorry.”
Violet’s grip tightened on my hands while she watched my reaction carefully, unaware that my world had already crumbled.
“He blamed us because he thought it was my parents who forced him to act that way. But it was all him.
Your mom chose us, like you did, so he killed her.”
Chapter Eleven
“This isn’t good, Aria. You have to find my brother. You have to go to him!”
Violet’s urgent words swirled in my mind as I ran through the pack’s lands, searching for the sexy stranger. My sexy stranger.
“Mating is sacred for us. We mate for life, and you rejected him after he chose you…”
My bare feet slammed against the grass, skipping over fallen branches and flowers, only the beating of my frantic heart thundering in my ears.
“Don’t you see? You are the one thing that has kept him going all this time. He needs you… I know where he’ll be.”
Passing the tree cluster Violet directed me to, I saw the two boulders she mentioned and took a hard right through the bushes. However, even as I ran towards him with nothing else but a desperate feeling driving me forwards—one I couldn’t explain or understand, but that wanted him more than anything—I thought about my mother.
She had been everything to me when I was little, and I knew she had loved me as much as I did her because she showed me with her every breath. Yet, she risked everything to save Pretty Boy’s parents, Wolf Shifters that were supposedly evil, knowing my father would see that as an unforgivable betrayal.
Why?
She had risked her life for what was right, just like I had for my sexy stranger and his wolves. It wasn’t right to kill them. I couldn’t condone that no matter what it cost me, and neither had my mom.
The only difference was I knew him already. Even if I had just seen him a few times, there was a connection there that I couldn’t deny… A connection?
Questions whirled in my mind and thoughts of my childhood returned. Of mom working in the sewing and fabric store, and dropping me off at her friends’ house who babysat me. The woman’s face was gone, just like my mother’s, but I remembered her heartwarming presence just as strongly. Crouching to avoid a tree branch, I kept running, finally seeing the part of the mountain Violet had described. It was still too far away from me, but a small cabin stood next to a beautiful lake, looking old and weathered. Yet, I still ran towards it as fast as my human feet would take me.
It wasn’t fast enough.
I recalled the woman’s family was sweet and always treated me like I was one of them. They were Mom’s dearest friends. I hadn’t thought about them in what seemed like a lifetime, but a smile came to my lips when I saw myself playing with their children day after day. Her baby was the cutest thing, and her oldest child became my best friend in the whole wide world.
He was my first kiss. A stolen kiss while we played one afternoon by the lake close to my house. I was like five years old then, so it was hardly a peck, but we got into so much trouble. He was the only person I had left after Mom died. When I was nine, he disappeared from my life too, and pain gripped my chest as I recalled crying myself to sleep for months after that.
I had felt so alone without him. So utterly alone.
That boy was everything to me back then, and we swore to be in each other’s lives forever… he was my best friend, my person…
Mine.
My steps faltered when the image of the beautiful young boy awoke in my memory. His golden blond hair shining under the sun brilliantly, honey eyes filled with love and a mesmerizing grin. Struggling to breathe, I glanced down at my left arm.
“Ouch! What are you doing?!” I whined in the memory, pulling my arm away from him. He had bitten me.
“I’m making sure we’ll always be together no matter what, Aria,” his voice assured. “Now, nothing will keep me away from you… I promise.”
Overwhelming emotion broke through the haze, and my heart ached with a love I hadn’t felt in so long. One that had remained dormant inside me. Tracing the marks his tiny canines left on my forearm back then, I glanced up just as the cabin’s door burst open. Pretty Boy stepped out, anxiously searching the area. He could smell me close.
“Zach!” I yelled, running to him while fresh tears slid down my cheeks.
His head snapped in my direction, both relief and hope bursting through his eyes when he heard me say his name. The face of that little boy who was my whole world matured before my eyes as he faced me, and laughter escaped me, mixing with the tears that fell.
“Zach!” I sobbed, seeing him close the distance between us, and capture me in his embrace the moment I slammed against his chest.
His arms hugged me so fiercely I thought we would merge into one, and every inch of me reveled in the feeling.
“I’m so sorry… Forgive me.”
“I don’t care…” he growled, plunging his nose in my hair and breathing me in deeply. “You are here now, that’s all I’ve ever wanted.”
“I found my way back to you,” I whispered in his ear and he pulled away, looking into my eyes with the scolding passion I’d felt from him once.
“About fucking time.”
Zach’s mouth crashed onto mine possessively, demanding everything from me, and I held on to him for dear life while his lips erased every moment I’d spent without him. I kissed him as zealously as he kissed me, feeling that love that had somehow flourished when we were only kids flood my being once again. The one I now understood he’d felt for me all these years.
“I choose you.” Each whispered word brushed his mouth. “My sexy Alpha,” I added, and felt the smirk slowly capture it before he claimed my lips.
My legs wrapped around his waist when he lifted me off the ground, and he walked us into the cabin, slamming the door closed behind us.
“Can I see you naked now?” I asked, and Zach’s laughter rang around us.
“Your wish is my command, mate.” He let me fall onto the queen-sized bed, his eyes beginning to glow a dangerous yellow while he unbuttoned the pants he had changed into after arriving here.
Why were all his beds so freaking comfy?
“Really?” I asked, my attention following the lowering of his zipper.
“Yes. I am innately inclined to satisfy your every demand. You are my Alpha, and anything you need for us to mate, I must provide,” he informed, a wicked look capturing his features. “That is, if you want to mate with me. Do you claim me?”
“Do I need to answer that?”
His lips twitched, but he dangerously narrowed his eyes at me. “Yes.”
“You are mine,” I replied breathlessly, and a mesmerizing grin captured his lips.
“Good answer.”
A rush of need flowed into my belly the moment his pants dropped, and my eyes basked in the sight of him. The sexy predator crawled his way onto the bed, pausing over me. I was helpless but to whimper, feeling his entire body over mine. Zach hardened against my navel and my legs pressed together furiously when I began to pulse for him.
“You marked me when we were kids,” I whispered, amazed and enticed by the notion. “I have always been yours…”
Zach nodded and his eyes half closed, nostrils flaring as he scented my desire for him. When they opened, it felt like the wolf was in control, not him.
“Don’t question me,” he ordered in a rough tone.
His shifter nature had taken over, and a thrill of excitement made my stomach violently dip with yearning. Zach lunged for my neck, nuzzling it while sharp claws extended from h
is fingertips.
“Don’t stop me…”
His claws sliced through my dress until the tattered bands slid off my body, leaving me bare under him.
“Don’t fear me…” was his last demand. “I’ll never hurt you, Aria. I’m your mate.”
“I trust you,” I whimpered, letting my hands caress his body, feeling all of him. Every single, deliciously hard inch.
A grunt escaped him with my intimate touch, and he pressed his hips against my body, letting me feel him even more. I wrapped my legs around his waist eagerly, but he pulled back so the most intimate part of us wouldn’t touch.
“Not yet,” he growled in my ear, his voice now fully animalistic.
“Zach” I half moaned, half gasped when his canines pierced my neck, holding on tightly. My body slightly trembled under him, but he only held me until he drew blood, then licked my wound gently, placing a soft kiss on my neck.
“Mine…” he declared, and my entire body ached for him.
When his head lifted once more and his eyes fell on mine, I was mesmerized by the sight of him. He was holding on somewhere between man and wolf. His gorgeous yellow eyes, canines, and half extended claws represented the wolf, but the softness of his lips while he kissed me, holding me fiercely, and his body against mine was all man.
My gaze fell to his chest, and the words on his tattoo jumped out of my mind. “One look, one touch, one smile was all it took…” I whispered between kisses, feeling his mouth create a trail down my body.
“Your hand on my cheek, one Thursday afternoon,” he replied, reciting the words of the poem on his skin. Words we had read together back then, when we couldn’t truly understand their meaning.
“Let's be friends, you said, and we were lost right then…” I gasped while he flipped me on the bed, his lips caressing my spine, all the way down to the back of my thighs.
“Lost and found the same, two worlds becoming new.” Zach’s fangs grazed my calves, and he turned me once more, letting the tip of his tongue create an invisible trail as he tasted every inch of me.
My head fell back, a breathless moan escaping me from the sinful pleasure his leisure exploration of my body incited. “If I knew then what I know now,” I breathed, trying to control the spinning room. “I would have never gone away.”
Falling for Shifters: A Limited Edition Autumn Shifters Collection Page 24