by Cecilia Lane
Rylee tapped her pen against the notepad. “And everyone has one?”
He shrugged uncomfortably. “I assume. But not everyone meets one. Some, most maybe, just settle down with someone compatible.”
She glanced up, then back down to her notes. Her palms itched and her stomach turned over, but not with the queasy disgust she felt earlier.
Butterflies. That’s what she felt. Wanting to know if Cole had someone in his life made her feel butterflies in her stomach.
“And do you have a mate?” she asked softly.
“No,” he said forcefully. “I don’t want one.”
“He doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Mates are wonderful,” a woman said from the door.
Rylee smiled at the couple entering her lab. She could see the resemblance between the men. Both were massive with wide shoulders and huge arms. Callum was carved from rough stone, but Cole was made with a more delicate hand. He hid the difference under his tattoos and a thicker bit of stubble on his cheeks than his brother carried.
Callum stuck his hand out, but Cole was suddenly between them. “This is Rylee. Rylee, this is Callum, my brother and alpha, and Leah, his mate.”
“Down, boy.” Leah snorted and reached around him to shake Rylee’s hand.
Callum shifted his eyes to her, then to his brother. “Better listen to her, Cole. She’s on a tear this morning. She might just take second from you.”
Rylee cocked her head. “Can you expand on that while I pull the kits? Please, take seats. You don’t need to linger in the door.”
“Better listen to her, Callum. She’s on a tear this morning. She might just take all our secrets from you,” Cole teased and wheeled his seat to the table in the middle of the room.
“If you two are done measuring your dicks, I’ll answer the lady,” Leah announced and flounced into one of the waiting seats. “Alpha is the leader of our little bands of misfits. That’s Callum. Second is just that, second in command. Which is Cole, when he’s not sciencing the shit out of things.”
Rylee spread out a cloth and snapped on gloves. Tubes were ready to hold cheek swabs and hair samples for both Leah and Callum. Needles were ready to draw blood. She gestured to Callum to roll up his sleeve, and she cleaned his skin. “How many are typically grouped together under one leader?”
“Depends on the alpha,” Callum answered. She set the needle against the vein as he continued without a wince. “Some are stronger and can hold more. Some are happy with just one person under them. Some are content staying a loner.”
“I need a few hairs, root and all. This might sting a little,” she warned after putting a sticker on the vial with Callum’s blood. The back of her neck prickled with raised hairs. Glancing over her shoulder, she found both Cole and Leah watching her with wary eyes. She felt hunted.
Callum reached up and pulled a few hairs out himself. “Will this do?”
Able to breathe again, she nodded. “Back to mates. Cole said there’s a draw to the other person.” She flicked a glance at Cole. “Is that only between shifters, or is it felt when someone is fae or vampire?”
“Or human? I felt it with Callum before I was bitten. Not as strongly as a shifter, but there was this pull to him. A need to be near him. Protect him. Defend him from anyone who oversteps,” Leah nodded, still watching her closely.
The air felt like jelly as Rylee stuck Callum’s hair into a tube and sealed it shut. She reached for the cheek swabs and quickly rubbed inside Callum’s cheek. Her hands shook when she stuffed them into their tube. “No overstepping,” she soothed. “Simply doing my job.”
Silence reigned as she changed gloves. Leah held out her arm for her sample to be taken. “Have you felt a pull to anyone before?” Leah asked.
Rylee’s heart jumped in her chest and she looked again toward Cole. He wasn’t interested in a mate. He’d know if he had one, from her crash course on the subject. And while she did feel inexplicably drawn to him, there was no future. She’d finish her work and be done with Bearden.
“No one,” she said quietly.
She’d barely pulled the needle from Leah’s arm when the woman flattened her hands on the table and squeezed her eyes shut. A rattle worked its way out of her middle, and her eyes were liquid silver when she opened them again. Cole was immediately on his feet, placing himself between them.
“Need to go,” Leah growled, inhuman.
“Shit. Yeah. Out the door. Nice meeting you, Rylee,” Callum lifted Leah by her shoulders and hustled her out the door. Leah’s rumble grew louder even as they hurried through the clinic.
A dull roar hit the air, followed by a tiny, delighted screech of children and clapping of hands.
Rylee turned wide eyes to Cole. “What just happened?”
He made a face and returned to his seat. “What you said the first time we met, about shifters spreading to others unwillingly? Leah was bitten during a challenge fight. No knowledge or consent. It fucks with the animal, no matter how much you would want it. Those people can be dangerous when their animal takes control.”
“She was going to change? Here?” She toyed with the collar of her blouse. As much as she wanted to see a shift happen up close, she certainly didn’t want it in her lab. Too many things—herself included—could be broken in the tiny space.
Cole twisted in his seat and drew up the back of his shirt. She swallowed hard at the glimpse of the cut muscles wrapping around to his front. On closer inspection, though, she could see faint scars across his side. “She got me last week before Callum could draw her off. He’s the only one that can contain her right now. Probably a combination of alpha power and being her mate.”
She must have looked horrified, because he dropped his shirt and continued. “Don’t worry, little bit. I won’t let her hurt you. And fights are normal with us. We have to keep finding our place in the clan, and beating the shit out of one another is one way to work off some steam and keep the pecking order.”
Nodding, she mulled over everything that had taken place. There was mobility within the ranks, just as there was within the military or any job. It wasn’t based on merit, but a sense of power. She wondered if there was a way of measuring or predicting that, and if it would be expressed through any particular genes.
She settled into routine. She needed to start the sequencing of both samples, since those would take the longest. Then she wanted to start the amplification of some interesting segments of samples previously gathered and sequenced.
But first, she wanted to prep slides and get a quick visual of the blood cells themselves. So far, she’d seen nothing different in the shape or size in any of Bearden’s residents that would point to anything similar to sickle cell anemia. The only unusual aspect had been the concentration in the sample taken from the vampire, Victor.
The first slide presented nothing unusual, but the second showed slight variations. The cells weren’t twisted into a new shape, but they weren’t as round as she was used to seeing. Tiny, gentle ridges made up the outsides.
“Oh. Oh! Come see this!” She didn’t even move from the eyepiece, only waving Cole toward her. The roll of his chair sounded loud in the quiet lab and she shifted to the side to make room for him.
Cole pulled back from the eyepiece after barely putting his face to the microscope. “I can’t see shit.”
“Oh. Sorry.” Rylee dropped her glasses from the top of her head to her nose and pressed back against the eyepiece. A quick twist of a knob adjusted the settings for normal sight and she made room for him again. “Try that.”
He’d barely ducked his head back to the eyepiece when she started explaining. “See the ridges on one, but not the other? Most of what I’ve seen so far are smooth, which makes sense if everyone was born a shifter. But Leah was bitten, right, and her cells show a slight difference in structure.
“I’ll know more once the sequencing finishes tomorrow, but I bet there will be little differences here and there. Slips in the code, if you will. Not
enough to be an entirely different species. Almost like a different breed. Both shifters, just slightly different.”
He looked at her like she spoke another language. “And you can tell all that from some blood and hair?”
“Neat, isn’t it?” She nodded, enthusiasm seeping into her words. Shyness suddenly fell over her. She wanted him to share in her excitement. A little bit of acceptance, that was all she wanted. By his own words, he wasn’t interested in the subject.
“I don’t understand half of it, but very neat.” He tucked a stray piece of hair behind her ears and then fixed her glasses on her face. The stormy weather in his eyes coalesced into a swirl of gold. “You seem better today.”
“Something unexpected came up, is all.” Panic and fear and everything that came with thinking about Peter rose hot and disgusting in her throat. She pushed it back down, determined not to let it consume her. She was safe in Bearden. Safe near Cole. Peter wouldn’t stand a chance against the man, let alone the beast. “I wanted to thank you for yesterday and I wasn’t sure how. You just stepped right in and… and…”
“It was no problem. You were upset. Anyone would have done the same.”
Her lips twitched into a sad smile. “No. They wouldn’t.”
“You’ve been around the wrong people, then,” he said. His words were quiet, but the air felt heavy again, like it had the day before when he found her crying. She wanted to wrap herself in it like a blanket.
Her breath caught in her chest as he leaned forward. She expected to feel panic and fear, those wild emotions she was most familiar with since Peter’s attack.
Cole pressed his lips to hers and a tiny rumble vibrated through him and into her. That sensation delivered heat all over her body, from her tight shoulders all the way to her toes. Her scalp tingled at the second vibrating rumble and she nearly gasped. It was almost like a purr.
She’d been kissed before, even before Peter took advantage, but nothing quite like Cole. He took his time, sipping her lips until he teased her into parting them. The first stroke of his tongue pulled a tiny, shocked groan from her that he devoured with a sexy growl. The rest of the world faded away in the background and it was just them, sharing breath and tasting one another.
He cupped her cheeks, and she expected him to turn rough. Maybe rough wasn’t the right word. Less gentle. More demanding. But he kept his slow, deliberate pace. His lips, his kiss set her on fire.
She should have felt panicked. He held her close. He could overpower her at any moment. Where she expected to want to run, she wanted to get closer. That in itself tinged the kiss with a bit of panic. What did it mean that the giant, grumpy shifter could so solidly brush away everything that’d held her back from truly living? There was a hook in her middle that felt connected to him, slowly reeling her closer into his orbit.
She wasn’t sure if it was something she was ready to examine.
She sucked down a shuddering breath when he finally let her loose. He didn’t part from her, though. He only pressed his forehead to hers and plucked once more at her lips. “I’ve been chasing the wrong girls all my life if all nerds kiss like that.”
Rylee shut her eyes, but that didn’t wash away her smile or the flush spreading across her cheeks. “You’re ruining it.”
He smirked. “Little bit, you don’t even know the half of it.”
Chapter 11
“Morning,” Cole greeted Rylee. One shy smile was enough to send his dick thudding against his zipper. He’d had another night filled with dreams of her and been out of bed even before his alarm sounded.
Worryingly, she didn’t say a word and huddled near the door. Brows shooting together, he tested the air. She didn’t smell nervous or scared, not in the way he’d expect if she regretted what’d happened between them. She smelled almost… apprehensive. Like she was waiting for something bad to happen.
Cole’s frown deepened. He pushed her too far. One kiss was too much. She knew as well as he did that they were dangerous together.
That damn kiss had torn his world apart. His bear, smug bastard, still refused to see the truth of the situation. Rylee might be fun for a night or a month, but she wasn’t his future. She was human and humans weren’t meant for enclave life. She’d be out of Bearden once her lab had enough results and then she’d go on to start her perfect human family with some shitty human husband. He and the rest of Bearden would be entirely forgotten. He’d seen it before with his own mother.
His jaw tightened, and he didn’t try to tease a word out of Rylee. She shifted in her seat next to him, throwing glances his way, but he didn’t say a damn word. Her baby blues grew bigger and more watery the longer they went without speaking.
His phone chimed through his truck speakers and he answered the call with a growl. “What?”
“Cole,” his father’s nurse, Louise, breathed into her phone. “I couldn’t reach Callum. It’s Ephraim. He’s had an episode again.”
Cole passed a hand over his face. He did not want to deal with an out of control bear, not when he couldn’t even deal with the silent treatment from his unwilling companion. “Can you try him again?” he asked, knowing the answer even before Louise denied him. She wouldn’t be calling him if she had a hope of reaching Callum.
“Can you please come?”
Cole growled an acceptance and ended the call. He turned to Rylee. “Need to make a pit stop.”
She didn’t say a word, only nodded when he turned down a different street than the one they took toward the clinic. A few more turns put them on a potholed road and he saw Louise’s car peeking out of the driveway.
Cole pulled up alongside Pop’s nurse and rolled down his window. “What happened?”
Louise wrapped her hands around her steering wheel. “It was a normal morning. Served him grapefruit and had coffee. Callum stopped by, as usual. He’d been gone for maybe an hour when Ephraim started acting agitated. I tried to calm him, and then he snapped that he didn’t know me, and shifted. That’s when I reached for the tranquilizer, but he got me before I could pull it out.”
Cole whistled when Louise raised her arm and showed the healing scratches. At least she’d been able to dodge before those scratches turned to full wounds. Blood made his father crazy when he was already in a state. “I’ll handle him from here. Thanks, Louise.”
He nodded and eased his truck past the nurse. Rylee hadn’t said a word before he pulled to a stop in front of his father’s house and he cut her off before she could object to anything. “Wait here. I don’t want you getting hurt.”
“What’s going on?”
He was already out of the truck and jogging toward the house. He shouted over his shoulder, “Stay there.”
The house was a mess, but not nearly as bad as he expected. Pop had changed in the kitchen. Scraps of clothes littered the floor, and one of the chairs hadn’t survived. The door leading to the backyard was just gone, broken into pieces by the sharp claws and heavy paws of a bear determined to break free.
He grabbed the tranq gun from inside a locked drawer, right where Louise said it would be. She’d been able to shove the keys into the lock before Pop chased her off. With that in mind, Cole stuffed a couple extra darts into his pocket, in case the first didn’t bring his father down.
He was out the broken back door in an instant. By the fucking Broken, he hated tracking his father like an animal. Pop’s scent was strong enough that he didn’t need to look hard before he found the aging bear circling around the house and ambling toward his truck.
And Rylee. Fuck. He couldn’t let her get hurt. It didn’t matter that Bearden would be blown off the map as soon as a human was injured by someone like him. He, personally, couldn’t see Rylee Garland take an injury.
Smug as fuck bear in his middle chuffed in his head until Cole kicked him to the back of his mind. Instincts be damned.
Cole hurried along, gun raised and ready to shoot as soon as he got close enough for the dart to piece through fur and hide. His
bear raged inside him, first at the threat to his mate and then at the pain of his father and former alpha falling apart.
Cole shook his head to center himself. He didn’t have time for his bear’s whining or tantrum. He had to hunt down his father before the man could hurt someone or himself.
He padded silently through the broken brush, keeping the large bear ahead of him. The beast stopped and sniffed the air, but didn’t turn. Cole crept closer, then closer still. Finally in range, he squeezed the trigger just as the bear bolted for his truck.
Rylee’s scream split the air and dug into his brain. The bear tripped over one of his feet, caught himself, then toppled to the ground right next to the truck.
Slowly, fur receded into skin. Rylee stared at him from inside the cab, then switched her focus at the first sound of snapping bones. She watched in fascinated horror as the bear changed into his unconscious and naked father.
Blowing out a breath, Cole stooped and lifted his father into his arms. The creaking of his truck door opening and closing didn’t give him pause. He walked quickly toward the house and settled his father into his bed. He’d be out for a few hours.
Leaving Pop to sleep, Cole gathered the dustpan and broom from the kitchen pantry and started sweeping shards of glass and smaller bits of wood into a pile. The door would need to be replaced entirely.
“You should head to the lab,” he told Rylee as soon as he smelled her behind him.
“Cole,” Rylee said softly. She surprised him by reaching for the broom. “I’ll clean up the glass if you clear out the wood.”
She started at one corner of the kitchen while he piled up broken pieces of door and chair. “What’s wrong with him?”
Cole shrugged. “Dementia of some form. He forgets everyone around him and that he has a bear inside him. Makes him dangerous when he shifts or gets forceful. He used to be mayor, and fire chief before that. And now he needs someone watching him every second of the day.”