His lips quirked in that sexy way that curled her toes. Even in the face of fear, her body responded to his on a primal level.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” he said. He sounded as though he meant it. “I brought you here so you’d be safe. The last thing I want is for this to be hard for you. Why don’t you sit?”
She didn’t fear him. Not really. If he’d wanted to hurt her, he would’ve done it already. What she feared was much worse…
“Why don’t you tell me who the hell you are? No more bullshit.”
“I’m Hayden Dean, the same man I was yesterday.”
“Okay then,” she said, skepticism setting in, “what are you?”
Exhaling heavily, he leaned forward and rested his hands on his knees. “I’m a two-hundred-year-old werewolf. I was born to non-shifter parents, who died when I was young. I lived on the streets, was attacked by a werewolf, and transitioned during the next full moon. Angus Dean saved me from the streets, accepted me into his pack, and adopted me as his only son. Your path to this point isn’t much different, but if you look at how much I’ve done with my life from then to now, you’ll realize everything’s going to be fine.”
Her breathing became shallow and little pinpricks of starbursts swirled in her line of vision. She shuffled to the end of the bed, stared out the window at the crashing waves, and used the bedpost at the foot of the bed to support her weight. She seemed to sway with the ocean swell, her ears filled with the same muffled hush and boom.
She couldn’t wrap her head around the reality Hayden had painted. It might as well have been the script from a movie.
“I was kidnapped…” she fought out, strangling the end of the blanket in her grasp. “By werewolves.”
Wouldn’t she have remembered something like that?
“They took you from somewhere on the Embarcadero, probably before you reached the place we had dinner.” There was truth in Hayden’s voice. Remorse, too. “The transition from non-shifter to werewolf can make your memory patchy. That might explain why you have blank parts when you try to recall what happened, but if you try to piece it together, it’ll come back.”
A blacked-out car parked at the curb on Pier 39 streamed into her mind. Someone had emerged from the back of the car, chased her down, and stabbed her with something in the neck.
Touching the spot under her jaw unleashed an onslaught of horrific memories.
Quasimodo. The horror of the first bite. Hayden finding her.
He’d saved her.
“And then…” She couldn’t speak the awful words.
“You fought one of them.” He shook his head and lowered his gaze. “You were so brave, Melina. There are wolves in my pack who wouldn’t fight a rogue head to head. They don’t have honor or live by codes the way we do, which is why they split off to begin with.”
“I just want to clarify something.” One breath. Two. “We’re talking about werewolves.” Her head spun as she tried to get the details right. Air whooshed in and out of her lungs, deep and labored. “As in, men who turn into hairy, snarling, beastly wolves.”
“We’re not snarling or beastly, but the hairy part would depend on the man, I suppose.” He cracked a smile, but recovered quickly. “And it’s not only men. Women, too.”
Her hands and feet tingled. “This isn’t real. This can’t be happening.”
Hayden rose and stood behind her She could feel his presence against her back, though he didn’t touch her. “We went over the details yesterday, remember?”
“Oh yeah, I remember everything you said.” She spun. Right into his chest. “I remember the two pulse point thing and the rogue pack thing, blabitty-blah, but I didn’t think you were telling the truth.”
He chuckled, and then cut his laugh short. “Why would I lie to you about something like that?”
“I thought you had a twisted sense of humor.”
“Oh, my sense of humor is definitely twisted. But not about this. You look red.” His hand touched her bare shoulder, radiating delicious warmth through her body. He took back his hand as if she’d shocked him. “Are you feeling okay?”
“Okay? No, Hayden Wolfie Dean, I am most definitely not okay!”
“Wolfie?” He grinned, shaking his head. “Is that the best you can come up with?”
She paced back and forth, to the windows and back to him again. Without warning, her skin flushed hot and her head pounded. Hayden had mentioned hot and cold flashes earlier. As if the clouds parted, she recalled every crazy part of their conversation.
“I’m a werewolf?” she screeched. “And you’re a werewolf and you’re really freaking old—”
“Whoa, no need to fight dirty.” He threw up his hands. “I’m not old. For a werewolf, I’m in my prime.”
“How old will I get?”
“About three hundred if you live alone, and a thousand if you bond with your fated mate. Theoretically speaking.”
“A thousand?” Stars danced in front of her eyes. “As in, one thousand years. Wonderful. I’m going to be a horrible old woman. Bitter and really freaking hairy.”
“You won’t look much older than you do now,” he said, his voice soothing to her ears. “You’ll age gracefully. As for the bitter part, I think you’re already there.”
She gasped, and fought the urge to smack him.
“And Gabriel knows about the werewolves too,” she rambled on. “He sent you the email, so he’s in on this. How many more of you are there?”
“I’m not sure how many populate the world at this point, but we have hundreds of werewolves in the San Francisco Wolf Pack and there are hundreds of others in packs surrounding our area.”
“Uh-huh, yeah,” she said, nodding frantically, “and I’m going to shift—isn’t that what you called it?—and grow a bunch of hair and howl at the moon, and oh God, that’s not cute. I’ll look like Chewbacca.”
“I’m sure there are some people who think Chewbacca’s cute.” He laughed, hard and deep. This time, she did smack him, right in the shoulder. He cowered, probably for her benefit. “I’m kidding, slugger. You won’t be anything like Chewy. You’ll be dainty and sleek, most likely, and will have the same color coat as the hair on your head. It’ll be dark and silky, and fall through my fingers just the same.”
She softened. Damn him.
“This is so surreal. So freaking unbelievable. Do they make Nair for dogs?”
“Not that I know of, but you won’t need—”
“It’s hopeless.” She slapped her forehead. It was ice cold. Clammy. “Does it hurt when it happens? When you shift?”
How could he be so calm about all this?
“Shifting is scary at first, so you naturally resist the change, which makes the process uncomfortable.” He leaned against the bedpost and folded his arms over his chest. “But after that, it’s the most freeing feeling in the world.”
“Freeing?”
He nodded.
She rubbed the mark on her neck, and then eyed her wrist where his teeth had pierced her flesh. Vaguely, images took root in her mind. He’d held her hand. He’d apologized over the decision to bite her—she recalled the agony in his voice.
“You bit me,” she whispered, remembering his tongue on her skin. “You freaking bit me. Right here. I can still feel where your teeth went in.”
“I had to.” His voice turned soft. “I didn’t have any other option.”
“You could’ve let me die.”
He raised his chin in defiance. “That wasn’t an option.”
“Sure it was.” She sucked in a short breath, and pushed out, “You said I would’ve died if you didn’t bite me a second time. You didn’t have to. You could’ve left me.”
“I couldn’t let you go.” His dark eyes blazed with agony. “Not so soon after I’d found you. You can blame me if that makes this easier for you.”
As her thoughts jumbled into an incomprehensible mess, Melina sucked her bottom lip into her mouth and bit softly. She became hyp
eraware that the only thing standing between their naked bodies was a fuzzy blanket and a terrycloth towel. She suppressed the urge to toss the blanket on the bed and follow it down.
“You said you found me.” Her heart thudded against her ribcage. “I don’t know how you remember it, but you didn’t. I was hired to interview you last year, and hired again this year.”
He grabbed her by the wrist, and held it against his heart. His touch lit something in her hand, and buzzed into her chest. Her heart sped.
“I can hear your heart race when I touch you,” he whispered, the subtle parting of his lips capturing her in a trance. “That only happens when a werewolf meets his match. In our race, we call that a Luminary bond. You’re meant for me, Melina. No matter how we decide to live from this moment on, we’re connected.”
“Connected?”
“Fated mates.”
“This is too much,” she rasped out, struggling for air. Damn, her chest was tight. “Werewolves, fated mates, rogue wolves, Chewbacca hair. I don’t know if I can wrap my head around it.”
“I know,” he breathed. “It’s a lot to take in, but if you trust me, I can walk you through it.”
She shook her head, but her heart beat ‘yes’. “That’s just it, Hayden. I don’t know if I can trust you at all. You said you found me. That our touch proves we’re meant to be. If our connection is so intense, where were you at that stupid awards show last year?”
“I had to touch you to know for sure. Our kiss in my office dispelled any doubt I had.” He paused, brushing his thumb over the back of her hand. “On the night of the awards show, the rogues showed their dissent toward turned wolves. In order to squash any problems, my father asked that I take a born wolf from our pack to the event.”
“But you took two women.”
His lips quirked. “Go big or go home.”
“So, if you had your way, you would’ve taken me?”
“If I had my way, Melina,” he said, his voice rich and smooth as honey, “I’d take you every single day and twice on Sundays.”
She went damp at the words.
“But you have to know, right from the start,” he said, “that I don’t have any intention of completing the Luminary bond with you.”
Daggers to the heart.
She dismissed the gut-clench reaction. Was Hayden even what she wanted? And why was she thinking about him and their connection when she had much bigger issues to wrap her head around?
It was as if she couldn’t resist him. Even if she was going to turn into a big ole hairy dog.
Maybe she’d be cute and dainty like Minnie…
God, she was stupid. This whole thing was too much.
“Our connection will draw us together like magnets,” Hayden went on, “but only so far. We have to keep distance from one another.”
He was totally breaking up with her, before they’d even started anything.
“Here comes the cold shoulder again. This time I’m ready for it.” She ripped her hand from his and rubbed the spot on her hand where it’d warmed. “Let me guess. It’s you, not me?”
She’d kissed a ton of frogs in her quest for the ultimate fairy tale, and each of them had used different, worn-out break-up lines.
“I’m the Alpha of the pack. Or, I will be,” he corrected, digging into the closet. He yanked out a pair of dark-washed jeans and stepped into them. “As Alpha, I’ll have a major target on my back to any wolf who wants to challenge my authority. Add the fact that I’m a turned wolf in the middle of a rogue uprising, and I might as well paint a target on your back, too. I won’t let that happen.”
The world whooshed in and out.
“You’re talking too fast, and it’s too much.” She waved her hand in front of her face, wishing away the stars still shimmying around in her line of sight. “I’m barely keeping my hormones under control here, and now this Luminary talk? I don’t get it. I don’t know if I want to.”
“I’m going to be Alpha, Melina. I’m going to rule. If someone has a bone to pick with me—”
“Clever wording.” She couldn’t help but joke through her cloud of confusion.
He sighed, kinking his neck to the side in that irritated way he’d perfected so well. “If someone wants to hurt me, they’ll go for my mate first. I won’t—I can’t—do that to you.”
Not only had she fallen for the most eligible bachelor of the year, she’d fallen for a werewolf. The Alpha.
She rubbed circles over her temples. Shouldn’t she be worried about donning a coat of stinky wolf hair and growing fangs? Why were her thoughts preoccupied on Hayden turning her away?
“I don’t know what’s happening.” Her heart gave a sickening thud. “I’m not thinking straight.”
“I’ve been where you are, so I know the back and forth you’re having with yourself. But inside, you know the truth about what’s happening to you, and what needs to happen between us. You can feel it, right?”
Yeah, she could.
Despite her best efforts, she’d totally, hopelessly fallen in love with Hayden. She’d loved him from the start, she realized. The hard and true beat of her heart warned that she always would.
Surprisingly, after everything she’d learned the last twenty-four hours, that was what scared her the most.
Chapter Twenty
Sitting on the beach behind Hayden’s house, Melina dug her toes into the sand and stared at the lineup of waves on the horizon. Slivers of moonlight illuminated the water as it churned and tumbled, rolling closer to shore. Cool sand and tiny pebbles smooshed between her toes, reminding her of summer days when her parents used to take her to Baker Beach on the very edge of the city. She’d always cherished those memories…
Taking a deep breath, Melina drew her knees against her chest and wrapped her arms around them.
She heard Hayden’s footsteps striking over the sand before she spotted him. It seemed as if everything had changed in such a short amount of time. Her ears had become painfully sensitive, her sense of smell had heightened, and her lust for Hayden had become insatiable.
“You’ve been out here for an hour,” he said, sitting beside her in the sand. He handed her a steaming mug of coffee—dark and bold, judging from the aroma. “I tried to give you some space, but the wind’s picking up. Thought you might want something to warm you up.”
She’d been cold earlier, but now, with her body running hot, the crisp air felt good. It was a reminder that she was alive, that she could feel something real and normal. The wind whirled, stirring loose pebbles over the beach. Hayden’s enticing scent—spicy, crisp, and male—hit her nostrils, and made her go weak. She took a sip and breathed in deep when the sugar and vanilla cream hit her tongue.
“Stay out here much longer and you’ll see the sun rise,” he said, drinking from his own mug.
Without answering, Melina stared out over the waves, to where the dark blue ocean met the sky. It was probably three o’clock, a couple hours until daybreak. Although her body felt raw and worn, and her mind was drained beyond words, she couldn’t sleep.
A new sun would bring a new world. A whole new reality and strange adjustments.
She wasn’t ready to face any of it.
If only the dark could stay, even a little bit longer.
“Anything you want to talk about?” he asked, his voice a sexy rasp.
They’d gone ’round and ’round about the details of her transition. She was scared, but there wasn’t anything she could do other than take it one day at a time. Hell, she was taking it one hour, one minute, at a time. Hayden had promised he’d be with her through it all, to help guide her through it. She believed him, easing some of the fears wracking through her.
But her heart still ached over one thing he’d glazed over.
“The Luminary bond,” she said.
He nodded slowly, kicking his legs out in front of him. “It’s the non-shifting equivalent of soul mates. It’s the idea that there’s one person out there for everyone.�
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“And you’re it for me, huh?”
He chuckled. “Well you don’t have to sound so miserable about it.”
“No, it’s not that…”
“Then what?”
She couldn’t look at him, so she kept her gaze trained on the crashing waves in front of her. “You said our connection will grow, but only so far. You said you won’t complete the bond with me, which means we’ll never be together, right?”
“Right.” He tipped back his mug and stared out over the horizon.
Prince Charming was sitting right beside her, but once again, he didn’t want her. Not in the same way. When she thought of the future, she envisioned marriage and children, a home and career. She dreamed of having it all. Tied with a big ole red bow. But now she’d have to find someone else, and Hayden had ruined her. She’d constantly compare everyone to him, and they’d fall short. It was almost as if Hayden was asking her to choose—her heart over her dreams.
Cinderella managed to get her fairy tale. That bitch.
“If you’re the one I’m supposed to be with,” she said, stroking her mug, “how could I ever be happy with anyone else?”
“I don’t want you to be with anyone else.” Hayden spoke so harshly, it was nearly a growl. “I need you…” His words drifted.
He’d been about to say more. Melina could feel it. She could almost say the words herself. They were right on the tip of her tongue. And then they were gone.
“You think it’s too dangerous for an Alpha to have a mate?” she probed. “Not us, specifically, but hypothetically speaking?”
Tipping back his mug, Hayden finished his coffee and then exhaled heavily. As if the weight of the world sat on his broad, muscular shoulders. “Under certain circumstances, yes. In the city right now, there’s dissension from those who believe turned wolves are less worthy than born wolves.”
“And they don’t want you to rule?”
“Judging from what happened to you this weekend, they’ll do anything to keep me from taking over the pack.”
“Has it always been this way?” Her throat tightened. “I mean, when the rogues were in your pack, did you know they didn’t want you to step up after your father died?”
The Werewolf Wears Prada (Entangled Covet) (San Francisco Wolf Pack) Page 15