Dark Fates (A Paranormal Anthology)

by Carrie Ann Ryan

  Hayden growled. This was the side to Savage that caused them the most problems. “You know I’m not an idiot. If it was just a matter of a doctor, don’t you think I’d have fucking done that?”

  “Down, boy. I should know better than to bait you after all these years. We can’t even blame Lucian for your poor sense of humor. You never did have one. Why do you need a Healer for a human? Start talking, and enough with this clandestine bullshit. I’m not your mark. You aren’t going to play me. Tell me the whole truth, or I’m hanging up.”

  Fuck. “You know you’re only thirteen months older than me, and you’re not even my Alpha. You gave this place to me. It’s officially mine. I don’t have to take this shit from you.”

  “Hayden.” Savage growled. “Tell me what you need or call back when you’re not being such an asshole.”

  He knew on some level that he’d called to give Savage a hard time. Pissing off his brother was something he could control. His mate having no idea who he was? Completely out of his control.

  “I have a True Mate.” He spoke the words fast. “She’s a human.” He proceeded to tell his brother the whole sordid story from start to finish, ending with how Chelsea had no idea who he was now and how he had absolutely no idea what to do about it. “Do you have any suggestions? Have you ever heard of a human who could do this before?”

  “No.” His brother answered fast. “It all sounds like so much crap. If it was anyone else in the world telling me this I’d call foul. But you never lie.”

  That wasn’t exactly true. He’d told a huge amount of lies in the past when Lucian had needed him to. These days he’d tried very hard to be truthful. Why bother when the truth worked just fine? If he lived an authentic life, he had no use for fabrication. With all of that being the case, he still lied by omission every day to protect his pack from human discovery.

  “If you don’t know of a human who can do what she does, then no one does.” Savage kept his nose deep in the darker edges of the world. Psychic humans who could see many futures would have caught his attention. “Thanks anyway.”

  “I’ll look into it. Keep your head down, brother. I’ll call if I hear anything.”

  Hayden disconnected the call just as Sal walked into the room. “My Alpha?”

  Whether Sal wanted to know about the food on the tray or his conversation on the phone Hayden didn’t know. Either way he wasn’t exactly in the mood to share. “Go out to the car, Sal.” It wasn’t much of a greeting, but right now he couldn’t do pleasantries. His pack would have to understand. “The one we took from the True Believers last night. The van.” He spoke in spurts and stops, a tribute to how befuddled his mind had gotten.

  “Yes, the van outside. I’m following you.”

  “Good because I’m not following myself.” He shook his head. “Take down the plates. Someone owns this van. Even if it was stolen, it gives us something to go by. Some place to start. We’re going to have to find the True Believers who held my mate. If we can track them down, I don’t know, we’ll figure something out.”

  Sal nodded. “I’ll get the boys on it.”

  “Good.”

  “One more thing, my Alpha.” Sal cleared his throat.

  “Yes?” Hayden turned back to him.

  Sal took a package out of his coat pocket. It took Hayden a full thirty seconds to realize they were condoms. He opened and closed his mouth several times before he spoke. “She’s human. You’re right to give me those. I could actually get her pregnant without her needing to be in heat.”

  His second-in-command nodded. “Consider it a gift from my years of sleeping with the gentler species. I’ll find a way to get them in your bedside drawer without her noticing.”

  “Thank you.” He cleared his throat. “Okay if we never mention this again?”

  Sal grinned. “Absolutely, my Alpha.”

  Hayden retrieved the tray. Delaying the inevitable couldn’t continue. Besides, he needed to set eyes on her again. His need to claim her demanded he at least be in the same room with her for enough time to assure himself of her safety.

  He took the stairs two at a time while maintaining the tray. What was the protocol for entering her room? Did he knock? Did he just enter? In the end, manners ruled out. His mother had been nothing if not a drill sergeant when it came to that.

  Hayden knocked. What exactly would he do if she denied him entry? Leave the food on the tray outside the door and scamper away? He was an Alpha male. It wasn’t in his nature to run away. Fortunately, he didn’t have to decide, though the few seconds it took for her to call her permission for him to come in were the longest of his life.

  He opened the door and walked in, careful not to spill anything. She sat against the headboard, still covered by the sheets. Dark circles marred the skin under her eyes, and the acrid smell of her distress permeated the room, making him want to cringe.

  He walked to the bed and set the tray down next to her. “I wasn’t sure what you liked to eat.”

  She eyed the food, and to his horror, a tear slipped from her eyes. “That was awful nice of you. I can’t tell you how much it means to me.”

  “Chelsea.” He exhaled her name, not sure what to do with himself but finally deciding to sit down on the edge of the bed where he wouldn’t cause the tray to turn over. “Yesterday was a very…odd day, for both of us.”

  “Only I can’t remember most of it.” She sniffed. “I’d forgotten what this was like. I’ve been confined in a place for so long where people understood what was happening to me. I’d let slip from my mind how horrible it is to be around groups who know things that you did when you don’t have any idea of it yourself. I don’t know if I’m making any sense.”

  He nodded, the need to take her in his arms nearly overwhelming him. He had to wait. Grabbing her into an embrace would send her running, and he couldn’t have that. Control. He’d never been without it.

  So why did his mate make him feel like a thirteen-year-old kid who couldn’t figure out if he wanted to shift or fuck?

  “Trust me, I get the senseless stuff. There are things about my life that you might have trouble believing.” He cracked his knuckles. “But don’t act like the people who kept you confined did you any favors. They didn’t. They were using you for their own purposes. I don’t know if you remember feeling like they wanted to kill you, but that was your impression.”

  She nodded. “I’d been feeling that for a while. It wasn’t confined to this most recent time.”

  “We need to find those people so we can figure out what is happening to you, and I think that is going to be easier said than done.” The True Believers hadn’t gotten away with the destruction they’d been causing lately by not being good at secrets.

  “Why would you do this for me? If I just showed up here recently, why do you care one bit about what happens to me? I’ve lived in the real world. I know exactly how little strangers give a shit about other strangers.”

  He growled before he could stop himself, and her eyes widened. Hayden decided to ignore the instinct to stop and explain everything to her. The whole he-was-a-werewolf bit would have to wait until another time. “You’re not a stranger to me. Just because we met yesterday doesn’t mean that we’re not important to one another. Haven’t you ever had the experience of meeting someone and feeling like you’ve known them forever? Well, that’s how it was for you and me.”

  There, that should settle it, he hoped.

  Chelsea raised a finger and pointed at him. “You’re a werewolf.”

  Well, he hadn’t expected that. What was the right response to that statement? He nodded. “That is correct. How do you know about werewolves? Did you get your memory back?”

  She exhaled loudly. “No, I don’t have my memories of whatever I saw before. But I do know about werewolves. I’ve been living with the True Believers. They’re all obsessed with werewolves and any other monsters they can track down , as a matter of fact.”

  He stood up, raising an eyebrow
. Her careless use of a word he hadn’t heard in a long time bothered him more than it should have. If anyone else had said it, he wouldn’t have cared. This woman, however, even if she couldn’t remember him, happened to be his mate. “Monster, huh?” He extended his arms. “Do I look like a monster, Chelsea?”

  “Not right now you don’t.” Her eyes flared with heat, and she stood up, his shirt hanging down to her knees. He’d forgotten that she’d been sleeping in it and seeing her dressed in one of his favorite pieces of clothing made his cock jump, argument or no argument.

  “But I will look like a monster?” Had his mate been influenced by the people who had her? Was she some kind of werewolf bigot?

  “I shouldn’t have said monster.” She put her hands on her hips. “That was wrong. I’ve been hearing that for years. I’m sorry. But you’re not exactly…normal. And neither am I, heaven knows I know that. I guess I don’t know what I’m saying.”

  “All right then.” He could handle ignorance. Hatred constituted another matter altogether. “Here’s the deal. You’re my mate, Chelsea. Yesterday you knew that. You’d seen it a hundred times in some lifetimes and evidently seen some scenarios where we weren’t together. But in this one, we’re meant to be together. Trust me, I can feel it.”

  In every part of his soul. In the very cells that let him breathe, he could feel her essence seeping into him. He needed her. How would he survive the sweet torture of having her close and not being able to claim her? Oh the madness…

  She visibly swallowed. “Let me see if I can get this straight. I came here because, in my dream state, I knew that we were mates even though we’d never met before.”

  “Exactly.”

  “You’re a werewolf. I think I’m human. I mean I’m some kind of human-esque thing, even with my weirdness. Sex can happen? Wolves and, you know, non-Wolves?”

  He hadn’t expected that question. Hayden didn’t know her well enough yet to read her facial expressions. Right now she looked…blank. Maybe he had approached this entirely wrong.

  “It’s not all that common.” He shifted his stance suddenly feeling uncomfortable. “But it happens. It’s not like we’re not…built to be compatible. We have all the rights parts. It’s just that True Matings are rare, and, usually, if a wolf is settling into a relationship that isn’t a True Mating, they choose to do it with one of our own kind so that there aren’t the problems of existing in two different worlds. So, I guess it’s fair to say that most human-werewolf joinings are usually True Matings.”

  She walked toward him, her eyes narrowed. “If all of this is true, then everything I’ve been through has been leading to this moment. My destiny. Is that it? Some universal deity decided that I should mate a werewolf and so, therefore, it shall be?”

  “We believe that it’s the Moon. She guards us, shapes us, sets our destinies. We all play a role in the werewolf world. Or at least that’s how the stories go. I don’t pay that much attention to it. I’ve had other things to do.”

  Like torture and destruction. He pushed those memories away. They had no place in the room with his mate. She would be protected for the rest of her days, even from the parts of his past he’d never forget.

  She stood right in front of him now. He could smell the detergent he used on his clothes. The label called it scentless, it would never be entirely that way to him. But under those chemicals was the light honey scent of Chelsea. He might never wash that shirt again. Would there be a way to get her into all of his clothing? Hayden would have a good time getting her out of them again.

  “So the moon made werewolves—”

  A thought dawned on him, and he interrupted her. “Actually, it’s a love story.”

  She sighed. “Really?”

  “Don’t be skeptical. It’s a nice story if nothing else. Do you want to hear it?”

  Chelsea raised her dark eyebrows. “Sure. I’ve got nothing else to do, I suppose.”

  His mate had a mouth on her, and he really, really liked it. If she were a werewolf, he’d take the opportunity to show her just how dominant he could be by grabbing her, shoving her over his shoulder, finding a private place, and having his wicked way with her. Humans were different. But he couldn’t help smirking at her response.

  “Well, Miss Mouthy, the story goes that there was a beautiful woman named Lily. She was abused by some of the men of her village who chased her out into the woods and did terrible things to her.” He had never actually told this story before. His mother had told it to them several times over the years, but saying it aloud really reinforced how brutal the whole thing was.

  It didn’t take a lot of imagination to picture Chelsea lying on that ground. What happened next suddenly made a lot more sense than it ever had before.

  “What happened to her?” She crossed her arms in a defensive position. Was she also seeing what he saw?

  “The moon was high in the sky. She lay dying.” He cleared his throat. “And then she got noticed by three Alpha wolves. They fell in love with her, felt her pain as their own, and begged the moon to make them men so they could protect her, love her, and punish the men who had harmed her.”

  She blinked rapidly. “That story sounds so familiar to me.”

  “Do you know it from the time you can’t remember? Is it coming back to you?” How much easier would everything be if she just suddenly remembered?

  “No. Maybe I heard someone tell the doctors at the place where I stayed.”

  He nodded. That was possible. Of course the only one who knew the story were Wolves. Did the True Believers have Wolves captive, or were their wolves working with them? There were so many questions.

  She spoke quietly. “The Moon gave it to them. Humanity, of sorts. And they took their girl, and they lived happily ever after.”

  “Well, one of the Alphas did. The other two, they say, went on and found their own mates.”

  A crooked grin crossed her face. “Then I guess it’s fair to say you guys have been inter-mating since moment one?”

  He laughed, surprised by the sudden sound. “You’re right. No purebreds among us.”

  “And now you want to mate with me.”

  “Yes. But only if you want to.” He leaned close enough so she could feel his warmth. “And it’s my job to make you want it.”

  Her sudden intake of breath, the subtle shift of her scent to a stronger scent, and the way her pupils dilated told him she wasn’t immune to his words. She did want him. It was just early in the process.

  A knock sounded on the door behind him. “That would be Dan with the clothes I sent him out to buy you. If you give him the black dress you stole that I know you don’t remember doing, we’ll get it back to the dry cleaner somehow. Eat your breakfast. Then we’ll talk again. I want to show you something.”

  He turned his back. A thought dawned on Hayden, and he turned around one more time. “And if you decide to run, I will track you and find you. You’re not a prisoner here. You can come and go as you like, always. But you have to come back. Because the second I met you, you changed the game for me. I know it’s too much for you to understand at this point and not fair for me to tell you this yet, but you are my whole life. You’re not alone anymore. You have me and my entire pack with you. Always.”

  One lone tear slipped down her cheek. “I don’t even know anyone’s name yet. How can they possibly think of me that way? I’m just some human girl who can’t remember anything that happened yesterday. I don’t belong here.”

  Hayden crossed to her in two steps. He wiped his finger down her cheek, and she shivered beneath his touch. “You’ll learn everyone’s name soon enough. They’ll tell them to you over and over until you can remember all of them. But, as for just being some human girl who can’t remember things, well, I guess I can say one thing about that. We’re a pack full of misfits here. A group that was, at one time, so unwanted that most of our fellow werewolves didn’t even know we existed. You’ll fit right in here, sweetheart. I can promise you that.”


  She was his. She’d belong wherever he did. Forever.

  Chapter Four

  The clothes Hayden’s pack mate had bought her were slightly too big. But she’d lost so much weight over the last year that Chelsea found it hard to wear anything that didn’t hang on her slightly. Certainly, the doctors hadn’t made much of an effort to find her garments that fit. She bit down on her lip. Maybe they weren’t real doctors.

  It was hard to think about the last few years without wanting to wince. She’d known they had an objective beyond studying her visions and forgetfulness. And it all had to do with killing werewolves. She’d kept her head down and pretended that the whole thing was so odd it couldn’t be true.

  Better to live in their facility than homeless on the street never knowing what was going to happen from one moment to the next.

  She wandered through the vines with Hayden. He didn’t seem to be in any particular hurry. They weren’t in harvesting season—she’d evidently just missed that—and he talked a great deal about the grapes, like someone else might wax philosophic about the future of their children.

  Chelsea couldn’t help her grin.

  “What are you smiling at? Did I say something funny?” The afternoon sun hit from behind leaving part of his body remained draped in shadow.

  “When I was living on the street at sixteen, we used to steal boxes of wine from convenience stores.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “Boxed?”

  “The part of what I just said that bothers you is the boxed part? Not the stealing?”

  “Chelsea.” He shook his head. “I used to torture people for a werewolf who, when he died, had managed to convince the majority of Alphas in the world that he was, in fact, so deified he might as well have been the Moon herself. I can assure you a little theft isn’t going to throw me for a loop.”

  “What about drugs? Drinking?” If he was going to hold to the whole mating thing—which really should be freaking her out, but the idea hadn’t yet made her want to panic—he should know what he was getting in the bargain.