by Renee Rose
Fuck! Why am I remembering all this now?
Because the feeling was the same. The shame. Not feeling worthy of standing beside my golden boy brothers.
“Boyd?” Audrey prompted.
Fuck. Had she asked me a question? Right. What was I going to do?
Because I couldn’t think, because my brain was too fuzzy at the moment and the weight on my chest too heavy, I said, “I don’t know. This isn’t on you, darlin’.”
Later, I would wish I’d said a million other things. Explained that she was my mate, and I would fight to keep her no matter what. Even if it meant being at odds with my family and my pack.
But I was out of steam in the moment. I’d defaulted to fuck-up mode.
I just needed to get my head on straight and get things figured out.
I pulled up in front of Audrey’s place and climbed out, walking around to open the door for her.
“You okay?” She took my offered hand and peered up at me as I walked her to the door. My sweet doctor was concerned about me. “You sure you don’t want to stay?” she asked.
I sucked in a breath as my dick punched against my jeans. “Fuck, do I.” I forced a smile. “You need to sleep, and I need to deal with things at the ranch. I’ll call you, okay?”
“Um, yeah. Okay.” She kept her gaze on my face, a wrinkle of worry between her brows. I bent over and gave her a quick kiss.
“Good night, darlin’. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”
She nodded, her smile wistful as she backed through her front door. “All right, sounds good.”
Before she shut the door, I said, “Gotta let that pretty pussy rest. I’ve got plans for it tomorrow.”
She bit her lip, and her gaze dropped to my crotch. “Good night,” she whispered.
Fuck me.
I got in my truck, even though my wolf was practically snarling at me to stay, to sleep with her. Hold her all night. I couldn’t. I had things to figure out. Instead of heading straight home to deal with shit, I found myself driving up to the mountains, to a pullout where I liked to go when I needed to run. I stripped out of my clothes and shifted, bolting through the evergreens.
Praying my wolf would help me cast off the fog of uncertainty that had settled over me and Audrey and the future I’d been planning with her.
22
AUDREY
I stepped out of my house and locked the door. I hadn’t been able to sleep much last night, reliving everything that had happened on our date. The wild sex at his truck, the waterfall, the wolf, then finding out it was a kid. That Boyd was also a wolf. I’d seen the kid shift from a wolf into human form. I’d seen Boyd’s bull riding injury, then saw it gone, as if it had never happened. It was unexplainable, yet it made sense.
I wasn’t freaked. I should be. A boyfriend who was a part wolf? Insane.
But it felt real. It felt… right.
I’d tossed and turned mostly because I worried about Boyd. I didn’t know what exactly passed between him and his brother, but I did know it was about me. I saw Rob staring through the windshield at me, frowning and laying down the law about something to Boyd and James. It was obvious he was the pack’s alpha. It made complete sense why he was such a hardass. He was the leader of a group who had to remain secret. One slip-up, and they could be destroyed or killed.
It was forbidden for Boyd to tell me. I understood that.
Was it also forbidden for him to be with me? Was that why he seemed so out of sorts when he came back to the truck? Why he hadn’t spent the night with me?
“Hi, Dr. Ames?”
I jumped in surprise. I’d been so deep in my thoughts, I hadn’t noticed the woman leaning against my car at the curb.
Oh shit. It was Total Bitch from the bar. Karen. James’ sister.
She wore snug jeans, cowgirl boots and a plain white t-shirt. The neckline was a deep V that accentuated her ample breasts. She was beautiful, I had to give her that. She was also a bitch, so I approached her warily.
“Hi. I just wanted to thank you for saving my brother’s life yesterday. He told me he almost drowned.”
And got shot, but apparently that wasn’t life-threatening to a wolf.
“Oh, no problem. That’s what I do.” I smiled wanly. “I am a doctor.”
She showed no intention of moving her ass off my car. “Yeah, I heard that.”
Okay, what the hell does Total Bitch want? It clearly wasn’t to thank me. Most family members who were thankful brought me a Bundt cake or sent pictures of their baby.
“Listen, I don’t know if Boyd told you, but—” She rolled her lips in like she was breaking bad news to me. She looked left and right, as if my neighbors were leaning out their windows to overhear us. “—shifters can’t mate with humans.”
I frowned. “Like, it’s not biologically possible? Because I can say you’re wrong.” I could play a little bitchy, too.
Her eyes narrowed because she caught my meaning. James probably mentioned the waterfall, and it was easy to put two and two together about what we’d been doing there. It hadn’t been Bible study.
“Like, it’s forbidden,” she clarified. “I hate to tell you this, but since you were so kind to James and all, I thought you deserved to know. I feel like it would be even worse if you found out later.”
My stomach tightened, and I didn’t want to ask. But I did. “What?”
She tucked her dark hair back behind her ear. “Rob sent Boyd to date you. To keep you quiet about his bull riding accident because while it was probably pretty bad when it first happened, he healed way too fast to be human. You couldn’t know the truth. Boyd’s always been the charming one of the three Wolf brothers.” She shrugged her slim shoulders. “I guess Rob figured a little attention from the good-looking one, and you’d be smitten enough to do whatever he asked.”
She looked me over, head to toe. “A little attention goes a long way with some women.”
Oh God. I wanted to puke. She was manipulating me and being a total bitch. She knew a woman’s weaknesses and went right for them. I was smart enough to see that. She’d been all over Boyd at the bar before I got there. Hell, even after. Then her little stunt with the mechanical bull. Boyd had rebuffed her efforts, and she was scorned. He’d wanted me, not her.
The cattiness was one thing, but something in her words rang true.
Boyd had used sex to distract me from examining his wounds. He’d gotten me in the barn, got my panties down around my thighs and made me forget my own name, let alone to look at his wound. Or lack of. He’d even covered the spot with a bandage to fake me out. It was only because of her brother’s eagerness to fool around with his girlfriend and a meddling Jett Markle that the truth had come out. Boyd hadn’t told me he was a shifter.
Had Boyd been seducing me just to keep what they were a secret? How would Karen know that if she hadn’t actually heard it from one of the brothers? She hadn’t been there.
“You’re not one of us. You never will be. He may have had fun with you, but he’ll be back in my bed. He can mate me, bite me as we fuck. I’ll give him pure pups.” She stuck her chest out and practically preened with pride over her ability to birth a shifter baby.
I might deliver babies for a living, but I knew jack about shifters. Was a shifter/shifter mating required? Could there be mixed babies? Was that even possible? Was she messing with me or telling me the truth?
Boyd hadn’t filled me in. He hadn’t answered any of my questions. He’d promised to do so, but instead of coming in last night and staying when he could’ve given me the answers I needed, he’d left. Was he stalling?
I blinked. I couldn’t process all this or look at Karen a second longer.
“Excuse me, I’m late,” I snapped at the same moment Boyd pulled up in his giant truck. I hadn’t expected to see him this morning, but my heart flipped at the sight. I had it for him bad, and I realized now that was more trouble than I ever imagined.
“Uh oh. Speak of the devil,” Karen said, a sly
smile curving her glossed lips. “Just be careful, that’s all I’m saying. Have a fling, ‘cause he’s that good. But I don’t want you to get your heart broken like every other human female who slept with Boyd Wolf.”
“What did you just say?” Boyd growled as he climbed out of his truck and slammed the door. He couldn’t have possibly heard that unless—
Oh yeah. They probably have super hearing, too. Wolf ears.
He stalked toward Karen, but she dashed away. “Gotta run! Thanks for saving James yesterday!” She jumped in a beat-up VW bug and drove off.
“What the fuck did she just say to you?” Boyd demanded as he watched her car disappear around the corner.
I drew back. I didn’t like this side of him, the tense, snarling anger that seemed to simmer beneath the surface. I didn’t like the way he was talking to me. I especially didn’t like all the thoughts rushing through my head right now. I wanted to throat punch Karen for messing with my head.
“Is it true, Boyd?”
“No,” he said immediately before I even clarified what I was asking.
“You’re lying.”
He shook his head, like it would make things clear. “Lying about what? What did she tell you, Audrey?”
“That Rob told you to seduce me to keep me from talking about your accident. To make me forget about looking at it or to ensure I was crazy for thinking you’d been so gravely injured.”
Boyd started to speak, then his mouth snapped closed, then opened again, and my heart dropped to my shoes. Oh shit. Karen had been right.
I’d questioned myself, wondered if I needed a new prescription for my glasses. Doubted my medical assessment. All that time, he’d been telling me I’d exaggerated.
Tears filled my eyes, and I started stumbling blindly for my car door. “When you open your mouth, you better not lie to me.”
“Hang on. Hang on, Audrey.” Boyd tried to block my way, but he seemed smart enough not to touch me.
I spun, glared. “Step back, Boyd. I really don’t want to see you right now.”
“Just give me a minute to explain.”
I shook my head. “I knew it was too good to be true. I knew a guy like you had to be pretending if he was interested in a woman like me. I was right. So was Karen.”
Boyd pushed my door shut when I opened it. “That’s not true,” he insisted, keeping his hand on the top of the door. “I told you, Audrey. It was fate. I felt it at the arena. I knew it then. I’ve known it all along. You’re mine.”
I shook my head. “I’m not yours, Boyd. I’m not anybody’s. You knew what I wanted all along, and you used it against me. I was as easy as all those buckle bunnies, wasn’t I? Now step out of my way. I have to get to work.”
Misery washed over Boyd’s face, but after a moment, he opened my car door and stepped back.
“I don’t want to see you again. And don’t call me.” I got in and slammed the door.
“Wait, Audrey!” he shouted, but I’d already started the car. I drove away.
I sure as hell wasn’t watching in the rear-view mirror to see what he would do.
I’d been a fool, but it was over now.
Boyd Wolf was already history. I would find someone else. Someone normal and kind. Maybe dorky like me.
Someone human.
Christ, I didn’t know a breakup could hurt this badly. I was so stupid. I should’ve just fucked him in the med room at the arena. Been one of those women who had a little ride on Boyd’s huge dick, then pulled up their jeans and walked away. They’d get an orgasm from him but keep their hearts intact. I’d been so much worse than them, and I’d judged them harshly. I’d fallen for him and that made me the dumbest of them all. I pulled in at the hospital and dropped my head to the steering wheel, giving into the sobs that had choked my throat the entire drive.
23
BOYD
Fucking fuck. If I’d thought I was a screwup before, it was nothing like what I felt now. Disappointing Rob was par for the course. But hurting Audrey Ames? The female I wanted to spend the rest of my life with?
That cut like a fucking knife through my chest.
I sat in my truck, my thumb hovering over the screen of my phone.
Don’t call me, she’d said.
She hadn’t said don’t text.
Me: I’m sorry. Let’s talk.
After five minutes, then ten, nothing. “Shit!” I shouted. It didn’t make me feel any better. She wasn’t going to respond. I could show up at her office, but that wasn’t the place to talk. I couldn’t disrespect her like that, in front of her patients or office staff, no matter how much I wanted to explain.
Should I write her a letter? A good old-fashioned letter? I could get the words out right, get them down on paper, so she could read them again and again until she believed me.
What was required in this situation that would make everything right?
I wish I fucking knew. I couldn’t fix what happened to my parents, and it seemed I couldn’t fix this.
Would it help to tell her about fate? About how my wolf picked her, and he only picked one female. The way we mated for life?
Or would talking about wolf stuff just annoy the fuck out of her right now? I’d only heard the tail end of what Karen had said to her, and I could imagine the rest. She was poison to the pack, and I had to deal with her, too.
I started to type another text, then deleted it. No, a text wouldn’t do because I wasn’t a teenager. I couldn’t fit all of what I wanted to say using my thumbs on my cell. A letter. I needed to get it all in a letter. Hell, I’d write her a thousand letters if I could just figure out what to say. And for that, I needed to go home, sit down and get my shit figured out where she was concerned.
What did I want? Me. Not the pack. Not what Rob would do or want or expect.
I slammed my fist into the dash, cracking it. Funny, it didn’t feel as satisfying as I’d hoped. No, doing my usual irresponsible things felt wrong right now. Including that run I’d taken last night to avoid talking to Rob, even if that meant telling him to fuck off.
It was time to man up and solve my fucking problems.
I started the truck and drove home.
AUDREY
The universe was looking out for me because I ended up with three births and stayed at the hospital until two in the morning. I had no idea what was in the water or the weather nine months earlier, but the population of Cooper Valley had exploded the past few weeks. It was good to see young people and growing families in the community, but it was a reminder of everything I didn’t have. When I got home, I found an envelope on my doormat with my name neatly scrawled across the front. I looked around, but all was dark and quiet. A dog barked in the distance, and I instantly thought of it being a wolf.
No, Boyd had put thoughts in my head… and a letter in my hands. I couldn’t believe he’d written to me. Who besides your Aunt Dorothy wrote letters?
Boyd did.
Don’t read it. Do not read it.
I tossed it in the trash can inside my door and went straight to bed. And stayed there. Fortunately, I was so tired from working… and from two previous nights of terrible sleep, that I was out cold.
The alarm jarred me awake, and I got up on auto-pilot, showered and went back to the hospital. Coffee fueled me, and I tried to keep my mind a blank. I couldn’t stop to think. I couldn’t slow down and realize my life had been turned upside down in a few short days. Not any hot guy, but a hot guy who ended up being a wolf. Nope, I wasn’t thinking about that. Nor about the way he made me feel when he got all protective. The way he lit my body on fire. His smile. His touch. His dick as it filled me.
I couldn’t think about him because when I did, it literally felt like I had a huge gaping hole in the middle of my chest, as if I’d been the one gored by the bull. I’d fallen all right, and I didn’t have the ability to magically regenerate the way Boyd did.
I worked late again, volunteering to stay and cover for a fellow doctor who wanted
to see her son’s little league game and celebrate over pizza. Another thing I’d never get to do. When I got home, there was another letter on my doormat. I threw it away. Showered. Climbed in bed. This time, I barely slept. Went in early.
Doctors were no strangers to lack of sleep and long hours. In this case, it was a haven for me. A place I could bury my head and not ever think again.
Not ever feel again. Numb was good. Numb was safe.
24
BOYD
“You wanna tell me what the fuck is going on?” Rob asked, walking up behind me. “You’ve been a sulky fucker for days now.”
I’d been pitching rocks at a telephone pole for the past three hours. Pitching them so hard I’d embedded hundreds of stones into the wood, so it looked like it had been turned into a mosaic. I leaned against the fence, one foot propped up on the bottom rail. My hat was tipped back, and I’d heard him walking over from the house, but I’d ignored him. I couldn’t do that now, the nosy asshole.
Two days. I’d poured my heart out to Audrey in a letter. When she didn’t answer that one, I’d written another. I’d keep writing them until she answered. I was trying to do the right thing, to tell her the truth, to give her everything I couldn’t say aloud. Everything I wished I’d said from the beginning.
Except I suspected she hadn’t even read them.
Which meant I might have to make a grander gesture. If only I knew what would win her back. Crawling, begging and groveling weren’t off the table.
I’d planned on talking to Rob about Audrey, but I’d been pissed off at him. I’d been too hurt to see straight. It took everything in me not to hop in my truck and go to her. My wolf was not happy with me for staying away. Besides dropping the letters on her stoop, I’d steered clear of everyone. Especially my brother.
Even though it wasn’t really his fault. Still, if he hadn’t talked about her in front James, fucking Karen wouldn’t have had the fuel to start a fire.