“Glenna,” he whispered at the corner of her mouth.
Chapter Sixteen
Glenna was about to shatter if Sam’s mouth didn’t touch hers. He knelt at her side, his lips hovering over hers as if asking permission. Not what she expected from someone as rough and strong as he was—someone who wore camo and tattoos as easily as his skin.
Her world had turned upside down. She barely remembered that in her normal life she was engaged. There was no way in hell she should be even thinking about kissing him. But the chemical attraction between them was so strong it pushed right through the shoulds and should-nots, pushing her to throw all her doubts away and lose herself in this man.
She lifted her face and their mouths touched—and she tumbled head first into temptation.
He kissed her with his closed lips barely brushing hers as if he were afraid she’d break if he applied any pressure. He was restrained, gentle. But she didn’t want gentle. She’d had that and it didn’t do anything for her. She wanted the heat and drive she could sense burning just beneath his skin.
She opened her mouth and slid her tongue out to stroke between his lips, and he groaned like a man who hadn’t tasted a woman in far too long. He moved between her knees and she spread her thighs apart, letting him in to wrap his arms around her and pull her in hard. Their lips and tongues stroked and teased, setting fires low in her belly and leaving her burning for more.
The vibration on her thigh didn’t register as anything other than additional pleasure.
“Fuck!” Sam rocked back onto his heels and pulled his phone out of his jeans. He closed his eyes for a moment before answering. “Sam here.” He gave her a long look that said they weren’t finished. A tremor rocked through her and she gripped the side of her chair hard and watched him walk away across the deck, well out of earshot.
What was she doing? She pressed cool hands to her flaming cheeks. He wasn’t a guy she could date—he was her jailor. And on top of that, she had a fiancé. A wedding. Neither Roger or her grandmother would understand why she’d kissed a tattooed muscle man who might be a possible kidnapper. Forget the wolf hallucination, she was either sick or crazy or both.
She had to get away from here. She had to get home where life was sane and predictable.
And boring.
Her stomach still growled, almost painful in its demands, but she took the food to the kitchen and reluctantly stored the amazing sandwich in the fridge. She promised herself she could eat more later, but right now she had a wedding dress to think of. Her stomach would have to eat guilt instead of food.
She cleaned up the kitchen, sneaking looks at Sam pacing out on the deck. He made several phone calls, his mouth tightening into a thinner line each time he hung up and cursed. Finally stuffing his phone in his pants pocket, he turned and faced the cabin, decision written in the grim line of his lips.
She busied herself with wiping the counters, her back to the door when he strode in. “I’m sorry, Glenna. Something’s come up and I have to go take care of something. Get those shoes of Ian’s. You’re coming with me.”
“What? Where’s Ian?” She’d been so focused on Sam she’d totally forgotten to ask about the other man. “Where are we going?”
He grabbed Lana’s jacket off the wall hook and tossed it at her. “Ian left hours ago on an errand for Lana. He’s with her at Ram’s Haven. There’s no time, and no one is answering their friggin’ phones. We have to go.”
“But I’m sick. Won’t I spread the disease?” If she had it, they shouldn’t take her anywhere. If she didn’t, well, now she’d find out.
His expression relaxed. “I know you need information, but we don’t have time. I’ll make it simple. Neither of us is contagious. The disease is only contagious when the carrier has the fever. You’re past the fever stage now, and since you’re a female, it isn’t going to come back until you mate.” He grabbed a leather jacket off the line of hooks. “Grab your stuff and let’s go.”
A line from some talk show came into her head: never go to the second location, that’s where the real violence occurs. All the glow of their kisses faded. She shook her head. What had she been thinking earlier? What had her body been thinking? He wasn’t her lover, he was dangerous and she was an idiot for forgetting it, even for a second.
“You’re crazy. I’m not going anywhere with you but back to Denver. You owe me some answers.”
“I don’t have time for this.”
She sat down and fixed him with the evil-eye she used on the junior accountants when they brought her sub-par work.
“Really? You’re going to do this now?” When she folded her arms across her chest, he shook his head. “Fine, but then we go.”
She nodded. There was nothing she could do anyway if he wanted to force her. He could simply drug her again. And she didn’t want that.
“You have the disease. The media calls it lycanthroism, but they don’t know shit.” He leaned against the counter. “We call it the Bite, because you have to have it break through to the blood in order to catch it. You get it and you get a fever, that’s when it’s contagious and you don’t have the fever right now so you aren’t contagious. The death rate from the fever stage is high. If you survive, which you did, you go through the change and that can take anywhere from a few weeks to months. There are several possible effects, depending on your DNA. Most survivors become wolf shifters, like me and Ian. You call us werewolves.” His lips twisted when he said the words and he shook his head. “We won’t know for a while what you’ll be, but I know you’re changing into something. How long it will take—I don’t know. What we do know is that you survived the attack and the fever and you smell like pack to my wolf.” His eyes gleamed, and a shiver rushed through her, but he stayed on his side of the kitchen.
“What does that mean?”
“That means you’re changing and you’ll be either a wolf shifter, dreamwalker, or spelltalker. With modern science we now know that it takes two genes to show outside effects. If you only have one gene, you get the fever and not the change. We call those people dormants. They don’t have any special talents, but they have a place in the pack. We all have a place in the pack.”
Dreamwalker, spelltalker—none of this seemed real. It was as if she’d gotten stuck in an alternate reality where everyone else knew the rules and she was lost. Words raced round and round in her head chasing questions she couldn’t even begin to form.
Yes. She could. She had to adapt. Alternate reality, dream, disease-induced hallucinations, it didn’t matter. What mattered was surviving. And that she could do.
“A place in the pack? What kind of place do you think you’re going to shove me into?”
“It’s not up to me. It’s up to your DNA. Now, we wait to see when and what you change into.”
She choked back the hysteria that struggled in her throat.
According to the media, the CDC, and the doctor she’d seen at the ER, she had an illness that was supposed to first drive you insane so you attacked people like a rabid dog—then it would kill you in a painful death. But according to Sam she was going to become a werewolf. Or something else.
“I think that’s enough for now.”
“No, it isn’t.” If she were going to make it, she had to know everything. “What’s a spelltalker? Or a dreamwalker for that matter? Are they animals?”
“We can talk more in the truck.” Sam pulled her out of the chair, and helped her into the tight sleeves of Lana’s jacket. “Now we go.”
He shut off lights and locked up. Outside the sun had dropped down and the absolute darkness of night in the Rocky Mountains had fallen. She climbed into the SUV. Automatically she fastened her seat belt, stuffing her fingers under her legs so he wouldn’t see her shaking as they drove down the driveway and made a left up the steep mountain road.
She had no idea what kind of situation this man would consider an emergency in this topsy-turvy world, and she wasn’t sure she wanted to know. She only knew
one thing for sure: she was crazy, no matter what the scenario. She’d just climbed into a car with a man who looked like he lifted weights for a living and thought she was about to turn into a werewolf. And now they were going God-knew-where, driving down a strange road into the dark. She’d done the unthinkable, headed to the second location with the man who was keeping her prisoner.
Chapter Seventeen
Sam drove the speed limit. This was no time to get pulled over. The cops weren’t searching for Glenna now, but there had been an APB out on her when she’d first gone missing. She huddled in the corner of the passenger seat, her lanky frame folded up much smaller than he’d thought possible, staying as far away from him as she could get. He knew once she recovered from his revelations she’d be on him for answers and he wished he were better at this. He actually found himself wishing Serena had stayed so at least she could have dealt with the upcoming questions.
No he didn’t. Then he’d be driving down the road with both of them in the car. A shell-shocked woman bordering on anorexic, who somehow had him sniffing around her for more, and his brother’s mate— the woman who had driven him into the wild.
No, this was better. He slowed the Suburban back down from where the speedometer had crept up.
What the fuck was he going to do with her when he got there, he didn’t know. He couldn’t leave her in the car and he didn’t want to take her inside. Maybe someone at the school could take over for him. He snorted to himself. Not likely. Where was everyone tonight?
And why was his wolf pushing him at her? Following his wolf’s nose to a mate was a bad idea. Done that, been there. His wolf didn’t know jack shit.
“Can I ask a question?” Glenna’s voice had been sure and strong in the house, pushing for answers. Now she sounded small and soft and it made him worry.
Had he given her too many answers? Why the hell had Lana left him alone with her, he sucked at this kind of stuff.
“Yeah, ask away.”
“The news said lycanthroism makes you crazy, that you act like a wild wolf. Not once have I heard that you become an actual werewolf.
A black and white pulled out in front of him. He slowed down, keeping the SUV well back, relieved when the cop turned at the next intersection.
“We’re wolf shifters, not werewolves. No one turns into Boris the Beast.” She looked confused. Great, she’d never watched late-night old horror movies. “Not everyone becomes a physical wolf. Dreamwalkers gain a wolf on the spiritual plane only.” He took a few extra turns. Made sure no one followed them, before getting on the back road that led to the boys’ home that masqueraded as a private boarding school.
“But I’m not going to go crazy like the media thinks?”
“No. You won’t go crazy. The news jockeys just know what the feds feed them, and the feds don’t know squat. Yes, when the fever is strong we can lose control, but everyone in the packs goes through that in adolescence because that’s the time we expose them to the virus. We separate our kids into group homes, schools really, where they can be monitored and kept safe. Actually we’re on our way to one now.”
Make it sound like everything was fine, normal. She was in for enough shocks tonight.
“The other time the fever takes us is when we are in search of a mate,” he said. “Males can get out of control, but usually they claim their mate and the fever ebbs. If they don’t...” He stopped.
He hadn’t been able to claim his mate and the fever had nearly driven him wild. He couldn’t think about that now, not with her in the car and his adrenaline pumping. His wolf, ever close to the edge, would rise. “You won’t ever experience that. Females don’t.”
“If I don’t turn into a wolf, there’s really no reason why I can’t go home. She sidled a little closer on her seat, pulled out of the corner by their conversation. In the dash lights her face was animated with hope.
And it was up to him to kill it. Damn, Lana. “No. You can never go home.”
Her breath hissed out between her teeth.
He let her know the brutal truth. “No one wants you at home. Your family thinks you have a contagious disease. They believe you’re going to go insane, go crazy and attack them. And the government is looking for you. If they get you they’ll lock you up and experiment on you, never let you live a normal life again.”
The gates of the school loomed on the left.
He glanced at Glenna’s set, paled face and cursed. He should have just lied to her. Told her she could go home, told her everything was fine. Because now they were here and he had no time to deal with her fears. No time to deal with her at all. There was an adolescent, newly shifted to wolf loose in the woods. And if that boy made it to a civilized area, if he found a girl to claim, he would claim her with an adolescent shifter’s violence.
And they’d have another victim to clean up.
They turned in under the sign that read Ridge School.
“I thought you said this was a school? It looks like a prison.” Glenna jerked her chin at the twelve-foot-high chain link fence and the barbed wire on the top.
“It is a school, but we have to have certain preventive measures in place, or else things like tonight happen.”
“What do you mean? What’s going on?”
“You’ll see.” He stopped the SUV at the security hut, before driving down the long, tree-lined lane.
The big man on guard bared gleaming white teeth through his shaggy beard. “Visiting hours are over. Go away.”
“I’m not here to visit.” He pulled out his wallet and flashed his credentials. “Sam Wulfric, enforcer. We’re here to help.”
The security guard reached out for the wallet.
“Really?” Sam swallowed down his growl, and handed it over, but inside he was fuming. He would never have had to do this in Windy Gap, but this was Ram’s Haven and even if people knew him, after what they’d heard, they still didn’t trust him. “You’re slowing me down, man. They need us inside.”
The guard handed back the wallet, his movements slow. “Who’s she?” He frowned and gestured at Glenna, shrunk back into her corner of the truck.
“Look, you guys called for backup. I’m here for backup. Let me in or call the council. I fucking don’t care which. But every minute you keep me here, things are going to shit.” Somewhere out there a boy was burning with the fever, and every minute he was in increasing chance of getting shot, or worse.
The guard grunted. “Fine. But if there’s a problem I’m giving them your name.” He pulled out a clipboard and made a note before finally waving them through.
Sam rolled up the window. “Asshole.”
Glaring bright lights flooded the grounds and illuminated the stone and log main building that had started life as a rich man’s hunting lodge and now was home to somewhere close to fifty boys and the staff to teach them. He parked in the dirt parking lot on the side of the main building near the stone flight of stairs that ran up to the wraparound porch. Turning off the car, he took a deep breath.
“Wow.”
He saw the old school from a stranger’s perspective. Four stories of classic brick elegance with black double doors and a wide stone staircase big enough for an entire football team to fit on. Once you passed the gates and guards, it looked like a rich man’s house. And it had been, over a hundred years before.
They’d called it ‘The Rock’ when he’d gone to school here—the only pack school for boys this side of the Rockies. The smell of deep woods overlaid by chalk and institutional food had meant home for the five years he’d been away from his family, everyone except his twin. Now it pulled up his own memories of adolescence and struggling with the change. Struggling to learn how to live with his wolf.
“Why are we here?” Glenna’s face looked even paler in the harsh parking floodlights, the hollows under her eyes and cheekbones dark with shadows. “Has there been an outbreak?”
He shouldn’t take the time to answer her questions now, but her need tugged at him. He suppr
essed the thought that it was the pheromones making him yield to her and instead justified it to himself by thinking of how alone she was. She needed him, needed his time, his expertise. She didn’t have a school, didn’t have support. Her world had become a harsh place the moment she’d been attacked, and it would only become harsher.
“This is one of those group homes I told you about. They need some help tonight, and I’m it.”
Apprehension bit at the back of his neck like a pesky fly. There should be more enforcers to back up the school in a case like this. They should have left him alone with Glenna—she was a priority right now. But it seemed something was wrong elsewhere, and they’d called him in a panic. “Stay here. I want to check it out before I bring you in. Keep the doors locked and don’t let anyone in until I come get you.”
She nodded, but she’d already run once.
“Look, it could be dangerous out here. I have to trust you to stay put. Can you do that?”
“I’ll be here. Where the hell would I go? Do you think Hagrid, back at the gate, would let me through?”
He thought about enlisting the guard’s help to watch her, but decided the man wouldn’t help him anyway. “There’s a dangerous wolf out on the loose and I can’t risk you getting attacked.”
“According to you, I already have the Bite. He can’t make me any sicker.”
“No, but he could tear your throat out trying.”
She jerked back.
“Will you stay?”
She nodded, her eyes slipping to one side. He didn’t trust her, but he didn’t have a choice. He didn’t want to bring her into a bad situation and at least she was safe here—if she stayed in the car. And what were the odds of that?
He got out and popped the back, grabbing his kit bag he’d stashed in the partitioned-off area most people would assume was for dogs. Walking around the truck he unzipped the bag and extracted what he needed before opening the passenger side door.
Blood Enforcer (Wolf Enforcers Book 2) Page 9