One True Mate_Wolf's Hour

by Kate Rudolph

  Get a grip.

  “What were you doing over there?” he asked, trying to take his mind off this obsession. He was a detective, he could observe, detect. All of that.

  “Oh!” She laughed a little to herself and turned to face him. The full force of her attention was a drug he could easily become addicted to if he wasn’t careful. He didn’t want to be careful. “I was seeing how fast I could run in front of the camera. Seven point three seconds, just like I thought. The brick thrower was much faster. Two point six seconds give or take from one end of the block to the other, which is impossible. I think they did something to my camera.”

  She wasn’t wearing a watch and he didn’t see a timer. “Did you time it on your phone?” he asked. “I can clock it if you need to try again.” For science, he told himself. Not because parts of her were irresistibly bouncy and he wanted to enjoy it again.

  But Cam was shaking her head. She touched a finger to her temple with a wry grin. “It’s all up here.” Her face scrunched up into something conflicted, and after a long moment, she heaved a sigh. “There’s something I need to tell you.”

  There was no world outside of this car. Dom shifted his body to face her, his entire being focused on hers. “What?” She looked like she was about to face a firing squad. “It can’t be that bad.”

  “I’m a freak. You know how Captain Hook was with ticking clocks? It’s like that in my head all the time. Tick tick tick.” Once she started, she didn’t seem to be able to stop. “I’m a clock and a timer, all rolled into one. It’s like the most useless psychic power ever. Something big is going to happen in three hours and forty-one minutes. Who cares! I can’t tell you what it is, but it’s big. Like scary big.”

  She shifted away and pulled her arm back, retreating before he could reject her. He recognized the move. He’d done it enough himself when he was younger. Psychic. Twenty-five. Hope washed over him and swept him away in a torrent. “Are you sure your father…” He cut himself off. What kind of question was that?

  “What?” She was puzzled, brows drawn down in a thick line of confusion. “No one ever said my dad was like this. Not my mom either.” She seemed to come out of some spell. “What are you doing here, anyway?”

  “Stakeout,” he said a little forcefully. “Thought maybe the vandal would come back.” His cover story spilled out like the truth, even as the panicking wolf inside him wanted to offer more detail.

  “In broad daylight?” She peered out through the windshield and looked back at him.

  Dom shrugged and tried to look nonchalant. “It’s a small town. This is all the excitement I get.” But he wasn’t even on shift. He just didn’t like the thought of her in her shop, unprotected, while some asshole was out there haranguing her.

  “I…” she trailed off, and licked her lips before starting again. “I think you’re lying to me. Why?”

  ***

  Cam didn’t know what possessed her. She hadn’t planned to get in the car. She hadn’t planned to have a conversation. She definitely hadn’t planned to reveal one of her darkest secrets. And yet, here she was, heart pounding and accusing this man of being a liar. God, she was an idiot. The first guy who made her feel anything and she was doing everything she could to push him away.

  But Dom didn’t look like a man who was running. She could see him thinking and could almost track his thoughts. But it was like her timer. She knew the length, the twists and turns, but not the content. Finally he gave her his wry little grin and her heart did that flip flop thing it seemed to be getting in the habit of. “I didn’t want you to be alone in case something happened again. You need someone to have your back.”

  Oh no. Oh no, oh no, oh no, oh no. The only person that Cam could rely on was herself, and, on occasion, Aunt Grace. She couldn’t get used to the sexiest man she’d ever seen, the one she’d been dreaming about for years, being around. She couldn’t get used to him saying things like that. But even while her brain denied it, her heart cracked open and let him in. A barb sank in deep and buried itself, and hope of extrication would be fatal. It ached, but it was the sweetest ache she’d ever felt and she wasn’t sure she wanted to go back even a minute to when she hadn’t known it was there.

  “I don’t want to freak you out,” he said, barely louder than a whisper.

  “Maybe I should be freaked out, but I’m not.” If he could accept that she was a weirdo and want her—want to protect her—anyway, who was she to push him away? “I mean, it’s not like you’ve got a tail or something, is it?” His worst secret couldn’t be worse than hers.

  She expected a laugh. That was a joke, and it wasn’t terrible. Maybe a little dumb, but not worse than anything else. But Dom got that worried look again, his face pinched and eyes narrowed. He opened his mouth and she expected her timer to go off, to tell her that this was the big thing that she’d told him about. But that was still more than three hours away.

  Fingers tapped on the windshield, smearing fingerprints right in Dom’s face. Cam jumped, startled. The car might as well have been its own little kingdom for all the attention she’d been paying to the outside world. She wouldn’t have noticed if someone tried to burn down her store. Dom’s face shifted from serious to a little guilty, and she knew he’d been thinking the same thing.

  He rolled down the window and Detective Litchfield stuck his head in the car. “Well, what do we have here?” he said in the voice she’d only ever heard cops use on TV.

  She could tell Dom was rolling his eyes, even though he looked at his colleague and not her. “I’m sorry, officer, was I speeding?”

  Litchfield laughed and pushed against Dom’s shoulder. “I see my—” He cut himself off and she thought he was about to sneeze from the way he breathed deep. But then he ducked forward and looked through the driver’s window straight at her, his expression grim. “Can I talk to you out here?” he said tightly, looking away from Cam like she wasn’t even there.

  The last thing she wanted to do was get Dom in trouble. It probably wasn’t alright for them to… hang out before the case was resolved. She placed a hand on his arm and gave it a little squeeze. “I’ve got some stuff to do inside. We’ll talk later.”

  “Can I come by tonight?” He asked like Litchfield wasn’t glaring over both of them.

  Well, if Dom didn’t care, she wasn’t going to. “Yeah, I’d like that.” She slid out of the car and nodded to the other detective. He didn’t quite scowl at her, but only because his attention was caught between her and Dom and he couldn’t decide who to settle on.

  Cam didn’t let that bother her. When she got to the front of the store and let herself in, she realized that Dom didn’t know her address. But she shook her head at herself. Of course he could find her. He was a cop. No trouble there. She closed the door behind her with a smile. She couldn’t wait for tonight.

  Chapter Eight

  “I’m not sure why I even try to give you advice,” Logan said, sliding into Dom’s car without invitation and sitting right where Cam had been only moments before.

  Dom growled. He didn’t like the other male sitting there, in her warmth and her scent. His wolf struggled to gain dominance, to challenge the surfer and make him go away. “What do you want?” His voice vibrated through the car, low and almost feral. No human throat could hope to make a noise like that.

  “Are you moonstruck?” Logan demanded, ignoring the growing danger. “I told you to get her out of your system. And now you’re flirting with her in broad daylight, in your vehicle, where Brenner or anyone else could see you. She’s human, they’re for fucking, not relationships. Get it together.”

  In a flash, his arm darted out, too fast for a human eye to follow. He had his hand around Logan’s throat and his fingers tightened in a vise. “You don’t talk about her like that,” he said. “Not about fucking her. She’s mine.”

  Logan engaged the recliner handle for the seat and moved back, making Dom’s hold on him slip. The other detective got a punch out, landing i
t on his cheek and making him see stars. He grabbed for Dom’s throat at the same moment Dom got his grip back and both of them slammed the other against opposite windows, neither having quite enough leverage to get the upper hand.

  Blood tried to rush to his head and black circles danced in his eyes while Logan squeezed. The snarl that came out of Dom’s mouth could only be called monstrous, and though his teeth were human, he’d gladly rip out Logan’s throat for even thinking of touching Cam.

  “She’s… all… yours,” Logan forced out and loosened his grip, though he didn’t let go, lest Dom lunge back at him.

  By degrees, Dom came back to himself. He let go of Logan and slumped back into the driver’s seat, looking out onto the street to make sure that Cam hadn’t witnessed that display of masculine stupidity. Luckily, she was nowhere in sight.

  The two men sat silently, Logan absently rubbing at his neck while Dom took deep breaths, trying to get himself back under control. This wasn’t him. He didn’t do stupid shit like this. “Do you know Wade Lombard?” Logan asked after several minutes of silence, his voice a bit raspy.

  “Of course.” Everyone knew the citlali for the KSRT. Not only had his mate survived thirty years ago when Khain killed all the females, his officers were the ones who kept finding the One True Mates. Not to mention that they’d be instrumental in destroying Khain once and for all.

  “He gave me a call this morning.” Logan looked straight ahead and his normal surfer tan seemed to pale around the edges.

  “Asking you to go join the big leagues?” Dom asked.

  “He said to be on the lookout for a mate in our area. He didn’t have any more information than what we already know. Twenty-five. Psychic. Kind of crazy. Smells really good.” His voice lost the rasp as he kept talking, but he remained quiet, the moment solemn.

  “Cam knew who her dad was,” Dom replied, even as hope tried to worm its way into his system and tell him that maybe it wasn’t as simple as that. Maybe she didn’t know about the angel, maybe her mother hadn’t either, or she’d never told anyone.

  But Logan wasn’t surprised. “I did a little more research into Ca—” Dom growled. “Into your baker, Miss Watson. It turns out her parents got hitched only two months before she was born. Now, that’s no guarantee that her dad wasn’t her father, of course. But I’d say it’s an interesting turn of events. Wouldn’t you?”

  A white car passed in front of them, Cam in the driver’s seat. She gave a little wave as she passed. Dom smiled and waved back, heart pounding.

  “Any hint that she’s an X-Man?” Logan asked. “Laser eyes? Mind reading? Anything like that?”

  The counting, timing, whatever. Was it just a normal human thing? Or could it be a sign of something else, something bigger? “Does Brenner know?” Dom asked. Their citlali would be ecstatic about a mate in Blue Valley. But he had his favorite men, and he’d do his best to see that she chose one of them. Dom barely held the growl back this time.

  “I’m not an idiot,” his friend said—and after this conversation, Logan definitely qualified as a friend. “No one has said why he doesn’t like you, but even I can see that he wants you gone.”

  “I caught his son stealing evidence and made sure he got caught by someone who couldn’t sweep it under the rug.” And it had happened in his first months in Blue Valley, long before he could build up any sort of relationship with the captain.

  Logan blew out a long breath. “Yeah, that would do it.”

  “He’ll have to get over it eventually. It’s not like I’m going to transfer when Cam has her whole life here. Not unless it’s for her safety.”

  “And if Cam isn’t the mate?”

  Dom shook his head, decision made and his soul at ease for the first time in as long as he could remember. “I don’t care. She’s mine.”

  ***

  How long was the guy going to talk to his friend? Cam sat on her couch, not waiting for a man to come to her, she told herself. She was just sitting and a man would be coming by later.

  Eventually.

  Maybe.

  She was so frustrated she actually got up and checked the clock on her microwave to make sure that her brain hadn’t been fried. But it was blank. She hadn’t bothered to reset it after the power went out in a storm a few weeks ago. The only place she was sure would have a reliable clock was her computer, and she didn’t feel like turning it on. Her phone was out of battery and charging in the bedroom.

  But her brain knew that it had been more than an hour since she’d left the shop and waved goodbye to Dom. Her brain also knew that she was now well under the two hour mark for whatever big thing was coming her way. Her imagination danced in anticipation of what it could be. She’d changed the sheets on her bed to the nicest, cleanest ones she had and had jumped in the shower to clean off the day’s grit.

  And to make sure she was clean for him.

  Dominic Soto was coming to her house. Luckily, most of the mess was confined to the spare bedroom, and other than a rapid cleaning of her kitchen and piling a small stack of clothes into a laundry basket and shoving it in her closet, the place was presentable. She wasn’t a terribly messy person by nature, and her Aunt Grace was a clean freak who’d instilled certain habits into her that she still couldn’t break. Added to the habits of cleanliness she’d developed for the bakery, house cleaning took less than twenty minutes, leaving her plenty of time to brood. No, not brood. Pine? That was wrong too.

  Wait. Eagerly. And obsess about what she was wearing. She’d changed into jeans and a bakery t-shirt and put a hoodie over it all, but was wondering whether she should change into something nicer. Or sleeker. Or sexier. But she didn’t have sexy clothes. She’d never needed them before.

  How did people do this? She was going crazy. Well, crazier than usual.

  Cam started pacing in the living room and quickly made a circuit of the ground floor. When that did nothing but make her nerves worse, she opened the sliding glass door and stepped out onto the porch. She gulped down fresh air, hoping that it might give her a little clarity and calm her down. She looked out towards the woods, hoping to catch a glimpse of her dog friend from yesterday, but he wasn’t there.

  Instead, she saw an empty can right on the property line. “Assholes,” she muttered as she climbed down the steps. She was all the way out in the country and people were still littering in her yard. When she got close, she saw that it was a can of spray paint. She picked it up and shook it, but the thing was empty. Had the vandals from town come here? Did they know where she lived? Cam looked back at the house, but it was still the same gray that it had been since she bought it. Nothing special, but nothing that had been marred by kids with too much time on their hands.

  She ducked into the woods and followed the path in the dirt until she came to a second empty bottle. As soon as she picked it up, she wished that she’d brought a bag to carry them with. If she found more empties, she’d need to leave them and come back later. It wasn’t too much farther until she found another two cans and the remains of beer bottles that had been left to rot near a fallen log. Beside the log she saw that the trees had been covered in artful designs of small animals and stylized words, nothing like the mess that had been left at her shop. She didn’t appreciate that someone had come out here and marred the beautiful trees, but at least they’d been kind enough to do something pretty.

  A twig snapped and her head jerked towards the direction from which she’d just come. She gripped one of the spray paint cans tightly, as if it would be a suitable weapon for her. But it fell bonelessly out of her hand when Dom stepped into the little clearing she’d found. He took a seat on an opposite log and grinned down at her. “Did you get the party started without me?”

  “Oh!” Cam set down the spray can and looked at the broken bottles. “It looks like someone came out here to have fun. I found the spray paint bottles and followed the trail.”

  “And they weren’t nice enough to leave anything for us?” He shook his head,
still grinning. “Bastards.”

  Cam laughed, and the apprehension she’d been feeling melted away. She stood and offered her hand to Dom. “Come on, I’ve got better stuff than empty bottles back home.” After he stood, she let go of him to pick up as many of the empty cans as she could carry. Silently, he did the same beside her and they walked back to the house. When they reached home, she led him to the recycling bin and they disposed of the cans.

  She led him up the porch and Dom paused and looked over at her patio couch with the hint of a grin. “What?” she asked.

  “I’m just glad to be here.” He smiled.

  She smiled back, her heart light and almost uncomfortably happy in his presence. “Me too.”

  She led him into the house and shut the door behind them. His car was parked in her driveway, she saw through the front window, but he must have come around the outside to seek her out. “Was I in the forest for long?” she asked, even as her mind helpfully supplied the time. “I must have left just as you got here.”

  “I didn’t sm—see you inside. And you didn’t answer the door,” Dom said. “I figured you had to be out back.”

  “Huh.” She got that strange sense that he was holding back again, but this time she didn’t press. It didn’t exactly feel like a lie and she didn’t actually care how he’d known she wasn’t in the house. It didn’t matter. “I like the woods, and the wildlife,” she said. “I go back walking there a few times a week, at least.”

  “Take me with you sometime.”

  It wasn’t a question, but Cam nodded anyway. She slipped her sweater off and put it on the kitchen chair. When she turned around, Dom was right there, less than an inch away. His hands found her hips and her own palm pressed flat against his chest, not to pull him away but to steady herself.