“What are you two even doing here?” Steele demanded, without answering Roxanne.
Dash looked offended. “I arrested her, but then I got a call from the station saying that a Warden was headed to your house, so I swung by to see what was going on.”
Isadora held up her hand and shifted it into a paw, extended a claw, and used it to pick the lock on the handcuff, which fell off her. She bent over, picked it up, and tossed it over to Dash.
“I told you to stay in the car,” Dash growled at her.
“And I never do what I’m told. You should know that by now.” Isadora flashed an infuriating smile at him. “Besides, I came in here to help you two bozos. I thought someone was trying to murder you. You know these jerks?” she inclined her head at Jerrico and Loren with a scowl.
“I am the Chief Warden of the Shifter Nation, and you are all in serious trouble.” Loren’s face was dark with rage. “You don’t attack a Warden during the course of his duties.”
“Bring it,” Dash growled. He was a Beta, but a mouthy one. “I was defending my pack member and boss.”
“You’re not Chief Warden of my nation.” Isadora leaned back against Dash’s counter. “I answer to the Council Pride, and they’ve pretty much just washed their paws of me.” The Council Pride ruled over feline shifter matters that couldn’t be dealt with by individual prides. A mention of the name Isadora Mosswood was enough to set them to hissing and snarling and shaking their heads in despair, Steele had been told.
“Why were you arresting her?” Steele demanded. He was getting sick of having to play kindergarten cop for these two.
“I found her on our property, with a bunch of jars, and she refused to say why, so I arrested her for trespassing.”
“I was there to pick berries. Accidentally crossed your property line. Oops.” Isadora shrugged. “Seriously, Dash, get the night stick out of your ass. I mean, excuse me, is your family desperately short of blackberries?”
“Who puts berries in jars?” Dash asked suspiciously.
“Anyone who wants to make them into jam. I’m sorry you don’t like my berry picking technique.” Her tone was openly scornful. “Exactly what nefarious deeds do you think I was going to carry out with those jars?”
He narrowed his eyes at her suspiciously. “With you, who knows.”
Steele was done listening to the two of them act like idiots. “Both of you, get out. Dash, you will drop the charges. Isadora, next time I see you put your paw one inch over the line, you will be sitting in a jail cell for thirty days straight. If you want Dash to put handcuffs on you so bad, just ask him out on a date. Out!”
“I do not – the nerve!” Isadora looked appalled, and turned and stalked out of the room.
Dash followed her, spluttering and looking mortified.
Roxanne was still cowering in the corner. “Those men turned into wolves and attacked you.” Roxanne’s eyes were like saucers. “You turned into a wolf. I know you. Who are you?”
Steele shot Loren and Jerrico a look that promised death if they pushed him any further. “You two, you came into my house uninvited, treated me with disrespect, lied and manipulated me, and caused harm to this woman. You will leave my house, now.” He let out a long, low growl and let his snout extend, flashing fangs at them. “I will contact you when Cody comes by, and I will tell you what he finds out after he’s examined her. Until then, I do not want to see you on my property.”
Loren looked at Steele. “You haven’t heard the last of this.”
Chapter Eleven
“I’ve seen you before, and I can’t remember where,” Roxanne said, her voice rising in panic. “I don’t know where we are right now. Is this your house?”
“It is my house, and you’re safe here. A medical expert is coming here in three days, and he’ll be able to help you,” Steele said, putting his hand on her arm gently.
She took a deep breath, and seemed to calm herself a little bit. “Are you sure? What kind of medical expert is he?”
“The kind who can fix the type of problem we’re dealing with here.”
Roxanne looked dazed. “I believe you. I don’t know why, but I do.”
“Let’s go in the living room,” Steele said. He glanced at the front door. He’d actually locked it, which he’d never done before. He didn’t want Loren and Jerrico to barge back in.
Roxanne followed him, and she sank into the couch, looking around the room in bewilderment and wonder, as if seeing it for the first time. Steele wanted to run after Jerrico and strangle him, but he couldn’t leave Roxanne alone. He sat down next to her, and put his arm around her. She leaned into him, feeling soft and warm and smelling like flowers. This would be his idea of heaven, if circumstances were different.
“That man said I was your girlfriend. Am I really your girlfriend?” Roxanne asked, looking up at him with her beautiful, chocolate brown eyes.
Steele considered this. “Basically, yes. I am completely committed to you. I won’t be with any other woman.”
“We met when you rescued me from a car accident. Didn’t we?” She rubbed her face.
“Yes.”
“And then we dated? Did we? I think we did.”
Steele managed a rueful smile. “It’s complicated.”
“You can turn into a wolf. That girl can turn into a lynx. Can I turn into anything?”
“A sex goddess.”
That one made her laugh. “That’s good to know. If I were going to pick a super power, that would be a good one.”
She glanced through the door into the kitchen, and the aftermath of his fight with Loren and Jerrico. “That’s a big mess in there. We…we should clean up.” There were overturned chairs and broken pieces of crockery and rugs wrinkled back and kicked into corners.
She went back to the kitchen, knelt down and began picking up the pieces and putting them in the garbage.
As the two of them cleaned up the kitchen together, Steele felt his heart squeezing in his chest. This was what he wanted. He wanted this woman, with him, forever. He wanted to joke around with her, do chores with her, cook for her, then pick her up and carry her into his room and make her moan with pleasure. He wanted to come home to her every night.
Could he really let Cody erase her from his life a second time? Did he have any other choice?
His cell phone, sitting on the counter, rang, and he grabbed it. It was his uncle, Vince Battle, Alpha of Timber Valley.
“Steele. Would you care to fill me in on what’s going on?” Vince barked at him. “I’ve got some very pissed off wardens howling for your head.”
Steele bit back a snarl. His wolf didn’t like to be challenged like this, but Vince was an Alpha, and his uncle, and he had the right to be worried about the welfare of the shifters in Timber Valley, and everywhere else for that matter.
“I’ll be right back,” Steele said to Roxanne. He took the phone, walked outside the house, and quickly filled him in.
“Why did you even stop to help her? What were you thinking?” Vince demanded. “I don’t even want to get into the sheer stupidity of you having a relationship with a human. The Wardens could have you executed for that. Do you understand what you’ve done? Do you know what kind of position this puts me in?”
“If I hadn’t stopped to rescue her in that snowstorm, she’d have died,” Steele said. “And strictly speaking, I didn’t have a relationship with her. We got together that night in the cabin. Yes, I fell for her, but I didn’t let it deter me from my duty. I trusted that Shaman to do a proper mind-wipe on her. I was willing to walk away from her forever, to protect our species.”
Steele understood his uncle’s anger. If their positions had been reversed, he would have been furious as well. No shifter had the right to risk the lives of their people, or to violate the laws of the Covenant that had been created to keep them safe.
Unfortunately, his heart was doing the thinking for him, not his head.
Vince let out an angry growl. “The Elders ar
e concerned that with all this time that she’s been having these flashbacks, she might have said something to someone.”
“It’s possible, but think about it, Vince. She suffered a head injury, she’s having memory blackouts, and she tells someone she saw a werewolf. What would they think? They’d think she had some kind of brain damage. Throughout history, there have been occasional, accidental sightings of our kind. It’s never resulted in our exposure, because our Shamans can usually minimize the damage, and because the human mind can’t and doesn’t want to comprehend the existence of our species.”
“You’re right, but you know how the Elders and the Wardens get when there’s any talk of exposure. And Steele, you were an idiot to let yourself get involved with this woman at all. It has to end immediately.”
“I know,” Steele said.
“The Elders are talking about taking her in to their custody so they can have their Shaman examine her. That would be best for everybody. There could be no more accusations that you are having a relationship with her, and they might be able to get the answers they need. They don’t want to wait until Cody gets here.”
“Over my dead body!” Steele barked. Fur bristled on his face and the back of his hands.
“That sounds like someone who’s more concerned about the wellbeing of the human than he is the protection of our species.”
“Think what you will, but you know that Cody is the best shaman in the country. Jerrico tried to get in and see what was wrong, and it did nothing but bring back her amnesia. If he tries again, he may cause irreversible brain damage, which is not in anyone’s best interests.”
There was a pause. “I can’t argue with that logic, although I think you’re arguing more because you’re concerned about her safety,” Vince said.
“Either way, I’m right.”
“I’ll talk to the Elders. I did have a word with them about sending the Wardens out to your house without notifying me first, which is disrespectful to me as pack leader of this territory,” Vince said. “Once Cody shows up, though, her memory must be properly erased, she must return to her home, and you can never see her again. If you do, the Elders will issue a Kill Command, and I will side with them. I’ll carry it out myself if it comes to that.” Steele had no doubt that Vince meant it. It didn’t matter that Steel was his nephew. If Steele’s own parents thought that he was doing something that would endanger shifters, they’d carry out a Kill Command.
“Understood.” Steele hung up. Understood, but did he agree? Was he really going to have Roxanne’s mind wiped again?
To his shock, he realized that he was no longer quite sure.
Chapter Twelve
“That was delicious, thank you, but you didn’t have to cook for me. I’m your host. I should be cooking for you,” Steele said, pushing his plate away.
She’d made him a cheese omelet with chopped shallots, and hash browns for breakfast. His stomach was comfortably full and the room smelled like home cooking.
They’d spent the night together, just sleeping in each other’s arms. He should have been glad that she was no longer furious at him, but he wasn’t, because it meant that her memory, part of herself, had been stripped away. She had the right to be angry at him, and at everything that was happening, but she wasn’t right now.
“I love to cook,” she assured him.
She reached out to pick up his plate, but he grabbed it away from her. “Don’t you dare! I’ll do the dishes! Sit back and relax a minute, will you?” he laughed. She’d been on the go since she woke up that morning, cleaning, straightening, sweeping.
“I can manage a minute, I guess,” she said, and got up and left the kitchen. When Steele was done with the dishes he found her sitting at his old wooden secretary desk in the living room, sketching on a piece of paper. Her happy mood had vanished; her forehead was wrinkled in concentration and worry puckered her face.
He put his hands on her shoulders, rubbing away the tension and looking at the picture she’d just drawn.
She’d grabbed the colored pencils from the cup that he kept on his desk, and sketched a picture of a blonde girl who looked to be in her late teens or early twenties. The girl had one blue eye and one brown eye. That was a characteristic only seen in wolf shifters who were healers.
Underneath it she’d written help her help her help her, over and over.
He felt the hair on the back of his neck lift. “Who is she?” Steele asked, looking down at the picture.
She buried her face in her hands. “I don’t know. Her face just popped in to my head. Who wrote ‘help her’? That looks like my handwriting. Did I write that?”
“You must have. She’s a healer,” Steele said, picking up the piece of paper. “Does that jog your memory at all?”
“No.” Roxanne looked at the picture again, as if she’d never seen it before. “What do you mean, she’s a healer? You just asked me who she is.”
“In the shifter kingdom, in all species, healers are always female and always have different colored eyes. This must be someone that you’ve seen.” He looked at her. “There is a group of humans which has been kidnapping shifters, and they’ve especially been targeting genetic mutations like healers.”
“Who are these humans? How do they know about you?”
“We’re working very hard to figure that out,” Steele said, his expression turned grim.
“What other kind of mutations are there?”
“Well, there are shamans, who can manipulate people’s minds, and there are shifters who just randomly have various abilities that you humans would call psychic, or telepathic, or various other powers. Some of them can set things on fire with their mind, or levitate objects. There’s a fairly high population of shifters in Timber Valley who have special abilities, so we’re on high alert because of that.”
“This girl that was kidnapped - how do I know what she looks like?”
“Remember how you thought you had been held somewhere against your will?”
She shook her head. “No. I was? When did that happen?”
Again, Steele silently cursed Jerrico’s interference. “Never mind. Cody is back in town tomorrow, and we’ll get all our answers then.”
“You think she was one of the shifters who were kidnapped? That must mean she needs help now, Steele. We can’t wait. What can I do? We have to help her.” Roxanne’s voice rose in panic. “Why can’t I remember? I’m trying to, but it’s just making my head hurt. I’m really trying, Steele.” Her face had gone white, and she was breathing fast. Her eyes swam with tears.
Steele reached down and grabbed her hand. “Roxanne, calm down. It’s not your fault, and we’ll find this girl, all right?”
“I have to remember. She needs help. Where did I see her? Where is she? Oh, God, my head.” She doubled over and vomited into a wastebasket by the desk. “My head,” she moaned.
“Stop! Just stop! Don’t try to think about it, it’ll just make it worse,” Steele said.
Steele quickly helped her into the bathroom; her legs were like jelly, and he had to hold her up. Once she’d rinsed out her mouth, he wet a washcloth and she pressed it on her forehead. He scooped her up in his arms, carried her to the couch, and laid her down. “Stay there,” he said. “Stop trying to remember. Just relax. We will find this girl.”
He paced the kitchen floor, frantic. This could be the first real lead that they had to finding the missing shifters. Roxanne might even be able to lead them right to them.
He had an obligation to his race, and to the family of that girl. He needed to report that picture to the Wardens, so they could contact all the wolf packs in Montana and have them start searching.
The problem was, as soon as he sent the picture to the Wardens, they would demand to let Jerrico examine Roxanne. They wouldn’t be willing to wait until Cody came back. If Steele refused, they’d send over a team of Wardens and take her by force.
If he thought that Jerrico could safely and successfully extract the info
rmation, he would have been willing, but it was clear that Jerrico’s powers weren’t up to the task. Frustration boiled up inside him. Why couldn’t they see that waiting for Cody was the only answer?
Because Roxanne was human, and not their priority, and they’d be willing to risk scrambling her brain permanently if they thought it would help them find what they needed.
Finally he stopped pacing. He’d made his decision.
He was going to send in the picture to the Wardens, but before they got to his house, he would take Roxanne and leave town. He knew they’d consider him a traitor. He couldn’t help that. Roxanne was his, and he wasn’t letting them take her from him.
He would still do his duty. There was another shaman that he knew of, in upstate New York, who was pretty close to Cody’s level of talent. Nobody would expect Steele to head out there. He’d take Roxanne there, and have the shaman fix the damage that had been done to her earlier. He’d probably have to force the shaman to do it; there would be a kill order out on him by then, and every wolf shifter in the country would know about it.
He’d insist that the shaman fix Roxanne, and extract whatever she remembered about the missing shifter girl. Then he’d have the shaman call the Wardens with whatever information Roxanne could provide, hopefully information that would lead them to the girl.
He thought quickly. He needed to deliver a message to his uncle that he’d be leaving, and that somebody else would need to take over his department, but that message couldn’t be delivered until he and Roxanne were safely out of the area.
Who could he turn to for help? Although he had a lot of friends and family in Timber Valley, he couldn’t trust any of them not to turn him in to the Wardens, and he didn’t want to put anyone in that position anyway. Any wolf who helped him would be considered a traitor.
Hmm. That would only apply to wolves, though.
Shaking his head, he grabbed his cell phone and called Isadora’s number. He couldn’t believe that he was doing this; Isadora was the last person that he ever thought he’d be calling for help and yet strangely, somehow, he trusted her. Probably because she’d be more than happy to see the uptight, rules-following Sheriff Battle flout authority.
Hard As Steele (A BBW Paranormal Romance) (Timber Valley Pack) Page 8