by R. E. Butler
“You can see her now, Alpha.”
Adam stood immediately and followed Whalen to the patient room. His mate lay on the bed, her skin as pale as the white sheets. Tubes were taped to the top of one hand, and her right arm was bandaged. Someone had dressed her in a hospital gown. She was unmoving except for the rise and fall of her chest.
“She’s going to be okay?” His voice was tight. He couldn’t hide the worry.
“Yes. She had a severe allergic reaction to the venom in Cyrus’s claws. It overwhelmed her system, and I won’t lie. She nearly died.”
Adam gingerly held her hand, staring at the tubes and monitors hooked to her. “I didn’t know tiger claws had venom.”
“All cats do to an extent. Under normal circumstances, if Cyrus had pricked her skin, she wouldn’t have had any reaction. But things being what they are, her body almost shut down for good.”
Things being what they are?
Her hand was cold. He reached for the blanket folded at the bottom of the bed and drew it up over her. “What do you mean?”
Whalen folded his arms and looked at Cinder. “I know she’s your mate and she’s Wiccan, but something is happening because of both of those facts. What it is, I don’t know, but her reaction was so severe that there has to be an underlying explanation. Why would an otherwise non-allergic female suddenly have a near-death experience because of a scratch?”
Adam’s lip curled. “It was hardly a scratch. He shredded her arm.”
Bandages covered the gashes. Adam could still see the wound in his mind’s eye, her skin coated with dark-red blood.
“I simply meant that she had an excessive reaction. I think something more is going on here aside from her being your mate. When Wiccans and shifters mate, the Wiccan doesn’t change, but Cinder appears to be changing.”
Adam lifted his head and stared at the doctor. “Changing? What do you mean?”
“Her eyes were golden for a while. When I checked her pupils, they were bright gold. They’re back to their normal color now, but that’s weird.”
“She’s part wolf, though. Leo said her father was a shifter.”
“I don’t know, Adam. She’s technically thirty-one. It’s unheard of for a shifter to shift so late in life. If she were going to shift, she would have in her teens.”
Adam blew out a breath and turned his attention back to her. “How long will she be out?”
“A day maybe. She’ll come out of it when her body is ready.”
Nodding, he said, “Tell the cat he can come in, and tell Brick that I want the elders here. And thank you for saving my mate.”
“She’s my alpha too.”
Adam was alone with his mate for only a few minutes before the cat hurried in and stood on the other side of her bed. Brick and the other pack members stood outside in the hallway.
“She’s my mate,” Adam said.
“I know that already.” Cyrus’s voice was tight and angry, but Adam didn’t care.
“Things will be different for her now. You understand that, right?”
Cyrus glared at him. “She’s not one of your minions you can order around. Just because you say mate doesn’t mean that she’ll understand it.”
Adam wanted to tell Cyrus to shut up or he’d throw him through the window. Or both maybe. What he did instead was lean over and kiss Cinder’s forehead, inhaling her melted sugar scent. “I need your keys,” he said to Cyrus as he straightened.
“What?”
“She needs clothes when she wakes up. Unless you want me to break into your place, give me your keys.”
Cyrus dug through his pocket with an aggravated snarl. “Tell your people to stay out of my room.”
Adam caught the keys that Cyrus threw at him and walked out of the room. It was the most difficult thing he’d done, but he didn’t particularly want to be around the cat at the moment and there were things to do.
* * * * *
“Come on back, sweetheart.”
Someone’s voice pushed through the dark haze surrounding Cinder and beckoned her forward, tugging on the back of her neck as though she was a wayward puppy that needed instruction.
She tried to slip back into the darkness, but the voice was insistent and she felt compelled to listen. It took some effort, but she was able to force open her eyes. She found herself staring up at the plain, white ceiling tiles of one of the patient rooms in the clinic. She heard someone pacing nearby, and farther away, people were arguing.
“Hey,” Adam said, leaning over the rail of the hospital bed, his dark hair sweeping forward over his brow. It made him look boyishly sweet, and for one glaring moment, she was tempted to reach for him and seek comfort in his arms.
What the hell is wrong with me?
Her voice rasped out past dry lips. “Where is Cyrus?”
Adam’s smile slipped and he straightened. “He’s out in the hallway.”
He poured a cup of water for her from a pitcher on the nearby table and without asking, cupped the back of her head and lifted her enough so she could drink from it. It was almost sweet, except for the grimace on his face.
She wasn’t sure why she felt compelled to explain anything, but she said, “He’s my friend.”
“Your lover,” he sneered.
Drawing the covers up tighter to her chest, she glared up at him. “Who I take to bed isn’t any of your concern.”
He wrapped both hands around the rail of the bed and leaned over. “It is entirely my concern, Cinder. We’re mates. Why do you think you’re so drawn to me? Why do you think your libido went haywire after we met?”
“I’m not drawn to you,” she said stiffly.
“Liar,” he snarled.
Her mouth dropped open.
“I’m sorry you were hurt, but my wolves were doing what they needed to keep you safe.”
“I don’t need your protection, Adam.”
“Don’t you? The full moon is in nine days. How do you think you’ll feel that night? Your cat can’t satisfy you, and you know why.”
She pursed her lips and narrowed her eyes. “Cyrus satisfies me just fine. In fact, we live together. So why don’t you just take off and let my lover take me home.”
He bit back a snarl, his hands flexing on the plastic rail until it cracked under the pressure. He released his hands immediately and straightened. “You’re my mate, Cinder. I scented you across the bar on Friday night, and I knew immediately that you were meant to be mine. The fact that you’re also a witch is a bonus. Our pack needs a Sahri for the full moon gatherings. Come this full moon, if you’re not by my side where you belong, what you felt tonight is only the tip of the iceberg. Only mates can satisfy each other, Cinder. And it goes both ways.”
“What happened to Leo?”
He cracked his neck before answering. “Once we’re mated, you can resume a platonic friendship with whomever you like. Until then, you’re not to be around any unmated males.”
“You can’t tell me who I can be friends with,” she argued.
His brow arched. “Can’t I?”
As he turned to walk toward the door, part of her wanted to call him back and ask him to stay with her. She remembered feeling safe in his arms, and she liked that feeling. But the rest of her, the part that felt like it was slowly being taken over by this new primal side, wanted to tell him to go to hell in the worst way. While an internal battle raged, he opened the door and let in Cyrus and Dr. Whalen.
“I’ll be seeing you, Cinder,” Adam said in a tone that brooked no argument. The door clicked shut, and Cyrus rushed to her side, hugging her gently as he avoided the bandaged portion of her right arm.
“I said you could be in here, but I’m not going to watch you manhandle my alpha’s mate,” Dr. Whalen growled, and for the first time since she’d known him, the doctor looked frazzled.
“Not you too.” She patted Cyrus’s hand and he let go, stepping only as far as her outstretched arm would go. He gripped her hand tightly, his body vibra
ting with annoyance and barely contained anger.
“The mate-call, Cinder, is nothing to be flippant about. Adam recognized you immediately by your scent, and he asked me to set up a meeting so that he could introduce himself to you. If you hadn’t run out so fast, you wouldn’t have gone into the mate-heat like you did. Being away from your mate at first can drive you insane with need. Don’t you know anything about your wolf heritage?”
He fiddled with the chart and glared at her over the clipboard as though she were a wayward child. And right then, she felt pretty damn petulant. She didn’t need another wolf telling her what to do. “I’m barely a wolf. I’m almost entirely Wiccan. Whatever I do with my friends isn’t anyone’s business but ours, so I’ll thank you very much to keep your opinions to yourself.”
He put the chart back on the end of the bed and folded his arms. “When you first started working for me, I would have agreed with that, Cinder. Only on the full moon did I ever catch a scent of wolf from you, but it was always so faint and buried. Once you started seeing the young wolf from our pack, your scent increased, slowly but steadily. When you were out a few weeks ago because of your heat cycle, I would have been hard pressed to tell you apart from a full blooded she-wolf. You act like one, you smell like one. The only thing you don’t have going for you is the ability to shift. Tell me the truth, Cinder. Did you ever have a heat cycle like you did in September?”
She shook her head. It had been heaven and hell wrapped up in screaming hot sex. The past seasonal cycles had barely affected her. She’d always believed the wolf part of her was so small that it was of no consequence. She relied on her Wiccan nature and never tried to nurture the wolf. If she wasn’t going to be part of a pack, then it didn’t matter anyway.
She felt tears sting her eyes and she looked at Dr. Whalen. “Why now? Shouldn’t it have happened before?”
He sighed deeply. “To tell you the truth, I’ve never known a true hybrid like yourself, one born of Wiccan and werewolf genes. My best educated guess is that the reason you never truly felt your wolf is that she was waiting for her mate. When you came here, you connected first with me, a wolf who’s part of your mate’s pack, and then with Leo, another wolf in our pack. Your wolf is ready to stretch her legs now that you’re home, Cinder. You just have to let go and trust Adam to help you.”
Her home? Her mate? Her wolf? Defiance crept through her even as her wolf growled in agreement. “If I refuse? If I pack up tonight and leave town?”
“First of all, you’re not leaving until tomorrow morning. Second of all, you’re not going to get very far. The mate-call is a powerful thing. It’s meant to secure a mating, to bind the two together so they can begin their new life.”
“I don’t accept this.” She shook her head. “I want my life to go back the way it was.”
He moved to the bed and picked up her right arm, carefully peeling away the layer of bandages, revealing four angry scratches across the meat of her bicep. “You reacted badly because you are allergic to the venom in Cyrus’s claws. Only werewolves react so violently in their human form to tiger attacks. You went into anaphylactic shock. If Adam hadn’t brought you back inside, you could have died. You can’t go back to the life you had before, because that life doesn’t exist anymore.” He fixed the bandages and laid her arm gently back on the bed. “You are a werewolf, Cinder, and the perfect mate for our alpha, which makes you a female of standing in the pack. I have known many alphas in my long lifetime, and Adam is not only a great leader, but also a good man. Think about that tonight while you rest. I’ll check on you in the morning.”
The door shut quietly as the doctor left, and Cyrus pulled a chair up next to the bed and looked at her. “I can’t believe you’re allergic to me.”
She started to laugh, but choked on the tears, curling onto her side and holding Cyrus’s hand tightly to her chest. Immediately, she felt as if she was doing something wrong by holding onto Cyrus, as if she were betraying someone.
She knew exactly who that someone was.
When Dr. Whalen released her the following morning and told her take the night off from work, she sat on the edge of the bed in the light pink hospital gown and looked at her ruined blouse. There was a soft knock at the door, and Cyrus pulled it open. A young woman stood outside, holding a small travel bag. “I’m Angie, Adam’s sister. He asked me to bring some things for you.”
Cyrus let her in the room, snarling at the two men who stood outside in the hallway, before he shut the door.
“Who were those guys?” Cinder asked as Angie walked to the bed.
“Wolves from our pack. Adam made sure there were guards here all night.”
Cinder pressed her lips together. She did not think that was awesome.
Taking the bag from Angie, she pulled open the zipper and said, “These are my clothes. How did you get them?”
Cyrus answered, “I gave him the key to our place.”
“What?”
“He asked for the key, suggesting he’d break in if I didn’t hand it over, so in the interest of not messing up our security deposit, I gave the key to him.”
Cinder frowned and looked at Angie, who had her head down and was trembling as though she were frightened. Did she think she was in trouble?
“Thanks, Angie. I appreciate it.”
She lifted her head and smiled brightly and then hurried from the room. Cyrus found something about the situation funny and seemed to be trying hard not to laugh.
“Shut up,” she groused as she stripped off the gown and changed into comfortable jeans and a short sleeved top. The wound on her arm had healed overnight – thanks to her accelerated healing – and hadn’t even scarred. She’d always attributed her healing abilities to her Wiccan nature, but if it were true that she was becoming more in tune with her werewolf side, then she didn’t know what that meant for her Wiccan half.
The guards introduced themselves as Brick and Solan as she and Cyrus left the room. They followed her and Cyrus out of the clinic and they walked to a vehicle parked directly behind Cyrus’s truck.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“We’re seeing you safely home as instructed,” Solan said.
Cyrus chuckled as he pulled open the passenger door and she said, “It’s not funny.”
“It totally is,” he said, grinning as he shut her door. He climbed in behind the wheel and started the engine.
“You’re certainly warming up to the wolves,” she said.
He glanced at her as he pulled out into the street. “Hey, I was pissed last night because the wolves caused you to get hurt. But Adam’s a solid guy. His people worship the ground he walks on. And more than that, he stood by your bedside all night. He didn’t take off until the doc came in after you woke up.”
She looked at her roommate. This was a serious side of Cyrus she hadn’t seen before. “You believe all this mate-call and mate-heat stuff?”
“Hell yeah. Maybe Wiccans don’t have that sort of thing, but I can tell you one thing for sure: Adam believes you’re his mate and there isn’t anything on earth that will stop a male from being with his woman. He’s backing off because you’re freaked out and pissed off, and that shows an incredible amount of restraint.”
He reached for her hand and squeezed it. “What we have together is just casual, and even you can admit that it’s starting to wear thin. Once Leo started to come around, you wanted something more out of your life than the passing fucks. Someday, I hope I’ll find a female I’m mate-called to. It’s something to be cherished, not feared. A truemate would never harm his bride, and he would lay down his own life for hers. Don’t you want that?”
“It’s fast,” she murmured, releasing his hand and staring out the window.
“Real mate-calls are like that. Out of the blue, bulldoze right over you kind of stuff. You’re lucky, Cin. Real lucky.”
Maybe he was right.
It turned out that swiping clothes for her wasn’t the only thing that Adam
and his pack had done. The condo had been cleaned from floor to ceiling. The fridge was well stocked, including a prepared plate covered with plastic wrap. Flowers graced every flat surface from the kitchen to her bedroom. It looked like a florist had gone haywire.
Cyrus, chuckling quietly, went to his room and left her to stare at the note on the counter, the thin piece of light blue paper was wrapped around the stem of a single yellow rose with red tips. She slipped the paper off and opened it as she touched the satiny tip of the flower to her nose and inhaled. It smelled sweet and perfect.
Cinder, please join me for dinner tonight at eight. A car will be around for you at seven fifteen. Adam.
She crumpled the paper and tossed it in the trash. She’d never met a more infuriating male in her life. Ignoring the desire to call the phone number scrawled at the bottom of the note, she pulled the plate out of the fridge and ate. Once more, she found herself of two minds about her current situation. She wanted to see him, but she didn’t want him to think she was going to come running every time he snapped his fingers. She could admit – at least to herself – that if they’d met in a club, she might have eagerly taken him home and enjoyed the hell out of him. But this whole I’m-the-alpha business just didn’t sit right with her. She never considered herself a wolf, just a witch who happened to have a father who was one. She felt adrift in a sea of confusion, tossed about and unsure.
* * * * *
There was a knock at the door promptly at seven fifteen. She opened it and found Brick and Solan. Brick’s gaze moved up and down her body, and he frowned. She was wearing a pair of lounge pants with cartoon devils on them and an oversize sleep shirt.
When he said nothing, she said, “I’m not going, in case you can’t tell.”
He opened his mouth to say something, but Solan elbowed him. Shutting his mouth with a firm click of his teeth, he nodded and they turned and walked away. She peeked out of her apartment and saw them getting into a sleek black town car.
She shut the door slowly, a little stunned that they hadn’t argued or asked for an explanation.