by Paige Tyler
Max was still kissing her, his cock taking that as a sure sign they were getting ready for round two—or was it round five?—when Lana quickly pulled back. He was just recovering from the bout of sensual whiplash when he realized Lana was looking at him with those wide eyes of hers again.
“Will our kids be werewolves, too?” she asked, clearly thrilled at the thought.
“Whoa, slow down a little,” he said trying hard not to laugh. “Figuring out who’s going to become a werewolf is kind of complicated. I’ve been one since I was eighteen and part of the Pack now for nearly two years, and I still don’t understand everything about how it all works. All I know is that there’s a gene all werewolves have that switches on and turns them when something traumatic happens. Like the accident you had when you were in high school.”
She frowned a little. “That’s what turned me into a werewolf? I thought I must have gotten bitten or something.”
“Nah. That’s all folklore,” he said. “You should probably talk to Gage or Brooks or any of the older werewolves. They could help answer your questions. Of course, if you’re looking for the scientific details, I’d suggest Triana, Lacey, or Dr. Saunders. Triana is Remy’s mate and works in the medical examiner’s office, Lacey is Alex’s mate and is a veterinarian, and Saunders is the Pack’s doctor. He probably knows more about werewolves than anyone. Except maybe for Gemma. She’s Triana’s mother and has been around werewolves for over twenty years. Her knowledge is a little skewed toward the mystical side of things, though, since she practices voodoo.”
Max was about to say more, but then he realized Lana was lying on top of him with a completely dumbfounded expression on her face.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, trying to remember what he’d said that could have confused her. It had seemed straightforward to him.
“All of those people you mentioned are werewolves?”
The question came out slow and careful, like she thought it was something she shouldn’t ask. He replayed the conversation in his head again to see if he’d said something strange. If he had, he couldn’t figure out what it had been.
So he simply shook his head. “Not all of them. Triana and Lacey are soul mates of two members of the Pack, and Saunders is a doctor Gage has known for years. He’s helped us out a couple times. Gemma isn’t a werewolf, either, though she was married to one.”
“Gage, Brooks, Remy, and Alex are all werewolves?” she asked. “They’re all in your pack?”
That’s when Max finally figured out what Lana was getting at. She wanted to know how many other werewolves like her were out there. Now that he thought about it, it was a question he probably should have seen coming. The fact that he hadn’t likely had to do with the multiple orgasms. It was a well-known fact that orgasms made men stupid—or at least dulled their wits for a period of time. Years in some cases.
“Yes, they’re all werewolves.” He ran his fingers down her back to rest his hands comfortably on the upper curve of her butt. He liked her butt—it was a nice butt. “Just like all the other members of the Dallas SWAT team—all seventeen of us. We’re one large pack, extended to include the women each of us have bonded with.”
“Like me?”
He smiled. “Yes, like you. You have a pack now, a group of werewolves who will always be there for you, no matter what you need.”
Lana must have liked the sound of that, because she smiled like crazy. “I can’t believe there are so many werewolves in Dallas and I never knew. I can’t wait to meet all of them. I have so many questions.”
“And they’ll be thrilled to meet you too. But as long as we’re talking about the subject of werewolves in Dallas, I guess I should mention there is more than just our pack. One of the guys in the SWAT Pack bonded with another werewolf who already had her own pack, so they’re here, too, with all their various mates. Then there are all the smaller packs and the loners who started showing up when the hunter threat started to get worse. There are maybe fifty werewolves in the metro area these days who have shown up hoping to get protection by being close to a large pack.”
“Hunters? You used that word before in the alley when you changed in front of me. I guess that’s who chased me earlier tonight,” she said casually, almost curiously. “Go ahead and say it now—you were right about them, too.”
Max started to nod, but then the words sunk in. “Wait a minute.” He sat up so fast he almost dumped Lana off his lap. He quickly adjusted her so she was sitting back on his thighs, any thought of another round of fun and games completely gone now. “You were chased by someone tonight, and you didn’t think to mention it to me?”
She looked at him in confusion. “I didn’t mention it when I walked through your front door? I’m sure I did.”
“I think I would have remembered you saying something like that,” he said. “It’s kind of important. You walked in, showed off your claws, then jumped on me.”
Her lips curved. “Oh yeah. I guess that’s how it happened. But in my defense, the concern that you might not want me in your life after the way I’d treated you outweighed any worries I had about being shot at by a bunch of crazy men in downtown Dallas.”
They’d shot at her, too? Max cursed. “I need you to go into excruciating detail about everything that happened. Leave nothing out.”
Max sat there with Lana resting on his thighs, listening in stunned silence as she explained what had happened at the club and how the same guy who’d spritzed her with that nasty perfume at the mall had chased her, along with some of his buddies. By the time she was done, he didn’t know if he was furious with her for not telling him about it right away or impressed as hell that she’d gotten away from five heavily armed and well-trained hunters.
Regardless, he picked Lana up and deposited her beside him on the bed, then grabbed his phone from the bedside table to call Gage. He hadn’t even thumbed in his passcode before the thing rang in his hand, almost making him drop it. At the sight of Gage’s name on the screen, he thumbed the green button. Good freaking timing, he guessed.
“Max, is Lana with you?” Gage said before Max could even get a word out. But Sarge’s tone said it all. Something was wrong.
“She’s here,” Max said. “What’s wrong?”
“Get her to Medical City Dallas Hospital, ASAP. Paramedics just brought in her father. Someone broke into their house and attacked him.”
Max wished she hadn’t, but it was obvious Lana had heard everything Gage said, even though it wasn’t on speaker.
He heard her heart kick into high gear as she leaned forward and thumbed the speakerphone button. “How bad it is? Was my mom there, too?”
“Your mother wasn’t there. She was handling some kind of crisis at the restaurant. She’s on the way to the hospital now.”
“How badly is my father hurt?” Lana asked again.
Gage hesitated. “It’s bad. They broke in and beat the hell out of him, no doubt trying to get him to tell them where to find you. Then they shot him and left him for dead. He’s hanging on, but he’s in critical condition.”
Chapter 11
Brandy and Miriam met Lana and Max the moment they walked into the Medical City ER, hurrying them down the hall as fast as they could.
“Your dad is heading in for surgery, but he’s asking for you,” Brandy said. “He’s refusing the surgery until he sees you and Max. Talk to him fast, then convince him to let us take him into the OR. Every second we waste is making it harder to save his life.”
Lana started to hyperventilate, her gums and fingernails tingling like mad. She probably would have shifted right there if it wasn’t for Max holding her hand. He was like a rock, a steady presence she latched on to as emotional waves threatened to drown her.
There were a dozen cops in the hallway outside the ER, some of whom were Max’s SWAT teammates—his pack mates. Well, hers now, too, she guessed. All of
them looked as worried as she felt.
Brandy and Miriam quickly hustled her and Max into a curtained-off triage area, then left. Lana’s mother was already there, unshed tears in her eyes, but surprisingly, so was Gage. Lana choked back a sob at the sight of her father lying in a hospital bed, his face cut and bruised. He had an oxygen mask on and multiple IV lines in both arms. His forehead, both hands, and chest were swathed in heavy bandages, blood already soaking through several places. He was conscious, but he didn’t look good. All the terrible things she’d said to him the other day when they fought echoed in her head, bringing a fresh rush of tears to her eyes.
“Okay, your daughter is here,” a doctor Lana hadn’t noticed standing by the bed said to her father. “Can we please take you into surgery now?”
Her father reached up and pushed the oxygen mask aside. The doctor quickly moved to put it back, but her dad gave the woman his patented deputy-chief glare, stopping the woman cold. “I need to talk to my daughter and her boyfriend alone.”
Her father’s voice sounded stronger than Lana thought it’d be, which was a relief. The doctor didn’t look happy, but she nodded.
“Two minutes,” she said, then left, pulling the curtain closed behind her.
Lana hurried over to the bed, leaning close to kiss him gently on the brow. “Dad, you need to let them do the surgery.”
He waved her concern aside. “I will, but first I need to talk to you. Before it’s too late.” His voice seemed weaker now that the doctor had left, like he’d been putting on an act for the woman.
“Don’t talk like that,” Lana insisted, refusing to even let him think such a thing. “You’re going to be fine.”
He took her hand, gazing up at her fondly. “Lana, I love you dearly, but you’re a terrible liar. There are things I need to say, things I should have told you long ago.”
“Things we both should have told her long ago,” her mother added.
He shook his head, his gaze going to her mother. “I convinced you to go along with my plan. You’re the one who wanted to tell her from the beginning.”
Dammit. There wasn’t time for this. Lana glanced at the heart monitor on the cart near the head of the bed. She wasn’t a doctor, but she had a general idea about what she should be seeing, and her father’s rhythms didn’t look very steady to her.
“Dad, you can tell me everything later, after you come out of surgery,” she said. “We can sit together and talk as long as you want.”
Her father ignored her, looking at Gage, then Max. “The people who did this weren’t after me. They were after Lana. I don’t know how they found out, but they know she’s different and they’re planning to kill her. I need the SWAT team to protect her. She’s special like you and the other people on your team. I know you can keep her safe.”
Gage nodded. “We will.”
That must have been good enough for her father because he turned back to Lana. “I know this is all happening so fast, and you don’t understand any of it, but you’re special. You have been for a long time. I should have told you everything a long time ago, but I was scared you’d be mistreated. You’re different, and our world doesn’t treat people who are different very nicely. But it’s time you know everything.”
Lana had had enough. Her father was getting weaker by the second and the patterns on the heart monitor looked even more erratic. They needed to hurry this along and get him into the operating room.
“I already know what I am,” she said softly. “I’m a werewolf. I figured it out earlier tonight, though I’ve been getting an idea that something was different ever since I met Max. He’s the one who helped me figure it all out.”
“A werewolf.” Her father gazed at her, awe in his eyes. “Yes, I guess that makes sense.”
She smiled even though she was on the verge of tears. “It doesn’t make sense at all, but it’s true anyway. Now that we have that out of the way, it’s time to get you into surgery.”
He shook his head. “Not yet. There are so many things I need to tell you—how it happened, why we hid it from you, what those men look like.”
Lana opened her mouth to tell him they could talk about all that later, but then an alarm sounded from the heart monitor. There was also a red light blinking on the side of the main console. She didn’t know what it meant, but it couldn’t be good.
Beside her, Max whipped the curtain back and called for help. Brandy, Miriam, and the doctor hurried in. Lana quickly got out of their way. Seconds later, they were wheeling her father away, leaving Lana with Max, her mother, and Gage.
Her mother wrapped a comforting arm around her shoulders. “I have a few things I need to tell you. Then maybe you can help me understand a few things as well.”
* * *
“We knew there was something unusual happening within forty-eight hours of the accident,” Nora said.
They were sitting in a quiet corner of the cafeteria, drinking bad coffee, Max on one side of the table with Lana, her mother and Gage opposite them. At this time of night, the place was deserted except for the guy cleaning the food-prep area behind the counter. He was wearing a set of earbuds and was completely lost in his music.
They’d come in about thirty minutes ago, after Lana had finished giving statements to the detectives investigating her father’s assault. She told them about the men who’d chased her from the club the previous night and about the run-in with the same men at the Galleria. She’d given good descriptions, so Max knew the detectives were out there right now gathering video footage from both the mall and the downtown street cameras, hoping to get a look at the men and find out where they might have gone after that. Max couldn’t help but wonder what they’d think when they saw video of the blur Lana probably made as she ran away from the hunters. But she and his pack would worry about that after the hunters were off the streets.
Max had told the detectives about the case Austin PD was working on, hoping they’d share anything they learned in Dallas. The lead detective hadn’t said anything one way or the other, but Max hoped he’d be willing to work with Peterson.
“The doctors said that with all the injuries you’d sustained, you’d never make it through the night. A zero percent chance…that’s what they said,” Nora said quietly. She wrapped her hands around her coffee cup as if trying to gain comfort from the warmth inside as she remembered the events surrounding the accident that had turned her daughter into a werewolf. “But the next morning, you were still hanging on. You still had a lot of internal injuries, so even though the doctors were worried you wouldn’t survive another surgery, they had to do it to save your life. But when they took you in for another CAT scan beforehand, they couldn’t find the damage that had been there on the earlier scan. The doctors thought your scan had gotten confused with someone else’s.”
“But that wasn’t it, was it, Nora?” Gage asked softly. “The injury healed itself, didn’t it?”
She nodded. “Some of the fractures Lana had sustained weren’t as bad, either. The doctors couldn’t explain it and didn’t try. They took her in for exploratory surgery, only to come out a little while later and tell Hal and me that all Lana’s injuries were healed.”
“Is that when you and the deputy chief took her out of the hospital and arranged for private care at home?” Max prompted, remembering what Lana had told him a couple days ago.
Nora glanced at him, her blue eyes tired. “Yes. Some of the doctors started talking about doing tests and taking samples, so they could figure out how she recovered from injuries that severe so quickly. Hal and I didn’t want that, so we refused to okay the tests and took her out of the hospital as soon as possible.”
“How did you hide all this from Lana?” Max asked. “The fangs, the claws, the eyes—everything? Typically, a new werewolf has trouble controlling all those things.”
Nora gave Lana a small smile. “We didn’t know s
he was a werewolf. As far as we knew, she was simply unique. We had no way of knowing there were others like her. The only times we ever saw any of those things you described was after she experienced a horrible nightmare in the month or two following the accident. She’d wake up screaming in fear, her teeth and fangs out, her eyes glowing bright green. But once she got into therapy with Dr. Delacroix and stopped having the dreams, the fangs and claws disappeared, so Hal and I didn’t think about them. I never dreamed that we were living in a town with a whole SWAT team just like her.”
Max exchanged looks with Gage at the mention of Delacroix’s name. What were the chances that the psychologist who’d worked with Cooper was also the same woman who’d worked with young Lana Mason? What was Delacroix, a werewolf whisperer?
Gage merely shrugged and turned his attention back to Nora. Max had no choice but to do the same, wondering if maybe therapy was the reason Lana’s inner werewolf had stayed hidden until recently. He was about to ask Gage if he thought that was a possibility when Nora spoke again.
“Have the fangs and claws come back?” she asked, looking at her daughter.
Lana glanced over to make sure the guy with the headphones wasn’t looking their way, then put her right hand on the table and extended her claws.
“Well, I guess they have.” Nora eyed Lana’s claws with an expression of wonder on her face before glancing at Max. “And Hal is right. You’re like Lana…a werewolf?”
Max smiled at the way she whispered the word. In answer, he placed his hand on top of Lana’s and extended his much longer claws.
“You don’t seem very alarmed by all of this,” Gage pointed out. “Which makes me wonder why Hal went to such great lengths to try to keep Lana and Max apart. If you knew what my team and I are, why didn’t you want Lana to know there were other people like her in the world?”