by Amber Lynn
I didn’t ask where the scars came from. In our world they weren’t unusual. I had plenty of my own that I’d explained away as a dog attack when Paul asked about them.
His left hand reached out to me, and I glanced down at it doubtfully. If he thought I was going to touch him when he was in nothing but a pair of shorts, he was mistaken.
“I’ve seen your mark over the years a few times, but I haven’t seen it up close since it formed. Are you going to deny me that honor?”
Evidently he thought he was a comedian.
“Why don’t you spin around and carry on explaining the world to me.”
“You do love to play hard to get. Fine, but I suggest you try your hardest to resist touching.”
I rolled my eyes as he rotated his feet to face away from me. His tanned skin was even more scarred, almost like he’d gone a couple rounds with a grizzly bear. That didn’t make it any less appealing. In fact, it turned me on just a little. Paul’s skin was so smooth that at times I’d wanted to dig my claws in and cause damage.
“Let’s not start thinking about sex with your husband, if you don’t mind. I’m glad you approve of my manliness, but don’t compare me to him.”
It’d been hard for me not to, but stupid at the same time. I focused on the man in front of me and looked up to find a wolf paw in a circle, similar to mine, but just a little different. Mine had turned a dark purple color over the years, after starting out red. His still had a red hue and was a left paw, where mine was a right paw.
I could’ve tried to claim he’d gone out and had a tattoo put on, just to act like he was special. Instead I did the stupid thing and reached out to touch it. The second my fingers made contact with skin, the fire that had abated in me increased tenfold.
It was like I’d found my way into a sauna right next to the core of the earth. If it was just the heat, it would’ve been fine, but a sickening desire started creeping up through my body, telling me clothes were evil and I’d rather surround myself with his body.
I fought that urge. I was great at fighting unnatural feelings, but that one was a little harder to beat back. Closing my eyes only made visions of what it would be like to let go creep in, so I kept them open and finally found the will to remove my hand. It could’ve been hours, but I was hopeful only a minute had passed.
Taking a step back, I shook my head to try to clear the lust and power filling it. No moves were made by the man. He stood still, breathing deeply, judging by the motion I saw.
“What exactly was that?”
I spoke of the weird desire, but as I stared at the mark and watched it turn from red to a dark green, my question encompassed a lot more than the swell of emotion.
“You’re stronger than I thought, but you couldn’t stop her. She bonded with him, and that’s going to make your fight a little tougher.”
After one more deep breath he spun around, and I was staring into the eyes of his wolf. The brightness was hard to look away from. I wondered if my eyes matched. I’d never had them turn other than in anger, so I wasn’t sure what would set off other emotions that would bring her to the surface.
“I wouldn’t doubt if they were gold moments ago, but you were quick to push her back down. I warned you not to touch.”
He took a step forward and the shine in his eyes faded back to the usual green. They seemed a little more alive than I’d seen, but at least I didn’t get the feeling he was about to try to take a pound of flesh from me. He chuckled softly, no doubt at my thoughts.
“You have to admit you haven’t seen what you just witnessed with other wolves. If that kind of thing happened to a normal wolf anytime they came in contact with their mate, things wouldn’t get done.”
I could concede that. Most of the females I knew seemed to come to terms with their plight in life, but I rarely saw anything that screamed they wanted to act on anything more than an urge to procreate.
I’d felt that urge, but there was a lot more behind the call I felt. I’d wanted to get to know every inch of him, worship him and at the same time be worshiped. It was more than just a wild rut my wolf wanted.
I didn’t understand it, or maybe I just couldn’t, because it was more than my brain was capable of comprehending. I’d felt love before, but there was more to what my head was telling me I should feel towards him.
“This is wrong.” Wrong was a mild word. Things were royally screwed in my mind.
“I don’t think you were quite ready to move onto this phase of our connection, which is why I tried to warn you. My wolf accepted yours years ago, from the very beginning. You’ve done your best to deter yours, but letting her directly feel mine makes that a little difficult to continue.”
“You’re saying that touching you was enough to let my wolf form some other kind of bond with yours? I thought we were already bonded? She wouldn’t let Paul touch me without a reaction.”
The smile on his face widened, allowing his perfect teeth to make an appearance. His eyes had dimmed, but his canines remained extended. I hadn’t noticed them while my mind tried to work on other issues.
“On your side of things she was only able to connect via the basic bond that we started upstate. As mexxej and reġina, we have another level to meet in order to take over as leaders, which you were kind enough to connect. Pretty soon you’ll be reading minds and altering things just like Selina and I can do.”
I needed to sit down. I didn’t know what was going on, but my head was swimming with chaos.
“I don’t understand.”
“Only because you don’t believe. The story of the par lupu is more than a fairy tale mothers tell their children, and the version they tell isn’t the full story. Sit down and I’ll go over the highlights often missed.”
He took my hand before I could move on my own and guided me to a wicker love seat situated in the sitting area of the balcony. Having already thought about sitting down, I didn’t fight him. I did fight his hand lingering after we were both comfortable. Whether my wolf wanted to growl at it or not, I wasn’t ready for more touching.
“I guess you have the floor.”
“Your strength is really intoxicating sometimes. I suppose that doesn’t make you feel any better, but it lets me know you’ll be up for what’s ahead. As I’ve already told you, I’ve had to deal with male wolves trying to get to you, and your power boost is going to make that job even harder. I imagine it’s already being felt, and calling out like a beacon.
“If we can last until your divorce is finalized, we’ll be fine. It’s the months leading up to it that we’ll have to be overly careful. The stories tell only of the love between the mexxej and reġina, never of the trials they face to take their proper place as rulers. As you can imagine, most wolves are like you, and believe it’s nothing more than a story.”
He stopped for a second and turned his head to the side. It was only a moment before he was up on his feet.
“Can you feel the girls or Paul? They just dropped off my radar, which I didn’t think was possible. I don’t know why Selina would block me out.”
She blocked me from knowing exactly what she was doing all the time, but I could always feel her, and I still felt her up in her room.
“They’re upstairs. I can’t promise that they’re sleeping like they’re supposed to be, but I feel them up there.”
He looked hesitant to believe me. With the power it sounded like he had, I assumed it was uncomfortable when someone else screwed with the senses he’d become dependent on.
“It’s not that. Something isn’t right. She shouldn’t be able to stop me from picking up thoughts. Selina’s strong, but she’s still a child.”
His worry started to rub off on me, and I decided there was only one way to get on with his make-believe story, checking on the girls. Since he seemed to believe the story so much, I was slightly curious exactly where he thought it would lead. I still didn’t believe I was some kind of wolf queen, but I couldn’t deny something had changed since I touc
hed his mark.
I wanted to understand exactly what that was so I could fight against that change, which was the thought I had in my head when I opened the girls’ room to find it empty. I’d navigated the house without picking up any odd feelings, so finding the room without occupants threw me off guard.
He pushed his way around me and walked straight to Selina’s bed. Seeing up close that it was empty, he moved on to Sierra’s, the closet, the bathroom and finished by looking under both beds. The girls were clearly not in the room, but I still felt them.
I ran to the master bedroom and found it empty as well. I hadn’t heard any noises to indicate that they left the upper floor, but after not finding them there, we continued through the rest of the house, finding not a soul, even the guards who usually hovered were missing.
“I suppose the good news is that it wasn’t a wolf. I don’t know why humans would kidnap Paul and the girls, but I imagine they’ll be easy enough to follow.”
He continued to have an edge of worry to his voice, but by that time, I was a few steps past hysterical. My family was missing and I hadn’t picked up that something was wrong. I had no idea what was going on, or why I still felt like everyone was in the house.
Chapter Fourteen
“I promise you I had nothing to do with this, so stop thinking of ways to skewer me. I don’t know what’s going on, but I wouldn’t have pointed out something was off if I was involved.”
We were back in the girls’ room, looking for clues on where to start our search. I’d decided that all the warnings about how my family was in danger was his way of making me think the danger was from the outside, when it was actually his plan to steal my family away from under my nose.
It seemed like something a wolf would do. A way to show how much power you had over another person.
“I have absolutely no reason to believe anything you say. You’ve been stalking me for years, talking to my daughter behind my back, and you think I’m going to believe you didn’t have something to do with them being taken?”
“There’s no motive for me to take them. You haven’t once thought about keeping Selina away from me, at least not today.”
“Why would you decide to stalk us for three years without saying anything? I don’t have any clue why you do what you do, but I’m not seeing anything out of place here and I don’t believe for a second Paul wouldn’t fight back. It had to be an inside job and you walked right into our living room today without one of the usual guys stopping you.”
My voice was gruff, but loud. I was seething at the thought that I’d been busy ogling his body while my family was kidnapped. He still hadn’t put his shirt back on, just his badge. I didn’t know how it was going to help the situation, but if he found one of the girls’ stuffed animals acting suspicious, I supposed he had the situation under control.
“I already explained why I did what I did. I was waiting for you to leave him on your own, but after seeing you ready to rekindle things with him, even when you both understood there wasn’t ever going to be the connection you once had, I had to rework my initial plans to include him.”
“None of what you said makes sense. Neither does the fact that we’re standing here in a room with no clues while someone out there has my family. You’re the cop, where are they?”
I couldn’t pick up a single scent that didn’t belong in the room. I could agree on only one thing that he’d said, and that was that no wolf took Paul and the girls. I supposed he could’ve been lying about not blocking things when I asked him, but I had to believe that it was someone Paul knew. I just didn’t understand how they’d convinced him to leave with them.
“Here’s what I know. First, I had nothing to do with it. Second, the more I think about it, the more I think a wolf may be calling the shots externally. There definitely wasn’t one here, but I don’t know how a human would’ve known our guard would be down. They had to have been taken when you touched my mark. That was the only time my mind was occupied.”
“Great. I guess we have confirmation that we shouldn’t bother getting to know each other if a simple touch blocks us from knowing someone is stealing my husband and kids. How many wolves are in town who could’ve masterminded a kidnapping, and why would they think to target things tonight? Since you’ve been screwing with my senses, I’m barely able to tell my brother is around when I go to visit him.”
I was standing on one side of Selina’s bed while he stood opposite me. It’d been at least a half an hour since we figured out something was wrong. My sense that they were in the house had faded, and with it my worry somehow managed to increase.
Stressing out a werewolf was a bad idea. The wolf inside me wanted to shift, jump out the window to track down whoever had my family and tear them to shreds. Since I was pretending to be human, and I knew the Governor’s Mansion always had a reporter or two hiding in the bushes, I refrained from acting on my instincts.
“None that I’m aware of. I don’t generally think werewolves are that smart because of their need to act on impulses rather than think a plan through. The odd things we’ve sensed are more than likely Selina, but I don’t understand why she’d make you think everything was fine, while shutting me out. Another wolf couldn’t do that, so it has to be her.”
For the part about blocking him out, I could’ve said she did that because she was smart, but I was busy going through the list of guards I thought should’ve been monitoring the house. Even with our new personal guard, there should’ve been around ten men on duty, and I hadn’t seen a single one while I looked through the house.
“We’ve both jumped to the idea that someone took them, but what if the girls convinced Paul to take them out for ice cream? They could’ve taken a couple of the guards with them.”
I was grasping at straws. I wanted to find a logical explanation. Maybe it wasn’t the girls who initiated the exodus. Maybe Paul thought it was best they didn’t hear the conversation we were having on the balcony.
“We can hope that’s the case, but would they take something other than the SUV we were in earlier today? I checked for cars and that was the only one outside.”
He took out his phone and dialed before lifting it to his ear. He didn’t need to bother with that step, because I heard ringing from outside the house. I wasn’t sure who he was calling, but as I took off in a run to find out, I had a pretty good idea.
The phone wasn’t exactly close to the house, but six hundred yards was close enough for me to cover in twenty seconds. I picked up the familiar phone and looked down to see an unknown number calling.
“I suppose that at least verifies things for us,” my shadow said, hanging up his phone. “I’m guessing the ice cream shop isn’t in the residential houses down that hill.”
Any place serving ice cream was at least five miles away, and there was no reason for them to walk around the back of the house. I started hitting buttons on the phone, trying to see if there were any clues. In the end, I found only the phone being where it wasn’t supposed to be a clue.
“Okay, so we have a direction, which we should’ve figured out about an hour ago, but I’ve been so busy distracted by you that I didn’t even think to call my husband.”
“Don’t say it. I don’t care if you think I’m behind this, I’m not leaving.”
His ability to read my thoughts stopped surprising me. I was getting ready to suggest he head back to his life so I could find my missing family.
“I imagine I can’t physically make you leave, but I can ignore your presence.”
I bent down to study the grass at my feet. There were shoe prints going every direction, which didn’t surprise me because we were standing in an area that often found families having picnics.
Other than the phone, nothing indicated Paul had been there. I didn’t smell a single thing that triggered me to follow where they’d gone. I didn’t smell the girls either.
“They were carried, which is masking their scents. I smell strong cologne fadin
g, presumably that’s what they used to cover the trail. A human wouldn’t know to do that.”
I was ignoring him, so I didn’t voice the questions I had. I could sense what he was saying, which only brought home the point that a wolf was somehow involved. No one else would’ve known to mask scents with cologne. It didn’t explain why we hadn’t smelled the same cologne anywhere in the house.
I hadn’t had issues with wolves since leaving my pack. I rarely ever saw my brother, and he was the only one I knew who actually lived in the city.
I stood up and looked off in the direction I assumed they went. I needed to be smart, running off into the night randomly wouldn’t help me find them. I didn’t feel them, which was odd since I’d felt the girls when they were nothing but cells.
The missing guards had to be involved somehow. I decided I needed to find out who was on duty and where they were. There had to be more than one to carry Paul and the girls off. I couldn’t imagine anyone carrying Paul around, but I would’ve known his shoe prints.
I didn’t want to alert the media that the governor had been kidnapped. I assumed the police would wave their forty-eight hours missing persons delay for the man who was in charge of the man in charge of the man who signed their checks, but I didn’t want to get them involved.
“Speaking of your brother, I’m going to call him in to help. I know you two have issues, but a third set of eyes and ears won’t hurt. We’re a little emotionally charged, and he’ll be able to look at things with a clear head.”
I hadn’t ruled my brother out as a suspect. He clearly hated Paul, and I didn’t doubt he had an issue with his partner’s plan to let Paul live.
I started walking back towards the house without replying. I figured if they were working together, it was only because they were covering their tracks.