“Yeah,” she allowed.
“And how I told you that Dante was dangerous?”
She stared at him in full recognition of the conversations they’d had during their waterfall hike.
“I think he lured you outside—”
“That’s crazy.”
“He’s done it before. The woman who owns the diner, Angel Mercer, had the same exact thing happen to her. She was found in the woods behind her house. She was disoriented. She had no memory of how she got out there.”
“So why do you think Dante was responsible?”
She wasn’t being confrontational. In fact, Elizabeth looked like she believed him so completely that it had taken her breath away.
He had no idea how he was going to explain this to her. All he knew was that she would need to know everything—everything about Dante, about himself and his brothers, about the history of werewolves in the Fist—before she agreed to be his for all of eternity.
If anything was crazy, it was that. What was he supposed to do? Tell her everything in one fell swoop and expect her to not only take his word for it but to volunteer herself to be his for the rest of her life?
He could see no way out of it, so he sucked in another long, fortifying breath, and said, “Whatever happened to Angel Mercer out in those woods…”
“Dean, you’re scaring me,” she warned.
He pushed his point through to its farthest conclusion, ignoring how insane he sounded. “It resulted in her becoming a werewolf.”
There. He’d said it.
Elizabeth’s green eyes widened as round as saucers and she nearly dropped the mug of coffee she was clutching. She caught it, but coffee sloshed out, spilling down her towel-covered chest. She didn’t look at the spill or even seem to feel it.
“What are you telling me, Dean?” she asked in a quavering, terrified voice.
“I’m telling you that Dante Alighieri has been building a pack of werewolves. He takes mortals and turns them. The ones I’ve talked to, those he has turned that me and my brothers know about, don’t remember a thing.”
“Are you saying I’m a werewolf now?”
“I don’t know whether you are or you aren’t,” he told her honestly. “But…” he went on, but couldn’t easily get the words out. He tried again, “But I’m a werewolf, too.”
“What?!”
“I’m not like Dante,” he tried to assure her. “I’m not evil. I’m not building a dark army. I don’t turn people against their will.”
“But you’re a… werewolf?”
“Yes.”
He let the information hang in the air between them and watched as Elizabeth very slowly absorbed the news.
“But you’re saying,” she started, barely able to process what little he’d managed to tell her—man, the full picture was so much bigger than what he’d barely explained—then continued, “you’re saying that Dante has powers? He can erase memory?”
“He can, and I think he was able to get you outside because he entered your mind and exerted some dark form of mind control over you.”
She stared at him for a very long moment. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with this information, Dean. You’re telling me you’re a werewolf. I might be a werewolf. I was mind controlled by a werewolf. I, I,” she stammered, unable to make her brain work. “I’m a werewolf?”
“I don’t know whether you are or aren’t and since you can’t remember what happened last night, we’ll have to wait and see.”
“Wait and see what?”
All he wanted to do was reach for her, to hold her close, to protect her from the nightmare that she now knew she was trapped in. But nothing could save her from the truth. And nothing he could do would protect her from what had already happened to her last night.
“We’ll have to wait and see if you shift.”
“If I shift?” she asked, horrified. “We’ll have to wait and see if I shift into a wolf?”
“Yeah.”
She burst out laughing, coming to the brink of mind-boggled hysterics, but soon her cackling laughter twisted and sank into cries as panicked tears spilled down her rosy cheeks.
“What’s the antidote?” she asked as hope filled her big, green eyes.
All Dean could do was shake his head and whisper, “I’m sorry. I should’ve never left you last night.”
From seemingly out of nowhere, she thwacked his arm—hard—then wound up to deliver another blow, but he caught her swinging arm.
“You let me go on a date with him!” she yelled, furious. “Why the hell would you let me go out and be alone with him like that if you knew what he was capable of?!”
“Would you have let me stop you?” he yelled right back. “Would you have believed me if I’d told you any of this before?” he challenged, raising his voice even more. “What would you have done, Elizabeth, if I’d told you, oh hey, don’t go out with that werewolf, he’s the bad kind, you should stick with me, because I’m the good kind of werewolf? Huh? What would you have done?”
“I would’ve jumped in my Mercedes and gotten the hell out of town!” she shot back, fully incited now.
“No, you wouldn’t have!” he hotly informed her, and he knew exactly why.
It wasn’t just because she was the most stubborn, obstinate woman he’d ever encountered in his life. It wasn’t because so long as anyone told her what to do, she would be hellbent on doing either the opposite or exactly as she pleased anyway. It was because Elizabeth Halsey was destined to become his one true mate. The second she’d met him, the moment she’d looked into her eyes, their souls were tied. She wouldn’t have been able to leave the Fist if she’d tried. She was drawn to him. Her instincts told her, whether she consciously understood it or not, that she needed to be around him. That’s why she hadn’t left Devil’s Fist and that’s why she’d pushed hard to be around him, to tempt and seduce him—which he obviously liked—even if it meant arguing and fighting with him. Every bone in her body was compelled to be with Dean Quinn. But could he tell her that? Could he tell her that she was destined to become his one true mate?
“You’re very arrogant!” she accused.
“You’re very ignorant!” he shot back.
She gasped, appalled and offended and at a loss for words. “Ignorant!”
“Yes,” he insisted, unwilling to back down or apologize.
“There has to be a way to undo this,” she said, but more to herself than anyone. “I know the best doctors in California. Specialists. I have access to scientists and the leading innovators in every sector of medicine.”
“Don’t go off the deep end,” he told her. “We don’t know if you’re a werewolf.”
“You think I’m going to wait around to find out? I should be in a hospital or, or…”
“There isn’t a single doctor or scientist out there who would be able to reverse a werewolf back to their purely human and mortal form,” he said, but the statement hadn’t at all come out as the apology he’d meant it to. Before he could stop himself, he blurted out, “Besides, you’re destined to become a werewolf anyway.”
“What the hell are you talking about now?”
“Shit, I shouldn’t have said that.”
“You know what? You’re insane,” she said as she jumped off the bed, but as soon as her feet hit the wooden floors, her balance betrayed her. She wobbled and would’ve fallen to the ground if Dean hadn’t swooped in and caught her.
“You need to rest.”
“Get off of me!” she objected and tried to shove him away, but he was holding her too tightly.
She could beat his chest or spit in his face if she wanted to, he still wasn’t going to let her spill to the ground and hurt herself.
He eased her back onto the bed and told her, “Try to calm down—”
“Don’t you tell me to calm down,” she hissed as she tucked herself against the headboard where she’d been sitting. Then it dawned on her, “Destined to become a werewolf? You mean
like you? That’s what you mean, isn’t it? Isn’t it, Dean!”
“Yes!”
“Ha!” she laughed. “You are arrogant! You’re just mad because Dante turned me before you could, aren’t you?”
For the million time, he told her, “We don’t know that Dante has turned you!”
“But that’s why you’re pissed!”
“You’re probably protected since you’re meant for me!”
It had slipped out. Of all the things he shouldn’t have told her, this was it.
Elizabeth’s eyebrows had shot clear up to her hairline and if her eyes were any wider they would’ve tumbled out of their sockets.
She eerily repeated, “I’m meant for you?”
As if he might be able to brush over the notion, he assured her, “I don’t see how Dante would be able to successfully turn you since you’re marked for me.”
“Wow,” she said, her tone revealing a strange mix of alarm and skepticism. “You’re completely bat shit crazy.”
He groaned out a sigh and pinched the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger.
Should this be the part where he tells her that his eldest brother and werewolf king has a gift for foresight and can see certain aspects of the future as it pertains to his brothers’ soulmates?
Um, no, that would probably not be the smartest move he could make at this juncture.
But if he wanted to convince her, Dean knew that the time for talking had passed.
He would have to show her, if he wanted her to shut her mouth and open her mind to the realities of everything he’d been trying to explain.
Before he could overthink it, before he could weigh the pros against the cons, he stepped off the bed and faster than the speed of light collapsed into his wolf form.
Elizabeth screamed bloody murder, but he’d made his point so he shifted back into his human form and looked down at her from beside the bed.
“Like I said, I’m a werewolf,” he told her in a gruff tone.
She believed him. He could see it in her eyes, and he knew that if she believed he was a werewolf, then she would have to believe everything else he had just painfully revealed to her.
In a very quiet, accepting voice, she asked, “I’m meant for you?”
“No one ever gave me a rule book so that I would know how to do this,” he told her. “I’m sure that overwhelming you with all of the information at once was too much. But yes, you’re meant for me. You’re my one true mate. Our souls are marked. You’re destined to become mine and as mine you’ll become a werewolf, just like me. That’s why I’m optimistic that Dante couldn’t have turned you. I trust that only I can do that. But Dante has powers. My brothers and I don’t entirely know what he’s capable of. If he’s found a way to bend or break the rules…”
“Then he could’ve broken whatever destiny you and I may have had?” she supplied.
“I seriously hope that’s not the case.”
Chapter Ten
ELIZABETH
It was surreal. What Dean had told her—no, what he had forced on her—was impossible to mentally grasp. But he had also shown her. It would have been easy to write him off as some kind of deranged maniac, an insane person, someone whose grip on reality was so loose that he deserved to be locked up in an asylum, if only he hadn’t proved the validity of everything he’d told her by actually transforming into a black wolf right before her very eyes.
She would’ve preferred to believe she was trapped in a nightmarish dream, that if she held on long enough, she would rise up out of the nightmare and find herself safe and cozy in her luxurious bed in Los Angeles. But she knew that wasn’t the case. She wasn’t dreaming. This was real life, and it would seem that life as she now knew it had become stranger than fiction.
She wasn’t thinking clearly, though. Whatever had happened to her out in the woods last night had left her foggy-brained and confused. But at this point, the headache and body aches she was suffering only added to the surrealism of it all.
The only thing that had made even the slightest fraction of sense was that Dean seemed convinced she was meant for him.
It had a ring of truth to it, but the bell it had struck sounded very far away as if it was vibrating from the farthest corner of her heart.
It explained a lot—why she’d felt drawn to Dean, why no matter how hotly she argued or how fiercely she tried to pull away she remained magnetized to him, and why when he touched her it felt like every inch of her body ignited on fire for him—but she had questions. So many questions that she felt buried under them.
“Why would I be meant for you?” she asked from where she sat with her knees tucked practically to her chin, her back against the headboard of his bed. “Why me?”
“I have no idea,” he said honestly. “I guess it’s one of the greater mysteries of the universe. Three out of my four brothers have one true mates that were destined for them. We never learned why they had been specifically marked, we only knew that they were.”
Falling into deep consideration, she asked, “Do you think it has to do with the land?”
“What do you mean?”
“I wonder…” she trailed off, but the idea seemed too terrible to consider.
“What?” he pushed.
“It never made sense to me why my dad would hold land in Wyoming. And from what you told me about the history of the old Halsey land as all the residents have been referring to it, it sounds like my father didn’t buy it, but that he probably inherited it from his father, and my grandfather may have inherited it as well. I wonder why we have been tied to this place.”
“If your father was a werewolf, I think you would’ve known that,” Dean offered, but Elizabeth wasn’t so sure.
She had loved and admired her dad, but he hadn’t exactly been a hands-on father. Throughout her upbringing, he had rarely been home. He wasn’t exactly a fixture of the mansion she’d been raised in. As she grew older, coming into her teenage years, her dad had taken her on select trips to show her certain developments he had completed, but even those instances her dad hadn’t spent too much time with her. In a lot of ways, Thomas Halsey had remained a mystery to Elizabeth her entire life. Maybe there was a lot more to the mystery than she could’ve ever before considered.
She grazed all ten fingers through her drying, blonde hair as though doing so would keep her mind from splitting apart. When she looked at Dean next, locking eyes with him, she once again felt the strong, unbreakable connection that seemed to have been binding them together since day one.
“I don’t know why, but I believe you,” she breathed.
A subtle smile tugged at the corner of his mouth and he took a stab at teasing, “You don’t know why you believe me? I just turned into a wolf a second ago.”
She smiled. “Yeah, I noticed,” she allowed. “That’s not what I’m talking about.” She sobered up and fell back into a low, serious mood, clarifying, “I believe I’m meant for you. I’ve been able to feel it, but I guess I’ve been ignoring it or I couldn’t make sense of it or I thought it was some kind of hormonal response to your good looks.”
“You think I look good?” he grinned.
She shot him a leveling glance that implied that of course she thought he looked good. He was easily the best looking man she’d ever seen, though she’d like to see him in a suit. The jeans and tee-shirt ensemble was getting old.
“What does it mean, though?” she asked. “I have to become a werewolf?”
“Eventually, yes,” he admitted. “But not against your will and not until you really want to become one. Right now, though,” he went on, his tone dropping into the territory of concern, “with Dante terrorizing the town, everything has changed.”
It was almost unfathomable that the handsome, professional, real estate man who had charmed her so easily could be such an incredible threat to Devil’s Fist. Almost. Elizabeth honestly would have never guessed him capable and though it was hard to wrap her hazy mind around, she
was starting to grasp the severity of the situation.
Devil’s Fist was under attack and Dante Alighieri was leading the charge.
“How long do we have to wait before we’ll know whether or not he’s turned me?” she asked, scared.
“Maybe not long,” he allowed. “We could go see my grandmother and Troy, my oldest brother. They might be able to see into you, see what happened last night, or at the very least be able to tell if you’ve been turned.”
She drew in a deep breath, feeling even more scared than she had.
“I think we should,” she finally answered. “But not just yet,” she breathed as she reached for him. “I think I need a little more time… in bed… with you.”
Dean grinned as she pulled him over her and they laid down on the bed. She just needed a little break from the horror of what had happened, from the insanity of all she’d learned, and from whatever would be waiting for her at Dean’s grandmother’s house. She just needed a few minutes to forget it all and to get lost in the incredible feel of being with Dean Quinn.
Despite her splitting headache and how sore her muscles felt—it felt like ever her bones were aching and she feared to imagine what that was a symptom of—she urged Dean over her, spreading her legs so that he could lower down in-between, and cupped his face in her hands.
She searched his eyes for a long moment, drinking in the sight of his features, and when she locked her gaze on his lips, he leaned in, coming close for a kiss.
His lips were warm and silky smooth and also firm as he kissed her. Her eyelids grew heavy and she moaned as he deepened their kiss, helping her head to tilt and caressing the sensitive length of her neck.
But the harder Elizabeth tried to forget the nightmare that had enveloped her, the darker the doom she felt in her chest became.
Whatever Dante Alighieri had done to her last night was growing deep inside of her…
…and Elizabeth was deathly afraid that sooner or later that darkness would swallow her whole.
***
At around the time Elizabeth and Dean were drifting off together into a spell of warm sleep, in the heart of the Fist Dante Alighieri breezed into Libations where Detective Eddie Friendly had agreed to meet him during his lunchbreak.
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