by D. M. Turner
The man just inside the door shot Ian a wide-eyed glance, swallowed, and lowered his gaze.
“What’s your name?” Sophia asked gently, easing closer.
“Clara,” came a faint whisper. “I’m looking for Kelly.”
“You know Kelly?”
A slight nod. “She’s my sister.”
Sophia glanced at O’Neil. “Would you please call Kelly and let her know her sister is here?”
The man nodded and pulled a large phone out of a pocket on the leg of his cargo pants.
“How do you know she’s telling the truth about who she is?”
She sighed then glanced back at Ian. “Look at her. Why would she lie about something that’s so easy to verify? Besides which, we’d all know she was lying, if she tried. Unless you don’t think you’d be able to sniff out a lie.”
His tight frown remained.
A soft whimper pulled her attention back to the woman, who shrank even more with a fearful look at Ian and turned to shield the bundle in her arms further.
Sophia laid a hand on the woman’s shoulder. “Regardless of the fact he’s a thorn in my butt at the moment, Ian won’t hurt you. I promise you that. What have you got there?”
Clara loosened her grip enough to reveal an infant. Newborn, if the small size and traces of blood were any indication.
Turning her gaze on Ian, Sophia forced a calm tone. “She has a baby. What room can I put them in?”
Ian scowled then pointed toward the guest wing. “A room upstairs, second door on the left, contains a bassinet.”
“That’ll do.” She put an arm around the terrified woman and led her toward the hallway. Only then did she realize how badly Clara trembled. Purely fear, or weakness, too? “Think you can manage the stairs?”
A shaky nod was the response. The woman cringed violently, her gaze directed to the floor, when they passed Ian.
Sophia met his gaze briefly. “Perhaps a doctor would be a good idea. Make sure Annie comes.” If Clara freaked out about Jeremy, too, at least Annie could take a look at her and the baby.
Ian nodded.
Step-by-slow-step, Sophia guided Clara up the stairs and to the second door on the left, per Ian’s instructions. She turned on the lamp on the nightstand. As Ian had said, a bassinet sat next to the bed. She gently extricated the infant from Clara’s arms and laid it in the tiny bed then helped the woman sit. With gentle hands, she examined the frightened woman’s face and exposed forearms and hands. So many bruises. Layers of them.
To make it worse, every bone stuck out, pressing against the inside of pale skin. How had she carried a child to term, starved like that? How was she even still alive? “You’ve been starved.”
Clara nodded. Tears filled her eyes. “He punished me for not moving fast enough to do something he told me to do.”
“By withholding food while you were pregnant?”
Another weak nod.
“How could your husband do that to you?”
For the first time, a bit of fire lit the other woman’s dark green eyes. “He’s not my husband. He never married me. I never accepted him as my mate either. He bought me. He owned me, nothing more.”
“What?” Horror sliced through Sophia’s chest. “Who sold you?”
“My father.”
“Oh, Clara, I’m so sorry.” And I thought my father was a rotten peach. She sat on the edge of the bed and put an arm around Clara, careful not to squeeze in case there were more serious injuries than bruises.
“He demanded I call him Master.” She covered her face with a battered hand and broke into sobs. “When I realized I was having a girl this time, I had to leave. I can’t risk him getting his hands on her. I won’t let him hurt her.”
“You did the right thing, bringing her here. We’ll protect her.” Well, she would. She couldn’t speak for Ian or his pack, though if Kelly had anything to say about it, they’d probably do so as well. “We’ll protect both of you.”
“I don’t care about me.” The woman’s gaze settled on the still, quiet infant. “As long as she’s safe, that’s all I care about.” A faint smile appeared. “I named her Hope. It’s my hope that she has a far better life than I’ve had.”
“She will, because you had the courage to fight for her.” Sophia smiled.
Clara met her gaze. “I wish I’d had it sooner.”
The soul-deep despair and sorrow in the woman’s eyes sent a chill all the way to Sophia’s soul. There was also an eerie acceptance. She’d seen that look before.
The thunder of running footsteps on the stairs was soon followed by Kelly appearing in the doorway. Her eyes widened when they landed on her sister. “Clara!” She ran toward the bed.
Sophia held out a hand. “Careful. She’s in bad shape. Bruises, possibly… worse.”
The woman stopped and studied her sister more closely. “I’m so sorry, Clara. I knew he was evil, but I had no idea it was so bad.”
“There’s no way you could’ve known.” Clara shook her head. “He supervised my phone calls, so I couldn’t tell you.”
“How did you find me here?”
“Remember, you called me from Flagstaff when you first came here to attend the university?” She smiled. “I never told Farley that you called. When Daddy called looking for you, I feigned ignorance, but I don’t know if it worked.”
Kelly shook her head. “He found me, but he’s dead now.”
“I followed the scent of werewolf from Flagstaff.”
Sophia frowned. The woman had walked for miles. Had no one tried to help her, or had she hidden herself due to her condition?
A soft mewling sound drew all of their gazes. Kelly stepped to the bassinet. “You have a baby.”
“Her name’s Hope.” Tears slid down Clara’s face. “I have nothing to give her, so she hasn’t eaten since she was born yesterday evening.”
Kelly’s eyes filled then she picked up the tiny infant. “I guess now I know why God has me producing more milk than my son can consume.” Her gaze shifted to her sister. “If it’s okay with you, that is.”
Clara nodded. “I brought her to you. I know you’ll keep her safe.”
“We’ll watch over both of you. Have you healthy in no time.”
Sophia looked into the abused woman’s eyes and wasn’t so sure. “Why don’t I let you two visit? I’ll send Jeremy up when he gets here.”
“No!” Terror wreathed Clara’s face, and she trembled.
“No men. I’m sorry.” Sophia closed her eyes for a moment before looking at the woman. “I should’ve thought before I spoke. Would it be okay if I send up his wife, Annie? She’s a nurse.”
Clara relaxed marginally and nodded. Her attention shifted to watching Kelly settle in a rocking chair in one corner to nurse Hope.
“I’ll do that then.” Sophia left the room, closing the door on her way out. She only made it partway down the stairs before tears came. Her legs gave out, and she collapsed on one of the steps and leaned her head against the wall.
“What’s wrong?”
She glanced to the base of the stairs.
Ian stood there, studying her.
She wiped away tears. “Why do men do that? Treat women that way? Aren’t men supposed to protect? How can one of you do that to anyone?”
He scowled. “I would never do that. I don’t understand men who do.”
“She won’t survive,” she whispered.
He mounted the steps then sat beside her. “What makes you say that?”
“The way she looked at me. Hopelessness. Despair. Sorrow. Acceptance.” Sophia lowered her head. “I’ve seen that look before.”
“When?”
“In my mother’s eyes the day she died.” A sob broke free, and she wrapped her arms tightly around herself. “They said her death was an accident. A drunk driver hit her. They said she must not have seen the truck coming, but they hadn’t seen what I had. All these years, I’ve believed she saw the truck and wanted it to hit her. She to
ok my youngest brother with her. Daddy claimed Eddie wasn’t his, so he was really nasty to him.” She laughed softly without humor. “Well, nastier than he was to the rest of us, anyway.”
“Why would she do something like that?”
“To escape. To find peace. As far back as I can remember, Daddy controlled every aspect of our lives. My mother’s day was scheduled to the minute. Housework, caring for the children, meals. He even told her when she could go to the store and how long she could be there. If she got held up, he beat her. If anything wasn’t to his liking, he punished her. If any of us made too much noise or looked at him wrong, he beat on us, too.”
* * *
Horror settled in to stay as Ian listened to Sophia’s words. No wonder she was gun-shy with dominant males. Her father had been of the worst sort possible. “How old were you when your mother died?”
“Ten.”
So young. Apprehension wove through his body. “How did your father respond to that?”
“He went into a rage, wanted to kill the man who’d run her over.” She wiped both hands over her face. “Then he expected the routine to be restored.”
“What?” Ian frowned in confusion.
“I was the oldest. I had a younger brother and sister to take care of. Daddy pulled me out of school and had me take care of them, the house, the cooking, all of it.”
“That’s a lot for a child to manage.”
“Learning it all was hard. He punished me a lot early on because I didn’t get everything right. I eventually figured it out, and things mostly leveled off.” She leaned her head against Ian’s shoulder.
Though it wasn’t much, he took comfort in the gesture. Didn’t her willingness to lean on him, even in that small measure, mean she trusted him not to be like her father? Had the abuse been only physical, or…? He forced his body not to tense. “What about… his other… needs?”
Sophia shook her head. “Thankfully, he had girlfriends. I think he had them before Mom died actually.”
“Did you have to stay with him until you were eighteen?” A childhood spent abused by a heartless monster. People feared werewolves, but far worse things than wolves lived among them.
“No. He had this habit of dragging me out of bed in the middle of the night when he was in one of his drunken stupors, just so he could scream at me and beat on me. One night, when I was fifteen, he grabbed me, and I was awake in an instant, grabbed a bat I’d hidden under my pillow and hit him before he could hit me.”
The same state she’d awakened in when Jeremy had hold of her that first night and when Ian had tried to remove her shoes?
“I told him if he ever touched me again, I wouldn’t stop hitting him until he was dead. The next morning, he signed us over to the state, told them he was tired of dealing with a bunch of brats. We were all shuffled into different foster homes.”
“I’m surprised he didn’t call the cops.”
“And admit to other men that his fifteen-year-old daughter put a hurting on him with a baseball bat for abusing her?”
“Good point. Did you see your brother and sister again?”
“Not until after I became an adult. Then it was too late. My sister died of a drug overdose at seventeen. My brother ended up in prison for armed robbery and nearly beating a man to death. He was murdered by another inmate.”
“I’m sorry.”
She shrugged and released a long sigh. “They made their choices. I couldn’t be there to help them. I couldn’t fix it.”
Ian slipped an arm around her waist, moving slowly in case the move spooked her. She settled more fully against him, and he relaxed. “I hope foster care was better.”
“The foster home they put me in was kind of a group home. I was one of three girls, and there were three boys. The boys thought they were tough guys. I found out the first night that they were routinely raping the other two girls.”
He closed his eyes and swallowed to keep his stomach where it belonged. “Did they hurt you?”
“They tried. I told them if they even looked at me I’d make them regret it.”
“Good for you.” He hugged her for a moment before easing his hold.
“Two of them jumped me one night while the third was out with friends. I was able to get to a lamp. I cut lose with all the rage I’d bottled for years. It might not have been so bad for them except the lamp base was wooden, so I was able to use it repeatedly before it splintered and fell apart.”
“How did they fare?”
“Both of them ended up in the emergency room.” She shivered. “I was arrested.”
Arrested? Why would they arrest the true victim? “Did you tell them what had happened? What the boys were doing?”
“Yes.”
“They didn’t believe you?”
“The other two girls were afraid to back me up, so they lied. I was sent to juvie, and because I kept fighting with bullies, I pretty much spent most of my time in solitary.”
Ian chuckled. “Why do I get the feeling you wanted it that way?”
She shrugged and flicked him a smile. “Maybe you’ve figured me out a lot faster than the staff there did.”
“How long were you stuck in there?”
“A year, but I was okay with it. I focused on my education, used all the time alone to study.” Sophia sniffled. “My social worker came one day and said they’d found out the truth of what was happening in that foster home. Apparently after I was removed, those boys went right back to their old tricks. They got found out when they accidentally killed one of the girls. The surviving girl confessed everything.”
“How sad that one of them died for the truth to come out,” he muttered.
“I was put into a new foster home with a wonderful Christian couple. They ran a restaurant and expected the kids to help out. They had kids of their own plus me and another foster child. We all helped in the restaurant. I loved it. All of it, but especially working in the kitchen.” Tension bled off her body, and she sank closer to him. “Mrs. Abernathy was an incredible cook, and she was so kind and patient. She and her husband led me to the Lord.”
“The greatest gift they could’ve given you.”
She nodded. “They helped me finish school and get into the culinary academy.”
“Do you still have contact with them?”
Sophia shook her head. “No. Mr. Abernathy died of a heart attack while I was in culinary school. Mrs. Abernathy sold the restaurant and went to live near one of their sons back east. I lost contact after they moved a couple of times.”
“That’s too bad.”
She shrugged. “It’s just as well. I couldn’t explain my life to them. Not now.”
He certainly understood that. He’d had to leave his parents after he was Turned and head west to the great open spaces to hide what he’d become. Everything and everyone he’d known. Gone. Not many werewolves were blessed to keep their friends or family after they were Turned. Tanya was a rare one in that sense.
The faint hum of a vehicle caught his ear. “Jeremy and Annie are here.”
With a deep sigh, Sophia got to her feet. “I’m going back to bed. Don’t send Jeremy up there. Clara’s terrified of men. Let Annie take care of her. Okay?”
Ian nodded then watched her go. He hated for her to be alone right then, but there was no choice in the matter. He stood and descended the stairs.
O’Neil appeared at the end of the hall. “I’ve got that bloodstain soaking. It should come out nicely.”
“Thank you.”
“Ian?” A female voice from above pulled his attention up the stairs. Kelly looked down at him, her eyes red and puffy as though she’d been crying.
“Yes?”
“Farley will come after her. He won’t give her up without a fight.”
He knew what that meant. Weary to the bone, he nodded. “We’ll call in the pack. We won’t let him have her.”
“Thank you.” Tears filled her eyes.
“Find out what you can about
the pack, so we have an idea what we could be up against.”
She nodded and retreated back down the hall.
Ian turned to O’Neil. “Call the others. Tell them I want everyone here by daylight. You and David may want to get your families out of town until this passes.”
“I’ll consult with David about it. Maybe he can fly them to Texas to visit my wife’s family or something.”
He nodded. “I need sleep. Wake me when everyone’s here.”
“Yes, sir.”
Chapter 18
Monday, April 16, 2018
Heart racing, Sophia sat up in the dark room, gasping for breath and fighting for control of a wolf that wanted to kill someone. It was a nightmare. Nothing more. There’s no real threat. Calm down. Muscles and bones ached with the beginnings of the Shift, but she forced it down and turned on the light to chase away the shadows in her mind.
Daddy’s not part of my life anymore. He can’t hurt me. Those boys either. Sedgwick is dead. No threat. I’m safe.
The beast inside settled after several long minutes.
She lay back but was too restless to sleep. Fear continued to nag at the edges of awareness. Sleep brought vulnerability.
Except when Ian’s near.
Sophia got up, shut off the light, and padded down the hall to the living room. Just before she entered the dining room, the soft rumble of voices made her pause. Brett, and two other males she didn’t recognize. She’d have to pass them to reach Ian’s bedroom. Introductions. Conversation. She wasn’t interested in either at the moment, particularly if it meant dealing with unfamiliar males.
Rather than return to the guestroom, she wiggled out of the clothes she’d worn to bed, Shifted, and continued toward Ian’s room.
Brett and the men stood near the fireplace, talking in low tones. All three turned to look at her. One moved to intercept her, standing between her and her destination with a scowl, staring her down.
She lifted a lip in warning and stalked toward him. If he thought he’d intimidate her with that look, he better think again.
