Alpha's Second Chance_Shifter Nation_Werebears Of The Everglades

by Meg Ripley

  The rest came back to her quickly. A man had appeared, seemingly out of nowhere, but her vision had been so blurry, she hadn’t been able to see him clearly. He’d fought them though, she was sure of it, and watching the mesmerizing way he moved, she’d felt the calm come back to her.

  But what happened? One minute, she’d been back on her feet fighting, and the next…she had no idea.

  She looked down at her body, inspecting her physical condition, which surprisingly wasn’t so bad. There was blood on her torn clothing, but it didn’t appear to be hers because she bore no evidence of injury. Her wrists were smooth and flawless, despite the vicious grasp that held them and there were no bruises where the man had crushed her arms in his grasp. She could still clearly recall the painful throbbing in her face, quite certain at the time she’d broken every bone from her forehead to her jaw, but there was no pain there now.

  But why couldn’t she remember what had happened next?

  She tested the back of her head with her fingers, searching for some sign of injury that could explain it, but found none. Quickly she realized though that the biggest problem she faced at the moment was figuring out where she was, not how she got there.

  Had they taken her somewhere? Was she being held captive? And again…why?

  She leapt from the bed suddenly alert, looking for something—anything—she could use as a weapon. If she’d failed fighting with her hands, then she needed something more. She’d be ready the moment they opened that door.

  The pickings were slim, but she found a candlestick. It was very old, but sturdy, and the base of it was embellished with gold leaves, each of which came to a nasty point.

  She’d no sooner picked it up when the door began to open, so slowly, her anticipation grew and stretched taut. She clutched the makeshift weapon tight, prepared to attack, but then she froze.

  It was Grant, and seeing him now, she was suddenly quite certain he was the man who had come to her rescue last night—or, at least she thought. But if he’d been there to help her, why was he holding her captive now? Her arm shook with her indecision.

  “Is that any way to say thank you?” he asked, his deep whisky voice making her muscles relax just a little. While he appeared at ease, he also seemed to be eyeing her just as suspiciously as she was eyeing him.

  “Where am I?” she asked, delaying the decision to attack.

  “You’re in my home.”

  Why would he tell her that if he had any intentions of letting her go? Why would he have shown his face, for that matter? A niggle of fear tickled the base of her spine, but she forced it back, remembering what had happened when she’d let the paralyzing emotion rise up.

  “Why am I here?”

  He chuckled lightly, but then his look turned serious. “What… are you, Freya?” he asked.

  What? She wasn’t a ‘what,’ she was a ‘who.’ “I’m Freya Cullen, as you very well know. What am I doing here?”

  He ignored her question, throwing his previous one back at her. “What are you?”

  It was her turn to ignore him. “What are you going to do with me?”

  Whatever his plan for her, she had no intention of going along with it, but she could try to glean as much information as possible.

  He stared back at her; his eyes met hers, and it seemed like he was searching for something. Like yesterday, it felt like he was trying to see deeper, but his broad shoulders relaxed a moment later, and the look on his face changed.

  “I plan to take you home once you’re up for it, which appears to be soon,” he said, glancing down the length of her body. “And I trust you’ll stay out of trouble in the future.”

  “You’re going to let me go?”

  Was he the decoy sent to put her at ease? If so, he was one hell of a decoy. Despite the upheaval going on inside her, she was innately aware of him; his broad chest and muscular arms barely concealed beneath a soft cotton T-shirt; the slim taper of his hips drawing her gaze downward, settling on the bulge beneath the fly of his jeans that couldn’t possibly be all him. Could it?

  If those men were hiding somewhere beyond that door, waiting for her to let her guard down, she was sunk. But he wasn’t like them; some part of her was sure of it.

  “You…you aren’t one of them.”

  “No,” he replied simply.

  “Then why did you bring me here?”

  He was silent for a moment, and it appeared that he’d turned inward, as if he were searching for an answer to that question, too. “You were unconscious,” he said matter-of-factly. “It didn’t seem wise to leave you to see to your own well-being.”

  “Thank you,” she said after a long, troubled moment, staring at him, trying to ignore the awareness that was sending tremors of desire through her veins. And by the heat in his eyes, she’d guess he was experiencing the same thing. But there was still no proof his intentions weren’t sinister. It could still be a ploy, and even if it wasn’t, she needed to get out of there; to go home and try to sort through all that had happened.

  “Look, I appreciate your help, but I really have to go.”

  He was silent for a long moment, but then he nodded. “As you wish. There are clothes next to the bed. I’ll be down the hall when you’re ready.” He looked at her for a few more seconds, then turned and left the room, closing the door behind him.

  She listened closely, waiting to hear the turn of a lock, but she heard nothing except his footsteps that grew quieter with every step.

  Reeling with confusion, she found the clothes he’d mentioned next to the bed and stripped out of the dress that had been torn in so many places, it did little more than create a lace-like cover over her body. Undressed, she surveyed her body once more, still amazed that she hadn’t suffered more damage. There was a yellowish bruise on her hip she hadn’t noticed at first, but aside from that, she’d escaped unscathed.

  She slipped into the borrowed clothing and then hesitated. It could still be a trap; there was no proof otherwise. But then, why would he go through the charade of pretending to let her go?

  Summoning as much of last night’s courage as she could muster, she left the room, taking a step out into the hallway. But which way did she go now? The hallway continued to both the left and right of her, and she could see that a few doorways up on the left, there was another hallway as well.

  Eenie meenie miney mo…she turned to the right. Please let this be the right direction, she thought, and took a few tentative steps down the hall. Fortunately, not five seconds later, she spied the man standing alone in front of an enormous hearth in a grand living room at the end of the short hall.

  “I see you made your way just fine,” he said without turning around, though there was a note of irritation in his tone. When he finally faced her, however, it seemed to dissipate. His eyes blazed hot with desire, and her own body responded, making her wonder if there was really any need to leave so quickly.

  But yes, there was. Though she’d escaped unscathed—thanks to Grant—her mind was reeling with questions. Who were those men? Why had they wanted to hurt her? How had she fought the way she did? And how had Grant, for that matter? Looking at him, she had no doubt he was strong, but he’d appeared to exude the same inhuman strength that had pulsed through her own veins last night.

  “You’re ready then?” he asked, breaking into her thoughts and drawing her back to the present.

  “Yes.”

  He nodded toward another hallway at the same time he started toward it. She followed Grant to a door at the end of the hall that led to a garage—a garage filled with more cars than she’d seen in some sales lots. Certainly, none of the cars in front of her—Lamborghinis, a Porsche, several Aston Martins and a dozen other cars she didn’t recognize—had ever graced an ordinary lot.

  He pressed a button on the remote in his hand, and the passenger door of the car nearest to her opened. She slid in and Grant came around to the driver’s side, and though the car was relatively spacious, his large frame se
emed to fill up the space, making Freya even more aware of the potent male figure next to her.

  Without looking at her, he revved the car engine, a smooth purr that acted like a balm for her jagged nerves. With another press of a button, the wide garage door slid open without a sound. He shifted the car into gear and drove out, easing down the long, winding driveway and along the near-empty street that would lead back to the highway. She remembered the route from days before and managed to relax another degree. It was as if the drive back could somehow undo all that had happened; it was a foolish thought, of course, but soothing, nonetheless.

  Grant then turned onto the highway, and her heart nearly leapt into her throat. Every bit of calm she’d managed to call forth vanished in an instant. Sixty miles per hour…one hundred miles per hour; the speed increased exponentially with every second. One hundred and twenty miles per hour…

  Though the car glided down the highway smoothly, she gripped the sides of her seat, praying they’d make it off the highway before he spun out of control and she wound up wrapped around a tree.

  Fortunately, at that speed, it didn’t take long to reach the city. He veered onto the exit ramp, slowing to something that approached the speed limit, and she released the breath she hadn’t known she’d been holding. Out the corner of her eye, she could see that he was smiling to himself, and she glared out the windshield. Did he do that on purpose? she wondered with annoyance.

  Caught up in her irritation, it took her a moment to realize he’d taken the exit that led to her apartment, and was even now making the turn onto her street.

  “How do you know where I live?” she asked, panic rising in her chest anew.

  “Your wallet,” he replied matter-of-factly.

  “You went through my purse?”

  Her nerves were overstrung, no doubt, but finding out he’d gone snooping through her purse was the final straw in the long list of things that had happened in the past forty-eight hours that were definitely not okay.

  She’d found a woman dead and probably stumbled upon the escaping assailant; her apartment had been broken into; she’d been attacked by a mob of strangers and had somehow transformed into a woman with superhuman strength and speed she didn’t know she possessed; and she’d been rescued—or kidnapped?—by a man who seemed to have the same freakish strength she had called up out of thin air. And, oh right, he also happened to have an unhealthy need for speed that could have landed her dead in a ditch on the side of the highway.

  The fact that he was sexy as hell and part of her wanted to forget about everything else and climb over the gearshift onto his lap just went to show how crazy the past two days had made her.

  “Forgive me, but you weren’t offering up too many answers at the time.” His reply did nothing to placate her.

  “Of course, I wasn’t. I was unconscious!”

  “Precisely,” he answered, as if that cleared up the issue succinctly.

  “Do you go through every woman’s purse when she’s not conscious?”

  “No, of course not—just the sexy, unconscious ones.”

  “Oh? And do you come by those often?”

  He chuckled, but didn’t reply, and that was probably for the best. “Is there somewhere else you can stay?” he asked instead, changing the subject abruptly.

  Yeah, sure, she lived in a tiny, one-bedroom apartment but secretly had a mansion stashed away in another city. Who didn’t? “No…I only have one apartment. Not all of us have a house the size of a shopping mall.”

  “Yes, I appreciate your…modifications—much easier to navigate now.”

  “Modifications? What are you talking about?”

  He eyed her suspiciously once again, but then turned his attention back to the road in front of them and abandoned the subject without answering her. “Freya, I suggest you pack a bag and find someplace else to stay for a while.”

  “Thanks, I appreciate the advice and all, but I must have left my money bags in my last life.”

  He cocked his eyebrow, but didn’t respond, and immediately she felt chagrined. He’d helped her—probably saved her life—and even driven her home, and here she was giving him attitude. “I’m sorry, I really do appreciate what you’ve done for me. Thank you. But I’m sure those men were just random troublemakers—it isn’t exactly unheard of in Las Vegas. I’ll be fine—thanks to you.”

  Obviously, that wasn’t entirely true. She had no idea who those men were, or why they’d attacked her, but until she could make any sense of all that had happened, she had no idea what to do next.

  So, it was time to try to make sense of it. She thanked him again after he pulled up at the curb in front of her building and slid out in a hurry, anxious to put some space between herself and the man who was doing nothing but adding to the confusion in her head at the moment.

  She raced up the four flights of stairs to her apartment and closed the door behind her, but it was as if the click of the handle unlocked the floodgates and all that she’d been keeping at bay, all that had happened in the past day, burst forth.

  She sank to the floor and waited for the well of emotions to overwhelm her, but like the other day when she’d happened upon the poor woman who’d been murdered, they didn’t come—at least most of them didn’t. What she felt more than anything was a tidal wave of confusion. It seemed all so familiar, the way her body had handled those men. She wasn’t oblivious to the fact she would have lost if Grant hadn’t shown up, but she should never have made it as far as she did. It seemed so long as her mind stayed clear, she’d been unstoppable.

  Maybe it was a fluke, she thought; the result of a surge of adrenaline. She stood up, looking for something on which to test her theory. She kicked out at the wall in front of her, and her shoe-covered foot went right through it as if it were paper. But did that mean anything?

  She moved to the sofa and tried giving it one-handed shove. It slid several feet and slammed into the end table next to it, sending the damaged lamp crashing to the floor. That seemed a bit more than the average person could do, didn’t it?

  She ran to her bedroom, thinking of the heavy wooden bed frame, and she bent down to lift it up from one corner. She raised it up to her waist, barely engaging any of her muscles. Okay, that’s definitely not normal, she acknowledged.

  Moving throughout the apartment, she looked for one test after another, but there was nothing she couldn’t lift or break with one hand, and all the while, it felt like she couldn’t quite tap into the source of it, a source that would have made her infinitely stronger.

  The wall that separated the living room from the kitchen! Certainly, she couldn’t break that—it was a solid wood structure, she’d been told. But she punched, and her hand went right through it.

  She pulled her fist back, inspecting the bloodied scrapes on her knuckles, as if they could somehow explain what was going on. But as she watched, the scrapes and the long, thin gash grew smaller. And smaller. No more drops of blood welled up from the broken skin. Smaller still, and then they healed up completely right in front of her eyes. Only the specks of dried blood on her smooth flesh belied the fact there had ever been an injury there.

  How was that possible? Her head swirled with yet another baffling discovery.

  It was a bad dream. It had to be. That was the only rational conclusion. No human could fight like she had, and it wasn’t possible to heal miraculously from injuries. But if she was trapped in some bizarre nightmare, why couldn’t she wake up?

  29

  Grant drove away, making a left at the first intersection, and then another left…and another. And one more. He listened and he watched as he drove in idle circles, waiting for any sign of the dragon who’d attacked her. He would return for her; it was only a matter of time. Whoever he was, the dragon had gone to an awful lot of trouble trying to acquire her.

  He drove past her apartment again and again, but it was as if a heavy band connected them and it was drawn taut the further he drove.

  Event
ually, he gave in. Wise or not, he didn’t want to fight it. And so, he pulled into an empty space a few yards from her building, trying—and failing—yet again to figure out what Freya Cullen really was.

  It was possible she was playing him for a fool, but he was damn good at recognizing a lie when he heard one, and everything about her gave him the impression she really didn’t know. The way she’d clutched the seat on the highway as if a car crash could actually kill her—she genuinely seemed to think she was human. How the hell that was possible, he didn’t know, but there it was.

  And that also meant she had no idea why those men had been after her, nor did she realize the dragon wasn’t going to give up so easily. Whatever she was, the dragon wanted her badly—and he wanted her alive, which in his experience, was worse than being wanted dead.

  He slammed his head against the back of the seat, wondering what the hell he’d gotten himself into. When he’d swooped in to help her, they’d recognized him, and when he’d flown her back to his home instead of pursuing the dragon, he’d known it wouldn’t be long before they were after him, too.

  What he didn’t know was why the hell he’d done it. In his three millennia, he had seen countless atrocities; it shouldn’t have fazed him in the slightest. But seeing her lying there, battered and bruised—the woman who’d been warm and alive in his arms the night before—it affected him more than he could have imagined possible.

  And whatever her allure was, it was even more powerful than it had been the first moment he’d seen her. Relenting, he slid out of the car and crossed the few yards to her building, ran up the four flights of stairs to her apartment and knocked on the door.

  She opened it a moment later and a surge of arousal jolted through him from the sight of her. She hovered at the door without saying a word, seemingly trying to decide whether to let him in. Finally, she stepped back and motioned for him to enter.

  “I don’t understand,” she said, pacing. She looked adorable—the kind of adorable that was hot as hell. Her long, dark hair was pulled up at the crown of her head, and her agitation had stained her cheeks a rosy pink against her otherwise milky white skin.