“It’s only been a few hours,” Noah said, applying more ointment to the incision before he covered it again.
“She should be healing,” Ethan said, rubbing his hand over the back of his neck as he looked from the small woman who looked so fucking helpless to the blade that he’d dipped in holy oil and-
She had to have demon blood, but the question was, what kind?
“What are you doing?” Noah asked as Ethan rolled Indie back over and pushed her lips apart, looking for any hint of a fang only to shift his attention to her ears, looking for marks, points, or anything that would tell him what he was dealing with as he noted just how hot her skin was.
“Checking for marks,” Ethan said, grabbing hold of the shirt that he’d changed her into after the tracker had been taken out and raised it so that he could search her torso for any of the marks that would let him know what type of demon that he was dealing with only to release a curse when he didn’t find anything.
“Whatever she is, we need to bring her temperature down quickly,” Noah said, reaching for her only to step out of the way when Ethan picked her up and carried her to the bathroom.
“Do whatever you would do for her if she was human,” Ethan said, carrying her towards the large tub and-
“No. Please don’t. I promise I won’t do it again,” Indie started mumbling when she spotted the large tub, making him frown since she hadn’t batted an eye when he’d handcuffed her to the tub and shown her the bag that normally left grown men trembling a few days ago.
“She’s delusional,” Noah said, moving past them and turned on the tub, setting it to cold.
“Wait. No, no, no, no, please,” Indie mumbled in a rush as the scent of her terror reached him.
“Shhh, mo stoirín,” Ethan whispered softly as he went to place her on the edge of the tub only to pick her back up with a curse when she took him by surprise.
One minute, she laid limp in his arms, and the next, she was fighting him with everything she had, screaming, wiggling, shoving, and kicking until he was left with no choice but to toe-off his shoes and carry her into the tub.
“I have you, mo stoirín,” Ethan promised her as he carefully sat down in the tub filling with cold water and shifted the screaming woman in his arms so that she was laying with her head resting against his chest as she struggled to catch her breath.
“Please, don’t,” she whimpered as she grabbed hold of his shirt and buried her face against his chest.
“You’re safe, mo stoirín,” he said as he placed his hand on her back and moved it in an awkward caress as Noah shut the water off and left without a word.
It had been so long since he’d held someone like this. The last time had been when Trace was a little boy. Trace hated carriages, hated being thrown side to side in the overcrowded, rickety old things. The carriages barely had a chance to take off before his son would crawl onto his lap and bury his face against his chest. Within minutes, Trace would be fast asleep and Ethan would sit there, content to hold his son in his arms. It made him wonder what his son thought of his first car ride.
He probably hated every last minute of it, Ethan thought, chuckling as his movements became less awkward until running his hands over her back felt like the most natural thing in the world to do. His wife always hated this sort of thing. She’d been a prim and proper little thing with a mischievous smile that used to drive him insane and she could never seem to stay still.
He’d loved Emily, but she used to drive him insane, he thought with a fond smile as he shifted so that he could lower Indie into the water, careful of her incision. Chasing after Emily had been a fulltime job. She’d hated sitting still, loved staying busy, and she especially loved doing all those things that women did to make everything perfect for a baby and-
He never should have listened to her.
She’d wanted to wait until Trace was older before he’d changed her, afraid that the baby would need something during the day or manage to wander outside and they’d be helpless to do anything about it. If he’d known the hell that waited for her…
“I don’t like cold water,” the small woman holding onto him whispered as he continued rubbing her back beneath the water.
“I know you don’t, mo stoirín,” Ethan murmured absently as he closed his eyes and dropped his head back against the wall, wondering what the hell he was doing.
Chapter 26
Westdrom, Maine
She was definitely calling in sick today, Samantha decided as she opened her eyes only to squeeze them shut again when the sunlight streaming into her room caused the searing pain currently tearing her skull apart to explode.
Definitely calling in sick, she thought as she blindly reached for her phone only to remember where she was. That led her to biting her lip to stop herself from crying as she shifted her search from her phone so that she could call in sick to the extra-large bottle of Advil and bottle of water she kept by the bed for just this reason. After she swallowed three pills, she slowly exhaled, sat up, and was forced to bite back a wince when her head protested the move.
It took a few minutes, but she finally managed to make it to the bathroom. After she spent thirty minutes standing in the shower, waiting for the hot water to make the pain bearable again, she got dressed, walked back into the bedroom and decided that she didn’t want to spend another depressing day alone in bed.
Deciding that she’d rather spend a depressing day on the couch waiting for the phone to ring instead, Samantha grabbed a pillow and blanket off the bed and went downstairs. She wasn’t really surprised when she didn’t run into Trace along the way since he’d been avoiding her for the past few days, which was fine with her. She was just here to make sure that he was safe, which she decided meant driving him somewhere else if something happened and making sure that he had plenty of blood.
Since she didn’t want to find out what would happen when he ran out of blood, she’d decided to call in an order for blood the other night when she noticed that he was drinking more than fifteen bags a day. She’d considered asking him where all that bagged blood in the refrigerator came from, but since he would have just ignored her, Samantha searched the kitchen instead and found the business card on the bottom of a cooler. After the creepiest phone call of her life, she’d managed to order more blood, which had been delivered promptly at two in the morning by a guy that hadn’t been able to stop staring at her neck.
She’d just barely managed to stop herself from asking him if he was like Trace when she realized that she had no idea what Trace was. Other than cranky that is, Samantha mused as she dropped her stuff on the couch and headed to the kitchen, knowing that if he was in there that he would take off as soon as he heard her coming, because that’s what he did. Well, that and glaring, Samantha thought as she grabbed a package of blueberry Pop-Tarts out of the box, popped them in the toaster that she’d ordered off Amazon before she grabbed a can of dog food off the counter and popped the top for the asshole that followed her into the kitchen.
Ignoring the look of disgust that he was sending his food, the same food that he would bitch and whine about if she didn’t buy it for him, she grabbed a Coke out of the fridge, put her piping hot Pop-Tarts on a plate and headed back to the living room. There, she spent the next thirty minutes eating her Pop-Tarts and debating what she was going to watch today. After grabbing another Coke, she decided that it was time to do some research on her current situation and settled on a horror movie marathon.
Deciding to ease into this, Samantha put on A Werewolf in Paris, curled up with her blanket and settled in. Thirty minutes later, she was regretting her decision not to start with something else like Scooby-Doo or pretty much anything else that wouldn’t have her laying there, hoping that werewolves really didn’t look like that and-
“What is this?” Trace asked as she watched in horror as another unfortunate party guest was torn to pieces.
“A movie,” Samantha said because right now, that was all she could mana
ge as she tried her best not to imagine what would have happened if the men in her basement had turned into werewolves. She probably would have passed out as soon as they started sporting fangs, she thought as Trace sat down on the end of the couch. Her grip on the blanket tightened right around the time that her breaths started coming a little too quickly as she watched a werewolf tear apart some poor bastard who hadn’t been able to run fast enough and-
Found herself frowning when Trace started laughing.
For a moment, she was distracted by the unexpected sound and unable to help but notice that he had a nice laugh, it was deep and incredibly sexy and…was starting to unnerve her a bit considering that he was laughing his ass off as a werewolf gouged a man.
“What’s so funny?” Samantha asked, and to be honest, she wasn’t sure why she did that, not when she really didn’t want to know the answer.
“This is fake,” Trace said, chuckling as he reached over and helped himself to her Coke.
“H-how do you know?” Samantha asked, really hoping that this wasn’t the part where he broke the news to her that he was a werewolf.
“Because werewolves don’t look like that,” he said with an incredibly sexy smile that made it difficult to focus.
“They don’t?” she asked, sounding hopeful.
“No,” he said, shaking his head as he finished off her Coke. She felt her shoulders sag in relief as she glanced back at the television and-
“They’re bigger, their snouts are larger, they have more teeth, their claws are longer and sharper, they’re completely covered in hair, and they’re taller,” he said, not really sounding all that concerned as she sat there, slowly nodding as she mumbled, “I really hate you right now,” as she grabbed her pillow and threw it at him.
“Did you want me to lie to you?” Trace asked, chuckling as he caught the pillow and placed it on the couch next to him.
Blinking at him, she said, “Yes, yes, I did, in fact.”
“Would it help if I told you that they don’t like the taste of human flesh?”
Nodding, she said, “It really would.”
“Then they hate the taste of human flesh,” he said with a straight face.
“Really?” Samantha asked, starting to feel better about all this only to narrow her eyes when he said, “No,” with a wink.
“I see,” she murmured, nodding absently as she reached over, grabbed hold of that pillow and decided to beat the shit out of the man laughing his ass off at her!
*-*-*-*
Miriam, Nebraska
“Indie-”
“Go away,” the small woman currently curled up on the bathroom floor mumbled weakly as Ethan stood there, slowly exhaling, wondering where the fucking shifter was.
He needed to fucking leave and he needed to do it now, but he couldn’t leave her like this…
Fuck!
“You should be back in bed,” he said, reaching over to pick the small woman up only to have her throw one of the small individually wrapped bars of soap that came with the room at him and…missed.
“Just let me die in peace,” Indie said, squeezing her eyes shut tightly to block out the light as she reached up with a trembling hand and pulled the extra stack of folded towels he’d ordered from room service down into a mess on the floor only to drag them against her body and snuggle them while he stood there, wondering what was taking the fucking shifter so long.
He should have been back by now, Ethan thought, glancing down at his watch and wondering if he should have made the doctor stay only to dismiss the idea since Caine needed him more. The Pyte should never had trusted the Council, but he was too fucking desperate to listen. Whatever was causing his mate’s cancer to come back, the Council was behind it.
Danni hadn’t fed enough when she’d been turned to completely kill the cancer but with overfeeding and the Ion’s blood, she should have made a complete recovery. Her body should have seen the cancer as a poison in her system and killed it, but for some reason it had come back twice so far. The first time Caine had managed to destroy it with the Ion’s blood, but now…
Now nothing was touching it.
As soon as he made it to his son and took care of the bitch, he planned on taking a trip to New York to find out what was going on with Caine’s mate. Hopefully, the human doctor figured it out before it was too late. He didn’t even want to think about what would happen if the Pyte lost his mate since he’d seen first-hand what Caine was capable of.
After he found out what Trace was, he’d gone in search of other Pytes, hoping to get answers and when he found Caine…
He’d wished that he hadn’t.
Back then, Caine had been full of rage, taking it out on everyone that made the mistake of crossing his path. He’d found the Pyte in England, taunting the Sentinels as he wiped out village after village, leaving behind a trail of bodies and stories that would haunt the country for decades. When he’d met first met the Pyte, he’d expected answers, but all he got was one piece of advice that tore away every last hope that he had.
Kill the boy.
He’d never admit this to anyone, but when he came back to the tavern where he’d left Trace, he’d seriously considered it. He’d sat on the bed next to his son and watched him as he’d slept and thought about Caine. He hadn’t been able to stomach the idea of his son turning into a monster.
To this day, he still wasn’t sure if he would have been able to go through with it or not, but just as he found himself reaching for that pillow, Caine chose that moment to step into the room. The Pyte had followed him, most likely to kill Trace only to join Ethan as he’d watched Trace sleep. For a long time, the Pyte just stood there, staring down at Trace and then, he’d pulled the pillow that Ethan had in a death grip out of his hands and tossed it aside before he’d left without a word. He’d never told Trace about Caine, afraid that he would ask questions that he didn’t want to answer.
“I need to leave, mo stoirín,” Ethan said hollowly as he thought about the little boy that had trusted him to keep him safe.
He needed to go to his son.
“Okay,” Indie mumbled, nodding her head even as she buried her face against the towels.
“I need to go to my son,” he said, trying to force himself to walk away as he watched her curl into herself as she struggled not to cry.
“It’s okay,” she mumbled into the towels as he told himself that she would be fine.
More than fine.
They’d removed the tracker, got the bitch off her trail, and he’d make sure that she could stay here for as long as she needed. She wasn’t his responsibility, he reminded himself even as he found himself closing the bathroom door to block out the light from the television in the other room and shut off the bathroom lights before he sat down on the floor and pulled her into his arms.
“Thank you,” she mumbled against his chest.
“You’re welcome,” he said as he closed his eyes and slowly exhaled.
“What’s your son’s name?” she asked after a while.
“Trace,” he said as he absently ran his hand over her back, noting that she was still warm.
“How old is he?”
“Three hundred and seventy years old,” he murmured, wondering what kind of man his son had grown up to be.
“That’s pretty old,” she mumbled sleepily, making his lips twitch.
“Yes, it is,” he said, wondering how she would react if he told her how old he was.
“Where’s his mother?” she asked, snuggling closer to him.
“She died giving birth to him,” he said, still wondering when it was going to stop hurting to think about her.
“I’m sorry, Ethan.”
“Thank you,” Ethan murmured absently.
“Is…is he the reason why you came after me?” Indie asked after a slight hesitation, making him frown until she explained, “I heard you talking about him on the phone the morning you grabbed me.”
“Yes, he is,” he said, wishing th
at he’d been able to find her sooner so that he could have traded her for his son to save him even as his arms tightened protectively around her.
“What did they do to him?” she asked as she absently traced circles on his chest.
“They buried him alive in a tomb and left him there,” Ethan said coldly.
“And you were hoping to use me to find him,” she said quietly.
“Yes,” he answered flatly.
She didn’t say anything for a long time and then…
“I would have done the same thing,” Indie said when the first click reached his ears and by the time he realized what was happening, it was too late.
The bitch had found them.
Chapter 27
“Wait. Can I ask you one more question?” came the question that had Trace pausing mid-massage of his temples to glare at the woman that hadn’t stopped interrogating him since this morning.
“No,” Trace bit out with a murderous glare that the small woman looking lost in thought simply ignored.
“If I get bitten by a werewolf, will I become one?” she asked, worrying her bottom lip.
“No,” he said evenly, returning to rubbing his temples as he continued to glare at the small woman that he’d planned on staying away from and if the sounds of humans screaming mixed with growls hadn’t piqued his curiosity, he would still be ignoring her…and thinking about her.
He couldn’t stop thinking about her.
If it had been her scent, he simply would have drained her and been done with it. There was something about her that drew him. He’d wondered if it was simply because she was the first woman that he’d seen in centuries. He’d thought about that a lot, wondering if he would have reacted this way if a different woman had been in that cellar with him.
Over the last few days, he’d found himself thinking about her, thinking about the few women that he’d scented delivering packages to the house and the naked women that he saw that day on the flat box. Several times, he found himself closing his eyes as he pulled his cock free and ran his hand over it, thinking about the way the naked women had moaned, their breasts, how they’d touched each other while they’d begged to be fucked and-
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