Did Tara know Owen was a bear? She had to call her best friend.
Or does she?
“Does Tara know Owen is a…bear?”
He drew in a slow painful breath that rattled in his chest like his lungs were wet. “Yes.”
His eyes were nearly swollen shut. Blood ran from cuts on his face. His head. Down his shoulders. He really did look like he’d been in a fight with a bear.
Katherine knelt to the floor. “Did Owen do this to you?” She gestured at his body.
The shake of his head was nearly imperceptible. “Tiger.”
“There are no tigers in Alaska. And these marks are huge. The tiger would’ve had to have been like fifteen hundred pounds and—”
Knox’s lips pressed tight.
A wave of fresh terror slipped over Katherine, tightening around her neck like a noose. A noose she couldn’t grab and pull off. Air wouldn’t come. Her heart raced until the pounding in her ears was deafening, like a train bearing down on her and she was trapped on the tracks.
She grabbed the side of the vanity and squeezed tears from her eyes, finally managing to drag in a ragged breath. In and out. In and out. In and out.
What the hell had she found herself in the middle of?
“This can’t be real. It can’t. People don’t turn into animals. They don’t tear each other to pieces and…kidnap my best friend. Oh, God! Were you involved in taking Tara?”
“Katherine.” His voice was gravelly and calm and soothing to her overwhelmed mind and body. “Do not fear me. I would die before I allow harm to come to you.” He leaned and placed his hand over hers on the counter. The warmth of his touch sent reassuring waves through her body.
“But were you? Why else would you be almost dead? Owen and his friends went after her. They did this to you, didn’t they?”
Knox’s gaze dropped from hers to the floor. “I am ashamed of my brother. Could not stop him.”
“Your brother did it? Not you?” Katherine tugged her hand away from Knox. “Tara almost died.”
“The tiger thought I hurt your friend.” He shook his head and winced. “But I tried to save her. The tiger left me for dead. After the fight ended, I dug out of the cave and came here. Most of the pack is dead. My brother is dead. I have nothing left.”
He reached for her hand again, his large palm enveloped her much smaller one. “Nothing left but you, Katherine. I found your scent in town and followed it here to this house.”
2
Knox
Everything hurt. His brain. His body. His spirit. The only thing that’d kept him going was the hope to see his mate again. To feel her hands on his body. To hear her laugh. To see her smile.
She was all that mattered and now she’d called the bear…or almost called him. The one Reylean the pack had betrayed in the worst way possible. They’d taken Owen’s mate. Raish had tried to kill Tara. The dragon’s tribe had come at the wolf pack full force. Why Raish had ever thought to challenge them, he would never understand.
What did his foolish brother think he would accomplish other than sending the rest of them to their deaths?
Maybe that had been the intended goal.
After Raish’s mate had been killed, he had slowly lost his mind. Sunk deeper and deeper into despair and the thirst for revenge on anything that resembled happiness.
If his end game had been to die and take the whole of the pack down with him.
He had succeeded.
Raish had brought dishonor to the pack. Dishonor to the name Li’Vas. Knox, second son to the House of Li’Vas was now alpha to nothing. The remaining pack had been slaughtered. If any did survive, they were scattered across the mountain running for their lives and praying the Li’Vhram dragon didn’t come hunting.
Knox certainly wasn’t going to give him a reason to.
His only goal was to stay with his mate.
Claim her.
Keep her safe from the Tribe.
Get as far away from the Li’Vhram dragon as possible.
“You are my mate. Your soul glows for me. You are mine, Katherine. I couldn’t leave you. I will never leave you.” He had to get it out. He had to tell her. In case he was
“I—You—What do you mean? I’m not glowing. Yours?” Katherine tugged her hand away once more.
The loss of the skin-to-skin connection was palpable. Painful. His heart had leaped for joy in his chest when he’d opened his eyes and seen her standing over him. Warmth had enveloped him when she’d brought him into her home.
But now. Now she was backing away.
Fear shone in her eyes like a full moon in a black sky. He had done this. She was afraid of him. He shouldn’t have lied to her. He should’ve told her what he was sooner. Lies were always wrong, even if the intentions behind them were good.
He leaned away from her and rested his aching shoulder against the cold tiled wall of the bathroom. He truly had nothing. No home. No pack. And a mate that was terrified of him. It was no less than what he deserved for his deceit.
“Forgive me, Katherine.”
“All this time. You’ve been—this? A werewolf? Who are you? How could you hide this from me? I thought—I wanted—I fell in love with you. You lied to me,” she said, her voice shattering a little more with each word until the trust he’d built with her over all this time was scattered into bits and pieces. Pieces he feared she’d never let him put back together.
She backed up another step. She was standing in the doorway of the bathroom now. He couldn’t reach her if he tried. Even the thought of leaning forward or attempting to stand made his stomach roll.
His body would mend. Slowly. But right now, he was still almost dead.
“I needed you to know me.” He breathed deep, wincing through the fiery pain stabbing at his chest. “Before my wolf.” She’d claimed that she loved him. He just needed a little of that to persist. To push through the mistakes he’d made.
Fate’s magick was strong. Katherine wouldn’t be immune to the pull of his soul, but the disappointment and mistrust he now saw in her expression would take time to fade.
Time he didn’t have.
“But…Knox. This is a huge thing. You’re not—you’re not even human. Where does that leave us? I can’t even believe I’m asking this question. How can you even consider us being together?”
He couldn’t consider any other option. She was his fated mate. His very soul would cling to her until death.
Knox lifted his head and peered at his mate from beneath ratted chunks of his hair. She was still in the doorway. No closer, but also no further. And she was asking questions. Her tone was cautious but more curious than broken.
“Fate has spoken. I have faith she would never point me to the wrong mate.”
At one point he had hoped to ask Li’Vhram’s permission to stay in the town. But that was before his brother had attacked Li’Vhram’s mate. Then Owen’s. Raish had been circling the door to death since he’d come through the portal and his mate had been killed.
“Fate is just a saying. It’s not a person.”
“She is so much more than that. She guides our people.”
“Like a god?”
“Yes. Similar. Though we consider her more of a protector. Only the magic-benders can commune directly with her.”
“Magick-what?” Katherine shook her head. “Never mind. We’ll cross that bridge later. Right now, we just need to focus on patching you up before you die in my bathroom.”
Katherine didn’t trust him. She certainly wasn’t going to leave town with him any time soon. But he couldn’t travel in this condition anyway. He needed rest. Food. He just needed to lay low. The dragon and the rest of the Tribe had no reason to come looking for him. At least not yet.
They assumed he was dead.
They assumed all the wolves were dead or fleeing. After a victory like they’d had on the mountain, the Tribe would be more relaxed and less vigilant. He could survive. He just had to stay out of sight.
In the meantime, he needed Katherine to trust him again. He needed her to want him and desire him like he did her—he was trapped in a desert and she was the only source of water.
“Your soul glows, Katherine. Can you not see it in me? You shine like soft rays of moonlight in a dark sky. Your whole body is illuminated. It is the soul call.”
“But I don’t see it.”
Doubt hatched in Knox’s mind like a fang-toothed hibix, eating away at his confidence one tiny bite at a time. The same way the little pests consumed forests. One tree at a time from the inside out.
Could Fate be wrong? No.
Could he be imagining the whole thing? No.
He kept telling himself it wasn’t possible. He wasn’t seeing things. He wasn’t wrong and neither was Fate. He banished the burning and tightening fear in his chest. Dread that threatened to swallow him into darkness. He couldn’t let it steal his hope. He’d survived everything. Clawed his way down the mountain. All the way through town.
She was his mate. Of this he was now sure.
On Reylea mates could see each other’s soul call. Their skin glowed from the magick within. At least those were the stories passed down. Even in animal form the soul call would show itself to the two mates meant to be together. It was never one-sided. But here, perhaps because she was not Reylean…could the magick be hidden from her?
“Just because you do not see, does not make it so. Can you see my wolf?”
She shook her head.
“But you know it exists.”
“I think so. I mean, yes. I saw you change.”
“I cannot show you the glow. You are human and Reylean magick must not be visible to you. I cannot think of another explanation. But can you feel the magick? The connection between us when we touch. The desire we feel for each other is wild and twisting and twining around and between us, weaving us together like a blanket of strong vines that will never come undone. I am yours. A wolf mates for life and mine is meaningless now without you.”
“That’s a lot of pressure, Knox. That’s not fair.”
“Forgive me, shuarra. All I can ask is that you forgive and grant me another chance to earn your trust.”
“I’ve felt drawn to you since we met, but I assumed it was just chemistry. I was attracted to you. But then we touched. We kissed. It was more than I expected but asking me to believe that some Fated deity has matched us together as soul-mates is more than far-fetched.”
“The soul call is how Fate shows mates on my world. It is special. Revered. Treasured. You are a priceless gift. One that I will not abandon under any circumstances.”
“Your world? Wait. The big Alien vs. Earth contact piece that was all over the news in January and then mysteriously got buried. The shimmering silver thing in the sky…people saw one out near Denali.”
“Yes. The portal from our valley on Reylea was in your sky. It was silver in color. We fell many lengths when we arrived here in Alaska. Your snow made the landing softer, but it was still a hard fall. There was much confusion. Chaos.”
“So not only are you a werewolf, you’re an actual alien from another planet?”
“Werewolf?” Knox sucked in a breath and tried to right his body so he could see Katherine better from where he sat.
“That’s what you’re called in earth legends. A man who can turn into a wolf is a werewolf. I guess the others would be werebear or weretiger.” A small giggle escaped between those last few words, banishing the mistrust on Katherine’s face for a moment and changing it into amusement. The smile that graced her lips lit a small fire of hope in his heart. “Those are not nearly as cool-sounding as werewolf. Probably the alliteration aspect.”
He didn’t know what she was speaking of, but at least her heart-rate had slowed and her shoulders had relaxed. Her body language said she calmer and less on edge. He would take whatever he could get at this point.
“Too bad there’s no lions. We could chant lions and tigers and bears, oh my!”
Knox opened his mouth to tell her there were lions and then snapped it closed. But keeping another truth from her wouldn’t help anything. It would only be another lie. “There are lions. At least two that I know of.”
“Shut the front door. How many types of shifters were on your world?”
“I never really counted them. As predators, we rarely interacted with each other’s tribes.”
“So all of the Ray-lee-ahns,” she said, trying out his home-world’s name, “everyone is a predator? There aren’t any alien bunnies hopping around the Denali National Park?”
He barked out a laugh. His hand wrapped around his middle as pain sliced through his chest. “No. There are no rabbits that I’m aware of. I never met or heard of a Reylean that wasn’t a predator. Though I suppose that doesn’t mean they don’t exist. Wolves aren’t known for talking and sharing history.”
“How did you learn English so well so quickly? Your speech has improved so much since we first met. You hardly miss a word now.”
“It is part of Fate’s magick from my world. The more I speak and hear you speak, the faster the language fills into my mind.”
“Oh,” she said, her tone not sounding distrustful at all now, only curious.
Knox continued, “Most of my stumbling is from being unused to speaking at all. Wolves on Reylea exist almost exclusively in their beast form.”
“Why?”
“It is just how we live.” Knox paused. It was the first time he’d truly considered why. And he found he didn’t have a reason other than it was what he’d been taught. He’d never questioned it. Ever.
All the other tribes only shifted to animal forms for hunting or fighting. The wolves were the only ones that shunned their human form in favor of being an animal. He actually couldn’t remember what his parents faces looked like. He’d only seen them shift a handful of times through his life.
“Do you not like being a person?”
“I like being a person with you, but I miss the familiarity of my beast. My instincts are honed much better as a wolf. I am vulnerable as a man.”
“Hmmm,” she said, inching out of the doorway and just a little closer to him. It wasn’t much, but it was better than more retreating. “You know all that blood and dirt is drying. You should really get cleaned up before we keep talking about…everything. Plus, you’re dripping blood on the floor too.”
“It will stop. My body is healing the internal injuries first. I must rest before I try to move again.”
“Well, yeah, but that’s going to take weeks. You can’t just camp out in the bathroom covered in blood and dirt. You’re not an animal.” She slapped her hand over her mouth and stared at me in horror. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean it like that. It just. I’m so sorry.”
Knox gritting his teeth against the pain. “I am an animal in many ways. It is true. I just need to rest now, though, dirty or not.” He put a hand against the cold stone-like wall and frowned. The tiles were now smeared with blood and dirt. He glanced down at the splatters and small puddles of blood on the white floor. It was a mess.
He was a mess and disrespecting her home.
He looked up at Katherine again, noticing for the first time that she was covered in grime and bloodstains from helping him into the house. Her clothes were filthy. Just like him.
His mate was asking him to clean himself, but all he wanted to do was shift back into his wolf and curl up in the corner for a few days. That’s all he needed. “Would you allow me to sleep in that large white basin? It would keep most of the blood and dirt contained.”
Her mouth dropped open. She glanced over at the white basin surrounded by a curtain and then back at him. “You want to sleep in the tub?”
Knox nodded. “If you would be willing to help me once more. I can get inside it. Then I won’t continue to create a mess. I just need to sleep. And I’ll heal faster if I sleep in my animal form.”
“No.” Katherine’s body straightened, and she folded her arms over her che
st, stubbornness seeping from every pore. He was annoyed and proud of her at the same time. She wasn’t afraid. That was a huge improvement, but she also didn’t appear to want to allow him to rest in her tub either. “I’ll help you into the tub to get cleaned up. You can’t leave wounds open and unbandaged and you’re covered in dirt and who knows what kind of germs.”
He didn’t know anything about germs, but he could imagine anything would be an improvement over what he looked like.
And who was he to deny his mate.
If she was willing to touch him. Help him in any way…he would accept it. If only for another chance to feel her skin against his. To feel the connection Fate had chosen and matched him with.
Katherine was the other half of his soul and until he won her heart and trust and claimed her body, he would forever feel that he was missing a piece of himself.
3
Katherine
Sleep in the tub.
Not on my watch.
Werewolf or not.
She stepped closer to Knox, placing a hand on his shoulder and avoiding the open bloody gashes.
“Processing all of this isn’t going to be a one and done thing. And I don’t forgive you for lying, just so you know.”
He reached for her hand, enclosing it in his hard grimy one.
“I hold nothing against you. Not even your mistrust, shuarra.” The contact was electrifying and possessive in a way she didn’t want to admit to herself, but she liked that he touched her. Liked that he wanted her. Liked that he recognized and validated the fact that he had lied. He wasn’t trying to skirt around it and pretend it hadn’t happened.
He owned it.
Not many men would do that. At least not many she’d been around.
“What is that word, shoo-ar-ah? What does it mean?”
“Fated mate. Soulmate. It’s the Reylean word of endearment used by most males when they find their Fated match. It’s not commonly used among wolves due to the fact that we rarely shift, but I’ve heard it often in the other Tribes’ camps. It feels natural to use it with you.”
Wolf At The Door: Soulmate Shifters World (Soulmate Shifters in Mystery, Alaska Book 5) Page 2
