“I don’t really remember the specifics. I know I partially shifted from how my clothes got torn up, though. Everything just narrowed down to tunnel vision and…” He trailed off, then shook his head a bit. “When I was fully aware of everything again, his body was shredded and I had meat and blood in my mouth. I ran the rest of the way back to the apartment building, threw up once just before I went into the courtyard. I saw the blood in it, so I know I swallowed some.”
He was nineteen at the time, I remembered. We had seemed so adult and so sure of life back then, but looking back on it Hunter was barely more than a kid. My heart ached for him as I viewed the story in this new light. It wasn’t just that I had his perspective now, but also that I was able to look at it with the distance of time, instead of the pain and confusion of an eighteen year old girl.
My arms slipped around him to hug tightly and I nuzzled at his cheek. “You were scared and hurt,” I reminded him softly. “You don’t go hunting humans.”
His face turned to nuzzle me in return and his arms wrapped around me, drawing me into a close embrace. “That doesn’t bring a man back from the dead, Sofia. There’s no way to make up for that.”
I didn’t really know what to say, so I just held him. My one hand remained in his hair, combing through those silky strands as I nuzzled him. After a few moments I caught his lips with mine in a soft kiss. I felt his lips respond to mine, returning the gesture, and then he ducked down to kiss along the side of his neck. When I felt the brush of his teeth ever so gently teasing at my throat I hissed inward and pressed closer to him.
“Stay with me tonight,” I whispered into his ear as I held him to me.
He went still, then drew back from me to meet my eyes. “I don’t know if I can do this. It about killed me to go home without you last night.”
I frowned as I listened to him, wondering how it was that we could know each other so well and in so many ways and yet sometimes it felt as if we spoke completely different languages. “You don’t have to go home without me. I want you to stay.”
“But that’s the thing. I have a home that isn’t with you. That’s my problem.” His hand brushed lightly against the scarf over my hair, then settled on my shoulder. “There’s too much history here for me to be able to hold anything back. You’re not my old girlfriend. You’re my mate and I can’t let that go or pretend all we’re going to do is date.”
I fell quiet, my eyes moving over his face carefully as though I could read all his thoughts there. I couldn’t, though. There was so much going on behind the scenes inside of him that I knew nothing about and I hated that. “Ten years later and you’re still a stupid boy.” My eyes finally left his face, in order to close as I leaned in and brushed a kiss against his lips. “I can’t make promises about the future, but you are my mate. I’m not denying that.”
Maybe those were the exact words he was waiting for. All I knew was that his arms tightened around me again to draw me closer and that soft, brief kiss was followed up by something with far more force and hunger behind it. I parted my lips to his desire, letting him claim my mouth. His hands pushed the robe down off of my shoulders and I shrugged out of it, but he had already been able to see me completely nude. I needed to see him, too. I wanted to see how he had filled out and what new scars he carried and I wanted to kiss them all. I pushed his jacket off of his shoulders, but before I could get his shirt open my fingers brushed against his shoulder holster and I froze.
He broke the kiss as he pulled away, then took the gun out. I watched him check the safety before setting it down on the coffee table, then follow it with the holster.
“I don’t normally carry when I’m not working, but Jean-Claude was tracking Christopher’s pack,” he explained, unbuttoning his shirt.
I thought back to the cannibalistic pack chasing after me and shuddered. “I’m glad you had it.”
“Me too.”
As I watched admiringly, he pulled his shirt off, muscles flexing and rippling beneath his skin. I could see a faint white streak of scar tissue across one shoulder that I guessed was from the knife. On his other shoulder were the ash darkened marks left from my teeth. The scar was raised a little, just not as much as mine. The tattooing method we had used on the scars had left them quite clear, though, so that I could recognize the shape of my own jaws permanently imprinted on his body. Mine, forever.
We move back to my room together, where we took our time with one another’s bodies. Hands caressed and explored, relearning what we had once known and finding what we had missed before. By the time our lovemaking brought us both to shuddering climaxes the orgasms seemed like a dim secondary concern in comparison to the intimacy of the moment.
Afterwards, we rested there in my bed, curled around one another and letting ourselves give in to the exhaustion after all the adrenaline of before.
“Do you feel the marks at all?” Hunter murmured as he nuzzled me.
I shook my head sleepily. “Not since the day my father threw you out. You?”
I felt him shake his head as well. “Maybe we can feel one another now,” he suggested, before ducking to slide a kiss against my lips.
I hoped so. Even as close to him as I was in that moment, I still felt isolated inside without the marks.
Chapter Nine
Hunter
Someone was helping me put a backpack on. It felt heavy, full of bottles and bags of food. “I need you to be a good boy now, Hunter,” a woman was saying.
She turned me around to give me a smile, her reddish brown eyes filled with tears. Her blonde hair looked like it hadn’t been brushed in years and had been hacked at with a knife at some point in the past.
A phone was ringing somewhere, but the blonde woman ignored it.
“Can you promise me that you’ll be a good boy?” she pleaded. “Don’t tell anyone where you came from. Never, ever tell them a thing about us. Just say you’re lost. Can you do that?”
“Yes, Mama,” I said solemnly. “Shouldn’t I take the baby with me?”
“No, James is too little.” She turned away for a moment as her shoulders shook with a sob she was fighting down. “He’s too little. He’ll have to stay with me.”
The phone rang again.
“But why can’t you come with?”
“They might not notice a little boy all alone, but they’ll notice me.” She shook her head, then turned to face me again with that same pained smile from before. “You can carry your backpack even when shifted. Remember that. Now run.”
The phone kept ringing. I wasn’t entirely sure how many times it had rung before I realized that and dragged myself from sleep, but it seemed like it had gone on forever. I rubbed a hand over my eyes as I sat up, disoriented for a few moments before I remembered I was in Sofia’s bed. She shifted closer to me and draped an arm across my waist, nuzzling into my shoulder.
“That’s not my ringtone,” she mumbled.
“No, it must be my phone.” The ringing stopped while I was getting out of the bed, probably going to voice mail. I was halfway across her bedroom when it began ringing again. I could tell from the ring that it was one of my employees—I’d entered them all into my phone with the same generic ring so I could always tell if it was work related—but why one of them would be calling me this many times in the middle of the night escaped me. I glanced around the room and found a digital clock beside Sofia’s bed. The glowing letters announced that it was 4:13. I stared at that for a moment as a sense of dread settled sickeningly in my stomach, then turned away to head out into the living room and find my phone.
Werewolves don’t have perfect night vision. Canine eyes had evolved for hunting in dim light, but not the dead of night. Even if I shifted my eyes, I wouldn’t be able to see all that much better. The fact that I had never been in Sofia’s house before and didn’t know the layout didn’t help much. I felt around in the dark until I found the coffee table, then where we had left my jacket draped across it, then finally pulled my phone ou
t.
I stared at the number of missed calls and swore.
“What is it?” Sofia asked from behind me. Being far more familiar with her own living room and now having the light of the phone as a guide, she moved across the room easily to come to my side.
“Five texts and fourteen missed calls from three different employees.” There was something odd about which employees had called as well. I looked at them for a bit, trying to figure out what it was. There was Brandon, who I had just teamed up with Autumn. Then there was Jake, who was teamed with Belle. The third was Whit, who was teamed with Tamara. Three human men, but almost half my employees were human men. That didn’t defy the odds exactly. Their partners, on the other hand…
I started checking the text messages, holding the phone so Sofia could see as well.
In the hospital. Belle’s missing. We got jumped.
Tamara never showed up tonight and she’s not answering her phone. I’m really pissed.
Autumn and I were attacked tonight, but the client wasn’t the target. She took off running and the guys followed her. Assholes broke my arm.
Cops here now. Want to talk to you about Belle.
I’m getting worried about Autumn.
Sofia laid a hand on my arm as she leaned in against my side to get a better look at the texts. “Are those women shifters?”
I nodded grimly. “Leopard, jackal, lion.”
“God, Hunter. I’m so sorry.”
I shook my head, not wanting to hear her sympathy just yet. This was too freshly horrifying to be able to take it. Before I could check my voice mail the phone rang again. This time I answered it, noting which one of my employees was calling.
“Brandon, is there any sign of Autumn?”
His voice sounded strained on the other end of the line. “No, nothing. I’m pretty worried, too. One of the men who attacked us snapped my arm like it was a twig. I’m not saying she didn’t hold her own good—you were right about her in hand-to-hand—but they outnumbered us and only seemed interested in her. I don’t know what the hell was going on.”
I glanced at Sofia, who was watching me closely. Even without the call on speakerphone, I was sure she was close enough to be able to hear everything. “Are you at the hospital now?”
“Yeah. Jake’s here, too. He got knocked out with one hit and didn’t see half as much as I did.”
Jake was nearly as big as Brandon and not the type to go down easily in a fight. I wondered just how badly he had been hurt to be knocked out like that, considering that a blow to the head like that was never as clean and easy as movies made it look.
“How many men attacked you and Autumn?” I asked.
“There were four of them. Jake’s pretty sure there were four when he got jumped, but he can’t be entirely sure.”
“Yeah, of course. I’m surprised he can tell us that much.” I thought for a few moments about how to handle this, especially with the police involved, but I was at a loss. Finding Christopher and his pack and slaughtering the lot of them sounded like a good place to start, but that was easier said than done and it wouldn’t necessarily help the three missing shifters or keep the cops from getting suspicious.
Before I could decide on my next move, Sofia pulled the phone out of my hand. “Which hospital are you at? Okay. Hunter will be there as soon as he can.” As soon as she ended the call with Brandon she dialed another number while I watched on, mildly puzzled. The phone rang several times before someone picked up and Sofia switched it to speakerphone. “Hey, this is Sofia. I’m really sorry to wake you up, Edie, but there’s a lot going on tonight. We’ll fill you in, but we need you to come with us to keep the police from making things worse.”
Once she had worked out the details with the person on the other end of the line, she hung up and handed me back my phone. “Get dressed. That detective who was giving you the hard time in the park is my friend Edie. She’s a pyromancer.”
I put my phone back in my jacket pocket before I began collecting my clothes from where they’d been strewn around the living room. Sofia went back toward her bedroom, but left the door open. Once she flipped on the light I could see her as clear as day while she dressed and it was difficult not to be distracted by that beautiful view. God, I had missed her.
“You’re going to tell her everything we know?” I called as I buckled my belt. “Are you sure that’s wise?”
Sofia turned to shoot me a look before turning back to tug a shirt over her head. “Why wouldn’t it be?”
“She’s human.”
“She’s paranormal, same as us.”
“Yes, but she’s human.” I sighed, wondering why she couldn’t just grasp the distinction immediately. “She’s physically weaker. Slower. She has no special loyalty to shifters. She’s a human. Yeah, she might have something extra, but she’s still not one of us. When push comes to shove, she’ll care more about human justice than anything else.”
Sofia finished dressing and came back into the living room barefoot, then settled onto the couch to pull on a pair of sneakers. “This can’t be handled in the justice system. She’ll get that.”
I cocked my head to the side doubtfully. “Will she?”
Sofia’s eyes went to the side to avoid my gaze, which was answer enough. She wasn’t sure of it, which was bad. Magic had a tendency to just evaporate into nothing under close, skeptical scrutiny, so I wasn’t especially worried about ending up in a lab or anything like that. The far more likely threat was that this detective would try to handle things legally and ensure that nothing actually got done and these assholes escaped to kill again. Vengeance wasn’t much of a driving factor for me most of the time, but Christopher had killed Sofia’s mother, hurt my people, and possibly killed the ones they took.
“Christopher has to die.” I said it softly, making my tone as gentle as I possibly could, which didn’t come easily to me. “No one is safe until he and his pack are dead. There’s no prison for wolves. It’s the safest way to handle this.”
Sofia finished tying her shoes and got to her feet with a heavy sigh. “I know that! That doesn’t mean I like it and it doesn’t mean a good cop is going to be okay with it.”
I came closer to her and gently laid my hands on her shoulders. She didn’t resist, so I pulled her into a hug. “Nobody should like killing. We kill when it’s necessary. To eat, to protect.”
She rested her head against my shoulder, nuzzling in close. “Then how are we really any different from Christopher?”
The question floored me. I knew that I had struggled and anguished under the burden of guilt for what I had done, but what sort of self-loathing had her father projected onto the rest of the pack? What had she lived with to even think such a thing? I stroked my hand along her back and pressed a kiss to the side of her head.
I tried to think back to what my parents had taught me and what her grandfather had said when he ran the pack. There had been many good lessons at his feet. Her grandmother, too, had been a natural leader. It had only been after Sofia’s mother disappeared and her grandfather’s health had begun to fail that the pack had been handed over to Ric, who seemed to do his best to destroy it. I suppose we had Christopher to thank for all of it.
A rote lesson from my youth came back to me and I smiled faintly at the memory. “Remember the way of the hunter. A good hunter goes for a good kill. What makes a good kill?” I recited, knowing she’d remember it.
Sofia was quiet for a moment before she answered. “A good kill is clean. A good kill is quick. A good kill is necessary.”
“Christopher and his pack are killing humans and wolves and shifters, using vampiric magic to extend their lives unnaturally. Is that necessary?”
She shook her head.
“They feed while their prey are still alive. Is that clean or quick?”
“No,” she admitted.
“That’s how we’re different. We kill to feed ourselves, for our natural lives. We don’t cause our prey extra fear or pain and
kill them as quickly as possible.”
I felt her nod against my shoulder. “I’m just really torn on whether or not it’s necessary to kill Christopher’s pack.”
I drew back from her enough to see her face, knowing that surprise was clear on my own. “They killed your mother. You don’t want them to die for that alone?”
“What I want out of pain and grief and what’s necessary aren’t the same thing.” She gave me a faint, sad smile. “It wasn’t a good kill when you attacked that mugger, but you don’t deserve to die. Doesn’t that make us hypocrites?”
Had I been in my fur, my hackles would have raised at that, but I settled down as I realized what she was saying. She wasn’t accusing me or blaming me. It was all too easy to let my own defensiveness take over and never hear a word she had to say. I desperately didn’t want to fall into that same pattern again and ruin this second chance with her.
I took a deep breath, thinking, then nodded slowly. “All right. We’ll give them a chance. If they’ll stop using the vampiric magic and join with us so we know they’re not harming anyone, then we can let them go. We have a duty to protect other people, though. We know they’ve been murdering humans and shifters for the past twelve years; it’s unlikely they’ll stop on their own. If they won’t join us, then it’s necessary because it’s going to save lives.” There were too many ifs there. I didn’t like it. I wanted the certainly of simply going in with one straight path to follow. Still, I could see the sense in what Sofia was saying. Even if it wasn’t human justice, she still wanted to know that there was an attempt at mercy.
She nodded, seemingly satisfied with that, then gave me a quick hug before pulling away entirely. “Then let’s go find out what we can about the missing shifters.”
Chapter Ten
Sofia
My Bug had gone home with Edie, so we took Hunter’s car to the hospital. As he drove, I watched him in silence. I was sure he had to be upset by his employees being taken, but he seemed to be doing his best to hide that. With his jaw clenched and his eyes focused on the road, it was difficult to see much more than grim determination. I had always admired his strength; I just wondered what had happened to make him think feeling anything at all was a weakness.
Once Bitten, Twice Claimed (Claimed by an Alpha Paranormal Romance Book 3) Page 8
