She swept her gaze over him. Barefoot, with only a pair of ragged sweats sitting low on his hips, he mesmerized her. She took a moment to enjoy the sight he made.
His wavy, dirty blond hair reached the edge of his stubble-covered cheek, and a few darker hairs marked a path down his well-defined abs. The thick muscles packed on his frame combined with his powerful arms and thighs enhanced the aura of power and strength that surrounded him. The females in her pack eyed him with lust, while their males gave him a wide berth. The attention he garnered didn’t bother her. He had eyes only for her. And Ethan, of course.
She grinned with the knowledge that Noah was hers, then dragged her attention to his face, a task that proved harder to do than it had the day before. Every inch of her came alive in his presence. The month of celibacy they’d willingly embraced was taking its toll. Soon it’d be over.
“I’m headed to the kitchen to get some breakfast. I’m starved.”
“So am I. Ravenous, actually.” He set his mug on the bookshelf just inside the room. “Come here.”
She went to him, unable to resist the command in his voice. He hooked an arm around her waist and pulled her close but didn’t kiss her. He buried his nose in the fall of her hair and inhaled. They hadn’t shared more than affectionate embraces since they’d made love on the night of the full moon. It wasn’t fair to Ethan to give in to their passion without him, but with the next lunar cycle looming over them, they were both ready to explode.
“You smell so damn good, Hannah. I can’t wait to lose myself in you.”
“Me too. I need you, and I miss Ethan.” Although she sensed Ethan’s mood, she couldn’t connect to him telepathically the way other soul-bonded couples could. She knew why—Ethan hadn’t licked her bite mark and sealed their connection, allowing the mental connection. Noah had been the one to lick the wound, but she couldn’t touch his mind either. Actually, without a piece of his soul, she couldn’t even feel his emotions. He experienced hers, though. She was grateful. His support and comfort had been unwavering over the past month.
Other than a few brief phone calls Ethan had made from the safety of Shifter Affairs, they hadn’t interacted with him. Ethan had insisted on the lack of contact. Safer, he’d said. He wasn’t taking any chances with her life or Noah’s.
Noah sighed. “So do I. This has been an incredibly long month.”
“Only a few more hours, then we can finally be together. I can’t wait.”
“Yeah, and it’s looking like it’ll be an easy transition.”
She leaned back. “Michael decided to take Ethan’s offer and put his family into protective custody?”
Ethan had shared the details of his plan with her and Noah. Hearing them had filled her with pride. She’d mated a good male who respected life.
He nodded. “Ella called a little bit ago and said Michael’s family arrived safely at their destination. After the transfer of the spirit wolf tonight, Michael will join them.”
“Thank goodness, and as soon as he does, we’re going home. I only wish we could bring Owen with us.” Unfortunately, they didn’t have the capability to guard him with the level of security the humans had insisted on.
“He’s in good hands. I talked to Riley and Jenna after he arrived yesterday. They’ve been studying up on cases similar to Owen’s and are confident they’ll be able to help him.” He squeezed her hand. “I want to go out and visit him this morning. To see for myself how he’s doing.”
“Okay, I’ll go with—”
The front door opened, stopping Hannah’s words. Noah shoved her behind him, locking her to his body with his hand splayed over her lower back. He eased his firm grip a moment later with the sight of their visitor. Nic, wearing only a pair of sweats, rushed into the room, his hair a wild mess.
Her heart skipped a beat. There was only one reason she could think of that would bring him out. “Oh my God, Riley? Is she okay?”
“Yes, she’s fine. So are the babies.” Nic shoved his hair out of his face. “I’ve been out at Quinn’s house since early this morning trying to calm him down.”
Noah stepped forward. “Why? What happened?”
“Maria’s missing. She took his car sometime in the middle of the night and drove off.”
A sense of guilt seized Hannah. She knew Maria had been struggling with her feelings for Alex and Quinn. Hannah had done her best to hint that Maria might be able to keep both males, but had backed off when Maria had grown agitated over the idea. “Why? Did she say anything?”
Nic glanced between her and Noah. “Yeah, Quinn said they’d almost ended up in bed, but once he suggested that they should mate too, she kicked him out. He went for a run, and when he got back, she was gone.”
“Why didn’t your pack protectors stop her?” Noah curled his fists. “With the shit going down with Michael, she’s in danger too.”
Nic met Noah’s angry gaze. “They tried. She nearly ran them over. A couple of shifter agents took off after her, but she had a head start. They found Quinn’s car, not her. She ditched it and stole some human’s truck.”
“Okay.” She took a deep breath. “They’re trained for this type of thing. They’ll find her.”
“I agree. She couldn’t have gotten too far. That’s not why I’m out here.” Nic focused on her. “I need you to talk some sense into Alex. He’s angry and wants Quinn’s blood for sending Maria running.”
She groaned and faced Noah. “This is my fault. I should’ve told them about us. If they knew three people could form a bond, we might’ve averted this whole situation.”
“We agreed not to take any chances. Too many lives depend on it. Besides, we don’t know if they’re in the same situation as us. I talked to Quinn. He doesn’t know if Maria’s his true mate. He just knows he wants her”—Noah rubbed the back of his neck—“sexually. She keeps turning him down. It might just be the chase. Nothing more.”
“Maybe, but we should’ve told them. Just in case. So they’re not floundering in the dark like we were.”
Noah took her hand. “You’re right, but it’s too late. We can’t do anything about it.”
“Sure we can. I’m going to tell them now.” She glanced over her shoulder at Nic. “Will you arrange it so I can talk to both Alex and Quinn?”
“Already done. I just need the two of you.”
Noah laid a hand on her shoulder. “Can you do this without me? I’m not exactly close to Alex, and I want to talk with Owen before Ethan becomes alpha. Tell him about us. The shit our pack is facing.” He shrugged. “And who knows, he might have an idea of where Maria might’ve run off to. They were good friends once.”
Understanding dawned. Before going to bed, Noah had expressed his concern over Owen not wanting to return to their pack because of Ethan. “You want to treat him as a dominant, not a beta.”
“Or a victim who was too weak to save himself.”
She stood on her tiptoes and kissed Noah’s cheek. “I love you, my mate.”
“Same here, Hannah.” He squeezed her tight. “Same here.”
And once she had Ethan in her arms, she’d be complete. Only a few more hours. Everything would be perfect after that. She repeated the words, but it was hard to believe them, especially with the tiny voice in her head warning her that things never went as planned and happiness wasn’t guaranteed.
Neither was tomorrow. Tragedy could strike in the blink of an eye.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
The small cabin tucked into the woods looked similar to many Noah had seen. The no-frills dwelling boasted a bedroom, bathroom, and combo living room and kitchen. That was where the normality ended. Before releasing Owen into the Kagan pack’s custody, the human government had insisted on several precautions to contain the potentially dangerous shifter who resided inside.
Highly sensitive triggers and locks were installed on the
windows and doors. Mounted cameras monitored the activity inside and outside the dwelling. And recording devices offered a live stream of conversation the psychologists in the next state analyzed for clues to his mental health.
Noah glanced at where Chris, in his wolf form, lay in the grass several feet from the door. The other male didn’t hide his presence as protectors often did. Guarding Owen wasn’t a secret. Also, Chris owned the cabin. Or, more accurately, it had belonged to him and his deceased partner, John, before being abandoned a couple of months ago.
Noah acknowledged the other male with a slight dip of his head, then unlocked the front door and slipped inside. Owen didn’t stand or speak. Noah didn’t expect him to, nor did he bother to greet Owen. Noah walked directly to the bookshelf in the corner, snatched the tiny microphone that sat there and crushed it in his hands. The three cameras that focused on different parts of the room went next. Noah knew where they all were. He’d watched the humans outfit the place the day before.
With their privacy guaranteed, Noah grabbed two bottles of water from the fridge. He tossed one to Owen, carefully avoiding his gaze, then twisted the cap on his bottle and drank half of it. Noah recapped it and took a seat opposite of where Owen sat at the small table.
Finally, Noah glanced from the unopened bottle of spring water sitting on the wood’s surface to Owen’s stony face. His hazel eyes and dark brown hair were the only two features recognizable on the male from the time Noah had known him. The years Owen had spent among the humans and the select corrupt shifters who’d treated him as an object had not only hardened the once good-natured male but physically altered him.
Scars decorated his face and arms. No doubt more marked the rest of his body. The fact that they marred his skin spoke of the level of depravity he’d endured. Shifters rarely scarred due to their enhanced healing. Only those wounds treated with salt left their mark. The painful process was also the only way they could retain a tattoo through a shift. On Owen, the scars fit him, though. Combined with his cold and icy expression, Owen appeared untamed, even wild. Maybe crazed.
It wasn’t the change in his demeanor that shocked Noah. His size did.
Owen had grown in the years since he’d matured—an impossible feat. Shifters’ bodies aged. They also gained or lost weight and muscle mass. But they did not…grow. Yet Owen had. He stood as tall as Noah and as wide.
The only conclusion Noah could make was that whatever had been done to Owen in the humans’ experimental facility had altered his physical makeup. Noah had kept his hypothesis from the human government, however. They already treated Owen as if he were a caged beast.
Hands planted on the table, Owen pushed his chair back and moved to stand. It was the same response he’d given to every male visitor since the humans had dropped him off.
“Five minutes, Owen. That’s all I’m asking for. I want your advice.”
Owen froze, half out of his seat. “I have none to give.”
“Then be my captive audience. I need to talk. It helps me work through the issues that have left me sleepless and worried.”
“Have you given up your role as a dominant?”
“No. That’ll never happen. I might slip lower in our pack’s ranking as I age, but I’ll always be a dominant.”
Owen narrowed his eyes. “I beg to differ. A dominant doesn’t admit to feeling anxious. That makes him appear weak.”
“Maybe.” Noah leaned forward. “But a shifter who doesn’t utilize his pack mates is a fool, and at the moment, I need a friend and a confidant who won’t judge my uncertainty.”
Owen held his gaze without blinking. Several long moments passed before he sat. Arms crossed over his wide chest, he leaned back in his chair. “Then talk.”
“I’m in love with your brother and his mate, Hannah Kagan. Actually, she’s mine too. The three of us are lovers.”
Owen snorted. “Well, that explains a lot.”
Noah raised a brow.
“I’ve been dreaming about the three of you.”
Noah leaned forward. His instincts flared. “Dreaming about us. What does that mean?”
“I dreamt about the three of you holding hands, kissing, lying together under the full moon’s light.” He held his hand up in a just-wait motion. “Nothing too intimate, but enough that I could guess what had happened during the scenes I wasn’t shown.”
“Shown?”
Owen’s single nod answered him.
“Explain.”
“A few years back, I was sold to some scientists. They put my through a series of endurance tests, altering parameters and triggers to see how I’d perform. It was annoying but not bad. They didn’t torture me or anything, but then they started injecting me with hormones and stuff to see if they could make me stronger and faster.” Owen motioned to his body. “It worked, but it had an added benefit the humans hadn’t expected.”
“And that was?”
“My instincts improved. I started to anticipate people’s actions. Their movements and such. The humans noticed too and increased the dosage of the drugs or maybe the kinds. I don’t know. It’s not like they asked my permission.” Owen gave a small smile. “Months passed without any more changes. They came to the conclusion I was too old to enhance further and sold me. Truth was, I just didn’t tell them about my dreams. I figured they were dreams, nothing more. Then they started to come true.”
Noah’s heart stopped before racing hard. “You can see the future?”
Owen shrugged. “No, not exactly. I think the spirit wolf shows me possibilities of what might happen. You know, like those choose-your-own-adventure books that were popular when we were kids?”
“Give me an example. Something you dreamt about.”
Excitement and a healthy dose of fear buzzed within Noah. If Owen’s instincts had sharpened so much he was anticipating the future, he’d become invaluable. On the same note, Noah had read enough of those alternate-ending books to know that what a person thought was the right path at one point in a story later turned out to be very wrong.
“I saw Hannah die in a fire. She was trying to find her way out of your house. The front door was stuck, so she tried crawling toward the kitchen. She got disoriented and…” Owen shrugged. “Obviously, it didn’t happen. She got out.”
Noah swallowed hard past the lump in his throat. “What else have you seen?”
“Little things. Lately, it’s been about Maria.” Owen made his way back to the table. He snatched the water bottle, took a sip, then recapped it. Each movement was slow, calculated, and a blatant attempt to avoid the question. Finally, he sighed. “Honestly, nothing that’s made sense. I thought I knew her.”
“Sometimes things aren’t always what they seem. Tell me.”
“I saw Maria kissing a couple of different males. None I know. She fights with one, then gets in a car and takes off. Next I see her, she’s…”
Noah waited a moment more for Owen to finish his statement, but the other male turned his attention to his water bottle, screwing and unscrewing the cap.
“That’s actually happened, Owen. Maria’s missing, and we’re worried about her. If you can give us some clue how to get her back, we’d be eternally grateful. So would Quinn and Alex, the two males you probably saw her kissing.”
Owen carefully set the bottle down. “It’s nighttime. She’s wearing a pair of black shorts and a gray top and has her hair in a braid. A bear shifter who runs a hunting camp for other shifters approaches her. They talk, then she gets into a car with him.” He raised a hand. “I don’t know what they talked about. I can’t hear them, only see their mouths moving.”
“A hunt…where humans or female shifters are the game?”
“Yeah. You’ve heard of it?”
“Through Ethan. He knows a human survivor.”
Owen gave a small shake of his head. “I don’t know if surviv
or is the right word, but there’s a clan of bear shifters who do a lot of acquisitions for the illegal networks.”
“Do you have a name?”
“Ulgran is their clan name. I think I met oldest brother.” Owen shook his head, an irritated look on his face. “Or maybe I only dreamt about him. I don’t know.”
“And you didn’t find a way to hint about the danger Maria might be in because…?”
“Maria is Michael’s daughter, and since she left with him of her own free will, I assumed she was involved in trafficking too.” Owen squeezed the water bottle in his hand. The plastic crumpled and water rushed out, soaking his hand and thigh. “That’s the damn problem with my dreams. I see snippets, not the whole thing.”
“And you haven’t been around. You don’t know our pack’s problems.”
Owen snorted. “Exactly. Even if I had, nobody’s going to tell the dangerous, unstable male who’s lived his life like a damn trained dog anything.”
“I did.”
Owen grunted and spun on his heel. “Well, you’re the first. Even the Kagan’s human alpha female talked to me as if I’m a child when she stopped in with her mate yesterday. I sat and listened because she’s female and deserves my respect, but damn, it was hard.”
“Riley? I’ve met her. She’s a wonderful, caring woman.”
“Maybe, but she’s too damn nosy. I don’t want to talk about what happened, and I sure as hell don’t want to share how it made me feel.”
Noah stepped forward. “And why not? She’s treating you as her pack mate. When one of our own has been hurt, we reach out with love and comfort—words, hugs, caresses. Whatever it takes. I know our pack never did stuff like that, but it’s what a real pack does for its members.”
Owen glared at Noah for a long moment before his shoulders slumped. “She wanted me to talk about my goddamn experiences. What I saw. How I reacted. How I feel, but I can’t tell her the truth. I’ll get tossed into a cell again.”
Owen’s words didn’t go unnoticed by Noah. Sympathy rose. For a male who’d lived as a captive for years, being locked up was a legitimate fear. Even the small, comfy house he was in probably felt oppressive.
Shared for Love: Kagan Wolves, Book 2 Page 28
