by Paige Tyler
By the time he wandered into the kitchen, the aroma coming out of the oven was so amazing he almost started to drool. Seriously, he had to swallow twice so he wouldn’t drown in the stuff. Great. All this time, he thought his biggest worry was going to be fangs, claws, and maybe a unibrow. Now, he had to add drooling like a bulldog to the list.
Putting her phone in her back pocket, she washed her hands, then opened the oven and took out a large casserole bubbling and steaming with all kinds of yummy goodness. That was when he finally recognized the aroma.
“You made shepherd’s pie for me?” he asked.
It was all he could do to stop himself from hopping up and down like a kid. He hadn’t had a good shepherd’s pie in forever.
Rachel turned to look at him, brow arched. “No. I made shepherd’s pie for me. You happen to be the beneficiary of what would have been leftovers for tomorrow night’s dinner.”
Knox eyed the large casserole again, confident there were three or four dinners in there for a woman Rachel’s size, but he was smart enough not to say that out loud. He was outspoken, not stupid.
“Need help with anything?” he asked. She’d already set the table, but he needed to make the offer anyway.
Rachel motioned toward the fridge as she carried the casserole to the small kitchen table. “You can get us something to drink. I usually have milk with dinner, but you’re welcome to anything you find in there. Glasses are in the cabinet by the sink.”
Milk, huh? He was pretty sure he hadn’t touched the stuff since he was in elementary school. He poured a glass for Rachel, then thought Why the hell not? and poured one for himself, too.
Knox brought the glasses over to the table to find her spooning huge portions of meat pie onto both their plates. The pile of mashed potatoes, vegetables, and beef almost made him start drooling again.
“I’m not complaining, but is there something about me that makes you think I usually eat this much?” he asked, setting down the glasses.
Rachel snorted as she took a seat. “Are you honestly telling me you haven’t noticed how much food you’ve been eating since you turned into a werewolf?”
Knox opened his mouth to say no, but then hesitated. Now that he thought about it, he supposed his takeout bill had been climbing recently. “I guess I have.” Shrugging, he slid into the chair opposite her and picked up his fork. “I just thought it was because I’d been pushing myself so hard lately.”
Rachel nodded, scooping up a forkful of casserole. He was about to do the same but got distracted watching her eat. He wasn’t sure when chewing had become a sensual act for him, but when it was the beautiful female werewolf across from him doing the eating, it was.
“Your metabolism is a lot higher now,” she said, thankfully missing the weird way he was staring at her mouth. “Whether you realize it or not, your body is going through a lot of physical changes right now, so you’re putting on more muscle. Those kind of changes require a lot of energy to make happen. That’s why you’re eating more.”
“Huh.” He finally took a bite of food, almost groaning at how remarkable it tasted. The beef was spicy, the vegetables tender, and the mashed potatoes that topped the whole thing were creamy and smooth. If he didn’t have to share with Rachel, he would eat the whole casserole dish himself. “So that’s why I have to keep buying new clothes every week.”
“Oh, yeah. You’ve easily put on twenty pounds of muscle. You’re probably a few inches taller, too.”
Knox considered that while he ate, wondering how this situation could get any stranger. What the hell was going to happen the next time he went home to visit his family and they noticed he was taller and heavier? Then again, they hadn’t seen him much over the past several years, since he’d been deployed so much, so maybe they wouldn’t notice. That’s when another thought hit him.
“If the guys on my old SEAL team could see me now,” he murmured softly, “they’d probably think I’m taking steroids or something.”
Rachel reached over to scoop more shepherd’s pie onto his plate. He wasn’t even sure when he’d finished the first serving, but he was still hungry, so he kept eating.
“You were a Navy SEAL?” she asked.
He nodded. “Eight years.”
She sipped her milk. “So how do you go from being a Navy SEAL to a hunter?”
Knox was silent, not sure how to answer because answering meant talking about a part of his past he’d rather leave deeply buried.
Across from him, Rachel stopped eating and looked up at him, her expression partly curious, partly suspicious. “What, was I not supposed to ask about that? Is the issue of how you became a monster off-limits?”
Something told him, when she referred to him being a monster, she wasn’t talking about the claws and fangs. No, she was talking about him being a hunter. He forced himself to give her a small smile. “No, not at all. It’s just that…well, it’s kind of complicated, and I’m sure you don’t want to sit around and hear me talk about myself all night.”
She gave him a wry look and motioned at her plate. “Unlike you, I don’t consume food like it’s going out of style, so we’re not going anywhere for a while. Besides, if you expect me to teach you about being a werewolf, the least you could do is tell me how you ended up in this situation.”
He nodded but still hesitated. There were few subjects he hated talking about more than himself, but at this moment, he couldn’t figure out a way around it. Not that he wasn’t willing to give it a try. “I’m not sure where to even start.”
Rachel snorted and took another sip of milk—she even made snorting sound sexy. “Most people start at the beginning. How’d you end up in the navy? Are you from a military family?”
Knox chuckled despite himself. “That would be an understatement. Dad is retired army and Mom is the epitome of a dedicated army wife. Of course, being in the army meant we moved constantly when I was a kid, so we never lived in any one place for more than three years, four tops, which sucks when you’re a kid trying to fit in at school, but my parents were all about that life. My brother, sister, and I are even named after the military bases where we were born.”
“No way,” Rachel said. “Let me guess, you were named for Fort Knox in Kentucky.”
He nodded. “Bingo. My little sister was born at Fort Riley in Kansas. And my brother at Fort Gillem in Georgia. If you ask me, Gil got the short end of the stick on that. I still don’t know what my parents were thinking when they named him.”
She laughed. “If you come from an army family, how’d you end up in the navy?”
He shrugged. “After being around all that olive drab and living on all those bases in the middle of nowhere, there was no way I was going in the army. Dad had a cow, but the first time I boarded a ship, I knew I’d made the right decision.”
That earned him another laugh. Man, he was really starting to like that sound.
“I can definitely understand wanting to go your own way,” she said. “I grew up in an army family, too. My dad is retired, like yours, and my older brother is a major in the Special Forces assigned to Fort Campbell, which now that I think about it, would suck as a first name, so I’m glad he and his wife didn’t go that route when they named my nephew.”
“Big time,” he agreed, helping himself to another serving of casserole. “Did your family have a problem with you becoming a cop instead of going in the military?”
Rachel shook her head. “Not really. Law enforcement is an acceptable alternative in the Bennett family. Although my two sisters didn’t go in the military or become cops.” She glanced at him as she spooned some more pie onto her plate. “Now I know why you joined the navy. What made you become a SEAL?”
He grimaced. “You’ll probably pick up on this as a recurring theme soon enough with me, but it turns out I have a habit of making impulsive decisions. In this case, I saw a video at the re
cruiting center about SEALs doing all this badass stuff and decided that was the job for me. The recruiter tried to talk me out of it, saying the SEALs weren’t something to jump into on a whim, but I told him it was the SEALs or nothing.”
“Ever regret that impulsive decision?”
He grimaced. “I have to admit, there were a few times during training when I was so exhausted I wasn’t sure I’d ever be able to move again and thought for sure I’d gotten in over my head, but I kept going. I’m stubborn that way.”
“And then after eight years, you decided you didn’t like it?” she asked. “What, are you a slow learner or simply a glutton for punishment?”
Knox laughed, loving her sharp tongue and even sharper wit. “Neither, I hope. Honestly, I loved the job, even if the nonstop deployments didn’t leave me much time for a life.”
“But?” she prompted.
He cursed silently. Sometimes, it seemed like he had a sign stuck on his forehead that read I have a screwed-up backstory. Ask me about it! But the day he’d walked away from the SEALs, he’d made the decision to leave all that shit behind. He hadn’t talked about it with anyone, not even friends or family. He didn’t want to dredge it up for Rachel, either.
“But,” he said, taking a deep breath, “things happened, and suddenly, my perspective on life changed. So, I made another of my famous impulsive decisions and got out of the navy. It was as simple as that.”
On the other side of the table, Rachel studied him like she didn’t believe a single word he’d just said. He braced himself, expecting her to press for more information, but instead, she took another small bite of food.
“Okay, so you bailed on the SEALs and then what? Stumbled across a recruitment poster for the hunters?” she asked, her voice suddenly sharp. “Let me guess—the offer of all the werewolves you could slaughter was too much to resist.”
Knox’s first instinct was to defend himself, but he stuck a sock in the urge. While the details might be a little off, Rachel was fairly close to the truth. Yeah, he’d been played for a sucker, but he was still the guy who’d fallen for the lies. What he’d done was his responsibility and no one else’s.
“I was in a bar in Tulsa,” he said, looking down at his empty plate and wondering when he’d finished the food on it. “I’d been out of the navy for nearly five months by then with no job prospects and no idea what the hell I was supposed to do with myself. After a few beers and a couple of shots, I struck up a conversation with the bartender. I mentioned I used to be a SEAL and was looking for work, and this guy a few barstools down came over and started chatting me up.”
“He was a hunter?”
“Yeah.” Knox grabbed his glass of milk and downed half of it. The stuff still tasted as good as he remembered. “The guy was prior military, and we did shots and talked until the bar closed, sharing stories about combat we’d been in and people we’d lost.”
He swallowed hard, remembering how close he’d come to telling a complete stranger about why he’d gotten out of the navy. He blamed the alcohol and the isolation of having spent months on his own with nothing but nightmares for company. He still wasn’t sure why he’d held his tongue, but he had and he was glad.
“As we were leaving the bar, he told me about some people he worked for,” Knox continued. “At first, he made it sound like he was hunting down terrorists for a secret branch of the government, but then he started talking weird about fighting an enemy no one else knew about—‘a threat to the existence of the human race’ was the way he put it.”
Rachel let out another snort. Knox silently agreed. He remembered thinking the same thing that night and that maybe he should get the hell out of there before it got any weirder.
“The guy pulled out his phone and showed me pictures of bodies torn apart—violence that even I hadn’t seen before. And trust me, I’ve seen a lot,” Knox said. “Then he showed me a photo of a man with glowing blue eyes and fangs and told me monsters really existed and that they were trying to wipe the rest of us out.”
Knox didn’t dare look at Rachel on the other side of the table, not wanting to see the revulsion he knew was on her face. It was one he was familiar with. He’d seen it reflected in the mirror too many times to count.
“I agreed to help right on the spot,” he whispered, staring down at his plate. “I thought I’d be saving the world from monsters. It wasn’t until a month later, after being pulled fully into the operation, that I saw my first real werewolf—and what the other hunters did to him. I tried to stop it, but I was too late. That’s when I knew I’d made the biggest mistake of my life.”
Rachel was silent for so long he almost thought she’d gotten up and left the kitchen table without him realizing it, but when he lifted his head, she was still sitting there, staring at him with a flat, unreadable expression on her face that made him wonder if she might actually try to kill him.
“How many werewolves died while you stood by and watched?” she asked softly.
A stab of pain so intense pierced his chest it felt like someone had plunged a blade into his heart. But no, it was only Rachel’s expression of disapproval cutting through him like a knife.
“Just that one,” he told her solemnly. “If I close my eyes, I can still see his face at that moment right before they killed him. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve prayed to go back and fix it, even though I know I can’t. The best I can do is make sure it never happens again. That’s why when I saw you at the wedding reception, I jumped in front of that asshole hunter and took the bullet meant for you. I didn’t want another death on my hands. There are way too many already.”
Rachel gazed at him for a long moment before she pushed back her chair and stood. “I’ve got a quart of chocolate chunk ice cream in the fridge. Do you want some?”
The sudden change of subject caught him off guard, but he wasn’t going to ignore an olive branch when it was offered.
“Yeah, ice cream sounds good.”
* * *
“What happened after you were shot?” Rachel asked, smashing the chocolate chunk ice cream in her bowl with the spoon to make it softer. Not only did she love her ice cream that way, but it gave her something to do so she wouldn’t have to look at the handsome werewolf sitting across the table from her.
Rachel knew she should absolutely despise everything about Knox. He was a hunter, and even if she took him at his word that he’d made a mistake by joining them, he was still partially responsible for the death of at least one innocent werewolf. Moreover, he’d come to Max and Lana’s reception at the compound with the intention of killing more.
But for reasons she couldn’t quite get her head around, she was having a hard time finding it in herself to hate him. Hell, she was having a problem churning up enough energy to even dislike him. The more she thought about that, the more it worried her. If she couldn’t hate a man like Knox after all the reasons he’d given her, what the hell did that say about her sanity?
Knox dipped his spoon in his ice cream, mouth quirking. “You mean after you let me get away?”
She didn’t say anything. She honestly didn’t want to talk about why she hadn’t shot him when she’d had the chance. She might not hate him, but she still couldn’t shake the feeling she’d somehow failed her pack by letting Knox get away.
“I drove back to LA with the three other hunters and your jackass of a police chief—former police chief now, I guess I should say,” he explained. “They were all sure I was going to die from blood loss. Hell, so was I. But by the time we got there, the bullet wound looked like it was weeks old. I might not have realized I was a werewolf, but I knew something was weird.”
She stuck a big spoonful of ice cream in her mouth, almost moaning as her taste buds did a little happy dance at the rich chocolate flavor. “What did the hunters think?”
“I refused to let anyone see the injury. I made it sound li
ke it hadn’t been as bad as everyone thought.”
“That was smart,” she said. “Then again, I’m not sure the hunters know how werewolves are created, so you probably would have been safe. And the vampires wouldn’t have realized you’re a werewolf because you didn’t smell like one yet.”
“Good to know.” He shrugged. “But I didn’t want to take that chance.”
“So, you left?”
“Not right away,” he admitted. “When you work for vampires, you don’t just quit. Apparently, the coven thought I’d make a good addition to their security team, so they gave me a promotion. On the downside, it meant spending most of my time in their damn nest. But on the upside, it gave me the freedom to finally get the hell away from them.”
Knox dug more ice cream out of his bowl, his brow suddenly furrowing as if something just dawned on him. “I’ll be damned.”
“What?” she asked.
He shook his head. “The night I was bailing on LA, I picked up the scent of cinnamon and licorice jelly beans. I didn’t think about it until now, but I smelled the same thing when I was here last night. And again when I first walked in tonight.”
