“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said it like that.” He noticed she wasn’t sorry for having said it just the way she’d done it.
Az cleared his throat. “We’re a funny pair, aren’t we? You had access to all of my most horrendous memories and we can’t get anywhere near yours.”
“Apparently, we can.” She jumped off the table. “I’d say we’re a perfect pair.” She wrapped her arms around his waist, burying her head against his chest. “I can’t remember anything and even though you hate magic, you can give it back to me.”
She was right. “Okay.”
Her head jerked up. “Just like that? Okay?”
“You want it. For you, I would do anything.” As he said it, he realized he meant it. If Leah needed him to, he would walk through walls. “However, despite what my mom thinks, I’m going to have to speak to Tristan. The pack isn’t run that way anymore. We don’t hide things from the Alpha unless his life is in danger and we know he’d throw himself in front of the bullet. Then we might lie to keep him safe.”
“I like that idea better.”
He didn’t like anything about it, not one damn thing.
I do. I think it’s a great idea. His wolf danced around in his head.
Of course you do. Az rolled his eyes.
Az watched Tristan shake his head in wonder. All the Kanes were in the room with him and, of course, Cullen and Summer who might as well be Kanes these days. Leah had requested Malcolm and Jana be there too. In their brief contact, his mate had come to trust the other woman. Since he was doing this for her, he might as well indulge what she wanted in all things. The whole pack would know of his humiliation soon enough.
“Why did I never know you could do this?” Tristan turned on Cullen. “Did you know he could do it?”
“No, my Alpha, this is the first I’m hearing of it.” Cullen raised an eyebrow at Az in the infuriating way he did where it was like he believed you but he questioned everything you said at the same time.
Hit him. His wolf’s solution for everything.
Shut up.
“Jana, have you ever heard of a male member of the pack being able to perform this kind of magic?”
Malcolm’s mate shook her head. “No, my Alpha, but I would venture a guess that Az’s wolf must be very strong for this to work.”
“Dad beat it out of me by the time I was fourteen. Mom forbade me to speak of it. Frankly, I’m not even sure I can do it anymore, which is why I didn’t offer it up right away.” That was, at least, partially true. Leah knew all the circumstances. The rest of them didn’t have to.
From the corner of the room, Gabriel spoke. “I knew about it.”
Tristan turned around to look at him. “Why didn’t you ever say anything? Why didn’t either of you ever say anything?”
Gabriel shrugged. “Not my story to tell.”
“He tried to kill me as a baby because he had an inkling that I was ‘different’ and then again when I was a child because he thought I was a freak. In the pack, only women have magic. My existence and my ability to do what I can do goes against nature. I didn’t exactly feel like advertising it.”
Leah placed her hand on his back and he immediately felt better.
“Besides, memory walking is not exactly a useful talent. Most of the time when we forget things, it’s better if we can actually forget them.”
Cullen spoke up. “It would be extraordinarily useful in interrogation. You could just slip into their minds.”
Az shook his head. “Doesn’t work that way. It’s never that clear or that easy.”
Ashlee took a small step forward. “You know Braden sometimes does things that seem magical to me. I thought maybe it was just my imagination but now that I know that you can, and you’re his uncle, maybe I’m not hallucinating.”
Tristan looked at her sharply. “You never mentioned this to me.” “He’s still so young, I didn’t think it warranted attention yet.”
There was a moment of silence in which Az became convinced Ash and Tristan were speaking telepathically.
He looked at Leah. It’s a personal nightmare for me to be standing here doing this. I think it would be much more useful to be in the basement figuring out a compound to break Dad’s hold on the wolves he’s creating. I had this idea about a vaccine…
She shook her head. First off, I still have to get used to the fact that you can speak to me like this. Second, you are not going to go run away to the lab. After we get my memories back, you can go hide there if you want. Everyone is acting just fine towards you. Kind of stunned but not weirded out or disgusted.
Was she right? Was he being too sensitive about the whole thing? It was so hard to give up a lifetime of believing what he could do was wrong based on a few minutes alone with his family.
I never told you that it was bad. I’ve wanted you to do it for years.
That was true. His wolf had only become hostile towards him when he’d stopped doing it.
“Alright.” Tristan nodded. “Do it.”
“It’s a little more complicated. I can’t just do it.” “What do you need?”
“I guess I need quiet and time alone to give it a try.” “Do you want my office?”
Az appreciated the offer. “No, thank you. Do I still have a room here?”
The room erupted in laughter. Az felt his face turn red. Tristan walked to him and placed his hand on his arm. “Yes, little brother, you still have a room here. We haven’t thrown you out of the house for lack of attendance.”
Placing his hand in Leah’s, Az led her from the room. The hallways were quiet; it was early in the morning, and other than the pack members he’d awaked from their beds no one was up and around just yet.
They arrived at his room and he turned the knob, opening it up. A quick cursory glance told him that the room was exactly as he’d left it. No one had been in it at all and it showed. The main sitting room had pillows thrown around everywhere—he could remember doing it, he’d not been able to settle down and relax, having wanted to be in his lab more than he wanted to be in the rooms—and he’d thrown things around in frustration. If they walked into the bedroom, it was likely that there wouldn’t even be sheets on the bed.
Feeling sheepish, he regarded Leah. “Um, I don’t stay here very much.” She nodded, her eyes dancing. “I can tell.”
“I tried to tell you earlier. I’m not normal. I mean forgetting the fact that I can do what I’m about to do with the memories, sometimes I just forget to do basic things. I might disappear in the middle of the night and you’ll find me at four in the morning up to my elbows in chicken fat as I try to figure out if I can use the stuff to create a new way to fuel the compound.”
He really needed her to understand. The life she saw with Tristan and Ashlee or any of the other mated couples, it was never going to happen with him. Az had always suspected that the universe was going to curse his mate with a miserable existence. It might be better off for the woman if he never mated.
But now there was Leah and gods help him, he wanted her with every part of his soul. Wolf and man both needed her, desperately, except she needed to understand. It was pivotal that she really ‘get’ what she was buying into.
“I have to believe that a lot of these things will work themselves out. I’ll tell you what, if I find you missing in the middle of the night, I will come and find you and bring you back to bed.”
Gods, the idea of being in bed with Leah…
“Let’s focus on this so you can see if you actually like who I am, shall we?”
Was she worried about that? “I can almost guarantee that I’m going to like you.
You’re like a dream, a gift from the universe.” “Oh, the things you say.”
Only he meant them, every word. “Leah…”
She placed a hand on his arm. “C’mon, let’s go.”
He nodded. She was right. “I need to touch you to do it.”
Raising an eyebrow, the teasing glint he’d first seen in
that picture and had noticed briefly here and there since appeared in her expression. “Even better.”
He sat down on the floor and he tucked his legs under him like a pretzel. “I discovered I could do this by accident and unfortunately in the presence of my father when I was about two years old. I travelled backwards into his mind.” He shivered at the memory. Not too many people could remember things from that age but he could remember doing that. First off, it had scared him that it happened and second because of the way his father had reacted to the whole thing. “He didn’t much care for the experience.”
“Will we get to see what happened to me? Or is it just going to be my childhood, my parents and stuff like that?”
He shook his head; maybe he would actually start laughing at how little he understood what was going to go on. “She-wolf, I have no idea what’s going to happen. I’m so sick of saying that to you. Sit here.” He indicated the spot next to him.
“Do we have to be right there next to each other or can it be just that you’re touching me?”
And it was already starting. She didn’t want to be near him. Well, he had warned her. He shifted slightly trying to cover his discomfort. “Just sit close enough for me to be able to reach you with the tips of my fingers.”
She nodded. “Right.” Moving to him, she placed herself directly on his lap, her back pressed up against his chest. “Does this work?”
Yes, it worked. His heart pounded hard and his groin jumped to attention. Shit, she smelled so good. All he wanted to do was stick his face into her colored hair and stay there for eternity. Forget anything that didn’t exist outside of Leah. “Um, yes. It works.”
He heard her laugh slightly. “I saw your face. You thought I didn’t want to sit near you.”
Okay, now he felt foolish. She squirmed in his lap and before he could stop himself, he groaned. Her tight, snug ass moving on top of him nearly undid him.
“Are you going to be able to concentrate?” Her voice had taken on a low, husky sound.
“No, but don’t you dare get off.”
She snickered and he grinned at the sound. “Alright, let’s do this.”
He placed his right index fingers on her temples. She closed her eyes and sighed under his touch. Even though it wasn’t necessary, he ran his other hand down her face tracing her features with the pads of his fingers.
“You’re so beautiful.”
“That’s not true. Right now I’m really funny looking.”
He closed his eyes. “For the rest of my life, I will be able to picture the perfection of your face in my mind’s eye.”
“Are you sure you’re a scientist? You sound like a poet.”
With that strange thought in his mind, he pressed his hand harder against her temple until he could feel her pulse. Three seconds passed and the strange falling sensation he hadn’t had since he was a child gripped him. Everything went black. He heard screaming and had no idea if it was Leah or he. Not that it mattered. They were both going in.
7
Leah landed on her butt, rolling to her side as soon as she made contact with the ground. Hearing an oomph, she saw Az land next to her. Raising her head, she looked around warily. The room where they were was darkly lit. Two lights made to look like lanterns glowed on top of two glass tables illuminated what, she quickly determined by the number of book shelves on the wall, was some kind of library or study.
“Az, is this typical?” She pulled herself up to her knees looking around.
“Yes, but most of the time the person knows what memory they’ve landed in. We’re going to have to hope it triggers something otherwise it’ll be a little like watching a play with yourself as the actor, I suppose.”
He stood and offered her his hand. She took it, loving the feel of his rough fingers closing around hers. Everything about him was so much bigger than her. She guessed it could make others feel small. To her, it just made her feel safe.
She looked around one more time. Az was right, like something out of an action play she watched herself stomp into the room. Her eyes widened as she recognized the sound of her voice yelling.
“I said no. I’m not going to speak to him. Not now, not ever.”
A tall man with silvering hair and high cheekbones covered in stubble entered behind her. She could see parts of her own face reflected in his. They had the same chin and the curvature of the top of her face looked like his.
She whispered. “I think that’s my father.”
“He looks like the picture in the articles I read. We don’t have to whisper. This already happened. There is nothing we can do that they can hear or be aware of. We’re not really there. This is coming out of your head.”
That was good news. At least it meant the memories were still in there somewhere. What would have happened if there had been no memories? She turned to ask Az but then heard her past self screaming again. She noted that her hair looked like it had in the picture. Hot pink streaks but no multicolored stripes.
“Mom never would have wanted this. It’s exactly what she didn’t want. She told us ‘never ever go anywhere near the shifters or Kendrick Kane.’ She couldn’t have been more explicit. She’s not dead two months and you want to arrange a meeting with the man?”
“Leah, baby, your mother was overwrought. Do you think if there really were people who could shift into wolves that the American military and the government wouldn’t know about it?” He threw his hands in the air. “For goodness sake, I sit on the Senate Committee that gives out money to the military for special research. I would know.”
Leah shook her head. “Mom was adamant and she wasn’t given to flights of fancy. Other than this one subject she never said anything to me in my entire life that wasn’t down to earth and easily proved with facts and data. The woman was a biologist for god’s sake. She said she and I are wolf shifters and that Kane is dangerous. I’m choosing to believe her. I will not see the man.”
“I’ve already set up the meeting.”
Leah expected to hear her past self argue some more and was surprised that she said nothing else for a few moments. “Why would you do that?”
Her father sat on the edge of his desk. “You know how much I love you.” She nodded. “I do know that, Dad.”
“I loved your mother that much too…which is why I always let her believe this little lie. Truth is, I think something terrible must have happened to your mom when she was a child. Kendrick Kane is barely thirty years old. He couldn’t have possibly had anything to do with it.” He ran a hand through his silver, grey hair.
“But maybe he knew her family; maybe you have some family left that you could know from her side. Now that she is gone there is no reason to continue on with this farce. Besides, if someone hurt your mother so badly she was forced to live her life with this delusion then I want to know who it was so I can hurt them.”
Her father exhaled and Leah in the future knew he looked tired. “Have you ever seen a wolf become a man or vice versa? Has it ever happened to you? Did you ever see it happen to your mother? Do you hear voices of wolves speaking to you in your mind?”
Past Leah shook her head. “No, Daddy.”
Next to her, Az swore. “I know exactly what happens.”
Barely able to form words, Leah looked at Az’s hard profile. “Tell me.”
“Your dad called him. It’s easy to get to him, especially someone in your dad’s position. Hell, I could get him on the phone right now if I wanted to. He told him who he was, mentioned your mother’s name. Kendrick remembered her. Arranged the meeting. He wasn’t here two seconds before he would have scented you as a member of our pack. Kendrick must have felt as if he stumbled on gold. He’d finally get to experiment on a member of our pack, the one thing he’d never gotten to do.”
She nodded. Yes, that sounded right, familiar. Images flooded her mind. The meeting had gone well, Kendrick had been pleasant. She’d started to doubt her mother. At the thought, Leah closed her eyes. She could reme
mber her mother now. Her sweet mother, never the typical politician’s wife. How could she have become so disloyal so fast?
As if he read her mind, Az stroked the back of her hair. “It would be normal to doubt her. If you’re not raised with it, it seems like the stuff of bad movies. If your mother never shifted in front of you or your dad, it’s ridiculous to think you’d just believe.”
Then the men had come. They’d grabbed her out of her bed at night, after having stormed the house like an army coming through the door. Before she’d known what was happening, she’d been gagged and in the back of the car. It had felt like a nightmare and that was only because she didn’t know what pain was yet.
She would.
Opening her eyes, she still stood next to Az but the scene had changed. Grabbing tightly onto his arm, she looked around. “Where are we?”
“Your memory, she-wolf, you tell me.”
Leah liked how he kept using the nickname he’d coined for her when they’d interacted in the lab. It made her feel more secure. He was still with her. She didn’t have to go through this alone. This was a man who had risked his life to get her out of the cage. No way would he fail her now. Not that she needed protection; she’d already lived this. Whatever happened had already happened.
She saw herself gagged and bound sitting in the center of a clearing. Instead of the grassy one on Westervelt this was a sandy desert during sunset. Men and women surrounded her with a man in the middle shouting.
“That’s Kendrick.” Leah was going to have to make a mental note about when Az did and did not call his father ‘dad’ versus calling him Kendrick. As she stared at her mate, she realized that his eyes looked dead. Seeing the man who had been responsible for his birth was killing him. She wished she could make this all go faster.
“You look like him.”
He nodded, his eyes still glassed over in that way that gave her the shivers. “But not as much as Tristan, Gabriel, or Rex.”
“You’re much better looking than he is.”
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