She blinked back the tears and nodded, not trusting her voice.
“Do we have a copy of Haley’s family tree?” Damon stretched his neck side to side as he looked at Jayden.
“Not yet. I asked the Guardians to send me a copy.”
“How the hell did you get them to agree to that? You’re not even employed at the compound.” Damon’s voice was harsh and Ava could detect a hint of resentment in his tone.
Jayden’s grin split across his handsome face. “I may not be employed as a soldier like you, my friend, but I do have my connections.”
“You mean you blackmailed someone.” Damon snorted.
“It helps to be one of the few in the world who can erase an entire night of debauchery that’s been caught on Facebook.” Jayden shrugged.
Ava narrowed her eyes. “That’s impossible. Even if you erased some pictures someone else posted, someone would have already seen them.”
“That’s when you replace what they think they saw with a subliminal message that makes them forget what they saw.”
“You’re serious. You can actually do that?”
“Thanks to technology, our information is limitless.” Jayden stood. “I’ve got to check on some things down in the casino. I do have a job, you know.”
“I was beginning to wonder. You seem to have a lot of time on your hands to be hanging with us.” Damon walked Ava to the door.
“Just trying to keep Ava entertained.” Jayden shrugged. “Wouldn’t want her to think all wolves are as uncivilized as you.”
***
Walking through the casino, Ava stayed close to Damon. He’d not touched her since they were interrupted in the room, and since then his mood had changed for the worse. He’d grown more distant. It was probably for the best. She didn’t want to get him in trouble with his job. He’d told her many times that his job was his life, his everything. She couldn’t take that away from him. Besides, she wanted to be first in a man’s life, not second best.
Her gaze swept the casino as the flashing lights and the rhythmic sounds of the slot machines lulled her into a sense of normalcy. Despite having her world turned upside down these last few days, she thought she had handled it pretty well. Discovering she was a werewolf hadn’t shocked her as much as it should. In some odd way, she’d always known she was different.
An older blue-haired lady pulling an oxygen tank hurried to pass them to a recently vacated slot machine. Easing herself up onto the stool, the old lady held her bucket of coins in one hand while feeding the machine with the other, all the while oxygen pumped into her lungs via tubing attached to her nose.
Ava grinned and watched with interest as a second elderly lady walked up to the blue-haired lady and accused her of stealing her slot machine. A few heated words were exchanged and security was called. Jayden, dressed in his black security uniform, arrived at the scene and tried unsuccessfully to diffuse the situation. The woman with the oxygen refused to move, arguing it was empty when she sat down. The other lady said she had to go get more money and had intended to come back.
“Do you want to wait and see if they end up slugging it out?” Damon’s breath tickled her ear.
Looking up, she smiled and shook her head. “No. My bet’s on oxygen lady.”
He grinned. “Yeah, she’s tenacious. Plus, she had a cane stuck beside her oxygen tank. I’m willing to bet she wouldn’t hesitate to use it.”
“Well, look what the dog dragged in.”
She felt Damon stiffen behind her.
A sense of foreboding crashed over her as Ava came face-to-face with a stunning blonde with beautiful brown eyes. The woman was dressed to the nines in an expensive white pantsuit and red heels that matched her smirk.
“Lorry.” Damon’s voice spat out the woman’s name like a curse.
Ava’s heart sunk.
“Damon, you’re looking well.” Lorry glanced at Ava with evident surprise in her eyes. “I see you have a new plaything. Odd. You always preferred blondes.”
Fury and anger pitted in Ava’s gut until she wanted to pound Lorry’s pretty little face into the floor. She forced a smile and looked directly at the rude woman. “Damon’s tastes have changed. For the better.”
Lorry’s smile faltered, her façade of perfection cracking as she uncrossed her arms and clenched her mouth.
He chuckled. “What’s wrong, Lorry? Did you think I would be pining away for your sister, unable to get on with my life?”
Lorry narrowed her pretty brown eyes at him.
He snorted. “Of course you did. You both probably did.”
“You were mated,” Lorry spat out, her beautiful features turning vindictive and bitter.
Ava stilled and couldn’t breathe. Her heart melted like a crayon under the heat of an Arkansas sun.
Damon was mated.
“You can’t mate someone who tries to kill you. A mate would never do that.” He took a step toward Lorry, anger flashing across his face like lightning.
Ava felt like she’d been punched in the chest with a steel hand as she stared up at Damon. Why would any female try to kill him? He was magnificent and powerful and protective. It was in that second she realized something else about Damon. He was also hers.
“You don’t understand, Damon. She would have lost everything. She didn’t know they were going to try to kill you.” Lorry crossed her arms and fixed him with a stare.
“We both know how attached Laura is to her money.”
“You don’t know what it’s like to grow up poor, to have the other kids make fun of you because your mom didn’t have enough money to buy decent clothes.” Lorry snarled. “For once we had money and her lifestyle was threatened. She didn’t know what to do.”
“My money. You mean, you both had my money. Because if my memory is correct, Laura never worked a day in her life after she met me. In fact, you moved into my house the week after Laura did.”
“We’re family. Family is supposed to take care of each other.” Lorry stuck out her chin. Ava changed her mind. She didn’t think Lorry was so pretty after all.
“Actually, I think that’s called being a gold digger.” Ava took a step forward. For once she was grateful for the difference in height so she could look down at Lorry.
Lorry’s lips turned upward in a very unattractive snarl. “Well, it looks like you’re doing the same thing, so you’re one to talk.”
Damon growled and Ava reached out and touched his arm reassuringly. “Damon doesn’t take care of me financially. I work and have my own money, just so we’re clear.” She raised her eyebrow. “Now, the bedroom is something completely different. In fact, he takes really good care of me in the bedroom.”
Lorry’s mouth dropped open and pumped like a trout before she slammed it shut. Turning on her expensive heels, she stomped away, elbowing the elderly gamblers out of her way.
Ava gave Damon a disbelieving look. “You actually dated someone related to that bitch?”
“I’m afraid so.”
Chapter Seven
Damon itched to get his hands on the information as Jayden dumped the contents of a black folder on the bed.
Jayden pointed to a document containing a list of names. “This is the family tree that David Jenkins was keeping on Haley.” He looked up at Ava. “Do any of the names sound familiar to you?”
She studied the paper and shook her head. “I don’t recognize any of these people.”
Damon picked up the document. “Jayden, scan this and send it to this number.”
“Who is it?”
“Zane. He’s one of our Pack members in Arkansas. He’s a genius with genealogy. If there is something significant about these relatives, he’ll find it.”
Jayden averted his eyes. “Does Zane happen to have a sister named Katy?”
“Yeah, how did you know?” Damon cocked his head and frowned. “Please tell me you didn’t bang his sister.”
Jayden gave him a pained look. “Didn’t have time. Zane showed up,
armed to the teeth. I managed to escape out the window, buck-ass naked. It was dead of winter and I almost froze my balls off before I made it to my car.”
Zane was very protective of his only sister. Hell, the dude didn’t even let you look in her direction without threatened to castrate you. The fact that Jayden made it out alive was a miracle.
“Don’t tell him who you are then. Just tell him you’re a friend of mine.”
Jayden nodded and headed back to his room.
“I’m going to call and check in with Barrett. He should have a safe house ready for you.” Damon slid a glance to Ava.
She shook her head and crossed her arms. “Hell, no. You’re not taking me back until we find Haley.”
“Ava, this is not a game.” He gave her his fiercest scowl, but she didn’t bother looking the least bit intimidated.
“You’re not the boss of me.”
“No, I’m not. I’m just the person responsible for keeping you safe and alive.” He narrowed his eyes.
“That’s not why you’re so eager to get rid of me.”
“What?” A flicker of irritation flashed through his eyes.
“You want to get rid of me because you don’t trust me.” Her voice carried a note of surprise.
“This has nothing to do with trust.”
“It has everything to do with trust.” She reached out and cradled his scarred cheek. Her touch nearly took him to his knees.
He closed his eyes, forcing himself to remain in control of his emotions. He needed to focus on the job.
“I’m not like her. I’m not like Laura.”
His eyes sprang open. “God, I know that, Ava. I never said you were.”
“You didn’t have to. Sometimes when I look at you, I see it in your eyes, the distrust. At first I didn’t understand why, but now after seeing Lorry, I do. I want you to know that I would never hurt you like Laura did. Never.”
No one had ever said that to him and actually meant it. Words were lies, easily spilled and quickly forgotten.
“Damon, what did she do?” She took his hand in hers.
The memories of that night were too painful. Hell, it had been painful for years. It was the reason he never came back to Louisiana. His stomach clenched as he watched her emerald eyes. If Ava knew the details, would her opinion of him change?
He eased down onto the bed.
Ava eased onto the opposite bed and waited patiently for him to speak.
Sucking in a deep breath, he held it a second and blew it out. “I suppose I need to start from the beginning, before I even met Laura. That might explain why we ended up together in the first place.” He swallowed. “You remember me saying that I grew up in an orphanage?”
“Yes.”
“Well, that part of my childhood was pretty uneventful until my last year there.”
“What happened?”
“I was going through puberty. You know, voice changing, mood swing, hair developing in all the right places, all the typical teenage stuff.” He shrugged. “Anyway, one night after dinner, I broke out in a fever and my muscles started aching, really bad. The nuns put me in bed thinking it was the flu. My bed was facing the window and as I lay there shivering, I watched the moon come out from behind the clouds. I was drawn to it and couldn’t keep my eyes off it. It was mesmerizing.” He averted his gaze to the floor.
“Instead of my symptoms getting better, they started getting worse. For three days I stayed in bed, one of the nuns always at my bedside. Sister Mary actually sent for the priest thinking I was going to die.” Damon laughed ruefully. He remembered the pain. At the time, he had actually wished for death so the pain would finally end.
“On the third night, as I lay there, alone, in my own sweat and screaming in pain from the muscle aches, my eye caught the full moon coming out from behind the clouds. The instant I saw it my pain intensified. It was so much worse than those three days of agony I’d experienced.”
“Were you shifting?”
He looked up and nodded.
“That first time it took me an hour to make the transformation. And at midnight, when I was fully wolf, the priest decided to finally get off his ass and arrive. You can’t imagine the look on his face when he came through the door.
“He called me a demon and started throwing holy water on me.”
“Did it hurt?”
“No, but it did piss me off.”
She chortled.
“I jumped through the window and kept running until I reached the woods. The next morning I tried going back to the orphanage, but they’d locked the doors and wouldn’t let me in. They said I was evil and of the devil.” He glanced away. At the time, he had thought maybe they were right.
“You were just a child.”
“I wasn’t just a child Ava, I was a wolf.”
“Where did you go?”
“I was homeless for a while.” Damon bit his cheek as his past washed over him.
“How did you survive?” Her brows furrowed together as if she were reliving the pain right along with him.
“I slept where there weren’t a lot of people, like cemeteries. Sometimes, I managed to sleep in churches that were unlocked. Finding food was the hard part. A lot of times, the only way I could eat was to steal it.” He hated admitting that desperate part of his life.
“One night, I got into a fight with some guys over some bread I had stolen from a restaurant. It was at night and there happened to be a full moon. Of course you can guess what happened next.”
“I thought you didn’t need a full moon to shift?”
“You don’t. But you are more likely to shift if you don’t know how to control it. I was still young and hadn’t learned how to control it.” He shrugged. “Anyway, the guys freaked and ran away. I was in the city so trying to hide was almost impossible. To make a long story short, a couple of rednecks spotted me in an alley and captured me.”
“What happened next?”
“They shipped me to South Carolina where they entered me in an underground dog-fighting ring.”
“They made you a slave? Even after you shifted back?” Her eyes held a pain for him that he’d never experienced from another person.
He nodded. “There are some humans who will do anything for money.”
“Could you not escape?”
“I tried once, when they forgot to chain me.”
“They chained you?” Her voice was tight with rage.
“They’d always chain me around my neck, like the other dogs. They never knew when I was going to change, so they made sure I was secured.”
“That’s why you don’t like anything around your neck.”
“Yes.” Shame burned through his gut as he looked away. He didn’t want to see the pity in her beautiful eyes.
“How long were you there?”
“One year, three weeks and thirteen days.”
“Oh, Damon.” She reached for his hand.
He sucked in a deep breath. He needed to finish the story before he chickened out. “One night, I managed to finally break my chains. I escaped and didn’t stop running until I got to Louisiana. Jayden was the first friend I made. He’d caught me out behind his grandmother’s house one night digging through the garbage, looking for something to eat. I knew the minute he got close enough to catch his scent, that he was a wolf. Granny took me in, cleaned me up and fed me. I ended up living with them for a while.”
He chuckled. “Granny was the one who explained to me what I was. She said I wasn’t a freak. She actually contacted the commander from New Orleans when I needed a job. It was the first time I was ever in a Pack and working as a Guardian.”
“Is that where you met Laura? In New Orleans?”
“Yes. She was a waitress at a restaurant near Bourbon Street. She always waited on me when I came in. I didn’t go out much other than to eat. Even then I was usually alone, unless Jayden happened to be in town. Laura found out that I had recently bought a remodeled loft downtown and asked to
see it.” He grimaced. “Anyway, she ended up coming back to my place and…”
“You two got it on. Understood. No details please.” She flinched.
It had been nothing like being with Ava, and they hadn’t even had full on sex.
“After that, Laura started coming by, bringing me meals, checking on me. For the first time in my life I felt like I mattered,” he continued. “I thought I was in love and asked her to move in with me. It was the worst mistake of my life.”
“Laura’s a wolf?”
“Yes.”
“How does that work, being wolves and being a couple? I mean did you guys shift and go run together at night?”
He grinned. Ava made it sound so simple, so right. So completely unlike Laura and how she viewed being a werewolf.
“Laura never shifted in front of me the whole time we were together. I’m not sure she shifted at all. She said she despised being a wolf.”
“Can you do that, prevent shifting?”
“There is something you can take to stop yourself from shifting, but the side effects are too dangerous.”
“Why did Laura despise being a wolf?”
“She said it was uncivilized. She liked herself in human form where she could show off her beautiful clothes and jewelry that I bought her.” He shook his head. “Laura always worried about what others thought of her if she didn’t wear the very best.”
“How did she try to get you killed?”
“I came in late one night after having busted some werewolves making crystal meth. I walked into the kitchen to grab a sandwich when Laura called to me from the bedroom. The lights were off, which I thought was weird because Laura always kept a nightlight on.”
“The second I walked through the bedroom door, a baseball bat hit me across the chest. I dropped to my knees and two guys jumped me.” He looked down at Ava’s white-knuckled grip on his hand. He held her hand against his scarred cheek.
“Right before I passed out I looked up. Laura was standing there looking down at me with nothing in her eyes. Not love, not hate, just emptiness. Later, I found out that the two guys were looking to collect on a very large debt she’d run up at the jewelry store owned by an Italian guy who happened to be connected to the mob.”
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