by Paige Tyler
He nodded. “We both got a little crazy last night. I get the feeling it’s always going to be like that for us. But like me, every mark on you will fade by tomorrow and be completely gone in a few days.”
She looked down at her body—her beautiful, sexy, smoking, passion-marked body—then looked at him in confusion. “What are you talking about? I look like I’ve been in a fight with a rabid mongoose. It will take weeks for all this to heal up. These marks on my neck will probably never go away.”
He sighed again and moved across the bed until he was sitting on the side of it. This was going about as badly as he could have imagined. But on the not-really-bright side, it wasn’t like he had to worry about dealing with a hard-on anymore. It was completely gone.
Selena took a few steps back but stopped when she realized he wasn’t going to come after her. He couldn’t miss the way her eyes darted around his place until she positively ID’d the location of her dress, bra, and shoes.
“I’d hoped I’d be able to find a better way to tell you this, but that option is off the table now,” Brooks said. “So I’m just going to dump it all on you and pray you’re able to deal with it. But you have to promise to stay calm and let me get it all out.”
She took a step closer to her dress, her eyes never leaving him. “You’re starting to scare me a little. I’ve never heard you babble like this.”
He was babbling? He’d hadn’t done that since he was five. Then again, he’d never had to deal with a situation like this before. Bad guys with guns were simple compared to this.
“When Pablo shot at you in your classroom, it started a genetic change in your body.” Damn, he wished Gage—or even Cooper—were here to tell him what to say. But in their absence, he went with his gut. And his gut told him Selena wasn’t the kind of woman who liked to beat around the bush. “That’s why you’ve probably been experiencing some strange stuff that doesn’t make a lot of sense to you. Like being able to smell things you shouldn’t or hearing conversations when there’s no way in hell you possibly could. You’ve also probably found yourself getting upset, emotional, and even angry for no reason.”
She stared at him, the confusion in her eyes painful to see. “How can you possibly know all that?”
The urgency of the question was displayed more in the tension on her face than in her words. It made him wonder what kind of crap she’d been dealing with over the past few days that he didn’t know about.
“Because I went through the same confusing time after I lived through my own incredibly painful and traumatic episode in Gulfport,” he explained. “I couldn’t control my emotions, I smelled my neighbors baking weed four blocks away from where I lived, and I overheard my beat partner telling the shift sergeant he thought I was having a nervous breakdown. Which was probably what it looked like from the outside. Of course, I happened to hear that particular conversation from the far side of a pistol qualification range, which obviously shouldn’t have been possible.”
Selena didn’t say anything. Instead, she stood there naked and vulnerable. He wanted to take her in his arms and hold her. But he couldn’t. Not yet. There was more that needed to be said.
“This genetic change is also why you bit me on our first date and again last night,” he added. “Part of it is because you’ve just started the process, but the biggest part is that you haven’t gained control over your body yet. Your fangs and claws are going to pop out whenever you get angry—or aroused—until you gain control.”
He was about to follow up with a promise to help her gain that control. To be there with her through the whole thing and then some. But he didn’t get the chance.
“Fangs and claws?” she growled. “What the hell are you talking about? You make it sound like I’m turning into some kind of monster.”
Damn, he was doing a crappy job explaining this.
“You’re not turning into a monster,” he said quickly. “But you are getting claws and fangs. They’re part of the package when you become a werewolf.”
Selena stared at him, her expression unreadable. Bending over, she picked up her dress and yanked it over her head, ignoring her bra completely as tears filled her eyes. Brooks stood up to follow, knowing he was blowing this. She either didn’t believe him, or she thought he was insane. Both were equally bad.
“Selena, stop. Please!” he pleaded, walking around until he was in between her and the back door. He didn’t want to pen her in, but she needed to understand what the hell was happening to her. For her own safety and for the safety of every werewolf out there in the world. “I know this sounds crazy, but I promise it’s true. You’re turning into a werewolf, and all this stuff that’s happening to you will only get worse until you learn how to control it. If that isn’t enough, there are people in the world who will hurt you if they know what you are. You need to let me keep you safe.”
She didn’t say anything as she dragged her heels on, the move unbelievably graceful even in her anger.
Brooks reached for her, intending to pull her into his arms for a kiss. He needed to make her see that all of this was a big mistake. But then she spun around and stabbed him with a glare that stopped him in his tracks. Dark eyes flickered with a color deep in their depths. He wasn’t sure what color it was, but he knew it sure wasn’t green.
“Stop it right now!” she shouted. “I don’t know whether you think this is funny or if you really believe this crap. Either way, just stop. I don’t want to hear anymore.”
Brooks heard Selena’s heart thudding at a thousand miles an hour. He could smell the fear coming off her in waves. She was terrified and confused, and the way he was handling this situation was making it worse. His gut twisted as she shoved past him, heading for the door. The protective alpha instinct in him started to panic, warning him that if he let her go, he may never get her back. She might be The One for him, but that wouldn’t mean anything if he let her get away before she knew what the hell being The One even meant.
He wanted to reach out to grab her, to somehow keep her here with him until he could get her to listen to him. But he knew that would never work. He remembered the strength she’d shown last night while they’d made love. If she wanted to leave, it would take a lot of physical force to even attempt to stop her. Brooks wasn’t ready to do something like that to her. Not even to keep her safe.
So he decided to do the one thing that might get her to understand he wasn’t making this up.
“Selena, wait!” he called out, running to catch up to her as she reached the door. “If last night meant anything at all to you, I’m begging you to stop and look at me for a second.”
She hesitated, then slowly turned to face him. There was doubt, fear, and sadness in her eyes. But there was anger, too. So much frigging anger. He didn’t have much time to do this.
“Don’t freak out,” he said softly.
Holding up his right hand, he let his claws slip out to their maximum length.
Selena’s eyes widened, and she stumbled back, hitting the door, fear and shock overcoming every other emotion.
“Please don’t be scared,” he begged, taking a step closer and moving his hand this way and that so she could see it. “They’re just my claws. The same kind of claws you have. The same claws you used to scratch my stomach and my back.”
Selena’s gaze was locked on his claws, until he’d said the part about his back. Then she moved so fast, he could barely follow the movement, her hand grabbing his shoulder and spinning him around.
He’d known his back was scratched up, but he didn’t realize how bad it was until he heard her sharp intake of breath. He spun back around to see her standing there with both hands covering her mouth, an expression of pure horror on her face.
“It’s okay,” he whispered, taking a step closer. “You just got a little carried away last night. That won’t happen once you gain more control.”
“I really am a monster,” she whispered.
Her claws extended as the stress and fear of the moment overwhelmed her. At the sight of them, her whole body began to shake, and he could see the tips of her fangs peeking out from behind the hands she still had over her mouth. She must have felt the sharp tips against her lips and realized what they meant, because her eyes widened in near total panic.
Brooks closed the distance between them, not able to stand the sight of her so scared. But that turned out to be the very worst thing he could have done. He swore it sounded like her heart was going to explode as more fear ripped through her.
“Stay back!” she sobbed, her fangs and claws on full display as she tried to push him away. “I don’t want to hurt you again!”
He tried to resist, but that only made it worse. One moment, Selena was growling in fear, and the next, she was snarling in uncontrolled rage, her eyes flashing vivid blue. The next thing he knew, he was flying across the room like he’d been hit by a truck.
Brooks landed on the floor hard enough to knock the air out of him, but it wasn’t the impact that stunned him nearly senseless. It was the image of Selena snarling at him with those vivid blue eyes. He’d only seen blue glowing eyes like that one other time in his life…and he’d almost died then.
The sound of a heavy metal door slamming pulled his attention back to the present, and he scrambled to his feet as fast as he could to follow after her. But he wasn’t even halfway to the door when he heard the engine on his old truck rumble to life. She must have grabbed his keys as she’d left.
Brooks kept going anyway, running outside in time to see his truck spinning out onto the road behind the building, rear tires smoking as it sped away. He took about ten steps after her before he remembered he was still naked. He slowed to a standstill. If he chased her, she’d only run faster. Besides, it wasn’t like he was going to tackle his own truck, especially with Selena driving it.
All he could do was stand there buck-ass naked in his backyard, howling in frustration as Selena drove away, wondering how the hell he’d missed the fact that the woman he loved was turning into an omega werewolf.
Chapter 14
It was after ten o’clock by the time Brooks walked into the bullpen in the admin building later that morning. He stopped short, groaning when he realized that, with the exception of Becker, the entire Pack was there. Like they’d been waiting for him. From the way they were looking at him, they knew exactly what had happened to him that morning, too.
He turned and glared at Zane as his pack mate strolled in behind him. “You told them?”
Zane made a face and walked past him, heading for his desk. “What, that you’re so bad in the sack Selena woke up screaming this morning and left you, taking your truck with her?” He pulled out his chair and sat. “I might have mentioned it.”
“Damn, Brooks.” On the other side of the room, Cooper chuckled. “What is it with you dating women who steal your stuff? First, the one in Gulfport took your LSU gear, then the one from the narcotics division swiped a bunch of your dress shirts, and now Selena jacks your ride? Maybe you need to find a different type of woman to hang out with, because if you keep going like this, before long, you won’t own anything.”
Everyone laughed at that. Remy even leaned across the aisle from his desk to fist-bump Cooper.
Muttering under his breath that they were all degenerates, Brooks walked over to his desk. That’s what he got for calling Zane to pick him up. At least his teammate hadn’t told everyone Selena had shifted and completely lost control. Or that Brooks had only made it worse when he’d tried to calm her down.
“Since Brooks has finally decided to join us, maybe we can finally start the morning briefing,” Gage announced from the doorway of his office, his tone suggesting he wasn’t happy Brooks was late.
Brooks stifled a groan when another round of laughter swept through the room. He dropped into his chair as Xander and Mike moved to the front of the bullpen and began conducting after-action reviews on each of their recent response calls before transitioning into updates on any ongoing missions. Gage held these meetings at least once a week—sometimes more—as a way of making sure everyone on the team knew what their teammates were working on and also so they could hopefully learn from each other’s experiences.
Brooks tried his best to pay attention, but within minutes, his head was a million miles away, scenes from last night and this morning replaying through his mind over and over. But no matter where he started, he always ended up in the same place. With Selena totally losing it and running out of his house with tears on her terror-stricken face.
He had alternated between calling and texting Selena for nearly an hour after she’d left. He’d left countless messages, saying he was sorry he’d scared her and that everything was going to be okay…if they could just talk. When Selena hadn’t responded after the twentieth text, he’d finally stopped, afraid he was only going to freak her out even more.
On the way to the SWAT compound, he and Zane had driven past Selena’s apartment to see if she was there. Brooks was smart enough to know trying to see her would have been a complete catastrophe, but he’d wanted to make sure she’d gotten home okay.
Unfortunately, his Chevy hadn’t been in the parking lot. He’d immediately had visions of his truck ending up in a ditch somewhere because she’d been too far gone to even control it. He was so damn worried, he’d actually considered putting out a BOLO on his pickup. Thankfully, Zane had talked him out of it. The last thing they needed was a DPD patrol car pulling Selena over because they thought she’d stolen the vehicle. In her condition, she’d probably attack the officer.
“Brooks, what’s the status on the joint gang task force?” Gage asked from the front of the room.
He looked up to see not only his boss staring at him, but everyone else, too. Brooks stared back. His head was so completely trashed, he had no clue how to answer Gage’s question. He had the intel from last night at the club, but that info was more than twelve hours out of date. Ray and the rest of the task force could be working a dozen new angles by now.
Knowing how bad it was going to look but not having any choice, Brooks opened his mouth to admit he was completely out of the loop on the task force operation. But before he could get the words, Zane spoke.
“I talked to Ray about an hour ago,” his friend said, throwing him a pointed look before turning back to Gage. “The energy drinks we confiscated from the club last night came back laced with high levels of fentanyl. According to the lab, the concentration in a single can is enough to put the average person on a pretty good ride. Drink more than one—or add in alcohol—and you get the overdose scenario we had last night.”
“Did the lab get any usable fingerprints from the cans?” Gage asked, eyeing Brooks for a second before looking at Zane. “Any way to ID where this stuff is coming from?”
Zane shook his head. “Unfortunately, no. The cans came back covered in prints, but it’s going to take a while before the crime scene unit sorts them out. Ray and his people spent the morning hitting the other clubs in town and found five other places selling the energy drink. They all told the same story—they were approached by a sales rep they’ve never met before who provided them cases of Buzz at low cost in an attempt to build a market for it.”
“That doesn’t make a hell of a lot of sense,” Connor pointed out with a frown. “Whoever is making this crap has to know they won’t be able to sell it in legitimate clubs much longer, even if they build up a demand for it. Once word gets out this drink has synthetic heroin in it, no one is going to touch it with a ten-foot pole, no matter how much people might want it.”
“They won’t care by then,” Brooks said, still playing catch-up. “Once word hits the streets that someone has figured out how to make heroin you can drink, the dealers can move it to the underground market. Think raves, college parties, and private clubs.
Hell, they can sell it on street corners or out of the back of a truck in a parking lot somewhere. It won’t matter, because this crap will move like crazy by that point.”
Connor shook his head. “That’s a nice frigging thought. Throw in the fact the dealer can probably change the appearance of the cans anytime they want, and this has all the makings of a whole new direction in drug distribution.”
Gage crossed his arms over his chest. “Is anyone working on ID’ing the sales reps who dropped the cases off at the clubs? With six different clubs targeted, someone has to recognize them.”
“Ray has police sketch artists working with people in every club, and he’s got the employees looking at mug shots,” Zane said. “He’s still working on the theory this is connected to the new gang boss.”
Brooks grimaced. Unlike in the movies and on TV where it took cops five minutes to find someone in their fancy computer database, it took a whole lot longer in the real world.
He was still musing about the probability of Ray’s crew finding a connection when Cooper asked if there’d been anything new on the prison break.
Gage grunted. “There’s crappy news and less crappy news. Which one do you want first?”
“Less crappy,” the entire room said in unison.
“Becker was able to successfully hack into the personnel records for Coffield. He also broke into the security system that monitors and tracks prisoner movements, along with the warden’s computer and those of the Marshals Service.”
At the desk beside Brooks, Rachel looked a little uncomfortable that a fellow SWAT cop hacked into other people’s computers. That was only because she didn’t know Becker yet. While the guy was younger than almost all of them, he’d been a scary good computer geek even before he’d worked for the Secret Service back when he was human. He’d only gotten sneakier after that. That he’d been able to break into both the state prison system and the marshals’ computers wasn’t a big shock to any of them.
