He didn’t reply, just stared at her with those cold, unreadable green eyes.
“But you didn’t let me die. Instead, you leapt in and basically offered your life to save mine.”
“Do you have a point?”
“My point is…” She swallowed hard. Was she crazy? Well, that was pretty much a given at this rate, but it was too late to turn back now. “I don’t think you’re a bad guy, Nate.”
Surprise flickered in his eyes now, before resignation. He shook his head.
“You have no idea what I am.” He released her and stood up. “Maybe you need to stop believing what you write in your books, because believe me when I say I’m nobody’s hero.”
Ouch.
She took the hand he offered her and allowed herself to be pulled to her feet.
“I’m not trying to make you into a hero. But I think I’ve decided… I am willing to try and help you.”
His grip tightened around her hand. “Don’t screw with me, Sage.”
“I’m not.” She lifted her chin and gave him what she hoped was a no-nonsense look. “But likewise—don’t screw with me. I want the truth. I want your side of the story, and then we can work on proving your innocence.”
“If I’m innocent, right?”
“Right.” Had she forgotten to say if? Though, if there was no “if” she was pretty much signing her own death certificate, right? But then, wouldn’t he have just let her die?
Oh, dammit, her mind was running in circles.
Go with your gut. That’s what would lead her from now on out. It’s what had led her to turn around and help him. She couldn’t explain it, couldn’t understand it, but she was running on gut instinct from this moment on.
“We should get back to your house,” he said gruffly. “Before someone reports two naked people walking through the woods.”
“There’s some commune type folk out here, it wouldn’t be too weird.” She gave a small smile. “But yes, you’re right. Maybe we should shift and go in wolf form? We’ll get there quicker.”
He hesitated. “Yeah, we could. But…”
“But?”
“But I don’t share your quandaries of seeing the opposite sex naked.”
“Oh my God.” Heat flamed her cheeks and she was all too aware now of her nudity.
A shit-eating grin split his face. “And, Sage, you look hot.”
“I should’ve let you die.”
Chapter Nine
“Do you want toast with your breakfast?”
Nathan shook his head and didn’t glance up from the computer screen. “Just meat and eggs will be fine. Thanks.”
The sizzling of meat in the pan meant she was pressing the hell out of whatever she was cooking.
“Well, aren’t you an expensive date.”
He grunted. “Are we calling this a date now?”
“Not even a little bit. I’m calling you a charity case.” More movement in the kitchen and pots and pans clanging. “Coffee?”
He only half heard her question as he was busy checking her pack’s website again—not that he expected much to have changed. “Black. Strong.”
“Hmm. So that’s what put the hair on your chest.”
“Genetics did that.” He glanced at the shelves above the computer and saw a series of books, all with her name on it.
Sage Pembrooke.
“Do you write under a penname?”
“Sage is my real name, Pembrooke is not.”
Hmm. “What are your romances about?”
“What?” She twisted to look over her shoulder at him. “Oh. They vary. I write romantic suspense. Lots of action. Adventure.”
Which was absolutely the last thing he’d suspect when looking at her.
If he had to peg her for a writer, he would’ve put her down for inspirational shit. Or motivational crap.
But action? Didn’t see that coming.
Hmm. What were her love scenes like? Surely that gave a hint of who she was. What she’d be like in bed…
Damn, you’re an asshole.
Even so, he almost stood and grabbed a book, but decided that might get awkward. He’d look later.
For now, he’d be content to explore her pack’s website.
A moment later, he narrowed his eyes and made a soft grunt. “Who’s Jim Whelan?”
There was silence from the kitchen, and he glanced over to find her pressing even harder on the ham in the frying pan.
“Sage?”
“He’s the alpha of my pack.”
Ah, and there was some animosity there. “You don’t care for him?”
“He’s fine. I just prefer to do my own thing.”
Maybe just a problem with authority figures. Actually, that was beginning to make sense from what he’d learned of her.
But even still she was a damn puzzle. Why hadn’t she run earlier today? Hell, she’d tried three times alone this morning. Then, when she finally had her break, she hadn’t taken it.
She’d actually blown his mind by coming back and saving his life.
Just thinking about it had his gut twisting, but the longer he reflected on the memory, the more his blood heated. Maybe it was wrong—or maybe he was just a man with a dick—but once he’d come back from death’s edge, he’d become aware of the way her lips and tongue had felt on his skin.
Hesitant and yet determined. Each little stroke of her tongue against that potentially fatal bite had brought him back to life, and unfortunately fueled the flame of awareness and desire that was building toward her.
Complicated. Pretty fucking complicated actually.
“Breakfast, or a bunch of dead animals for you, is ready.”
Not bothering to hide an amused laugh, Nathan pushed back the chair and stood before making his way to the small kitchen table.
One plate was heaped with scrambled eggs, bacon, ham and sausage. On her plate were scrambled eggs, sliced tomatoes and toast.
“Not a big meat eater?”
“I crave it now and then, but no, not so much.”
They sat at the table and he grabbed his fork, tucking into a meal he hadn’t realized he needed.
When was the last time he’d eaten? Lunch yesterday? Then again, that much blood loss probably had something to do with it.
After taking the edge off and finishing half of his meal, he set his fork down and picked up his coffee.
Sage was still eating, quietly and slowly, her gaze squarely on her food. It seemed as if she was deliberately avoiding eye contact now.
Did she regret her decision not to flee and seek help? Her decision to ultimately help him?
He took a moment to observe her, sipping on coffee strong enough to make him wince.
She really was pretty. The morning sunlight spilling through the window made her strawberry-blonde hair seem more of a soft red.
It was almost exotic the way her hair had dried into long, loose curls that fell around her shoulders and framed her heart-shaped face.
She glanced up, saw him watching, and then ducked her head again.
But it gave him enough time to see those strikingly blue eyes. They really were the highlight of her face. Huge, and whether she wanted them to be or not, a mirror to every emotion she felt.
And right now they reflected her awareness of him. If he hadn’t known to look in her eyes, the fact that she was a blusher was also a dead give away.
Unfortunately, she’d put on clothes the moment they’d returned to the house. Even if the shapeless, flowy green blouse hid her shape on top, her jeans hugged a nice, round-looking ass.
She was so completely different from Alicia, his fiancée. Or dead fiancée.
He pushed that sickening thought from his head and reached for his fork again. The only thing the two women had in common was that they were both redheads, and even on that front the shades were pretty different.
Alicia had been tall and svelte, and driven by a strong need to climb the social ladder. Being married to an alpha—bein
g Mrs. Nathan Larson—would’ve made her top of the food chain as far as women went.
And yet he’d always sensed she’d resented the shifters. That she’d resented that side of herself.
Only in the hours before her death had his suspicions been confirmed.
“You lose your appetite?”
Sage’s soft question had him blinking out of the past and returning to the present.
“Just giving my stomach a minute to rest.” He pushed a piece of ham across his plate. “Thanks.”
“You’re welcome. I hope you like it.”
“Not for the food. For what you did earlier.”
She flushed and gave a small shrug. “You already thanked me, and don’t worry about it. I’d have to be a pretty awful person to let you die.”
“No. It would’ve been a natural reaction from a woman intent on surviving.”
“You’d just saved my life. I couldn’t walk away without trying to return the favor.” She was mimicking him now, shuffling food around on her plate.
Maybe his decision in picking her last night had been smart after all. Maybe on a gut level he’d known she’d end up being a good ally, even if he didn’t deserve her support. Her trust.
“So…there’s nearly an entire pack of shifters dead. Including your fiancée,” Sage said without preamble. “Will you explain that to me?”
Christ. Here they went. He could try.
“It was the night after a big rescue went down,” he said softly, floating back to that night in his head. “One of our agents and her younger sister had been abducted. We caught the guy, saved the women.” He paused. “And locked up the jerk responsible.”
Sage nodded, not saying anything, but he could see that she was absorbing every bit of information.
“I went to visit their abductor that night in the prison. To question him and figure out if one of the P.I.A.’s enemies was involved.”
She arched a brow. “Enemy? What do you mean?”
“Someone who’s not really a fan of shifters in general—even though she’s half shifter herself.”
“Half? That must’ve been hard on her.”
“She doesn’t acknowledge that side of herself anyway.” He paused. “And you’ve probably heard about the creation of a drug in the last few months that’s given these half-blooded shifters the ability to actually shift into wolves.”
“I have, yes. I don’t know much about it, but the opportunities and abilities these halves now have is fantastic.” Her expression twisted with sadness. “I hated the way they were treated. Like they were second-class citizens.”
“Discrimination has always been a part of history and humanity.”
“It doesn’t excuse it, and there will always be those who fight for equality.”
“You’re right. Thank God for that.”
She wrapped her hands around her coffee mug. “So this enemy of the shifters, was she involved with the abductions?”
“Sorry, we got a little off topic. Surprisingly, no.” And there was still a part of him that refused to believe she hadn’t known about it.
“But the guy who did it was her employee,” he continued. “So I thought maybe she might’ve been involved for some reason.”
But then, the abducted women had been her nieces, and even if Jocelyn Feloray were a monster, it would be shocking that her evilness had shrunk to such a level.
He flashed back to the rescue on the mountain and a scene that had left his blood chilled.
Grace, one of the victims, had basically accused Jocelyn of killing her parents. So maybe it wasn’t completely beyond realm.
“So the employee was behind everything?” Sage questioned.
“From what I’ve been able to decipher, yes. I only had the opportunity to question him for a few minutes down at the cell where he was being held, though, before…”
“Before?”
He closed his eyes and saw a sea of red. Heard screams from a man that were so shrill with terror they sounded feminine.
“Before someone shoved a needle into my neck and everything became hazy.”
Sage leaned forward. “Someone injected you with something? Who? What was it?”
“I don’t know what. I don’t know whom—though my bet is on a woman if I go by the physical form. The person wore a black ski mask.”
Fascination blazed from her eyes. “What happened next?”
God, he’d swear she was almost using this as research for a book.
“What happened next is pretty fucking hazy. The next few days were, actually.” He shook his head. “I have images in my head. Some moments of clarity.”
“The bulletin said that most of a pack was murdered and they think you did it. Why is that?”
Damn, she really did sound like a reporter. Or a prosecuting attorney.
“Because I was there.” He couldn’t lie. “I don’t remember much. I remember the tangible fear. The blood lust—but I’m almost certain I didn’t kill those people.”
“Almost?” The word squeaked from her mouth.
He knew how crazy it sounded. How terrifying it must be to sit across the table from someone being accused of murdering almost a dozen people.
So why wasn’t she running? Why wasn’t she trying to bash him over the head with a frying pan?
“There are moments I don’t remember, but I’d never take out an entire pack in cold blood.”
Was he trying to convince Sage or himself?
Anger and confusion boiled in his belly. Why the fuck couldn’t he remember?
“Those people were innocent. They didn’t deserve what happened to them.” He could hear the emotion thick in his voice.
He’d been running ever since that horrific day. Sage was the first person he’d spoken to about what had happened, but that was the damn problem. It was a puzzle with various pieces floating around in his head. He didn’t know what had happened.
“So there must be parts you remember?”
“Some parts, yeah. There’s images of people being killed—”
She leaned in closer. “Did you see who killed them?”
“Yeah. I did.” He ground his teeth together, as the one image that was most prominent rose in his memory. “I’m pretty sure it was my fiancée, Alicia.”
Whoa. Nate was engaged. That was the first thing Sage latched on to from his words.
She fell back in her seat and forced her gaze away from him.
That casually dropped shocker had knocked the wind out of her sails, and also put a suspicious lump in her throat and made her heart twist slightly.
With the way he’d touched her this morning—the intimacy of it—she would’ve never guessed him on his way to being mated.
But then again, he’d only been manipulating her, she reminded herself. His attempts at seducing her were probably as calculated as the missions he ran with his P.I.A. teams.
The second shocker was hearing his fiancée may or may not have been responsible for the slaughter of an entire pack.
“Is she going to be held accountable?”
“No.” His expression hardened and his gaze slipped from hers. “She didn’t make it out alive.”
Sage digested that. If he was right about her being the murderer of those poor people, then maybe that was a good thing she’d been killed.
“But you did.”
“Yes, and I had blood all over me. I tried to stop her from killing them. Tried to save the wounded…”
“Do you have someone who can vouch for you, Nate?”
His brows drew together in clear disbelief. “Vouch for me?”
“It’s just…I want to believe you, I do,” she said quickly. “My gut is telling me to trust you, but I also have a history of being a little bit on the naïve side. I’d just feel better about this if I could talk to someone who knows you.”
He stared at her as if she’d grown another head. “Sage, if I had someone to vouch for my innocence I sure as fuck wouldn’t be on the run and take
n you hostage.”
Hearing it phrased like that made her realize the question had been a little ridiculous.
“But surely one of your friends… I just need someone who knows you to tell me you wouldn’t do something like that.”
“The moment you contact someone and ask about me it’s all over. They’ll figure out who you are—where I am. They’ll bring me in and I’ll be lucky if I even get a trial.” He thrust a hand through his hair. “They want justice, and they want it fast. What happened is beyond our normal. It’s huge and ugly. Surely you realize that.”
“I do,” she agreed. He was probably right. “But have you at least tried to tell anyone that you’re innocent? Surely if one of your agents knew…”
She trailed off, not even sure where she was going with her line of reasoning.
“I’ve thought the same thing,” he said after a moment. “I know it’s hard to trust me—to believe any of what I tell you—but I’m a good alpha. A good commander. My agents respect me and I know they’re questioning my guilt right now.”
“So what if we can get a message to one of them? Like, in a way where they can’t trace you?” she said slowly.
He stayed quiet and clearly seemed to be thinking about that.
“Because if we’re going to prove your innocence, it’s going to be kind of hard to return to the scene of the crime. They’d arrest you on the spot.”
“Or shoot me.”
“Not really good options.”
“No. They’re not.”
She shook her head. There had to be a way. Had to be some way she could contact someone.
“Maybe if we—”
“Stop, Sage.” He closed his eyes and his mouth twisted bitterly. “I shouldn’t have gotten you involved in this. I was desperate when I took you hostage last night. Exhausted, angry and desperate.”
She stayed silent, because she knew he wasn’t finished.
“It’s not who I am. I protect the shifter population, not terrorize them. And the more I sit here and think about how you nearly lost your life trying to escape me, the more I realize how damn out of line I am.”
He was. She wasn’t going to argue with that. She also wasn’t quite sure where he was going with this.
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