by Zoe Winters
When he realized she was alone, he carried her back inside.
She’d stopped screaming and collapsed against him, still crying, but the panic had faded. He sat her gently on the couch and took her chin in his hands, his eyes locking with hers. “I’ll be right back.”
She nodded.
She looked so small sitting on the couch in one of his T-shirts. He was in and out of the kitchen in less than thirty seconds with an open bottle of water.
“Drink.”
She took the bottle and drank. Her face was red and flushed from crying, her eyes puffy. Her throat was no doubt raw if she’d been screaming for long. He wondered if any of the pack had woken. Well, if they had, the cat was out of the bag, and they were either going to think he was having really wild sex or torturing someone.
“I won’t leave you alone here again,” he said, the guilt starting to weigh on him that his behavior had been the cause of this much fear.
She nodded and lifted the bottle to her lips again. That’s when the scent of her blood hit him. Her hands. She’d pounded on the door until her hands had bled. His pupils dilated but he resisted the change, glad he’d eaten a bear.
He lifted the hand she wasn’t using to drink and caught her eyes. “I’m not going to hurt you. But we used the last of the ointment on your cheek. Can I?”
She looked at him confused for a second, then her eyes widened a fraction.
“I know it might seem disgusting, but it’s really the best antiseptic. And I can make the bleeding stop.”
She nodded.
He ran his tongue gently over her hand, and he could taste the vampire in her blood. He’d deal with that issue later. For now, what was important was to try to make her feel safe.
The guilt crushed in on him. He’d meant to help her, and instead he’d traumatized her. Well, what did he expect keeping her against her will? Had he thought she’d be A-okay with being locked up?
Her arousal hit him hard, jolting him out of his thoughts. He looked up at her, his pupils dilating this time for a new reason. She looked away, clearly mortified, knowing he’d sensed her reaction. He released her hand.
They sat silent for a few minutes. Her other hand was still bleeding and clutching tightly onto the water bottle. He didn’t push the issue. Finally, after a few minutes of neither of them speaking, she shifted the bottle to her cleaned hand, and gave him her other one.
“Jane?”
“I’m bleeding.”
His nostrils flared. “Yes, I’m aware of that. Are you sure you’re comfortable with this?”
She nodded and looked away from him while he used his tongue to make the bleeding stop on the other hand.
When he finished, he started babbling. “I didn’t mean to be gone that long. I should have known you’d panic. I should have remembered the claustrophobia. I just thought we’d dealt with that issue. But you were locked in, and I should have known how you’d react if you woke up. I shouldn’t have chanced it. I should have waited until daytime, to go hunting and should have . . . ”
“Had a bad dream,” she croaked, interrupting the litany.
“Will you tell me about it?”
He sat in quiet horror while she recounted the dream and her history. He understood now why he could taste vampire in her blood. He’d been so close to saying something stupid, asking her why she’d fed from a vamp. Though even if she had, it likely wouldn’t have been her choice. He’d been so wrong about her. She wasn’t a vampire groupie; she’d been trying desperately to appease them.
“I finally worked up the nerve to stake Sedrick. He was sure he’d kept such a close eye on me, but I’d made a stake a little bit at a time when he was doing other things. I had it ready for months before I worked up the nerve to try it. I was afraid something would go wrong with the coffin and it wouldn’t open. I knew if it didn’t, Sedrick was strong enough to open it from the inside.
“When I staked him, I thought I would die from the smell, but the coffin opened that night, and I got out. He’d spared my parents, but I stayed away. I’d been gone three years and thought I might lead another vampire to them. So I just ran and lived in shelters for awhile. I tried to make sure I was never out after dark. But sometimes I had to go out at night, like when I had a job and had to work later than normal.”
He’d stretched out on the couch and pulled her back against him, running his fingers through her hair. For a moment she tensed and he stopped, but then she relaxed again.
“I’m not them, Jane. I know you’ve heard bad things about the werewolves, but that’s political bullshit. I don’t allow my pack to hunt humans.” Even as he spoke, the pool of blood from a few hours before taunted him.
“I know.”
He suppressed the growls as she went on to tell him about the next vampire who caught her, and how while that one hadn’t locked her in a coffin, he’d passed her around and whored her out to other vampires. Until Gregory had rescued her.
“Greg was the first vampire I met who wasn’t a complete monster. After a few years I got comfortable, thought I was safe. Almost felt like a person again. Then the tournament came up, and he wouldn’t turn me. He said he didn’t want to curse me like that. And then he let me go because he said he couldn’t be king with me.”
She let out a shuddering breath. “He wanted to believe I’d be okay without a protector. But I knew I wouldn’t be, so I latched onto Paul. I thought if I picked the vampire, maybe I would pick someone who wasn’t that bad. Like Greg. But Paul only looked innocent.
“Almost as soon as Anthony won the tournament, he and Charlee got wrapped up in all the vampire business and politics, and Paul kept getting pushed to the fringes. He started taking it out on me, like the knife marks, and slapping me around because he’d figured out I could take more than most humans.”
“They’ll never touch you again.”
Silence stretched between them, and Jane drifted to sleep nestled in his arms, a few of her demons purged for the night. Cole ran his fingers through her hair while she slept, quietly plotting how he’d kill Paul to make it look like a happy accident.
Chapter Six
Jane woke in Cole’s bed with an arm thrown loosely across her body. She tensed. This wasn’t how she remembered going to sleep. A million thoughts and feelings ran through her. Clearly her body wanted him. Then again, her fucked-up body had wanted the vampire that killed her boyfriend when he bit her, too. Don’t think about that shit. Don’t even go there.
His arm lifted and retreated back to his side of the bed. “You fell asleep, and I brought you back here where you’d be more comfortable.”
She rolled over to find herself under the covers and him on top. That made her feel better at least, the thick blankets acting as a shield.
“Are you okay with this?” he asked, gesturing at the bed.
He’d been walking on eggshells since the night before when she’d told him about the dream, and then for some indefinable reason spilled her guts to him. Jane wasn’t in the habit of sharing her life history with practical strangers. Especially strangers who were supposed to be the enemy. But she’d been throwing her hat in with the vampires so long out of self-preservation, she’d forgotten that one halfway decent vampire notwithstanding, vamps were the enemy, too.
At least for someone like her.
Her mother had never mentioned a history with the undead. Maybe she’d been kept as a pet and the vamp released her, or she killed him. Maybe she’d been under a thrall and didn’t remember it.
Jane’s skin crawled at the idea of her mother having been some vampire’s pet and not remembering a second of it. She thought about the women in the back room of the club and wondered how many of them even knew what was going on. How many of them woke in the morning with a gap in their memory and no clue about their nightly activities?
The things Jane had been through had been bad. But at least she knew exactly what had and hadn’t happened to her.
“Jane?”
&
nbsp; She jumped at his voice and tried to refocus on the present. “It’s fine. I’m sorry, I was thinking.”
“I’m not looking for payment or a business transaction here. You don’t owe me anything.”
She nodded, her eyes drifting to his bare chest. Which made her want to give it to him all the more. This wasn’t like Sedrick or the others. It wasn’t just her body that wanted Cole. Maybe it was because she was out of her element with a werewolf, but the instincts she’d honed so well to stay alive had been flung to the wind now that she was with him.
She could feel his warmth through the blankets, and she wanted to rip away the barrier between them to feel his skin pressed against hers. But he’d made no move toward her and hadn’t shown any overt interest. He knew she’d been aroused when his tongue had run over the back of her hand, and he’d ignored her reaction.
Okay, so she’d been bleeding and that had been gross, but it didn’t seem like he minded. He hunted and ate raw warm meat, freshly dead. Blood was a part of that.
“Cole?”
“Yes?” His voice was tight.
She wished he’d stop treating her like she was made of glass. She’d been with Gregory at least long enough to know the signs of what she was looking for. She’d had warning bells with Paul but had thought he wouldn’t be as bad as he’d become. There were no bells with Cole. Then again, maybe her evil detector only worked on vampires.
“Last night, when you cleaned up my hands, um . . . there was blood and panic, and you didn’t change.”
“Was there a question in there?”
She rolled her eyes. “Yes. Why?”
“The cave is bigger than the car. I’d just hunted. I was concerned for you. And your fear wasn’t directed toward me. Earlier in the night, you were afraid of me. Later in the night it was something else, and my instinct shifted to protect you from the danger.”
Jane turned that over a bit in her mind and then nodded, her curiosity satisfied. At least she felt safer now, knowing he was unlikely to go furry and homicidal on her.
He rolled out of bed, his hair sleep-tousled. “You can take a shower and freshen up while I make breakfast, then you get to meet the pack. I’m sending you out shopping with Rhonda.”
“I don’t have any money.”
“I didn’t ask you for any.”
Jane sat against the headboard, twisting the sheets in her hands. “You’ve lost ten thousand dollars because of me, and now the tab is just getting higher.”
“I told you that’s not your fault. I have everything I need. I’ve got a bunch of money sitting in the bank not being spent.”
“I have clothes. I can go get them,” she offered.
His lips pressed into a tight line. “A) You’re not going anywhere near those vampires again.”
“But they’ll be asleep . . . ”
“And I’m sure they have guardians, do they not?”
“Yes,” she said, looking down at the sheets clutched in her hands.
“B) You’ve been dressing according to vampiric whim for how many years now? I want you to wear what you want to wear. I mean it.”
“But how will I pay you back?” She was beginning to believe he wasn’t going to make her earn her keep in a pornographic way. Although, of all the people to want such a thing, this would be the first time she wasn’t at least a little repulsed by the idea. He was beautiful. The first man she’d been near in a long time that didn’t look like a monster to her.
“What do you do for all your money?” she asked, trying to distract herself from the inappropriate trail her mind kept going down.
“I run an Internet business.”
“I’m good with numbers. I could do the bookkeeping.”
“I am not turning you into an indentured servant. Paul’s debt isn’t yours. Believe me, I intend to take it out of his hide at the first opportunity. And the shopping is a gift, no strings. It’s the least I can do after last night. Leaving you like that.” A shadow fell across his face. “I owe you. All right?”
She couldn’t exactly argue with that. It had been pretty heinous for him to leave her alone in a sealed cave. “Okay.”
“Good. Now we need to get going. The pack meeting starts in less than an hour, and I’ll have to introduce you.”
Jane peeled back the cover and got out of bed, the sheet wrapped around her. “Introduce me as what?”
“A friend.”
She looked doubtfully down at the wadded leather clothes she’d been wearing the night before. “Your hooker with a heart of gold friend?”
It was Cole’s turn for eye rolling. “I’ll go borrow something for you; just take a shower. Will you be okay if I leave you for twenty minutes?”
She crossed her arms over her chest. “Do you really think I’m that weak?”
“I never said, or meant . . . ”
“I’ll be fine. It was a bad dream from the stress. It’s over. I want to stop talking about it.”
He put his hands in the air. “Fine. I’ll be back.”
Forty-five minutes later, Jane was wearing jeans, her boots, and a blue sweater, which looked ridiculous with the pink hair, but at least she didn’t look like a punk rock call girl.
Cole put in the security code for the steel door on the other side of the den. His hands flew so fast over the keys she couldn’t have figured out the code even standing right beside him watching. Now she had to meet the pack, who, despite her cleaned-up appearance, was probably going to think she was a whore.
The bite marks Paul had left would likely never heal. There was one on her throat, bites on her breasts, her hips, her thighs. After her shower, while Cole was in the kitchen, she’d looked at them and the scars on her back in the mirror. He hated vampires, and she was a walking advertisement for his enemies.
“Time to face the firing squad,” Cole said as the door slid open.
“Yay,” Jane said dryly.
He just looked at her. What? Was she supposed to cower and whine and weep and moan 24/7 just because they’d had a few rocky hours in the beginning? Now that the immediate danger with the wolf seemed not so immediate, she was feeling embarrassed over her weakness. The tough Jane mask fell back into place like an old and welcome friend.
The tunnel between Cole’s den and the rest of the caves was longer than Jane had expected it to be. She wondered if his seclusion from the pack was a safety precaution. One didn’t stay pack alpha for twenty years without being smart and probably paranoid to the point of insanity.
They arrived at another steel door, and he punched in a second code.
“Welcome, Cole,” a computerized female voice said.
Jane stood frozen in the doorway, unable to move into the room. There were dozens of people, no . . . wolves, packed in together.
Most were wearing jeans and T-shirts, a decided fashion downgrade from the dramatic glitz and glamour of the vampires. Some were playing cards. Some were rough housing. One girl was eating a whole can of Pringles at a rapid pace.
All the wolves were loud and rambunctious. It was a little overwhelming, and suddenly Jane wasn’t sure how to act. Being a vampire groupie had taken months to get just right.
“Go on,” Cole prodded. She took a few tentative steps into the room.
One of the wolves near them growled at Jane, his eyes glowing golden even as he maintained his form. The other wolves looked up, and within moments there were several unpleasant growls being aimed her direction.
Cole moved her behind him, seemingly unconcerned, and let out a growl that could better be classed as a roar. It was so loud every other wolf in the room immediately fell silent, a few whimpering.
“That’s enough!” he said. “This is Jane. She’ll be staying with me for the foreseeable future.”
One of the male wolves looked insulted. “She smells like vampire.”
Jane blushed. This group was not subtle. She’d thought she’d been faced with everything, but vampires were just . . . different from this.
/> “Ed . . . ” Cole warned.
“I call them like I see them,” Ed said. The wolf looked to be about mid fifties, his hair graying at the temples. But Jane knew, given the slower rate of therian aging, he must be much older. A hundred years at least. His face was set in lines indicating perpetual grumpiness. Jane took a step back at the glare the wolf shot her.
“She isn’t one of them.”
“Well, she’s a vampire groupie then,” one of the female wolves said with obvious disdain.
Cole growled. “She’s not one of those either. She is a friend of mine and therefore a friend of the pack. Is that clear?”
They all nodded, a little too quickly. Ed’s nod was slower than the rest. She wondered how safe she was even with the alpha standing in front of her.
Cole looked over the group of wolves then spoke. “Rhonda.”
A perky blonde stepped out from the crowd. She was dressed a little sexier than the rest, though no one seemed to notice.
“I need to speak with you.”
She glided over to him. “Yes?”
“I need you to take Jane shopping. I’ve got to attend to the pack meeting.”
Rhonda’s lip curled into a sneer for a split second before she planted a placating smile on her face. “Anything for you,” she purred.
“Good.” He handed her a credit card and pulled something golden out of his pocket that looked like an ancient talisman attached to a long leather cord. “If you run into any trouble that you can’t handle, use this. And tell Cain she’s off the menu. She’s mine. I want you back in four hours, no longer.”
He looked from Rhonda to Jane, then led Jane down the tunnel out of hearing range. He produced a sheathed knife from his pocket. “She’s the omega, the weakest wolf. She’s loyal to me, but just in case.”
He’d given her silver.
Chapter Seven
Cole stared off in the direction Rhonda had taken Jane, berating himself for letting her out of his sight. Rhonda had always been the weakest of the pack; he’d rescued her from bullies as a pup. She’d understand how Jane felt in all this and be someone safe.
