The elevator door crawled open, releasing a glut of pastel-clad staff members, and he could hear Sara grinding her teeth until they were clear. Once inside with the doors closed, he fought the urge to pull her into his arms, knowing things had changed between them already, and Sara still wasn’t aware of half of it.
Ping.
Sara squeezed through as soon as the door was open wide enough and burst onto the ward, heading for the nurse’s station with Ryan right behind her. She grasped the raised counter separating her from the woman on the other side so tight her knuckles were white, and she didn’t bother catching her breath before getting to the point. “My sister, Hailey Carpenter, I’m here to pick her up.”
The woman took her time looking up and conveyed her displeasure at the interruption when she did. “One moment please.” She banged on her keyboard and consulted the screen in front of her. “Ahem.” She glared up over the top of her thick-rimmed glasses as though they carried a terrible stench. “Carpenter, you said?”
“Yes. Hailey Carpenter. She’s down that hall.” Sara pointed to the left of the desk while Ryan resisted the urge to show the miserable old bat a bit of fang.
“Says here she was discharged over an hour ago. Looks like you wasted more than just my time.” With that, she dismissed them by standing up, turning her back, and walking away.
“What? Wait! Where is she then?”
Another nurse came up beside Ryan, saving her co-worker from an untimely death. “Excuse me, did you say Hailey?”
Sara and Ryan both spun their full attention on the new arrival. “Yes.”
“Matilda there’s right, sugar. She left here with a…gentleman, over an hour ago.”
Ryan didn’t miss the hesitation and, with his hackles rising higher, overrode Sara before she had a chance to speak. “What did this gentleman look like?”
The nurse looked nervous under his glare but answered anyway. “He was tall and skinny, with kind of mousy hair, and he had on a scruffy bomber jacket. Leather, I think. Why? Is there something wrong?”
Guilt clawed up Ryan’s throat. Fuck. The second Mongrel wore a jacket like that.
Sara started to speak, and he cut her off again, wrapping his hand around her arm and squeezing in the hopes she’d get the message to let him handle it. “No, not at all, just a misunderstanding. Thank you.” Ryan made short work of propelling Sara past the nurse in a beeline for the elevator.
“What the… Ryan, stop it—”
She looked over her shoulder toward the now empty nurse’s desk, and with her hair back in a clip the way it was, Ryan saw the telltale mark he’d known, but still dreaded, would be there. The only thing that stopped his lunch from making a return trip was the need to get her out of there and his wolf’s overwhelming instinct to claim its mate.
Ryan mentally snapped at it. Enough. We can’t have her. His primal half howled in rage, but did back down.
“Ryan, what do you think you’re doing?”
“Sara, please, you need to trust me.”
She tried to pull out of his grasp. “No, I need to find my sister.”
Mercifully, the elevator was still on their floor and the doors opened as soon as he pressed the call button. Ushering Sara in ahead of him, he shoved her toward the side of the conveyance where her indignation went unnoticed until the doors closed again.
“Ryan, damn it. Let go.” She was squirming and batting at his hand.
The second they were alone and moving, he turned her toward him and shook her to get her to look him in the eye. He was careful not to hurt her, and the last thing he wanted to do was scare her any more than she already was, but he had to get through to her.
“Sara. Stop it. You need to listen—for Hailey’s sake.”
The stricken look on her face kicked him in the chest, and his inner wolf howled for the hunt in response to her pain.
“The only person who can help you get your sister back now is me.”
Chapter Nine
Ryan’s out of character behavior, and his conviction that the second attacker from the day before had Hailey now, kept Sara quiet on the way back to his truck.
She’d even allowed him to herd her into the passenger seat and close the door while she desperately tried to make sense of everything. But as soon as he got in, she came to her senses and turned on him. “What the hell are you talking about, Ryan? A guy who tried to drag my sister off yesterday to god knows where, to do god knows what, just walked her out of there. We need to go to the police right now.”
“Put your seatbelt on, Sara.” He turned the ignition on without looking at her, pissing her off more.
“What?” She crossed her arms over her chest. “I’ll do no such thing until you tell me what’s going on.”
He reached over and tugged it in place himself and slammed the tab home. “Sara, please, not here. Let me get you back to your hotel, then I swear I’ll explain everything.”
She knew he was deliberately trying to keep his voice calm, but it didn’t help. Sara was starting to shake inside and felt sick to her stomach. Who was this man? How fucked up was it that she wanted her Ryan to show up and take her away from this guy?
Sara steadied her breathing. That doesn’t matter right now, getting back to the hotel does. There, you’ll be surrounded by other people and it’s only a few blocks away. You can keep it together till then. She swallowed, hoping to water the desert in her mouth and did her best to sound reasonable. “Fine.” The word started out okay, but ended in a squeak.
Ryan put the truck in gear. “Thank you.” They headed out of the lot and much to Sara’s relief, the big black beast chewed up those few blocks to the Hyatt in short order.
Tears of tightly reined panic and frustration burned the back of her eyes as Ryan drove it into the underground parking garage, which barely cleared the sides and top of the opening as they passed, then he slotted the thing into a stall near the elevators and shut it off. Without the rumble of the engine, the silence down there closed in on Sara like a tomb, adding claustrophobia to her list of current complaints. She had to get out of there. She had to call the police.
She popped her safety belt and fumbled for the door release without success. Her vision started to blur and a whimper escaped. She couldn’t get the damn thing to open.
“Sara.”
She pushed with one hand and pulled with the other, no longer thinking clearly. She had to get out of there.
“Sara!”
At Ryan’s bark her dam burst. “What!” Sara spun so her back was against the obstinate door, swiping madly at her wet cheeks and screamed at him. “What do you want, Ryan? What?”
“It’s locked.”
Her jaw dropped, and before she could recover, he trapped her hands between his.
“Please. Calm down, and listen. Give me five minutes. That’s all I ask. For Hailey?”
One second she was desperate to get as far away from him as she could, the next, the sincerity in his voice registered and now the part of her she was trying to ignore wanted desperately to let him fix everything. She was losing it.
But what if his claim she needed him to get Hailey back was true? Could she afford not to hear him out?
A calm she knew was fleeting settled over Sara, and she mentally pulled herself up by her shoelaces. No, she couldn’t. But she also couldn’t let him keep touching her and hope to keep any perspective so Sara yanked free of his grasp and glared at him. “Two minutes. No more. Then you better let me out of here.”
Pain flashed over his handsome face and the needy part of her winced. “Fair enough.” He looked out through the front window and took a breath ending in a resigned sigh, which somehow resonated deep in her soul. “This isn’t going to be easy for you to understand or even believe, but you have to. For starters, I think you already know I’m…different.”
Her rarely tapped snark came out. “Really, you can read minds, can you?”
He closed his eyes and she stifled it. The sooner
he had his say the sooner she’d be out of here.
“Sorry. Please go on.”
“As are you and your sister, and because of it, Hailey is now in the hands of someone who wants to hurt both our kind.”
Our kind?
“For lack of a more scientific way to explain it, and in the interest of expediency, I’m just going to say it. The paranormal stuff you write about isn’t as fictional as you think. Though not quite the same, much of it is real.”
What? Sara’s ears started to buzz. Paranormal?
“Me, for instance. My DNA is dual. I’m human, yes, but I’m also—”
The buzzing exploded inside Sara’s head. “Stop!” She refused to hear this, not from the man she’d been falling so hard for. How could this be happening? “Stop right there.” Where was the kind, funny person she’d spent the last several days with?
Gone.
No. Her lungs heaved, making it hard to breathe. “I want out. Now.”
His face was more than stricken, but she couldn’t let herself care, or trust the idiotic voice in the back of her mind begging her to give him a chance…give them a chance. It simply hurt too much.
“Please, Sara, listen. I’m not done.” Ryan attempted to regain her hand, and she started flailing both at him, hitting any part of him that got too close.
“Yes, you are.”
“Damn it, Sara. I can prove what I’m saying is true.” Ryan’s eyes were bright with his plea—too bright.
What was left of the thin string holding back Sara’s full on panic attack broke, and she started to cry and screech at the same time. “No! No! No!”
“Oh gods, Sara.”
He tried again to catch her flailing limbs, and this time she slapped his face. “Get away from me.”
The shock was instantaneous, and he pulled back immediately while Sara squashed herself as far from him as she could in the confines of the cab. Confusion, anger, hurt all vanished in the face of fear as she looked at Ryan on the far side of the truck, and the truth she so desperately tried to run from pinned her place like a butterfly specimen.
His eyes were beyond glowing now and something was happening to the structure of his cheekbones and jaw. Sara blinked repeatedly. No, no, she was not seeing this. Yes, you are. You know you are.
Ryan didn’t come any closer nor did he turn away from her. He just stared at her through those illuminated eyes as his forehead grew more pronounced and his nose began to broaden and stretch. The tiny pops as it happened had her covering her ears.
A voice she hardly recognized as her own came out of her mouth in gasps. “Please stop. This can’t be happening.”
Ryan’s eyes filled with pain as he spun his head away and what now sounded like bones cracking echoed through the interior of the truck. His shoulders convulsed, and he yelped, prompting Sara’s heart to clamber higher in her throat than it already had. She struggled not to faint, while Ryan’s breathing steadied, then had to do it again when he turned his face back toward her. Other than a lingering sheen of silver over the blue of his eyes, she was looking at her Ryan’s face, the changes she’d witnessed gone. Sara had the sudden urge to giggle.
She really was losing her mind.
“You had to see for yourself.”
His words were barely above a whisper and so desolate she no longer felt like laughing, suddenly too cold and numb for that. Shock probably. “Please? Let me out.”
Ryan didn’t move as every feeling that scraped through him telegraphed to her. Resignation, pain, concern, and loss all ran a merry chase before a sadness so profound it was crushing won out, nearly breaking her resolve to flee.
Then her door unlocked.
*****
After she’d bolted from the truck, Ryan had shadowed Sara as she’d made her way up into the hotel lobby then continued to track her progress up the elevator and along the atrium walkway leading to her door. He’d lost sight of her for a moment, spiking his adrenaline, when she must have put her bag down to find her key. Then she’d straightened, and within seconds, slipped inside.
He’d gone up himself after that and listened at the door to make sure she was safe in there. He heard the shower running and the sound of her crying. Her heart-wrenching sobs had gutted him, and if he hadn’t needed to check in with Zander and try to reach home again, he would still be there instead of going crazy waiting at the trailer.
Ryan’s phone started to spin around on the bench, tearing him away from the memory. Zander lifted his head but stayed quiet while Ryan dove at the thing and answered. “It’s about fucking time.”
“Nice. Ten years go by and now you fill my inbox with orders to respond immediately, then talk shit to me? What the fuck do you want, Ryan?”
Ryan gritted his teeth. After the attack yesterday, he’d called to speak to his father, and found out his parents, along with the other Clan Alphas from the northwest had gone off grid for an undetermined amount of time somewhere out in the bush. Leaving Ryan no choice but to contact his estranged cousin, who until now, hadn’t bothered to return his calls, most likely out of spite.
Something that no longer mattered given the bigger picture. “Garath, I know we have our differences—”
“Differences, ha! Differences would be you rooting for a rival sports team, asshole. I think our issues are a lot farther up shit creek than that, don’t you? Why am I even talking to you? I don’t have time for—”
Ryan’s attempt at diplomacy fell to the wayside. “Garath! Shut the fuck up. Feeling is mutual, trust me, so why would I contact you, of all people, unless I had no other choice.”
Garath’s chuckle dripped sarcasm. “Oh, this ought to be good.”
Ryan cut to the chase. “Overseers. Do I have your attention now?”
Garath wasn’t laughing anymore. “Excuse me?”
Ryan relayed all that had happened since the attack on Hailey, skimming over his personal attachment to her and more particularly Sara. Last thing he needed was for Garath to realize what Sara meant to him. That would be like handing him a loaded gun then holding it up to his own forehead for him. “With them going after her a second time, and taking her from the hospital in broad daylight, there’s something bigger going on here. The Council needs to be advised.”
“Leave that to me. I’ll contact them as soon as I hang up.”
“Good, probably be a good idea for them to alert the other Alpha-lines even overseas on the off chance there’s activity beyond this we haven’t been made aware of yet.”
“Already on my list.”
His cousin’s cooperation lifted some of the burden Ryan was feeling. “Garath? Thank you.”
Garath’s response was clinical and cold. “Don’t thank me. I’m not doing it for you, and so we’re clear, when I reach the Council, I’ll also be lodging a formal claim to the Sheridan Alpha-Designate seat based on your incompetence.”
Ryan’s temper flared. “For chrissake, this isn’t the time to get into a pissing match.”
The emotionless voice on the other end cut him off. “No, it’s not. That time passed when Arlene jumped to her death. I won’t stand by any longer while your inability to get your head out of your ass continues to pose a threat to everyone around you.”
The mention of the woman they’d competed for, and the tragic end she’d come to because of it, had Ryan seeing red. “Incompetence. Where do you get off? At least I haven’t stayed in the backcountry with my tail between my legs ever since. I’ve managed a fuck of a lot more toward keeping us safe in this century than you ever have.”
“Really, Ryan? You go ahead and keep telling yourself that, and while you’re at it, tell it to those two Wulverkynn down there. Yeah, you’ve managed to protect them well, haven’t you?”
The line went dead. Ryan leaned heavily against the counter and stared blindly at his phone’s dark screen while his house of cards came crashing down around him. Incompetent? Was it true? He took a step beside himself and looked at things from an outside prospec
tive for the first time and didn’t like what he saw. Guilt and shame made an event out of going to town on his conscience.
Damn it. Garath was right.
Ryan had made a career out of putting his own desires above the welfare of his Clan. He’d been on a fool’s mission to prove his way was the only way for Wulver-kind to move forward into this century. He’d been acting like a spoiled pup, whining about how fate had pissed in his breakfast flakes, instead of facing his responsibilities head on and making all his efforts work for the benefit of his people, not just his money.
How could he blame Garath for disputing his ability as Sheridan’s future leader? His cousin had too many older brothers to vie for his own Clan’s Designate, but the Kinsella Alpha blood in his veins was just as pure. With the self-deluding veil now torn from his eyes, Ryan had to admit he would do the same if the roles were reversed.
Problem was Ryan was no longer hell-bent on wiggling off that hook. At least not until he was certain Sara and everyone else he cared for was safe.
After that, he’d hand the reins and a gun over to Garath himself.
Chapter Ten
The first thing Sara had done when she’d reached the relative safety of her room was call the police who advised her the officer in charge of investigating yesterday’s attack was unavailable, so she’d left a message for him. She also considered calling Nicki, but what was she supposed to say to her. Oh by the way, Hailey’s been kidnapped after all and the guy you talked me into chasing thinks he’s a werewolf. No, that would have to wait.
Instead, Sara had taken her cell into the bathroom in case the police called back and got in the shower thinking it would warm her up and clear her head. She’d been wrong.
She’d also thought she had no more tears to cry when she’d crawled out from under the hot water. She’d toweled off and cocooned herself in the duvet from her bed then aimlessly wandered around her room, trying to wrap her head around the last twenty-four hours.
The duvet they’d made love on. A solitary tear proved her wrong on that count too.
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