Paige smacked Eli in the shoulder. Trust him to make jokes in a situation like this. Caelan shook out his jeans and stepped into them, buttoning them while he asked, “So, why do you think someone’s been here?”
She pointed at the shiny metal still mocking her from the table. It was definitely going in the trash.
“A knife.” Caelan propped his hands on his hips, looked around her kitchen, and sniffed the air. If he smelled anything out of the ordinary, he was a better man than she was.
“I didn’t use it,” she said calmly and shifted her weight onto one foot and tucked her arms beneath her breasts again.
“You’re sure?”
“Yes.”
Eli left, wandering off down her hallway toward the back two bedrooms. Paige shuddered. She hadn’t even thought about the guest bedroom. What if he was in there? What if Eli got hurt? What if she could stop being such a wussy little baby?
Sheesh. Both of these men were trained professionals who owned a security company. They did this sort of thing for a living, and she’d bet money she didn’t have that Eli had some sort of weapon on his person.
Caelan moved then, distracting her. He reached into his bag and pulled out a gun. A black one, for all she knew about guns, and she knew she’d been right in her assumption that Eli would be armed.
“Anything else?”
“My bedroom window was open when I got home.” Paige started toward the hallway, intent on showing him the scene of the crime, but he stopped her with a hand on her arm.
“Stay here.”
“By all means.” She didn’t want to go back there anyway. The perils of living alone as a woman. Maybe she could get Derek to move in with her.
Whoa. Down, girl. Got to tell him about the whole shape-shifting thing first.
Eli returned within minutes, his palms out in a gesture that said he didn’t know anything. “Nothing seems out of whack, Paige.”
Duh, she wanted to say. “I know.”
“I’m picking up on some human scents,” Caelan said as he entered the kitchen.
She nodded. “My coworkers. They were here last night for dinner.”
Caelan leaned into her, his nose closing in on her cheek, and she barely refrained from backing away. “And the other human?”
The knowing look he threw in her direction had her cheeks heating. No doubt he could smell Derek all over her, mixed with the aroma of their lovemaking. She could tell him now. She should. As Prime, he had a right to know who his wolves were bringing into the pack.
She didn’t. She wanted to talk with Derek first. If he wanted nothing to do with her, there’d be no reason to divulge anything to Caelan. Her heart cracked with the thought. Caelan might smell another man, but that didn’t mean he knew the man was her mate.
You’re delusional if you think he doesn’t know.
Raising an eyebrow, he stuck his hands in his pockets. “And the reason for Tucker’s?”
Paige deflated. He’d given her an out and she was sure as shit going to take it.
“Tucker insists I’m his mate.” The asshole had completely ruined her night, and she would make him pay with more than planting his rump on the ground.
“Ah,” Caelan said as if everything were clear.
“He keeps leaving me flowers on the porch and tonight he tried to…well, you know…”
Eli stood at attention, his lips curled into a snarl, his eyes glowing. “He tried to what?”
Did she have to say this out loud? She really preferred to deal with it alone, but she supposed they’d have to know sometime, if for nothing else than to be better equipped to put the bastard in his place and see to it he left her alone.
“He thinks if I sleep with him, then I will know my destiny and go peacefully into the night by his side.”
“More like in his wake,” Eli grumbled. “The man doesn’t have a lick of sense.”
“Apparently, if he thinks wanting a woman constitutes making her his mate.” Caelan leaned against her counter and crossed his arms over his chest and his feet at the ankle. “How long’s this been going on, Paige?”
She sighed. Better to get it all out at once, right? She slumped into a chair at the table and eyed her sink, where her drink still sat, yearning for her attention.
“Four days,” she admitted.
“Why haven’t you said anything before?” Eli took the seat next to hers and swung it around to straddle it. “We could have put a stop to it right away.”
“First of all, they were just flowers. It didn’t seem like something I needed to tell you about. Second, until tonight, I thought I could handle things on my own. Besides, I wasn’t sure they were from him.”
“What happened tonight?” Caelan’s calm demeanor did little to cloak the anger oozing off him.
“More flowers. He was here when I got home from Der—” Whoops, almost let the cat of the bag before she was ready. “He thought I should be grateful for them, and to show me how much he wanted me, he shoved me against the door so he could be close, I guess.”
“And?” Caelan urged.
“And I sort of shoved him off.” They didn’t need to know how she’d used the flowers as a bat. A girl had to have some pride.
One of Eli’s eyebrow’s quirked. “He didn’t do anything back?”
“He was too busy trying to pick himself off the ground.” She snickered, remembering how he’d looked.
“Impressive.” Eli chuckled.
“Impressive, yet egging the proverbial wolf. Literally.” Caelan stepped into the middle of the room and inhaled deeply. “Maybe you should come back to the house with us.”
Paige unconsciously reached for the knife.
“Don’t touch that.”
She yanked her hand back with Eli’s soft command.
“We’ll have it tested for fingerprints. Your window too and anything else he might have touched.”
Of course. How could she be so stupid? She shook her head. No way would she let the bastard run her out of her home. “No. I’ll stay, but thanks for the offer.”
“I don’t like leaving you here.” Caelan started to unbutton his jeans, preparing to shed them before his shift.
“If I leave, he wins. No. I can’t just leave my home.” No matter how much she really didn’t want to stay here. Not tonight, not while this was all so fresh. There’d be no sleeping for sure. Lots of tossing and turning and listening to every single creak and groan of the old house. See, she had a lot to look forward to.
“Tieran will kill me if I let you stay here.”
“I’ll bring her some Mountain Dew tomorrow and she’ll be all over it.” The entire pack knew of their leader’s mate’s predilection for Mountain Dew. If you ever wanted anything from her, all you had to do was offer her a six-pack and you were in like Flynn.
“Maybe I could stay?” Eli asked, looking to Caelan for confirmation.
Paige gasped in horror. “Absolutely not.”
“Why?” both Caelan and Eli barked at the same time.
“You have a fiancée at home, waiting for you in bed, probably. You’re getting married in three days,” she hissed. “You cannot stay at another woman’s house three days before your wedding, cousin or not.” She stomped her foot and stood up, ready to shoo them from her house. Enough with the drama. Whoever had been here was long gone, and she would stay up all night if need be to guard her home and her body. The sun would come up in the morning and tomorrow would be a new day.
One where she would write down everything she did so she wouldn’t forget that she’d fixed her hair with a screwdriver and left the thing on the toilet lid.
Eli scratched his head. “Somehow I don’t think Nikki’ll mind if I’m doing my job in protecting you. Especially considering she’s already lost one bridesmaid to a broken leg, she wouldn’t want to lose
another one. I don’t want her to lose another one.” He gave a mock shiver.
Paige huffed. “I’m not lost.” She thumped her chest. “See? I’m right here. Not lost. I won’t go wandering off in woods I’ve never been in, nor will I let any strange men in the door in the middle of the night, including that weasel Tucker. So you can both rest at ease and know I’ll be all right in the house I’ve lived in, alone, for the last three years.”
Caelan winced. “This doesn’t have anything to do with not trusting you, Paige. It has to do with not trusting everyone else outside there.” He stabbed a finger at the back door, which still stood open from their barging in. “Tucker is easy enough to find and put down for the night, but what if it wasn’t him?”
Paige recoiled as if she’d been slapped. Who else could it be if not Tucker? He’d admitted to sending the flowers, and he wanted her. What better way to “get” her than by scaring her so badly she’d run straight into his arms? He so totally had another thing coming.
Caelan rubbed a hand over his face. “All right, look. We’ll detour over to Tucker’s on the way home and at least make sure he’s where he should be. If he is, we’ll have a little chat and talk more tomorrow with you. I’ll send the crew over in the morning to fingerprint too, because no matter what, I don’t expect Tucker to flat-out admit he was in here.”
“Me neither,” Eli added. “He’s just smart enough not to get caught.”
“In the meantime, you will lock all the doors and windows before we leave, and keep some lights on. I’ll check around the outside too, but it’s the same as inside. I didn’t pick up on any scents other than the ones that should be here.” Caelan moved to her side and murmured, “And that other one, but that’s a discussion for another time, isn’t it?”
She swallowed. “Yes.”
“Are you happy?”
Paige looked him in the eye. He’d probably ferret out a lie in seconds. “I haven’t exactly told him yet,” she mumbled.
Caelan stared at her for a moment. “Let me know if there’s anything I can do.”
“I will.” Paige strode into the hall and retrieved her keys from beside the phone, where she’d dropped them earlier. She twisted one of them from the ring as she walked back to them. “Here’s the key to the front door so your guys can get in. We’re working on a project at work and I have to be there.” She’d take her pillow with her for her lunch break so she could take a nap after the inevitable sleepless night she was about to partake in.
“You sure you’ll be okay here tonight?” Eli paused in the back doorway, one hand on the knob. Caelan hadn’t moved and didn’t look willing to either.
“I’m sure.” Bogeymen didn’t exist. Werewolves, yes, bogeymen, no. She hoped. Okay, bogeymen maybe, but she wasn’t stupid enough to discount the person who’d been in her house.
“Then do us a favor and punch the house number into your cell so all you have to do is push Send if something happens,” Caelan growled.
Paige nodded. That she could and would do.
He hesitated. “I don’t like this.”
“But you’ll go along with it because there isn’t any evidence that someone’s actually been here. If we were human, yeah, I might be more nervous, but we’re wolves. We’d be able to smell someone.”
“Unless they were masking themselves,” Eli supplied.
“Or you already know them,” Caelan added.
She nodded again to both those points. “Right, and since I know for a fact Tucker wants me as his mate, I doubt he’d physically try to hurt me.” She tried to convince herself he’d only been snooping, trying to find a way to keep her close.
A muscle ticked along Caelan’s jaw and he looked like he was trying hard to justify leaving her alone. She suspected it would be hard for him as Prime. The urge to protect was inbred. She didn’t fault him because without it, he wouldn’t make a good leader, he wouldn’t be respected, and more than likely he’d be challenged or overthrown. As it stood, Caelan had never questioned his abilities.
Okay, there had been the man who’d tried to kill his mate, but that had stemmed from some long-ago feud a few generations back.
Caelan stripped out of his jeans and stuffed both them and his gun in the bag he used to carry his clothes while in wolf form. Not always terribly convenient, but it beat the hell out of showing up somewhere naked.
“You’re locking the door.” He grabbed the handle and inspected it and the lock mechanism, both of which somehow had survived their storming in, and shoved Eli all the way out.
“I’m locking the door,” she agreed, holding it open a few inches and watching as they got ready to leave. “Do you want your shirt back?” She plucked at the cotton, ready to hand it over, but Eli shook his head.
“Another day.”
“Fine.” She almost envied them their time to run. As nervous as she was, another run would do her good. The feeling only lasted a second. She still had a bath with her name written all over it, and a now watered-down amaretto sour.
And then they were gone, blocked out by the door, and the snick of the deadbolt sliding into place overrode the softening pound of her heart.
“You aren’t going to leave her alone, are you?” Eli stuffed his jeans into the pouch, adding the gun on top before closing it with the drawstring. They stepped off the back porch and stalked toward the edge of the woods. Caelan didn’t want Paige overhearing them.
“Hell no. She doesn’t need to know that, though.”
“Nope.”
Caelan scouted the surrounding area for the best position to take up so he could keep an eye on Paige’s house for the night. He didn’t like what was happening. Something felt off about the whole thing, and he wished she’d come to him sooner.
“Stop at Tucker’s place and make sure he’s there.”
Eli grunted an affirmative. “The woman is radiating mate sex. Even he should be able to sense that.”
“I know.”
“So why the pressuring her to make her think she’s his? The man can’t be that stupid. He knows when a wolf finds another shifter mate—they both feel it. It’s not one-sided like it is with a human mate.” Eli shook his head. “Idiot. I wasn’t kidding about Nikki having a cow if anything happens to Paige.”
“I won’t let anything happen to her.” Caelan cocked his head and listened to the wind. Most of his pack had probably already settled in for the night, but there were a few who chose the late hours to roam. He didn’t hear anything but the call of a few coyote in the far distance. “I can only guess he wants her bad enough to think she’ll take him with or without being mates. I’ve seen it done before, two wolves marrying having decided they won’t ever find their actual mates.” He contemplated the thought before wiping a hand down his face. “Get back to your mate and let Tieran know where I am.”
“You want me to send someone to relieve you in a couple of hours?”
Caelan thought about it. Since he wasn’t sure exactly what he was dealing with, he was hesitant to bring in anyone else. With new scent-erasing technology in the shifter world, it would be damned easy for any of the pack members to mask their scent from all of them, so unless he caught someone in the act, they weren’t too likely to ever know who’d gotten into her home.
Still, he would need help, and who better to assign to watch her than the man she’d chosen as a mate? Nature wouldn’t allow Derek to do anything less than protect her with his life. And Caelan for damn sure wasn’t above forcing the issue. If she wasn’t ready, for whatever reason, to tell Derek what she was, then he’d give her time.
Fuck. He should have come out and told her Derek was Nikki’s brother. She apparently hadn’t connected the dots yet. The look on her face that said she wanted to tell him herself had made him keep quiet. If she wanted his help, she’d ask for it. Otherwise, he wouldn’t interfere in their mating.
“You should have told her at the very least that Derek knew about us.”
Caelan grinned at his twin’s reading of his mind. “Where would be the fun in that? Besides, I can’t wait to see Derek taken down a notch or two.”
“Well, she’ll be safe with him, we know that much.”
“Yeah.”
As for tonight, he’d have one of his men take over the way Eli suggested. His team knew how to be discreet. Paige would never know they were there.
“Matthews is on call tonight. Have him head over here.”
“You got it. I’ll have him spell you at oh-one-hundred.”
They shifted together, but Caelan hung back, watching his twin as he loped off in the direction of Tucker’s house. Caelan turned and sat on his haunches to take one last close look at Paige’s place before whimpering and setting out to the location he deemed the best to watch from. He settled at the base of a tree. A light flicked on somewhere in her bedroom, the bathroom maybe; he couldn’t see with the curtains drawn.
He smiled inwardly. Things were bound to get interesting when Paige found out who Caelan had assigned to watch over her. Derek might not be a shifter or have the overall strength of one, but Caelan had no qualms about using him for security. The man was smart as hell and knew what he was doing. He’d protect Paige as well as any pack member, more so when he found out they were mates.
Besides, having him around her worked twofold. Might be to Paige’s advantage to be seen in the arms of her mate, even if she hadn’t told him as much. Derek might be clueless about their status, but if a shifter was stalking her, he’d know Paige was already mated, and that was what mattered. He’d either leave her alone or fuck up.
Caelan was banking on the latter. No one was going to mess with a member of his pack.
Chapter Three
“Do you believe in werewolves?” Ryan asked late the next morning, his voice cracking.
Paige half spewed, half choked on the mouthful of Coke she’d just slurped in an effort to stay awake after her fitful night.
Ultimatum: Graham Pack Mates, Book 3 Page 5
