“Oh, God!” I moaned and buried my face in my hands, not wanting to look.
“How could you?” Ophelia whispered from behind me. Then her voice grew louder. “How could you? I trusted you—both of you! Don’t you care that our entire race is going to die out because of your selfishness? Don’t you give a damn about anyone but yourselves? You Royal bastards!”
I turned my head to look at her and saw that her cheeks were shiny in the moonlight. She was sobbing and shaking her head, looking like a woman betrayed.
Jake’s Wolf growled and took a step towards her, but I shook my head.
“No, Jake—not her,” I told him.
“There will be trouble if I let her go,” he predicted, still speaking in my head.
“Let her go,” I said firmly. “She’s not guilty of anything but being sucked into a cult. With Sorenson…” I almost said “dead” but then couldn’t get the word out. “With him gone, she’ll be all right,” I told him.
Jake growled again, taking another menacing step towards the weeping Ophelia, but this time I thought he was just warning her away from me.
“You’d better go,” I told her. “Run while you can! I’ll hold him back as long as I’m able.”
Ophelia pointed a trembling finger at me.
“This isn’t over,” she said. And then she turned and stumbled towards the trapdoor, sobbing as she went. I heard her clattering down the wooden ladder and then her footsteps running down the hallway downstairs. I listened for a moment until the front door banged distantly and a motor started—she must be driving away.
I bit my lip. The last of our kidnappers was gone now, leaving me alone with the huge black Wolf in the moonlight.
THIRTY
Now that I was alone with Jake’s Wolf, I couldn’t help feeling nervous. Yes, I could hear his voice in my head but what if I was imagining it? What if I was going crazy from all the stress of this awful night and now that everyone else was gone the Wolf would tear my throat out, too?
I shrank back from him as he approached the bed. The Wolf seemed to see the fear on my face, because he whined sadly and came to a stop at the foot of the bed.
“What is it, little Ani?” I heard him asking in my head. “Do you hate me now? Fear me? I’m so sorry for what I did to you—I don’t blame you if you can’t forgive me.”
“I…I’m afraid I’m going crazy,” I whispered in a small voice. “I keep thinking I’m hearing you in my head, but what if I’m not? What if I’m just losing it from all the stress?”
“You’re not crazy!” Jake protested.
“Then how can I hear you?” I demanded. “I thought you said you wouldn’t be able to talk to me in your, uh, fur form?”
Jake didn’t answer my question, though I had a strong feeling that he did know the answer. Instead, the big black Wolf came closer to the bed. Very deliberately, he wiped its muzzle on the sheets, cleaning away the blood as best he could. Then he laid his head on the side of the bed and looked up at me, giving me sad eyes.
“Please don’t hate me,” I heard Jake’s voice say. It sounded hoarse with emotion. “I never meant to hurt you!”
“You didn’t hurt me!” I objected and then I moved to get off the bed and realized that wasn’t strictly true. There was a sharp little pain between my legs that hadn’t been there before. At first, my confused and traumatized mind couldn’t think why that would be. Then I remembered the rough fucking he’d given me to distract our captors and the sharp little pain I’d experienced near the end.
“You’re hurt!” The big Wolf looked at me anxiously.
“No, I’m not,” I denied again. But when I moved, I couldn’t help the small moan that escaped me.
“Let me see!” the Wolf that was Jake commanded.
I started to part my legs, but the huge black Wolf was intimidating—though he had Jake’s eyes and I could hear his voice in my head, I still had a hard time wrapping my mind around the fact that they were actually the same being.
“Could…could you please change back into Jake? I mean, back into your, uh, human form first?” I asked hesitantly.
The Wolf made a little chuffing sound of worried impatience.
“It’s really hard to Shift back to human form so soon after Shifting to my fur form. Hold on—I’ll have to get out of the moonlight to do it.”
He was just backing into the shadows—which made him look even more scary—when the front door of the old house banged open loudly and we heard a voice shout from below,
“Everybody freeze! We’re here for the Royal Heir and his sister, the Royal Omega! Come out and give them up or die!”