Bill drove mindlessly while rain lashed at the windshield. Each thud of moisture resonated like a million tiny punches—the imagery was poetic irony. Heneededto be punched. In the face. Or, maybe somewhere else?
The bulge straining against the front of his jeans? At least then, he might be able to think of anything but her.
There were a million other issues to contend with—like what happened this morning. His heart panged as he recalled the present left on his doorstep. It served him right for venturing beyond his property. Though, he hadn’t sensed another lycan in the area—whoever was behind the act must have used a human to deliver their message. Thankfully, Loren hadn’t noticed. She’d even bought his lie, but sooner or later, she’d learn the truth. They—the bastards who sent that mangled deer—would come calling in person.
It was an old custom—the reckoning mark. To their kind, every animal’s life was sacred. Killing a doe in such a brutal way was the biggest insult imaginable. A warning.
Someone wanted to pick a fight. The Eislanders? Lukka wasn’t the sort to resort to such an archaic method of communication. No, he’d send one of his peons with a message instead. Obviously, the men from the woods had friends willing to avenge their cruelty.
But they could try. Loren washis…
He could still taste her. Sense her. Smell her. But the attraction went well beyond natural interest. It was one thing to have initiated the mating bond toprotectLoren Connors—hedidn’t regret it—couldn’t regret it.
But that didn’t mean that he had tomaintainit. Lukka or not, he should have broken the bond the moment she woke up and found some way to explain. Then he should have put her on a bus to a city far away, where she could live as a human and go on with her life.
She had no idea what was happening to her—whathadhappened to her. It made him sick just thinking of it. Or maybe that was just her memories crowding the back of his head? They were poison, though the girl seemed to have no idea what he’d taken from her that night in the woods—all the horror he’d just lifted off her mind like a telepathic vacuum.
The fear. The murder. The memories.Especiallythe memories. He never went through them, but they were dark—he could tell that much. Seeing the scars on her wrist confirmed that suspicion.
Her file, tucked away in some back corner of the precinct, didn’t contain much. Just a general list of the places she used to live, some mention of a mother’s suicide, and some vague annotations to a child abuse case.
Even her mother’s name, Eveline Connors, didn’t ring a bell—and names held more meaning to lycans than humans. If she had belonged on Black Mountain, he would remember her. Every packmate held a place in his mind, even Fred Connors.
Loren, however, was an enigma. The funny thing was, even after nearly a week, he still couldn’t bring himself to type her name into the damn database and research her in detail. Her past, and whatever horrors it contained, should come from her—nowhere else. He would wait until she was able to do so without the mating bond driving her emotions.
A pang of guilt stabbed through him as he realized how different things might have been if he’d taken the time to interact with her before this whole mess. At the time, he’d told himself that it was better to keep her at arm’s length. As recently as a few days ago, he still held the belief that distance between them would make it easier when Lukka came to integrate her into the pack. After all, once she left for Black Mountain, it wasn’t like he’d ever see her again.
But now…
There was a part of him that craved to learn everything about her. Good and bad. What made her tick? What made those hazel eyes widen in fear if he came too close to her? What haunted her nightmares?
Oh, he could guess that Fred Connors had something to do with it—but there was more to it.Waymore. And every day, it was getting harder to maintain that boundary between them. Though, hell, he’d pretty much smashed that “boundary” anyway.
What happened in the field had been a mistake.
He meant only to help her. Stir up her instincts and give her a temporary Alpha to follow until he could puzzle out what to do next.It was a good idea in theory. He could coax her to shift, diminish the mating bond somewhat, and maybe finally be able tothinkwithout her damn thoughts in his head.
It should have been easy to force submission from one little female. Until she fought back—fuck, shemorethan fought back.
Frowning, he took one hand off the steering wheel to brush the bleeding wound on his chest. She’d bitten him deeply, and his heart thundered as he remembered the wild little sound she’d made, right before she had.
He may not have been a genius, but he knew it wasn’t normal—shewasn’t normal.
He could sense her at odds with herself. The meek little girl she presented to the world was struggling to resist something deep inside that couldn’t be controlled. Something wild he could sometimes glimpse behind those hazel eyes.
And despite his years of mastery over his lycan side, Bill still couldn’t ignore the part of him that had risen up in challenge at that. It was like the urge of a predator to give chase when prey turned tail and ran. Instinct so ingrained it was damn near impossible to resist, not that he would fall back on that stupid excuse.
He still shouldn’t have kissed her. The mating bond was driving her, confusing her. She didn’t know what she wanted.
And it was his fault.
Would she hate him for what he’d done, when she eventually learned the truth?
Probably.
But he couldn’t bring himself to feel an ounce of guilt—everything he’d done had been entirely to save her. From Fred Connors. From herself.
Or at least, that was what he’d believed. Until he started having pesky little thoughts that proclaimed the exact opposite. Thoughts that whispered things likemine, whenever he caught sight of her, small and pale, with that brown hair falling down her shoulders.