She had been calling out in excitement, but the look on Hannah’s mother’s face told her that it wasn’t the right emotion to be feeling.
Hannah’s mother was standing next to the booth and helping customers when the men approached her aggressively, knocking over bottles and smashing plates as they came.
“What are you doing?” her mother yelled. “This is my place of work. You have no right!”
Her mother had attended a pack counsel and was awaiting a decision. The day they walked into the diner, they brought with them a man in a long silk robe who walked behind the tall, thick men. He was as straight and thin as a toothpick.
Hannah learned later that he was the leader of their pack, a very old wolf shifter who rarely shifted anymore. He wanted her mother to sign a sheet of paper that decreed her official exile from the pack.
“You have been exiled,” the man said. “All of the support you have received from the pack since your mate’s passing will be retracted and thus held for another deserving widow.”
Hannah watched from the counter as her mother pleaded with them, telling them to call Fred, that no harm had been committed.
“Fred has received his consequences,” the man retorted. “You will not be hearing from him again.”
Her mother wept on her knees as customers fled the diner. She was fired from her job for the display during work hours and due to the fact that none of them knew she was a shifter.
Hannah stood frozen in the center of the woods, her eyes squeezed shut. She had blocked out the memory for years because it was a door, a door that opened up to new memories, all of them wearing knives.
She tried to run more to shake off the thoughts, but she couldn’t. She stopped running completely and let out a guttural howl.
Hannah wondered if Levi had heard it and was concerned for her well-being.
She began sauntering back to his mansion, realizing that she could no longer run from her problems. They would come up again somehow, either in her body or in her mind, if she left them to fester.
She would go to him and tell him all about the fated mates business. She would tell him how that made her feel about him and would leave it up to him to decide how he felt. As painful as it might be, she needed to hear from him to know whether she would spend the rest of her life longing for him.
Then, of course, there was the mission.
Nick’s agency was known for setting up shifters with their mates, all of whom happened to be human. Hannah had heard the stories, of course, but didn’t think that she’d ever be blessed enough to be a part of his strange, supposedly coincidental service.
Yet, here she was, strolling around the woods, her mind rushing with thoughts of her beloved.
Hannah could continue protecting him, of course. It wouldn’t be easy because if anything were to happen to him, it would destroy her world entirely. But on the other hand, she wasn’t going to trust any old bodyguard to keep the man who was her mate safe.
She shifted back into her human form and found her clothing along the way. Some of it had been ripped as she tore it off, and she sighed as she held it up. She placed as many of the pieces back on as she could and began toward the house.
Once she saw the roof through the tree line, she started to feel sick. At first, she thought it may have been from what she was about to do but then realized that something smoky was shooting through her nostrils.
She moved faster, her heart picking up the pace in her chest. She was a wolf, so her sense of smell was sharp and precise. She narrowed her focus as she detected the distinct scent of unfamiliar sweat coming from the house.
She sprinted lightly on her bare feet, then even harder as a gunshot rang through the air.
Nothing could happen to Levi. She knew at that moment that she would kill for him, would risk her own life to keep him safe.
She flashed through the yard and made her way through the front door, kicking it down with a loud and deafening roar.
16
LEVI
Levi was beyond disappointed when Hannah did not respond to his advances. He knew, of course, that it had only been one night, but it had been several rounds of spectacular sex with a nightcap to remember. As he walked up the stairs to his office, he realized then that perhaps he was thinking of it as a first, amazing date rather than what it really was: fucking his bodyguard.
He told himself to let it go for the time being. Hannah was running through the forest, hopefully letting off some steam and getting her own thoughts straight. He couldn’t and wouldn’t push her into something that was still a bit confusing.
Levi went into his office to check on the scan of Lincoln’s files they had started at headquarters. He popped open the laptop and went to his coffee machine a few feet from his desk.
When he dumped coffee grounds into the filter, he noticed something on his laptop screen pulsing red. He had removed his glasses and left them near the computer, so he couldn’t exactly see what was happening. He finished making his beverage and sat down at his desk.