Twelve wolves destroying their adversaries as if they’d done it a million times.
Tearing them to chewable pieces…clawing, biting, destroying, with Hayden leading the charge. It was brutal. Blood splattered everywhere.
When it was over, Hayden shifted back and looked at her, a grin on his face. “I told you to trust me, honey-woman. Are you okay?”
She swallowed and tried to smile through her chattering teeth. Nerves or adrenaline or maybe she was still coming down from whatever they’d given her nearly overwhelmed her. She couldn’t make them stop.
Hayden took her hand. He’d shifted, as they always did, back into his clothes. If she hadn’t seen him do it, and if there weren’t eleven other werewolves running around, she might be able to believe it hadn’t just happened.
“I’m okay.”
“You’re worn out, I can smell it. Go back to my room. Lock the door. I have a key. I can get in. I want you asleep in my bed when I come back. Nod if you understand.” She nodded. “I’m going to get rid of their car, and then I’m going to shift. Much as l might like to do otherwise, I have to shift in this moon, or it will hurt like hell. A good, long change.”
Another woman might not like his instructions—the magazines her captors had provided her with and the movies she’d gotten to see made it seem like she was supposed to be completely independent. But she liked Hayden telling her what to do. At least for right now.
“Chelsea, in any of those visions, did you see the truth of us?”
“The truth of us?” She didn’t know what he meant.
“That you’re my mate. You know what that means?” The stillness she’d seen earlier returned when he asked her that question.
Happiness surged up her spine. Those times she’d been his mate? The best lives she’d ever imagined living. “I do.”
He smiled, a full-on goofy grin. Hayden only looked thirty years old, except in his eyes. In them she could see all the years he had lived. But grinning like that? It took ten years of sadness away from his gaze.
“Good. Then get upstairs, honey. I’ll be there later.”
His words spoke of promises. He didn’t know her yet, but maybe that wouldn’t matter. They’d figure it out. He’d just beat the True Believers. They’d figure the rest of it out.
Despite the small lingering headache, her steps to his room were light and giddy. She found an old T-shirt she vaguely recognized as one she’d seen him in. It still smelled like his scent—maybe she was part wolf?—and she changed into it. Cuddling into his pillow, she closed her eyes. Everything was going to be all right.
Sometime later a sound woke her up. A key being inserted into a door. Did the doctors need her now? It didn’t feel like morning. How long had she slept? She sat up and rubbed her eyes. Looking around the room and seeing early morning light coming through the shades, Chelsea realized one thing. She had no fucking idea where she was.
With shaking hands, she yanked the covers up to her chin. Oh god. Where am I? This wasn’t a dream. Or at least she didn’t think it was. How would she know?
Not knowing what else to do, she grabbed for anything she could use as a weapon. Her shoe was the only thing readily available, as it sat right next to the bed. Her sneakers wouldn’t provide much defense , but maybe she could chuck it.
“Who’s there?” she called out as the door swung open.
The handsomest man she’d ever seen outside of television stepped into the room. All good looks aside, he still might prove to be some sort of psychopath. She’d met enough of those during the year she’d lived on the street.
“Its just me, Chelsea. I told you I had a key. What’s the matter? You smell terrified. Did you have a bad dream?”
He walked toward the bed, all long, muscled limbs that complemented his high cheekbones and closely shaven brown hair. He had scars on his knuckles. How many times did a person have to be in a fistfight to get that scarred?
“Who are you?” She raised her shoe, knowing it was ridiculous. “Where am I, and how did I get here?”
He stopped moving. “What?”
“You heard me.” She gestured with the shoe again. “Answer me.”
“Chelsea, are you saying you don’t know me?” He put his hands on his hips.
“We don’t know each other. That I’m sure of, damn it. I have no memory of getting here and no clue as to who you are. So you’d better start talking. Or I’ll…” She closed her mouth. There really wasn’t anything else to say.
“You’ll hit me with that shoe.” He nodded. “You’ve forgotten. The vision faded, and now you can’t remember. You said that would happen. I was busy focused on other things. I didn’t pay attention to the idea that you might forget.”
She sucked in her breath. “Are you telling me I know you from a vision? From one of my episodes?”
“Yes.”
He didn’t say more. He didn’t need to. This was very bad news. She’d had a vision, and it had brought her to this person, this place. Disaster loomed on the horizon. She just knew it. Even if the man across the room could stop traffic with the intensity in which he stared at her.
Her mouth went dry. “Can you tell me what’s happening?”
“Truthfully? I’m not exactly sure I can. This has gotten complicated. You were aware of things before that I’ll now have to explain. That’s going to be hard.” He shook his head. “But for tonight, you’re safe. Sleep here. It’s your room now. We’ll figure it out tomorrow. You’re safe.”
She didn’t feel safe. But, for now, his reassurances would have to do. Running back to the doctors would be ridiculous. They’d gotten mean. The True Believers wanted her dead. She’d have to stay here until she could figure it out.
With the man who’s name she didn’t know watching her.
Chapter Three
Hayden stared at the breakfast he’d made as he set it on the tray to bring up to Chelsea. He had no idea what she ate and didn’t eat, so he’d made everything he could think of. Bacon, eggs, cereal, biscuits, and pastry he’d bought from the gourmet bakery down the street the second they’d opened. He hadn’t been sleeping anyway. The couch in the den of the living area wasn’t very comfortable. He climbed the stairs.
Napa had no shortage of extraordinary food. He’d be glad to get her whatever she wanted. But first he had to introduce himself and figure out how to explain all of this to his mate, who now had no idea who he was.
Things had been easier when she’d been making very little sense. He hadn’t known her, but he’d certainly known he wanted to. She’d known him, or at least she thought she had, and she wanted him in spite of the truth of who he was.
He stared at the closed door to his—now her—room. What was he supposed to do? It had never occurred to him that he could have a human for his true mate. How was he supposed to woo her? If she were a wolf woman, she’d know they were supposed to be together from scent alone. Then she’d run from him. It was the way of the female werewolves. He’d chase her, catch her, and the rest they’d work out in the bedroom.
Or the living room. Or outside. Or wherever the urge took them…
He shook his head. Picturing her naked, sprawled out on his bed, with her brown hair laid out on his pillow made him hard. The images continued. The blue tips on the end of locks touching the headboard. Her breasts, rounded and large for a woman as petite as she…
Hayden set the tray outside her room on the floor. This wasn’t going to work if he was as jacked up as rocket about to go off. Somehow, someway, he had to get control of himself. He craved the woman more than he wanted his next breath, and she had no fucking idea who he was.
He hated to do what had to be done. Bringing Savage too far into his business broke the unspoken rule between them that said he left his brother alone and that Savage did the same thing when it came to personal choices. Hayden rubbed his temples.
His mate, even if she didn’t know that was what she was, needed help, and he had to figure out what to do abo
ut the True Believers. Why had they targeted him when he was such a completely small opponent? Kill Savage and they might gain some tactical growth. San Francisco was a huge pack. Take out Napa and it would be weeks before anyone would even notice.
“Shit.” He grabbed his cell phone before he could think better of it and phoned Savage. It was too early to reach out to most people, but his brother never slept more than Hayden did. Savage would have been up with the sunrise. He felt like a caged wolf and he stormed back into the kitchen having nowhere he could go that would make him feel better.
“Hayden.” Savage answered on the first ring. “Someone die on Full Moon last night?”
Hayden shook his head. Savage always had a way of jumping to the worst possible conclusion, which was probably why the other man remained alive. “No one is dead. Yet.”
Silence met his statement for several beats. He could almost picture his brother, standing on the deck of his multi-million dollar home overlooking the Pacific. If there was one thing werewolves seemed to know how to do it was to turn one dollar into ten. Maybe it was because they lived longer—or maybe it had to do with their aggressive instincts simple made them more dominant in the marketplace.
Savage always took his calls outside whenever possible. He said he did his best thinking with the wind in his face. In this case, Hayden hoped it worked.
“I was kidding about the death part. But I guess I shouldn’t be making jokes given the current climate. Talk to me, brother. What do you need?”
Hayden appreciated Savage not making him ask. They had enough trouble getting along without playing mind games. Or maybe Savage understood that, in the arena of manipulation, Hayden had been better versed.
“I need a Healer.” He drummed his fingers on the kitchen counter. This was going to get ugly any second.
“That’s not a problem. I can send you mine. He’ll be there in two hours.”
“Thanks but your Healer isn’t going to help me in this. I need a Healer who can fix a human. Do you know any?” Hayden’s limited understanding about the werewolf Healers, who were few and far between, was that their powers worked on other werewolves and didn’t extend past that.
“They’re called doctors, brother, and I would imagine you can find quite a few in the Napa Valley.”
Hayden growled. This was the side to Savage that caused them the most problems. “You know I’m not an idiot. If it was just a matter of a doctor, don’t you think I’d have fucking done that?”
“Down, boy. I should know better than to bait you after all these years. We can’t even blame Lucian for your poor sense of humor. You never did have one. Why do you need a Healer for a human? Start talking, and enough with this clandestine bullshit. I’m not your mark. You aren’t going to play me. Tell me the whole truth, or I’m hanging up.”
Fuck. “You know you’re only thirteen months older than me, and you’re not even my Alpha. You gave this place to me. It’s officially mine. I don’t have to take this shit from you.”
“Hayden.” Savage growled. “Tell me what you need or call back when you’re not being such an asshole.”
He knew on some level that he’d called to give Savage a hard time. Pissing off his brother was something he could control. His mate having no idea who he was? Completely out of his control.
“I have a True Mate.” He spoke the words fast. “She’s a human.” He proceeded to tell his brother the whole sordid story from start to finish, ending with how Chelsea had no idea who he was now and how he had absolutely no idea what to do about it. “Do you have any suggestions? Have you ever heard of a human who could do this before?”
“No.” His brother answered fast. “It all sounds like so much crap. If it was anyone else in the world telling me this I’d call foul. But you never lie.”
That wasn’t exactly true. He’d told a huge amount of lies in the past when Lucian had needed him to. These days he’d tried very hard to be truthful. Why bother when the truth worked just fine? If he lived an authentic life, he had no use for fabrication. With all of that being the case, he still lied by omission every day to protect his pack from human discovery.
“If you don’t know of a human who can do what she does, then no one does.” Savage kept his nose deep in the darker edges of the world. Psychic humans who could see many futures would have caught his attention. “Thanks anyway.”
“I’ll look into it. Keep your head down, brother. I’ll call if I hear anything.”
Hayden disconnected the call just as Sal walked into the room. “My Alpha?”
Whether Sal wanted to know about the food on the tray or his conversation on the phone Hayden didn’t know. Either way he wasn’t exactly in the mood to share. “Go out to the car, Sal.” It wasn’t much of a greeting, but right now he couldn’t do pleasantries. His pack would have to understand. “The one we took from the True Believers last night. The van.” He spoke in spurts and stops, a tribute to how befuddled his mind had gotten.
“Yes, the van outside. I’m following you.”
“Good because I’m not following myself.” He shook his head. “Take down the plates. Someone owns this van. Even if it was stolen, it gives us something to go by. Some place to start. We’re going to have to find the True Believers who held my mate. If we can track them down, I don’t know, we’ll figure something out.”
Sal nodded. “I’ll get the boys on it.”
“Good.”
“One more thing, my Alpha.” Sal cleared his throat.
“Yes?” Hayden turned back to him.
Sal took a package out of his coat pocket. It took Hayden a full thirty seconds to realize they were condoms. He opened and closed his mouth several times before he spoke. “She’s human. You’re right to give me those. I could actually get her pregnant without her needing to be in heat.”
His second-in-command nodded. “Consider it a gift from my years of sleeping with the gentler species. I’ll find a way to get them in your bedside drawer without her noticing.”
“Thank you.” He cleared his throat. “Okay if we never mention this again?”
Sal grinned. “Absolutely, my Alpha.”
Hayden retrieved the tray. Delaying the inevitable couldn’t continue. Besides, he needed to set eyes on her again. His need to claim her demanded he at least be in the same room with her for enough time to assure himself of her safety.
He took the stairs two at a time while maintaining the tray. What was the protocol for entering her room? Did he knock? Did he just enter? In the end, manners ruled out. His mother had been nothing if not a drill sergeant when it came to that.
Hayden knocked. What exactly would he do if she denied him entry? Leave the food on the tray outside the door and scamper away? He was an Alpha male. It wasn’t in his nature to run away. Fortunately, he didn’t have to decide, though the few seconds it took for her to call her permission for him to come in were the longest of his life.
He opened the door and walked in, careful not to spill anything. She sat against the headboard, still covered by the sheets. Dark circles marred the skin under her eyes, and the acrid smell of her distress permeated the room, making him want to cringe.
He walked to the bed and set the tray down next to her. “I wasn’t sure what you liked to eat.”
She eyed the food, and to his horror, a tear slipped from her eyes. “That was awful nice of you. I can’t tell you how much it means to me.”
“Chelsea.” He exhaled her name, not sure what to do with himself but finally deciding to sit down on the edge of the bed where he wouldn’t cause the tray to turn over. “Yesterday was a very…odd day, for both of us.”
“Only I can’t remember most of it.” She sniffed. “I’d forgotten what this was like. I’ve been confined in a place for so long where people understood what was happening to me. I’d let slip from my mind how horrible it is to be around groups who know things that you did when you don’t have any idea of it yourself. I don’t know if I’m making any sense.”
He nodded, the need to take her in his arms nearly overwhelming him. He had to wait. Grabbing her into an embrace would send her running, and he couldn’t have that. Control. He’d never been without it.
So why did his mate make him feel like a thirteen-year-old kid who couldn’t figure out if he wanted to shift or fuck?
“Trust me, I get the senseless stuff. There are things about my life that you might have trouble believing.” He cracked his knuckles. “But don’t act like the people who kept you confined did you any favors. They didn’t. They were using you for their own purposes. I don’t know if you remember feeling like they wanted to kill you, but that was your impression.”
She nodded. “I’d been feeling that for a while. It wasn’t confined to this most recent time.”
“We need to find those people so we can figure out what is happening to you, and I think that is going to be easier said than done.” The True Believers hadn’t gotten away with the destruction they’d been causing lately by not being good at secrets.
“Why would you do this for me? If I just showed up here recently, why do you care one bit about what happens to me? I’ve lived in the real world. I know exactly how little strangers give a shit about other strangers.”
He growled before he could stop himself, and her eyes widened. Hayden decided to ignore the instinct to stop and explain everything to her. The whole he-was-a-werewolf bit would have to wait until another time. “You’re not a stranger to me. Just because we met yesterday doesn’t mean that we’re not important to one another. Haven’t you ever had the experience of meeting someone and feeling like you’ve known them forever? Well, that’s how it was for you and me.”
There, that should settle it, he hoped.
Chelsea raised a finger and pointed at him. “You’re a werewolf.”
Well, he hadn’t expected that. What was the right response to that statement? He nodded. “That is correct. How do you know about werewolves? Did you get your memory back?”
She exhaled loudly. “No, I don’t have my memories of whatever I saw before. But I do know about werewolves. I’ve been living with the True Believers. They’re all obsessed with werewolves and any other monsters they can track down , as a matter of fact.”