"Yes, Faith, you certainly did." Her Theo was back but Ashlee didn't react to his voice.
She motioned her heard toward Theo. "Can you see him?"
Ashlee spun around looking around the room. "There is someone else here?"
Faith nodded. "Yes but evidently he still can't be seen." Theo walked to her and wrapped his arms around her. The room started to fade and Faith sighed. Where were they being sent now?
With only seconds left, she stared at Ashlee whose eyes were huge as she watched Faith disappear. "Might not want to tell anyone about this. I have no idea how this works but there is the whole changing the future problem."
Chapter Seven
He hit the ground hard, shielding Faith's body in his own as he attempted to shield her from any damage their reappearance might cause. Looking around quickly, he immediately discovered they were back in Faith's bedroom. Jumping to his feet, he pulled Faith to hers.
"You just fucking saved my life."
Faith gaped at him for a second. "I don't think I've ever heard you swear before. In face, I'm not sure I've ever heard any of the wolves curse, come to think of it."
He pulled her so her body was flush against his. "We do it, just usually not in front of women. Call us old-fashioned."
She nodded like the ridiculousness of his statement made something clearer to her. "I guess all of you were born in time periods long past so it makes sense."
"Are you being obtuse? Did you not see what happened there? You saved my life."
"I know I certainly couldn't leave you there to die." Her eyes said there was more to the story but for right now he wouldn't press. Realizing he squeezed her shoulders tightly he forced himself to decrease the pressure in his hands.
"I just vanished. I could see what was happening but even you couldn't see me and more and more I became removed from all that was around me."
Faith stared into his eyes, her brown and gold irises boring into his soul, stripping him naked of all of his defenses.
"I have all sorts of feelings for you, Theo, things I shouldn't be feeling this soon after just meeting you but I know you're my mate, I've witnessed what that means. Two people who have never laid eyes on one another before suddenly can't exist without the other one, would die without the other one. Tell me how it happens; it already feels so intense, what's going to make it more so?"
Theo shook his head. He wished he could answer her. "I don't know, Faith. Honestly, I don't. It's a closely guarded secret between the couple, even mated pairs don't discuss it amongst other mated pairs but it seems to happen with the actual mating act. That's all I know."
"Because I basically felt like I was going to die if you died and I know that after we mate, if you do die, I'll be compelled to follow as fast as I can, right? That's how it works."
Theo nodded. "With very few exceptions, notable my deranged father. He killed my mother and didn't follow her, obviously. My two Aunts, the two women who were married to my father's brothers, they didn't follow my Uncles during the crisis but lived in agony every day of their lives in order to ensure the pack still had mystics in it until the other women returned."
"Doesn't sound like me. I've never been particularly self-sacrificing."
Theo ran his hands through her dark, silky locks. Closing his eyes, he pulled a strand to his nose so he could memorize the scent. Honey and spring rain, two of his favorite scents. Why was he not surprised?
Tell her how wonderful she is. Theo was glad to hear his wolf had returned from his long absence.
"I don't think you see yourself the way others see you."
Faith narrowed her eyes. "Or maybe you don't know enough about me to make that judgment."
"Oh yeah?" This he had to hear. "What are you big bad secrets Faith? Murdered anyone is cold blood? Stole money from impoverished little old ladies?"
She pulled out of his arms. Immediately he felt bereft, although he didn't chase her. Whatever she wanted to say must be very important to her. What little he knew of female shifters told him it was best to shut up and let her get it out of her system.
Her eyes bore into his, begging for understanding and he regretted saying the last smug thing he'd said. What if she had no choice and had killed someone? He was going to feel like the biggest scum on the earth. "I was a private detective. My partner and I ran a business together, I was the one who could seek out and find information. If you thought your spouse cheated on you, I could find the answer and I was never wrong. I know now that had to do with my wolf skills-even though at the time I didn't know I had them."
"Lots of people do that for a living. Again, it's not like you made those men or women stray."
"No." She shook her head. "It's not that I'm embarrassed by my former job. Not at all. It was my partner--Andrew--he died and it was all my fault and I can't help but feel that first of all, fate has a huge sense of irony by making me a wolf and, two, I have no business being happy and certainly not with someone as noble as you."
He rolled his eyes because he couldn't help it. "Noble? That's a little dramatic. My nephew was being kidnapped, anyone would do the same. I think you can count on it."
"Oh Theo, you've never lived outside of this island, have you?"
"We all did for a while--before our world all but ended thirty some-odd years ago. I went to college. I have a degree in mechanical engineering, although when we rebuilt the Institute I got a good lesson in just how out of date my fifty-five year old education actually was."
"I'm not sure what the world was like fifty-five years ago but now it's quite different. Not everyone would rescue a child from a monster or a burning building, not if it meant risking their own life--even if the child in question is family."
His mate was a cynic and the thought made his chest tighten. If Kendrick hadn't done what he did she would have been raised on the island among the pack and most likely would never have developed her negative sense of the world. Not that he could blame her; he didn't exactly see life as roses and fairytales either, but it broke his heart that she didn't.
"Okay. Say I believe that--and I still think that most people would do what they could for a family member, especially a juvenile one--what does that have to do with anything at all?"
"Andrew was our front man. Most people didn't want to hire a woman to be their private detective. That's all fine and good in movies and in books but in real life people want men to do that kind of job, even if the woman is better at it."
"So you let people think this Andrew was the one doing the actual work?" So far he followed her story.
She nodded. "I did. Although I let him do some investigation, if I felt it was simple and he could handle the situation. We grew up together. Sometimes we were in the same orphanage, sometimes one of us was temporarily fostered, in his case sometimes he was in juvenile detention, but we always wound up back together. I used to wish I could love him--I mean, I loved him, I just wasn't in love with him--and now I know why."
He walked two paces until he could touch her and reached out to stroke her cheek gently. "It was lonely for me too, Faith. I longed for you too."
To his horror, one tear slipped from his mate's eye before she blinked it away.
"But you see, that's the thing. I wasn't lonely--romantically, I was--but I had Andrew. We were each other's family even though we didn't have our real families. His mother was a drug addict who couldn't take care of him so we took care of each other. I used to make up stories about mine. Depending on who you asked, my parents were lunatic sociopaths or expatriate freedom fighters."
"Or people who could turn into wolves?"
She shook her head. "No, I was years past believing that fantasy. That particular theme had been taken care of."
Theo wasn't sure Faith had taken him seriously earlier when he said he was going to find the people who had beat her, but he had been, and once this situation with the demons was done he would enjoy showing them just how terrified they had made a small child feel. He shook his h
ead. There were things to focus on before he could think about that.
"So what happened to Andrew?"
Theo had to admit, and maybe he was a caveman, but he just didn't like discussing another man with Faith. How close had they actually gotten and what did it mean they were family to one another? He knew there had been other men in her life but had this one meant so much to her that she thought she couldn't pursue the mating ritual with him?
"I sent him on what I thought was a small case. A woman's husband had been committed to what I thought was a psychiatric facility for the very rich in Mexico, basically a spa. She was convinced that he was cheating on her because his conversations had become so sporadic and the director of the facility had no explanation. It seemed like a simple case of fly down there, take some photos, come back and I was up to my neck in a deeply complicated commercial espionage case."
Theo could see where this was going. His father, before his brothers and pack mates had blown it to smithereens, had run the facility.
"Andrew never came home?"
"I tracked him for months, visited the facility hundreds of time, but could never find him. Finally, I got word from a source that he had shown up in Texas and he was..." Faith stumbled over her words and a lump formed in his throat. If she burst out crying he would have to kill someone, anyone who was responsible for it.
"He was dying. Dad sends them away from the clinic to die on the streets like unwanted garbage. I know."
Theo finished the sentence for her. That was what happened to the wolves his father and his team of lunatics 'made' in Mexico. For the most part they seemed to choose the mentally ill but sometimes regular people got sucked into it too. After they forced a violent, disgusting transformation on them, the wolves required the administration of a particular drug--a drug that even his brother Azriel who could seemingly do anything--couldn't recreate.
When Kendrick abandoned the poor unfortunate souls, the first thing that happened is they went through terrible withdrawals that left them violent, and the second was they died. The biggest problem was that since the building had burned down in Mexico they had no idea where his father had relocated his misbegotten experiments.
Faith's Andrew had obviously been amongst the unlucky.
"Was he past the violent phase when you found him?"
The woman whose every mood he now absorbed as his own closed her eyes. "No."
Fix this.
He wished he could. It seemed so simple for his wolf. There was a problem with Faith; they needed to make it better. But Theo knew there were some things even those who loved you best in the world couldn't fix for you, ever.
"How much longer did he live?"
"One and a half weeks. It was gruesome."
"Did he shift?"
"Several times. I tried to get doctors but it was like there was this vast conspiracy. He wouldn't do it in front of others. I just kept promising him he'd be okay but he wasn't, not ever again."
Theo wasn't going to make Faith describe the details. He could picture them in his head. Az had brought two wolves to the island after the Mexican facility had burned. Watching his brother had been fascinating for Theo, even in the midst of his own decreasing mental health, and seeing how awful those people fared had been one of the catalysts Theo had used in making his decision to separate his madness from the pack.
"And then you went back to Mexico yourself."
"Broke in, determined I would find proof and instead I found Summer."
"Who you attempted to rescue and in the process had a shift forced on you, but quite differently, and that was how you discovered you were one of us."
She nodded. He'd heard the story when the pack had returned to the island. Although he'd been so caught up in his own stuff at the time he hadn't given much thought to the woman they'd found and promptly left at the Mexican border with promises she would come to Westervelt when she was ready.
It had never occurred to him that she could be his mate, which brought him back to what he still didn't understand.
"Faith, in none of this are you culpable, none of this makes you 'unworthy' of me. By the way, that was just about the stupidest thing I've ever heard you say."
"I never listened to him. He called me from Mexico before he approached IPAG to tell me he thought something was very wrong. He was afraid. Lately, he'd been lazy in his work, trying to get out of things. Andrew was susceptible to a lot of temptations. I don't think he ever learned how to turn something that was bad for him down. If I wasn't there to tell him something was a bad idea, he seemed to forget it was. When we were growing up he would go through these times where he would do a lot of drugs. I could always tell which one he was doing based on how he behaved. If he was hyper and super on top of things, then he was most likely on speed. If he got lethargic and hungry, then he was doing a lot of marijuana. He was trying to get out of work a lot back then, so I thought he was smoking pot again. I went off on him, berated him. If I hadn't done that..."
Theo shook his head. "Not your fault. You had no way of knowing."
"Wouldn't you think that a woman who spent a large portion of her childhood insisting the impossible was possible wouldn't be so fast to dismiss out of hand her oldest friend's fears?"
"It's like deciding to turn left instead of right on a walk somewhere and boom you're struck by a car. Split second decisions we can't take back, they shape and define our life. Who we are, will be, and what happens to us is all a series of decisions. If Andrew was really afraid, he was an adult who lived in the world, he could have decided not to go in."
He watched as her eyes moved back and forth in her sockets, as if she thought deeply about what he'd said. "I feel responsible for it and I swore revenge but I'm stagnated on that too."
"We will get Kendrick--the whole pack will--and together we'll avenge Andrew."
He was certain about it. Not certain yet that she fully believed him when he said it wasn't her trial to bear alone, he was shocked when she reached up and pulled his mouth down on hers.
After a moment, she released him. "Theo, please, I want to be your mate in all ways possible. I don't want to live without you another day. Let's do it, let's connect like that."
Want my mate.
Theo agreed. He wanted her too and just the thought of it made his groin go hard. Reaching out, he grazed the side of her face with his thumb wishing he could memorize her profile.
"You know Faith, the time we have spent together, both in the past and in the woods, I have to tell you, if none of this mattered--if we didn't have destined mates chosen for us by the universe--I would still pick you."
Her eyes got wide and a glorious smile crossed her face. He continued. "If we were just two people who met somewhere and had the choice of anyone in the world to date, I would desperately hope that you would date me."
"Oh Theo." Faith threw her arms around his neck. "I feel the same way."
In his mind, Theo knew this was a pivotal moment for the two of them. Whatever happened next, and besides the sex for which he would admit he was looking forward to, the binding aspect of the mating experience was unknown to him, he could feel in his pores that although it would be important this very second spent between the two of them was as crucial as anything to come.
Staring at her, he just had no choice. He needed her as he required the air around him to breathe. Guiding her lips to his, he kissed her hard--a kiss of utter possession. Realizing she was on tiptoes, he somehow walked them both to the bed and was happy when he didn't trip while doing so.
"I love you." The words needed to be said and he meant them from the depths of his soul. Truth was, he'd been in love with her since she'd pulled him out of the water in the woods and falling even more so every second since. The woman tried to shield him from his brothers and had saved his life in the worst moment of his existence without hesitation. Faith was his and he would worship her, as flawed as he was, for the rest of his existence.
She ran her hand over his ey
ebrow. "I love you too."
He didn't know why he deserved that but he would take it.
Faith's scent overwhelmed him and he growled, his wolf smiling inside of him. She pushed at his chest and he felt the wolf fill his eyes, relieved when hers did the same.
"My wolf is rather fond of yours. She's practically dancing."
Like that image.
He did too. Suddenly, they both had on too much clothing. Not caring if her pajamas were the most valuable item she owned, he tugged at them until in frustration he finally ripped them from her body. She yelped, a smile present in her wolf eyes.
Theo wished he could be gentle and slow in his caresses but there was no time for that. They were two caged animals finally let loose to have the freedom they'd both endlessly craved. The entire world was Faith, he revolved around her, and if he didn't have her too he might die from the torture.
Her body arched against him in their primal mating dance and she reached up, destroying his shirt in one tug, much easier than he had done hers. Once again, he was reminded not to underestimate his mate--she was a tough woman.
They had both seen each other naked before but this was different; this was everything, this belonged to just the two of them. He pressed his mouth to hers and she moaned deep in her throat, the sound sending shivers all over his body. Faith's pleasure was his own.
The next step they took together would be the binding one. There would be no separating her from him--even if he felt it was for her own good--ever. Although he never would have believed it, the thought made Theo fill with happiness. He never wanted to be away from her and if somehow she went first he would follow immediately. For eternity, they could do this, even when they no longer lived on earth.
"I don't know what you're thinking about but if it's keeping you from me, stop thinking it."
That was his Faith, always reminding him what he should be doing and taking him out of his own head. Desperate to bury himself inside of her, he refused to act like a teenager and just push his way inside. This was his mate, the woman he'd be with forever. Some finesse was needed if only to assure her that he wasn't a total dolt.