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“You’re perfect,” he says again, bringing his hand up from between my legs to his mouth, licking his fingers clean and making me blush a little.
“You taste perfect, too.”
Both his hands come to my hips and slide over to my stomach. “We might have made a cub,” he says smiling.
“What if it’s not a cub?” I ask, unable to help myself. I know mates tend to conceive fast, so the likelihood of me being pregnant is high.
He shrugs like it’s no big deal either way.
“What if it’s human like me?” I push, needing more from him. “I know you don’t like humans.”
“I like you.”
The word like stings a little, because I more than like him.
“Will you like our babies if they’re human?”
“I will love them either way. You aren’t the only human I like. Sheriff Dominic’s wife is human too, and she doesn’t bother me. If our babies are human, they will be perfect like you. Anything from you would be perfect.”
His words hurt way more than he could ever know, because they can’t be true. My father was his jailer. I’m almost a hundred percent sure of it now that he’s told me about his time in captivity. He only told me bits and pieces, but I recognized his descriptions and I knew he was talking about the same place I had run from.
Not only that, he had a clear hatred for humans. I know how much that hatred can eat someone up. I’d seen it with my father. He hated shifters. Thought they were science projects. Hell, I think he hated humans, too, if how he treated me was any indication. It was why I ran to begin with. He wanted to start running tests on me, too. I’d seen an opening to escape one night and took it. I ran for what felt like forever until I collapsed in the snow, where my brothers found me. I’d only been eleven.
I’d refused to tell them my name, so Snow was born that day. Pulling myself from Koda’s lap, I grab the discarded shirt from the floor and use it to cover myself a little as I exit the room. I hear his chair push back and his heavy footsteps following me down the hallway and into the bedroom where I start to look for clothes to wear.
He stands in the doorway, watching me get dressed, with a confused look on his face.
“We aren’t going anywhere. I like you naked,” he protests as I slide a shirt over my head and pull on socks. I ignore him as I find pants and slide them on next.
“What’s the matter? I can tell you’re sad. Tell me and I’ll fix it. We can go to town now if you really want. Maybe I have something that can keep you warm. It might be a little big but—”
“Koda,” I say, cutting him off. “You can’t think every part of me is perfect.”
“I can,” he growls, taking a step into the bedroom. I match him with a retreating step, making him growl again.
“The Denalis are my brothers because they found me in the woods one night. Covered in snow. It’s how I got the name, actually. I was eleven when they became my family.”
“I’m your family now,” he corrects, possessiveness coating his words. A half smile pulls at my lips. I love that he’s like that with me. But it’s not real. He keeps calling me perfect and it’s not true. Each time he says the word, it cuts a little deeper.
“Before I was Snow Denali, I was Angie Madden.” His eyebrows rise like he’s thinking. “That night I was running from a facility my father ran. That was the night the Denali brothers found me. His name was Dr. Jack Madden.”
I see the color leave his face before a roar of rage sounds though the house, making me jump. “See? Not everything that comes from me can be perfect, because I come from him.”
We stand in utter silence for what feels like an eternity before Koda turns, storming from the room. After a few moments I hear the front door bang open. Following the sounds, I enter the living room to see the door that’s always locked up so tightly is wide open.
I grab my shoes next to the door and my cape and slip them on, stepping outside onto the porch to see if I can see where he went, but I only see his tracks in the fresh snow. A sob hiccups from my chest, and I feel the tears start to slide down my face.
Stepping off the porch, I start walking. It’s clear that he wants me gone. He’s been so protective of me, but he just left the door wide open. It’s not long until I start to hear howls, and I start running towards the sounds, knowing who it is.
When I break through the clearing, I see them coming towards me at a dead run. When I reach them, I drop to the ground, petting each of them. I can tell they are inspecting me but won’t shift until we get back to their cabin.
“Lead me,” I tell them as I follow them through the woods for a good mile before I finally see their cabin. I push inside and sit on the sofa. I wait for them to shift and change, and then all three join me back in the living room. They pull me up from my seat and wrap me in hugs.
“We’ve been so fucking worried, Snow. The phones have been down, and we had to wait for the storm to stop to make it over to the Alpha’s house to find out where you were,” Flint says, a half growl in his voice.
“I’ve been with Koda,” I tell them.
“We know,” Forest says sternly, and I give him another hug.
“He wouldn’t fucking tell us where Koda lived. Said he’d go check it out, but then his mate started freaking out. He kicked us out of his house. Said he’d get back to us, but we’ve been searching anyway,” Flint finishes. I can see the tension in his body.
“I’m fine,” I try to reassure them.
“You’re not fine. You’ve been crying,” Finn says worriedly. My fair skin hides nothing.
“I…” I pause, taking a deep breath. “My mate wants nothing to do with me.” The last part comes out as a sob as Finn pulls me into an embrace, holding me tightly and trying to get me to stop crying. Suddenly, a roar sounds from outside.
Chapter 7
Koda
When I bolt from the house, I don’t think about anything other than the name that Snow said. Jack Madden.
He was such a horrible human being who did terrible things to our kind. When I was there, he was the one leading the facility. I’m pretty sure he owned the place. Everyone answered to him and he seemed to be making all the decisions. When I was there, I got the feeling that if he went down, the place would have fallen apart. I could sense dissent in the people that worked there and knew that all it would take would be one good gust of wind and the whole place would tumble to the ground. The only person who seemed to want to be there was Madden.
I knew I’d have to wait for the perfect moment. I waited until he was the last one in the lab that night. Sometimes he would stay late and do experiments the other technicians weren't comfortable with. They knew he was going too far, but no one was willing to stop him.
On my last night there, he came into the lab furious. He was blaming me for things I had no clue about. He said our kind was a disease on mankind and he was going to
cure it. I had thought for a long time that he wanted to make us some kind of super-race with his experiments, but soon I realized he just enjoyed torturing us. He was crazy. I knew one day he would kill me, and I knew that day had finally come.
I saw the needle on the table and knew I only had one chance to make my move. Before the last tech had left for the night, he’d placed a pair of scissors on the table close to me and gave me a look. I couldn’t figure out why he did that until Madden came in. Then I knew. He was giving me a chance.
While his back was turned, I grabbed the scissors and cut the straps binding me. Before I could form any sort of plan, Madden turned around and I swung out, slicing the scissors across his throat. In one move, my captor was on the floor, bleeding to death.
I waited, scissors in hand, and watched until the light left his eyes. I wanted to make sure that he never did this to anyone ever again and that no other shifters would suffer through what I had to. I took what I could in the short amount of time I had. I found the other shifters and set them free. They all took off as fast as they could without a second glance. I went outside and found some gasoline in a storage building nearby.
Watching the fire take hold, I made sure that there wasn’t going to be anything left but ash. Once that was clear, I got out of there and started running. I ran into some shifters a few days later and they helped me out. All I could think about was finding Winnie at that point. I didn’t think about what I had done, but even now I don’t regret it.
When I get to a clearing in the woods, I stop and try to catch my breath. How could my mate want me if I killed her father? Would she even be able to look at me if she knew the truth of what I'd done?
There’s a burning in my chest, and I know it’s because I’m separated from her. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what I’ll do if she pushes me away. The last few days have been the sweetest I’ve ever known. I never thought I’d have something like that again. She pushed back all the darkness that’s always been present in me. When I was with her, it was gone. I saw nothing but her. My perfect little mate.
