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“But—Wait. What? You obviously asked her if she wanted to be a werewolf.”
“Of course,” he said, in a weary, haunted voice.
“And she agreed.” He made a noise that she took to mean yes. “Was Alana—” Alex paused, not wanting to use the word stupid, but hey, if the shoe fit—
“I thought her grandmother had told her,” he continued. “I mean, if a child were so damn important, then why wouldn’t she have told her?”
“Yeah, why?” Alex murmured, pulled toward him despite herself by the agony in his voice. She wanted to hold him and comfort him and make it better—three things Alexandra Trevalyn had never wanted before. That she wanted them with a desperation she could barely control scared her.
She just might have to kill him after all.
“Her gran knew Alana wouldn’t agree to becoming a werewolf if it meant giving up her dream of a big family, and Alana had to agree or she would have died. So Margaret lied.” He laughed, but the sound was more of a cough. “Told Alana that of course werewolves could have kids. When I found out I—” He paused. “Well, let’s say Margaret won’t be lying again anytime soon.”
Alex frowned. Did that mean he’d scared the old lady speechless? Or something else?
“But when Alana asked me,” he continued in that same voice that pulled at a part of Alex she’d never known she had, “and I told her the truth, she looked at me as if I were a monster.” He gave that short, sharp, un-funny laugh again. “I thought she’d get over it. That I would be enough. That we would be enough. I mean…what choice did she have? She was a werewolf, for better or for worse. Forever.” He shook his head. “Or not.”
Alex had always wondered about that beautiful blond wolf in northern Minnesota. Either the woman had been dumb as a rock, or she’d wanted to die.
Alana had breezed into town, and people had started disappearing. That always got Edward’s attention.
He’d sent Alex; she’d done her job. But she’d always wondered. Alana had shown up first, then—bing, bing, bing—several other strangers followed. Folks left town, and they didn’t come back, and there were whispers of a wolf pack with a sleek, golden she-wolf in the lead.
Alana had been sloppy. She hadn’t tried to hide their tracks. But it had always bothered Alex that she’d caught the other werewolves red-pawed, one with his snout buried in the local sheriff. But Alana…
She’d never attributed a single death to Alana.
Then came that fateful night. All of the other wolves were dead, and Alana had loped right into town. Strange behavior for a real wolf, kind of typical for a were.
She’d crashed through the picture window in the lobby of the hotel where Alex had been staying. That sound, followed by the screams, drew Alex out of her room and down the hall.
A wolf the shade of sunlight had backed the clerk—a teenage kid with a nametag that read holly—into a corner. The beast had glanced once at Alex, as if making sure she was there and that she was armed; then she’d lunged at the girl, teeth snapping.
Ka-bam!
That had been the end of Alana Barlow.
Alex lifted her gaze to Julian, but he was still captivated by the photo. Alex couldn’t tell him that his wife had committed suicide by Jäger-Sucher, that Alana would rather be dead than live a childless life with a man who adored her. She just couldn’t.
Besides, it would sound like an excuse, and she wasn’t going to make one. It didn’t matter if Alana had wanted to get shot or not, Alex would have obliged her either way. If Alana hadn’t been killing people in that town herself, she’d been leading a pack of monsters that had.
In Alex’s opinion, Alana was as much of a psycho as the next werewolf. Obsessed by a child instead of blood, willing to give up her life rather than live it, screwing up Alex’s future, thank you very much, by getting herself killed, thus causing her husband to agonize over her loss and eventually come gunning—so to speak—for the hunter who had ended her.
“You deserved better,” she murmured.
He spun away from the photo. Alex hadn’t realized she’d crept so close until his chest brushed hers. Together they gasped, their eyes widening, nostrils flaring as the awareness that had always been between them ignited.
Then he was dragging her against him, and she was letting him. As his mouth hovered, and his fingers clenched, and their breath mingled, he whispered, “Then there was you.”
Julian believed in fate. And this was his.
He had loved Alana with all that he’d had. But she’d left him and gone away to die.
Though he’d suspected it he hadn’t wanted to believe it, had refused to, until he’d heard the truth in Alex’s voice, saw it in her face.
Suicide by Jäger-Sucher. What a way to go.
But Alana was gone, and Alex was here, and through some bizarre twist of that fate he believed in, she was his mate. At least he understood now why he couldn’t keep his hands off her.
