Recovering quickly, he tucks his phone back into his pocket, leaning forward to rest his arms on his thighs casually. “How are you feeling?”
That twisting in my stomach returns with a vengeance, heart hammering away as I push myself upright. He reaches out a hand in my direction, and I react on instinct. Cold cocking him in the side of the face, the adrenaline flooding my system gives me some extra force behind the punch, sending the chair crashing with him to the ground.
Scrambling free of the blanket, I sprint towards the open doorway, bare feet slapping against the hardwood floor. I grab the frame, swinging around the corner and into the hallway. A series of closed doors pass by in a blur as I race through the house, following the hall to a set of stairs. Palm sliding over the handrail to steady me, I fly down the steps, launching myself at the front door.
Fumbling with the lock as my heartbeat thunders in my ears, I tear it open, making it all of two steps before slamming into a hard chest. It sends the bags in his hands crashing onto the front porch, groceries spilling out and rolling across the painted wood. Arms wrap around me instantly, shielding me from the worst of the fall as we go tumbling down the stone steps. One arm banded around my lower back, his other follows the length of my spine so that he can cover the back of my head with his hand as we roll, landing on the stone-studded path below.
He ends up pinned beneath me, keeping my face pressed into his throat, tucked beneath his chin. That tug in my stomach turns into an all-out scream that’s impossible to ignore, forcing me to breathe in his earthen scent, hear the blood rushing through his veins as his heart sprints. It all feels... familiar, like a distant memory dancing on the edge of remembrance, triggered by a scent or song you can’t quite place. He feels like the center of the storm, a safe place despite the chaos and destruction that’s far too close for comfort.
“Shit, are you hurt?” he asks, and something about his voice triggers another fraction of a memory, making me realize I’ve seriously gone off the deep end.
I need to run before the other guy catches up to me, and hell, this one is clearly in on it. For fucks’ sake, he was walking into the house when I crashed into him. So there should be no reason that I shouldn’t knee him in the balls and make a break for it before it’s too late. Yet here I am, hiding with my face pressed into his neck like just his scent is enough to keep the world at bay.
I can’t bring myself to answer him, because honestly, I might burst into tears if I try to speak right now. Ishouldbe hurt, never should have been able to run out of that room in the first place. There’s just been too much, too quickly, and though I’m not physically injured, I’m the farthest thing from okay.
“Ssh, it’s okay, you’re safe.” He makes no move to release me, actually tightening his hold. “Nobody’s going to hurt you anymore.” Like he knows exactly where my mind is at, the hand at the back of my head starts slowly stroking over my hair. “We pulled you from the wreckage almost a week ago and brought you here to patch you up.”
A week. An entire fucking week?
I take a breath to center myself and try to calm down, roughly croaking, “The driver?”
His hand stills mid stroke. “Dead.” After a hesitant pause, he adds, “We killed him.”
Relief floods my limbs, my breath leaving me in a rush. “Promise?”
I don’t know what the hell is wrong with me right now. I don’t know this man; his word means nothing. But the terrified part of me that still feels locked in that trunk, the phantom sensations of that asshole’s hands all over me when he dragged me off of the trail making my skin crawl, needs to hear it. Even if it’s a lie, I need to hear it until I can pretend it’s true, or I’m never going to be able to sleep again.
Almost reluctantly, he relaxes his grip, palming either side of my face and pulling back so that he can look at me. Shaggy black hair sticks up in several spots from the fall, but it’s the bright green eyes that get me, sending a sharp stab through the center of my chest.
“Promise. He’s gone, and never coming back. You’re safe now,” he declares, voice unwavering and easing the knot of tension in my chest.
“Why did you bring me here instead of a hospital, then?”
His gaze softens, thumb brushing over my cheek. “We’ll fill you in on everything. I imagine you’re starving, though, so how about we discuss it over lunch?” When I don’t budge, he sighs. “You ever read any vampire or werewolf romance novels?” At my nod, his tongue darts out to wet his lips. “I turned you rather than let you die. Mason and Bane tried too, after you didn’t wake up, so now... you’re feeling instinctively drawn to me, yeah? Know in your gut that you’re safe with me, even though we’ve never met before?”
Frowning, I realize that I was leaning into his touch while he was talking, yet still don’t want to pull away despite being annoyed at the fact. “Are you trying to say you’re, what, my sire or something?”
His face lights up with his smile. “Exactly. We turned you, so it falls on us to take care of you. The sire bond is a way of helping ease the transition of changed shifters, when everything in their lives is thrown for a loop. Having that instinctual knowledge that you aren’t alone, that someone’s there to protect you while you figure things out? It helps make everything not feel so overwhelming or impossible.”
My face scrunches up and I free my face from his touch, pulling back. “So instead of taking me to a hospital, you abducted me from the accident and brought me back to your house so that you could change me into a werewolf? Do you have any idea how insane this sounds?” I shake my head, sitting back and scoffing, “You’re crazy.”
He rises up on his elbows, giving me a challenging look. “Then why don’t you have so much as a single scar where we pulled all of the shrapnel from you? At least one of your legs was broken, and yet you sprinted out of the house like your ass was on fire. Focus, and you should be able to sense exactly how many people are in the house.”
Biting my tongue, I try to wrap my head around everything he’s saying, to put it in a place that I can deal with. The heightened senses, not having a scratch on me despite how terrible that car accident was? I’ve read way too many books and fallen in love with too many fictional characters over the years to deny that a part of me always wanted to believe it was possible. But those are just the wishful fantasies of someone that wanted to escape her life, not reality.
Yet here I am, sitting on top of this stranger without a blip of fear that he’s a threat despite the ludicrous things coming out of his psychotic mouth. Hell, he outright admitted they killed a guy, but I can’t bring myself to be upset at that claim. People like that bastard deserve to be put down, and I’m not going to lose any sleep over some vigilantes feeling the same way.
So though I feel like an absolute idiot right about now, I close my eyes, trying to calm my racing thoughts and analyze things logically. I can’t deny the heightened senses, but I attributed that to being drugged, which is still a possibility. The longer I sit here though, the more I contemplate the theory that I was just disoriented from sleeping so long, since that head rush I woke up with vanished so quickly. And honestly? I feel better than I have in a long time, though to be fair, that could be adrenaline trying to keep my stupid self alive.
With a deep inhale, warm summer air fills my nostrils, along with the earthen scent of the man beneath me. A bit fainter, the scent of pine and rain is nearly overshadowed by cologne. I can faintly hear both men’s heartbeats, know they’re watching from the doorway without even looking, and neither are trying to haul me back inside. Either they trust that the man beneath me could stop me before I got far, or they aren’t with the sick son of a bitch that abducted me. But that means I either have the worst luck in the universe and was abducted twice in one day, or...
“What did you do to me?” I eventually whisper, sounding ridiculous even to my ears. But there should be no way I can hear other people’s heartbeats this clearly, should honestly be bedridden with stitches and broken bones after the car crash. Drugs can do a hell of a lot, but even the best plastic surgeons leave scars behind.
As he sits up, I’m left straddling his lap, knees digging into the warm stone. “That’s what we’re going to find out.” At my furrowed brow, he elaborates, “Turned shifters are genetic roulette. No matter what bites you, it depends onyourblood. The three of us are a subspecies of viper that are only known to the supernatural world. Even though we turned you, you could very well end up a mongoose or a hawk. So we’re going to have to wait for your first shift to see.”
Swallowing, I absentmindedly nod, thoughts whirling a mile a minute and trying to rationalize things away.Maybe I actually died in the accident.This definitely seems like the sort of thing I would dream up to cope with the afterlife.
“You said Mason and Bane, right?”
