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Something in his tone warned that his motive was more than just curiosity. “Know what?”
“WhymyAlpha compelled you to forget your lycan side and left you to be raised out here alone.” His words registered in two distinct ways.
The first was that he was furious. So very angry. But, as she weighed his revelation, Loren couldn’t process her shock. It was enough to diminish whatever mixture of confusion and horror she felt toward him.
“What? Do you mean…” The man from her memories. “You knew him.”
Bill nodded, his expression darker than ever. “Yes. And the only way we are ever going to get real answers is to go and find them.”
Loren didn’t move, feeling her teeth chatter. Micha and Bill seemed rarely affected by the cold, but she was already shivering, and the prospect of walking the entire way to Baker farm made it sink in just how far she’d run in only a few minutes.
While a wolf.
“I just shifted,” she blurted with a tattered laugh. That seemed to be an understatement. Amid that violent transformation of muscle and bone, she felt wild, untamed emotion she’d never experienced. Ever. Remnants of it lingered still, heightening her awareness of everything from her swaying stance, to the way her heartbeat surged beneath her skin.
Her nerves prickled, her knees buckling with unsteady energy. All over, her entire body hummed in a way that felt…
Primal.
Even his nearness resonated differently. His scent overwhelmed every ounce of air she drew in, and she could feel a shadow of his heat despite the distance between them. A part of her shuddered, drawn to him regardless of everything…
“Please,” Bill called, snapping her back to the present moment—they were still in the middle of Fred Connors’ backyard. “Come with me.”
His tone alone coaxed her forward, and she followed him in a daze, still eyeing her thin, pale limbs. They looked the same, belonging to the frail Loren Connors, but within… It was as if her brain had expanded to twice its previous size. She was aware of so much more than her own fear, and discomfort. The sky seemed brighter, the wind far louder, rustling through the trees in a deafening clamor. Even her body seemed affected—her stumbling, unsteady movements were such a violent contrast to the way she’d moved while in wolf form. No wonder McGoven seemed to relish the change.
“Wait here,” he said once they reached the boundary of the property. “I’ll bring you some clothing. Then we’ll load up.”
“All of us?”
He nodded. “Micha and I will take my truck. You will ride with Naomi. It’s safer for her to be with me than on her own. At least for now.”
She couldn’t bring herself to argue. “And then?”
“Then we get answers.”
What he didn’t say echoed in her mind, uttered by that shadowy inner voice—By any means necessary.
24
“You drive,” Bill told Micha before tossing him the keys. He didn’t even know if the kid knew how. Still, if he took the wheel himself, he doubted they could reach Black Mountain in one piece.
From the corner of his eye, he saw Loren and Naomi entering the latter’s pink sports car. Admittedly, the flashy model would stick out like a sore thumb anywhere near the relatively rural outskirts of Black Mountain. Oh well. He’d regret the oversight later—among other things.
While he’d kept it together enough, to grab Loren a fresh set of clothing, focusing was a struggle. Funnily enough, the shock was more startling than the unexpected pain.
How damn ironic. He had been prepared to play the hero and break the bond himself, when Loren did so easily without even understanding what it was. On her own. He hadn’t expected that plot twist, and it… Unnerved the hell out of him.
Perhaps she had inherited “the calling” as he had, but even so—from the very start, he’d sensed something abnormal in her. A duality of sorts, that allowed her to seem like a harmless human one minute, and a wild, feral lycan the next. Her unusual nature puzzled him, though maybe the horror inflicted on her as a child played a role in it all.
After being suppressed for nearly a decade, her lupine instincts had mutated, becoming just as unpredictable as the environment she’d grown up in. Hell, that might have been the only reason why she’d survived this long.
To protect her, the wolf within had learned to adapt and react however it saw fit.
Even against him.
The worst part hadn’t been his own agony at the severance. No… It killed him to witness the pain on her face as she understood the truth. Being stabbed through the chest with a blunt knife would have hurt less. Only one other loss in his life overshadowed this mental anguish—Emma’s. But while this pain was different in essence, it went just as deep.
And unlike Emma, Loren wasn’t gone. Her scent lingered, taunting him even as they hit the highway, and all traces of her should have been diminished by the fresh air. He couldn’t stop his gaze from straying to the rearview mirror, watching that pink car tailing them.
