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He hadn’t hesitated to eat, and she’d seen him pour the soup into the bowls. She sat and reached for the spoon with a trembling hand. The spoon clinked against the china bowl, and she spilled a little soup before she lifted it to her mouth. Rich meaty broth with a hint of vegetables danced across her taste buds. She swallowed and barely prevented her moan of pleasure.
“Have some toast. Do you want butter?”
“No, thanks,” she said and diagonally cut a piece of bread. She dipped one half into the soup and took a bite. Aware of him watching, she tried to eat slowly and thought she’d managed when he returned to his meal.
“How long have you been at Mrs. Hunter’s place?” he asked.
She shrugged, not wanting to give him details. He was a wolf, and his sense of smell was as good as hers. She recognized him now. He was the wolf from last week. After almost colliding with him, he’d haunted her dreams and waking hours.
He’d smelledsoperfect that she’d experienced an absurd notion of speaking with him. Luckily, her honed instincts had kicked into gear, and she’d kept walking with scarcely a hitch in her old-person gait. At first, she’d thought the Middlemarch shifters would see through her subterfuge, but everyone saw what she wanted them to see—an elderly and reclusive feline.
She didn’t care what the locals thought as long as everyone believed she was a grumpy, independent old woman who preferred her own company.
She scowled down at her soup. Unfortunately, the storm had proved her undoing, and now the wolf-man had seen her true deficient shifter form. No matter what she did, her hair color, ears, and tail remained. She shot another glance at Marcus. He had mentioned nothing, but he must’ve seen—her ears. The hair—she might’ve bluffed her way through the weird calico coloring, but the ears and tail were unusual. Peculiar. Her shift into her feline form always worked, albeit a painful process, but whenever she wanted to reverse the change, those stubborn ears and tail remained attached to her person.
“You have the same scent as old Mrs. Hunter,” he drawled, his spoon halfway to his mouth.
Her gaze flew up to meet his, and what she saw had her heart stuttering and renewed fear swirling to life. If he guessed the truth, she’d need to start afresh elsewhere. She’d moved several times to escape capture and hated to begin again. Middlemarch suited her because other shifters resided in the town. Feline. Wolf. They didn’t bother her how humans might, and they acted as a warning system. Whenever strangers behaved oddly, the shifters monitored them. Even though they didn’t know it, the Middlemarch residents were her extra safety net.
“Not going to comment?”
“What do you want?”
“How about the truth? I was thinking about the possibilities while heating the soup and came up with a conclusion. You and Mrs. Hunter are the same person, and you’ve been pretending to be an old woman.”
Ria spooned up more soup and swallowed it before dipping a piece of toast into her bowl. “I don’t have to tell you anything.”
“Now there’s gratitude for you. I discovered you unconscious on the floor and in danger of getting swept away by a landslide. I risked my life to enter your cottage and drag you out. And not one moment too soon, either. Your house washed over the lip of the hill when the two trees pinning it in place broke under the strain of the mud and rain.”
Ria stilled. “It’s gone?”
“Yes, you’re lucky to be alive.”
Huh! Hadn’t the scientists proved she was difficult to kill? They’d poked and pried and cut her enough. Her thoughts raced ahead, and she set down her spoon. “Who are you? What do you want from me?”
She pinned him with a glare, then had to glance away. The knowledge galled her, but something was appealing about this wolf. Liking someone was dangerous. The scientists used friendship as a lever to get what they wanted. Ria sucked in a breath, and, along with the meaty aroma of the soup, she got a whiff of his wild pine. Damn it. She didn’t want to like him, yet the cat part of her wanted to play with him. Ria snarled silently, but her feline ignored her, letting out a loud purr that rumbled through her mind for long moments.
The man—Marcus—stared before setting down his spoon. “My name is Marcus Kerr. I am a werewolf from Scotland, and I came to Middlemarch with my pack or what remains of them. I have a furniture building business that I share with my best friend, Rory Henderson. As for what I want from you. You’re my mate. I crave your body and your soul.” His brown eyes held a challenge, and the tilt of his head screamed arrogance.
Ria could only study him briefly because her cat started purring when he was in their sights. Stupid beast. Her cat was the root cause of her problems. At least until she’d discovered Middlemarch and its feline population, but she wasn’t stupid enough to trust anyone. Lonely—yes—but much safer.
“No comment?” he asked drily. “I’ve stolen your power of speech.”
“How do I know you’re telling the truth?”
The wolf rolled his eyes and picked up his spoon. He shoveled in a mouthful of soup before he deigned to reply. “You can speak with my pack alpha—Rory Henderson. His mate is a feline. Question Saber Mitchell or London Drummond from the Feline Council. They’ll support my story.”
Either he was an excellent liar, or he was spurting honesty. He hadn’t hesitated to give her names to prove his story.
“I’m not your prisoner, and you don’t intend to hand me over to the scientists?”
A growl burst from him, and an expression of acute distaste etched into his features. “What the devil are you talking about? What scientists?”
“The ones who experiment on shifters,” she snapped back.
For an instant, his face went slack, then his eyes bulged, and his mouth fell open. “You… You came from a science lab?”
She leaped to her feet, unable to remain still for a second longer. Her hair bristled, and her ears flattened against her head. Claws protruded from her fingertips, and she didn’t care that he could see her otherness. He already knew what she was—a freak her brother had sold because he was ashamed and didn’t want anyone to guess their relationship.
