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Julian groaned. “Fine, but he needs to fall in line. I suggest you don’t stray far in case he needs an extra kick in the ass. He’s petulant. Impossible.”
“Don’t listen to him,” Rafe interjected. “He’s just salty about what happened with the woman.”
Greyson raised a questioning eyebrow. “What?”
“The woman we found in the woods,” Rafe explained.
Julian shot him a look of annoyance.
“A woman?” A smile bloomed on Grayson’s face. “It’s all making sense now.”
* * *
“Tell me about this woman,” the vampire insisted.
“It’s nothing.” Julian feigned disinterest yet he hadn’t been able to get the incident off his mind. He shook his head and reached for his whiskey. Though he’d refused to discuss the matter in the car, Greyson persisted when they returned home.
“She almost died,” Rafe told Greyson as he entered the living room wearing nothing but his birthday suit.
“Whoa. What is your issue?” The ancient vampire held up a hand and shook his head, his voice laced with annoyance. “You’re vampire now. Wear some damn clothes. No one wants to see that monster of yours.”
“Don’t hate the player, hate the game.” Rafe ducked behind the bar and reached for a beer.
“Robe? Shorts? Anything.” Greyson turned to Julian. “Goddammit, Alpha. He’s got to learn to wear clothes. I brought him up here to tame his beast, not to become one.”
“Jesus, you vamps are prudes.” A hiss sounded as Rafe popped the cap off the bottle. “Except Viktor. He’s pretty cool.”
“My brother can be carefree. Reckless,” Greyson said.
“That’s what we like to call fun.” Rafe took a swig of beer and pointed the bottle at him. “Let that tension go. Breathe in, breathe out … namaste, big guy.”
Greyson reached for a throw blanket and tossed it at Rafe’s head. The wolf caught it midair with one hand and wrapped it around his waist. “You’re tightly wound, you know that? I don’t how you survived thousands of years like this.”
“Damn well. Could go all day long not looking at your junk, especially while I’m trying to enjoy a cocktail.” Greyson smiled and turned to Julian. “Tell me about the woman.”
“It was nothing. Just another strange experience in this thing we call life.” Julian crossed the room and sat across from the vampire.
“Obviously not nothing. Tripod over there may be annoying but he doesn’t lie. What woman has an ancient wolf like you shook?”
“He’s making something of nothing.” Julian shrugged, aware he couldn’t stop thinking about her. Though he resisted his obsession, it persisted. “A couple of days ago, last week, I was out for a run on the mountain, like always, and it started raining. It’s spring, so nothing unusual there. It was night and I’d been out for a few hours. When I was about to go back home, I heard something. I thought it was a voice, which would be unusual in the middle of the night as far out as I was.”
“Curiosity killed the cat. Or wolf, in this case.” Greyson smiled.
“To be fair, I knew right away it wasn’t an animal. But I couldn’t let something, paranormal or not, cause shit where I live so I took off. But it really started coming down hard. It had been raining on and off the past week and that section of the mountain tends to be unstable. I go up there, I see this woman. She’s hurt. Next thing I know there’s gunshots and the hill gave out.”
“That must have been some ride.”
“Damn lucky she didn’t die on the way down.” He shook his head. “I was covered in mud and shit. But I managed to get her to the hospital. A few hours go by, and the doc says they’re prepping her for surgery for a ruptured spleen.”
“She ghosted us.” Rafe looked to Julian who shook his head. “What? She did. Just tellin’ it like it is.”
“A human just what? Walked out of the hospital when she was supposed to get surgery?” Confusion washed over Greyson’s face.
“She seemed human to me at the time,” Julian replied. “But yeah, that’s essentially what happened. It doesn’t make any sense. How does a human go from needing surgery to disappearing?”
“Math isn’t mathin’,” Rafe said. “No one gets up from that kind of an injury as a human.”
“So where is she?” Greyson asked.
