“Nope. Jacob had a few more appearances scheduled, so Hailey and I spent the day shopping, eating out, and we saw a movie,” she said. “I had a few misgivings, and apparently for good reason. I so badly wanted to have hope. Instead, I should have trusted my instincts.” Sighing, she glanced away. “Look what happened. I haven’t even been here twenty-four hours and already my baby is in danger.”
“Don’t worry,” he spoke with more confidence than he felt. “We’ll get her out. In the meantime, I’ll go fetch us something to eat.”
She nodded listlessly, so he left her there.
Later, he returned with a couple of breakfast burritos and coffees, as well as a change of clothes for her that he grabbed at the local big box store. She ate with a mechanical precision that told him she was already working on a rudimentary plan.
“Maybe you should tell me,” she said, blotting her mouth with a napkin. She’d missed a crumb, and he found himself aching to lick it off her lips, which shocked him.
What the hell was wrong with him? With difficulty, he tried to focus on her words. “Tell you what?”
“What I should expect to find when we get into Sanctuary.” Mouth a thin line, she leaned forward. “I need to be prepared.”
“No,” he said, as gently as he could. “You don’t. Let’s leave it at that.”
Her gaze locked with his, the determination in her expression twisting his gut. But finally she nodded. “You’re right. I need to concentrate on getting Hailey out.”
“Yes.”
“But after...”
“One day at a time,” he told her. “That’s how we’re going to get through this. One day at a time.”
Though she nodded, she got up and began to pace the confines of the small hotel room, her lithe grace reminding him more of a trapped panther than a wolf. Even in the artificial light, her hair gleamed like strands of luxurious silk.
Watching her, he tried to throttle the dizzying current of desire racing through him. This both infuriated and intrigued him, because despite his instinctive reaction to her when he’d seen her on the television, he hadn’t expected to want her. More than that, actually. He hadn’t thought he’d crave her the way he did.
He needed to get a grip. For someone who always prided himself on being in control, he felt perilously close to completely losing it.
“I wonder, have you always known?” he asked her, more to distract them both than anything else.
She stopped pacing, swiveling her head around to look at him, sending her long hair whipping around her shoulders. “Have I always known what?”
Feeling foolish, now he regretted asking. Almost. “What you were. A Shape-shifter. When was the first time you changed into a wolf? How old were you?”
As distractions went, it worked. Head cocked, she stared at him, the expression in her vivid green eyes making it clear she was trying to decide if he was messing with her or telling the truth.
“I really want to know,” he added, his voice a bit huskier than he’d have preferred, but sincere all the same.
“I was ten,” she said. “Most of us are ten or eleven when we shift for the first time. Once in a while it happens to someone much younger, but that’s the general age.”
“I see.” Truthfully, he hadn’t known.
“You had no one to guide you at all, did you?” she finally asked. “Because your mother died and you were all alone, except for that crazy man who raised you.”
He doubted his careless shrug fooled her. “I had no idea. The first few times I had the urge to shift, I panicked. I was eleven and I didn’t know what was wrong with me.” He and Lilly had shared that sense of fear. But of course, he didn’t mention that to Blythe.
“Did you go to your father?’
He winced, this time unable to hide it. “No. I couldn’t. Even though I was still relatively normal, I couldn’t fail to notice how rigid the lines were for him. I think I instinctively knew he would recoil from me in disgust and horror.”
The sympathy on her beautiful face completely pissed him off. He didn’t want her pity, or anyone else’s, for that matter. That was part of the reason he’d avoided his own kind all these years. He was what he was and damned if he’d make apologies for it.
With difficulty, he managed to rein in his emotions. None of this was her fault. In truth, he didn’t understand the way she made him feel, the things she made him want. Desire was both the least and the greatest of these.
What he was about to tell her was private—he’d never shared it with another human being, with the exception of the one person he’d let Jacob destroy.
But Jacob had her daughter. If anyone deserved to know, it was Blythe. He’d have to be careful in how he told it, because Lilly had been with him then. Lilly had always been with him. He and his twin had been exceptionally close.
“I was out in the desert near Sanctuary,” he began, hoping like hell he didn’t slip up. He had to tell the story as if he’d been alone. “I liked to go on long hikes in those days. It was a way for me to think. The urge to change had been coming more and more frequently, which terrified me. But so far I’d been successful in fighting it off. Not this time.”
He took a long pull on his coffee, considering his next words.
To her credit, she simply waited, her eyes vivid-green as she watched him through her long lashes. She was quiet, rather than peppering him with questions. This, he appreciated.
After a moment, he continued. “This time, when the urge to change hit me, the need was like never before. Fierce and compelling. I fell to my knees and tried to fight, but something else took over my body and I couldn’t. Before I knew what happened, my clothes were torn and tattered and I shape-shifted into a wolf.”
“You should have had someone there to help guide you,” she said softly. “It’s always like that, the first time.”
He shrugged, careful to keep his face expressionless. His memories of that day were still vivid, though they mostly consisted of watching what had happened to his sister as she went through her first change. They’d been frightened and exhilarated, amazed and shocked.
When they’d changed back, they’d each managed to do so far enough away from the other that they were able to hide their nakedness until they got dressed.
It was all new and strange and a continuous learning process. But they’d had each other and so they’d learned to cope.
“It was a long time ago. But I was in an animal frenzy after that. As wolf, I ran and hunted, when I was human again, I got dressed in my shredded and tattered clothes and returned home. I vowed that one time would be it and I’d never let it happen again.”
“And of course it did,” she said, her expression soft and understanding.
He nearly told her then, nearly revealed the truth of the horror that had happened to his twin so many years ago. But at the last moment, he reined himself in. They were strangers, after all. He would do his best to help her and her daughter, after which he doubted he’d ever see her again. He wasn’t the kind of guy women depended on.
Still, he had to tell her part of the truth, just so she really understood what kind of monster she was up against.
“I went as long as I could before changing again. Each time, I came away convinced something was wrong with me.” He shrugged, to show her it no longer mattered. “I started being more diligent about attending Jacob’s services. I tried to be kinder, more studious. In short, I thought if I somehow atoned for whatever sin made me this way, I could be normal again.”
He didn’t tell her this