“When I met them, they were hyenas. They favor that form, but not always. Sometimes they’re snakes; sometimes they’re birds. I was bitten and poisoned, pecked with sharp beaks, but mostly, they left me in the bottom of a pit and laughed, poking me with sticks, starving me and tossing fresh meat down for me to eat. Of course, I could smell what they tried to feed me—human meat they’d harvested from local villages they infiltrated. There were other things they did, things I can’t talk about. The really bad stuff happened after dark.”
“I think the bleeding has stopped.” She took the towel and pulled it away. It had. Even though she smelled human, Liv still healed like a shifter, much faster. Dark rings had already begun to form under her eyes though. Not pretty.
Guilt hit him like a sledgehammer. “I’m sorry, Liv.”
“This?” She pointed at her face. “I did this to myself.”
“No. If I hadn’t trashed your place….”
“Considering the sounds of hyenas woke you up, I think you have a pretty good excuse for what you did. They hurt you. They threatened to hurt your family and pack. And now you can’t become a Wolf because of what they did.”
“That’s right.” He frowned. “But it doesn’t make me feel any better about destroying your stuff.” He didn’t want her sympathy, didn’t seek it. His mate should never feel sorry for him.
She threw her arms around his neck and hugged him. “Oh, Xan. I’m so sorry.”
“I did what I did to protect the pack. I don’t want you to ever pity me.” He pressed his nose into her hair and inhaled. For the first time in years, Xan felt peace. He soaked it in, the healing only she could give him. Hell, he didn’t want to let go. He patted her shoulder, unable to do what he really wanted with his hand.
“I don’t. I admire you. When you’re in a situation as ugly as what you survived, you don’t ever know what you’ll do—how you’ll react. You were so brave.”
Xan pulled back and looked her in the eyes. “Now I told you what happened to me. It’s time you come clean about your past and the secret you’re hiding.”
She blinked, and tears filled her eyes.
“Liv?”
She sucked in a deep breath and pulled away, stepping back. Her hands went to her blouse and she began to unbutton it, stopping when she reached her belly button. Slowly, she pulled the fabric and the top of her bra aside to reveal a long white scar. “You might want to sit down. This will take a while. I’d just finished my internship, had been practicing for a couple months when I met him.”
Xan sank onto a stool by the island and listened. With each word past her lips, his feelings for her grew, along with anger in his gut. While he’d gone off to save the world, his mate struggled to survive a brutal attack from a man like him.
He could not stay here. Not with her, not when he didn’t trust himself.
“Well?”
“I think I should move on. Leave Los Lobos and the Black Hills.”
“You gave your word. Did what I tell you change your mind? Do you hate me now because I had a relationship with a former patient?”
“Doc, I don’t hate you. I’m no good for you. I’m unstable. I black out.” He’d never hurt her, but he wasn’t about to tell her and give her a reason to cling to saving him. She didn’t deserve an unhinged mate.
Maybe as a human she can find someone else, move on with her life?
The thought made him all kinds of ill, a sickening twist in the guts, the inability to breath and the lack of caring if he drew another lungful of oxygen.
“Please. Don’t go.” She leaped into his arms, her hips between his thighs, her arms wrapped around him, and her breasts pressed tight to his chest. Her lips crashed onto his, and it took all his strength not to lose it there.
The woman, the tiny coyote belonged to him. Even though he knew he should, he could not walk away. He hadn’t scented the animal before, but now he could. He could taste her, sense her, feel her shyness as she crept out of hiding. Liv never stopped being a coyote and her animal just recognized its mate, even if her human side didn’t. God, he wanted to tip his head back and howl, but he didn’t. He wouldn’t frighten her, not when he’d just found her.
His hunger grew, Xan returned the feverish kiss, taking everything she offered, losing his heart to her. He rose from his seat, scooped her into his arms, and carried her back to the room. She didn’t speak when he laid her on the bed and stepped back, yanking his shirt over his head. If he couldn’t walk away, then he better show her who and what she was to him, the only way he knew how.
He dropped his hands to his pants and unbuttoned. Liv reached to pull her leggings down and he growled. “No.” He wanted to be the one to strip her bare. He eyed her hands as she dropped them to her sides.
“Okay.”
He nodded and continued to strip, dropping his jeans and shorts. Since he liked to walk around barefoot, he didn’t need to remove his boots. It worked in his favor, since he didn’t have the patience to untie his laces. A deep need to kiss and touch her had taken over. She belonged to him, and by God, before the day ended, she’d know it.
His skin tingled as he stared at her. A feeling he got only before he’d shift. He rubbed along his forearm where it began to burn. Could her coyote bring his Wolf out? Could she be the cure he’d sought?
“You’re so beautiful,” she whispered.
Xan smiled. No one could really call him beautiful. Nobody but her. He had sharp edges like flint, and an exterior stone facade as hard as granite. She saw something deeper, something few had. His rock-hard loyalty. He would give his life for those he loved. No matter what he’d become, what he’d been through, he’d never lost his soul. And only one woman could understand the internal battles he’d faced, a woman who’d fought her own demon and survived to find her mate.
“Are you going to stare all day or get these clothes off me before I combust?”
Xan stalked toward her, grabbed one boot, and yanked it off. Then the other, tossing it over his shoulder. He fisted the waistband of her leggings and underwear, ripping them open, not bothering to peel them from her body. Taking his time would be for a more leisure moment, when he didn’t have to win his mate, brand her as his, show her to whom she belonged.
The heat in her eyes told him he’d chosen wisely in his method of disposing of her clothing. He slid his gaze down her curvy body and soaked in the memory, recording it over all the bad, something to replay when he needed strength. She would be his salvation.
Lust and need. “Come here.” He stroked his hands down her sides to her ankles and yanked her to the edge of the bed. Xan dropped to his knees and tore the raged remains of her clothing from her legs. He bent one knee and kissed the inside of her ankle, working his way up.
“You’re killing me here.”
No, he wasn’t the one doing the killing. His dick had gotten so damned hard it hurt. He would take his time, show her how he worshipped her. And then he’d mark her and make her his.
“Please,” she gasped and arched when he nipped her inner thigh.
Xan smiled against her skin.
Impatient coyote.
He bent her other leg and alternated between kisses and soft bites up the inside, taking his time, tasting every square inch. As he reached her inner thigh, his fangs elongated, something that hadn’t happened in forever. He froze.
“Xan?”
He lifted his head and looked at her, grinning.
At first, he read shock on her face, and then her expression relaxed. “I see I bring out the animal in you.”
“You have no idea.”
Then she smiled, her dimples making their appearance. “My, what big teeth you have.”
He would kiss those dimples later, while he pounded into her. First, he had to taste her. “The better to eat you with.” Xan dropped his mouth to her clit and sucked.
“Oh, God!” she screamed and drummed her heels into his back. She latched onto his hair and yanked, panting under him, coming unglued as only a true mate would at the slightest touch.
This wasn’t love. The connection went far deeper. He spread her open and licked, finding a barrier. Xan lifted his head again. “You’re a virgin. I thought when you said you had a relationship with a patient, it meant you had sex.”
“No. We dated. He tried to rape me because I didn’t give him anything.”
“Wolves, coyotes, animals don’t usually abstain this long.”
“I’ve lived most my life as a human.”
“Liv, I need to tell you something, and I don’t want you to freak.”
She cocked her head. “You’re a virgin, too?”
“No, but I am your mate, and I plan to mark you as mine.” He’d already decided to have her several times before he told her. Usually when one bonded with one’s mate, it couldn’t be clearer. But she didn’t have the experience of a normal female shifter, and her coyote had just come out of hiding. Her virginity changed things a bit.
She went stiff. “Mate?”
“Don’t tell me you don’t feel it. I sense your coyote. Close your eyes, reach for her. She’s there, waiting to stake her claim.”
“I….” Liv closed her eyes. Her breathing slowed, her heartbeat steadied. “I feel her.”
“And what does she say?”
Liv opened her eyes. “She says you are mine.” For a moment, the coyote flashed in her gaze, pure animal and lust.
“That’s right.” Xan bit her thigh, marking her, making her his. He licked and kissed the small wound, a symbol of his devotion. His loyalty. Liv arched up and came. Xan returned to licking her, tasting her cream, devouring her need. As she cried and came again, he slid up her body and pressed the head of his cock against her pussy. “You belong to me, Coyote.”
“Yes.”
Xan drove inside her, busting her barrier, taking the gift she offered. She squeezed against him, pulsing around his cock, oblivious to the pain, and like the animal she claimed, didn’t want to stop. “More.”
“Greedy, Coyote.” Xan stilled. “You’ll be sore. We need to take it easy.”
She grabbed his hair on either side of his head and forced him to look her in the eyes. Her lip curled, and she snarled. “More.”
What his mate wanted, his mate got. Xander pounded into her, taking her over the precipice one more time before her swelled inside her and came. Liv locked on with all her limbs and held him to her, hanging on with all she had. He kissed her and nipped her neck, pressed his lips to her ear. “I love you, Liv.”
“I know.”
They made love through the night, and as dawn peeked through the pink floral curtains, Xan rolled to his side and tucked her against him. “You will never have to be afraid again, Liv. I’ll protect you.”
She snuggled in, and soon her breathing evened out as she slept. He stroked her hair and inhaled.
His.
He’d finally come home, and for the longest time since he could remember, everything felt right. Xan closed his eyes and slept like a stone. The nightmares never came.
He woke up several hours later to orange blossoms and clove filling his nostrils. He reached over and patted cold, empty mattress. The slight scent of panic-laced pheromones. Confusion? Over what they’d done, over who they were to each other? Did his mate have day-after regrets? His wolf snarled, and Xan fisted the blankets, fighting the urge to leap out of bed and retrieve the mate who’d abandoned him.
Liv needed space. He should learn a little self-control, something he found almost impossible around her. He closed his eyes and listened for sounds in the house to signal she hadn’t left him. Clunks came from the living room. Xan growled low in his throat, his hackles rising. She cleaned his mess.
Again.
He’d laid a lot on her the night before, and she still had a good deal of it to process.
Stop it. She’s not going anywhere. Don’t piss her off.
He reached for the remote, fighting his wolf’s desire to retrieve his female. He’d need to tamp down on his aggressive nature. Liv didn’t know her animal, didn’t understand the primitive natures driving her to act the way she did, but she would subconsciously follow her instincts. And it should be good enough for him.
Mating took sometimes days to complete, and separation could be almost unbearable. During mating, the males tended to be even more possessive and dangerous. Not something he wanted her to see or feel coming from him again. She couldn’t know all the intricacies that went along with the bond. He’d need to learn a little patience and control his beast—give her space when she needed it, pull her close when she didn’t. Her coyote remained shy and a flight risk.
Watching television should help him get his mind off his distant mate. Xan flipped through the news channels. The distraction would help. Sports, car show, cooking…a massacre outside a small Wyoming town
. Whoa, back up there.
He’d seen villages like the newscaster described.
In Africa.
Fuuuck.
“Police and FBI are on the scene of a grisly slaughter this morning. We don’t have any hard facts yet, but from the body bags we’ve seen come out of the ranch, we’ve counted at least twenty-two dead. An eyewitness from the town, a cook who works at the ranch, discovered the bodies around four this morning. We have been told she suffered a heart attack. She has been taken to Evans Point Community Hospital at this time, and no word on her condition has been released.”
The reporter turned toward a barbed-wire fence, with fire truck, ambulance, local police, and state troopers blocking most of the view of what went on inside. “Word has it, it’s the work of wild animals. The bodies of the victims were found scattered in pieces. Police aren’t saying at this point in the investigation, but we’ve turned to one of our experts in Denver to get the scoop. Lily?”
The screen switched to another reporter, this one standing outside the Denver Zoo.
“Dr. Marshall Ramsey, I understand you’re a caretaker here at the zoo in Denver. Can you give us a little inside information into what kind of animal you think was responsible for the massacre outside Evans Point, Wyoming, this morning?”
“Yes. Well, for the last couple of decades, wolves have been reintroduced into the wild. Yellowstone is one of the many places. At one time, packs of hundreds roamed the prairies and mountain ranges of the West, now it’s rare to see a mated pair outside the national parks. Inside the parks is another matter. The wolves have made a comeback, and some packs number over a hundred.”