Once Upon a Shifter (70 page)

"Yes, of course!" he said quickly, and then offered her the sofa with the gesture of his hand. "Please… you are welcome to sit on me—" his eyes slammed shut as embarrassment flooded up his neck and into his cheeks. He took a deep breath and organized the way the words needed to come out before he opened his mouth again. "Join me, please, Lea."

Her smile was small, but it was there, and it appeared she wasn't going to run back into the bedroom, calling him names as she went, so he guessed he hadn't totally screwed up.

"Thank you," she said as she sat down. He sat back down in the chair, but he was still a little humiliated over what he'd said to her, so he focused on the pages in front of him.

"What is that?" she said.

Glancing up at her then back to the binder, he came to the conclusion that telling her wouldn't hurt anything. She was, after all, Phoenix's PA; she would probably be helping him with all of this if she didn't have troubles of her own. That reminded him where they were and that she probably didn't need anything else to worry about. Maybe he shouldn't say anything.

"It's okay if you don't want to tell me. Wolf business isn't any business of mine. I was only trying to make conversation," she said, then seemed to grow shy, shrinking in on herself, as if she wasn't important enough for anyone to tell her anything about what was going on.

So she wanted to talk, he thought, and wondered if maybe she'd wanted to talk to someone all along and nobody had cared to listen. "How about if we play Question for Question? You ask a question and I'll answer it, and then it's my turn to ask you a question."

She looked befuddled by his suggestion. "What do you want to know?"

Roel shrugged as he smiled. "Stuff… about you."

"Pfft!" She rolled her eyes away from him, to her hands folded loosely on her lap, but she was smiling innocently, and that blush on her cheeks gave her pale complexion just the perfect amount of color. It was so damn cute. "I'm not interesting at all."

"Why don't you let me be the judge of that? I would say that I am almost certain you're wrong, but it would be rude of me to tell a lady she is wrong, now wouldn't it?"

She shook her head a little, but kept her eyes on her fingers as she rubbed them. "I wouldn't think you were being rude if you said that."

"Okay, then, you are wrong until you prove me wrong," he said, and smiled when she did. She appeared to be relaxing a little, so he decided to jump right into their game. "You wanted to know what the binder is, right?"

She gave the book a long look and nodded. "Yeah. We can start there."

"It's one of eight. Brad's wife is the bookkeeper for our pack, and the binders contain information on every other pack in the United States. There are over three-hundred packs in the US alone. I have no clue how many there are in the world, so you can skip that question. But if you really want to know, I can have Heather find out for you."

"Wow! There aren't nearly as many vampire clans here."

"That may be because there are a lot more vampires in one clan than there are shifters in a pack. We are almost as educated on the clans here as we are the packs. There are only two High Vampires here in Alabama, and there are five Alpha Pack Leaders, though the numbers of vampires and shifters are about the same in this state."

"Do you think that means that the vampires are more organized than—?"

"Nuh-uh-uh." Roel shook his index finger back and forth. "It's my turn."

She giggled then clapped a hand over her mouth.

He stared at her a second with his mouth open, stunned by the angelic laugh she had. "Do that again."

Blinking in confusion, she lowered her hand. "Do what again?"

He narrowed his eyes at her. There was no way she was ignorant to the fact that she was this amazing. Hadn't anybody ever told her? Surely she'd had boyfriends. Of course he knew that she was a vampire's assistant, but she had to have dated at least one of them or maybe humans before she'd met Phoenix. Right?

"Laugh," he said.

"Whatever for?" And now she sounded defensive, almost as if he'd insulted her.

"Never mind," he said, but made a mental note to try to get her to do it again without bluntly asking her to do it. People sounded like idiots when they laughed for no reason, though he didn't think this girl could ever sound like an idiot. "Back to my turn," he said, and acted like he was actually thinking of a question, though he'd known what he wanted to ask her before he even suggested they play the game. "Why did Jaxon bring you to a hotel?"

"I killed one of Phoenix's vampires."

Blink-blink-blink-blink.

"Uh… Why would you—"

She put up her hand and moved her index finger back and forth. Roel frowned and leaned back in his chair with a loud huff. How could she drop something like that on him and not elaborate?

She grinned, but there was no laughing this time.

"How old are you?" she said.

He smirked. "Thirty-one."

Disbelief showed on her pretty face. "Unless you were bitten in the last three years, that's a lie. I know shifters are immortal."

"Alright, alright, I'll be a hundred-twenty-seven next month, if I live that long," he muttered the last part under his breath.

"What day in February?"

He raised his eyebrows. "It's my turn."

"Ugh! Okay. Hurry up."

He chuckled. "Why did you kill one of Phoenix's vampires?"

"I figured you would ask that," she said, and her shoulders slumped.

"We can stop. I don't want to, but we can if you don't want to talk about it."

It was clear she realized that she would get no more answers out of him if they stopped playing, so she shook her head. "No, I'll talk about it.

He grinned. "Good, because I'm dying to know what it takes to upset you enough to kill someone. And you must have badass skills. I've been killing them for years. It's not that easy, and I'm immortal. You're just a human."

Her eyes became serious. "A vampire's assistant isn't as weak as humans are. We drink their blood to prolong our lifespan. It makes us stronger, too. Not nearly as strong as a vampire, but we certainly have more strength than humans do."

"I wasn't trying to offend you, Lea."

She nodded. "I know. You really didn't. I just gave up that life a long time ago. I don't consider myself human anymore. I'm a VA."

Roel laughed. "A VA? C'mon, we need to think up a cooler name for you if you're not human. A VA sounds too weak for someone who can take down a vampire."

She laughed again. She laughed
again!

"What do you suggest I call myself?"

"I'll think about it and we'll throw superhero names back and forth after we finish Q for Q. That okay?"

Lea beamed at him. "Yeah, I'd like that."

He sniggered. "Okay, VA, why did you kill a vampire?"

She lost her smile. "My brother saw me when I was getting into my car at the supermarket—"

"You have a brother?"

She inhaled deeply as her hand came up, but before she could start shaking that finger, Roel told her to go on.

"I ignored him when he shouted my name, and then I hurriedly fled the parking lot, hoping I could lose him before I got to Phoenix's compound. I thought I had lost him, but I guess he slipped into the gate before it closed fully. I was so shaken that I honestly wasn't paying that close attention. Phoenix has killed others for less, but he didn't even chastise me. I guess he thought me losing my brother was punishment enough.

"I never thought I would see him again. You see, I, uh… something happened to me when I was seventeen and my brother went to prison for taking revenge on the guys who hurt me. He was the only one who believed me and he went to prison for making them pay. I blamed myself. Even my parents blamed me; they said I had probably asked for it or provoked them, if it even happened at all. So I ran away from Indiana. Phoenix found me, homeless, when I was twenty and took me in. I honestly never expected to see him again," she pleaded, like Roel wouldn't understand or believe her, either. He just watched her intently and waited for her to finish, but inside—inside, his blood was boiling at the thought of anyone hurting her. "And when I heard him calling my name at the market, I knew I had to get away. There was no way I could explain the years I haven't aged. I should look like I am in my early thirties instead of my early twenties.

"I was in my room trying to calm down and think about what to tell Phoenix, since I had lied to him and told him that I had no family, when I heard the shouting from the living room. Santino had already ripped his throat out by the time I got to them. He was close to killing me, too, but Jaxon came in just before he had the chance." She stared at her trembling hands as she finished. "I've thought about nothing except different ways I could kill him since that night."

Roel opened his mouth to ask how she'd done it, and then remembered it was her turn to ask him a question and he would only have to wait anyway. Instead, he made a statement. "After hearing that story, I only have one thing to say."

"What's that?"

"That if those fuckers who hurt you are still alive, they won't be after I find them."

"They're dead," she whispered. "My brother killed both of them."

"None of that was your fault—what they did, what your brother did, or that he found you and followed you into a vampire's lair. You believe that, don't you?"

"I guess so," she said.

Roel was on his feet and pulling her up to hers before she barely got those words out. Her expression was one of terror, but he couldn't stop himself. "Lea, are you crazy? You were the victim, not them. You can't control what people do. You can only control what you do after the damage is done."

She was trembling under his palms, and he hated that he was scaring her. He couldn't help it. His emotions were all over the damn place. What he really wanted to do was protect her, to let her know that nothing or nobody would ever hurt her again, but what he did next surprised even him.

He kissed her.

Chapter 46

Jaxon

Feeling a little too full from his feeding, Jaxon fumbled with the hotel room key, putting it in upside down first then backward.

"Piece of shit!" he complained, then smiled when the green light on the door lock mechanism gave him the go ahead. "Third time's a charm."

As he pushed his way into the room, two things became bluntly evident to him at the exact same time. One, Lea was out of bed, and two, he was about to murder one of Mena's mutts.

He flew across the room so fast that Roel barely had time to register that he and Lea weren't the only two people in the room, before Jaxon punched him so hard in the face that the act knocked the guy over the sofa and into the wall eight feet behind it.

He shook his head when the blow rattled his own headspace, but he didn't stop. Ignoring Lea's screams, Jaxon bounded over the sofa and landed on top of him, his knee nailing Roel right in the gut and holding him down so he could pound on his braincase.

Even though he'd fed and was much stronger now, every punch he threw felt like a brick to his own cranium.

"Stop!" Lea cried. "Jaxon, please stop. You're going to kill him!"

He paused long enough to shout, "That's the fucking plan! Now, get in the bedroom!"

A low growl vibrated from beneath him, and when he looked back down at Roel, the guy's eyes were shining silver. He barely registered that sirens were going off before he was tossed across the room from the violent power of Roel's shift.

As he got to his feet, a massive black wolf rounded the sofa, stalking toward him, its head hung low and its teeth bared.

Jaxon smiled as he cracked his neck, then palmed the hilts of the twin silver daggers he kept on his outer thighs. He crouched, ready for the fight. "C'mon, puppy," he snarled, and was just about to make a run at him when Lea jumped between them, tears rolling over her cheeks, a cell phone in each of her hands, one toward him and the other toward the wolf.

With the adrenaline pumping so wildly through his veins, he couldn't decipher what was being shouted over the speakers of the phones, but he knew Phoenix was the voice on one and Mena was the voice on the other. It was just a bunch of jumbled words until both Phoenix and Mena shouted in unison, "Stand down!"

A whine came from Roel as he lay down on the plush, burgundy carpet. It was clear Mena's order had more of an effect over him as a wolf than Phoenix's command had over him as a vampire, because Jaxon still wanted to cut the mutt's heart out, or at least give him a dose of silver poisoning. He honestly believed the only thing stopping him was Lea. She was knelt by Roel's wolf form and petting him.

"Christ!" Jaxon swore. "What are you doing, Lea?"

Her head whipped around and she glared at him with tear-filled eyes. "Leave, Jaxon!" she demanded. "Get out of my sight!"

"I can't! Phoenix gave me an order to stay here and protect you!" He pointed at Roel as he shouted. "I'm gone for forty-five minutes and come back to him trying to swallow your face!"

"We talked, we laughed and then we kissed! Nobody has shown me as much attention in thirty-two years as Roel did in half an hour!" she spat the words at him. "I may not be a shifter or a vampire, but I am a person; I have feelings, Jaxon; I have needs, and nobody has ever given a fuck about them until now!" She swallowed and took in a few calming breaths as he stared at her, stunned. "Just leave… please. I feel safer with him than I ever did with you."

He sheathed the daggers, then ran both hands over his face in frustration, torn between whether or not she was telling the truth or just lashing out in anger. He'd never known her to lie.

"Fuck it," he muttered, then walked to get his phone that was on the floor by her knees.

"Stay there," Phoenix's voice said just before Jaxon picked up the cell phone. "I'm on my way."

Jaxon stared at the phone with wide eyes, just now realizing that the call with his master was still in progress.
Shit!