Wild (54 page)

Caroline stood beside the overturned couch, her hands shaking, lifting to her face to cover her mouth, tears streaming down her cheeks as her eyes remained transfixed on him.

On the lycan he had turned into right in front of her.

Before Malec could speak Channing and Phelan came running inside the apartment.

“We came as soon as you left, but you were flying in that damned car—” Channing's words were cut short as he looked from Malec to the floor where the Solo lay in his own blood, then across the room to Caroline.

Channing immediately moved to go to Caroline, but Malec extended an arm to stop him. He did not speak, only shook his head, telling Channing to deal with the Solo. With steps that felt heavier than any weight that Malec had ever lifted, he walked toward Caroline, pulling the beast back inside and feeling his face and hands return to normal.

She was shaking her head now, wiping her hands over her face.

“Caroline,” he said, his voice sounding like an eerie croak.

Her head continued to shake even as she sniffled and attempted to stand up even straighter. Dropping her hands to her side the first thing she said to him was, “I thought you were a cat. I thought all of you were feline Shadow Shifters. I had no idea there were … that you … that … I just, I don't know what to say.”

“Don't say anything,” Kira whispered, coming to stand beside Caroline, wrapping her arm around her. “Let's go into the bathroom and get you cleaned up a little. This is no place for you to be right now.”

The last was said with Kira tossing an angry look toward Malec.

Caroline was a human, he reminded himself. He'd just killed a lycan in front of a human. And in doing so he'd just shown her what he really was, something he'd never, ever wanted to do.

“Did he say anything?” Blaez asked when Malec turned to see the alpha standing there, arms folded over his chest.

Malec shrugged, rubbing his hand down the back of his head. “No. Not that anyone had sent him, just that he'd come planning to take us out one at a time until he got to you.”

Blaez frowned. “Was he working for Zeus's bounty?”

“I don't know. He just said he wanted to take the true-blood down. He could have been acting alone as a quasi-Hunter, or he could have been trying to collect the bounty. Either way, he's not doing a damned thing now,” Malec stated coldly.

Blaez nodded. “You're right about that. Are you okay with this? I mean, how it all went down?”

Malec looked to the lycan that had saved him from himself years ago. “I'm more than okay with killing a coward-assed Solo,” was his reply.

Blaez continued to stare at him knowingly. “And the rest?”

“I'll deal with it,” Malec replied.

“She should come back to the lodge with us,” Channing said, entering the conversation.

“No,” Malec announced. “I'll take care of her.”

Channing sighed. “This isn't just about you, Malec. Let's just get her back to the lodge, and Kira will feed her and I'll—”

“No!” Malec yelled. “I said I'll take care of her, and I will.”

Channing's lips drew into a tight line as he moved closer, getting in Malec's face. “If you fuck this up for both of us…”

“What?” Malec shook his head. “I've got this.”

“You don't even know what you've got, Malec. What we could have. You've been denying it from the very beginning.”

“Now is not the time for this discussion,” Malec said through gritted teeth. His temples were throbbing, adrenaline still pumping fiercely through his veins.

“I won't lose her because of you,” Channing said sternly, his fists clenching at his sides.

It was time for Blaez to intervene.

“Malec, you stay here and clean up your mess. But keep in touch. I want to know that you and she are all right,” he instructed Malec. “You and Phelan get rid of that body. And the rest will be dealt with later,” he directed to Channing.

After another long stare at Malec, Channing nodded to Blaez and walked out of the apartment.

“I hope you know what you're doing,” Blaez told him before clapping him on the shoulder. “Kira,” he called to his mate. “We're leaving.”

When Kira and Caroline came out of the bathroom the alpha female was still glaring at him. Malec looked at her feeling more than a little chastised and said, “I'm going to take care of it.”

“You'd better,” Kira told him before coming up on tiptoe and kissing his cheek. “And take a shower. You smell like a dog.”

She was smiling when she pulled back from him, and that simple act warmed his heart. He hadn't liked it when she'd showed up at the lodge a couple of months ago, and he hadn't trusted her at all. Now he loved her like his sister and cherished her as the alpha's mate.

“Should I be afraid?” he heard Caroline ask when they were once again alone. “What exactly does ‘I'll take care of it' mean?”

Malec hung his head low, exhaling a breath and wondering how the hell he'd gotten to this point with this female. It wasn't supposed to turn out like this. He was never supposed to be in this position.

“You don't have to be afraid of me. Not now or ever,” he told her, moving to where the remnants of the front door lay on the floor. “Where are your hammer and nails?”

“What?”

He turned to look at her then. She was no longer crying, but her eyes were red and puffy, her hair pulled back from her face, her hands still trembling slightly.

Malec hated himself for that. He hated that he'd ever walked into her life and pulled her into this mess.

“I need a hammer and some nails. Or rather just a screwdriver will do. I can take this closet door and put it here as a temporary front door. The knobs are similar, so I can swap out the lock as well.”

He heard his own words and knew they sounded off considering what had just happened, but that was how Malec needed to play this. He needed to restore the things he'd broken, the things he'd disturbed.

Caroline moved without another word. She came to him a few minutes later with a miniature tool kit, and he went to work. Neither of them spoke until he was done, and then it was Caroline who broke the silence.

“You weren't going to ever tell me, were you? You could have, you know. I wouldn't have told anyone,” she said.

Malec had just closed the new door and locked it. He stood with his back to her, flattening his palms on the warm wood. He wanted to turn around and look her in the eye, to give her the same type of honesty and candidness that she'd always afforded him. But he couldn't.

What if I find a woman and fall in love with her? What if she's a human? I can never tell her who and what I really am.

That's what Mason had said to him the night he'd died. He'd asked his twin brother how he could continue to live the life that he considered a big lie, and Malec hadn't had a response. Just like he didn't have one for Caroline now. He hated himself for that.

“I had a twin brother named Mason,” he said instead, still not turning to face her. “He hated what we were, hated that we had to live under this cloak of secrecy. He wanted a better life, one where he could look forward to falling in love with a woman and being everything she needed him to be. But he knew he could never do that. If the woman wasn't one of us, a lycan, Mason knew that was never going to be possible.”

“He thought a human woman wouldn't love him if she knew he was a…” She paused.

Malec turned to her then, knowing that his eyes glowed the blue of a lycan while every other feature of his remained human. “A lycan,” he told her. “I am a lycan. A hybrid of a human and a werewolf that had been cursed by a Greek god.”

She didn't speak for a few seconds, only watched him, her gaze never faltering. Caroline had more confidence than anyone Malec had ever met, even himself. She should have been running for help, calling the police, shouting to the heavens that this monstrosity was in her house, killing people in front of her. But she wasn't.

“He was wrong,” she replied finally. “He was pre-judging all humans in the very same way he despised the possibility of being pre-judged.”

“He was young and frustrated. I told him it would be okay, that we were here for a reason and that all we needed to do was focus on that reason. That's all we needed to worry about,” Malec said. There was a tightness in his chest as the words flowed through his mind. He couldn't speak them all at once, but he wanted to. Oh, how he wanted to get this heavy weight off his chest.

Dragging a hand over his face he pushed away from the door, walking past her and into the living room that was still a mess. He lifted the couch, pushing it into the position he thought it might have been in before.

“If he'd just kept his mind on our goals, our destiny, he would have been all right. He shouldn't have been thinking about being with a human anyway. They don't deserve to endure our troubles. He should have just focused and coped with the circumstances like I did.” The words came quickly and with a rush of breath and energy that had him picking up an end table and a broken lamp. After surveying the lamp he walked into the kitchen, dropping it into the trash can in there.

He went back into the living room, picking up her telephone and keys and placing them on the table.

“Why couldn't he just learn to cope? Why did he have to kill himself instead? Why the hell did he think that was the only answer?” Malec yelled, his throat stinging with the pain that had haunted him for far too long.

“Is that what you've done, Malec?” Caroline asked quietly. “You figure the way to cope is by hiding in the woods and refusing to allow yourself to feel anything serious, anything real?”

That was exactly what he'd done.

Malec inhaled deeply and exhaled slowly. “I did what I had to do.”

Turning, he saw her standing closer to him than she had been before. “I'll run you a bath and finish getting things straightened out here, and then I'll leave.”

Because the look in her eyes was tearing him apart inside.

Caroline took another step toward him. “What if I asked you to stay?”

His chest clenched, his muscles tightening all over. “You know everything now. I trust you won't say anything. There's no need—”

“That's just the thing, Malec,” she said, interrupting him. “There is a need, and I think it's more than either one of us anticipated. More than we can even begin to consider walking away from.”

 

CHAPTER 12

He stayed.

And they showered in silence.

Malec washed her, and Caroline washed him. When they came out and stepped into her bedroom, he sat on the edge of the bed and reached for his clothes that he'd left there. Caroline stood near her dresser, holding the towel tightly around her body.

“Can I see it?” she asked. “Can I see the lycan?”

He paused, his shirt in his hands, towel still wrapped around his waist, and simply stared at her.

“I'm not a circus animal, Caroline,” he said, his words full of hurt and humiliation.

Caroline recognized that all too well, so instead of telling him what should have been glaringly apparent—that she knew he wasn't a damned circus animal—she decided to share something else with him instead.

“I was seven when my teacher, her name was Mrs. Hollis,” Caroline began, folding her arms over her chest, “made me stay after class one day and asked me who I lived with. I told her my mother, and Mrs. Hollis asked who else. I didn't know what she meant because it had always been just me and Max—my mom, I mean. She didn't like for me to call her Mom all the time. Only when we were alone.

“Anyway, Mrs. Hollis kept asking me over and over again, and finally I yelled that I didn't have a daddy. You want to know what she asked me after that?”

Malec didn't reply, but his gaze was intent on hers.

“She asked if my mother even knew who my father was. I went home that night, and I asked Max that very question: ‘Do you know who my daddy is?' Max's reply was without hesitation, a cool and distinct no. She didn't know who my father was because it could have been any one of her clients. I asked what a client was because that's how I've always been. If I have a question, I ask. The only stupid question is the one that goes unasked, and all that.”

Caroline shrugged, the memories in her mind as clear as if they had just happened yesterday.

“Max's clients were businessmen, cops, construction workers, drunks, and druggies, any guy who could pay her fee. She explained everything to me, her six-year-old sometimes-daughter. Max never lied to me regardless of whether or not what she was telling me was appropriate or even legal for that matter. As I grew up I began to see more and more of her clients coming in and out of our apartment. One day when I was thirteen I ran out of the house too fast in the morning because Max's client was still there. I hurried to get to school, and I forgot my coat. It snowed that day, and the counselor asked me where my coat was. I told her I left it home. She asked if my mother had sold it for drugs. By the time I made it to the ninth grade the guys in school had already begun propositioning me. They offered me their allowance, their history notes, even marijuana—because of course I used drugs since my mother was a prostitute—to give them some head in the stairwell of the school or to go into the locker room with them and let them fuck me up against the lockers.”

Malec growled then.

She'd heard the sound before when he'd been in her office looking down at that second buck. He was angry, she thought. But not as angry and embarrassed as she had been.

“Joey Winstadt was sleeping with my foster mother. One night at dinner, when she'd gone into the kitchen to get him another bottle of Jack Daniel's, he leaned over and whispered in my ear that he knew who I was. He'd heard all about my mother and how good she was and that he was betting that she'd taught me everything she knew. I looked right in his eyes and told him no, that I didn't know anything. How could I be a prostitute if I was a virgin? He stared at me a lot during that next year, and the morning of my eighteenth birthday he walked into the bedroom I shared with a nine-year-old foster kid and asked me to suck his dick. I told him I didn't know how, and he showed me. Joey showed me so many things and then, ten months later, he showed me the door.