Predator's Serenade (17 page)

Soren pulled Gioia to him and growled. “Spit it out, Ry.”

Gioia watched Ryland shift uneasily on his feet. Her attention was diverted by the sound of more footsteps a few feet away. She looked up.

And watched as her world began to crumble.

*

Soren eyed the people approaching as a horrible apprehension made his stomach lurch. He saw Lia, as pale as a sheet, and another man he didn’t know. The brown-haired dude was a shifter, that he could sense, but had no other clue as to his identity. The man’s fists were clenched, and his nervous gaze was trained on Gioia.

“Ah, fuck,” Soren muttered. “I thought we’d seen the end of the pheromone shit.”

Gioia began to pull away, her eyelids fluttering. Her lips moved of their own accord, trembling. Fear was etched into every corner of her face.

“Baby?” Soren asked. She was staring at the stranger, shaking her head, trying to pull out of Soren’s grasp so she could bolt. “Gioia! What is it?”

Her eyes narrowed on the dude in agonized bewilderment. Her voice came out as a crazed whisper. “I saw you die.”

A chill traveled down his spine.
No fucking way
.

Soren turned to the other man and was suddenly hit by a family resemblance. Wes’ thick hair. Gunnar’s hazel eyes. A bear tattoo peeking out from under his short sleeve. And a troubled expression that could only belong to one person.

Paul Clementine. A walking dead man.

The dead man peered at his wife, and his eye twitched as he spied her hand linked with Soren’s. He cleared his throat and spoke to Gioia. “You didn’t actually see me die, Gioia. You saw me get injured.” He blinked quickly, as if trying to dislodge a painful eyelash. “God, I'd kill for a hug, sweetheart.”

“Over my dead body,” Soren roared, enfolding her shaking figure in his embrace. “What the flying fuck is going on?”

“I saw his bloody body.” Gioia turned her horrified gaze upon Soren, her expression frantic. “Wes went with me to identify him.”

Paul took a step forward. Soren moved her a step back. Paul let out a quiet laugh laced with cynicism, clearly expecting such a reaction. “I should have known someone would have snapped you up. Let me explain.”

Gioia’s body appeared still, but Soren felt the tremors climb up and down her spine. “What explanation could there possibly be?” Her hushed cries nearly broke his heart. "I saw you. I saw the tattoo on your bloodied arm. I saw what was left of your face. I saw your remains laid out on a table in the morgue."

"It wasn't me."

"Then who the hell was it?" she whispered. "Grizzly Adams?"

Soren watched as the tendons tightened on Paul's neck. The shifter was sweating, and his body rippled with nervous tics. Still, Soren didn't get the impression Paul was lying. If his story was fabricated, he obviously believed it. His tension seemed to arise from having to confront his wife with such an ugly truth.

"Gioia," he continued. "I didn't know where I was, or who I was, most of the time. I was sick."

"And now you're all better," Soren couldn't help interspersing, tightening the curl of his fingers on the back of Gioia's neck to let her know he was there for her.

The other man looked him in the eye. "I believe so." He regarded Gioia with sadness. "Look, can we talk somewhere private? There are things you need to know."

Soren released his mate and marched over to Paul. "You don't go anywhere with Gioia without me being there. Understand?"

"And you are?"

Soren was tempted to answer he was Paul's worst nightmare but resisted. "Soren Snow."

Paul chuckled without mirth. "I thought I knew your face. My boy thinks you're the cat's meow."

Soren made no comment about that. "Like I said, anything you say to Gioia, you say in front of me."

Gioia took his hand. "Soren, it's okay. Stay with me." She nodded at Paul, her face so pale. "Let's talk."

* * * *

Ryland kindly offered his office. They shuffled in. Soren ushered Gioia in first, his hand on the small of her back, and she was glad to have it there. She still didn't trust herself not to collapse. Paul followed them. The others waited outside in the lobby.

Soren led her to his brother's executive leather chair. She sat and stared at the ghost of her husband on the other side of the desk. She didn't know what to do. This was the man she'd loved for years, and who she likely always would. He was also the man she'd seen dwindle into a sick, violent shadow of what he used to be. He'd hurt her and scared her many times, even if he didn't mean to. This was the man their own son felt compelled to kill.

Oh God, Gunnar! What would he say?

As much as she did want to hug Paul in relief, she felt it necessary to maintain a distance. Her emotions were already on edge. She couldn't afford to sever whatever lifeline she still had attached to her sanity. "What happened to you?"

Paul took a breath and began. "I was close to death. I should have died." He smiled at her. "That boy of ours is a good fighter. He almost tore my heart out."

"It's a shame he had to in order to save his mother," Soren added.

Paul didn't dignify Soren's comment with a response or even a look. Gioia reached over and squeezed Soren's knee, and he quickly covered her hand with his. Paul continued. "Somehow I found the strength to run. I didn't even know where I was headed. My body just pushed me out the door. Thank God we live in the suburbs. I was able to stumble into some surrounding fields. At some point, adrenalin kicked in and I shifted. In that state, I made it pretty far. My bear drove me into an empty field, probably with the intention of dying there, and I collapsed. My mind was a blur. The next thing I remember was waking up in a small home owned by a couple of Blackfoot brothers. Turns out they'd found me in that field. While I was unconscious, I'd shifted a few times, or so they told me later, and they had taken me in. Their legends speak of the bear people, and they recognized what I was. They looked after me and healed me."

"But you were beyond repair," Gioia said. "Gunnar almost tore you apart."

"I can only credit my bear for being stronger than me as a man," he replied. "I don't know. Maybe my guardian angel took pity on me." He let out a bitter huff of a laugh, which detailed precisely what he thought of his guardian angel. "Anyway, by hook or by crook, my Blackfoot friends patched me back together with their traditional remedies, and my shifter genes took care of the rest."

"So you got better but never thought to call your grieving wife?" She couldn't resist asking. Part of her wanted to rejoice at Paul's news, but part of her wanted to scream at him for letting her think he was dead and for letting their son think he'd killed him.

"Gioia, I'm so sorry," he replied. “The fact is, although my body improved, my mind took a lot longer to catch up. There was a lot of nasty shit in my system, and I was living in a dream world for so long. Memories felt like visions. And there were days when I was so high on Blackfoot medicines, I didn't know my own name. I honestly thought I'd made you and Gunnar up for a while. With my head so clouded, I never thought to reach out to anyone." His voice lowered. "Hurting you is the last thing I'd want to do."

She felt Soren tense in the chair next to hers. She tried to pick out his thoughts, as she'd been able to do lately, but his teeth were gritted and his mind was a cold, hard slate. She wasn't sure who she felt worse for: the husband she'd lost or the man with whom she'd felt an instant bond.

So many questions. No suitable answers. “But your body…the body in the morgue had your tattoo.”

“Are you sure about that? Maybe a similar tattoo, but it wasn’t mine.”

She forced herself to remember the grisly scene, the image she’d banned from her heart and her consciousness for the better part of a year. She forced her soul to take the lonely walk into the morgue once more, to follow the somber attendant as he led her and Wes into the cold room. In her mind’s eye, she saw Paul laid out, his body a gruesome network of wounds, which may have been cleaned, but which still appeared heart-wrenchingly fatal. There was so little left of his face. What was left of his arm bore hints of a bear tattoo…or so she thought? It looked like his bear at the time. Or was it simply her heart seeing what it needed to see to give her closure? She had looked away rather quickly, out of necessity of course, because she’d needed to bolt from the room and vomit into the nearest trash can. Wes had followed to comfort her.

They’d believed the man was Paul. It had made sense.

“Then who was it?” she dared to ask.

“I don’t know,” he conceded quietly. “A mauled hiker? The victim of a horrible crime? I wish I could tell you, Gioia, but it wasn’t me.”

“We assumed your body had been out in the elements. That you’d been mauled. The doctors all agreed. They couldn’t even take fingerprints.”

Paul sniffed. “Convenient, wasn’t it?”

“And these people who took you in,” Soren asked, “they just did so out of the goodness of their hearts? Fed and clothed and sheltered you for months? No questions asked?”

“Oh,” Paul said. “Questions were asked, believe me. Lots of them. I just had no answers. The Blackfoot were kind to me, unusually kind. When my strength came back, I did all I could to repay them by working for free. One of the brothers owned a farm. I felt it was only right to give him some free labor. You have to understand, nothing made sense in my head. And what I could remember…” He looked at Gioia. “Well, I didn’t want to remember.” His eyes grew moist. “I hurt you. Many times, I think.”

She did all she could not to dwell on the past. She was concerned with what was happening in her very bizarre present. “Are you really better?”

Soren’s hand gripped her thigh. This had to be killing him. She laced her fingers with his, not losing sight of the inconvenient fact that her heart was still hammering out of her chest for him.

“I haven’t had…an episode for a long time. The Merciers, the people I stayed with, made me drink a lot of sage tea, among other things. They even used it in cleansing ceremonies. They said it’d drive away the evil spirits from my soul. I know it sounds like horseshit, but I haven’t had a relapse.”

“And how did you find Gioia here?” Soren asked.

One side of Paul’s lips curled up in the hint of a grin. “Oh, come on, Mr. Snow. You’re a shifter too. You know we can be resourceful when we want to be.” He stared at Gioia. “Anyway, there’s more I have to tell you. About…”

“You know what really bugs me?” Soren said, interrupting. “You come out of nowhere and think you can just pick up where you left off.” Soren stood, planting himself in front of her chair and presenting Paul with his wall of a chest.

Paul stood, just as big, his temper simmering just as effectively. “She’s my wife.”

Soren grinned. “But she’s
my
mate. You forgot to mark her, remember?”

“Don’t do this,” Gioia begged, a hand on her brow.

“Oh, I can do this,” Paul threatened.

“Bring it on,” Soren retorted, steam practically coming from his nostrils.

As Paul sucked in an angry breath, Gioia thrust herself in front of Soren and called for Ryland’s help. As he and Lia piled into the room, she addressed the two men in her life. “I will not have this…this Alpha male posturing, so you can both forget about a pissing contest!” She turned to Soren, wanting to shake him for making this about marks and all that macho crap, as much as she wanted to slap Paul for thinking he could just walk in and take her back. “You aren’t two little boys fighting over a dump truck in the sand box. There are lives and feelings at stake here, not to mention a young boy who still has no clue his dead father is alive.” She swiped at her angry tears. She whipped around to face Paul. “How dare you? How dare you think you could just sweep back into my life? And Soren, you may have marked me, but Paul did too in his way. And last I checked, neither of you owns me!”

Cursing her mess of a life and wanting to disappear from all the men in her life, she fled the room. She had to find Gunnar before Paul did.

* * * *

Soren followed her to the conference room. Gunnar was already in there, trying out a new drum riff. His mom was begging him to listen to her for a second.

“Gunnar, put down your sticks,” Gioia said. “This is important.”

The kid, totally in the zone, kept playing.

“Gunnar,” Soren said. “Stop for a second.”

Gioia turned to him. “I’ll handle this! Leave me alone, Soren. I’ve had enough of territorial men for a while.”

“I’m not leaving you alone while
he’s
out there!”

“I can handle myself around him.”

“Which is why you ran off, right?”

As she glared at him, Gunnar decided to pipe up. “Who are you talking about?”

Gioia moved closer to him, sidling up to him as if approaching a predator whose cage door was hanging open and he didn’t know it yet. “Gunn, there’s something you need to know about your father. I don’t know how to tell you this, but…”

There was a crashing sound outside the conference room. Paul burst in, followed by Ryland and Lia. “I just want to see my son!” Paul shouted. He stopped short inside the door and gazed upon Gunnar. “Hey, champ. It’s me. I’m okay.”

Gunnar took one panic-stricken look at his very lively dad and shouted in fear. No doubt stressed to the max, he gave into his bear, shifting before them all and causing yet another outfit to end in tatters. A huffing, wounded bear Gunnar loped to the back of the room and huddled in the corner, as far from the ghost of his dad as possible.

Soren was next to him in a flash, his hand on the bear boy’s massive shoulder. “Remember what I taught you, Gunnar. You can control your feelings. I know this situation is severely fucked up, but just breathe and listen to your mom. You need to hear this.”

Paul pulled away from Ryland, his eyes blazing in anger and what had to be some level of self-hatred. He ran up to Soren and Gunnar. “Get your hand off my son, Snow!”

Soren glared at him. “You don’t tell me what to do. What’s wrong with you, bursting in here like this? Couldn’t you give the kid a minute to hear his mother out?”