Ride the Wicked Woodsman (A Night Falls Alpha Werebear Shapeshifter Romance) (4 page)

Another grunt followed, but he gave me an answer this time. "Taron...Murphy."

I looked up, my lips poised for a second above the cup's rim as I blew at the steam.

"Thank you for rescuing me, Taron."

He blinked, the sweeping motion so slow I could have measured it on a wrist watch. Something new twisted in my belly and I quickly dropped my gaze to sip at my tea some more.

"You're probably hungry," he offered, his voice tight as he returned to the kitchen.

"Famished," I agreed.

From the kitchen came sounds of Taron twisting roughly at the knobs on his gas range, then he banged around the cupboards and drawers again before appearing about a minute later. Taking the cup and saucer from me, he shoved a plate into my hands.

The dish was loaded with trout sprinkled with slivers of almond and scrambled eggs with tomatoes and onions mixed in.

Embarrassed to admit I could probably eat the pile of food and still want to lick the plate clean afterwards, I glanced up at him. "Aren't you having any?"

He waved off the suggestion and took a seat on the fireplace's brick surround.

"You can eat and talk, right?"

I stared at his face before answering, his brooding gaze dark and accusing.

"Yes," I answered. "Could I trouble you for some water?"

I wasn't just stalling. I would need some water before the meal was through. But I knew he was about to interrogate me and I wasn't really up to an interrogation just yet.

He had already gathered some information from the few items I still owned -- the motel and car keys, the fact that I only salvaged two cards from my wallet (one of them my driver's license with my address), and the fat roll of cash.

Taron had probably already figured out the money wasn't mine.

Returning from the kitchen, he placed a glass of water on the floor next to the rocker and returned to his seat by the fire.

"Why were you in the woods?"

I bobbed my head at him, my mouth purposefully stuffed with scrambled eggs so I could chew over his first question. I had to give him mercy points in his phrasing. He hadn't asked me what
in the hell
I was doing
alone
in the woods
in heat
.

Swallowing the eggs down, I reached for the glass of water and saw his irritation grow.

I took a quick sip then bobbed my head again. "There was a cop at the motel running my plates. I had just left the office and Ned had mentioned how the trail went over the mountain to the truck stop."

He listened through my long, careful answer without interrupting. I had expected him to blurt something out as soon as I mentioned the cop, but he remained calm. A wariness of human authority was pretty much the one trait all shifters shared.

"Running plates is a common enough police activity," he politely countered. "Nothing to flee if you're not wanted."

His gaze dipped to the baggie with its roll of cash.

"Family money," I answered. "And he wasn't exactly running the plates. He had turned his radio off before that. I think he was talking to someone on a cell phone."

"Radio might have been receiving but not broadcasting."

I shrugged and shoved some hot trout into my mouth, grimacing as I rolled it around to keep from burning my tongue.

"Whereas a night walk in the woods in your...condition..."

One of his thick, honey brown eyebrows lifted in accusation.

I risked a glare before dropping my gaze to my food.

"Look," I started, voice as hot as the fish I'd just swallowed down. "I'm not really a shifter, so I'm not in heat. I don't care what your nose is telling you -- it's just not possible."

His torso dipped low so he could look at my face. "So which one of your parents is human?"

I almost dropped my plate, caught it then fought to keep the food from sliding onto my lap. I was still famished and wanted it in my stomach, all the crazy questions from my host notwithstanding.

"Never heard of such a thing -- a shifter with a human parent," I answered honestly. "You're kidding, right?"

As far as I had been taught, even breeding among the various types of shifters was impossible. Here Taron was talking about human and shifters breeding. Not that mating was impossible -- my brother had bragged about bagging and banging more than a dozen human females.

He straightened, forcing me to lift my gaze if I wanted to read his face. He didn't really look like he was kidding, but his expression didn't give anything away.

"Both of my parents are wolf," I answered.

I looked down at my plate. I had only managed to eat about a third of its contents before his questions and the thoughts they invoked extinguished my appetite. I squirmed in the rocker, wanting to stand and put the food away, but it wasn't my kitchen.

"Here," he rose, took the plate from me and disappeared out of view. Scraping, rummaging through cupboards, then the soft sucking sound of a refrigerator being opened played against my ears before he returned a few minutes later.

"I'll re-heat it if you get hungry later," he offered. "I put the kettle on for more tea."

His attention focused on pushing the log around in the fire, he continued his line of interrogation. "So how can you not be wolf if both of your parents are?"

Closing my eyes, I wrapped my arms around my stomach. The heat from the shower had worn off and Taron was stirring unhappy memories as he poked around the fire.

...A stone hitting my cheek, drawing blood. All the cars, me standing on the small median strip that divided the six lanes in half, then dashing as fast as I could and silently praying that it wasn't so inhumanly fast that it would draw the attention of the passing vehicles. The wind of the big trucks lifting me off my feet and then the horn, the sound long and loud and menacing.

Impact -- pain -- blood.

So much blood...

"I was hit by a semi-truck when I was eleven," I answered in a monotone, my emotions shutting down to protect against the flood of images. "I would have been dead if I'd been a human. I survived on my own just long enough for rescue workers to reach me."

Gripping the rocker's armrests, I eyed the baggie on the floor with my keys and money. I wondered if the wolves who had chased me had returned to their homes after my host had chastised them and I wondered whether the trail was safe and my car was still at the motel and unmonitored.

I might be dressed ridiculously, but I figured I could drive to that Wal-Mart two hours away and walk through it in my makeshift outfit without being challenged. I mean, there was an entire website dedicated to the "People of Wal-Mart" and their questionable shopping attire.

"You're not leaving tonight, Onyx."

Leaning forward, Taron snatched the baggie and placed it next to him.

"I'll secure clothes for you in the morning and someone from my pack will check on your car, make sure it's not being watched. If it is, I'll personally drive you to the bus or train station. But I want to know what else I might be up against in helping you besides three horny wolf cubs and one cop who may or may not have been working outside his jurisdiction."

I shrugged. "I don't know what the cop was doing there -- maybe it was routine, like you suggested. But I was in pain and I freaked."

Pointing my chin at the baggie, I confessed my crime-of-the-century. "I stole the money from my dad. I had to because they won't let me work, think I'll betray the pack to humans since I'm not a shifter anymore."

The whistling tea kettle gave me an excuse to stop talking. I didn't want to tell him my biggest reason for running. No one likes being a victim. I'd been one for the last twelve years. Even my own sister, who had adored me as a baby, had taken sides against me. After Eric, she was the cruelest one in the pack.

I took the time while Taron made the tea to slip into the bathroom. I locked the door and sat on the toilet, the top lid down. Elbows braced against my knees, I covered my face for a few seconds then reached for the towel I had used earlier.

Falling halfway down my back, my hair was still a wet mess. Using the towel, I squeezed and tousled and squeezed it some more, my mind grateful for something I could do with robotic precision and stop thinking for a few more seconds.

Hearing Taron's footsteps returning to the main living area, I folded the towel over the rack, took a quick pee and washed my hands before joining him.

Leaving the bathroom, I hesitated for a second. He had claimed the rocker, the blanket neatly folded on the floor with a mug of the peppermint tea beside it. Changing direction mid-step, I headed for the brick surround he had been sitting on.

"Come here, Onyx."

I looked at him, just a glance at first and then a long hard stare. He wanted me to sit on his lap. My head bounced side-to-side a few times, the gesture confused and probably looking every bit like one of those bobble-headed dolls.

"You're hurting still, physically and otherwise. It's palpable to me."

"Yeah, so?" I challenged. "What's that got to do with me sitting on your lap?"

Instead of answering me, he tossed another question. "What I don't understand, from the little you've said, is that your alpha didn't seem to do anything to heal you once you were free of the humans."

I knew what he was talking about, had seen it done within my pack dozens of times. Maybe one day science would explain the biology of shifters, how it was possible for us to mutate between different states, but I didn't think they would ever explain some of the other things about us, things like the "alpha's touch." They would try, of course, search for things like bio-electrical, or maybe magnetic, energy pulses, try to patent machines based on it and probably fail because that part of what we were didn't seem scientific at all.

It was magic.

"Thought it was too late, I guess."

"You don't believe that," he challenged. "Now, be a good little guest and come here."

His tone was almost joking, but I could read how serious he was by his gaze. The black of his pupils almost eclipsed the burnt gold irises, and the lines on his face, barely noticeable seconds before, had hardened. So had the sinfully full lips that were pressed tightly together.

"Now, Onyx," he repeated. He tilted his head, eyes getting squinty as I remained rooted to the floor.

The sensation almost imperceptible, I felt a tug at my chest and then at the back of my knees. I glared at him, the stubborn nature that had kept me alive and sane the last twelve years rearing its belligerent head.

Taron's mouth curved into a wickedly delicious smile I shouldn't have been capable of appreciating and then the tug became more insistent.

"Maybe your pack alpha had a grudge against your family and that's why he did nothing."

He was just teasing, I could tell by that smile, the way his eyes had relaxed, and his tone. But the joke was on him.

"My father was the pack alpha," I answered, voice breaking. "Still is."

The tugging stopped, the recoil of the effort he had been exerting to pull me toward him springing back and slamming me so that I fell hard on my ass on the brick surround.

"Fuck...I..." Taron swiped at his thick jaw then bounded to his feet. Without asking or giving me the chance to object, he scooped me up and carried me back to the rocker, sitting down with me on his lap.

I wanted to protest, but he'd just knocked all the fight out of me with his dumb teasing. He was right, I had always felt that it wasn't too late to at least try to reverse the effects of the blood transfusion. My father had always paid lip service to the hope that I would "recover" when the greatest chance of my recovery had rested in his hands.

"Here," Taron said, his hands working to spread my legs so that they fell to the outer side of his. "Lean against my chest."

I didn't resist, let him mold me as he wanted. I had seen my father deal with such things as troubled pregnancies in much the same position, although my mother and the she-wolf's mate were always on hand to assist.

Or chaperone given the jealous nature my mother had always displayed.

Taron laid one of his big hands across my belly, the fingers gently exploring my flesh.

"Close your eyes and relax."

I did, and then his hand slid a little lower and I tensed immediately.

"I'm just following the pain, wolfling," he chuckled. "Although I should get an award for the reserve I'm showing."

Did he just say what I thought he said? He wanted to touch me more intimately?

I dismissed the idea before it could fully form.

I had cooties -- human cooties. That's what the kids in the pack had started taunting me with six months after the accident when it finally leaked that something in me had changed. My blood was testing human while the rest of my cells tested as shifter. And I still hadn't successfully shifted after the accident.

I always suspected Eric of telling everyone, probably to deflect the heat of not watching me like he was supposed to have done. Sadly, his ugly little plan worked. The kids soon graduated to calling me "freak" and "strainséir" -- a foreigner, outsider, stranger. When they found out I was no longer as strong as them, the hard bumps, furtive punches and vicious kicks had begun.

"Right here?" Taron asked, his palm resting gently just above the line of my hips.

Heat flowed into my body, not just where his hand was but where my back pressed against his chest and from the top of his thighs to the back of mine.

"Yeah," I rasped, fighting the urge to tense up. Forget the fact that Taron looked like he'd just walked off a movie set, I was ready to crumble from his mere kindness.

Tilting forward, I wrapped my hands around the end of the armrests.

"Stop fighting it," he ordered. "Lean back and let me heal you."

My head bobbled but I obeyed. I chewed at my lips to stop the quiver and pressed my eyelids together as tight as I could.

"Just what do you think you're healing?" I bit out, sounding like a snotty little brat who thought she was smarter than the adults around her.

"Your estrus shouldn't be causing you any pain, for starters."