Wild Heat (Wilding Pack Wolves 3) - New Adult Paranormal Romance (8 page)

Kaden’s face was inscrutable again, but Terra would bet her father’s fortune that he was silently cursing her with every vile word he knew. She was asking him to take a huge risk, a
personal
risk, just for her. Worse, it was for her art… which she was sure he didn’t give a flying fuck about.

“I’ll make it fast,” she said to both him and Marco.

And she did.

The building had been converted from a grocery store into a makeshift camp, complete with barracks, shower facilities, and a mess hall. It was half guerrilla warfare encampment and half homeless shelter. There were shifters of all ages from very young pups toddling around to aged grandmas. Terra was dying to take pictures of them in their human forms, and maybe someday she would come back here and do precisely that. But for now, she was after their inner wolves. And their stories. One by one, she explained the project, and they agreed to shift for her. Sometimes she took pictures of them on their bunks; sometimes on the floor playing with their toys. Some of the pups were so small she could practically fit them in her camera bag. Sometimes the older ones had battle wounds that were even more evident in their shifter form. In all cases, she took hundreds of shots, trying to capture that inner glow that each of them possessed, and that would bring out their true selves. She captured their stories on her phone recorder. She only stopped when she couldn’t see anymore through the tears that just flowed and flowed down her face.

The whole experience was brilliant and terrible and humbling… and by the time she left, she was completely wrung out.

Marco kept his word and kept Kaden safe. And he kept the hungry looks of the unmated male wolves from growing into something more sinister. After an intense hour, she and Kaden finally returned to the car and headed back to the safehouse.

They had survived. She’d gotten what she needed. And she was exhausted.

But she couldn’t remember glowing this much in a long, long time.

Terra had been sequestered in her bedroom/darkroom for half an hour, but Kaden was still pissed.

He knew from the start that going out—
anywhere
—was a terrible idea. The gallery was bad enough—unsecured, out in the public, meeting someone who had only been vaguely cleared. Kaden knew that clearance had legitimately come from the mayor’s office… but that didn’t mean he liked any part of meeting Julius. Then Terra had insisted they go deep into downtown, right into the shifter gangland where he routinely patrolled.

He had been lucky to get out in one piece.

But what made him angry wasn’t concern for his own life. It wasn’t even the embarrassment of having to put himself at the mercy of shifters he was used to cuffing for dealing drugs or petty theft or more substantial crimes like that illegal car-parts ring he was sure they were running. No, the thing that still had his blood boiling was the fact that Terra had been at risk through the whole thing. It was nothing but luck that she hadn’t been attacked or captured or even worse—forcefully mated.

That was something he hadn’t even considered before.

Now he was all too aware that she was an unmated female… and that brought every protective instinct he had raging to the surface.

And probably clouded his judgment.

He was still coming down from the surge of adrenaline that had been coursing through his system the entire time they were out. It was like he was stuck in that mode—hyper aware, breathing hard, ready to fight. He was pacing the apartment like a trapped animal, not unlike Terra had been before they left. But she had definitely returned a changed person due to the trip. She glowed all the way back to the safehouse and had scurried immediately into her bedroom with a fist-full of memory cards. He was sure she had dived right in and probably completely forgotten about him pacing out in the livingroom. To distract himself, he tried making a sandwich, but then it just sat on the plate. He gave up after ten minutes and dumped it in the trash.

Then he went back to pacing.

He was so absorbed in his thoughts, he barely heard her door whisper open before she was light-stepping out into the livingroom, a print in her hand and a soft look of joy on her face.

His shoulders dropped. It was hard to stay angry when her art had this effect on her.

“Look at this, Kaden,” she said softly as she showed him a black and white print. It was one of the little kids sitting next to the bunks they used for beds, only the kid was in his wolf form, parked on his haunches and resting his paw on a small red ball. Behind him was a half-broken, half-rusted toy truck and a book with pages falling out—the kind with big pictures and not too many words. It was cute… and at the same time, heartbreaking. Those things in the picture were pretty much all the kid had.

Kaden knew exactly how that felt.

“That’s great, Terra,” he said, looking away from the image. “Look, let’s get something straight here. I hope you got all the pictures you need because there’s no way in hell we’re going back there.”

Her pretty face scrunched up, and he knew that wasn’t what she wanted to hear. But she didn’t object, just examined him more closely, like she was looking for something. He didn’t know what she thought she might find staring into his eyes, but he couldn’t look away. He was supposed to keep his distance, be professional, just do his job and protect her… but it didn’t work that way with Terra. She was either wide open with him or slammed completely shut—there was nothing in between. Right now she was open, and it was cracking him wide… and he was afraid of what she might see inside.

He rubbed his hand across the back of his neck and gestured toward her bedroom. “Is your darkroom working the way you wanted?”

She ignored his question. “I know you didn’t want to go, Kaden. Hell, you didn’t even want to leave the house. It’s safer here. I get it. But nothing
happened.
It was fine. And now that I’ve been there once—”

“No!”
He said it a little too forcefully. She pulled back, a small snarl rumbling in her chest.
Jesus Christ,
what was he doing? But that protective instinct was raging again. “Just because you didn’t actually
die,
doesn’t mean it was a smart idea. There’re any number of ways this could’ve gone sideways. And there’s this whole thing about you not being mated…”

Her face scrunched up more. “You don’t have to worry about any of that.”

He stepped closer to her and had to physically lock down his hands at his sides to keep from taking hold of her shoulders. “I have to worry about
everything.
Anything happens to you under my watch, and it’s on me. You’re an unmated female wolf. You’re beautiful and famous. Every wolf in that gang was drooling at the idea of having you for a mate—if we hadn’t run into your cousin, I don’t know what you were thinking was going to happen there. As it was, the rest of them are still having fantasies about claiming you. It was just downright dangerous.”

She narrowed her eyes and peered up into his face. “What do you know about wolves and mating?”

“I know enough.” He ran patrols in that area—she knew that—but it went beyond that. Far beyond. But she didn’t need to know the rest.

“What was all that back there?” Terra asked gesturing vaguely to the door. “Marco said you grew up there. Is that why they hate you so much? Or is it just because you’re a cop, and you bust them for trying to scrape a living out of the dirty underside of our city—a city that rejects them simply because they aren’t human.”

“I put criminals behind bars.” The growl was unmistakable in his voice. “Marco may be your cousin, but he’s still running a criminal enterprise in the middle of Seattle. It’s my job to put people like that in jail and protect the law-abiding citizens of the city from them.”

“But you grew up there,” she protested. “You know they’re not all criminals.”

“Yes, I grew up there. With a single mom, no father, gangs everywhere… they were pulling kids straight off the street and wrapping them up in a hopeless life of crime that would suck them down forever. I didn’t have anyone to protect me.
No one.
The asshole who knocked up my mother didn’t even stick around to see me born. I
escaped
that life, Terra. I only go back there now because I’m trying to save a few kids from falling into it, the way I almost did. I want to help them get out.” He sucked in a breath—his chest heaved like he’d run a mile. He didn’t mean to spill all that, and it left him feeling carved out in the middle. Emptied of things he never said to anyone. Not even his mother when he left her to join the police academy.

Terra’s eyes had gone soft and round, and that was what really kept drawing more and more out of him.

She showed him the picture again. “This young halfling doesn’t have anyone to look out for him. Marco and his gang are doing that. He rescues the halflings that no one wants—some shift; some don’t, but they accept all of them. He’s not doing terrible things here, Kaden. He’s trying to do right by them, give them a pack. A home.”

Kaden eased away from her and crossed his arms over his chest. “That’s not the way I see it.” She was way too close to the truth.

But rather than being put off by his words, Terra edged closer. The soft perfume of her scent washed over him—it had an essential earthy wildness to it, a pure womanly smell. It was loosening something inside him… and that something was all that was holding him back.

She reached a hand toward his face. His heart pounded in his ears, but she stopped short of touching his cheek. “What are you not telling me?” she asked, almost in a whisper. “What’s your secret?”

He couldn’t stop the wince, but he forced out the lie, “Don’t have any secrets.”

She nodded, but it wasn’t like she was agreeing. “Stay right there.”

What?

She dashed away, back to her bedroom. Where did she expect him to go? But in a moment she was back—she had ditched the picture and returned with her camera. She lifted it and snapped a half dozen shots before he could react.

He unlocked his arms and dropped them into fists clenched at his side. “What are you doing?”

She stayed buried behind her lens. “Tell me your secret, Kaden Grant.” The camera clicked and whirred and snapped his picture another half dozen times.

“Terra,”
he warned.

She circled around him, taking pictures from every angle and forcing him to turn with her. He was pretty sure she was catching only his glare in her camera lens. “Terra, stop it.”

She dropped the camera from her face and held it in front of her black t-shirt. “What’s your story, Kaden Grant? Where’s the light inside you? Every once in a while, I see something that…”

Something inside him flipped… and he moved toward her without even thinking about it. He pushed aside the camera between them. “Something that... what?”

She stared up at him with those beautiful black eyes. “Something that sends my wolf panting,” she whispered.

Panting?
Holy fuck. They were inches apart—too close, dangerously close—and all he wanted to do was kiss her until she couldn’t breathe. Maybe even tell her the truth. She was the kind of person who wouldn’t judge him. He knew that now. He half-believed her camera had already peered into him and seen the thing he wanted to keep hidden from everyone else.

“Terra.”
He meant it at a warning, but the growl in his voice just made her breathing hitch and her eyes dilate. He was sure she wanted him—he could scent the arousal on her. And if he got any closer, she would feel the stiffening in his pants, his body betraying him, showing what he had been thinking all along. The fact that she wasn’t mated was driving him just as lust-crazed as the members of Marco’s pack. He wanted to bury himself in her. Make her scream his name…

But that would be a terrible, terrible mistake.

She reached for him, and he caught her wrist. Her skin was soft, so damn soft, and that contact almost broke his resolve. But then he slowly pushed her away and took a step back.

“My job is to protect you,” he said, his voice hoarse. “Nothing more.”

The room chilled ten degrees as she drew back, color flushing her cheeks—probably anger, maybe embarrassment that he let it get this far only to pull away.

“Fuck you,”
Terra said, soft and low but it sliced through him.

She turned her back on him and stalked back to her bedroom, slamming the door when she got there.

Goddammit.
He scrubbed both hands over his face and through his hair. What the hell was he doing? His bumbling idiocy had hurt her, and that thought stabbed daggers through his chest. It shouldn’t mean that much to him—
she
shouldn’t mean that much to him—but somehow her anger was a live coal burning him from the inside out.

Fuck.

He staggered to the couch and sunk into it, burying his head in his hands. Even in trying not to screw this up, he’d screwed it up. But it was better this way. Better for her to be angry at him—temporarily, he was sure she’d get over it—than for them to get tangled up any further than they already were. Besides, if he took her to bed, he would have no resistance at all to whatever she wanted—he knew that much about himself. And that was no way for him to keep a clear head and keep her safe.