Grayslake: Furrever Yours (Kindle Worlds Novella) (4 page)

Heather was five feet away from him. Knox struggled to keep his mind on what was happening, but all he could think was –
she’s here. And she knows what I am. And she’s not screaming or running away.

But she was still clutching her pistol so tight her knuckles were white.

“Are you planning on shooting me, Miss Heather?” he said, raising an eyebrow.

“Jury’s still out. What happened to that other wolf?” she asked.

Ah, yes, Norbert, who was a member of Kevin’s pack, had found out that Knox was coming to Heather’s house, and insisted on coming along. Kevin was, fortunately, about an hour away, or he’d have insisted on coming too, and that would have been a giant clusterfuck. If Kevin had attacked Heather, Knox would have killed him, and then every pack in the Northeast would have been gunning for Knox – and for his pack, as punishment.

“I told you if anyone tried to hurt you I’d kill them,” he growled. “I don’t lie.”

“Oh. But…he came here with you.”

“He comes from another pack. Apparently someone gossiped and told him I was coming here to talk to you, and he insisted that I bring him here. It was better to have him here with me than let him come by later and try to talk to you alone. I figured he might try something like this.”

She walked past him into the kitchen and looked down at Norbert’s body, now limp, eyes open and staring at nothing. Blood leaked from the enormous gash in his throat and spread across the laminate floor in a dark, thick pool.

He heaved a sigh. “I’ve got extra clothes in my truck and my cell phone is there too. I’ve got to call someone to come take care of this.” He inclined his head at Norbert.

Then he looked at her. “How long has she been gone?”

“Who?” The wide-eyed innocent look again.

“Come on, Heather. You know I’m a wolf. I can scent where she’s been. She was staying in your guest room. Please don’t lie to me.”

Heather glanced at Norbert and raised an eyebrow. “That’s one of the guys who was after her? A man who was going to kill me seconds after he laid eyes on me? No wonder she’s terrified. And I don’t know how long she’s been gone. That’s not a lie.”

He looked her in the eye. “No, I can see it’s not. So where is she?”

She shrugged. “It’s a great big world out there, Knox. All kinds of places she could be.”

Okay, she wasn’t going to answer him. At least, not yet.

He turned and stalked out of the house, praying that none of the neighbors were looking out the window right now – it was two in the afternoon, after all – and grabbed a spare uniform, his belt, and his cell phone. He walked into the foyer and shut the door behind him. Then he quickly called his pack and told them to come get Norbert’s body.

“What the hell?” Clarence demanded. “This is going to cause all kinds of trouble for us. Kevin’s not going to take this well.”

“I gave Norbert very specific orders not to harm Heather, and he went straight for her throat. I am an Alpha. Disobey an Alpha, get your throat ripped out,” he growled. “If Kevin has a problem with it, I’m more than happy to challenge him. I could rip his pussy ass in two, and he knows it.”

“Yeah, but not his dad,” Clarence said grimly. “And that’s who Kevin’s going to run yipping and howling to.” It was true. Kevin wasn’t even a true Alpha; the only reason he was leading a pack at all was because of who his father was. It had been a mistake for Eugene to indulge Kevin for as long as he had; a weak wolf had no right to be a leader, and would cause nothing but trouble.

“Just send the clean-up crew,” Knox said with annoyance, and hung up.

He went back into the kitchen, to find Heather in there making coffee, ignoring the enormous dead wolves on the floor.

“I was afraid you’d run off,” he said as he stepped into his pants. She blushed and looked away.

“Run off where? You could outrun me,” she said, which unsettled him. Was she afraid of him?

“You know I’d never hurt you,” he said.

“There’s a lot I don’t know about you, Knox,” she said, setting a cup of coffee down in front of him. “For instance, how do you take your coffee? You know how I take mine, but I don’t know how you like yours.”

“That’s because I pay attention when I care about something, or someone,” he said, grabbing the cup. “I like mine black.”

Then he glanced at the dead wolf. “You’re handling this very well.”

“Two years as an E.M.T., almost a year in the E.R.,” she said. “If I fell apart whenever there was an emergency, I wouldn’t be in this field.”

He nodded, taking a sip of coffee, and despite himself, his wolf was taking notice of how well she was doing with this disaster dropped at her feet. She was strong. She was compassionate. She’d be a perfect Alpha’s mate…

“Let’s go sit in the living room,” she said. “I don’t actually want to drink my coffee next to their dead bodies.”

They walked into the small living room, furnished in a needlepoint-and-country-cottage style that somehow didn’t seem like her. The furniture must have come with the house, he thought.

There was a faintly familiar scent in the air, but he was too distracted to try to figure out who it might be just now.

“How much did Margaret tell you about me and my kind?” he asked her.

She settled down onto the overstuffed sofa. “Not that much.”

He sat down on the couch with her. “We’ve always been around, which is where the werewolf legends come from, but we’ve always managed to keep our existence hidden. There’s no telling how most people might react if they knew about us.”

He took a long sip of coffee, and then set the cup down on the coffee table. He turned to look at her, his heart pounding in his chest. How would she react to what he was about to say?

He’d prayed for so long to get a chance to tell her, and now that he finally could, he felt ice-cold fear washing over him. He cleared his throat and forced himself to speak, his lips feeling oddly numb. “When I first saw you, I knew that you were meant for me. We have the concept of a fated mate – and you are mine.”

Her eyes widened in surprise. But she didn’t protest. That was a good thing, wasn’t it?

“But when I scented that you were human,” he continued, “I was devastated. Pack law strictly forbade me revealing who I am, and how could I ask you out with a secret like that hanging over me?”

“I saw you sniffing me and you looked…disappointed. I thought I must smell bad or something,” Heather said, looking hurt.

“Are you kidding? You smelled like heaven. I wanted you more than I’ve ever wanted anything in my life – but I knew that I couldn’t have you. That’s why I ran off. That’s why I avoided you even after you moved here.” Then he gave her a puzzled look. “Why did you move here?”

“Well, I’d been saving up to go to nursing school, and then out of the blue I got a scholarship offer from the local community college here. It was amazing. Full scholarship for the entire program. I couldn’t turn it down.”

“So you had applied to Grayslake Community College?”

“No, it was pretty weird. The letter came out of nowhere. But when I checked with the college, they said that the scholarship offer was legitimate, and it was because I was the daughter of a nurse. My mother died of cancer when I was still in high school,” she added.

“My condolences.”

“Yep. It sucked. Hurts a lot. My dad died of a heart attack a year later. That double-sucked.”

He frowned. Something odd about her getting a letter like that. It seemed like too much of a coincidence that she’d ended up in the same area as him. There was no college in Sugar Creek, but it was so close to Grayslake that if she were here, it was pretty much guaranteed that the two of them would run into each other.

She sipped her coffee, and then glanced up at him. “Margaret did mention that humans occasionally marry shifters.”

He felt his breath catch in his throat. She’d brought it up first. He hadn’t even had to lead her to it. “Is that…is that something you’d consider?”

“I’d need to know more about the shifter world first. Like why you’re trying to hand Margaret back to whoever beat the crap out of her. Is domestic violence acceptable in some packs?”

He shook his head. “No, it is not. If her pack was genuinely abusive, I most certainly would not let them take her. I swear to you.”

“So why are you chasing after her? And why is she running from you?” She met his gaze. “I mean it, Knox. I could never, ever associate with people who did that to a girl, or who would put her in the hands of those who did that to her.”

“I need to find out what actually happened. I understand she probably told you her version of what happened to her.” At Heather’s angry indrawn breath, he said, “Come on, Heather, I’ve been in law enforcement for ten years. I’ve learned that more often than not, there are three sides to every story—”

“Yeah, yeah, his side, her side, and the truth.” She was pissed. And he hated the way she was looking at him right now. “Are you saying that battered women are liars?”

“Definitely not. And you’ve seen how I deal with batterers. But I’m saying that I at least need to talk to her to find out what happened. Her pack has told me that she signed a contract agreeing to marry Kevin in exchange for a sizeable payment for her and her pack, and then she not only ditched him, she stole money from her intended husband before she ran off.”

“That’s a load of horse pucky.” She glared at him. “How did they explain the injuries?”

“They downplayed them, and said that she was a drinker and that’s probably why she passed out. Like I said, Heather, I need to get her side of things. The people who are looking for her are reporting that she committed a crime, but I swear to you, if she is telling the truth, I won’t give her back to them.”

She looked away, drumming her fingers on the sofa arm. “So…you liked me all along.”

He stifled a rueful laugh. “More than liked you.”

“What if I asked you to prove it?”

She moved closer to him, and his heart beat faster.

“Anything in particular you had in mind?” Because he had lots of ideas.

“Kiss me.” She leaned up against him and brushed her lips against his.

He stifled a groan. Something felt strange about this, but he didn’t know what. Hot desire flooded his body and made him dizzy. He reached forward and kissed her passionately, his lips hungrily claiming her… He felt her hands moving on his belt, fumbling…

And then there was a click.

He sat bolt upright. “What the hell?” She’d snatched his handcuffs off his belt and handcuffed him to the solid frame of the sofa.

He reached for his keychain. Gone.

She held his keys up and hurled them across the room.

“I’m truly sorry, Knox, but my first duty is to my patients.”

“Uncuff me, now!” he growled at her.

She turned and ran out of the room, the front door slammed, and then he heard her driving off.

He yanked furiously at the cuffs. He didn’t want to have to shift again, because he didn’t have any more uniforms with him. He began dragging the couch across the living room towards where she’d thrown the keys.

Then he heard the familiar sound of a car pulling up. With his shifter hearing, once he’d heard a car engine, he recognized it.

It was his Great-Aunt Olive’s beat-up old pickup truck. The woman was so rich she owned half the damn county, but she still drove the same truck.

That was the familiar scent he’d smelled. Aunt Olive – she’d been here before.

She walked in the door, took one look at him, and burst out laughing.

“Uncuff me!” Knox barked furiously, pointing at the keys on the floor. “Now. You have a lot of explaining to do,” he added.

She snorted as she grabbed the keys and unlocked his handcuffs.

“I hear you’re running around looking for some poor little girl who got beat up,” she said. “I scented the girl here last night.”

“And you didn’t tell me?”

“That’s right. I didn’t.” His great-aunt met his gaze with defiance. Damn the woman. She weighed about ninety-eight pounds sopping wet, and feared nothing.

“Well, you
will
tell me why Heather moved here.” That came out in a growl.

She shrugged and sat down on the couch next to him.

“Well, Knox,
you
were the one who came home and told me that she was your fated mate.” That was true. When he’d returned home from the clan gathering in north Georgia, he’d been in a terrible mood, and then Olive had tried to fix him up with several eligible females, and he’d kept turning her down. He’d finally had to confess to her. “So,” Olive continued, “I paid for her scholarship at the college, on the condition that it was an anonymous donation. And when she moved here, I accidentally bumped into her and offered to rent her one of the properties I own.”

“Damn it to hell, Olive, she’s human! Why would you interfere in my life like that? Why would you bring her here knowing that we could never be together?”

“Oh, pish tosh.”

“Pish tosh?” he mocked her, because he was angry at her for meddling and for putting Heather at risk. Heather never would have been exposed to the shifter world and all its dangers if Olive had just let well enough alone.