Lover Claimed (10 page)

“There are six shifters in the house and
another who just entered that liquor store on the corner.”

She turned back toward the direction of the
house. Okay the liquor store she could see, but she definitely
couldn’t make out anyone coming or going from it.

“Wait, how are you so sure about the
numbers?”

He tapped his nose again.

“Yeah, right. The best in the business.”

“
Exactamundo
.”

“So we’ve come all this way to find out how
many of them there are? I thought you needed to find out who hired
them to kill Mark and Trudy? For that wouldn’t we need to capture
one and torture him into telling us what we want to know?”

He looked over at her. His eyes seemed to
grow brighter in the dark night. And they were on her, making her
feel… She really didn’t know how they were making her feel. There
were too many emotions raging in her at once. She adjusted herself
uncomfortably on her seat.

“Sweetheart, you jumped straight to torture.
I don’t know if I should be turned on or a little scared.”

She tried her best to appear nonchalant, like
she hadn’t just had a spark course through her body when he looked
at her like she was the only woman on the face of the Earth, making
her feel like she was. Another man would’ve cringed away from her
at the mention of torture, but Lajos wasn’t an ordinary man. “I’m
just saying. We won’t get anywhere way back here.”

“We’re positioned downwind. They won’t be
able to smell us, me in particular, as long as the wind doesn’t
change direction. I can’t risk getting any closer. The minute they
get a whiff of me we’ll be in trouble. We’re outnumbered.”

“What about me?” She brought her hands up to
her handlebars in anticipation of riding down the street to get a
quick look at the house the shifters were holed up in. “I could get
closer and catch one for you, or at least break into their house
and snoop around.”

He shook his head adamantly. “Absolutely not.
I’ve put you in enough danger as it is. It’s more than likely that
you have a very angry shifter pack wanting to get their hands on
you.”

“If I’m in danger already, what’s the harm in
letting me do what I know best?”

“Breaking into houses is what you do
best?”

She straightened in her seat. She was poor,
but she wasn’t a criminal. Well…she did have a criminal record, but
not for what he was thinking. “I’m not a thief. I’ve learned the
art of escape. It’s what I do best. My dad taught me when I was
younger. As far as I’m concerned, I could apply that same knowledge
in reverse.” She shrugged. “It should be easy enough.”

He raised a questioning brow. “And you think
to try this trick your dad taught you on a houseful of wolf
shifters?”

“It’s not a trick. He taught me how to take
care of myself and how to survive if I was ever captured by someone
who wanted to do me harm. So, why not use what I’ve learned on
them?”

He rubbed the side of his head and closed his
eyes. “You’re making my head hurt,” he mumbled.

“Listen to me. They won’t be looking for me.
I’ll be in and out before they even suspect a thing.”

He opened his eyes and looked at her.
“They’ll smell you as soon as you enter their house. They’ll hear
every little noise you make. And when they get a hold of you
there’s no telling what they’ll do. Do you know what they did to
Trudy’s employee Mark?”

She shook her head. Even Trudy hadn’t been
told what had happened or seen Mark’s body. The cops made Trudy
close her eyes while they escorted her from the office. All the
news stations described the murder as “heinous” and “gruesome”, but
revealed nothing more.

“One of the wolves must’ve been in wolf form
while the other asked the questions. The wolf would’ve started
torturing Mark by ripping into his stomach, using his claws and
teeth to expose his insides. When Mark was good and open, I’m sure
the wolf would’ve began to eat his liver, pancreas and kidneys—all
while Mark was alive. They most likely shredded his intestines
last, ensuring him a slow and painful death.”

Meisha’s mouth hung open in shock. Her dad
had explained different torture techniques to her. Once he’d told
her that one of the Yaruzi favorites was to skin their victims
alive or let the fighting roosters peck away at them, but this…

She didn’t want to believe that his kind was
that monstrous. “How do you know they did this? The news didn’t say
exactly what had been done to Mark.”

His eyes met hers, the color shifting from
brown to a lighter green. Something dark lurked behind them, lethal
and predatory. “I know,” he said slowly. “Because it’s something I
would’ve done.”

Chapter
Eleven

She took in a sharp breath. Her heart seemed
to stop. Was she scared of him now? No. But her common sense told
her she should be.

“I don’t know what exactly you think we are,
Meisha. Paranormals are dangerous and we’re smart. We’ve been on
this planet just as long as humans and we haven’t been found out.
Some of us, like shifters, walk freely during the day, while others
slink through the night. There’s nothing docile about what I am.
I’m a predator—a lethal one.”

Predator…

Lethal.

She swallowed a lump in her throat. Granted
she didn’t know Lajos very well, but he didn’t strike her as
anything but…human.

“Sorry to lay it on you so harshly, but I
don’t think you’re fully aware of what’s going on here. You took
down a shifter—which is not even heard of for a human to do so
easily—and I think you have it twisted in your head that it’ll be
that easy if you were attacked again.”

“I caught him by surprise,” she said, her
mouth feeling like it was full of cotton. “Everyone…thing…” She
shook her head, not even knowing how to address him or talk about
the man she killed anymore. “No one or thing expects a surprise
attack, that’s why it’s called a surprise.”

“You’re right. But those shifters in there,”
he pointed in the direction of the house that she couldn’t even
see, “would love to get their hands on you.”

She settled back onto her seat. Having people
wanting to get their hands on her wasn’t a new concept. “I’m sure
they would, but they’d have to stand in line.”

He angled his body toward her and rested a
hand on his thigh. “What do you mean?”

She pressed her lips together tightly. She
hadn’t meant to say that out loud. It was between her and her
family, not to be discussed with outsiders. But there was something
about the way he watched her that made her feel comfortable in his
presence. They may go back and forth with banter but, in reality,
it felt good. Right. Most people couldn’t tolerate her smart mouth
or the bad attitude that she projected to keep herself from getting
close to anyone, but Lajos seemed to take it all in stride and move
past it.

“My dad is—was—a high ranking member in the
Yaruzi,” she said, with a little hesitation. If Lajos knew anything
about gang life then he would know it was deadly and dangerous.
“Yaruzi is the largest gang in Japan.” She had guarded those words
so tightly that it seemed almost foreign to speak them out
loud.

Those words had kept her and her family bound
to a secret life. She’d only told one other person; Trudy. If the
day came when the Yaruzi finally found them and they had to leave
Jacksonville, Trudy was the only person on the outside who would
aid her. And now she may’ve inadvertently gotten Trudy harmed.

Her and her family might’ve put Trudy’s life
in danger just to be able to store extra clothes and a stash of
money in Trudy’s attic. Meisha had spent most of her life hiding
from the Yaruzi. They wanted to kill her family. The thought could
be paralyzing sometimes.

If the Yaruzi wasn’t involved in this and
Lajos was right, that it had something to do with his business,
Meisha would get everything out of Trudy’s house and distance
herself from her best friend anyway. This situation made her
realize she couldn’t endanger Trudy the way she had anymore. It
would hurt like hell, but at least she’d know Trudy would be
safe.

She let out a shattering breath.

“I’ve heard of them,” he said. “In the human
world they’re not to be played with. Some of the werewolf packs
have aligned themselves with the Yaruzi. They help them with their
illegal weapons trade.”

Werewolves
?

He couldn’t be serious. “W-werewolves don’t
really exist.”

The side of his mouth quirked up to a smile.
“Just like shifters don’t exist?”

He had a point.

“There’s a lot going on in the big-wide
world. Werewolves, shifters, vampires and faes. My world is pretty
crowded.”

She struggled to wrap her head around
everything he was saying. She closed her eyes for a minute, taking
everything he’d told her in. “I can deal with wolf shifters, but
werewolves
and
vampires
and
faes. That’s…that’s too
much to deal with right now.”

“Like I told you, it’s a scary place out
there.”

She opened her eyes to look at him. “Are
they—the other paranormals—as bad as the Yaruzi?”

“I’ll put it to you this way. The vamps are
assholes, plain and simple. They have an authoritarian complex and
they’re sneaky. It’s not like the movies though, since normally
they wouldn’t give you the time of day. There are too many willing
victims for them to be interested in you. Unless you crossed one,
or came across a rogue clan, you’d have nothing to worry
about.”

She put a hand up to her neck, remembering
all the vampire movies from childhood where the man in the black
cape attacked pretty girls.

“The werewolves, well, most of them aren’t
happy. They have a disease that makes them bound to the moon.
Shifters are in sync with the animals that reside in them; we are
one, but also separate. Werewolves have two distinct personalities
that often don’t mesh well with one another. A few are fortunate to
have a beast within that isn’t out to destroy or do harm, but many
aren’t that fortunate. In situations like that, the host is in a
constant battle with the beast inside. Does that make them bad? Not
really, but I’d have to say the ones who give in to the inner beast
become bad.”

“And the wolf that lives inside of you…is
he…”

“Bad?”

She nodded.

“It’s not that way with shifters. If the host
is bad, the animal will conform to that personality. For shifters
the host and animal are in sync. When I shift, I’m still me, but I
have an animalistic force that guides and leads me.”

“And when you’re like this?” She waved a hand
up and down his body. “Does your wolf still guide you?”

He squinted. “It’s hard to explain. But in a
way yes. He’s always with me. Sometimes he sends me pictures of
what he wants or he thinks I should do.” He tilted his head to the
side. “I would describe it as having a very active conscience.”

“And your conscience is good?”

He chuckled. “He’s good.”

She knew he was good. She could feel it in
him, just like she could feel the evilness in her father’s
“friends” who would come to their house for visits. They had still
lived in Hyogo, Japan then. Those men weren’t good and she doubted
they had a good conscience. She’d been just a child when she first
met them, but she knew to stay clear of them. When they watched her
and her mom, she knew they were having bad thoughts about them.

An involuntary shudder ran over her body.

He reached his hand out to her, but stopped
halfway, holding it there for a pause. On the next breath he pulled
his hand back and gripped the handlebar. “I’ve never heard of a
member leaving the gang—any gang—of their own accord. Not to
mention a high ranking one.”

“My dad had to. They wanted my mom and me for
payment.” She looked down at her boots, not able to meet his eyes.
Her family had never talked about what happened that night
twenty-four years ago. If they didn’t talk about it, it would be as
if it never happened.

Lajos frowned. “What do you mean as
‘payment’?”

“A deal my dad was involved in fell through.
He lost the shipment—gold artifacts and money. He’d tried to make
it right by cutting off the tip of his finger as penance, but that
wasn’t good enough for Hasuki, the leader. He wanted more.”

She remembered the night her dad had come
home from a business meeting. He tried to remain calm even though
the crisp white shirt he wore was soaked in blood. He’d taken off
his jacket to wrap it around his hand, trying to hide it from her
mother, but it still bled through.

“Your hand,” her mother kept screaming. And
when her father unwrapped his jacket, she could see why her mother
was distraught. His hand was shredded, pieces of skin were hardly
recognizable. Other pieces that she knew now were tendons and bones
were visible and dripped with blood.

“You don’t have to say any more,” he
said.

She shook her head. “It’s okay. I want to
talk about it. It feels good. I’ve been holding it in for so long.”
She looked up at him and smiled. “Besides, you told me your secret.
It’s only fair that I tell you mine.”

Her smile faltered when he didn’t return one
back at her. He just looked at her as if he was surprised by her
gesture.

She quickly turned her head away. Maybe she
shouldn’t have told him any of this; maybe she should’ve held this
secret inside.

He reached out and tugged on her elbow,
bringing her attention back to him. When she turned around her
heart fluttered. He was smiling reassuringly at her. “Please tell
me, I want you to.”

It was something about the way he watched her
that made her feel calm and protected. It felt good to be able to
talk to him. “What they did to my father and what they wanted to do
to us wasn’t right. They took his hand away from him. That, as odd
as it may seem, was justified. My dad wasn’t perfect. He didn’t
lead an honorable life. He knew the consequences for his actions.
But my mom and I? We didn’t sign up to be their whores.”