Secret Babies of the Wolves (Box Set), page 56
“Where are you staying?” I asked, and she gave me the name of a rundown hotel toward the edge of town. It wasn’t one of the pack’s businesses, but I recognized it anyway. She must’ve been pretty hard-up if she was choosing to stay in a place like that. My wolf suggested that I could give her somewhere better to stay, that there was plenty of room at my place, which was exactly the reason I didn’t order her to stay with me. Sure, it would let me watch over her more closely, but when my wolf so obviously wanted to get her in bed, having her that close would be asking for trouble. “I’ll give you three months.”
“Um. To do what?”
“To figure out what you’re doing here. If you’re just passing through, that should be enough time to figure out where you’re going next,” I reasoned, arms crossed. I wished I’d gotten dressed properly before going after her, but there wasn’t really time. “I can’t just let you stay indefinitely. Not unless you’re planning to join my pack—and if you are, this needs to be a totally different conversation. So as of right now, you’ve got three months.”
She frowned, looking irritated, like she wanted to argue with me, but apparently she knew better. She was at least smart enough to know she didn’t have any power in this situation. “Okay,” she sighed. “Thanks for giving me that much, I guess.”
“And if you leave within the next week or two,” I continued, trying to make myself more comfortable with the situation by remembering I held all the cards, “I’ll assume you’re up to something and bring you back to find out what.” The slightest sneer curled her lip, and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t get some satisfaction out of ruffling her feathers. ‘Lark,’ huh? Sounds more like a bird than a wolf.
“I understand,” she grumbled. “Sir.”
“Good. Get out of here, then,” I said, nodding toward the front of the park. Sneaking another leery glance in my direction, she started off toward the street again, brushing dead leaves off her skirt and out of her hair. It was a struggle, but I managed to tear my eyes away from her and go to retrieve my clothes. In physical terms, she seemed pretty harmless, but I still didn’t trust a word out of her mouth. Past experience had proven that I couldn’t afford to take that chance.
This was at least partially my fault for shifting in the middle of a goddamn park anyway, but my wolf had been restless all week, and it wasn’t like I had time to leave town for a few hours. “Next time, you’re just going to have to wait,” I muttered to him as I grabbed up my clothes and started to dress. “This could’ve ended a lot worse if she was just an average human.” Whether she was actually part-shifter or not, it was obvious she was anything but average.
3
Lark
Once I was safely in my Uber on my way back to the hotel, I immediately googled Leo Torres. The first result was a website for a law firm, Torres & Charter, with a photo of the man I’d just met—although this version looked a lot more composed. Apparently, his full name was Leonardo Torres, Jr., and he was an attorney. I still couldn’t help thinking he seemed awfully young for an alpha, but a little more digging explained that too. His father, Leo Sr., had died just a few months ago, which would’ve made Leo Jr. alpha by default. He was obviously used to all the power that came with his position, though.
“I’ll give you three months,” I grumbled to myself as I got back into my hotel room and tossed my heels aside in frustration. “And don’t leave within the next week or two, or else.” Damn it, he was pushy. His rules threw a wrench into my whole ‘stay a while, get a job, save some money’ plan too. Why did it have to be the alpha I ran into? Alphas were always so aggressive and guarded. And now I’d gotten myself into even more hot water with this pretend shifter thing!
With an exasperated groan, I collapsed onto the bed without even bothering to take off my makeup. I’d had enough excitement in that one night to last me for a week, and my brain was fried. I’ll figure out how to deal with all this in the morning.
…
I had a few stressful dreams. Some involved Garrett and sent cold chills of fear down my spine. Some featured Leo and gave me a different sort of chill. Eventually, I woke to my phone ringing and nearly rolled all the way out of bed, groaning and groping for it, to answer groggily, “Hello?”
“You aren’t very good about covering your tracks, Elliot.” The voice on the other end woke me up immediately, like I’d been doused with ice water, and I sat bolt upright.
“Garrett,” I managed, hardly sure of what else to say.
“Did you think I was just going to let you walk away? After the way you insulted me?” he growled. “Don’t count on it. And wherever you are, don’t think I can’t follow you.”
Swallowing hard, trying to keep my voice from wavering, I ventured, “Garrett, listen. There’s no reason for you to go to all this trouble. I know better than to tell anyone about you! If you weren’t trying to track me down, you’d never have to deal with me again.”
He was laughing even while I talked. “You know, I keep hearing what a sweet-talker you are,” he told me, “but you just sound like a scared little girl to me. Anyway, save your breath, because you’re not about to change my mind. In fact, I had a little chat with your friends from Colorado today, so I’ll be seeing you real soon. You just look forward to that.”
He ended the call, and I sat still for a few seconds, almost numb as if that would hold back the fear building up in my mind. If he had talked to the last pack I’d visited, then he probably knew I was in Cavendish. They didn’t have any reason to protect me, after all, especially if he was threatening them. My immediate thought was that I needed to leave as soon as possible, but of course, Leo had already told me not to. So what the hell was I supposed to do?
Resisting the urge to throw my phone across the room because I knew I couldn’t afford a new one, I curled up tightly on the bed and shoved both hands through my hair, choking back a helpless scream. No. There’s no point. Throwing a fit isn’t going to fix this. Just breathe and think, damn it! What were my options? The ones that could actually work?
I didn’t know how serious Leo was about tracking me down if I tried to leave, but if he meant it, I couldn’t risk pissing him off by going against him. And if I was stuck in Cavendish, my only hope of evading Garrett was to hope someone there would help me. “Bears and wolves don’t get along,” I reminded myself, eyes tightly shut, trying hard to follow this train of thought to the end. “If I tell Leo I’m being threatened by a bear shifter, he might be willing to help me on principle, especially if I can convince him I’m a wolf too.”
No, I didn’t want to lie to him, but this was literally life or death. If I couldn’t get someone in this city to help keep me safe, Garrett was going to kill me. Period. Surely, one little white lie was justifiable to save my life. I really didn’t have many other choices.
While I showered and changed clothes, trying to make myself look as meek as possible, I went over exactly what story I would give Leo. I couldn’t tell him the real reason Garrett was after me, but it wouldn’t be too hard to believe that I’d done something to offend him. Bears were known to be even more aggressively violent than wolves. And even if he didn’t trust me, surely Leo wouldn’t want me dead. Right?
“It’ll be fine,” I told my reflection in the bathroom mirror, refusing to get teary-eyed and ruin my mascara. “He’ll understand. He’ll want to help. It’ll be…” My shoulders shuddered, and I dropped my head for a few deep breaths. It’ll be fine. It has to be.
Hoping to catch him in his office, I headed downtown to the Torres & Charter building, using the address I’d found online. The place was enormous and incredibly imposing. If I hadn’t been so freaked out about my own problems, I might have admired the clean architecture and tinted green glass. As it was, I didn’t really have time.
My head was down as I headed inside, meaning I didn’t see the person who was coming out at the same time and practically slammed right into him. “Oh God, I’m so sorry,” I said by reflex, awkwardly stepping to the side to let him pass.
“Don’t worry about it,” he answered offhandedly, starting to walk past me. Then he paused. “Hang on. Lark?”
Something about his voice was vaguely familiar, and when I looked up to meet his eyes, I knew why immediately. I hadn’t seen Chance Parker in six years, but I still recognized his twiggy build, his feathery blond hair, and, as he smiled, his dimples. “Chance!”
My interest in shifters started when I was about six years old and I happened to grow up next door to a family of wolves. Their youngest son, Chance, was my age and terrible at keeping secrets. He shared with me what they were, and I was at just the right age, the age where you still believe in things that should be impossible, that I was fascinated instead of frightened. He and I had been best friends throughout our entire childhoods, and I learned a ton about shifters from him, right up until we graduated high school and he moved away without a word. I was so shocked to see him that I nearly forgot my big problem for the moment.
“What are you doing here?” I asked, hugging him tightly.
“Uh, I live here,” he laughed. We stepped inside to find a relatively empty lobby area, and he pulled me aside to talk. “I moved here to join my mate’s pack. What on Earth are you doing here? Are you okay? You’re pale as a sheet.”
“Oh God, where do I start?” I groaned. Trying to be as quick as possible, I gave him a summary of my past few years: seeking out shifters to learn from them, seeking out the wrong shifters, Garrett’s grudge and how I’d been running from him. Finally, I ended with the sort of panicked conversation I’d had with Leo the night before.
“Wait,” Chance held up both hands to stop me, asking in hushed tones, “you lied to the alpha?”
“I didn’t really have much choice when he was trying to choke the life out of me!” I hissed back.
“Don’t be ridiculous. He wouldn’t have actually hurt you.”
“Well, forgive me for not recognizing that at the time,” I said with a roll of my eyes.
“I’m just saying, if you plan to stay here for…any extended period, you should go up there”—he nodded toward the elevators at the far side of the room—“and tell him the truth. The longer you keep lying to him, the worse he’s going to react when he finds out. And, he will find out...eventually.”
“Oh yeah? You think if I go up there and tell him, ‘actually I am one hundred percent human and I lied to you to save my skin,’ he’d still be willing to help me with Garrett?”
Chance frowned slightly, his eyes wandering away from mine. “I mean, no, probably not. But, I don’t know if he’ll want to get involved with some bear alpha to begin with. You might want to leave that out of your pitch altogether.”
“Great. So what am I supposed to tell him, then? How the hell can I convince him to help me?” I was asking myself as much as him, starting to panic a little again. Chance was pretty much shooting down the only viable plan I’d come up with, and I didn’t have much of a backup.
Before he could respond, the elevators dinged, and, of course, out stepped Leo. He hardly looked like the same man I’d seen last night, fully dressed in a tailored suit, dark hair swept back out of his eyes. “Chance,” he called, striding down the hall to meet us. His voice echoed off the shining stone walls and made me shiver as I remembered those dreams from the night before. “I was hoping to catch you before—” He paused as he saw me properly, his eyes narrowing. Looking between the two of us, he asked coolly, “Am I interrupting something?”
“Of course not,” Chance said, obviously a lot more comfortable around Leo than I was. Surprisingly comfortable, considering how deferential most wolves were to their alphas. “Lark was on her way to see you, actually. I sidetracked her.”
Leo raised an eyebrow, looking me over thoughtfully. Now that he was standing right next to me and I wasn’t in heels, I couldn’t help noticing just how much taller than me he was, and I hoped he couldn’t sense my nervous discomfort. “Do you two know each other?”
A second passed in silence. I had no idea how to answer him. Was Chance going to blow my cover then and there? Of course, I knew it wasn’t right to expect him to lie for me. Whatever Leo’s reaction was, I had to be prepared to accept it.
“Yeah, you could say that,” Chance agreed easily enough. Either this conversation wasn’t freaking him out at all or he’d gotten really good at playing it cool. “She was part of my old pack in Arizona.” My head snapped up toward his, and he held my gaze as he continued, “And I bet she’d fit in pretty well with us here.”
4
Leo
I was surprised enough to see them talking in the first place, but that suggestion really threw me. Chance might not have been a Cavendish native, but he was mated to one of my cousins, who had always been a close friend of mine. Point being: I knew him and trusted him pretty well. If he said Lark was part of his first pack, her half-shifter story must be for real. But that didn’t mean anything else about her was trustworthy, and it definitely didn’t mean she belonged in our pack.
My eyes flicked up and down her again, and I couldn’t help noticing she was avoiding looking at me altogether. What did she have to be so nervous about? Was she that afraid of me rejecting her? Narrowing my eyes, I asked, “Could you give us a minute? Wait by the elevators”—I jerked a thumb back over my shoulder—“and I’ll be right there.”
“Oh. Sure,” she muttered, stealing another look at Chance before obediently wandering down the hall to leave us alone.
“Did you know she was coming here?” I asked, lowering my voice a little.
“Nope. I haven’t heard from her in years,” he said, spreading his hands. “It seems like she’s had it pretty rough recently. I know our old alpha was always kind of weird about wolves who couldn’t shift, but I didn’t expect them to actually kick her out.” He glanced past me down the hall, concern written all over his face.
“You two must’ve been close if you’re still this worried about her.”
“We definitely were. I mean, not in a weird way, obviously,” he laughed, “but I would’ve called her my best friend. Part of me is glad she got away from our hometown. I’m a little worried about her just wandering by herself, though.” He gave me an expectant look, and I rolled my eyes.
“I bet. She told you we ran into each other last night?” Despite my wolf’s urging, I forced myself not to look back at her. She was showing a lot less skin this morning, but my unexplainable interest in her was still there, which told me it wasn’t just a physical attraction. It was something else, something I had way less experience with resisting.
“Yeah, and you were really suspicious the whole time,” he agreed. “But now you know there’s no need to be. What would she have to gain by turning on us? She wouldn’t.”
“You just said you haven’t spoken to her in years. What makes you so sure she’s the same person now as she was back then?” With a dark scowl, I reminded him, “We thought the same thing about Dalton, and look how that ended.” I could hardly get the bastard’s name out of my mouth without growling.
“What happened with Dalton wasn’t anyone’s fault,” Chance told me with a hard frown to match my own. “And Lark would never do something like that. Unless her personality’s done a full one-eighty over the past few years, I can say pretty confidently that she isn’t a danger to us. I understand if you don’t trust her yet. But I would really appreciate it if you’d at least give her a chance to change your mind.”
Why’d he have to be so damned diplomatic about it? And rejecting a request from him wasn’t the same as rejecting any random wolf in the city; in this case, I might actually feel kind of guilty telling him no. “I’ll talk to her, all right? I’ll see what she came here for and we’ll go from there.”
“Good enough. Now I really need to get back to the office. What did you come down to ask me?”
“Never mind,” I muttered, shaking my head, too focused on Lark to even remember what I wanted to say to him. “Go on.” After he left, I took a second to gather my thoughts before going to meet Lark by the elevators. She was standing to the left side, looking up at the wall of framed photographs featuring our entire legal team.
When she noticed me there, she glanced back and gestured to the photo on the top left. “This is your dad, right?”
I looked up at the photo and saw my own dark eyes and heavy brows, just older and more severe. “Yes,” I said as shortly as possible. “You wanted to talk, didn’t you? Come up to my office; we’ll talk.” She followed me into the elevator without protest, standing in the opposite corner of the car. Our encounter last night must have really shaken her up. I was actually starting to feel bad about it.
“So,” she started, “I didn’t see Chance’s picture downstairs. Does he work here, or…?”
“Chance? A lawyer?” I scoffed. “No. He does social work, and we’re sharing a client at the moment. Must’ve been weird for you, running into him by coincidence after all this time.”
“It was. But it was also nice seeing a friendly face for once—and it seems like his little talk with you was helpful, so I’m not complaining.”
“You’re serious about joining us, then?” I asked, throwing her a sidelong glance. “Is that what you came here to talk to me about in the first place?”
“Something like that,” she muttered, eyes searching the ceiling for something that wasn’t there. When we reached the 50th floor, I led her through the reception area with a nod to my secretary, then down the hall toward my office. Before we could get inside, a familiar voice drew my attention.
