Taming The Shifter

“Why would you care?” she asked. After all, she had shot him. Or so she’d thought...

He shrugged those mammothly broad shoulders. “I don’t know...”

“You’re mad at me for not letting you kill that man,” she reminded him. He certainly had seemed more upset about that than her shooting him.

“Yes, I am,” he freely admitted.

“Was that really you?” she asked. “That man in the alley?”

“I told you I didn’t hit you—”

“Not tonight...” She glanced to the sun-streaked blinds. “Not last night. That night a couple of months ago. The man in the alley—the one that I shot. It couldn’t have been you. Was it your twin?”

He reached for the buttons on his shirt, undoing them so that the dark gray material parted and revealed the hard muscles of his chest, dusted with silky-looking black hair. But something marred the masculine perfection—a jagged scar over his heart. He shrugged off the shirt and revealed two more puckered, nasty-looking scars in one of his broad shoulders.

She gasped and reached out, running her fingertips over first the scars on his shoulder and then the one on his chest. The scars weren’t makeup or theatrics but real skin—so warm that her fingers tingled from the contact. The very air between them heated. Her breathing slowed and grew shallow, so that she nearly panted. Her pulse raced, pounding harder and faster than that faint ache in her head.

“It was you.” She swallowed the rush of emotion and desire. “I shot you.”

“Yes, you did.”

So he’d had every reason to want to hurt her back, every reason to have struck her in the alley. But he touched her gently now, his fingers trailing from her bandage down the side of her face and along her throat. “Are you sorry?”

She shook her head, but pain reverberated inside her skull with the motion and she winced and whimpered.

“Shh...” he said. “Take it easy. Go back to sleep.” He reached for his shirt again.

But she grabbed his shoulders. “Don’t leave...”

His body tensed, and his topaz eyes dilated. “Kate...?”

“Don’t leave without telling me your name.”

His mouth, with those sexy sensual lips, curved into a slight grin. “Warrick.”

“Warrick?”

“Yes. Warrick James.”

“Warrick James,” she repeated, loving the sound of it—the feel of his name on her lips.

He leaned closer, as if she’d drawn him nearer. “Yes, Kate?”

“You’re under arrest for assault—”

He laughed at her now. “You never quit.” He moved to stand up.

But she clutched at him, holding him down on the bed. Holding him to her. “You’re not disappearing again.”

She needed to bring him in to the department, needed to prove her sanity to her coworkers. Especially the one who had been most vocal with his disdain for her story about what had happened that night.

“How are you going to stop me, Kate?” he asked. “You have no gun. You’re hurt. You’re weak.”

She winced—not in pain but in self-disgust. “I’m not weak.” She wasn’t that same scared woman she’d once been. She was older, wiser and stronger now than she had ever been. And to prove it, she launched herself at him, wrestling him down to the mattress.

He sprawled on his back without a fight, his arms wrapped loosely around her waist. Her breasts nestled against his hard, scarred chest. “You’re not weak at all,” he assured her. “You’ve overpowered me.”

“Because you let me,” she suspected.

He nodded. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

“You did.”

“Not anymore,” he said, lifting his head to close the distance between his mouth and hers. His lips skimmed across hers. “Now I just want you...”

And she wanted him, her skin heating and tingling everywhere they touched. The sheet had slipped down, so that her breasts were bare against his chest. His hair, which covered his impressive pecs, tickled and teased her nipples, bringing them to tight, sensitive points.

“And I want—” she struggled free of his loose grasp and grabbed up the sheet again, holding it between them like a shield “—to arrest you.”

“I’m not a monster, Kate.”

One of those dreamlike images rushed back to her mind—of a man that wasn’t a man. Of a man who was a monster—a mammoth, heavily muscled, hairy beast.

She didn’t believe him; she didn’t believe anything Warrick James said. She had been fooled once before and had believed a man to be a hero when he was really a monster.

So what could a monster be...but a monster?

Chapter 4

The human detective hadn’t killed Warrick, but what she’d done might have been far worse. She had bewitched him.

“Poor bastard,” Reagan murmured to himself as he sat alone at the bar in Club Underground, staring into his drink. He, too, had become besotted with a woman—so besotted that he’d lost himself in her. He had lost his honor and his integrity. He’d also lost his father and his brother.

Even if he could talk to Warrick and could actually get through to him, their relationship was destroyed. Reagan had destroyed it and maybe because of that, he deserved to be destroyed, as well. But Warrick didn’t deserve it. He didn’t deserve any more pain.

And neither did she. Reagan glanced down at the picture he’d set on the bar next to his untouched drink, and he sucked in a breath at her beauty. With her silvery blond hair and mesmerizing green eyes, she was beyond beautiful; she was ethereal. Reagan needed to get back to St. James—to her—before something happened to her. If only he’d had time to bring her with him...

But everything had happened so quickly—had gone so wrong. There hadn’t been time. And after what he’d done, he wasn’t sure she would have gone with him. Like Warrick, she would probably hate and distrust him, too.

And, he assured himself, nothing would happen to her—until he was dead. Then she would be of no use to the pack anymore. They couldn’t bait a dead man.

“You’re about to break that glass,” the bartender warned.

Reagan hadn’t even been aware how tightly he’d been gripping it until Sebastian Culver commented on it. Then he glanced at his hand and noticed how his fingers had gone white. He forced himself to release the glass.

“It’s not like you’re going to drink it anyway,” the vampire bartender remarked. “You just sit here every day until midnight—waiting for him to show up.”

And after midnight, he took to the rooftops, so that he could watch the city. So that he could watch Warrick.

The bartender shook his head. “I don’t get it...”

“What?” Reagan asked.

“He wants to kill you,” Sebastian told him what he already knew. “You should be trying to avoid him. Instead, you’re trying to find him.”

He had been trying to find him—to make sure that the human detective hadn’t wounded him too badly. But now Reagan knew where to find Warrick—near her. And he’d chosen to avoid a private confrontation that would probably end as badly as the one in the alley had. With them both wounded...

“I want him to find me,” Reagan corrected the bartender’s misassumption. “Here—in a public place.”

“You think that’ll stop him from trying to kill you?” Sebastian glanced around the crowded bar and snorted derisively. “Gunshots to his shoulder and his heart didn’t stop him from trying to tear you apart. I don’t think anything will stop him.”

Reagan sighed in resignation and reluctant agreement. “Not even the truth...”

“You’re wasting your time here,” Sebastian said.

“Not if I can save his life...” Then it would all be worth it. Even leaving Sylvia...

“Then you better find him,” Sebastian suggested.

“I know where he is,” he said. “With the detective.”

Sebastian shook his head. “He’s not with Kate.” He chuckled. “Maybe she’s done what she tried that night. Maybe she arrested him.”

Alarm slammed through Reagan. If Warrick was in custody and changed...

More than just his life would be lost.

* * *

Warrick stared through the bars, his hands grasping the old brass rungs. “Glad you’re here.”

“Glad I found you, boy,” the old man said. “You’ve been gone for much too long.”

“I can’t go back.”

“Not until he’s dead,” Stefan James agreed. His hair was more gray than black, his eyes nearly the same steely gray. But his age didn’t indicate weakness; if anything it represented the reverse. The older and wiser Uncle Stefan had grown, the stronger he had become. He was a good leader for the pack, but he wasn’t Warrick’s father. That was whose advice Warrick really needed, but he could never speak to his father again.

Because of Reagan...

Warrick’s hands slid from the rungs and he walked around the partition wall that separated the tellers from the vault area of the former bank. Or it would have had the bank still been operational but it had been deserted...until a few months ago when someone had taken up residence to hide inside the vault. As if that would have prevented Warrick from picking up his scent...

“You tracked him here?” Uncle asked, sniffing the air.

Warrick nodded.

“His scent is old, his trail cold,” the old man remarked. “But you’re still here. Why?” That steely-gray gaze narrowed as Uncle totally focused on Warrick.

“He’ll come back,” he claimed. But he wasn’t sure. He had only the vampire bartender’s word that Reagan hadn’t left the city. And why should he trust a vampire who didn’t trust him, either?

“You thought he would come back home, too,” Uncle Stefan reminded him.

“For her...”

“But he left his mate alone,” Uncle remarked, watching him closely—probably for that flash of jealousy and rage that Warrick had always exhibited when it came to her. “And he keeps running.”

“Because he knows I’m chasing him.”

“You’re not chasing him,” Uncle said with a disparaging snort. “You’re chasing your honor.”

“My honor or vengeance?” Warrick wondered now. And his hunger for vengeance wasn’t as overwhelming as it had once been. Probably because his hunger for Kate was greater. He shouldn’t have left her...

“Both, in this case,” the old man asserted. “You cannot lead the pack if you cannot claim justice for crimes committed against it.”

“I’m not leading the pack,” Warrick pointed out. “You are.”

Stefan shrugged as if the leadership role meant nothing to him. “It was always your father’s wish that one of his sons take over for him when he was no longer able to fill the role of leader.”

Warrick flinched, remembering how he’d found his father. All that blood spilling from his wounded heart, leaving nothing but the corpse of an old werewolf as, even dead, he turned at midnight. None of his power or intimidation had remained—nothing of the spirit of the fearsome leader and father.

But now another memory haunted Warrick more, of Kate lying alone in that alley in a pool of her own blood.

“Perhaps you are the right one to lead the pack, Uncle,” Warrick said of the role he, himself, had wanted to fill since he was just a pup. But as the younger son, he had never been groomed for the role—had never really been considered a possible candidate by anyone but his uncle.

Uncle Stefan shook his head. “I am an old man,” he said. “I have no sons now. No one to carry on when I grow too weak to lead. You are the future, Warrick.”

“Only if I can reclaim my honor.”

“You set off on this quest for justice,” Uncle reminded him, his brow furrowing with confusion. “Your belly burned with the desire for it.”

Warrick remembered when the heat and hunger of his rage had consumed him. Rage had ruled his life, had blinded him to anything but vengeance. Blinded him so much that he hadn’t even noticed the woman in the alley until she’d fired those shots into his shoulder.

It ached still, all these months after the shooting, just as his body ached for hers days after they had touched skin to skin—lips to lips. Now the desire burning in his belly was to possess Kate Wever in every way. She was so beautiful—all silky skin over sleek muscle. As he had once tried to haunt her, she haunted him now.

“What has changed for you?” Uncle asked. “Did he get to you?”

He had tried, that night in the alley—had tried to spew his lies and manipulations. That was when Warrick had threatened to rip out his throat, so that he wouldn’t have to listen. He shook his head. “Not him.”

“But someone has?”

He shook his head again, unwilling to tell his uncle about Kate for fear of sounding like a fickle boy instead of the decisive man necessary to lead a pack. It wasn’t as if he and Kate had a future anyway. She wanted to arrest him now for assault. What would she do once he’d committed murder?

He sighed. “Perhaps I am just wearying of the chase.”

Maybe Warrick had finally realized that his quest had been more about vengeance and pride than justice. But now, after finding Kate bleeding in the alley those few nights ago, it was less about vengeance and more about Kate.

How could he leave Zantrax when she was in danger, especially when he might be the reason she was in danger?

* * *

Blood stained the cement floor of the secret surgical room. Was some of that Kate’s blood? Paige shuddered to consider it, to remember that her friend had been that badly hurt. That strong, fierce Kate had been lying unconscious and vulnerable in an alley.

“Are you sure she’s all right?” she asked her husband. “She didn’t come to happy hour again.”

Ben nodded, but there was concern in his dark eyes. “As long as she doesn’t remember being here, she should be all right.” He poured a bottle of something onto the floor that dissolved the blood and cleaned the cement, but it couldn’t remove every trace of the horrors that happened in that room. It was as if screams of pain hung in the air with the pungent scent of the cleanser.

“She doesn’t remember,” Paige said. “She didn’t even mention getting hurt when I called her.” And Paige hadn’t been able to bring it up for fear that Kate would remember who had treated her injury and where.

“She has to know she was hurt,” Ben said. “She has stitches and a bandage.”

“Then why didn’t she mention it?” Maybe Kate had remembered more than she was willing to admit to Paige.

“Because she’s Kate,” Ben replied. “She’s proud and independent. And she wouldn’t want you to worry. And she especially wouldn’t want you to fuss over her.”

“Or she didn’t want me to know what she remembered and warn you,” Paige said.

Ben glanced at the security monitor that showed the video feed from the cameras outside both reinforced steel doors. One led to the hallway to the club; the other to the sewer. Both had been reinforced so that vampires—or other creatures—couldn’t get inside unless Ben let them in. It wasn’t just for his protection but for the protection of whatever patient he was treating. She looked at the monitor, too, and breathed a sigh of relief that both the hallway and the sewer were empty.

“She’s not out there,” Ben said. “And she would be if she had any suspicions about this place.”

“She has suspicions,” Paige reminded him. Kate had wanted inside this room back when somebody had been stalking Paige. But Sebastian had convinced her that the entrance to the sewer had been sealed off and the door led to nowhere.

If Kate ever found this room, Paige would lose her best friend. The society would order the human’s death.

As if he’d read her mind, Ben reached out and wrapped an arm around her shoulders. But because he knew her so well he offered her no false assurances. He only offered his love as he held her closely.

“I don’t want to lose her,” Paige said.

“Maybe we can talk to the society,” Ben said.

She looked up at him and arched a brow. As if the society would listen to her. She had no way to negotiate—not the way the society’s special surgeon could.

“Maybe I can,” he amended his comment, his sexy mouth curving into a slight grin.

“But the society isn’t the only danger she’s in,” Paige said. “What about this other creature or creatures? You’ve said there are two of them.”

Ben groaned. “I shouldn’t have told you about them.”

“We promised,” she reminded him. “No more secrets.” At least not between the two of them. But they kept secrets—the secrets of the society—from all their human friends. “Are they a danger to her?”

“The pack has the same law the society does,” Ben reminded her. “But the one she shot—he was the one who brought her here for me to treat.”

“You think he cares about her?”

Ben shrugged. “I don’t know what to think about Warrick James. The night I treated his gunshot wounds he was furious with her.”

“So he could have been the one who attacked her in the alley,” Paige said. She wanted to meet this creature who was threatening her best friend.

“I don’t know if he attacked her, or if she was attacked because of him,” Ben said. “But I feel like he might be more responsible than the society.”

Or was that only what he wanted to believe because he and Paige and the child they’d adopted were all members of the society? It could have been a vampire who’d attacked Kate. And if that was the case, she was lucky she had only taken a blow to her head instead of a fang to her throat. But if she kept investigating, Kate was too good a detective to not figure out the secret and get herself killed.

* * *

Goose bumps lifted on Kate’s skin as she stepped into the thick darkness of the alley. Not even her flashlight beam could chase away the shadows this late at night. The anonymous call, promising to reveal everything she wanted to know, had lured her back to the alley. She had considered that it was just a ploy to get her here—to hurt her again. Yet she hadn’t been able to ignore it. Zantrax PD made it a policy to follow up on every silent observer tip. Maybe this tip was even better since it had come into her direct line and had been traced back to a public phone near Club Underground. A real witness could have made that call. Maybe Bernie.

Or the person who’d struck her that night...

She was a detective. Whatever risk it took to learn what she wanted to know was a risk she was willing to take. Of course she wasn’t usually foolish enough to go into a potentially dangerous situation without backup. But this was the second night she had taken that risk. Third, if she counted that first night when she’d chased Warrick James into the alley. But then she hadn’t wanted to risk his killing that man.

And now, she hadn’t requested backup because she didn’t want to risk her reputation. Her “missing” body case had undone the respect she’d fought for years to gain in the department. He had ridiculed her the most. Not the man she’d shot but the man from her past, the man she wished she could leave in her past— forgotten only to surface in rare nightmares to remind her to never make that mistake again.

To never trust.

But they worked together. He worked nights, though, and she worked days. Except now when she was off the clock but not really off duty.

Tonight she was more prepared, though. Her gun wasn’t in her holster but clasped tightly in her right hand while her left grasped the flashlight. She shone the beam around the alley, illuminating only one small circle of darkness at a time. Nothing moved in the shadows, though.

Well, nothing human. Small feet scurried across the asphalt. Confident she was alone, Kate gave in to a shudder of revulsion over the nearness of the rats.

“Hello?” she called out. “Anyone here?”

Why call her if the person had no intention of showing up? He or she had gone to the trouble of disguising his or her voice so that it was unrecognizable. Maybe it was just a joke. Since that night when they had all searched for a body no one had been able to find, her coworkers had subjected her to many jokes. Like the bloody dummy left in her desk chair. And her locker and even her car...

If only she had been able to arrest Warrick the other night...to bring him in to the department and show his scars. She could have proved that she hadn’t imagined it all. That she hadn’t imagined him. He was real.

But too strong for her to have overpowered without her gun. Hell, when she’d had her gun she hadn’t been able to stop him. At least not permanently. He had survived injuries that would have killed anyone else.

Was he real?

He had disappeared from her bedroom just as quickly as he had the first night she’d discovered him there. One minute he had been there, almost as if he’d been watching over and protecting her after her concussion. Then the next minute he’d been gone...before she’d been able to find her gun or her cuffs. Before she’d been able to arrest him.

Or make love with him...

She wasn’t sure which she’d wanted more. Or at least she wasn’t willing to admit which she’d wanted more.

“Warrick?” Could he have been her caller? Somehow she doubted he would have gone to the trouble of altering his voice, though.

Who would have gone to the trouble of luring her here only to not show up? It had to be a joke. She sighed over her wasted time. But it didn’t have to be wasted. She could finish the investigation a concussion had ended those few nights ago. Instead of putting away her gun and putting down the flashlight, she leaned her shoulder against the Dumpster and shoved.

The metal creaked and squeaked as it edged slightly across the asphalt. Hell, she hadn’t entirely gained back her strength after the concussion. But the Dumpster seemed heavier tonight. It certainly smelled as if it was full since mingled putrid odors wafted out and overwhelmed her.

One scent—sweet and metallic—was new.

She rose up on tiptoe and shone the flashlight inside the Dumpster. The beam illuminated a man’s face, his skin pale but for the dirt and grease smeared across it and his beard.

“Bernie!” She recognized the homeless man from whom she had taken the statement about the people he had seen flying from the alley.

Maybe that was how Warrick disappeared so quickly from place to place. Usually she would never consider such a fantastic explanation, but at least it was an explanation. And that was more than she had managed to discover on her own.

She waved the flashlight in the homeless man’s face. “Bernie!”

The vagrant’s eyes were closed. Had he passed out drunk? She could smell the liquor, too, that saturated his clothes and oozed from his pores. The beam of light shining in his face didn’t even stir him.

Her pulse quickened and she moved the flashlight down. Horror, over what she saw, rushed up to gag her. But she choked it down just enough to scream.

* * *

He had already been tracking her scent, not surprised that it was leading him to the alley, when he heard her scream. The sound of the terror in her voice raised all the hair on Warrick’s body. She needed him.

But could he come to her like this?

It was after midnight, so he had taken his other form—the form he was from midnight to dawn every night. The form that might frighten her more than what was already in the alley with her. Unless...

He ran to her, legs straining to close the distance between them before she could be hurt again. Before he could hurt her...

But when he burst into the alley, he found her alone, staring into the Dumpster. What had she discovered this time that she shouldn’t have?

Then she turned and discovered...him. Fear had already drained her face of all color, leaving her skin deathly pale in the dark. Now her eyes widened, and another scream rose to her open lips. But she bit it back, as if afraid of startling him. “Stay away,” she murmured, cowering from him.

But the Dumpster was at her back, and he stood between her and the only exit. He was down on all fours, hoping to resemble more dog than werewolf. But dogs weren’t this big, this powerful, and she knew it.

“What are you...?” she asked the question, but he doubted she expected an answer.