Wolf at the Door

chapter Forty-six

“Whoa!”

“Edward—”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa!” Edward had more than jumped out of his seat. He had rocketed out of the damned thing. Adrenaline was a wonderful thing.

He’d jumped up and run over and stood in front of Rachael. “She didn’t do it!”

“We know.”

“So just pack up your arresting paperwork and back off, Beriberi!”

“Oh, don’t tell me that stupid nickname’s gonna stick now.”

“Focus, please! Someone’s out to make Rachael look bad. Like they even could, I mean, look at the woman. They don’t come much hotter than this, right?” He gestured to her. She hadn’t moved from her seat, just shifted her weight so she could tip her head back and look straight at him. “That’s what all this has been about, making vampires look bad to Pack, and Pack look bad to vamps.”

“That was our theory as well.”

“There’s no way she went to any of those crime scenes and committed any of those murders to make those crime scenes. No way!”

“Edward—”

“Shut up, Rache,” he muttered. Then, louder, “You guys don’t even know, okay? She’s as smart as she is hot, but even better, she’s as nice as she is smart. Do you know how rare it is to find a chick this smokin’ who isn’t also a huge bitch? Huh? Because it’s pretty f*cking rare!”

“Awwww,” the queen said. Then: “He’s right. We are rare.”

“She’s not out here by choice, she got sent here, like for a job. She was made to yank her entire life out by the roots and drag it halfway across the country, get it? And she’s such a good person she didn’t question any of it! So now here she is, and bodies are piling up, and that’s not her fault and it’s probably not even you guys’ fault, but here she is anyway, stuck in the middle of a mess she didn’t make. But she’s here, right? Getting shit done. She got sent to keep an eye on you guys . . . and you land her in this kind of trouble? When she could have said f*ck you to all of us and stayed home?”

He knelt beside her, took her hand in his—

worry anger fear anger love love love love worry anger love love love

—and said, “Rache, I know you’d never do anything like this. These guys aren’t touching you. Nobody’s laying a finger on you, got it? We’ll get you out of here and you’ll call your cousin and he’ll fix everything or you’ll engage your awesome brain and solve the crime.

“But I’m not letting them put you in a cage for even one nanosecond. I know you guys—the Pack . . . well, I don’t know the Pack. I only know you. And you couldn’t stand being in a cage. Not even a dinky holding cell downtown for a couple of hours. And as long as I’m here—”

“Encouraging you to add resisting arrest to your résumé,” Detective Berry said dryly.

“—nobody’s gonna lock you away.”

“Edward . . .”

“I mean it, Rache.”

“Edward, you’re a fool.”

“Thanks, I lo—wait. You aren’t saying the lines I imagined you’d say,” he admitted, looking flustered.

“You’re a fool and I love you.”

“Oh. I imagined you saying something like that, even if you’re not saying it exactly the way I pictured.”

“I’d like to take you for my mate. I’d like to bear your cubs.”

He looked at her. He looked and his eyes got bigger and bigger and she was getting a little alarmed—would he pass out?—when he turned away from her and said to the room, “Y’see? She loves me! And I love her! (I’ve just realized.)” He turned to her. “You knew I loved you before I did. This is one of those cool werewolf things where you knew something about me I didn’t know!”

“That isn’t true, Edward.” She kissed him, a long one full of what they both knew. “You knew before your body could give me the cues. Otherwise, there wouldn’t have been anything for me to pick up on.”

He quickly kissed her back. “I love you.”

“Yes, I know.”

“Are you really gonna be smug about this?”

“Sure.”

He laughed, and then remembered they wanted to arrest his lover—except was she now his fiancée, maybe?—for multiple murders.

Right. Back to work.