“Isabel. You're Isabel.”
Relief, followed by an unexpected wave of disappointment, poured through me. Whatever woman he was looking for, I was not her. No matter what that wild feeling was, I was the wrong person. Must have been exhaustion paired with some really vicious static electricity. Yup, that made sense. While a part of me was glad to not get tied up in another outrageous situation, I couldn't help but wish for fleeting moment that I was the woman for this ridiculously gorgeous, sexy man. Yeah, he looks dangerous, but maybe he was the right kind of dangerous. The kind of dangerous that would save my ass.
And if just touching his hand made me feel like that, imagine how his tongue on my…
No. No. No. Focus.
“Sorry, buddy,” I said, glancing over my shoulder. I could still hear the sirens, but they didn’t seem to be any closer. Were they parking around here? Trying to corner me, trap me? “My name’s Cara.”
“It used to be Isabel,” he said. “We met over two decades ago. And I've been looking for you ever since... I’ve been trying for years.”
I’m perfectly capable of saving myself to a point, but when several towns’ worth of cops are hot on my trail and I have absolutely nothing on me to get out of the situation, I really wouldn't mind a little carpe diem at some point. But if I somehow escaped the cops only to fall in the hands of some stalker, I was going to be really pissed. “I'm not Isabel and I've never seen you before my life. I really, really think that you have the wrong person. I'm going to have to ask you to leave me alone,” I said with all bravado possible. Wasn’t much. “I am dealing with a problematic situation right now, and you're the last complication that I need.”
To my surprise, he laughed ruefully. “I hope, at the end, you won't mind my particular complication.”
Oh, hell no. I was not dealing with that shit on top of everything else.
But his next words knocked all wind from my sails. “You got your eyes from your father, but you have your mother's hair.”
Those words were like a punch in the stomach. My gray eyes are mirror images of my father’s, but my long black hair was not. I had always figured it was from my mother, but had always been too nervous to ask.
“How do you know my father?” I asked nervously. No way was he a cop. Nothing about him screamed cop. But what if he was one of the sheriff’s men? That could be how he knows about my father. And as for my mother, he could just be making this up, since it’s pretty clear I don’t have my father’s brown hair. The man could just be saying what it takes to make me let down my guard and then he would kidnap me and bring me back to the sheriff or some small-time drug dealer where… I shuddered.
He knelt down, so that he no longer loomed over me. His gaze was intense, direct, and so earnest it looked almost out of place given he could be the evil, hot vampire in some science fiction movie.
“Our families knew each other decades ago. And then your father vanished with you the night of the attack. We’re trying to figure out what happened after that. And I know that it's you, Isabel,” he continued. “That feeling on your leg? When you put your hand there moments ago? That's because there's a little birthmark there in the shape of the diamond, and I have a matching one on my leg.” He reached down and casually tore a wide gash in his pants, like they were made of paper instead of stiff jeans material. There, on his thigh, in the same place as mine, was an identical diamond shape.
“Oh, my God,” I said faintly. “How?”
A siren shrieked nearby, and the sounds of cops closing in became audible.
“We can discuss this later. Now, we need to get out of here,” this stranger, Wyatt, said. For the first time, he sounded urgent. “Shift and follow me?”
“What?”
“Can you shift, or do you have…” He stopped at my confused expression as I got to my feet. He followed suit, and seemed to be about half a foot taller than me.
“What exactly do you want me to shift?” I asked, and spread my arms out to show him they’re empty. “I’m not carrying anything.”
“Oh, boy,” he muttered, so quietly I wondered if I’d misheard him. “Okay. Plan A through D are all out. Plan E time. We’re not going to make it past these cops if you’re… with the two of us together like this. So here’s the deal. I need you to run out from behind these buildings, turn left and go down two blocks to a small street called Brayer, and on the corner is a dark gray van. Only vehicle in the area not under a foot of snow.”
He pulled a set of keys out of his pocket and tossed them to me. “If you’re being pursued, leave me behind. Get out of here. My fighters will find you even if you ditch the van, and they’ll protect you if I can’t. When I tell you to run, do so, and whatever you do, do not look behind you.”
“Hey, you!” A loud male voice sounded behind me. “Police!”
“Run.”
For the second time in twelve hours, I ran, and as I did so, I glanced behind me. Just in time to see the beautiful man with golden hair change before my eyes into a huge, snarling wolf that flung itself at the terrified cops.
Chapter Six
Seyville, Nebraska
Wyatt
The cops all escaped unscathed—I just scared the shit out of them and darted away before they could regroup. They didn’t see me shift, but one of them definitely pissed himself when he saw me.
I followed her scent back to the van, shifted to human form, popped the back open, yanked on some spare clothing I always kept for situations like this, and then jogged to the driver’s seat to get in while huge clumps of snowflakes piled up on the roof. Good. Heavy snow meant fewer tracks.
Everything inside of me was screaming to touch her again. I now knew her scent, could pick out the timber of her voice in the middle of a thousand screams, knew what shade her beautiful eyes were, how her dark hair with just a hint of wave tumbled around the ragged collar of her well-worn coat. I wanted to feel her so badly. Know how warm her skin was, how soft that delicate patch was on her wrist, her neck, the arch of her spine…
It took a moment to realize that she’d not only searched the van, but that she’d found the gun. And it was pointed right at me. “Isabel, put the gun down.”
She glared at me. “My name is Cara, damnit.”
“Well. In that case, Cara, please put the damn gun down.”
“You… you changed into a wolf.”
Fan-fucking-tastic. I was mated to an Orpheus. “So you looked back, then.”
“How?” She honestly sounded more baffled than scared.
“I’m a shifter. I was born one.” The keys were in the ignition, and the engine rumbled under us. She was scared—but still seemed to trust me. Or at least wanted to use me as a getaway. Not that I blamed her.
“Just… just you?”
Oh, boy. “I lead my pack of shifters in another territory not too far from here. Any reason why you went to the van and didn’t run?" I pressed hard on the gas, and heard the engine whine in protest. Driving this fast in these conditions was dangerous as hell, but the people after her were more likely to kill her than an ice patch.
"Because I have questions, and you're the only person who seems to have answers."
"Not scared I'll bite you? Make you howl at the moon?"
Her jaw slackened. "So you're a werewolf shifter?"
I waited a beat, then sent her a smile that had weakened many female knees before. "Not a werewolf. Just a wolf shifter."
She’d been staring at my mouth, but snapped out of it and scowled. "Are werewolves real?"
"Not that I know of. But bet you didn't know shifters existed either, so it's anyone's guess."
"I'm not scared of you," she said after a pause. "I want answers."
I decided to not make a comment about how her pulse was racing. I could smell fear on someone without being mated to them, but the emotional ties only reinforced it. She was terrified, but hid it well. A good quality to have. "If you aren't scared of me, why the gun?"