Читать книгу Half Wolf - Linda Thomas-Sundstrom - Страница 11

Chapter 4

Michael stopped on the threshold of Kaitlin’s apartment. He looked first to Rena, who nodded her head before slipping past him. Damn it. Rena knew about Kaitlin, which meant they probably all knew.

His gaze slipped to the waif on the bed who had compressed herself into a tight ball near the headboard. The auburn-haired beauty was staring at him with a wide-eyed, stunned expression, as though she’d seen a ghost.

Because the bandage he’d taped to her neck had been removed, he knew what was coming. Hard questions and demands for explanations would be the next things out of her mouth.

Really, this nursemaid routine didn’t suit him. He was better at chasing bad guys. And Rena had no right to jump on his parade.

“I see you’ve met Rena.”

He leaned against the doorjamb, not quite sure what to say now that Kaitlin was fully awake. She was staring. Her eyes were clear and focused.

“I didn’t tell the others about you because I wanted to make sure you were all right first. Otherwise...”

She finished the remark for him in a voice that was stronger than he would have expected. “Otherwise there might not be any me to tell them about, since I’d be dead.”

He could sense the fear radiating off her in waves similar to the rippling heat of a desert mirage. Only colder. He felt that fear from six feet away. Yet Kaitlin was showing an inkling of the spirit that had attracted him to her in the first place. Even half-dead, he’d sensed she was a fighter.

He couldn’t look away from the tight, pale face that wasn’t quite like any other human’s face he’d seen. Light, this time from streaks of morning sun, seemed to caress Kaitlin’s delicate contours. He’d noticed those contours from the start, too. What he’d failed to remember correctly was the impact she had on him when those big eyes of hers were open. This fragile flower took his breath away.

And if he admitted that to anyone, or took it too seriously, he would no longer resemble the wolf he’d always thought he was, and he would dishonor his fallen mother’s memory.

Humans were a fickle, dangerous species. Some were even his enemies. And here he was, protecting one from things that went bump in the night.

He observed Kaitlin steadily. “You’re pale, but looking better. Does your neck hurt very badly?”

“Bad enough,” she said.

Life pulsed beneath her skin. In this case, he could sense anger, an indication of her turnaround, and yet Kaitlin looked even more waifish than before. Already thin, she’d lost more weight in the past two days—a sign of her new, faster metabolism kicking in. If she didn’t eat something soon, her nerves would fry.

Michael lifted the paper bag in his hand and watched her glance at it. “Breakfast.”

She didn’t acknowledge that.

“Do you feel sick, Kaitlin?”

She shook her head. “I’m not sick, I’m scared. I’m not sure who you are, why you’re here or what’s going on.”

He nodded. “I do realize how difficult this must be. Let me just say that I found you in the park, injured pretty badly, and that I helped in the best way I could.”

She pointed to the bandage. “You did that?”

“Yes.”

“You brought me here?”

He nodded. “As soon as I found out who you were and where you belonged.”

Her hand went to her neck. “I can’t feel stitches.”

“You didn’t need them.”

“I didn’t go to a hospital?”

“No. No hospital.”

“Then the injury wasn’t so bad after all?”

“It could have been your death,” he said, “if untended.”

She took a moment to reply. “If you hadn’t come along with a bandage, you mean?”

Her eyes were pleading with him to lie. She wanted him to laugh and tell her this was all a big joke of the worst kind and that things would be fine now. Of course, he couldn’t say any of those things and mean them. Though she had been faced with this situation for only fifty-some hours, she would have to come to terms with what had become her new reality.

“Lucky for you, I did come along,” he said.

Kaitlin’s shaking intensified, though Michael didn’t sense shock setting in, and that was another miracle. Her fragile exterior hid a decent backbone that made her want to try to deal.

“Public places are bad for us,” he explained, driven to speech by the intensity of her gaze. “Finding out about what we are would mean the end of many of us. Humans aren’t partial to sharing their planet with those who are unlike them. Given that, I couldn’t take you to your real home, either.”

She didn’t immediately press him for more information about that. Her attention moved again to the paper bag in his hand before coming back to his face. When her eyes met his, an electrified shudder passed through him that Michael didn’t like at all.

Her bloodless lips parted. “I dreamed that I had a near-death experience. Could that be true?”

“Maybe now isn’t the time for details.”

“Because you don’t have any details?” she challenged.

“Timing is everything, Kaitlin. Those details might hinder the healing process.”

Would you want to hear how you nearly bit the big one, and that your life force was drained by a fanged parasite? Or that you now will be initiated into the moon’s cult?

He kept those things to himself.

Her gaze remained nearly as steady as his was. “Maybe you’ll tell me that I’m going to be a wolf, and that you really are one, too,” she said. “Like in my dreams, and according to Rena.”

Michael glanced to the corridor before turning back to the bed. Rena had gone, but had obviously spilled some of the dirt he had intended to hold back.

Moving slowly, he stepped inside the apartment and closed the door behind him. “If we’re to have a chat, mind if I come in?”

“I thought only vampires had to ask for permission to enter a building.”

He smiled. “I was being polite. We have no such rule governing our behavior.”

“No. I don’t suppose animals have a need for rules,” she said.

She was still staring at him, and hadn’t moved. Michael didn’t attempt another step in her direction.

“Did it really happen?” she asked. “Was I attacked?”

“Yes.”

“You helped me?”

He nodded.

“None of it was a dream?”

“Afraid not.”

She rubbed her eyes, daring to momentarily take her attention from him, and whispered, “Shit.”

“I’m sorry,” Michael said.

“For helping me?”

“For how that’s going to turn out.”

She sat up straighter, resignation in her expression. “Okay. If it wasn’t a dream, tell me about what’s going on. That’s what you meant, isn’t it, by withholding details? There’s a surprise in store?”

“Truly, now might not be the time for the tough ones.”

“Tough for me, or for you?”

“Both of us, actually,” Michael said.

She fingered her neck. “Your friend came here to tell me I’m going to become something other than human. Since she was pretty convincing, does that make me crazy if I decide to believe her?”

“Not crazy,” Michael said. “Enlightened.”

He watched Kaitlin briefly close her eyes and exhale a slow stream of the air that he had helped to preserve by giving her back her life. Thoughts of that rescue brought mixed feelings because of all the unseen consequences. Still, damn it, if he had it to do all over again, he’d have done the same thing.

“You aren’t a figment of my imagination?” She asked this seriously.

“No figment, Kaitlin.”

She seemed to consider his reply. “If the attack was real, what about the other parts of what I thought was a dream? Did we run through a park?”

“We did. Last night.”

“Naked?”

“One of us didn’t have many clothes on. Clothes get in the way of a shape-shift.”

That shut her up for a long minute. Then she said, “No dream, really? None of it?”

“I’m sorry.”

Her eyes were even wider now, and trained on him in a way that made Michael’s internal wolf whine. Kaitlin’s gray gaze was direct and accusatory. “What is an Alpha?”

Her change in direction didn’t throw him, but her use of that word did. Michael promised himself that he would be having some serious words with Rena later on.

“An Alpha is the leader of a pack,” he said.

“A pack of wolves.”

He nodded, almost able to see the wheels of Kaitlin’s mind turning. The scent of her desperation tinged the air, though she was fighting for control over her part of the conversation, knowing its importance had to override her fear levels.

“I’ve never liked big, scary animals.” She said this breathlessly. “And now I’m supposedly going to be one?” Her eyes found his. “Like you? Like what I think I saw you turn into?”

Michael’s heart picked up its pace. He had made a vow never to get this close to a human female under any circumstances and had obliterated that vow with her because...well, again, he wasn’t sure why this woman affected him so much.

“Not exactly like me,” he replied. “Though you will be something close enough.”

Her jaw tensed, sending a spiral of pain through the wound on her neck, pain that Michael also felt. He supposed he was sharing her feelings due to having placed his blood in her veins, and that blood was giving him a heads-up on a few things. But that kind of sharing deepened his determination to stay as far away from Kaitlin Davies as possible in the future, once she knew the score.

“What does close enough mean?” she asked.

It seemed they were going to aim for the hard ones after all. This little fireball wasn’t about to let him off the hook.

Could he blame her?

“You now have Lycan blood in your veins,” he said.

He saw that the word Lycan didn’t ring a bell.

“Lycans are a very old lineage of shape-shifters,” Michael said.

Her head came up.

“Lycans can’t replicate themselves exactly, unless two Lycans mate and produce pure-blooded offspring. Because you now have Lycan blood in your veins, you’ll be a special combination of wolf and human, two things that can only mix well if the recipient of the blood gift is strong enough to handle their wolf, and pays close attention to the changes.”

“Blood gift? Hell, that’s what you call it?” Her eyes had gone glassy, though they still maintained focus. “Lycan means wolf?”

“Yes.”

“If this is true, I won’t be a real wolf?”

“Half wolf,” Michael reiterated. “And half human. Werewolf.”

She repeated that term to herself in a whisper, as if trying it on for size, and took time to formulate her next question. “You aren’t a werewolf?”

“Lycans are Weres, yes, and yet some older Were families have traits that actually fall under the categorization of shape-shifter. When those like us change, we take on animal form. Wolf form.”

None of this appeared to deter Kaitlin from pursuing her agenda of gaining all the information she could.

“What about the monster that attacked me?” she asked.

“Vampire.”

She closed her eyes and clasped her knees tighter, as if one of those monsters had gotten into the room. Michael sensed the rise in her blood pressure. There was now a faint tinge of pink in her cheeks.

“That was real.” She hung her head. “God. True. There are such things. No joke.”

“Hard to believe, I know,” Michael said. “For me, it’s equally as hard to believe that there are regular old humans that can’t change into anything.”

He walked to the side of the bed and set the paper bag on the table beside it. Kaitlin glanced up again. Beneath that gaze he felt wrong somehow, and that neither of them deserved the repercussions of what he had set in motion. His blood had bound them together in special ways. Before too long, he would have to break some of those invisible chains he already felt linking to her.

“You chased that vampire away,” she said.

“I took care of the problem so that vampire can’t hurt others or make more mindless monsters.”

“You don’t consider yourself a monster?”

“I suppose that’s a matter of perspective. But no, I don’t.”

“Supernatural vigilante, then?” she asked.

“My pack and others like us try to keep the peace. Some of us work behind the scenes to chase the undead away from the human population because only in that way can we, as a Were species, stay safe.”

There was more to tell her. Things she needed to know—such as the fact that she had spent one entire day and night in a coma, fighting the transition from human to something else.

He could tell her that he’d never seen a human take such a short time to pass through the first phase of moving toward their half wolf status, and that she was an anomaly.

He could warn Kaitlin that possibly she would hit the next wall in the hours to come, and therefore would need him for a while more, though he dreaded that need for closeness.

He could not bring up the fact that humans, like the one she had been, had hunted and killed his mother for sport.

“Then I should be grateful you were out there.” She surprised him again with a complete change of tone. Her voice became softer now, with an almost magical ability to work its way under his tough Were skin. The prickle of anticipation Michael felt when he observed Kaitlin was always unexpected, and wholly unique.

He fended off the desire to shift right there and avoid those gray eyes, the way he had done the night before. But shifting was a private matter, and Kaitlin had already seen him do it twice.

“Thank you for whatever you did to keep me alive, Michael. I mean it.”

She was still curled up in a ball, knees drawn tight. “I didn’t want to die and prayed for intervention. So, really, you can be considered an angel. My angel.”

Michael counted the passing seconds by his own racing heartbeats, knowing that this was the moment to take his leave. He wanted to argue again that he was the furthest thing possible from an angel. He had lethal teeth, ten razor-sharp claws, and he pretty much adhered to the moon’s beck and call. What kind of angel used the moon for their higher power?

He was a tough fighter for the rights of his kind to exist in this world, and yet his reactions to Kaitlin left him feeling fuzzy and ill-defined about the whole human-versus-wolf thing. These feelings were new and unwelcome. They left him feeling vulnerable when that word had never entered his vocabulary. They made him feel guilty about breaking certain vows.

I’m not to be trusted here, Kaitlin, this close to you.

He had to take care of this problem of being attracted to Kaitlin, and quickly. He couldn’t afford time away from his hunt for vampires and the protection of his pack.

Now that Rena knew about what he’d done, she could take Kaitlin under her wing. That task would serve Rena right for coming to see Kaitlin uninvited.

He shouldn’t linger near Kaitlin Davies for two minutes more. He’d done a good deed, had shared Lycan blood, which was a rare event for any Lycan, and Kaitlin had thanked him. The sun was up. She had made it through the weekend and seemed to be okay.

Damn, though...

Only heartless, soulless vampires left their offspring to fend for themselves. Vamps, and also a new breed of nasty rogue Weres created from the bites of other werewolves bent on passing along that trait to unsuspecting others. He had an obligation here to see Kaitlin through her transition to becoming Were, no matter how attracted to her he was. Three members of his pack had been the recipients of illicit tooth-and-claw encounters. Surely those Weres would understand about Kaitlin needing help, and condone what he had done to save her.

Kaitlin’s voice rose again, cutting through Michael’s internal chatter. “Why me? If you have a secret to keep, why help me?”

Her beautiful gray eyes reflected the chill of her fear. Kaitlin’s sober expression pierced his soul. Hell, this woman made the big bad wolf want to protect her.

“You’re young, beautiful and innocent. You have a whole lifetime ahead of you and didn’t deserve to die like that,” Michael said.

“Does anyone deserve to die?” she asked.

“Yes. The monster that attacked you and dozens of others like it.”

“God, there are more of them?”

“A seemingly infinite number,” Michael replied.

Kaitlin winced at the pain turning her head caused, and said, “You would have helped anyone out there?”

He had to think about that, and took too long for Kaitlin’s current need for answers.

Her eyes were accusatory. “You’re telling me the truth? You’re some sort of shape-shifter? I wasn’t mistaken about what I saw?”

He said, “Beneath a full moon, I change from this shape into another one.”

“Only with a full moon? I don’t recall seeing one last night.”

“I can change other times, as well. Only a few Lycans can do that, and not very many of us.”

She fired off another remark. “I’ll be a hybrid because I’m also human.”

“Because you started out human.”

“Why didn’t I die, Michael? What about this blood gift you mentioned? How does that work?”

“If you’re not born into our species, a transfer of blood is the only way to be initiated. It doesn’t take much, and is the only way I know of to heal the damage from a deadly vampire attack.”

“But it creates another werewolf.”

“Yes,” he reluctantly admitted.

Species. Initiated. Heal. Michael wondered how anyone in Kaitlin’s situation could possibly comprehend this.

“Would I have become a vampire if the monster’s blood had been left inside me?” she asked.

“You would have died and then been reanimated as one of them. Just like them. No heart. No soul. No need for breath. Hungering for blood.”

She pried her lips apart. “Maybe you helped me so that you wouldn’t have to contend with one more bloodsucker like the one I would have become.”

“Being like us seemed the better option, Kaitlin. Our genetics cause us to heal faster than normal, and we recover from injuries cleanly. We can survive a lot of things. With wolf blood in your veins to counteract that vamp’s damage, you had a chance. You’ve made it this far. In another month, that wound will be nothing more than a thin white scar. So I suppose...”

He leaned over her, with his hands on the mattress. “I suppose that though this new turn of events is unbelievable, you can be thankful you’re here today.”

Staring at Kaitlin, Michael relived how he had breathed life back into her after she had lain on the hard, damp ground. How he had cradled her in his arms and run his fingers over her bloodless face. He, who prided himself on remaining aloof from the human population, had whispered assurances to this woman, though one of her species had destroyed his family and others like his with a spray of silver bullets.

Did helping Kaitlin make him a traitor to his family, or just a bighearted idiot who made a rash decision on the spur of the moment? He felt like a traitor. Hell, saving a life didn’t equate to being an angel, and might have been an action he would someday regret.

Yet when Kaitlin broke contact and looked away, he wanted to pull her attention back despite his inner protests about keeping some distance. He wanted to lift her in his arms and trade hot, sultry breaths. Fantasies were appearing about pressing her to a tree in the moonlight, where he’d kiss Kaitlin to within an inch of her life, and revel in each second.

And if he were willing to admit more personal blasphemy, he’d concede the desire to go beyond that kiss-fest and have her in all the ways that counted between a male and a female, while listening to her soft growls of pleasure.

He had to close his eyes to shut those images off.

What had been his motivation for going back on an oath? Kaitlin Davies wasn’t human anymore. There was a slight possibility he could have helped her in that park in hopes of just such a situation as this, having been instantly attracted to her, and despite the taboo placed on Lycans mating with human-wolf hybrids of lesser bloodlines.

If that had been the case, though, he didn’t recall it. Nor had he stopped to consider that by saving her he would prevent Kaitlin from becoming a vampire. Neither of those thoughts had crossed his mind. All he saw was her, and how badly she was being hurt.

“I think I’m going to be sick, and I think I’d prefer to be sick alone,” she announced, bringing him back to the present.

She wasn’t looking at him now. He had to go, had to leave her, at least for a while. He also felt sick, confused, sad.

“All right, Kaitlin. I’ll go. Things will work out. You’ll see.”

Promises, little wolf, from what you believe to be a freak of nature, Michael silently added, scanning her profile.

“Werewolves tend to land on our feet, you know,” he said aloud.

“Yeah,” she agreed in a strangled voice, and with a last stab at defiance. “All four.”