When Lucy woke, the two men were already gone. She sat up in bed and looked around. Her head ached, and she put her hand against her temple. She’d been pretty drunk last night. Memories of the night before drifted through her consciousness. Werewolves were real, and she’d had sex with two of the hottest men she’d ever seen in her life. She wasn’t sure which was more shocking at that moment in time. The sex had been mind blowing, but the full consequences of it were barreling toward her hung-over, addled brain.

She groaned and flipped the covers off her naked body. Sticky cum still clung to her thighs and breasts. Stumbling to the bathroom, she groaned and turned on the shower full blast. Caleb had a gorgeous bathroom with a massive rainfall shower, black granite counters, and beautiful modern fixtures.

Stepping into the shower, she sighed. The water fell over her messy hair and sticky skin. She washed the vestiges of last night’s debauchery from her body. Too bad she couldn’t wash it from her mind. Last night, she’d been sure it was all right. She hadn’t cared. All that had mattered was the feeling of their bodies against her, inside her. Now she wasn’t so sure. She’d let Caleb come inside her. She’d never done anything like that before.

After her shower, she went back to her room and found her clothes laundered and laid neatly over the back of a chair. She dressed and slowly made her way downstairs. She could hear someone talking in the kitchen. As she rounded the corner, she saw Elijah with his back turned, holding a telephone.

Anger burned in her chest. “You lied to me!” she yelled.

Elijah turned to her; his face dropped. “I’ll call you back,” he said and hung up the phone.

“What’s wrong?” he asked her, putting his hands up as if to calm down a rabid dog.

“The phone!” she screamed, pointing. Her headache and her guilt over last night burned her emotions into a hot flame.

“It just came back on,” Elijah said, his tone giving away the bad lie.

“Just tell her the truth, damn it,” Caleb said, slamming the patio door behind him. “I’m sick of this shit.”

Elijah sighed and ran his hand through his dark hair as Lucy tapped her foot and crossed her arms, raising her eyebrows at him expectantly.

“The truth is, the phone and Internet were never off. The truck isn’t broken, either. We just wanted to get to know you and try to convince you to stay.”

“It wasn’t my idea,” Caleb said, holding his hand up in surrender as Lucy’s eyes shot daggers at both men.

“How dare you!” she shouted. She’d let them share her, come inside her. How stupid could she be?

“Please, Lucy. Let me explain,” Elijah took a step forward, his eyes pleading. She felt a tear roll down her cheek, and she wiped it away. How could they use her like this, lie to her and trick her? How could they be so cruel? She’d thought she meant something to them. Elijah moved toward her and tried to put his arm around her shoulders, but she pulled away and turned toward the living room to stand near the front door.

“When we found you in the woods, we scented you as our mate. Our perfect mate. Shifters know their mates by smell. We were both so excited, we didn’t know what to do. You are a human. A lost human and a stranger. If we’d taken you back to your car right away, we might never have seen you again. And we would have been left for the rest of our lives without our perfect woman.”

“This is a load of shit,” she said, waving her hand.

“It’s not,” Caleb said from the kitchen as he munched on a piece of bacon. Lucy’s mouth watered for breakfast, and her head begged for the coffee, the scent wafting through the heavy air.

“For the record, Caleb wanted to just bite you and claim you,” Elijah said defensively. “I just wanted a chance to get to know you.”

“You’re both jackasses. You could have just gotten my number and visited me in Portland.”

“We can’t leave our pack for very long. Plus, we didn’t want to let you get away without telling you the truth about our kind and about who you are to us. If we’d done it the first night, you would have thought we were insane.”

“That’s true,” said Caleb.

“Come, Lucy. Have some breakfast. Just relax. We’ll take you back to your car. We are both deeply sorry to have deceived you. We wish there had been another way.”

“There was. We could have just bitten her. Then she’d have to stay,” Caleb said, pouring her a cup of coffee and setting it on the table.

“Caleb. No,” Elijah said. Lucy gave Caleb an angry glare and rolled her eyes.

She sat down with a harrumph and stirred cream and sugar into her coffee. “I can’t forgive this,” she said definitively. “You trapped me. You didn’t respect my autonomy.” She took a sip of her coffee, and her headache slowly subsided.

“It will never happen again,” Elijah tried to assure her.

“Somehow I don’t believe you.”

“It’s true. We want you to be our mate. Help us run our pack. We need our alpha female to give us pups. This was all unfortunate. But how were we to know our mate would be a human?”

“What are you talking about? Run your pack, give you pups? That sounds like crazy talk. Are you saying I’d become a werewolf?”

“The mate’s bite can transform a human to a shifter,” said Elijah. “Being a shifter is fantastic and freeing. You will love it, Lucy. You will be strong and powerful. You will never have to worry about bad jobs or abusive bosses ever again.”

“So I’m supposed to trade an abusive boss for two deceptive asshole animals? No thanks. I think I’ll pass.” She stood from the table and crossed her arms. “I’d like you to drive me back to my car now, please. Or are you going to keep me here against my will?”

“Of course not,” Elijah said, standing. He sighed and looked at his brother with strain in his eyes. Caleb growled and stormed out the patio door. A moment later, the sound of a truck rumbled in the front drive.