Luke wiped Isabelle’s face with a damp washcloth. “Easy, sugar.” He brushed aside her poor shredded hands when she tried to snatch the cloth away from him.
“Christ,” she said.
Even if he hadn’t been able to detect her scent, that one simple epithet conveyed a depth of disgust he couldn’t miss. “Sugar—”
“I shape-shifted,” she said, her voice a thin whisper. Her naturally sweet scent soured into bitter, drenching fear. “What if I do it again? What if I kill someone?”
His wolf whined. Isabelle acted like she had committed some grave crime instead of embracing something that was as much a part of her as the freckles on her nose. When he found the son of a bitch responsible for making her feel this way about herself, he would rip them to shreds.
He should start a list entitled Bastards to Maim for Isabelle.
“Why would you think that?” he asked, but she didn’t answer, just shook her head. The sadness in her eyes wrecked him.
Loosening the hold on his own beast, Luke allowed its power to rise to the surface. To the human eye, not much would appear different. Some might steer clear of the wild energy they unconsciously sensed, while others would be drawn to his strength. To him, it felt like his wolf’s fur rubbed along his skin. When Isabelle gasped, he knew she felt it, too.
Her eyes flew open and locked on his face. “Wha-what?”
“Relax, sugar.” Cupping her cheek in his palm, he let his wolf touch her through him. Those intoxicating whiskey eyes grew hazy and she blinked slowly.
For a minute, he entertained himself with the idea that she would take a breath and settle into his arms.
That was because he was a delusional idiot.
“Wait a minute.” She squirmed upright against the headboard. “I want to talk about the crash. What have you gotten my brother into?”
She zeroed in on him until Luke felt like he was spot-lit under klieg lights. The scrutiny didn’t bother his wolf one bit, though. The smug bastard stretched out in his mind, cocking a brow as if to say, What? You’d expect less from our mate?
“Someone was motivated enough to put a bomb into that aircraft,” she said. “Who was the target? Was this about pack business or business business?”
“What do you mean? You think the pack would do this?” Stupid question. Of course she did. She was terrified of lycanthropes. “We didn’t. Wedding or no wedding, Freddie is already Rissa’s mate. He’s pack. And even if you think we’d kill our Luna’s mate to get at Branson, why would we do it in such a noticeable way? Yes, we control local law enforcement, but a helicopter crash? That brings the federal government into our business.” He cut a hand through the air. “No way.”
She stared at him for a few seconds more. “All right. I buy that. It’s probably safe to assume the werecougars were involved with the sabotage.”
A growl rumbled in his chest. “They certainly didn’t just happen upon you. There are only a few cougar shifters in the area”—and none of them were stupid enough to so blatantly challenge the pack—“and we have a good relationship with them.” The next part pained him to admit. “I don’t know who the hell the two bastards were who attacked you. Yet.”
“Fine,” she said, though it sounded like whatever.
“You know,” he said, his temper rising, “despite what you think of werewolves, we’re actually pretty boring. The pack’s a community, with all the bureaucratic details that entails. Our members need education, work, and a secure environment. The pack helps provide those things like a human municipal government does. The only difference is that we take into account the unique needs and problems of a lycanthrope.”
He dug his fingers into the tendons in the nape of his neck. “There are several other shifter groups and individuals in the territory. There’s some good-natured competitiveness, but we don’t try to kill one another.” Even as the words left his mouth, he wanted to take them back. After what the Chicago Alpha had told him, how the hell could he say such a thing to her of all people?
She glared at him. “Please. I may not have grown up in a pack, but are you really trying to tell me dominance challenges don’t happen at every run? Or that they aren’t violent? I’m supposed to believe what? That you all just have a little chat and vote?”
“No, but they usually don’t cause serious injuries. Or involve assassination.”
“So. It’s a happy-happy shifter utopia around here. You’re all going around being mundane members of society. Got it. But?”
He gave her a wry look. He wasn’t sure if he wanted to laugh or throttle her. “You’re kind of a wiseass.”
“Just noticing that now?”
Luke rolled his eyes. “But someone who obviously knows about us killed a man the night before you were attacked.”
“The county clerk.”
He nodded, and she seemed to chew on that for a minute.
“Why kill that guy?” she asked. “You said he wasn’t involved with the pack.”
“We’re not sure. Though it seems like a message.”
“What do you mean?” she asked.
He scrubbed his face. The barbarism of what was done to Conroy was beneath any lycanthrope. “They cut out his tongue.”
Anger brought a flush to her pale face. “Motherfuckers.” She enunciated each syllable with precision and vehemence.
“Yeah. Well, if that bit of savagery was supposed to tell me something, I wished they’d been a little clearer with the memo,” he said. “Plus, three other people have gone missing in the last few months. We haven’t found any sign of them.”
“No,” he said. “Two tourists and a human resident who supposedly left town. His kids haven’t heard from him since, and no one can locate him.”
“I remember Freddie saying he had been out on some S&R runs. You think these werecougars did it, took these people?”
“I don’t know.”
“There’s a lot you don’t know.”
“A whole encyclopedia’s worth of stuff,” he agreed.
A bandaged hand wrapped around his. “Sorry. That was bitchy. I’m pissed and worried for Freddie, and I’m taking it out on you.” She raised her other hand as if to rub her eyes, but stopped. Twisting her arm, she scowled at the bloodstained bandages on her forearm. “I’d like to kill that cougar again.”
“I’d rather do it for you,” he said with menace.
Big amber eyes flipped up to meet his. A ribbon of gold pulsed around Isabelle’s pupil as the wild scent of wolf filled the air. She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and when she looked at him once more, the beast was gone.
She cleared her throat. “I’m wondering how they got the bomb on the helicopter. We would’ve seen it if it was attached to the outside. Putting it in the fuselage had to take time and equipment.”
“We’re working on that. A mechanic from the Spokane airfield is missing. No one has seen him since he refueled your helicopter.”
“Hmm.” Isabelle looked off across the room, her eyes unfocused. “Freddie and I left the airfield for lunch while Branson and Jenny were at their meeting. We were gone just over an hour.” She shook her head. “I don’t know. I guess it’s possible.”
She shrugged. “Whoever it was could have planted the device in Spokane, or done it days before. Maybe even while Freddie was meeting me in Missoula. Or...” She gave him a meaningful look.
He reared back as if she’d slapped him. “Or what? We’re back to the pack trying to blow up Marianne Townes’s helicopter with her daughter’s mate in it?”
“I didn’t say anything about the pack, Luke. You guys don’t have a hive mind, do you? You can’t know what everyone around here is thinking.”
Or plotting.
The hair on his neck stood up. If Isabelle was right and the explosives weren’t installed by the mysterious mechanic in Spokane... His wolf snarled.
Then the saboteur could be much closer to home.
* * *
A hard, greasy ball sat in the pit of Izzy’s stomach. Strange, since she was so hungry; it seemed like she hadn’t eaten in a month. She was, however, big enough to admit the discomfort probably came from the way she’d poked at Luke. It was obvious he felt guilty about what had happened to her—and to everyone else. Not surprising, really. In Freddie’s kitchen, he’d told her flat-out he considered everything that happened here his problem.
That sort of personal responsibility usually only came from people with a deep sense of honor. And she was starting to trust that Luke was that kind of person.
Okay, maybe trust was taking things a bit too far. Perhaps she should say she had a reasonable certainty Luke was a stand-up guy. Everything she’d been taught about werewolves said that thought was insane. But her gut told her he wouldn’t harm her. Hadn’t he proven it already? Rissa, too. You don’t put yourself between a lethal enemy and someone you plan to kill later.
All these thoughts were making Izzy’s headache worse, so she focused on the crackling fire and the gently bubbling pool. The quiet sounds lulled her into a sleepy daze. She let herself drift, and immediately sank back into the images of her blood-soaked dream.
Choking, she flailed for something solid to hang on to.
Luke grabbed her wrists and pulled her onto his lap. “Isabelle, it’s okay.”
“It wasn’t an accident,” she whispered. All her life, whenever someone asked about her parents, she’d said they died in a car crash.
“It’s okay. We’ll figure it out. The Feds have already said they agree with you. Someone planted a bomb in the tail section.”
Izzy blinked, confused as she tried to process Luke’s words. “What? No, that’s not—” She snapped her mouth shut as she realized what the hell she was saying.
Luke cocked his head in a decidedly canine manner she found disconcerting. “Isabelle?”
A lie popped into her head, but the words jammed up and died on her tongue. Maybe it was because her big secret of being a werewolf was already out or because Luke was obviously concerned for her, but for once, would it kill her to not hide everything about herself?
Gold flickered in Luke’s eyes.
Images from her nightmare memory sprang into her mind and she fought the panic.
Blood. Her mother’s long-fingered hand, with the pretty pink polish on the nails, lay limp and covered in blood on the back of the seat.
Glowing eyes and sharp, white fangs.
Her daddy’s roar.
Strong arms banded around her and a gentle thumb stroked her cheek, pulling her into the present. Luke dipped his head so she couldn’t avoid him. “What just happened, sugar? I can smell your fear, so don’t say ‘nothing.’”
“Have I mentioned how much that annoys me?”
“Deal with it.”
“I’m on your lap again.”
“Deal with that, too.”
She sighed. “Your eyes...they started to glow.”
“That’s not something you need to be afraid of, sweetheart.” He sounded so sincere.
“What should I be afraid of then?”
He cupped her face. “Not me. Never me, Isabelle.”
Yeah, she was getting that.
“They killed them,” she said quietly, surprising both of them.
After a moment, he said, “Your parents.” Not a question.
He took a deep breath and let it out. “What do you remember about your family, Isabelle?”
“Wait. How did you know I was talking about them?”
He rubbed a hand through his hair, sending it in a new pattern of disarray. “The morning you flew to Spokane, I talked to the new Alpha of the pack in Chicago.”
The blood rushed from her head as if she’d stood up too fast. “You were checking my story.”
“Not in the way you’re insinuating. I wanted to know why they would allow you and your sister to be raised by humans, without any help. That’s not normal behavior for a pack. I called the Alpha there because nothing was adding up.”
Izzy looked away and tried to think past her instinctive fear, a knee-jerk reaction that was seriously pissing her off. How many choices had she let be influenced by that fear?
When she turned back to face Luke, she found him patiently watching her. “Does it now?” she asked. “Add up for you?”
“A little. What’s your last name, Isabelle?”
“It’s Meyers.”
He shook his head. “No. I don’t think it is.”
“What are you talking about? Of c—”
She stopped as a little girl’s voice drifted in her head. Another memory. Bess’s voice. Her small hand gripped tight around an extra-wide pencil. “R-A-N—what comes next, Izzy?”
“Randolph,” she said in a whisper. “Our last name was Randolph.”
Luke cradled her bandaged hands in his. “Yes. Your father was the pack Beta and your grandfather was—”
“The Alpha!”
She leapt to her feet and pain burned through them as soon as they touched the cold stone floor. She swayed. Another remembered voice hissed, “He gave them everything. All his time and attention. Even his son. And the filthy beasts still killed him!” Grandmother.
Luke was there, holding her arms, moving so fast, he’d been a blur.
“Our grandfather was the Alpha,” she said again, not resisting when Luke picked her up and set her back on the bed. “We were in the car.” The memories were flashing in her head like a strobe, a scream here, a terrified face there. “The window shattered and we crashed. They took Daddy out through the windshield. They—oh God.”
Luke slid into the bed and rocked her in his arms. She wasn’t even aware she was crying until his shirt grew wet under her cheek. “I’m sorry, Isabelle. So damned sorry.”
* * *
Every one of Isabelle’s tears tore at Luke. He couldn’t bring back her murdered family, fight their killers, or give her the childhood she should have had. All he could do was hold his mate while she shuddered through long-buried memories.
He felt completely useless. A familiar state these days.
It didn’t take long for Isabelle to sit back and swipe at her wet face. “Sorry.”
“For what?”
“Blubbering all over you like a damned baby.”
“Everyone needs to grieve, sugar. It’s nothing to be ashamed of.”
The expression on her face said she thought otherwise.
The angry scent of burnt coffee rose from her skin. “Why didn’t they kill me and Bess, too? We were easy pickings.”
Fury scalded his throat. “I guess the bastards didn’t have the stomach for it.”
“Had no problem with my mom. She was unconscious and they ripped out her throat right in front of us. The blood sprayed all over Bess. She screamed and screamed.” Isabelle’s voice broke. “Maybe that’s why Bess could never settle down. Never find happiness in anything. Even after we went to live with the Dodds.” Her eyes appeared flat and bleak, as desolate as the high mountain passes scoured by wind and time. “Spend a night covered in your mother’s blood... Maybe that’s why...”
“Why she killed herself,” he said quietly.
Isabelle stiffened as if he’d electrocuted her. “Freddie told you.”
“Yes.”
“How much?” A look he couldn’t identify darkened her eyes. Wariness? Betrayal? Her scent told him nothing since all those emotions and more were coming off her in steady waves.
“Everything he knew,” he said.
“Everything?”
“If you’re asking,” he said, “did he tell me about the man Bess killed? Yes.” She wrapped her arms over her middle, a shudder working through her. “Do you know who he was?”
“No. She didn’t say and I didn’t recognize him. She didn’t really give me a chance before she...”
Before she killed herself in front of you. “I’m so sorry.”
After a deep breath, she said, “Freddie must really trust you to tell you all that.”
Luke shrugged. “Well, he trusts Rissa.”
“And she trusts you. So that’s as good as the same thing to him,” Isabelle said.
“The question, sugar, is do you trust me?”
Wolf gold flashed in her whiskey eyes, then disappeared. A look of amazement crossed her face as she stared at him. “Yeah,” she breathed. “I guess I do.”