Chapter 10

Lana knew Brandy and Miriam were trying to cheer her up, but dragging her out to a dance club had been a horrible idea. There was a good crowd for a Sunday night, mostly college-age types who didn’t seem to need sleep or care about crashing at their desks tomorrow. But it was the same club she’d been planning to go to with Max last night, and that made going there hard to handle. Right then, all she wanted to do was go back to her friends’ place and curl up on the couch with Netflix and a cheese and spinach pizza.

Since running away from Max last night, Lana had felt like complete crap. She normally wasn’t a moody person, but as Sunday morning stretched into afternoon and then evening, the ache in her middle had gotten worse. She couldn’t help wondering if this was what people meant when they talked about being lovesick. If so, it sucked.

Lana had only stayed at her parent’s house for a couple hours the night before. Just long enough to get through the initial rush of emotions that had inundated her after what happened with Max in the alley. The instinct to run home to her parents had been understandable, but it had also been stupid. It was bad enough that her mother had badgered her, wanting to know what Max had done, but her father had been a complete pain in the butt, swearing a blue streak about firing Max first thing in the morning. Unable to take it, she’d left and headed back to the refuge of Brandy and Miriam’s couch. Both women had been out, leaving her with the silence necessary to figure out what the hell had happened.

The truth was that Lana still no idea what she’d seen in the alley, but as the hours wore on, she was becoming increasingly sure it hadn’t been what she’d thought. Max might have acted odd, but there was no way she could have seen claws and fangs. That was just stupid. And all the crap he’d said about her being in danger had to be some kind of hero complex gone to the extreme. Max had simply been playing off her grief for Denise, wanting to be her knight in shining armor. She’d read about that kind of stuff happening. The thing was, he didn’t have to do anything to make her like him even more than she did. She’d already fallen for him like a ton of bricks. She’d been thinking about having kids with the guy, for heaven’s sake. Now, it looked like her father had been right all along. Max wasn’t the right man for her.

While that sounded logical, it did little to help her get over the ache in her chest. Clearly, her heart had already made up its mind about who it wanted her to be with.

Lana blinked back a rush of tears and forced herself to move away from the bar. As she wandered around the club, she kept an occasional eye on her friends, nursing a drink she really didn’t want and trying to make it look like she was having a good time. She wished she could find a spot in the club that wasn’t so loud. Between the music and everyone talking, it felt like her eardrums were about to burst.

She’d finally settled on a location between two giant speakers a few feet away from the dance floor when a shiver ran through her body. At first she thought she’d been hit with a blast from the air conditioner, but then her skin began to tingle so badly she felt like she needed to scratch all over. It was like she’d just walked into a spiderweb.

Following an instinct she didn’t fully understand, Lana began to move around the club again, trying to figure out what was making her feel so freaky. Her steps took her into one of the larger side rooms decorated in a Goth style with plenty of black lights and heavy drapery covering the walls and ceiling. There were fewer people in here than in the main room, and it wasn’t as noisy. Catching a flash of movement out of the corner of her eye, she turned to see a man on the far side of the room, partially hidden by a thick velvet curtain. She moved a little to the left, trying to get a glimpse of his face and was surprised to realize it was the police officer from Central who’d spritzed her with perfume at the mall. The moment she set eyes on him, her gums and fingertips tingled. Crap, that was getting old.

She tried to duck out of the room before he saw her, but just then he looked her way. She cursed as he made eye contact. Maybe she could pretend she didn’t recognize him.

Suddenly, her whole body tingled all over like she was holding on to an electric fence. What the hell was making her feel this way?

She was still trying to figure that out when the cop from Central gave her a smile so creepy she thought her skin might slide off and run screaming out of the club. Kids who pulled the wings off of flies would look at this guy and head the other way.

And that’s exactly what she did, too.

Lana had almost reached the arched doorway that led into the main part of the club when two stocky men wearing leather jackets and jeans came into the room, blocking her path. She froze midstep as she realized one of them was the guy who’d been with the cop from Central at the mall the other day. That couldn’t be a coincidence.

She didn’t hesitate to follow her body’s instincts this time either, turning away from the two men and heading in yet a third direction. She had no idea where she was going, but she hurried past a group of women and ducked into the nearest curtain-covered doorway she saw, praying it would lead somewhere good.

She found herself in a dimly lit hallway with a red, illuminated sign at the end, declaring Emergency Exit. Alarm Will Sound. The easing of the tension in her stomach told her this was the way to go, and she immediately took off running down the corridor. She had to zig and zag around some chairs and tables stacked up against the walls, but then she was slamming through the emergency exit, tripping the fire alarm.

Lana hoped that would dissuade the men from following her, but just in case, she raced down the alley behind the club, heading for the main road out front. Once there, she’d be able to get lost in the shuffle of people hurrying out the front entrance by now.

But when she reached the street, two motorcycles slid to a stop in front of her, cutting her off. She initially thought they’d hit their brakes because of the people running out of the club, but then one of the men reached inside his jacket and came out with a pistol.

Crap.

“Boyd, this is Seth,” the man with the gun said, obviously talking to someone on a mic. “The girl just came out of the alley to the north of the club.”

Lana stared, shocked she could hear him through the full-face helmet he wore. But right then, she could hear every tiny sound around her. The noise was deafening.

“Good,” a familiar voice answered in Seth’s earpiece—the cop from the mall who probably wasn’t a cop at all. “Herd her back into the alley. We’ll take her out in here.”

Lana’s heart hammered. Safety was only a few hundred feet away on the other side of those two bikers, but she’d never get through them. Turning, she ran down the sidewalk away from the club as fast as she could, sure she was going to feel a bullet slamming into her back at any moment. She couldn’t think about that, though. All she could do was pray.

She heard the roar of the bikes behind her, but as fast as they were, she stayed ahead of them. She was moving so fast that everything around her was little more than a blur.

As if following some instinct she didn’t know she had, Lana turned into another alley, almost running right out of her strappy shoes. She dashed down the narrow space cluttered with dumpsters and trash cans, dodging some, leaping over others. She heard the bikes stop and knew they’d been forced to turn back because of all the rubble in their way.

She darted out of the alley and turned right, sprinting down the sidewalk for a few blocks before sprinting down another side street. Even though she should have easily outdistanced the men chasing her, she soon heard the sounds of pursuit. First the motorcycles, then three sets of heavy, pounding footsteps behind her. She knew it shouldn’t have been possible for her to discern three particular sets of footsteps out of all the noise around her, but she could.

She sniffed the air as she ran, not sure why, but her instincts were telling her she should be able smell the men behind her. More insanity, she knew. Those instincts had gotten her out of that club alive though, so she wasn’t ready to ignore them, even when the scents that should have been there never showed up. It was like a void where a scent should be. Even more insanity, but something inside her was terrified by this strange lack of odor.

While she was blazing, speed alone wasn’t enough to get her away from the three people chasing her and the other two on motorcycles. Every time she put some distance between her and her pursuers, the bikes seemed to get ahead of her and cut her off, constantly turning her back toward the three runners fanning out behind her. No matter what she did, the guys on the bikes kept finding her, herding her where they wanted her to go. It was like they knew how these new instincts of hers worked better than she did.

She considered digging her cell phone out of her cross-body bag and calling someone. But who would she call, and how would it help? She wasn’t even sure she could convince the police she was being chased, and even if she could, the men would almost certainly be able to catch her while she stood around playing with her phone. Even the idea of calling Max, as tempting as that might have been, didn’t come with any assurances. She might be dead long before he could get to this part of town.

She had no choice but to follow her instincts, the ones screaming at her to run in a certain direction even if that direction made no sense. The GPS in her head led her farther and farther from the more populated parts of downtown, along dingy backstreets she never would have ventured in, over industrial dividing walls she shouldn’t have been able to climb, and through deserted construction lots so dark she shouldn’t have been able to see her hands in front of her face. But for reasons that probably would have freaked her out if she’d had time to think about them, she could see just fine.

Lana didn’t know how far she’d run, but it was a long way. Oddly enough, she wasn’t out of breath. Finally, she ran into an old building that looked slated for demolition. All the windows were broken out or boarded up, with graffiti everywhere. As she flew past the homeless people squatting in the lower rooms, she wondered if she should ask them for help, but her instincts told her she’d do better on her own. Plus, she didn’t want to get anyone else hurt. If she were lucky, Boyd and his crew would keep going down the street.

She was almost to the far side of the building when she realized that she’d made a big mistake. Her pursuers hadn’t kept going. All five of them had followed her in, and they had her cornered.

Before she could slip out one of the rear windows, the wall beside her exploded in a shower of concrete fragments, throwing chips and dust everywhere. Crap, they were shooting at her with silenced weapons. Who the hell were these people?

She stopped thinking and simply ran for her life as one bullet after another smacked into the wall, pulverizing the sheetrock and the concrete blocks underneath. The acrid odor of smokeless powder filled the air, stinging her nose. She’d gone shooting with her dad enough times for the smell to be unforgettable, only now it was way more pungent.

But when a bullet smacked into the wall only a few feet away from her face, she picked up another scent. It wasn’t nearly as familiar as the stench of gunpowder, but she recognized it all the same. It was the damn perfume Boyd had spritzed on her. It even burned her nose as she breathed it in.

She tried escaping out a back exit, the door long ago ripped off the hinges and cast aside. But the moment she turned in that direction, two men stepped through the doorway and started shooting at her with silenced automatic weapons. It was surreal to run screaming from a hail of gunfire she could barely hear. If it wasn’t for the impact of the bullets hitting the wall, she’d have thought this was all some kind of game.

Lana had no choice now but to run up the sagging metal stairs, toward the upper floors, even as every horror movie she’d ever watched screamed at her that she was making a big mistake. Footsteps echoed behind her, heavy boots on steel reverberating in the concrete stairwell. They were right behind her.

Gunshots pushed her higher and higher, past the second- and third-floor landings. Not that there was anywhere to run on those levels, because most of the flooring had either fallen through or been ripped out. Only a monkey could have escaped across the remaining grid work of metal beams and rotten wood slats.

She raced up the last flight of stairs, praying there’d be a fire escape or some other way off the roof. But when she reached the top level and saw the heavy chain running through the space in the door where the knob used to be, then snaking back through a hole that had been drilled through the brick and metal of the doorframe, she knew her luck had run out. There was no way she was going to get through that chain and the big padlock holding it in place.

But whatever instincts had kept her alive this long refused to give up. Refused to let her mind consider how devastated her parents would be—how devastated Max would be—if they found her beaten and tortured like Denise.

Letting loose a growl, she ran across the last few steps between her and the door, lifting her leg to kick the door with her foot as hard as she could. The chain going through the door held, but the rusted hinges on the left didn’t. They snapped with a shriek of metal and the door tumbled out of its frame.

Lana braced herself for the pain of broken bones to come screaming up her leg, but she got lucky. Either that or she was so high on adrenaline she couldn’t feel anything. Either way, nothing hurt as she climbed over the remnants of the door and sprinted across the roof.

She heard the loud thump of boots nearing the top of the stairs just as she reached the far side of the roof and discovered there wasn’t a fire escape. She gaped at the ten-foot chasm between the roof she was on and the one on the building next to it. But it wasn’t the gap that scared the crap out of her. It was the fact that the far roof was at least two floors lower. If she tried to jump over there, she’d have to throw herself hard enough to cross the gap and pray she’d survive the landing. She’d have to be insane to try it.

She turned and hurried toward the left side of the building, hoping for better luck over there. But she barely made it halfway there before the sound of boots announced she’d run out of time. Boyd stood in the doorway of the stairwell. He was holding a small automatic rifle in his hands, a sick, demented smile slowly spreading across his face. The other men chasing her would join him soon enough, but for that moment, it was just the two of them.

She glanced in the direction she’d been running, calculating the possibility that there might be a fire escape on that side of the roof. But with Boyd there, it was a chance she couldn’t take. If she ran over there and found nothing to help her, she was going to die up here.

Lana spun and went back the way she’d come. The gravel and tar of the rooftop exploded around her at the same moment she heard the Pop! Pop! Pop! as Boyd shot at her with his silenced weapon. She ignored the near misses, running faster as she approached the far edge of the roof.

She didn’t slow and she didn’t think. She simply held her breath and jumped as hard as she could.

Bullets zipped past her as she sailed across the open gap between the buildings. How she continued to be so lucky was a mystery to her, but she’d easily cleared the chasm dividing the two rooftops. She had no time to marvel at the feat because the far rooftop was quickly rushing up to meet her. She braced herself for impact but envisioned so many things breaking she couldn’t imagine walking away from this. But when her feet hit the gravel, the impact wasn’t nearly as bad as she’d thought it would be. Those amazing instincts she was coming to trust with her life tucked her into a ball and rolled her twice across the roof before propelling her right back to her feet.

She almost let out a whoop of excitement as she regained her balance and raced for the far side of the building she’d landed on. Bullets continued to slap into the roof around her, but she ran even faster now as she realized she could really get away from the men chasing her.

Lana threw herself off the roof of the two-story building, far less concerned about how she’d handle the landing this time. The hail of bullets disappeared before she even landed, replaced by the sound of angry cursing. She almost laughed as she landed in the tall grass of a long-abandoned building and took off running again. It would take the men a little while to get down from the roof, and she wasn’t going to be around by the time that happened.

She ran at full speed toward the more populated part of town, where the stores and clubs were. When she got there, she slowed to a fast walk, not wanting to attract attention. As she passed a darkened storefront, she caught her reflection in the glass, and the image stopped her cold.

Lana stepped closer, her instincts telling her the threat from her pursuers had passed. Stunned by what she saw in the glass, she lifted her hand to touch her face simply to convince herself it wasn’t some kind of trick.

But it wasn’t a trick. She was really seeing her reflection in the glass—except in this particular reflection, she had half-inch long canines protruding from her upper jaw. The canines on the bottom were longer than normal, too. And her eyes were glowing green. She touched one of her fangs and was shocked not only to realize it was sharp as hell, but also that the tip of her finger was now graced with a slightly curved claw half an inch long. A quick glance down confirmed that all her fingernails were similarly equipped.

Crap.

She had claws and fangs and glowing eyes.

She gasped for breath, barely able to stand. Max had been telling the truth all along. She really was in danger, there really were people after her, and she really was a werewolf.

A werewolf like Max.

The fact that Boyd and his crew had been trying to kill her didn’t seem important right now. The only thing that mattered was getting to Max and telling him she was sorry. There’d been something special between them, and she’d walked away in a heartbeat rather than trust him. She had to fix that horrible mistake.

The instincts that had saved her life were screaming at her again, except this time, they weren’t telling her to run away from something. They were begging her to run toward something—Max. At that second, the need to find him and tell him exactly how she felt about him was so overwhelming she couldn’t have resisted it if she’d wanted to.

She gazed at her reflection in fascination as her fangs and claws slowly receded. It felt so normal she couldn’t imagine why she’d been so hung up about seeing those same weapons on Max.

One more thing to apologize for.

Lana pulled her phone out of her purse as she walked toward the nearest intersection. There were several text messages from Brandy and Miriam, asking where the hell she’d gone off to. She thumbed back a quick reply, saying the music had gotten too loud and she’d grabbed a cab.

You going back to the apartment? Brandy immediately texted back.

Lana didn’t bother to lie. No, I’m heading over to see Max. We need to talk.

There was no response for several long seconds, but when it came, it was slightly different than she expected.

Good. That’s what you should have been doing instead of coming out to the club with us.

Lana threw back a thumbs-up emoji, then flagged down a cab. Giving Max’s address to the driver, she settled into the backseat, trying to figure out exactly what the hell she was going to say to him.

She still had no answer to that question when the cab pulled up in front of his apartment building fifteen minutes later. By the time she paid the driver and walked upstairs to his place, she decided less talk and more action was called for in this case.

Max jerked open the door before she could ring the bell. He was wearing a pair of black athletic shorts, his hair was sticking up, and he looked like he hadn’t slept in days, but he’d never looked more handsome. Why the hell had she ever walked away from him?

“Are you okay?” he asked.

She knew she probably looked more than a little rumpled after her mad dash through downtown and that tumble along the gravel-covered rooftop, but she didn’t care. She didn’t want to get into any of that at the moment. There was more important stuff to cover first.

Holding his gaze, she held up her right hand and let her claws extend. She’d discreetly practiced the move in the backseat of the cab on the way over and had been shocked at how easy it was to make her claws extend and retract by doing little more than tensing her fingers.

“I know everything.” She stepped inside and wrapped her arms around him, hugging him tightly. “I’m sorry I ran away from you.”

She felt him take a deep breath, as if he was about to say something in reply, but she hadn’t come here to talk. They could do that later. When they talked about all kinds of stuff—like how she’d become a werewolf. Right now, she needed to be with the man she loved like he was the air within her lungs.

Reaching up, she tangled her hand in his rumpled hair, jerking his mouth down to hers. Then she kissed the hell out of him, trying to say with a single touch of her lips something that would likely take a thousand words.

Her body immediately began to tingle all over, and Lana felt her claws and fangs slide out. She simply couldn’t help it, and besides, it felt so right. Even so, she pulled back, worried about cutting Max’s tongue. Then she saw his fangs were out, too, and his eyes were glowing so bright they lit up the dim entryway.

He reached out and kicked the door closed behind her, then his mouth was on her neck, nibbling and kissing her there, driving her crazy. She heard a deep growl coming from his throat before she realized she was raking his back with her nails. She started to apologize but stopped as he slid his hands under her shirt and pushed it up. Things got a little wild after that, as clothes flew everywhere and claws gently raked across naked skin.

Then her back was pressed up against the door and Max’s cock was sliding deep inside of her. The pleasure was so intense she feared her growls would force the neighbors to call the police—or animal control.

Biting her fist in an attempt to hold in the noise wasn’t going to be enough, but she had to do something. So she once again followed her instincts, sinking her fangs into the muscles of his shoulder.

Growling, Max slammed into her so hard she thought the door behind her might shatter. But any concerns about that disappeared when she felt her orgasm approaching like a speeding train. Lana wrapped her legs around his powerful body and held on tight.

She was home. Where she was supposed to be.

* * *

“So I’m a werewolf,” Lana murmured as she sat astride his hips and grazed her extended nails across his chest, watching with fascination as her claws left light welts on his skin that faded almost immediately.

It took a minute for Max to reply. He was too busy catching his breath. They’d made love for nearly three hours straight, and this was the first time they’d slowed down enough to talk.

Talking was so frigging overrated.

Lana wiggled back and forth on his hips as she waited for his answer. Even after making love like two overly caffeinated Tasmanian devils, one little sexy move of that ass was all it took to get him going again. He couldn’t believe he was ready for more. But the night was still young, so anything was possible.

He was pleasantly tired, his body completely wrung out. He had bite marks on his neck and shoulder, not to mention claw marks on his chest and back. Most were shallow, but he felt a few on his back that might take a day or so to heal up completely.

The urge to mark Lana the same way she’d marked him had been intense, but she was a beta and wouldn’t heal as fast as he did. Still, he’d left a few reminders on her skin she was going to notice for a while. He couldn’t be sure without coming straight out and asking her, but he had the feeling she kind of liked the way those marks looked on her perfect skin. Possession was nine-tenths of the law after all, and it definitely felt like Lana was his now, the same way he belonged to her.

“Yup,” he said in answer to her question, feeling himself getting harder under her rocking hips. “An extremely sexy werewolf.”

Lana smiled but didn’t say anything. Instead, she lifted her hands and stared at her fingers, her claws extending and retracting over and over. Damn, her claws were so cute. Shorter and daintier than an alpha’s or omega’s, but still long enough to do some damage if she wanted to. His back was a stark testament to that fact.

Suddenly, Lana jumped off him, moving so fast she almost damaged the part of his anatomy that had been trying to get her attention. She stood beside the bed and stared at her feet, her brow furrowing slightly.

“Why won’t my toenails extend like my fingernails?” she asked, her face screwing up in effort as she looked down at her bare feet.

“They will.” He chuckled. “You’re kind of new to this, so it will take some time to learn. The claws on our feet are naturally inhibited in most cases unless we really push it. Probably a genetic adaptation to modern footwear, I guess. Wouldn’t want to shred your shoes every time your claws came out.”

Lana nodded, not taking her eyes off her feet. “That makes sense.”

She pursed her lips as if she was trying to push her toenails to extend regardless of what he’d said. Sighing, she climbed back on the bed and straddled him again, leaning forward so that the tips of her beautiful breasts were pressed against his pecs, her face close to his.

She opened her mouth and tried to look down her nose so she could see her canines as they extended. Then she reached up and pushed down on his chin, opening his mouth.

“Show me yours,” she said, never taking her eyes off his teeth.

He chuckled, making her frown at him with the sexiest look of fanged disapproval he’d ever seen. But he behaved, letting his fangs slip out.

“Whoa.” She tipped his chin this way and that so she could see. “Yours are so much bigger than mine. And before you even go there, I’m not talking about some kind of fang envy here or anything. It’s just that my fangs aren’t even half as long as yours, and you seem to have a lot more of them than I do. Where the heck do they all go when they slide back in? They seem too long to fit.”

He would have laughed at the pure, simple curiosity of her question if it wasn’t for the fact that having her breasts teasing him like this was seriously distracting.

“They slide into curved pockets along the upper and lower jaws. The longer the fangs, the more horizontal those pockets are. That’s why your upper canines are longer than the lower ones—more room to hide them. I’m a slightly different kind of werewolf than you are, so I have more fangs, and they’re bigger. If I need to get even more of them out, my entire jawline can widen to make room. Yours won’t do that. You’re not that kind of werewolf.”

Lana seemed to consider that for a second, and he wondered if he was going to have to explain the whole alpha versus beta thing. He hoped not. Science and medical stuff weren’t his strong suit.

“Okay,” she said, apparently happy with his explanation. “That makes sense. In that whole this-shouldn’t-be-possible kind of way. But why didn’t my dentist see these pockets when he was taking X-rays?”

“When was the last time you went to the dentist?” he asked with amusement, already having a good idea what the answer might be.

She frowned, seeming to put a lot of thought into that question. “Oh wow! I just realized that I haven’t been to the dentist since the accident. After I started going to college, I never thought about it.”

He nodded. “Now that you’re a werewolf, you won’t ever go back to a dentist. Werewolves don’t get cavities.”

Her eyes widened. “Seriously?”

He laughed. “Seriously. And you won’t get colds or the flu or any of the other common illnesses that affect most people. You’ll heal faster from cuts and fractures than a regular person, too. And by the way, you won’t gain weight or get drunk, either, not without a tremendous amount of effort.”

Her eyes widened more with every werewolf advantage he listed. But then her face became intensely serious. “I can still have kids, right? Being a werewolf didn’t change that, did it?”

Max felt something inside his chest expand, making him want to grab Lana and squeeze her until she squeaked like a werewolf chew toy. He settled for reaching up to curl her hair gently around his index finger. He loved her so much it made him dizzy thinking about it. He was wondering if he should say the words, just to make it official, but she repeated her earlier question, reminding him he hadn’t answered it yet.

“You planning on having kids sometime soon?” he asked, a smile creeping across his face.

Lana blushed, which only made her cuter in Max’s opinion. “Yeah, I guess so. I’ve never really given it any thought, until I saw you with Terence and the girls. That’s when I started thinking that you’d make a great dad—when the time is right.”

He tugged her down for a long, soulful kiss where he attempted to convey exactly how much he cared about her—and her idea of future parenthood. Like Lana, he hadn’t really thought about kids very much. In fact, given his screwed-up background, he’d always assumed it would be best if he never did. Too much chance of passing on some abusive gene that no one understood yet. But with Lana, the idea of kids didn’t seem so scary. With her, he thought having children might be the most amazing thing in the world.

Max was still kissing her, his cock taking that as a sure sign they were getting ready for round two—or was it round five?—when Lana quickly pulled back. He was just recovering from the bout of sensual whiplash when he realized Lana was looking at him with those wide eyes of hers again.

“Will our kids be werewolves, too?” she asked, clearly thrilled at the thought.

“Whoa, slow down a little,” he said trying hard not to laugh. “Figuring out who’s going to become a werewolf is kind of complicated. I’ve been one since I was eighteen and part of the Pack now for nearly two years, and I still don’t understand everything about how it all works. All I know is that there’s a gene all werewolves have that switches on and turns them when something traumatic happens. Like the accident you had when you were in high school.”

She frowned a little. “That’s what turned me into a werewolf? I thought I must have gotten bitten or something.”

“Nah. That’s all folklore,” he said. “You should probably talk to Gage or Brooks or any of the older werewolves. They could help answer your questions. Of course, if you’re looking for the scientific details, I’d suggest Triana, Lacey, or Dr. Saunders. Triana is Remy’s mate and works in the medical examiner’s office, Lacey is Alex’s mate and is a veterinarian, and Saunders is the Pack’s doctor. He probably knows more about werewolves than anyone. Except maybe for Gemma. She’s Triana’s mother and has been around werewolves for over twenty years. Her knowledge is a little skewed toward the mystical side of things, though, since she practices voodoo.”

Max was about to say more, but then he realized Lana was lying on top of him with a completely dumbfounded expression on her face.

“What’s wrong?” he asked, trying to remember what he’d said that could have confused her. It had seemed straightforward to him.

“All of those people you mentioned are werewolves?”

The question came out slow and careful, like she thought it was something she shouldn’t ask. He replayed the conversation in his head again to see if he’d said something strange. If he had, he couldn’t figure out what it had been.

So he simply shook his head. “Not all of them. Triana and Lacey are soul mates of two members of the Pack, and Saunders is a doctor Gage has known for years. He’s helped us out a couple times. Gemma isn’t a werewolf, either, though she was married to one.”

“Gage, Brooks, Remy, and Alex are all werewolves?” she asked. “They’re all in your pack?”

That’s when Max finally figured out what Lana was getting at. She wanted to know how many other werewolves like her were out there. Now that he thought about it, it was a question he probably should have seen coming. The fact that he hadn’t likely had to do with the multiple orgasms. It was a well-known fact that orgasms made men stupid—or at least dulled their wits for a period of time. Years in some cases.

“Yes, they’re all werewolves.” He ran his fingers down her back to rest his hands comfortably on the upper curve of her butt. He liked her butt—it was a nice butt. “Just like all the other members of the Dallas SWAT team—all seventeen of us. We’re one large pack, extended to include the women each of us have bonded with.”

“Like me?”

He smiled. “Yes, like you. You have a pack now, a group of werewolves who will always be there for you, no matter what you need.”

Lana must have liked the sound of that, because she smiled like crazy. “I can’t believe there are so many werewolves in Dallas and I never knew. I can’t wait to meet all of them. I have so many questions.”

“And they’ll be thrilled to meet you too. But as long as we’re talking about the subject of werewolves in Dallas, I guess I should mention there is more than just our pack. One of the guys in the SWAT Pack bonded with another werewolf who already had her own pack, so they’re here, too, with all their various mates. Then there are all the smaller packs and the loners who started showing up when the hunter threat started to get worse. There are maybe fifty werewolves in the metro area these days who have shown up hoping to get protection by being close to a large pack.”

“Hunters? You used that word before in the alley when you changed in front of me. I guess that’s who chased me earlier tonight,” she said casually, almost curiously. “Go ahead and say it now—you were right about them, too.”

Max started to nod, but then the words sunk in. “Wait a minute.” He sat up so fast he almost dumped Lana off his lap. He quickly adjusted her so she was sitting back on his thighs, any thought of another round of fun and games completely gone now. “You were chased by someone tonight, and you didn’t think to mention it to me?”

She looked at him in confusion. “I didn’t mention it when I walked through your front door? I’m sure I did.”

“I think I would have remembered you saying something like that,” he said. “It’s kind of important. You walked in, showed off your claws, then jumped on me.”

Her lips curved. “Oh yeah. I guess that’s how it happened. But in my defense, the concern that you might not want me in your life after the way I’d treated you outweighed any worries I had about being shot at by a bunch of crazy men in downtown Dallas.”

They’d shot at her, too? Max cursed. “I need you to go into excruciating detail about everything that happened. Leave nothing out.”

Max sat there with Lana resting on his thighs, listening in stunned silence as she explained what had happened at the club and how the same guy who’d spritzed her with that nasty perfume at the mall had chased her, along with some of his buddies. By the time she was done, he didn’t know if he was furious with her for not telling him about it right away or impressed as hell that she’d gotten away from five heavily armed and well-trained hunters.

Regardless, he picked Lana up and deposited her beside him on the bed, then grabbed his phone from the bedside table to call Gage. He hadn’t even thumbed in his passcode before the thing rang in his hand, almost making him drop it. At the sight of Gage’s name on the screen, he thumbed the green button. Good freaking timing, he guessed.

“Max, is Lana with you?” Gage said before Max could even get a word out. But Sarge’s tone said it all. Something was wrong.

“She’s here,” Max said. “What’s wrong?”

“Get her to Medical City Dallas Hospital, ASAP. Paramedics just brought in her father. Someone broke into their house and attacked him.”

Max wished she hadn’t, but it was obvious Lana had heard everything Gage said, even though it wasn’t on speaker.

He heard her heart kick into high gear as she leaned forward and thumbed the speakerphone button. “How bad it is? Was my mom there, too?”

“Your mother wasn’t there. She was handling some kind of crisis at the restaurant. She’s on the way to the hospital now.”

“How badly is my father hurt?” Lana asked again.

Gage hesitated. “It’s bad. They broke in and beat the hell out of him, no doubt trying to get him to tell them where to find you. Then they shot him and left him for dead. He’s hanging on, but he’s in critical condition.”