Chapter 11

Brandy and Miriam met Lana and Max the moment they walked into the Medical City ER, hurrying them down the hall as fast as they could.

“Your dad is heading in for surgery, but he’s asking for you,” Brandy said. “He’s refusing the surgery until he sees you and Max. Talk to him fast, then convince him to let us take him into the OR. Every second we waste is making it harder to save his life.”

Lana started to hyperventilate, her gums and fingernails tingling like mad. She probably would have shifted right there if it wasn’t for Max holding her hand. He was like a rock, a steady presence she latched on to as emotional waves threatened to drown her.

There were a dozen cops in the hallway outside the ER, some of whom were Max’s SWAT teammates—his pack mates. Well, hers now, too, she guessed. All of them looked as worried as she felt.

Brandy and Miriam quickly hustled her and Max into a curtained-off triage area, then left. Lana’s mother was already there, unshed tears in her eyes, but surprisingly, so was Gage. Lana choked back a sob at the sight of her father lying in a hospital bed, his face cut and bruised. He had an oxygen mask on and multiple IV lines in both arms. His forehead, both hands, and chest were swathed in heavy bandages, blood already soaking through several places. He was conscious, but he didn’t look good. All the terrible things she’d said to him the other day when they fought echoed in her head, bringing a fresh rush of tears to her eyes.

“Okay, your daughter is here,” a doctor Lana hadn’t noticed standing by the bed said to her father. “Can we please take you into surgery now?”

Her father reached up and pushed the oxygen mask aside. The doctor quickly moved to put it back, but her dad gave the woman his patented deputy-chief glare, stopping the woman cold. “I need to talk to my daughter and her boyfriend alone.”

Her father’s voice sounded stronger than Lana thought it’d be, which was a relief. The doctor didn’t look happy, but she nodded.

“Two minutes,” she said, then left, pulling the curtain closed behind her.

Lana hurried over to the bed, leaning close to kiss him gently on the brow. “Dad, you need to let them do the surgery.”

He waved her concern aside. “I will, but first I need to talk to you. Before it’s too late.” His voice seemed weaker now that the doctor had left, like he’d been putting on an act for the woman.

“Don’t talk like that,” Lana insisted, refusing to even let him think such a thing. “You’re going to be fine.”

He took her hand, gazing up at her fondly. “Lana, I love you dearly, but you’re a terrible liar. There are things I need to say, things I should have told you long ago.”

“Things we both should have told her long ago,” her mother added.

He shook his head, his gaze going to her mother. “I convinced you to go along with my plan. You’re the one who wanted to tell her from the beginning.”

Dammit. There wasn’t time for this. Lana glanced at the heart monitor on the cart near the head of the bed. She wasn’t a doctor, but she had a general idea about what she should be seeing, and her father’s rhythms didn’t look very steady to her.

“Dad, you can tell me everything later, after you come out of surgery,” she said. “We can sit together and talk as long as you want.”

Her father ignored her, looking at Gage, then Max. “The people who did this weren’t after me. They were after Lana. I don’t know how they found out, but they know she’s different and they’re planning to kill her. I need the SWAT team to protect her. She’s special like you and the other people on your team. I know you can keep her safe.”

Gage nodded. “We will.”

That must have been good enough for her father because he turned back to Lana. “I know this is all happening so fast, and you don’t understand any of it, but you’re special. You have been for a long time. I should have told you everything a long time ago, but I was scared you’d be mistreated. You’re different, and our world doesn’t treat people who are different very nicely. But it’s time you know everything.”

Lana had had enough. Her father was getting weaker by the second and the patterns on the heart monitor looked even more erratic. They needed to hurry this along and get him into the operating room.

“I already know what I am,” she said softly. “I’m a werewolf. I figured it out earlier tonight, though I’ve been getting an idea that something was different ever since I met Max. He’s the one who helped me figure it all out.”

“A werewolf.” Her father gazed at her, awe in his eyes. “Yes, I guess that makes sense.”

She smiled even though she was on the verge of tears. “It doesn’t make sense at all, but it’s true anyway. Now that we have that out of the way, it’s time to get you into surgery.”

He shook his head. “Not yet. There are so many things I need to tell you—how it happened, why we hid it from you, what those men look like.”

Lana opened her mouth to tell him they could talk about all that later, but then an alarm sounded from the heart monitor. There was also a red light blinking on the side of the main console. She didn’t know what it meant, but it couldn’t be good.

Beside her, Max whipped the curtain back and called for help. Brandy, Miriam, and the doctor hurried in. Lana quickly got out of their way. Seconds later, they were wheeling her father away, leaving Lana with Max, her mother, and Gage.

Her mother wrapped a comforting arm around her shoulders. “I have a few things I need to tell you. Then maybe you can help me understand a few things as well.”

* * *

“We knew there was something unusual happening within forty-eight hours of the accident,” Nora said.

They were sitting in a quiet corner of the cafeteria, drinking bad coffee, Max on one side of the table with Lana, her mother and Gage opposite them. At this time of night, the place was deserted except for the guy cleaning the food-prep area behind the counter. He was wearing a set of earbuds and was completely lost in his music.

They’d come in about thirty minutes ago, after Lana had finished giving statements to the detectives investigating her father’s assault. She told them about the men who’d chased her from the club the previous night and about the run-in with the same men at the Galleria. She’d given good descriptions, so Max knew the detectives were out there right now gathering video footage from both the mall and the downtown street cameras, hoping to get a look at the men and find out where they might have gone after that. Max couldn’t help but wonder what they’d think when they saw video of the blur Lana probably made as she ran away from the hunters. But she and his pack would worry about that after the hunters were off the streets.

Max had told the detectives about the case Austin PD was working on, hoping they’d share anything they learned in Dallas. The lead detective hadn’t said anything one way or the other, but Max hoped he’d be willing to work with Peterson.

“The doctors said that with all the injuries you’d sustained, you’d never make it through the night. A zero percent chance…that’s what they said,” Nora said quietly. She wrapped her hands around her coffee cup as if trying to gain comfort from the warmth inside as she remembered the events surrounding the accident that had turned her daughter into a werewolf. “But the next morning, you were still hanging on. You still had a lot of internal injuries, so even though the doctors were worried you wouldn’t survive another surgery, they had to do it to save your life. But when they took you in for another CAT scan beforehand, they couldn’t find the damage that had been there on the earlier scan. The doctors thought your scan had gotten confused with someone else’s.”

“But that wasn’t it, was it, Nora?” Gage asked softly. “The injury healed itself, didn’t it?”

She nodded. “Some of the fractures Lana had sustained weren’t as bad, either. The doctors couldn’t explain it and didn’t try. They took her in for exploratory surgery, only to come out a little while later and tell Hal and me that all Lana’s injuries were healed.”

“Is that when you and the deputy chief took her out of the hospital and arranged for private care at home?” Max prompted, remembering what Lana had told him a couple days ago.

Nora glanced at him, her blue eyes tired. “Yes. Some of the doctors started talking about doing tests and taking samples, so they could figure out how she recovered from injuries that severe so quickly. Hal and I didn’t want that, so we refused to okay the tests and took her out of the hospital as soon as possible.”

“How did you hide all this from Lana?” Max asked. “The fangs, the claws, the eyes—everything? Typically, a new werewolf has trouble controlling all those things.”

Nora gave Lana a small smile. “We didn’t know she was a werewolf. As far as we knew, she was simply unique. We had no way of knowing there were others like her. The only times we ever saw any of those things you described was after she experienced a horrible nightmare in the month or two following the accident. She’d wake up screaming in fear, her teeth and fangs out, her eyes glowing bright green. But once she got into therapy with Dr. Delacroix and stopped having the dreams, the fangs and claws disappeared, so Hal and I didn’t think about them. I never dreamed that we were living in a town with a whole SWAT team just like her.”

Max exchanged looks with Gage at the mention of Delacroix’s name. What were the chances that the psychologist who’d worked with Cooper was also the same woman who’d worked with young Lana Mason? What was Delacroix, a werewolf whisperer?

Gage merely shrugged and turned his attention back to Nora. Max had no choice but to do the same, wondering if maybe therapy was the reason Lana’s inner werewolf had stayed hidden until recently. He was about to ask Gage if he thought that was a possibility when Nora spoke again.

“Have the fangs and claws come back?” she asked, looking at her daughter.

Lana glanced over to make sure the guy with the headphones wasn’t looking their way, then put her right hand on the table and extended her claws.

“Well, I guess they have.” Nora eyed Lana’s claws with an expression of wonder on her face before glancing at Max. “And Hal is right. You’re like Lana…a werewolf?”

Max smiled at the way she whispered the word. In answer, he placed his hand on top of Lana’s and extended his much longer claws.

“You don’t seem very alarmed by all of this,” Gage pointed out. “Which makes me wonder why Hal went to such great lengths to try to keep Lana and Max apart. If you knew what my team and I are, why didn’t you want Lana to know there were other people like her in the world?”

Nora sighed. “That was Hal’s idea. I thought he was simply being an overprotective father, but now I realize he must have figured out you and your team are like Lana and was worried that being with Max would undo years of therapy and that the nightmares would come back along with the claws and fangs.”

Max would have liked to say he disapproved of what the deputy chief had done, but he probably would have done the same thing if he thought it would protect the person he loved.

On the other side of the table, Nora looked at Gage. “These men who assaulted Hal, the ones looking for Lana—they kill people simply because they’re werewolves even if they’ve never harmed anyone?”

Gage nodded, his jaw tight. “These hunters have killed dozens of werewolves. They’ve murdered others, like Lana’s roommate in Austin, simply because they’ve made a mistake or were looking for information. They’re vicious and cold-blooded serial killers.”

Nora frowned, her gaze going to Max. “But you’ll protect Lana and keep her safe?”

Max entwined his fingers with Lana’s. “I swear that I’ll never let anything or anyone hurt your daughter.”

“Good.” Nora looked at Gage. “And you’ll find the men who did this to Hal and make sure they never do it to anyone else again?”

“We’ll find them,” Gage promised.