––––––––

Cole moved his jaw. So thirsty.

A nasty creature had crawled around in his mouth and died there. He licked his lips.

“Ready for a drink?” an angel’s voice asked.

He forced his eyes open.

Correction. He slowly pried open his right eye, the one that was not covered with a bandage. He squinted to focus, but all he got was a blur of sun-kissed skin and black hair. At least, the black was where he’d assume a head would be.

What the hell had they given him and why hadn’t he been encouraged to shift yet?

His mind tripped back over a memory of being hit with a stun gun while he was injured. That couldn’t be right.

He tried to talk, but got a croak for his effort.

The bed moved up slowly until he was halfway to a sitting position. He inhaled the sweet smell of her lotion. He’d dreamed about that scent. The fragrance woke up parts of his body he hadn’t been sure survived the blast.

Now he recalled. This was the woman who had the same lotion as Tess.

Gray Wolf was there, Cole could feel him, but the wolf was being strangely silent.

Cole was glad for the drugs that had quieted Gray Wolf, because this was not the time to think about ... her.

“Open your mouth,” the angel said softly.

When he did, she slipped a straw in and he sucked down the best tasting water he’d ever drunk.

Then the straw went away.

“Hey.” That should have sounded forceful, not whiny.

“You can’t have a lot yet, but you can have sips more often for the first hour.”

His angel was right. He knew that, but it didn’t change the fact that he wanted to drink a lake dry.

His brain jumped from thirst to her voice.

He’d heard it before. Sort of.

She almost sounded familiar. Where would he have heard her? He hadn’t been in the infirmary at headquarters for years. Maybe that was a voice from a television broadcast.

That made zero sense.

The drugs must still be screwing with his head.

No one who worked close enough with the Guardian to treat a Gallize shifter would ever show their face on television. He should just stop trying to figure things out on his own and get someone in here who could update him.

Licking his lips again, but with success this time, he asked in his rough voice, “Where is everyone?”

He sensed her hesitation before she replied, “Who do you want to see?”

Warning bells rang loud in his head.

The Guardian would have already been in here and made it clear he was to be notified the minute Cole could speak.

Rory and Justin would have been taking turns staying here.

Damn it, Toto, we’re not in Kansas or anywhere friendly.

Who Toto? Gray Wolf grumbled.

Cole silently hushed him. We’re captured. Let me think.

His wolf hadn’t seemed drugged. Odd, but okay.

He had to answer his angel in a way that sounded normal for someone in his position. “The doctor. Where is he?” Cole quickly amended, “Or she? You just smell too good to be a doctor.”

“Wasting your time. I’m allergic to bad boys.”

She sounded insulted, but that wasn’t what snapped Cole to attention.

His heart rate clicked up.

He did know that voice. Intimately.

It couldn’t be her.

His heart rolled in his chest.

The first time he’d met Tess, she told him, “Wasting your time. I’m allergic to bad boys,” in that same cocky tone.

Add that to the lotion and ... damn. This had to be some twisted nightmare.

That couldn’t be Tess. Not his Tess.

What the hell would she be doing here?

“That all you got?” she said with just a hint of tease in her voice.

Oh, hell. That sounded just like Miss High and Mighty Tessella Janver when she’d ranted about laws and how when she was an attorney she wouldn’t stand for this or that. Her father had been an up and coming politician back then.

Now a highly respected Senator, Janver led the congressional charge against shifters, trying to eradicate Cole’s kind like a bad disease.

Cole had to find out just how deep a pile of shit he was in.

Keeping the conversation light, he avoided admitting he knew her and explained in his scratchy voice, “Not flirting. Doctors reek of blood and medicine.”  When in trouble, bluff and flatter in spite of claiming he wasn’t a flirt. “You smell like a rose garden in full bloom.”

She didn’t say anything.

Not too encouraging.

Maybe she’d fill in a few holes in his memory, but he had to be careful with his questions.

He must look really bad for her not to recognize him.

On the other hand, he was seven years older and he’d beefed up quite a bit once he joined the shifter teams. He’d had the slender, but muscular, frame of a runner when he was taken to the Guardian at nineteen. The day he’d had to say goodbye to his human life when he discovered that he was a Gallize descendant who was shifting earlier than anticipated.

They normally didn’t come into their powers and meet their animal until well after they turned twenty-one.

That’s me. Overachiever in everything.

Shifting into his wolf early had not been a good thing, though.

It had taken a year for Cole to learn how to control the massive wolf. After that, his world narrowed to the Guardian’s missions.

Save people and avoid thinking about no longer being a human.

Now he was inches from the woman he could never forget.

For now, he needed to stick with the basic dialogue anyone would expect. “How long have I been here?”

“Two days. It’s Wednesday evening.”

He hadn’t shifted or healed in two days? What the hell was wrong?

Or maybe what the hell drug were they giving him?

At a loss for where to go next, he started with a more direct question. “Are you my doctor?”

“No. I’m not a part of the medical team.”

At least that jived with her plan to go into law. Still, what was she doing here? Hmm. Would she tell him her true identity? “Who are you then?”

The blob shape he was now convinced belonged to Tess moved closer and dropped down, probably into a chair. “Let’s focus on you.”

He drew in a deep breath that didn’t punish him quite so much this time. He smelled the mix of her favorite skin cream and her unique scent that he had never before catalogued as human.

He’d never had the chance to sniff her as a shifter.

Now, he longed for her scent with every breath.

The last time they’d been together, he’d been human and had thought his future looked too bright to stare into directly. The night he vanished, he’d possessed a ring that would fit her finger perfectly. They had already made plans for after college for him, and law school for her. They hadn’t specifically said so, but they both knew she was going to have his children and they would grow old together.

His future had vanished in one night.

That loss hit him so hard, he hissed.

“Are you okay?” she said, concern wafting through her voice.

“I’m fine,” he lied. He wanted to break free and get out of here. For weeks, he’d kept his wolf locked down, fighting it for control.

But now? He’d like nothing better than to unleash the beast. If he was anywhere but near her.

He would cut his own throat before he allowed the wolf to force a shift and harm her.

“I can call someone,” she offered, sounding unsure. Nothing like the woman who had taken his heart by storm and been prepared to marry him in spite of her father expecting her to strive for a man who could match her social background.

“I’m good, really,” he said, then killed his firm answer with a moment of coughing.

“I wish I knew more about shifter medicine. Here, sip more water.”

He did, then laid back when she took the cup away.

What was Tess doing here? She’d been terrified of shifters when they came out, and her father hated them.

He’d been gone for a long time, supporting the military overseas and had stayed busy enough not to pay attention to the life he’d left.

But he had heard about her mother dying and a shifter being at fault.

Once again, he wondered how Tess could be sitting next to him at this moment.

When shifters first came out, he and Tess had debated about what that meant to everyone’s future. Being her father’s daughter, she’d agreed shifters should be put on the equivalent of a reservation.

Even as he’d worried about keeping her safe and how life as he’d known it had changed, he felt everyone born to this world deserved the chance to live free.

But her father had feared shifters, spouting that they were only mindless killing machines who should be captured and locked away.

When Senator Janver failed to get a bill through legislation to have shifters captured and put into one big compound, he changed his course and started a campaign to brand their human forms.

That bill was catching support.

Once Cole had been taken to the Guardian, he was put through a year of intense training and allowed to contact no one. He’d never returned to find Tess after that for one simple reason. He couldn’t face her, knowing they now stood on opposite sides of an invisible line. He couldn’t face the heartbreaking disappointment he knew he’d see.

But when the mating curse kicked in, he’d decided to make one last stop before he turned himself in to the Guardian, so that he could tell her what happened. He’d give her an edited version that would protect his Gallize family, but as much of the truth as he could. She deserved the truth, even if he had to hear her tell him she would never forgive him.

The day he’d accepted that he and Tess had no future had been the hardest moment in his life. To survive in his new world, he’d had to convince the Guardian and the team that he had let go of his past.

Until this minute, he’d believed he had.

But all he could think of right now was how much he wanted to touch Tess. Just brush his hand over her hair and feel its silky softness again. His brain took note of every tiny fraction of the scent he captured from her.

She said, “Do you need a pain med—”

“I don’t. No drugs, please.” He just needed to catch a breath and clear that crap out of his system. He didn’t know why he hadn’t healed, but drugs were never good for shifters.

Her sigh took him back to when she’d lose patience with him when they disagreed on something. He’d hear that sound and fold like a house of cards for whatever he’d done.

The next thing she knew, he’d have her up against a wall, forgetting their silly argument.

For all that was holy, he couldn’t take being this close to her.

Not again.

“Okay, then,” she went on. “Let’s start with you telling me who you are.”

Dream on, angel. But he kept that to himself. If he admitted to being a shifter, then he’d have to identify a pack or clan where he lived.

What was he thinking?

She’d already insinuated he was a shifter. This group had to know that much already. As a minimum, they knew he wasn’t human.

How many humans could have survived being slammed into a brick wall by that explosion? None.

To tell the truth, he hadn’t thought even a Gallize shifter could.

Had his little old homeless woman lived? She should have, but if he asked he’d have to admit knowing more than he wanted to right now. Surely, someone would have taken care of her.

If she hadn’t survived, he hoped her passing was peaceful.

Playing dumb might not benefit him.

If he had to make an educated guess, this was some division of SCIS. That agency took the lead in any incident involving a shifter. He wished now that he was a tech geek like Rory, who probably knew the names of the most significant SCIS personnel.

Cole had never cared who did what. The Guardian handled politics and agency dealings since so few even knew about the Gallize.

The last thing Cole expected was to find Tess working at SCIS.

If this was SCIS, they could throw him in a titanium-reinforced hole in the ground to heal. Once that happened, he’d never find a way out. His people had to be searching for him right now, which begged the question—exactly where was he located? He needed information for any hope of getting out or giving his team time to locate him.

She said, “Being evasive will not help you.”

That sounded all legal and serious, which fit her perfectly.

Tess had been studying law, but she’d planned to specialize in ... hell, he couldn’t remember. She wanted to protect national forests and help Native Americans. Something like that.

Her father had hated the idea.

Cole had loved her rebellious side.

She sighed again.

Even if he had it in him to shove her up against a wall and kiss the daylights out of her, he doubted it would end happily.

Where to start?

Remember me, Tess? I’m now a wolf shifter, the one being you’ve been conditioned to think of as a monster.

To be fair, that wasn’t far from the truth, especially now that his wolf and he were turning into two beings.

Cole forced his mind back on how to get out of here, which wouldn’t happen until he unearthed more information. He searched mentally for everything he could recall from that night and what her group, whoever she worked with, might have figured out.

He cleared his throat. “Here’s what I remember. I was walking by a building in downtown Spartanburg and the thing blew up. Have no idea what was going on or who did it, only that I was in the wrong place when everything went kaboom.”

“So you weren’t inside when it happened?”

“No. Why would you think that?”

“Lock pick tools were found on what was left of your clothes.”

Damn. That little detail had slipped his mind. “I’ve had them for a long time. They were a gift. No law against owning them.” He wanted that last comment back the minute it left his lips. It was definitely illegal in some states even if there was no intent to commit a crime. So sue me for not being able to think clearly.

“That’s partially true ... for humans. However, a law has just been passed that prevents shifters from owning any lock picking tools.”

Of course there was, and he’d bet her father had been behind it.

Cole had been on back-to-back missions for the last three months. He hadn’t been in places where he could keep up with news that didn’t involve national security.

She knew he was a shifter, but she’d soon know his full identity the minute his face healed.

He argued in a voice so rough it hurt his own ears. “That’s a ridiculous law. Why shouldn’t a shifter be able to apply for a locksmith job? It’s tough out there for shifters. The only person who wants to hire us is another shifter, which means the business owner is limited to a small pool of applicants, or ... some human who just wants a pet around.”

Yeah, his voice rolled out ripe with disgust, but that was the truth for many shifters without the network of support he enjoyed as a Gallize.

She had been tapping her finger on the rail bordering his bed, another habit from her past that he noted, but she suddenly ceased making any noise.

Silence filled the air, expanded and locked them in a stalemate.

He waited her out. People tended to talk when things got quiet, but he’d been trained to sit still for days when necessary. His patience paid off.

She said, “I don’t believe you were there by accident.”

Her blurry shape sat back.

He tried to squint her into focus. The image got a little better. He could make out the shape of her hair now. That black mass used to fall down to her waist, but it now seemed to be piled up on her head. Back in school, she’d chop it off, but that silky mane would grow right back before she turned around. She’d complain about having to make cut appointments as often as brushing her teeth. One time, she’d grabbed her hair in a fist and threatened to whack it off herself.

He cajoled her out of that insane action by pulling her shirt over her head and leaving her that way as he yanked her panties down and gave her something new to worry about.

“Did you hear me?” she asked.

“I did.” Unfortunately she’d snapped him back to the present, which sucked, because he’d been enjoying that little moment. He kept his voice as gravelly as he could to prevent her from discovering his identity until there was no choice. “I’m not sure what you want me to say. I had nothing to do with that explosion. If you’re just looking for a shifter to hang it on, then I guess I’m your guy.”

She gasped before she could quell the sound.

Bull’s-eye.

Tess had a streak of fairness that ran through her core. She hated to be considered unfair and dealing with shifters must be challenging that personal doctrine.

Under normal circumstances, he would never take advantage of knowledge about her, but this could be the difference between life and death.

His.

Why would she think he was involved in the explosion?

Unless ... she, or her people, knew the Black River pack were distributing through that warehouse. If so, why had SCIS shown up right then?

He pressed his advantage. “Were you just hanging around the area, waiting on some unsuspecting shifter to step into a bomb scene or was that staged?”

“Of course it wasn’t staged.”

“I heard sirens at the same moment the bomb detonated. How could you know to be there that quickly?”

“I’m not the one who has to answer questions. What’s your name?”

“Colin. Your lack of answer means it was staged.” He’d helped her practice cross examinations back in first year law school, because she’d wanted to be so ready for when she had to start trial classes. He remembered something similar she’d said during a heated exchange with him as the witness.

His agency had taught him to never share more than necessary. He’d known a boy called Colin in the children’s home and the Guardian had used the name Colin O’Donnell to create an identity if he ever needed one.

He needed it.

She said, “Just to clear up any confusion about our part in this, SCIS received a tip that shifters had infiltrated the food bank. We were a half mile away when the building exploded.”

SCIS? Just as he’d guessed. He’d caught snippets of news that SCIS were under threat of losing their funding if they didn’t hand over someone from the Black River pack soon.

They definitely needed a shifter scapegoat.

Well, shit, even if he could expose his true identity, he couldn’t prove it since there were no records of him anywhere. Talk about being the perfect fall guy.

“Do I get an attorney? Any representation?” he asked, wondering if that would tweak her belief in fairness.

“No. Due to being part of an investigation that affects national security—”

“What?”

“—you can see no one until SCIS approves it and that isn’t going to happen even though I would allow it.”

Yep, he’d dinged her conscience with that one. “You have nothing that ties me to that bomb other than being in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

She didn’t acknowledge that, instead whispering, “I can only keep you here until you’re able to survive in lockup.” She sounded apologetic. “If you know anything about that explosion or something that was going on in that building, you should tell me now.”

He didn’t want to hurt Tess, no matter what.

The sooner he got out of here, and preferably before she recognized him, the sooner she’d be safe.

The Black River pack had known he was going to be close to the building. They killed Sonic and set up that bomb. Hell, they probably paid the old woman to sneak inside. He wouldn’t hold it against a homeless person trying to survive on the streets.

They also had someone inside SCIS. Emergency vehicles had arrived within seconds after the bomb detonated.

That took coordination.

Screw this shit. He needed a plan and couldn’t come up with one with Tess so close. Not when any plan included unleashing Gray Wolf.