Cara knew she was dreaming. She had to be. Darian, the shifter was smiling at her with a look of affection, and kindness. Cara knew better. Darian attacked her, he didn’t care for her. The shifter wanted her dead.

It’s too bad he has to be so handsome.

His wide frame and square shoulders were powerful. Darian’s muscular chest and arms made him appear the perfect protector. His skin bore a warm healthy glow.

How nice for him that he gets to enjoy the sunshine while everyone inside the walls is confined to live in shadow.

His smile vanished when he noticed her looking at him. “Are you in pain?” Darian asked.

The baritone quality of his voice pulled her away from her negative musings. It was a masculine sound, yet smooth and rich. Cara watched him. He looked uncomfortable, uncertain. “I’m glad,” his eyes dipped lower to her chest and then back to her face. “you’re awake.”

A heated shiver ran down her spine and was unlike anything she’d ever felt before. “I’m not awake. This is a dream,” she told him.

“Is it? How do you know?”

Cara smiled at him, drinking in the beauty of his wild, golden eyes. “I’m warm and the bed is soft.” His interested gaze shifted to the floor. Again, he appeared uncomfortable. “Besides, if I were awake, I would be married to Aldrich.”

Darian straightened, a dark scowl on his face. “You are engaged to Aldrich? You love him? Has he… touched you, Cara?”

There is a lot of talking in this dream.

“I don’t want to talk about Aldrich. Don’t I even get to escape him in my dreams?”

A ghost of a smile touched Darian’s lips. “You do not care for Aldrich?”

“I hate him.”

He nodded, his shoulders relaxing momentarily before he was back to scowling. “Did he hurt you?”

Cara rolled onto her back and squinted as the rays of sun warmed her face. It felt so nice and yet so bright. The sun never hit directly into any of the windows in her home. The wall cast too great a shadow on all sides.

“Is he the one who did this?” Darian asked, his finger gently ran over the skin on the side of her face. It was still tender.

I shouldn’t be able to feel pain if I’m dreaming. Right?

Cara tried to sit up, but pain ripped down her arm. She gritted her teeth and closed her eyes, refusing to cry out or shed a tear in front of the shifter.

“Cara, you don’t know how much I regret hurting you.”

She glared up at him, her lips pressed tightly together.

“I don’t blame you for being angry. I thought you were a hunter. One of Aldrich’s hunters.”

Cara used her left hand to sit up and then caught the blanket as she realized she wasn’t wearing anything. No wonder he’d been looking her over. Cara hugged the blanket over her chest. She was too angry to shrink away even if she was horrified at being naked and alone with him.

“You can’t let the people of Aldrich Town eat? If we dare come out to try and catch food, you just have to kill us?”

“No, Cara,” Darian said, her name on his lips sounding like an endearment.

“It’s because of you that we’ve all been caged in by the wall. We are all at the mercy of Aldrich. You showed up, and nearly overnight, Havenhurst became Aldrich Town.”

Darian frowned at her as if he didn’t know this information. He had to know. He was older than she was and she remembered the wall going up.

“The wall protects us against you and your kind,” Cara said letting anger fill her words. “You took away the sun. Do you realize that?”

“Your people were never the target of the Rizer wolf pack.”

Cara barked out a laugh. “Is that why the Miller family no longer has any children? Shifters killed both of their sons soon after you and the other shifters settled here. They were just kids. What harm could they have done to you?”

Darian scowled at her. “Are you accusing my pack of killing children?” He stood up leaning over the bed.

Cara shielded her eyes, thinking he would be in the torn-up shorts but he was wearing black pants that rode low on his hips. The V shape of muscle and a light dusting of black hair disappeared under the waist of the pants.

“The Rizer pack doesn’t kill innocent children. We only kill the hunters. Hunters who have killed members of my pack.” His voice held a power to it that she didn’t understand. She didn’t like him or anyone else having power over her.

She fought the pull to lower her gaze and accept what he said as the truth. Instead, Cara stood up, facing him. “We’re starving inside the wall. The hunters probably killed a wolf because they were hungry enough to eat anything.”

Darian met her gaze with a measured look of his own. “Careful how you speak of my pack, Cara. They are my family, not food.”

Cara was ready to defy him but he didn’t raise his voice to her when he asked her to be careful. He didn’t act as though he would hit her.

He will. They all do.

“Your family kills our hunters and leaves the rest of us dependent upon a man whose cruelty is unlike anything you could possibly imagine.”

“You’re wrong Cara. We’ve seen what Aldrich is capable of, first hand. Aldrich promises your hunters wealth in exchange for my family’s wolf skin. I’ve lost five from my pack, and that doesn’t include Valor.”

Cara frowned. “If you hate being hunted by Aldrich, why don’t you leave? Take your family and go.”

“Aldrich has to be stopped,” Darian answered. He reached out lightly grazing the tender skin on the side of her head, his eyes hardened. “Who did this to you? Aldrich?”

Cara swiped at his hand. He caught her wrist firmly. “What do you care? My arm hurts a lot worse.” Cara held up her bandaged wrist and forearm as a reminder of his bite.

Darian nodded. “I imagine it does. All I can do is promise you that I will never hurt you again. None of my pack will harm you. We will protect you.”

Cara didn’t trust the warmth she felt at his words. She didn’t trust the feeling of relief that eased the tension in her back. “You said that Aldrich has to be stopped. Stopped from doing what, exactly?”

“If I tell you, Cara, I want something from you in return.”

The heat from his hand on her wrist felt strange to her. She twisted free. “What?” Cara asked hugging the blanket tighter around her body.

Darian’s gaze returned to the bruise on her face.

“That’s all?” Cara asked him. “You want to know who hit me?”

The shifter inclined his head.

“You go first,” Cara said.

He exhaled quietly, his golden eyes lowered to the blanket covering her legs. “Valor purchased two hundred acres of land for our community, just outside your little town. He wanted our pack to have the room we need, and the wild life our wolves demand. It is in the wolf’s nature to hunt. An injured man came to our pack from the city.”

“Aldrich?” Cara asked.

“Unfortunately, yes.”

Cara stiffened as Darian edged closer to her.

What does he want from me? He could have killed me a dozen times my now.

“Aldrich convinced our Alpha, Valor, that he wanted to learn about our ways. Teach humans about us so that they could learn not to fear us.” His fingers trailed over her naked back. The sensation warm and electric.

“What are you doing?” Cara asked him. Fear making her voice hike up in pitch.

Darian pressed his warm palm against her back. “I want you to become accustomed to my touch.”

Cara gave him a warning glare.

“If you ask me to stop, I will stop. Cara, I promised you already that I will never hurt you. I will not force you to do anything you don’t want to do.” He hesitated. “I don’t want you to fear me.”

His hand was still on her back. The sensation it gave her was too confusing to understand.

“Valor allowed Aldrich to live in our community for several months. He won the trust of the pack. We all were taken in by his trickery.”

“What happened?” Cara asked trying to tolerate his hand against her skin. She still didn’t understand why it was important to Darian what she thought of him.

Darian’s hand began to rub her back in a slow circular motion. The intimacy of the touch proved to be more than she was comfortable receiving. Cara side stepped away from his hand, breaking the physical connection.

The shifter’s hand fell down at his side. “He asked Valor to make him one of the pack, a shifter.”

“He’s one of you?” Cara remembered the way he’d bitten the guard and the blood that ran down his face. It was terrifying.

“No,” Darian said. “Valor refused him. Aldrich took his knowledge of our kind and used it against Valor. Aldrich murdered Valor by stabbing him in the back with a silver blade. Then he drank from Valor in hopes of changing himself into a shapeshifter.”

Cara couldn’t help it, she had to look at Darian as he spoke. She had to see his golden eyes because his words were full of emotion, a trait that she’d always been taught shifters didn’t have. When Cara’s father first started apologizing for hitting her she believed him that he was sorry.

Later she learned that she could see if he was sincere by looking into his eyes. The truth was always there in his gaze.

Darian’s eyes were so much more complex than her father’s. She could see sorrow, anger, and Compassion in his golden depths. “Why would he do that? It doesn’t make sense.”

“The bite of a werewolf infects the blood of a human. It changes them into a shapeshifter. Aldrich knew the shapeshifter mutation is in the blood. We believe this was the reason he drank Valor’s blood. He was trying to change his own.” Darian was watching her closely.

“Did it work?”

“It changed his blood if that’s what you mean, but he is not a werewolf. He is more like a rabid human. Aldrich craves blood, violence, and power. The werewolf blood he drank from Valor gave him great strength. However, not so great he can survive a fight with the pack.”

Cara felt his gaze on her mouth. She ran her tongue over her suddenly dry lips. “Why not destroy the wall and get him?”

“He knows our weaknesses. Aldrich was the one who killed the children and scared your people into building the wall. A wall laced with elements that are poisonous to our kind. The water you climbed out of that surrounds the wall, it too is poisonous to us.”

Cara took another step back from Darian, as she thought of Aldrich. He was like a wild animal, but Darian actually was half wolf. His promises were worthless.

“And Aldrich never leaves the town,” Cara finished for him. “So, you’re waiting out here, and he sends desperate men to come and hunt your kind down.”

Darian looked at the space she’d created between them. “I’d never thought of the hunters like that. They come at us armed with silver, and we can’t just allow them to kill us.”

Cara didn’t respond because she didn’t know what to say. He was right about that, but since his kind were so much bigger and stronger, she felt they should do something to stop the hunters. Couldn’t they stop them, and spare them?

“Your turn,” Darian said.

“My turn?” Cara arched a brow.

Darian gestured to her cheek. “The bruise on you face.”

“Oh. My father hit me,” Cara answered she didn’t know why he was so determined to know.

“Your father hit you, and was going to allow you to be taken by Aldrich?”

Cara shrugged. “You haven’t been trapped in a cage for years at a time. You couldn’t possibly understand the kind of pressure my father is under.” Darian didn’t look the least bit convinced. “Aldrich would have starved my father to death if he refused him.”

Darian closed the space between them so fast that she didn’t even see him move. He framed her face with his hands not allowing her to back away. “I would starve to death if it meant saving you from Aldrich. I would fight an army to keep you safe, Cara.” The look in his golden yellow eyes was full of sincerity and something else.

Lust? Like Aldrich?

“You want to have sex. That’s why you’re being nice to me?”

Darian exhaled releasing her face from his hands. “No, Cara. I don’t want to have sex with you. I don’t want to care about you. I don’t want to be tied to you. I don’t like feeling protective of you or sorry for your horrible circumstances.”

“I never asked you to feel sorry for me.”

“It doesn’t matter what I want. It only matters what is and will be.”

He wasn’t making any sense. “If you don’t want to have sex then why do you keep touching me and trying to get me to become accustomed to you?”

“You’re a part of my pack now.”

Cara’s eyes widened as her heart seemed to trip mid rhythm and stumble into a run within her chest. “Because you bit me?”

“Yes.”

That must be why it feels so funny when he touches me. It must be why I want to accept everything he says as the truth.

Cara turned away from him and walked over to the open window. Fresh air blew her hair up and off her neck. Not even a hint of the mote staining the air. It was clean and fresh.

I should be furious. Shouldn’t I?

she leaned on the windowsill.

If I’m a shifter I can protect myself from Aldrich, from my father. I can fight Darian when he attempts to control me.

A smile curved Cara’s lips and she shut her eyes enjoying the feel of the wind on her face. “What does being a member of your pack require of me?”

“Require of you?”

Cara looked over her shoulder at him. “Yes. Do I have to kill the people who come out of Aldrich Town?”

“You won’t be a wolf for several weeks yet. It usually takes at least a month before your first shift. You will be required to support the pack. Defend the pack as you would a family, because now they are your family.”

Darian watched Cara, waiting for her to freak out. To explode in anger. She hated shifters only this morning. Where was all that hatred now?

“You are not upset?”

“Upset?” Cara asked, the smile on her face the first genuine joyful expression Darian saw on her face. “I should thank you. You’ve given me just what I need so that I can take care of myself.”

“You’re not alone anymore. The pack is your family and we will protect you.”

I don’t need their protection.

“The hunters will kill you if you venture outside of Rizer land without the pack. As you say, they are desperate.”

“Not if I walk up to them before I turn, right?”

Darian’s fisted his hands at his sides. “Do you wish to return to Aldrich Town?”

When she didn’t answer, Darian frowned at her. “I command you not to leave Rizer land without a member of the Rizer pack.”

Her spine stiffened. She was feeling the power of the alpha. Just like that Darian had snatched away the freedom he’d just given her. She glared at him with as that trapped, claustrophobic sensation returned. “You’re forcing me to stay here?”

“I am protecting you.”

She narrowed her sharp gaze further. “That’s what they said when they built the wall.”