Don't give them the details, her instincts screamed, but a part of her broke. All of her fear and horror poured out of her.
“I was in Helena, living my life. I'm a paramedic. I worked at Station Two but had to leave early because of a migraine. I got home to find my grandfather had died of a heart attack. I did everything I was supposed to do even though I knew it was too late. One minute I'm calling the coroner, and the next I'm locked naked behind bars in a basement with nothing but one dim light bulb and a pile of meat in a bowl. There were bite marks all over me."
"All over you?" The blond asked. "It should only take one bite to turn a human."
Samara ignored him. "I thought I'd been attacked by dogs. I got frustrated and angry. So angry that I started to rush the bars of the cage, hitting myself against them. Next thing I know I'm growing fur and it felt like every joint in my body was dislocating."
She had to stop and catch her breath before her emotions stole her voice. "I'm not sure what happened. Everything turned hazy. I think Josiah shot me with a tranquilizer so he wouldn't have to shift and could..." She didn't finish, not that it mattered anyway. It was over and she was free, and Josiah could choke on his own rage. "He knocked me out every couple of days for the next few weeks."
"No," Kellen whispered, reaching out to brush her cheek with his thumb, which she leaned into without thinking about what she was doing. "He didn't rape you while you were unconscious. He's vicious, and if wanted to rape you he'd make sure you were awake to remember everything. And how the hell could he knock you out once you acquired a wolf shadow? We metabolize medication so fast, it doesn't affect us."
She pulled away from his touch. “Really? I didn’t know that.”
“Josiah never told you?”
“He never said anything to me. He just yelled a lot.”
"There's also no reason for him to pick a random woman off the streets," Stephen added, picking up where they’d left off. "It would've attracted the wrong kind of attention. Josiah may be a power mad alpha and a coward, but he's not stupid or a risk taker. There's a reason he wanted you. We just need to figure out why."
She could only shrug while Kellen stepped away giving her back her space. "I've had plenty of time to think about that, but I’ve got nothing. I'd never seen him before or any of the Riverstone Pack, to the best of my recollection, and my memory for faces is pretty good."
More silence, the three of them deep in thought but this time not looking at each other. That lasted until Stephen spoke again. "It's time, Kellen. We've been here thirty years. That's about the limit before folks start to notice that we're not one of them."
"Time for what?" Digging herself deeper into the lives of these three would only lead to trouble, and yet her curiosity got the better of her.
"Time for us to leave Winterbourne." Leo sounded almost mournful as he looked at her. "If we stay here much longer, folks will start to realize that we're not aging."
"We also never get sick, and we can heal quickly, between a few minutes and a few hours depending on the damage inflicted."
Samara thought about Carlie's comments earlier about how these three must drink from the fountain of youth.
Kellen took a deep breath. "Yeah, it's time."
"Then it's time for me to leave too." Samara pushed away from the wall she'd been leaning against. "I'm back to my original request. If you don’t mind giving me some money and supplies, I can freight hop again. The farther away from the Rockies I get, the safer it'll be for everyone."
"No, it's not safer," Kellen said. "It's more dangerous. If Josiah ever does catch you, he could torture you until you tell him we were here. Then he'll have a thread to follow us. We've evaded him for the past century and a half and we're not going to leave any sort of trail for him to follow."
Kellen crossed his arms, and this time looked her directly in the eyes. "There's no other option. You're going to have to join our brotherhood. From here on out, you're one of us."
Chapter
Six
"No! I just told you; I'm not a wolf shifter anymore and no one is ever going to bite me again." Shoving past Leo, she jerked open the door and ran. She headed right, back into the main workout room. What the hell had she been thinking? She shouldn't have gotten off the train. If she had just toughed it out until the train stopped in Barstow, she would have been safer there than in Winterbourne. She would have had a better shot of getting money and supplies without running into wolf shifters.
"Wait!"
No way she was going to stop now. She'd been caged once, she wasn't going back, even to an open one surrounded by wolf shifters. Sprinting past the workout crowd, including the green-haired woman, Samara ran around the half-wall, and yanked open the front doors. She started to run across the street but stopped. Where was she going to go? The restaurant belonged to Kellen. As nice as Carlie was, her loyalty was to Kellen. There's no way she would help hide Samara, even if such a thing were possible. Turning left would lead her into town, a town where Kellen knew everyone and everyone knew him. Going right would lead her back into the woods, the same woods Kellen and his brothers hunted in every night.
Kellen approached from behind, so Samara pulled out her knife for one final time and jammed the tip into her neck ready to end it all because she promised herself she would never go back. Damn all of the wolf shifters and their cages.
“Stay away,” she cried, even as surge of
adrenaline blocked the sharp twinge from the knife.
"Damn it, Maria! I told you I wouldn't hurt you."
Before she could slide the knife across her skin, Kellen surged forward. One large hand wrapped around hers and jerked the knife tip out of her neck. Warm blood started to trickle out of the hole she had made, but it wasn't enough to end her life. Pulling her whole body backward, she tried to twist herself under his arm to break his hold. It should have worked, except Stephen stopped her from twisting all the way and now she was stuck between them.
