“What happened to your parents?” he asked gently.
Zoe reached up to wipe a tear off her cheek. “Chloe and I went to the movies that night, and when we came home, there were four men in hockey masks waiting for us in the living room. Mom and Dad were already…gone.” She took her sister’s hand, holding on to it tightly as tears filled Chloe’s eyes. “We tried to run, but the men grabbed us and shoved rags over our faces. We woke up in the back of an SUV. It was still dark, so I figured we couldn’t have gone that far. The four men weren’t around, so Chloe and I managed to get each other untied, then ran. We didn’t realize we were all the way in Santa Fe, New Mexico, until the next day.”
While their story was heartbreaking to hear, even harder than hearing the words was seeing Chloe’s expression while her sister spoke. It was like the poor girl was reliving the experience all over again.
“If you were in Santa Fe, how did you end up in LA?” Alyssa asked. “Why didn’t you go to the cops there?”
Zoe glanced at her sister as if silently communicating with her. A moment later, she turned her attention back to him and Alyssa. “When we got out of there, we just ran and couldn’t stop. We had to keep going.”
Zane had no doubt seeing their parents’ bodies, getting kidnapped, then being forced to run for their lives was the thing that had turned them into werewolves. He could see the trauma in their eyes. And considering how slender and lithe they were, he also had no doubt they were beta werewolves.
“Isn’t there anyone back home for us to call?” Christine asked, her distress clear. “Cousins, uncles, aunts, close friends…somebody?”
The girls shook their heads in perfect synchronized rhythm. It was a little disconcerting how connected they were. Betas were really close anyway. He couldn’t imagine what they’d be like after they’d fully turned, then found an alpha.
That thought bounced around in his head for all of two seconds before coming to a dead stop. Bloody hell, what if the two girls were here looking for their alpha?
“Is there a particular reason the two of you headed to LA?” he asked, interrupting whatever Christine had been about to say. “Do you know someone out here?”
The girls looked at each other again, then back at him.
“Could we talk with you alone?” Zoe asked.
That seemed to catch Alyssa and Christine by surprise, but Zane had seen it coming. “Yeah, sure.” He glanced at the two FBI agents. “Could you ladies give us a minute?”
It was their turn to exchange looks. Alyssa nodded and pushed away from the counter beside him. “We’ll go grab some drinks and snacks from the vending machine for the girls.” She glanced at the twins. “Any preference on candy bars?”
“Peanut M&M’s,” they said in unison.
“There’s something different about you,” Chloe said the moment the door closed behind Alyssa and Christine. “What are you?”
Zane moved over and sat down on the chair where Christine had been sitting, keenly aware of the twins’ gazes on him and trying to use the time to organize his thoughts. Unfortunately, he was drawing a blank. He really wasn’t good at stuff like this.
He took a deep breath and let it out slowly, meeting their eyes. “What I’m going to tell you is going to sound crazy, but please don’t freak out, okay?”
Both girls stared at him, patiently waiting for him to continue.
“I’m a werewolf,” he said, trying to make that sound…not insane. “And whether you realize it or not, so are you. You’ve just started going through the change, so you’re probably not experiencing any of the more obvious things that come with it. But it’s happening nonetheless.”
Zane braced himself for the fireworks he was sure were coming. He expected them to tell him was crazy and that there were no such things as werewolves, but instead, the two girls looked at him, then at each other, and then back at him. Bloody hell, he wished they’d stop doing that. It was weirding him out.
“That explains why we feel safer when we’re with you,” Chloe said thoughtfully. “But I don’t think you’re the person we came out here to find.”
“Or are you?” Zoe asked.
Now, it was his turn to sit there and stare. “I don’t understand anything you just said. So, let’s start over, okay?”
They nodded, still in perfect rhythm. He told himself to ignore it.
“First, why aren’t you freaking out about learning you’re werewolves?”
“We realized that something was happening to us before we even got to LA,” Zoe said. “The scratches, cuts, and bruises we got when we escaped healed up in a few hours. Then a couple days ago, we both started being able to smell things we shouldn’t be able to smell. And last night, we realized we could see in the dark. We didn’t know what it was, but if you say we’re turning into werewolves, we’ll believe anything right now.”
Well, that was way too easy. Then again, it was probably because they hadn’t experienced the fangs and claws yet.
“Your change is just starting,” he told them. “It will get more…real.”
Zoe tucked her hair behind her ear. “Like what?”
