“Whatever happened to the guy in DHS?” Zane asked.
“Nathan told me there were lots of bigger problems in the world to deal with than a supernatural working for Homeland and that the guy was on our side,” she said. “He told me to drop it. Unless I wanted the people in black SUVs to show up at my apartment one day and make me disappear.”
Zane was silent for a while after that, obviously lost in thought. Alyssa was working up the courage to ask him why he didn’t want her help to find Zoe and Chloe when he spoke.
“Do you regret sleeping with me?”
The question was so completely out of left field that Alyssa gasped. “Why the hell would you ask something like that?”
He shrugged. “I saw the way you looked at me after the fight downstairs. After you saw the fangs and the claws, after you saw what I really am. I’ve been on the receiving end of that same look before. I’ll never be able to forget the disgust and revulsion. After seeing me like that, can you truthfully tell me you don’t regret sleeping with me?”
Alyssa was out of the chair and standing in front of him before she even realized she’d moved. Her heart was thumping a hundred miles an hour and she was half a second away from ripping into him like a complete psycho when the rational part of her reasserted itself and pointed out that screaming wouldn’t help anything.
“I’m not Sienna,” she said as calmly as she possibly could.
Those three words seemed to crack through the shell he’d put up around himself and he snapped his gaze up to look at her.
“I’m not the woman who walked away because you weren’t the man she thought,” she continued softly. “If you saw anything in my eyes, it was the confusion of a woman who’d just found herself in a world along with vampires and werewolves, coming to terms with the realization that she’d slept with one of those creatures. It didn’t mean I was disgusted or revolted. It meant I needed a moment to process that.”
He started to say something, but she cut him off.
“Yeah, I’m pissed you didn’t mention you were a werewolf earlier. Right from the very beginning would have been best, especially since you told me you wouldn’t lie to me. But I recognize it would have been a somewhat difficult subject to work into most of our recent conversations, so I’m willing to deal with it. At the same time, I realize I don’t have room to talk since I never bothered to tell you I investigate crimes involving supernatural creatures.”
He opened his mouth again. This time, she silenced him with a glare.
“Look, I’ll admit I don’t have a clue what the hell is going on between us, but there’s something real and powerful pulling us together. I can’t explain it, but I feel ill simply at the thought of you being shot over in Afghanistan or injured by those hunters. And the idea of you going up against another one of those vampires by yourself is enough to make me go insane with fear.” She sighed. “I don’t understand what I’m feeling, and it scares me a little, but I’m not going anywhere, no matter how hard you try and push me away.”
Alyssa expected him to scoff at every point she’d made, but after gazing at her for a long moment, he nodded and slipped around her to admire the same mural again. Maybe she’d stunned him speechless. She couldn’t blame him. She’d stunned herself. Until the words had come out of her mouth, she hadn’t known what the hell she was going to say.
“It’s calledThe One,” he said, eyes locked still on that damn mural.
“The one what?” she asked, confused. “What are you talking about, Zane?”
“This sensation you’re experiencing,” he explained. “Being worried about me, feeling a connection that couldn’t possibly exist this soon. It’s caused by a soul mate bond calledThe One. At least, that’s what werewolves call it.”
Zane turned to look at her, and for the life of her, Alyssa couldn’t say whether his expression was one of hope or contrition.
“Soul mate?” she repeated.
They’d met a few days ago and now they weresoul mates?
* * *
“Yes, Nathan. You heard me right,” Alyssa said as she stepped into the alley outside the club, turning a little away so she’d avoid the worst of the cold wind whipping down Third Street. “LA is home to a coven of vampires, and they kidnapped two teenage werewolves. As soon as I get a location on their nest, I’m going to raid it with four alpha werewolves. And I could seriously use all the help you can send me because these things are hard as hell to kill.”
There was silence on the other end of the line, then she heard a heavy sigh. “And you’re okay working with this group of werewolves?”
Alyssa thought about Zane still waiting up in Davina’s office, tense but okay with her stepping out for a few minutes to get some air—and a little perspective.
“Yeah, I’m okay working with them,” she said. “I trust them.”
Her boss asked a few more questions, which she answered, then hung up, promising to get her as much help as he could. After that, she stood there for a few seconds, wondering what the hell she was going to do now.
The whole soul mate thing had definitely thrown her for a loop. It wasn’t that she didn’t feel anything for Zane because God knew she did. But hearing him say the two of them had some kind of magical bond that meant they were going to be connected forever was a little insane. It should have been totally insane, but seeing as she now believed in werewolves and vampires, her definition ofinsanewas currently being recalibrated.
The really scary thing was there was a part of her that knew Zane wasn’t making up that stuff about the soul-mate bond. The moment she’d walked out of the office to head outside, she’d felt the pull on her insides, like her body was trying to tell her she shouldn’t be separated from him right then. Even now, standing out there in the cool night air, it was harder to breathe than it should be.
Zane was a werewolf and there was something between them, maybe something she couldn’t even fight. Crap, it was like she was trapped in some psychotic version ofBeauty and the Beast, and she didn’t have a clue what she was supposed to do about it. Hell, she wasn’t even sure how she felt about the situation.
