Hadley grimaced a little, kind of embarrassed at the idea of one of Carter’s pack mates being able to smell her on him, even if he’d said that would happen. Then an even more embarrassing notion hit her. What if Mike thought that she and Carter had done more than sleep together? Would a werewolf be able to smell it? That would be absolutely mortifying!
“Mike won’t tell anyone about us, right?” Hadley asked, still worried that the more people who learned about this “relationship” she was having with a patient, the greater the odds that it would all come out at some point.
“No, he won’t tell anyone outside the Pack,” he promised. “And neither will anyone else in the Pack. I imagine more than a few of them noticed your scent on me. Unlike him, they were too polite to say anything about it.”
Hadley sighed, realizing there was nothing she could do about the secret being out. Besides, with Strickland being on the loose, there were bigger concerns than someone coming after her job.
“So, do you plan to sit out in the lobby of my office every day?” she asked, sipping her water. “Not that I’m complaining.”
“Not every day, no,” Carter said, dunking a handful of fries in his ketchup. “Sometimes it might end up being Trey or Hale.”
She sampled her own fries, which she discovered were also delightfully seasoned. “I feel horrible enough monopolizing your time, but now Trey and Hale have been pulled into this, too? I hate being such a nuisance.”
“You’re not being a nuisance,” Carter said. “And Trey and Hale haven’t been pulled into anything. They’re more than willing to help. We simply have to rotate around the security shifts we’re pulling for Lydia and Kamden.”
That only made her feel like she was keeping the guys away from a more important job. But at least the subject of the other couple served as a good distraction and they spent the next few minutes talking about Lydia and Kamden and the likely impossible task they were facing. She couldn’t help but wonder what the two of them were going to do if Kat couldn’t come up with some way to safely extract Kamden’s skinwalker essence. It seemed so unfair.
“Can I ask you something?” Carter said.
She nodded. “Sure.”
“How did you and Gideon end up in the foster system?”
Hadley took a breath, ready to tell Carter this wasn’t something she wanted to talk about, but then realized that her usual pathological need to hide that part of her past wasn’t kicking in this time. She wanted Carter to know everything there was to know about her.
“Gideon and I grew up in Lubbock,” she said softly, dipping another fry in ketchup. “When I was four and he was seven, our parents walked out of our apartment one night and never came back. I don’t remember a lot about that time, though I do know we were dirt poor and that our parents argued a lot. I’m still not sure if they meant to abandon us, but we found out later that the car accident that killed them happened three counties away.”
“I’m sorry,” Carter said sincerely but thankfully without any of the pity she expected. “I’m guessing there wasn’t any family to take up in?”
“None that wanted to take in two kids they’d never met,” she told him, remembering back to those dark days when she and Gideon didn’t even have time to grieve the loss of their parents, too worried about where they were going to be living. “One distant cousin out in Idaho agreed to take Gideon because they thought he’d be free labor on their farm, but they didn’t want me. Gideon threatened to run away if they tried to separate us. Luckily, we had a social worker who refused to let us be split up. So that was that.”
Hadley nibbled on her fry, then took another taste of her burger, losing herself in the delicious flavor as she considered ending the story there. She’d answered the question and explained how they’d ended up in the system. But for some reason she kept going, maybe because it was so easy to share with Carter.
“We bounced around in a lot of short-term foster homes,” she continued. “It was difficult finding places that would take both of us. It also didn’t help that my brother and I were so screwed up after being abandoned. I kept all the pain and confusion inside, but Gideon lashed out at anyone who tried to get close to us, convinced that people would abandon us at the first sign of trouble. Of course, that became a self-fulfilling prophecy as one family after another gave up on us when he refused to trust them.”
“I’m so sorry both of you had to go through all of that.”
Hearing empathy from another person shouldn’t have meant anything. It never had in the past. Her pain was her own. It was part of what defined her. There was no getting beyond it. But hearing the warm words from Carter softened the anguish more than usual.
“Thanks.” She gave him a grateful smile. “The next four years were rough, but then Rose and Simon showed up and life got better. For me at least.”
“Gideon didn’t handle the adoption well?” Carter asked, reaching for his second cheeseburger.
“Not really,” she said. “Don’t get me wrong—he grew to love Rose and Simon in his own way—but that angry little kid who wanted to rant at the world for taking away his parents never really healed. He simply found other ways to release all that pain. Unfortunately, those other methods ended up taking him to places I couldn’t follow.”
“Is that how he ended up becoming a werewolf?” Carter asked after she paused.
Those old memories threatened to overwhelm her, but Hadley nodded, nibbling absently on another fry. Her brother’s pain was something she’d never talked to anyone about. Hell, she hadn’t even let herself think about it for a long time.
“After losing our real parents and going into the foster care system, Gideon stopped trusting everyone. He wanted to take care of himself—and me—without anyone’s help. At some point, he started getting into fights, coming home late at night with bags of money that weren’t his. He wouldn’t talk to Rose and Simon about what was happening. Heck, he wouldn’t even talk to me. We all suspected he was involved with some bad people and doing something illegal. Then one night, he didn’t come home. The police found him in an empty field the next day. He’d been shot multiple times and the doctors couldn’t explain how he was still alive, but two days later my brother walked out of the hospital completely on his own. A month after that, we learned Gideon was an omega werewolf, but he would never tell me what happened that night.”
Carter regarded her thoughtfully. “That explains why your brother was an omega then.” When Hadley gave him a baffled look, he added, “The emotions someone experiences when they first turn determines what kind of werewolf comes out the other side. Being filled with anger, rage, or vengeance—or any of a dozen other less-than-admirable emotions—somehow twists the change and the person becomes an omega. It’s kind of ironic that the person with anger management issues becomes an omega werewolf with even bigger anger management issues.”
Hadley didn’t realize she’d finished eating until she looked down and discovered that her plate was empty. Not so surprising, Carter was done too and currently looking in the takeout bags for stray fries with a delightfully forlorn expression on his face.
“What emotions were you experiencing when you became an omega?” Hadley prodded gently, hoping she’d be able to get Carter to open up enough to talk about himself now. “Was it anger, rage, or something else?”
Carter leaned forward and placed their empty plates on the coffee table, and for a long moment, Hadley wasn’t sure he was going to answer her question.
