“Sorry, it’s been a shocking couple of days to say the least.”The woman took a deep breath, and Liam had to force his eyes up so as not to follow the enticing movement of her breasts.“My name is Willow Anderson.And as far as I know, we have never met before, so we are most definitely not friends.”
Liam stared at the woman as she rose to her feet.She was tall, but at least half a foot shorter than him.
“No, pretty,” Jacob said slowly, as if he too were desperately trying to work out what the hell was going on.“We are definitely not friends, but you feel like you belong to us.But we are mated already, and this should not be happening.Unless—” Jacob inhaled sharply and his pained gaze fell upon Liam, just as he came to the same conclusion.
“Unless,” Liam said in a voice that rang with pain, loss and grief and everything a man would feel if he lost the woman he was meant to love and cherish for life, “we failed to protect her.”
Liam pressed his palm to the middle of his chest in a vain attempt to stop the pain that erupted within him.He heard Jacob cry out and drop to the ground and the dark-haired beauty before him whimpered as if she too felt the agony that coursed through him and his brother.
“Wait, stop!”Another woman came running into the room and this one looked familiar.More like his mate than the woman who sparked the mating bond within him for a second time.“Listen to me.”She faced him and Jacob, and her voice shook as she spoke.“You and Jacob have been gone a very long time.Many years have passed since the time that you remember.”
Liam frowned as he looked around the strange room they were in and it was only then that the strangeness of it all sank in.
“The time that we—remember?”Liam asked, his gaze still working around the room, taking in the furnishings, the lights against the wall that held no flame and the box on the table at the side of the room with moving small pictures in it.What in the name of all that was holy was going on?
The woman took a deep breath.“I am not sure how to tell you—um, well you and Jacob were—you see, every good love story has to have a journey to a happily ever after—shit,you were”—the woman stopped rambling for a moment and pointed a finger toward the dark-haired beauty—“and well, she is—erm.Fuck it!”She threw her hands into the air in what Liam could tell was frustration.“The date is 2025, you and Jacob ceased to be in 1813 due to a narcissistic asshole who wanted your mate and wouldn’t take no for an answer.”She pointed back toward the other woman once more.“This is Willow.She is Libby, or at least was, a little over 200 years ago.”
There was a brief silence in the room before it exploded with curses, exclamations and questions regarding whether the person who had just rocked Liam’s world at its very foundations was in fact high on crack or just channeling crazy.That last one came from his mate.
His mate!
Liam turned to Jacob and found him looking back at him.“We didn’t fail, Li,” Jacob said in a tight tone.“If this woman is our Libby, our mate, then we didn’t fail her.”
“Hold on just a freakin’ minute,” Willow spoke as she held a hand in the air, waving it around.“This woman just tells you that I am your mate from, what, two hundred years ago and somehow reincarnated into who I am now and all you can think to say is that you didn’t fail me?I mean, her, or, me—shit, us?Argh!”She made the cutest sound as she stamped her foot and Liam fought the urge to smile.“This is all getting a bit much.Yesterday, I was an ordinary, slightly recluse twenty-five-year-old woman, living on her own, with her c-cat in the smallest apartment known to man.I knew nothing of any of this magical shit, so let’s just recap my craptastic day, shall we?I went to my book club meeting yesterday because my stalker told me to go and yes that sounds supremely stupid even to me, but I went and listened as Lisa Colman talked down to me like I couldn’t understand the satire in the damn book she chose for us to read.”
Willow had started pacing and Liam had no clue what she was talking about, but he loved to hear her voice.He shot a glance at his brother.His smile told Liam that he was just as charmed by their mate as he was.
“Then, my friendly neighborhood stalker-turned-crazed demon gets on my ass and chases me through the damn street.”
Neither Liam nor his brother could stop their wolves’ reaction to the thought of their mate being threatened by a man and the room filled with ominous growling.
“That is an impressive sound, but you both need to shut the hell up as I have got my rage on at the moment, and it is keeping me from collapsing beneath the weight of my own hysteria.So, I do not need you stepping in and killing it.”Liam’s growl stopped with a chuff of laughter as she paused in her pacing and propped both hands on her hips.“Now, where was I?”
“Being chased through the street by a crazed demon,” Jacob offered dryly.
Willow clapped her hands together and smiled at his brother like he’d just solved the world’s biggest problem.“Yes, that’s right, thank you for listening.So, yeah, I am hauling ass through the streets, being chased by red-eyed Marcus and then managing to throw myself through a door, right at the feet of Ursula here.”She pointed at the blonde who grinned and gave them both a little wave.“Who shoves me out a window to run across a rooftop, leaping onto a building that has some kind of magical juju that stops a girl from stepping onto it and talks me into getting a tattoo.And not just a small butterfly or rose type tattoo.No.It’s a fuck-off great big one.I wake up from a nap to find out that Marcus has torched my apartment, killing god knows how many people, including H-Hugo and then I get this massive pain in my abdomen as it caught fire or some kind of weird alien creature burst out from within me like it did in that movie, you guys turn up and now it turns out we were lovers in a past life and none of that registers as strange as fuck to either of you?”
Liam stepped toward Willow and loved that she didn’t step back from him.At six foot four, his size could be intimidating.“It can’t feel strange to us, beauty, because the mating bond does not lie.”He held up a hand when he saw her about to start talking again and if she was still wound up it might be a while before he got the chance to talk.“And before you ask about what a mating bond is and why we have one, I need to know if your stomach still hurts?”She tilted her head in the most adorably quizzical way, and he grinned.“You said that your abdomen caught fire?”
“Or something about a creature?”Jacob added as he too stepped closer to their mate.
Willow glanced between the two of them.“Man, you guys are huge.Hot too.Shut up, Willow, and just answer the question.Yes, my abdomen hurt like a mother, but now it feels fine.It might have been the tattoo.Perhaps Ursula used a dirty tattoo gun.”
“Hey!”Ursula exclaimed from behind them.“Don’t be talking smack about my work.My shit is always clean and sterilized and the pain had nothing to do with the actual receiving of the tattoo, but rather the removal of it.And it only happens the first time, there shouldn’t be any pain tomorrow.At least I hope not.”
“No!”Willow gasped, lifting the shirt up in front of her and Liam was suddenly staring at the smooth expanse of white skin.“Where is it?”She ran her hands over her own stomach, before she marched around him and Jacob and over to Ursula demanding, “Where is it?I sat through that thing for hours!I want my black wolves back!”
Liam and Jacob jolted at the same time, then looked up at Ursula for an answer.
“They haven’t left you, Willow, they are standing right there.”Ursula waved a hand in their direction.
Willow shot a look at them, then back to Ursula, then back to them.“I’m going to have to call bullshit on that one, Ursula.”
Ursula sighed, gripped Willow’s arm and pulled her over to stand in front of him and Jacob.“Willow, this is Liam and Jacob.They are your mates, as the fates have decreed it.They are yours and you are theirs and you are destined for each other no matter where or when you are.They are also wolf shifters.They both have the ability to shift into huge wolves, both are pitch black, but you can tell them apart because of the—”
“Color of their eyes,” Willow whispered as she looked between him and Jacob, noting his bright green eyes and Jacob’s blue.
“Correct!”Ursula practically shouted.“Thank the Goddess.If that had taken any longer, I might have just had to kill myself.Yes, these are your mates and yes, they are the wolves I tattooed with extreme skill and talent onto your skin last night.They are real and that tattoo is their magical doorway to leave where they are currently in limbo and enter into this time and place, to be with you.This can only happen from dusk till dawn and let’s be honest, Tarantino and Clooney totally made that film less crappy.When the sun rises tomorrow, they will return to their form on your skin but never fear because they will be back at sunset tomorrow night.”
