I’d been doing a great job keeping the tears at bay, but this time, I failed at repressing my shudder. And as I expected, the Alpha stirred beside me.
I never thought teaming up with a werewolf to solve a string of human murders would lead to me banging one, enjoying it, and sticking around… but here we were: With acomplicationthat made no damn sense—no matter how hard I tried to untangle and justify it.
The king bed, which barely contained Marcus’s large frame, groaned under his body of corded, honed muscle. He rolled over to face me, amber eyes glowing in the darkness as he studied my expression.
“What’s wrong?” His low rumble was still thick with sleep yet already laced with a protective edge that made butterflies flutter in my stomach.
I searched within myself for a simple answer before I finally responded with a shrug. “It was only a nightmare, Blackwood. I’m fine.”
As long as I remembered to breathe.
It was all so strange because the damn nightmare wasn’t new—I’d live with it for five years. It used to make me strong, but now…
Marcus’s eyes sharpened, the wolf within him stirring from my lie. But he reached out, tracing the line of my jaw with his fingertips, and the tender touch softened the dangerous glint in his eyes. “Then lie back down with me,” he murmured.
After the battle with the rogues, I’d spent the last few nights by Marcus’s side. Most were at my safe house—a comforting neutral ground—but tonight, I gave in to his coaxing, and we were at his pack compound.
But honestly… there was no way he was comfortable all those nights in my queen-sized bed when he barely fit his own.
I placed the phone on the nightstand and scooted down into the massive mattress, pulling the silk sheets up to my neck.
Marcus watched me shiver, and his frown became a small smile. “The covers wouldn’t be so cold if you’d been using them.” He wrapped an arm around my stomach and dragged me closer until his mouth nuzzled my neck. “How long have you been awake?”
I swallowed; an almost imperceptible gesture. “Not long,” I said.
“Liar.” He placed a soft kiss on my neck. The warmth of his body seeped into my sensitive skin, banishing the chill from the sheets. His breath was hot against my flesh, caressing me with every word he whispered. “Your heart is racing, Joanna.”
“What do you expect when you’re doing that, asshole?” I retorted sharply.
I couldn’t hide the hitch in my breath as his lips brushed against my skin once more.
“You might be able to fool your hunters into thinking you’re invulnerable, but that doesn’t work on me.” His hand found its way onto my stomach, splaying his fingers as it traveled up to cup my breast.
“I needed a moment to think,” I protested, trying to dismiss his already waning concern while controlling the cadence of my voice.
Marcus pulled back, and I felt his eyes on me as I kept my gaze glued to the ceiling. “You needed to think at,”—he glanced at the clock on my side of the bed—“3:11 in the morning?”
I huffed. “Maybe I was thinking how it’s impossible to sleep with all your snoring.”
Marcus chuckled, the sound low and intimate in the darkness. “Your headscarf might be on too tight, Miss Sullivan, because we both know which one of us snores.”
I gave him a playful shove and admired as the moonlight highlighted the silver streak in his hair. “Fine. Maybe…” I paused, brushing the lock from his forehead and wondering how much of the truth I would share. “Maybe I was thinking about how nice it is to have somebody next to you… when a nightmare scares you awake.”
Marcus’s hand continued its exploration, tracing the curve of my waist. “Was it about Latoya?” he wondered, and the blood left my face.
I’d flinched at the sound of my sister’s name, and Marcus knew better than to wait for my answer.
“I’m interrogating her again today… in case you wanted to join me this time?” he offered, his tone soothing and comforting all at once.
My sister, whom I’d believed dead for years, was alive. Only… she wasn’t the same person I’d mourned. The womanwho bore my sister’s face was now a werewolf; and after being rounded up at the end of the battle with the rogues, she and her filthy comrades were prisoners of Marcus Blackwood, Alpha of the Blackwood Pack.
Detective James Cooper saw something in me the night we met, and he took a chance telling me a truth so many humans didn’t know. James’s pig-headed partner sure as hell didn’t know it.
That werewolves were real. And we were the sheep.
The revelation left me raw and uncertain, but next to James, vengeance was such a formidable teacher. And in a few years—earlier than most—I earned my tattoo, the mark of a hunter.
But what are you supposed to do when you learn the sister responsible for you becoming a killer is the very thing you’re trained to kill? The thing you despise?
