Page 8 of Wolf Revealed

He picked up the other slice of pizza, giving his pack mate a wary look. “Different how?”

Xander shrugged, reaching for his own slice. “Kind of like a werewolf, but not like any werewolf I’ve ever smelled.”

Oh, that.

“She’s a werewolf, all right,” Mike said. “In fact, she’s the same kind of werewolf as the ones we’ve been seeing around town the past few weeks. They’re part of her pack.”

Carter’s blue eyes went wide. “Seriously?”

Mike finished the bite of pizza he was chewing before answering. “Turns out she was a werewolf when we first met. Actually, she’s been a werewolf since the day she was born.”

If his pack mates had been shocked before, they were completely stunned now. Most of them were sitting there with their jaws hanging open, food forgotten.

“I know you’ve never been the type to talk about your past, but your fiancée faking her death and taking your son, only for him to get kidnapped by a crime boss you tried to put in prison, sounds like something out of a movie,” Trey said.

Mike noticed Trey wasn’t the only one who thought that. Crap, he really didn’t want to talk about this. Reliving it with Lark had been bad enough. But he couldn’t hide it from his pack mates any longer.

“I was recruited into the narcotics undercover unit straight out of the police academy,” Mike said, deciding to get through this as fast as he could. “One minute, I’m graduating, and the next, I’m buried in a cartel drug trafficking operation on both sides of the Mexican border. After that, I did another undercover job inside a biker gang, and then another in a high-end chop shop. By the time I ended up in Cassius Roman’s organization, I’d already been undercover for more than three years and barely recognized how far from normal my life had drifted.”

“Roman was nasty as hell,” Gage added. “He was involved in the typical organized crime stuff—drugs, prostitution, human trafficking, illegal arms, gambling, and grand theft. But the thing that made him and his crew stand out was the level of violence they went to. They were downright vicious. Lots of innocent people died when they got between him and what he was after.”

Mike nodded. “That’s a pretty good description of the filth I spent years swimming in as I worked my way up through the ranks of his organization until I was on the edge of his inner circle. And just when all our hard work was about to pay off, Roman somehow figured out we were moving in and fled the country.”

“I remember hearing about that right before I joined SWAT,” Xander said. “But where do Lark and your son come into this? Don’t tell me you were trying to have a relationship with her while you were undercover?”

“Actually, I did,” Mike admitted with a sigh. “I’d been in Roman’s organization for a while when I met Lark at Rockwall Harbor. You know, the waterfront entertainment area over at Wayne Hubbard Lake? I went there whenever I needed to get away and regain my sanity. Lark and I ran into each other in one of the stores and started talking about how humid it was outside and how nice it was in the air conditioning. Lark was new to Texas and hadn’t gotten used to the heat yet.” He smiled a little at the memory. “She couldn’t understand why anyone would want to live in a place that got this hot.”

Carter frowned. “If she didn’t like the heat, why’d she move to Texas? The two go together like peanut butter and jelly.”

“I asked her that myself,” Mike said, remembering the conversation like it had been yesterday. “At the time, I had the feeling she was hiding something from me, but I wasn’t concerned about it. She was a beautiful woman, and the two of us immediately clicked. We ended up spending the whole day together. And then we kept seeing each other. Of course, an hour ago, I learned she was hiding something from me.”

“That she was a werewolf,” Xander said.

“Yeah.”

“Is that why she left?” Trey asked. “Because she was afraid you’d find out?”

“That was part of it. And after becoming a werewolf myself, I get that,” Mike admitted. “The other part was that she was afraid Kal wouldn’t be safe as long as I was an undercover cop. Looking back on it, getting serious with her while still undercover in the organization of one of the most dangerous men in the world probably wasn’t the best idea. Especially since Roman tried to kill Lark and Kal to get back at me.”

That said, Mike wasn’t sure he would go back and change anything. Well, except for Roman trying to murder them, and Lark and Kal disappearing out of his life for the past decade, of course. Mike didn’t bother pointing out Lark had become the only thing that had kept him sane as he was drawn deeper and deeper into Roman’s organization, when it had seemed like he was only days away from losing himself completely.

“Did you give Lark your real name when you first met?” Trey asked.

“Yeah, I gave her my real name,” Mike said, smiling a little as he remembered how much he’d agonized over the decision. “It was reckless, but I figured there wasn’t much chance of Roman or anyone from that world running into her. I don’t know how else to say it, but it felt wrong to lie to her.”

He locked eyes with Carter, hoping his pack mate wouldn’t say anything about the whole soul mate thing. That wasn’t something Mike wanted to talk about right now. Mostly because he had no idea how he felt about the possibility. Even if it were true, and Lark was his soul mate, that didn’t mean she wouldn’t deny the connection. Now that he was a werewolf, it’d rip his heart and soul out even more than when she’d left him the first time.

“So, what went wrong?” Trey asked. “I mean, you must have been able to keep your relationship with Lark secret long enough to feel safe about having a kid. Did Roman come after them because he figured out you were a cop?”

“I don’t know. I’d been so careful to keep my personal life completely separate from my undercover one. At least I thought I had,” he murmured, once again wondering where he’d gone wrong. “But somehow, Roman learned about Lark and Kal. The day we planned to take him down, Roman skipped town. But not before he planted a bomb in our house. By the time I got home from helping round up the people who worked for him and arresting them, securing evidence, and filling out paperwork, I was dead on my feet and simply wanted to go home to Lark and Kal. The bomb went off just as I got there.”

“How did Lark get out before it went off?” Xander asked.

“As she reminded me earlier, she’s a werewolf.”

Mike’s mouth curved a little as he realized how thankful he was right then she had that speed and been able to escape with their son.

“I just wish she hadn’t felt the need to run from me,” Mike muttered. “She admitted she’d been afraid about me finding out she was a werewolf, and was worried I’d tell the world, and that the government would take our son away from her. While I’m angry as hell at her for leaving with Kal, after having a front row seat to the drama our pack has put up with when it comes to almost being outed to the world as werewolves, I get why she did it. Hell, in her situation, I probably would have run, too.”