Page 76 of Brandon’s Mate

With great reluctance, he moved her hand somewhere less distracting. “Aside from the fact that I’ve always been able to feel your emotions?”

She still didn’t say anything.

He said softly, “February 8, last year. I felt it. Something happened that completely terrified you. You were in the worst danger you’d ever been in, but it wasn’t just that. It changed you somehow—so bad you quit school and went back home to live with your parents and work for fucking Bearcat Construction. Which you swore you’d never do.”

This time, he felt her panic. “Brandon—”

“Don’t tell me you don’t want to talk about it, because I know you don’t. But if it’s important enough to keep you from wanting to maybe make a crew with me, then I think you need to.”

She moved away from him and sat up, pulling her knees to her chest and wrapping her arms around them as if to protect herself.

Brandon moved back a little, giving her space, and he kept his voice quiet. “Look, I know I’ve let you down before. I wasn’t there for you when you were going through this, whatever it was. I should have been. But I want to be now, and I can’t do that if you won’t give me the chance.”

For a few minutes he thought he hadn’t gotten through. Then, very softly, she began to speak.

“I really, really liked college. Being off on my own, having a new adventure—friends, parties—a little studying—It was so good for the first couple of years.”

Which meant that at some point, it had gone bad. “So what happened?”

“My junior year, some townies started harassing me. Mostly bullshit—catcalls, stalking, trying to corner me in dark places. I kicked some asses here and there. But they wouldn’t stop.”

He wanted to kill them. He touched her gently on the shoulder, but she wouldn’t raise her eyes.

“There was this big wilderness area near the campus, where I used to go when I needed to Change and run. I guess I shouldn’t have gone on my own, but I was sure I could take care of myself.”

Brandon thought he knew where this was going. His heart thudded in the middle of his chest. “But you were wrong?”

She raised her eyes to his. “Worse. I was right.” He saw the cold light in her eyes, the sad smile lifting the corner of her mouth.

“Turns out they’d been tracking me closer than I thought. They knew what I was—or they thought they did. A werewolf. Like in the movies, you know? Full moons and silver bullets?”

Shit. “What did they do?”

“They caught me one night. Four of them, with a tranquilizer gun. They took me to some cabin in the middle of nowhere, and they were going to experiment on me.”

Brandon’s panther started growling deep in his chest. Kill them, kill them, kill them. But he had the sick feeling that had already been taken care of.

“The trank didn’t work like it was supposed to, and I woke up with this red haze going through my mind. Kind of like when Rocko gave me those drugs. I didn’t understand what was happening, until they started in on me.”

“What did you do?” Brandon whispered.

“I went Monster Wolf,” Kitty said. “Just like my dad. A super-sized, drug-resistant, murder machine with nothing on its mind but survival and annihilating anything that stood in its way. I broke out of their restraints and tore every last one of them apart.”

Brandon felt his heart cracking in pieces. Kitty—wild, crazy, happy Kitty—had that on her soul.

He sat up and wrapped his arms around her. “I hope you don’t fucking feel guilty,” he said, although he knew she did. “They deserved it.”

Those sorry bastards deserved what they got, and if she hadn’t torn them apart he’d have gladly hunted them down and done it himself.

“Maybe,” she said. “Anyway, the kerosene heater got knocked over in the fight, caught some chemicals, and the whole cabin went up like a torch. If insta-healing wasn’t another one of Monster Wolf’s stellar attributes, I would have been dead before I got outside. But here I am.”

He’d been such an ass. He’d always assumed that she’d been coddled and protected, with hardly a care in the world. He should have known better. Life fucking happened to everyone.

“Who else knows about this?”

Kitty raised her head, eyes wide. “No one,” she said. “I mean, they know about the hunters and the fire. But no one knows about Monster Wolf. You can’t tell anyone. It would kill my dad, knowing he passed that on to me. And the Shifter Council would lock me up until they were sure I could control it, which I can’t. No one can.”

“Come on,” he said. “Your dad can.”