Chapter 4: What Are Fake Mates For, Anyway?

Chapter 4

What Are Fake Mates For, Anyway?

Eating and drinking led inevitably to my needing a nap, my body overwhelmed by the activity and the calories. Drew had to half-carry me up the stairs and pour me into his bed, and when he pulled that fluffy comforter up to my neck and tucked me in I passed out within seconds.

I crawled out of bed again some unknown number of hours later, feeling at last almost like I might be on the way to recovering some of my physical strength. Using the bathroom and brushing my teeth didn’t take all the energy I had, for one thing.

Somehow I’d slept long enough that dawn had barely broken as I got up. Christ, it must’ve been close to twelve hours.

But when I poked my nose out of the bedroom, the door of the guest room stood open, with no sign of Drew.

Either he was a freakishly early riser or a freakishly dedicated night owl.

I headed downstairs, pleased when my knees didn’t give out.

But that happiness faded into a hollow, chilled sort of loneliness when I didn’t find Drew in the massive living room or making coffee in the kitchen.

I explored more of the downstairs, feeling a bit like Bluebeard’s bride and a lot like a rude asshole, but driven to find Drew by a niggling in my gut like incipient panic. The house felt so empty. What if something had happened to him? What if he’d been kidnapped again, or his uncle had dragged him off into the woods, or who the hell knew what?

An office space filled with more computer equipment than I’d ever seen in my life—well, okay, I had no idea if I’d seen that many computers before, but it certainly seemed like a lot—held my attention for a moment, but Drew wasn’t there, so I moved on. A closet with some coats and a vacuum cleaner, the walk-in pantry off the kitchen, and the laundry room behind it didn’t yield anything of interest.

…Except for the door leading out of the laundry area at the back of the house. I knew it had to open to the outside by the window beside it.

My hand hovered over the doorknob. I hadn’t been outdoors since Drew brought me home, and I didn’t remember leaving the prison. Only a faint peachy-gray light filtered in through the window. It didn’t look particularly inviting.

I realized I couldn’t even remember what fresh air would feel like on my face.

And suddenly I couldn’t wait one second longer to know.

The door wasn’t locked, so it opened with one motion of my hand—and a blast of cold, pine-scented air, unfiltered and as fresh as I could’ve imagined, smacked me in the face as it swung wide.

I rocked back on my heels, my cheeks and nose tingling oddly from the chill.

When I opened my eyes again after a moment of dizziness, I took it all in: pine branches gleaming with dew, small birds rustling around, grass and a few sprouting wildflowers, a stone patio area with a couple of chairs and a Weber grill.

It didn’t seem real.

Heedless of my bare feet, I stepped out onto the flagstones. My breath plumed up in front of my face, and a little brown bird hopped away and then took flight, twittering in irritation.

I could take a step, and then another, and—keep walking. In any direction I wanted. Keep going until I got to Canada, or Arizona, or New York. Of course, I’d get eaten by actual wolves or something long before I made it.

But I could.

For the first time in—however long since I’d been kidnapped in the first place, whatever number of months or years that might have been—I took a deep, cleansing breath, all the way down to the bottom of my lungs, and held it for a count of five.

And maybe if a massive black wolf with glowing eyes hadn’t slipped out from between a pair of pine trees and stood staring at me, I’d have let it out just as calmly.

Instead, I coughed, choked, wheezed, and stumbled back against the side of the house with a thump.

Oh, fucking God, I wouldn’t even need to try to make it to Canada to get eaten, I could do it right here.

The wolf took a step forward, cocked its head, and then stopped, letting out a sound between a whine and a growl.

I started to get a little bit of sanity back. Aside from my lizard brain, which kept screaming something like, Freeze! No, run in the house! No, hit it with a rock!, none of which seemed like useful advice, the rest of my mind managed to start spinning again.

Drew. Maybe? That would be fine. Or one of his relatives. Maybe not so fine.

Either way, the chances of a real, non-shifter wolf lurking in an alpha werewolf’s yard seemed pretty damn slim.

“Drew?” I quavered.

The wolf bared its teeth, and my heart skipped three beats and tried to jump out of my chest—but no, it was grinning at me.

And nodding, a totally un-wolflike gesture that took away the last of my fear.

Also a totally ridiculous gesture given the upraised furry ears on top.

Since laughter might have been suicidal, I kept that part of my reaction from showing. This wolf might be Drew, but he still had absurdly large, pointy teeth.

“You stay up really late,” I said. “Or get up really early? I didn’t even smell any coffee in the kitchen.” Jesus, fresh coffee. My mouth watered. And then I remembered. “Not that I’d enjoy it if I drank it. Do you think it’d at least make me feel more energetic? You don’t think they, like, shut off my caffeine receptors, right? That’d go beyond cruel and unusual and into unthinkably sadistic.”

Drew-the-wolf nodded again, vigorously, his ears twitching.

The sudden burning heat of my face against the chill of dawn made me feel like my skin might explode off of me.

I’d been babbling like a moron. And not only that, I’d been asking him questions. While he was a wolf.

“I guess you can’t answer me,” I continued, even more stupidly. “I mean, could you? Are wolf mouths capable of creating the sounds necessary for the English language?”

Whatever I’d forgotten about my previous life, I thought it was extremely unlikely I’d ever seen a wolf laughing before. Well, now I could cross that off my bucket list. The sound coming out of Drew’s entirely lupine mouth would’ve terrified me if I hadn’t known who he was.

God. Could wolves use guns without opposable thumbs, more to the point, because I really needed someone to shoot me now?

“I’m sorry, that was so stupid,” I said in a rush. “Let’s go in the house. I’m going in the house, okay?”

I scurried up the steps again, reluctant to leave the freedom of the outdoors now that I’d regained it, but desperately eager to get away from the scene of my humiliation.

Still, it’d only be common courtesy to hold the door open for him, right? So I stood right inside the laundry room, hand on the door, waiting expectantly. Drew trotted over and sat at the foot of the steps. Waiting expectantly.

“Are you coming inside?”

He nodded, ears bobbing, but didn’t move otherwise.

I waited. He didn’t move, and his eyes glowed.

And then it dawned on me. He didn’t have any clothes on. If he shifted back, he also wouldn’t have any clothes on, unless werewolves had some kind of fashion magic I’d never heard of.

Had I always blushed this much? Maybe I’d simply never given myself enough of a reason.

“Sorry,” I choked out. “I’ll give you some privacy.”

Fleeing into the living room was for his sake, I told myself. Not because I didn’t want to face him ever again now that he probably thought I’d been standing there waiting to see him naked.

Drew strode in two minutes later as I sat on one of the giant plush couches wondering if I’d ever manage to act like a normal person. He’d put on a pair of sweatpants and a T-shirt…because that’s why a couple of items of clothing had been sitting on top of the dryer. I had a vague idea, with no way of confirming it, that before I’d been kidnapped my dryer had regularly hosted heaps of clothing with no werewolfery required. This house, with its unhomelike neatness and expensive furniture that looked like no one ever enjoyed it, didn’t feel like the environment I’d create when left to my own devices.

“Hey,” Drew said, standing awkwardly in front of me, as if he felt as uncomfortable in his own expensive and beautiful house as I did. “Sorry. I don’t like to come in before I’ve shifted back. Vacuuming up my own fur is a total bitch.”

Instead of something like, Oh, wow, that must suck, haha, what came out of my mouth was, “I wasn’t trying to see you naked!”

Drew’s mouth dropped open. And then snapped shut. “I didn’t think you were,” he said, with an absence of intonation that made me want to sink through the floor. And then he grinned at me, and it lit up his handsome face like a sunbeam. God, so unfair. I’d seen myself in the mirror again when I got up and hadn’t been all that impressed. “Besides, you already saw me naked. You know, and furry.” He waggled his eyebrows. “All the forest creatures are impressed, let me tell you.”

“Oh, my God,” I gasped, starting to laugh despite myself. “That’s so wrong. Also, for the record, I wasn’t looking that closely.”

He let out a crack of laughter, his eyes lighting up with merriment. “I might look at you a little weird if you had,” he said. “Now come on, let’s make coffee, and then we’ll figure out who the hell you are, okay? I doubt caffeine doesn’t work on you anymore. You’re right, even those assholes weren’t that sadistic.”

I followed him to the kitchen and sat at the table while he made the coffee, chatting to me about the surrounding forest and the wildlife the whole time, making me forget what an idiot I’d been.

Every time he smiled at me I found myself smiling helplessly back.

***

Drew dropped down beside me on the couch with a laptop instead of inviting me into his computer-stuffed Batcave. It made me wonder what the hell he did with all that stuff even more, but those thoughts fled and left me numb and empty-headed when he navigated to a national missing persons site.

He’d sat right next to me, my shoulder brushing his upper arm and our thighs close enough that I could feel the heat of him, but I had to resist the urge to inch even closer. I mean, much closer and I’d have been in his lap, and the laptop already had that spot.

Not that I wanted to be on his lap. But I felt edgy and out of sorts, my mind spinning in circles. His warmth and solidity pulled me in.

I resisted anyway.

“Do you want to do it?” he asked me, his hands hovering over the keyboard.

“No.” I cleared my throat to try to get rid of the rasp in my voice. “You do it.”

He typed in “Asher Stern” and hit enter.

And after a moment of the website thinking about it, in a way that seemed calculated to drive me insane, a result popped up.

I stared at my own face on the screen, my hands clenching into fists. The guy on the screen had the same eyes, lips, nose…identical features to mine. He was me.

But he wasn’t. His bright smile and bright eyes and shiny curls seemed like they belonged in a different reality. The photo looked like a casual snapshot, the kind of thing someone would post on a social media account after a day out with friends.

“You’re twenty-five years old,” Drew said, his voice sounding a little funny. “And, uh, dude? You, uh, have a warrant out for your arrest from a little over a year ago. For assault and grand theft auto.”

I had what? I tore my eyes away from the photo and scanned down the page to find it. Everything went fuzzy as I read the words, right there on the screen for anyone in the world to see.

I was a criminal. Was I? I didn’t feel like a criminal. Did criminals feel like criminals, or did they think their actions were justified? Did it matter if I couldn’t remember the crimes?

Drew’s hands around mine pulled me back to reality. My vision cleared, and I found him crouched in front of me, rubbing my hands and wrists, eyes dark and serious.

“Ash, it’s all right,” he said, and it sounded like it wasn’t the first time, maybe—only my ears had been buzzing. “We’ll figure it out. No one knows where you are, the cops aren’t about to pound the door down. Breathe.”

“You,” I gasped, and then had to pause and suck in a few deep breaths, trying to fill my lungs all the way. “You don’t seem pissed. Or—aren’t you going to call them?”

He actually laughed, his hands tightening around mine. I clung to them like a lifeline. How could he laugh at this? Wasn’t he worried about having harbored a dangerous criminal?

And then I remembered his blood-drenched claws, the splashes of it on his face and clothes. The glow of his eyes as he’d come into my cell, totally unfazed by the monstrous being with whom he’d clearly been slaughtering our guards and torturers.

No, probably not so worried about little human me jumping him and stealing his car.

“Ash. Come on. Okay, so worst-case scenario you carjacked someone. But I’m thinking it’s a lot more likely it’s all bullshit. Or maybe it was self-defense. Or maybe…I don’t even know, I’m spitballing here. But you ended up in that place somehow, and obviously some shit went down. We have no idea what happened. And until I see actual video of you doing something wrong, and maybe not even then, I’m on your side. Period.”

Never in my whole life—probably?—had I wanted to kiss someone as much as I wanted to right then.

I didn’t, because if my arrest warrant hadn’t convinced him to throw me out on my ass, that almost certainly would.

“I won’t steal your car,” I assured him, like a dumbass. And then had to blink away tears. “I’m sorry I’m such a pain. Why couldn’t you have rescued someone normal, right? And thank you. I don’t know how to thank you. I should’ve said that first.”

“Hey,” Drew said, his voice a little rough. “No one who came out of there is fucking normal. And what are fake mates for, anyway? You ought to get something out of that.”

“I already am. I’m getting to be safe, and—hang on a minute.” A bright-red flush spread over Drew’s cheekbones, confirming my sudden, ugly suspicion. I swallowed hard. I couldn’t make myself let his hands go, though, and he didn’t try to pull them away. He’d chosen to ignore the whole wanted-criminal thing. I could give him the benefit of the doubt too. “That means you think you’re getting more out of this than I am. But you didn’t say anything about that earlier. Yesterday. Whatever.”

To his credit, he didn’t flinch, instead looking me right in the eyes as he said, “I swear, your safety really was the main motivator. But I had a—my family had a mate picked out for me. I wasn’t interested. I took a leave of absence from work and took off for a while, and got kidnapped while I was—”

Drew broke off abruptly, his eyes glowing, and cocked his head.

“What? You can’t stop there, not when you—”

“Shush!” I shushed, my mouth still open, and yanked my hands away. Shush? Seriously? Who used that actual word outside of a preschool? But then he leapt up and went to the door, peering out the window set in the top of it. “Shit, I can hear my mom’s car. Shit, fuck, shit!” He spun back, eyes wild. “I texted her to tell her you’d woken up, but I didn’t fucking think she’d show up on the doorstep! You just woke up, right? You don’t remember anything. I haven’t had a chance to tell you much yet. I mean, I haven’t, but pretend it’s even less. Don’t answer any questions, don’t tell her your last name, it’s Castelli now, okay? That’s my last name. You’re Asher Castelli, you don’t remember mating me exactly but you can—feel something between us. Or some vague bullshit like that. Fuck!”

He dived for the laptop, slamming it shut and sprinting off toward the office room, no doubt to put it away and prevent any possibility of his mom seeing what we’d been up to.

Oh, shit. His mom. That sank in. Drew’s mother was about to walk in that door, and here I was all frazzled and wanted by the law and with my hair messy and limp, and I was about to meet my mother-in-law who wasn’t actually my mother-in-law…I had to run! I jumped up, looking around for an escape route. I could go upstairs. She wouldn’t follow me up there, would she?

Except that she probably would, given how panicked Drew was acting.

And then I heard her car engine, my human ears catching up with Drew’s super-hearing. Tires crunched on gravel, the engine turned off, and a car door shut.

A second car door slammed right after the first. Oh, no. She’s brought backup, and we wouldn’t even have her outnumbered.

“Drew?” I called out weakly.

He reappeared, turned to me, and said, “Follow my lead. Trust me?”

I could only nod. Too late to get away, and werewolves were a lot faster than me anyway.

And then Drew went to open the door.