Chapter 6: So Very Fucking Wrong

Chapter 6

So Very Fucking Wrong

At first, a month sounded like plenty of time to make a plan. I spent the first couple of days sleeping a lot and avoiding thinking—or God forbid, doing anything—about what I’d learned of my previous life. Maybe denial wasn’t the healthiest way of dealing with it, but my mind and my body simply couldn’t handle any more shocks.

On the fourth day I asked Drew for a laptop, and I settled in on the couch with a hot cup of tea—chosen because it had no texture at all and almost no smell, and therefore didn’t startle me when it only tasted like “hot”—to buckle down and finally face the facts. If I could find any facts, anyway.

Internet searches proved less than fruitful. I found an article in a local paper from a medium-sized town in Southern California mentioning that I was still being sought, having stolen a car after an altercation and disappeared. It had a phone number for tips, which forced a bitter little laugh out of me. Yeah, maybe I should call it myself. I could ask them if they knew anything about me.

But that was it. Presumably I’d lived in that small town, but more searches for my name along with the town’s name didn’t come up with anything.

When I thought of doing a search for social media profiles, I came up with zilch. So either I’d used a fake name or a nickname to set one up, I hadn’t had one, or it’d been deleted in the intervening time. Bottom line, it didn’t help me.

Basically, it seemed like I’d never done anything interesting or worthy of internet indexing in my life before I supposedly knocked a guy out—someone a lot larger and stronger than me, given the single photo I found of the victim—and vanished with his car, which had later been found totaled a few miles away.

I simply couldn’t wrap my head around it. Fourteen months ago. That tracked with my vague sense of time passing while I’d been imprisoned, I guessed, but I couldn’t remember anything. I truly didn’t feel like the kind of person who’d act like that. Even if I’d been physically capable of overpowering him and taking his car, which seemed even more unlikely. Had I had accomplices? I didn’t feel like much of a gang member, either. And the article hadn’t mentioned the victim saying anyone else had been there.

When I consulted Drew, he took what little I’d learned and promised to start some more detailed public records searches.

And then he disappeared into his Batcave.

Which, to be fair, contained the computers he might want to use for those searches. Or for all the work he’d mentioned needing to catch up on, seeing as he owned a business and everything. On the other hand, it kind of felt like an excuse to go into his office and get a closed door between him and me.

I spent a lot of time wandering around the house and the back yard, feeling melancholy and adrift, and making simple meals for the both of us, followed by cleaning up by hand instead of using the dishwasher. After all, what use did I have for a time-saving device when apparently I had nothing but time to waste?

Drew ate with me and hung out a little bit in between, mostly sitting on the couch with a laptop or a phone while I surfed the internet, but otherwise he’d been holed up in his office or going for extended runs in the forest in his four-legged form. So it wasn’t like I had to plan my nonexistent schedule around him.

Besides, I honestly didn’t want to. He’d gotten less and less communicative, not quite getting snappish and snarling at me, but very, very close. I could tell he had to restrain himself.

At night, though…at night it was different.

I’d lasted two nights alone before I woke up in the wee hours of the third, panting and gasping and with spots swimming in my vision and tears running down my face, panicked and having no fucking clue where I was.

Drew appeared a millisecond later, claws out and lips drawn back in a snarl, obviously ready to eviscerate whatever had made me cry.

Maybe it said something a little unsettling about my psychology, but the sight of a ferocious predator in my bedroom all primed to maim and kill settled my panic almost instantly.

Well, that particular ferocious predator, anyway.

I flopped back onto the pillows, relief flooding every limb, and managed a breathless, “I’m okay. It’s not real.”

Drew nodded and dropped into the chair by the bed, his clawed hands flexing as if he were still poised to rip something to shreds. “I’ll stay, don’t worry. I’m watching over you, Ash.”

And despite the warmth blooming in my chest, that simply wouldn’t do. That chair, while comfortable as chairs went, was…well, a chair. And leaving Drew to sit awkwardly and with a crick in his neck all night by his own bed while I lounged in its king-size, memory-foam luxury? Well, it’d been one thing when I was all unconscious. It had been gentlemanly and kind of him to sit in the chair and watch over me. Also, I’d probably smelled pretty terrible, so no doubt it’d also been practical for someone with a supernatural nose to be a few feet away.

But now it’d just be wrong of me to let him stay there, obviously.

So I budged over, taking two of the three pillows with me because I might feel guilty about taking his bed, but I didn’t feel that guilty.

“It’s a huge bed,” I said, trying not to sound too pleading and pathetic. I didn’t want him to have to sleep in a chair, sure, but really, I was terrified that he might get sick of the discomfort and sneak back to the other bed once I’d dozed off, leaving me alone again with the phantoms of pain and anguish and torture and imprisonment. “You might as well get a decent night’s sleep, right? Thank you for staying,” I added belatedly.

Drew hesitated, sighed, and finally got out of the chair and slid in beside me without comment—or a complaint about getting one third of his own pillows. I snuggled down into one of my two and tucked the other against my chest. Who had an odd number of pillows, anyway? What a weirdo. He only had himself to blame.

I couldn’t go back to sleep, though. The nightmare’s power over me had been broken when Drew came into the room, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t lingering in my mind.

“Drew?”

“Yeah?”

The darkness made it hard to see his expression, but he didn’t sound annoyed that I wasn’t letting him go back to sleep. I drew a deep breath and asked, “What happened when we escaped? I keep dreaming about it. But I was unconscious the whole time. It’s weird, but it’s actually more upsetting than not remembering anything else. I can’t convince myself it’s really over.”

“Move the pillow,” Drew said.

I blinked at him. “What? Is this an excuse to get two of them, because—”

“Put it behind you, then,” he said, with a huff of a laugh. “Christ.”

The second I’d tucked it behind my back, Drew wrapped an arm around me and pulled me inexorably against his side. Oh, God. He was so much better than any pillow, even though he wasn’t nearly as soft.

“It’s easier for me to talk about it when I can feel you’re safe,” he said quietly. “Look, Ash. What you didn’t see? It’d give you more nightmares if you had. But I’ll tell you, don’t start arguing. I’m just saying. You’re not missing much. Five of us got out. The big guy and the other unconscious one, you and me, and a fairy who’d been there for a long fucking time, it sounded like. We cleared the labs. Killed everyone who was left, a couple of warlocks and one guard. And then we lit it all on fire, divided up the guards’ cars, and took off as fast as possible.”

Picturing that helped, actually, no matter how right Drew probably was about it not being something I’d have wanted to witness. Seeing the warlocks all torn to shreds in the lab where they’d tormented me might’ve only added to my trauma; imagining it made me smile.

“What happened to the rest of them? I mean, the other prisoners?”

“The alpha and his—I don’t know what they were to each other, but the alpha and the passed-out guy. They left together. I gave him my name, told him where to find me, but he didn’t reciprocate. Maybe we’ll hear from them, I don’t know. I’ve been answering calls from unknown numbers just in case. The fairy hitched a ride with us for a few miles, and then had me stop in the middle of nowhere, got out, and vanished. So who fucking knows.”

I snuggled against Drew’s chest, shivering despite the warmth of the bed. To be all alone after surviving something like that…it made Drew’s grouchiness seem a lot more bearable. At least I had someone.

Someone who’d hold me in the middle of the night when I woke up terrified.

Someone who might be a little grouchy because he’d had to see and do all the terrifying things he’d just described to me.

I tucked my head against his shoulder, petted his chest, and smiled into his T-shirt as he relaxed under my fingers.

And I slid back into sleep between one deep, no-longer-gasping breath and the next, with Drew’s warmth—not to mention his claws and murderous intent—between me and the world.

After that night he didn’t even bother going to bed in the guest room he’d repurposed as his, simply doing his thing in the bathroom across the hall, leaving the en suite for me like the gentleman he was, and then coming into the bedroom and climbing into bed fifteen or twenty minutes after I’d turned out the light.

On the second night he slept in the bed with me, he appeared with a fourth pillow, grinning at me toothily as he arranged it. I took that as a sign not to try to go for three out of four.

So at night we got along fine.

But during the day he avoided me, grunted in response to questions, and went out for long runs in the woods, coming back wild-eyed and silent, prowling through the house as if he’d shaken off the fur but not whatever instincts drove him in his other form.

At what had to have been monstrous expense, Drew ordered our groceries in, and he bothered to talk to me for the ten minutes it took to pick out some clothes that would presumably fit me to be delivered as well.

And to be fair, he’d ordered a whole freezer full of smooth ice cream flavors, a case of chocolate protein drinks, and every type of fruit and vegetable that could be sliced into simple, crunchy pieces and eaten raw that he could think of. In fact, the amount of thought he’d put into finding foods that would nourish me and also not gross me out left me all warm and fuzzy inside, and strongly inclined me to forgive nearly anything.

But as the days turned into a week, and then into almost two weeks, he’d become so closed-off and edgy that I’d started walking on eggshells around him. Not that I thought he’d really snap and take it out on me, whatever was eating at him.

Of course he wouldn’t. I told myself that more than once, and I mostly believed it.

But that kind of tension in the air prevented me from ever relaxing.

Finally, in self-defense, I did what I would’ve done in the first place if I’d had a brain: I closed out the tabs I’d had open on the laptop full of news articles about world events I’d missed or forgotten, movies that I might or might not have seen, and other nonsense I didn’t really care about, and started researching werewolves.

First I read through all the basic info on relatively anodyne encyclopedia sites, but those didn’t have much I didn’t already know. Along with all other shifter types, werewolves healed quickly, had more strength and stamina than humans, and had senses that combined the best of animal advantages (better scent and hearing) with the best of what humans had to offer (full-color vision). They could full-shift or half-shift, depending on what worked best for the circumstances, and while the full moon had some effects on their physiology, they weren’t forced to shift or anything like that.

Actually, I skimmed the part about moon phases as they interacted with werewolf body chemistry, because it seemed like a bunch of hand-wavy hocus-pocus that boiled down to “werewolves are magic and we don’t really understand that, so go find a shaman and get off the internet.”

The pages dedicated to alphas specifically told me that most alphas were male, hinted at “differences in sexual function,” which stopped me for a minute but didn’t actually tell me anything, and made it clear that alphas were even stronger, faster, and more indestructible than your average shifter—all things I already knew from seeing Drew and the other alpha in action when they rescued me.

None of it really contained what I wanted. Unfortunately, Googling “why does my alpha werewolf roommate act like a jerk all day” didn’t give me anything. What a shock.

Which left me with only one option, possibly the one I should’ve gone for first: talking to him. You know. Like a grown-up.

I waited until dinner time, when I thought I had the best chance of getting him to sit down and have a conversation. He’d been even grumpier that afternoon, stomping around and slamming the fridge door over and over while he made sandwiches for lunch, growling something incoherent at me when I offered to do it instead, and then slouching off to his office again.

He hadn’t even eaten half his sandwich. If I’d needed more convincing that something was seriously wrong with him, that would’ve done it. Drew could always eat—in quantities that had alarmed me at first until I got used to his metabolism.

By the time he emerged, presumably lured by the smell of the tomato soup and grilled cheese I’d made, I’d worked myself up into a state of nerves that had me shaking enough, as I served the soup, to slop some over the side of the bowl and onto the counter.

“I’ll do that,” Drew growled, practically shoving me out of the way. Without enough force to hurt me, but still.

And that was the last freaking straw.

“What the hell?” I demanded, fists on my hips, glaring up at him. “What the hell is the matter with you? I don’t know what your—”

Drew whirled on me, ladle brandished in his hand, his knuckles white. I fell back a step, the words dying on my lips and my heart rate spiking: he had his fangs down, teeth bared, and his eyes glowed full gold the way they had in my cell.

“There’s nothing fucking wrong with me!” he shouted, his voice a feral, wild snarl. “Leave me the fuck alone!”

I froze like a rabbit staring down a starving wolf. Oh, God. I’d misjudged. I’d let my stupid, na?ve trust in him lull me into a false sense of security. Everything in the kitchen wobbled, going into high relief: the yellowish glare of the light over the sink, the gleam of the countertop, Drew’s glowing eyes. The air vibrated around me, it felt like, as my body went into some kind of terror-fueled overdrive.

And then the blind panic hit and I stumbled, trying to run, unable to turn my back on him, the nape of my neck tingling and throbbing with the need to get away.

I crashed into the fridge, the cereal boxes on top of it flopping down and whacking me in the head, everything clattering, and I flailed the other direction and lurched into the laundry room, scrabbling frantically at the door.

Locked, fuck, locked, and Drew’s footsteps thumped behind me.

His hand landed on my shoulder, his grip hard and punishing and inescapable.

I screamed loud enough to wake the dead and rattled the door, yanking and tugging—and he wrapped his arms around me and jerked me back against his chest.

I froze again, legs like jelly, unable to move a muscle.

Drew didn’t speak, but I could feel his chest heaving and his heart pounding. He leaned down and nuzzled into my hair. His harsh, panting breaths, like the soundtrack to a horror movie, ruffled my hair and ratcheted my fright up to eleven.

Something pressed against my lower back.

Oh, God. His cock. He’d gotten hard. He’d looked like he’d been about to kill me, and now…now he had something else in mind. He had a lot wrong with him, so very fucking wrong. And I was trapped here with him, with no one else around for miles. He could do anything to me.

“Drew?” My thin, strained voice would’ve been inaudible to anyone without werewolf hearing. “Drew, please.”

The chill from outside crept under the door, freezing my toes, but Drew’s body heated me more than any furnace would have.

He pushed against my back, crushing me in his arms, his cock stabbing me in the spine.

If I struggled, it might only make it worse. That could be taken as a challenge. Weren’t you supposed to play dead? Or was that bears? I knew I’d never read anything specifically about what to do if you were pinned against a washing machine by an aroused, furious werewolf. That I would’ve remembered, amnesia or no.

In the end, my body didn’t give me any choice.

Drew curled over me, breath hot against my ear, and pressed his face into the curve of my neck and shoulder.

And closed his mouth over the scar he’d left there.

His fangs pressed into me. Had he broken the skin? I had no way to tell, since it wouldn’t hurt either way. The heat of his mouth, the wet swipe of his tongue, kept me from knowing if I had blood on my skin.

I could be bleeding, crimson welling from my neck, hot and vital.

My head whirled dizzily, and I collapsed in Drew’s arms as if someone had cut my strings.

Drew went rigid, his arms like steel around me, all his muscles flexed.

“Fuck,” he said against my neck, a low, raspy whisper. “Fucking gods. What—”

I cried out as he let go of me—flung me, more like, tossing me onto the floor of the laundry porch with enough force that my arms flew out and my head snapped back. I landed hard enough to stun me. A crack and thump made me flinch and moan, and then a blast of cold air hit me. Rapid footsteps, tearing fabric, an unearthly howl that throbbed in my ears and in my brain and had me wrapping my arms over my head and whimpering…and then silence.

Slowly, panting and shaking, I levered myself up, one of my arms wobbling worryingly. Christ, I wouldn’t even know if I’d broken it.

If Drew had broken it.

Because no matter how much I wanted to believe that he’d been telling the truth when he said he’d never hurt me…that hadn’t been someone else assaulting me. He’d done that. Hurt me. And trying to defend him, even in my own head, would only make me more of a victim.

Broken arm or not, I managed to get up onto my knees.

The back door hung crazily on one hinge, both it and the frame splintered where the hardware had wrenched out of them. A few feet of knee-walking shuffle got me over by the dryer where I could peer outside. Drew’s clothes lay scattered all over the steps and the flagstones below, shredded to ribbons.

He’d shifted—in a big hurry—and run.

Unless he was lurking somewhere just out of sight. Watching me with those glowing eyes, fangs down, claws ready to rend and tear me to pieces the moment I moved and gave him something to chase. Prey that ran might be more fun. Maybe my going limp had bored him temporarily.

I couldn’t even feel my heart beating anymore; it’d risen to a tempo that felt more like the juddering vibration of a poorly tuned motor. My hands shook. My whole body had gone damp and clammy. I stared out into the night.

Something rustled in the darkness.

And something broke in my brain.

I booked it out of the laundry room so fast my feet slipped on the floor, probably making me look like a cartoon. A high-pitched keen rang in my dulled ears over the thud of my heart—me, screaming as I fled. Panic had my throat in a grip so tight my breath rasped and my lungs labored.

The stairs. I could run for the—oh, God, nothing up there but the bedroom. Lock myself in there and wait for Drew to break the door down.

Pin me to the bed, or the floor, or…no, no, not the bedroom, but where the hell else did I have to go? I spun in a frantic circle, the living room whirling around me sickeningly.

The garage. Drew had two cars, a snazzy little low-slung black thing that probably broke the sound barrier, and an SUV that would be more practical for snow at that time of year. And for everything else, year-round.

I lunged for the keys hanging on a hook near the interior door to the garage, fumbling the SUV’s key ring into my sweaty palm. And then dropping it with a jingle and a curse. Scrabbling it out from under the end table took precious seconds more, seconds that stretched like hours, the hair standing up on the back of my neck. Drew could come in the house completely silently on those massive paws. He could be on me before I even—I spun to find the living room empty. Normal.

The keys clutched in one hand, I opened the door to the garage, slammed it behind me, and pounded the unlock button, flinging myself into the driver’s side of the SUV and wrenching the door shut before I smacked the lock button twenty times.

I shoved the key in the ignition, and—stopped.

The faint creak of the upholstery under me made me start.

I dropped my forehead down onto the steering wheel.

Fuck. I won’t steal your car. Yeah, apparently I’d been lying about that. Could you have an addiction to car theft? Autokleptomania or something? Only that would mean compulsively stealing from yourself, wouldn’t it? Stupid compound words and stupid Greek roots and stupid…stupid me. Sitting here, a sitting duck.

But I still had nowhere to go. Home, maybe. That little California college town where I’d apparently stolen my first—or at least most recent—vehicle. In the absence of any social media, I’d had no idea where to start on trying to figure out if I had any relatives. Stern wasn’t exactly a rare last name.

My hand trembled on the car keys, making them rattle. Anywhere might be better than here. What would the sentence be for car theft? I hadn’t thought to look it up. A few years? I could spend a few more years in prison. At least in a normal one, I might not get experimented on. And if the other inmates beat me up and raped me, well—it wouldn’t hurt.

Something like a sob tore its way out of my throat.

I had to do something, though, so I lifted my head off the steering wheel.

And screamed again, flinging myself back in my seat. Because Drew stood in front of me, right at the bumper of the SUV, his glowing eyes fixed on me.

Stark naked.