Chapter 8

Lindsey

I should have been furious finding Walker roaming the house again after I told him to stay upstairs. Dante was still convinced he was going to get us all killed, so I was trying to buffer the two of them. And if I were being honest with myself, I was trying to put some space between myself and him too.

The man was gorgeous. How on Earth could he possibly be my mate? Even before I was a beast, I was just a nobody. It had been easy for the Raglan to snatch me up because no one cared. I"d lived within the Pack but always felt alone or like I wasn"t good enough.

I"d attended public human school and was bullied there constantly. It hadn"t been a good childhood. Though my fondest memories were of my family"s time out here at the manor. I"d spent my summers here running free and wild. At the time, I couldn"t wait for my wolf to come in, but I"d been taken before that had happened.

In fact, I"d only ever shifted fully into my wolf once before the experiments began. It had certainly been a slow, painful evolution into the beast I harbored now. And for a few years, I was locked away inside her. Trapped.

Things were better now. The beast and I were more in sync and I could shift between my two forms easily.

I had never really considered that I had a mate out there somewhere. Every shifter supposedly had a true mate, but many didn"t seem to ever find theirs. I certainly had never expected to find mine. With my wolf so distorted now, I honestly didn"t believe it was possible for me. Now that Walker was here, I didn"t know what to think.

Happily ever after wasn"t meant for a beast like me.

I dared a glance back toward him. When he noticed my attention, his eyes jerked upwards. I blushed. Was he really just checking me out? I knew I was naked, but that wasn"t really uncommon amongst shifters. Lord knew I"d destroyed more clothes than I now owned.

My body warmed all over just thinking about it even though I knew I had to be wrong. This guy looked like a cover model and those dimples had surely melted the panties off many women. He"d seen me as a beast. He knew the horrors within me. There was absolutely no way he was actually looking at me like a man looks at a woman he desires.

But when I dared to look back, he was still staring at me, and there was something dark and dangerous in his otherwise blue eyes. This time, I didn"t miss the way his eyes swept over my body and saw his pupils dilate.

Holy shit!

Was this really happening?

"They"re not going to come back, right Lindsey?" Maya asked.

"I-I don"t know," I stammered, still too shocked about my Walker suspicions to think straight.

He knelt down to the kids' level and smiled. My brain couldn"t help but fixate on the fact that he was now eye level with my most intimate body parts too. I started to grow uncomfortably wet and knew I had to get the hell away from them. Hell, I was still naked from my shift and had never felt quite so exposed. This wasn"t appropriate at all.

"Excuse me," I muttered and ran for my room, slamming the door behind me.

"What"s wrong with Lindsey?" Dante asked.

Walker had the audacity to chuckle.

There was no way he could have known, right?

I sank against the door feeling suddenly mortified.

"Lindsey"s just fine. She just needs a minute to get dressed and calm down. As for those men, they won"t return if they know what"s good for them. But if they do, our girl will handle them. And not to brag, but I am trained in multiple forms of combat. Between the two of us, I"m confident we can protect you."

"Thanks Walker."

Maya"s sweet voice warmed my heart. She trusted him.

Those kids were important to me. As far as I was concerned, they were the only family I had. To see Walker being so kind to them affected me in ways I couldn"t even let myself think about.

Get a grip, Lindsey, I told myself.

No one had ever made me feel quite like this before.

With everything that had happened to me, I battled with self-loathing. It was kind of hard not to.

Something had happened while I was still captive at the lab. No one seemed to know what, and at the time, I was locked inside my beast. I was still me—sort of.

It was really hard to explain it even to myself, let alone try to formulate the words to explain to anyone else.

I hadn"t been alone. They"d opened the doors and just set us free, or that"s what we'd thought at first. A truck had come and taken most of us deep into the bayou and tossed us into the river for the alligators to feast on. But we were more deadly than the gators.

Not everyone had survived, and some monsters were stronger and more dangerous than others. It had been like a blood bath at first and if I closed my eyes, I could still smell the coppery scent of all the blood. The river had turned red from it all.

I wasn"t the strongest or the fastest, but where some of them seemed to have no humanity left within them, I was still alive and well. That"s when my beast and I started to truly become one. With my intelligence and her superior modifications, we"d survived it all.

Lost and confused, the only thing I knew to do was go home, here to the manor. It had still been a thriving place at the time, and I had hoped my family would be thrilled to have me back, only they didn"t see me, only a monster.

I"d done this. I"d run everyone from this place and from the looks of it, they"d never returned.

Slowly, I began to work with the beast, and eventually I"d been able to shift back to my skin. It had been a joyous occasion and a difficult feat, but I"d done it. In time, I was able to shift freely between my beast and my skin, just like any normal shifter.

Before I could control it enough to hunt down my family and explain things, I stumbled across a gravestone in the family cemetery with my name on it. They thought I was dead. They had buried me, forgotten about me. Had they even tried to find me?

I"d been so angry that I"d gone back and destroyed parts of the home. The scratch marks and smashed mirrors and picture frames were evidence of that.

Feeling sorry for myself, I"d gone for a walk. I"d bounced between my human form and my beastly one with ease, unsure of which would be best for me to stay in. Wolves weren"t meant to be alone. It drove us mad not to have Pack and family, and I was certainly starting to experience those awful feelings.

Bad timing, horrible luck, distractions, who knew? I could blame a dozen things and give a thousand excuses, but it didn"t change the fact that I had let my guard down and a Collector happened to be in the area to witness it.

I"d been snatched up and put back into captivity so fast it made my head swim. But that"s where I met Dante and Maya, and my whole life had changed once more.

A light tap on the door pulled me from my walk down memory lane.

"Lindsey? You okay in there?" Walker asked.

"I"m fine. Just give me a minute."

I knew I had to pull myself together. The last thing I wanted to do was frighten the children even more.

Forcing myself up to my feet, I rummaged through the dresser and found something to wear before rejoining them in the hallway.

Dante looked up to me. "What do we do if they come back?"

"You and Maya hide."

She scoffed. "But why? I can help fight."

"You heard Lindsey. You hide. Let us take care of this."

I glared at him. I didn"t want him anywhere near those people either.

"I"ll take care of this," I corrected him.

"Look, I know we haven"t exactly had the chance to talk, but this is what I do. I can handle it."

"You can handle a bunch of panthers? Have you even met a panther before?"

Panther territory butted up against ours just at the edge of the manor.

Ours?

My chest ached at the thought. I was no longer a NOLA wolf. I was technically trespassing, but it was hard for me to accept that. They"d banished the beast, but they didn"t know it was me.

"Panther?" he said, and my lips tipped up in a satisfied smirk. "Oh, I knew I recognized that voice and just couldn"t quite place it. That was Kian Dannett and his friends. Right?"

I took a step back in shock. "You know the Dannett Panthers?"

"I know a lot of people and a lot of things, Linds."

Involuntary warmth spread through me at the casual use of my nickname.

"But how?" I blurted out.

"Have you ever heard of Westin Force?"

I gulped hard. Of course I"d heard of them. They"d been wreaking havoc and taking down collections. The Collectors were terrified of them. Rumors had it they had disbanded the Raglan entirely. I didn"t talk to many people, but I kept my head down and heard things.

"I can see you have. I work for them."

"But you"re a Collector. I spoke with Nate. He told me as much."

Walker made a face and shook his head. "Nate"s an interesting character, and I"m not at liberty to go into all of that right now. Just trust me on this."

"What about your mate?" I practically growled, remembering the bitch by his side.

Anger boiled my blood at the thought.

He looked confused as he stared right at me. "You"re my mate, Lindsey."

His words sucked the breath and all the malice right out of me, stunned by his admittance.

Maya gasped.

Dante laughed.

I'd completely forgotten about our little audience standing there.

"The woman you were with," I managed to say, unable to deny or confirm his proclamation. Though I supposed by not denying it, I was confirming it.

Gah! This was all insane.

"Taylor? Or I guess Tayla Grimes? She"s my partner. Not that kind of partner," he clarified, no doubt reading the expression on my face. "My undercover partner and fake wife. We were supposed to be going in deep on a long-term mission starting in Venezuela to help crack down on Collector activities. But I suppose that"s backfired now. We"d been planning this mission for months. My bosses are not going to be happy about this."

I wasn"t sure if I should feel guilty about that or not.

"Oh," was all I said and only because he looked at me like he was waiting for some sort of response.

I really didn"t know much about Westin Force, but enough to know that they weren"t the good guys where I was concerned. I had heard they tracked one of the Experiments and killed him. He"d originally been part of the Dannett Pride, a local panther. There were rumors that he had killed a few people, but so had I while stuck inside my beast. They hadn"t even given him a chance. That didn"t exactly make me feel safe about his revelation.

"What do you know about Westin Force?" he asked, likely sensing my hesitation now.

"I know you shut down the Raglan labs. I suppose I should be grateful to you for that. But I also know that you hunt and kill those of us that survived."

He nodded solemnly. "You"re an Experiment."

It wasn"t a question, but a fact.

"I certainly wasn"t born this way."

"Our first and only encounter with an Experiment was down in these parts too. He"d killed several innocent people along the shoreline, and we were able to track him. Our intent had been to capture him, but things got bad and we were forced to kill on sight. I"d been on that mission, but we"d divided into two teams, and he"d gone after the other. Horace. That was the guy's name. As he was dying, he had shifted back to his skin, and even then, his own Klaw hadn"t recognized him, but his fingerprints confirmed his identity. King Phillip kept us informed of other activity from Experiments, but nothing was to the extent of what Horace had done. So we have largely left it be. Despite what you may think, none of us enjoy killing a living being of any sort, but sometimes it is necessary."

I blanched. I understood this. I"d lost track of how many I"d killed in the early days of my release. I"d been amongst the survivors and had left my own trail of blood in the process. But I hadn"t fully been me back then.