Chapter 11

"What are you doing?" Wiley walks up with Sly in tow as I stand in the middle of the foyer sniffing the air.

"Cologne," I state, as if that one word explains everything I'm thinking.

"Dude, all I smell is bleach, antiseptic, and fucking puke. I hate human hospitals." Wiley curls his lips.

"It's familiar." I shake my head, the nagging feeling to stay alert and on edge distracting me from the task at hand and getting back to Dinah. "What are you doing down here?"

"Nan wanted a few minutes of girl talk with your mate." Sly waggles his brows. "What are you doing down here?"

I wave my phone in the air and then slide it in my pocket. "Letting everyone know I'm not going to make it to the party tonight."

Wiley smirks. "Figured that was going to happen. How are you feeling?"

"Frustrated."

He chuckles. "Grumpy ass bear. You'd think giving your mate orgasms would make you more pleasant."

"I'm pouring all my gentle sweetness into Dinah. The rest of you can fuck off."

Sly and Wiley exchange a shit-eating grin at my ridiculousness.

"Give me a couple of hours to run and play and I'll be back at midnight to take over guarding Jimmy," Sly says.

"Are you guys leaving from here?"

"Yep. We can strip down in the woods on the other side of the parking lot." Wiley motions outside.

"Quick question for you," Sly interjects. "Have either Dinah or Jimmy mentioned how many hunters there were?"

Wiley and I shake our heads. "No. Jimmy sent Dinah in the opposite direction, so I don't think she ever saw them. Why?"

"He talks in his sleep and after surgery last night, close to dawn, he started mumbling. I tried to mind-meld with him—break into his dreamscape—but I couldn't get a clear picture. However, I got the sense Jimmy clocked eight perceived threats, but we only took out four." Sly shrugs. "I don't know, it could be nothing."

"Well, we know there's JoeJoe, McMasters, and a suit—" I inhale deeply again, recognition dawning on me "—that's the fucking cologne. It's the suit from the parking lot. The one JoeJoe met with and who drove Dinah and Jimmy to the ranch. Don't you smell it?"

Sly sniffs the air again. "Sorry, man. I never scented him in the parking lot."

"Fuck. Could he be here? Why would he be here?"

Wiley stiffens, a strangled low howl ripping from his throat before he takes off running to the stairwell. Without a word, Sly and I chase after him, climbing the six flights and bursting into the hallway.

"Nan!" Wiley slams through the Restricted Area doors and shifts into his wolf form without giving a second thought to who can see him, his jeans trapped around his hind quarters. Adrenaline pumps in my veins as fear grips my heart. Only one thing would cause Wiley to respond like this—his sibling bond in distress.

Wiley jumps out of his jeans and onto a hospital bed against the hallway with a sheet draped over it. I burst through the door to an ungodly scene with Sly on my heels. The suit has Dinah up against the wall, his hand around her delicate throat while another man in a white doctor's coat stands over Jimmy with a needle in his hand. Sly attacks, sending him careening into the beeping monitors and bags of fluids, knocking the syringe away.

I round the bed as the suit adjusts his grip, pinning Dinah's back to his chest so he can use her as a shield.

"Let her go." My voice is raw, and my bear is a nanosecond away from taking over. But I can't unleash him. If he breaks free in this small room, there's no way in hell Dinah doesn't get hurt in the process. Regardless, my eyes turn a golden hue and my teeth elongate as my bear makes his presence known. The change is just enough to scare the shit out of the suit and, unfortunately, my mate. "Let her go and I'll let you live."

"What the fuck are you?" the suit hisses.

I drag in a shaky breath, willing my bear to listen to me this one time. "Last chance, let her go."

The suit's grip on Dinah loosens as he glances over at his fallen friend, the syringe sticking out of his jugular with Sly poised to spring in the suit's direction. But it's the giant gray wolf running in and leaping over Jimmy that causes the suit's fight-or-flight response to push Dinah away from him so he can cover his face with his arms. Not that it does him much good. Wiley has his fangs in the guy's throat before he can scream.

Dinah stumbles into my chest and I have her in my arms, her legs wrapped around my waist, turning her away from the carnage and covering her ears with my hands. "Don't look, Honeysuckle."

But she is looking—at my face, my mouth, and my eyes. The horror I expect to see twisting up her features isn't there, and instead its awe or maybe disbelief.

Wiley shifts back to his human form at the same time Nan stumbles into the room holding her belly. "The doors are secure."

"What happened?" Sly stands up, his hands balled into fists, his eyes also shining with an iridescent golden-green sheen.

Nan points at the suit on the ground. "That's Mr. Wilcox. He's a lawyer and on the hospital's board of trustees. He tased me after Dr. Barton saw who my patients were. Considering their shock that Jimmy and Dinah are still alive, I'd say they're part of the hunting party."

"You said they were all gone," Dinah whispers, but with our shifter hearing, everyone turns their attention to her.

"There were four with Jimmy when we found him. I never thought to ask you how many more to look for." I sag into the recliner with her on my lap. Although my instinct says to hold her tight and never let go, I let my hands drop so if she feels the need to run from me, she can. "I'm sorry, Dinah."

"Five hunters to include the doctor and Mr. Johnston." Jimmy speaks slowly and carefully—damn near robotically, probably from shock as he processes everything while maintaining a remarkable level of calm. "Two bodyguards at the ranch, Mr. Wilcox who took over our transportation from JoeJoe in a general store parking lot. JoeJoe who picked us up at the bus station in Bozeman, Mr. McMasters plus a doctor who gave us physicals, and Hank who recruited me at a hardware store in Idaho Falls."

I glance at my pack members. We can speak telepathically, but what's the point? The cat—or in this case, wolf—is out of the bag.

Locking eyes with Wiley, I tilt my head to the hallway. "Put on some pants."

I turn my attention to Nan. "Are you okay?"

She looks down at the burn marks on her scrub top and lifts it to show a light pink line already fading on her stomach. "He knocked me out for a minute, froze up my muscles so I couldn't shift, but I'll be fine."

Wiley comes in from the bathroom wiping his face clean with a previously bleached white towel now stained pink, his jeans hanging loose on his hips while Sly drags Dr. Barton's body into the hallway. I don't know what they hit him with, but considering the lack of a detectable heartbeat, I'd say he's dead. He's also the scent I picked up last night who was sick with cancer. If I cared, I would wonder if an impending death sentence was why this doctor turned murderer. But I don't care about his reasons. All I care about is he can no longer hurt my mate.

Still—two human bodies to deal with in a public setting. Not good.

I stare into Dinah's rich brown eyes as she stares back at me, guilt over not protecting her gnawing at my gut. Her heart beat is steady, but is it shock that keeps her from running away? She surprises me by tentatively touching my lips, pushing them back to peer at my teeth. "What are you?"

"Yeah," Jimmy adds pensively. "I was going to ask if I was hallucinating, but since Dinah saw something too… Uh, did a giant gray wolf jump over me, tear Mr. Wilcox's throat out, and then turn into Wiley?"

"We have a lot to talk about, Honeysuckle." I brush the back of my knuckles over her cheek and down the reddish marks around her throat, effectively ignoring Jimmy and his astute question. There's no way we can play it off as a drug-induced hallucination now when his mind is processing on all cylinders.

"Are you a wolf too?" she responds with another question.

My bear chuffs his displeasure loud enough that Sly and Wiley hear it, causing them to grin. "Not a wolf. I'm a bear."

"A bear?" she says a little louder.

"Yeah." I slide one hand up the outside of her thigh while using the other to brush the stray strands of platinum blonde hair from her cheeks. "I'm still the same guy who made you soup last night and made you come with my mouth this morning. Nothing has changed except now you know all of my secrets."

Dinah blushes and surreptitiously glances over her shoulder at Nan, Sly, and Wiley, who have the decency to busy themselves with other things, to include fretting over Jimmy and overwhelming his hearing. Her gaze lands on Mr. Wilcox's bloody body on the floor, but instead of her heartbeat speeding up with fear-laced panic, she narrows her eyes and turns back to me. "All of them?"

I shrug. "You know the big one."

"I think you have one more big one."

My brow furrows. "What's that?"

"What does being your mate mean?"