Sunlight streamed through the big windows where Stefan, Xandi, and Oliver waited in the kitchen. Xandi poured coffee as each of them took a seat.
“Where are the others?” Adam picked up his cup and sat at the counter where he could see everyone.
“Sleeping. Showering.” Oliver shook his head. “Fucking. Whatever. Mik, Tala, and AJ left for California about an hour ago. They got called out on a job and had to bail even earlier than they planned.” He sat at the table beside Anton. “We can fill them in later.”
Adam nodded. He glanced at Logan, then sipped his coffee. “I think she’ll walk again. Not right away. There’s a lot of bruising, her spinal cord wasn’t severed, but the pressure from the vertebrae we repaired will affect her until the swelling goes down.”
“Any other injuries?” Anton’s dark eyes flashed from Adam to Logan and back again. His fingers beat a nervous tattoo on the tabletop. “It looked like she hit her head pretty hard when her foot caught in the ropes.”
Logan nodded. “While Adam was repairing her spinal damage, I checked her upper spine and head. No damage, but I did find something interesting.” Once again he deferred to Adam. “You know more about this than I do.”
“Logan was near her brain stem, looking for injuries,” Adam said. “He happened to skirt the hypothalamus and discovered an anomaly.”
Anton’s eyes immediately shifted to Logan. “What kind of anomaly?”
“Something that didn’t belong,” he said. “At least not from what I learned in medical school. A small gland, undeveloped, but definitely not a tumor, not a growth of any kind.”
“Do you think…?” Anton’s fingers stilled. He clasped his hands together so hard his knuckles turned white.
Adam and Logan both nodded. “I think she might be Chanku,” Adam said. “When I was in Eve’s head, when she had her brain injury, I remember seeing exactly what Logan described, only the gland was larger. However, she’d been getting the nutrients and had already made her first shift. I’m guessing that what Logan saw was the same gland, the one that governs our shapeshifting abilities, before it’s been exposed to the nutrients that enable shifting.”
“That would explain it.” Anton steepled his long fingers beneath his chin. “The girl has many secrets, not the least of which have to do with her parentage.” He glanced directly at Adam. “She’s Milton Bosworth’s illegitimate daughter. The man who held your sister prisoner for all those years had a daughter of his own, one his wife never knew about. Her name is Daciana Lupei, a name I find absolutely fascinating…”
There were soft gasps of surprise from Xandi and Keisha. Stefan’s muffled “Oh, shit,” was heard over Oliver’s mumbled curse.
Pressure pulsed in Adam’s skull, pounding faster and faster until he felt like he might explode into a million pieces. “I don’t give a shit about her name.” He stood up and stared toward the hallway leading to Daciana’s room. “If I’d known that she was…”
“Bosworth’s daughter?” Anton reached out and touched Adam’s arm. His fingers looked relaxed, but his grip was solid steel. “Would it have really made a difference, Adam? I think you would have fixed her injuries even if you’d known. The daughter is not culpable for her father’s sins.”
Adam’s heart pounded. He listened for a moment to the rapid tattoo, each beat hammering out a memory of Manda’s desperate life. “He tortured Manda. The things that bastard did to her…”
“Are no reflection on the girl. She was a child.”
“She’s old enough to stalk us, damn it all. We could kill her now, before she ever wakes.” He glanced down at Anton’s fingers, still wrapped around his forearm. “I could go back into her brain, make sure she never wakes up. It would be such a simple thing. A ruptured blood vessel and no autopsy in the world would…”
“No. Absolutely not. I have had no true sense of danger from her. None at all. No dreams, no warnings. Not as I have in the past when we were threatened. Merely a sense of unease that all of us have shared, the sense we were being watched, which is true. She has watched us, not harmed us in any way. For all we know, she’s merely curious.” Anton’s fingers tightened once more around his forearm. Then he released Adam altogether and sat back down at the kitchen table. His eyes were dark pinpoints, gazing into Adam’s soul.
“Let it go,” he said. “I don’t often invoke my status, but in this case…” Anton sighed and shook his head. “No. I won’t go there. I will only ask you, as a friend and as a lover, to let it go.”
Adam filled his lungs with a deep, calming breath. He felt his heart rate slow and reclaimed his seat at the counter once again. “Okay. I’ll go along with what you want, for now. I don’t like it, but I’ll abide by your wishes.”
Anton nodded. Adam turned away from him and glanced at Logan. “What do you suggest?”
“Eve’s with her now. She should have someone with her at all times, at least until she regains consciousness.” Logan’s relief was obvious as he slipped directly into his medical professional persona, but he knew nothing about Bosworth’s history with the pack. “We don’t want her waking up and trying to walk, and we don’t have any drugs to keep her sedated. She’ll be out for a few more hours, I imagine, but she’s still badly injured. I don’t know enough about the process of repairing tissue and bones the way Adam does it, to know how strong repairs are in the beginning.”
“I’ll stay with her.”
Adam swung around toward the sound of Deacon’s voice. “Are you sure? Do you know what to say or do if she wakes up?”
Deacon shrugged his big shoulders. “Not really, but I can certainly keep a little thing like her in bed. Besides, I know what it’s like to be recuperating from an injury when everyone around you is healthy as a horse, and it’s not fun.”
He grinned and glanced down at his leg. Adam just shook his head and looked away. He’d still rather the girl died, but this was one battle he wasn’t going to win. That didn’t mean he couldn’t watch the woman closely. If she was anything like her father, he really didn’t care what Anton wanted.
At least Deacon had a way about him, a calm and peaceful manner that could diffuse even the most intense situations. Adam met his steady gaze. “Okay. I give. What are we going to tell her, though? We still don’t know why she’s watching us.”
“I’ll try and find out while she sleeps.” Anton drained the last of his coffee and set the cup on the table. “Deacon, do you want to come with me now? While she’s resting might be the best time to get beyond her defenses.” He paused a moment and looked at each of them, and his bearing was every bit that of a leader. The true alpha male of this pack.
“If I discover she is truly Chanku, I intend to add the nutrients to her food. I could never, under any circumstances, deny her the chance of knowing her true birthright.”
Keisha rose to her feet and planted her hands on the table in front of him. “Not without telling her. You have to give her that choice.”
“I agree, Anton. You know how we feel about sneaking the nutrients into someone’s food. It’s not right.” Xandi stood beside Keisha.
Anton looked down at his folded hands for a moment, then directly into his mate’s dark eyes. “We can’t tell her anything until we know we can trust her. We can’t begin to trust her until we know absolutely that she is one of us. We’ll do this my way.”
Keisha spun around and left the room. Xandi sighed and shook her head. “Oh, Anton. Why?”
When he didn’t answer, she followed Keisha out the door.
The room was entirely silent when Anton and Deacon left. So quiet, Adam heard his own heart pounding in his chest.
Eve glanced up from the book she was reading when Anton and Deacon entered the room. “Shhh.” She held her fingers to her lips and glanced toward the sleeping girl. She lay still and pale, tightly restrained on the wooden door in the middle of the bed. “She’s quiet now, but she’s been restless, almost like she’s trying to awaken but can’t.”
Anton nodded and moved quickly to the head of the bed. He cupped his palms around the girl’s face and closed his eyes. Everything else in the room faded away. He no longer worried about Keisha’s anger, no longer sensed Eve or Deacon.
Only the girl. Daciana. The hypnotic suggestion he’d left her with should have kept her asleep for hours, but her mind was more powerful than he’d thought.
Thoughts swirled, images of wolves racing through the night, of naked men slipping in and out of doors. He paused a moment and smiled. She’d certainly appreciated all the glimpses she’d caught of the various pack members without their clothing. It figured. She had a typically active Chanku libido, the kind that existed long before they’d had any of the nutrients that allowed them to shift. Still smiling to himself, Anton went deeper into her comatose mind. Confused at first as he assimilated her memories, he realized he was surrounded by the sterile glass and stainless steel of a small room that looked like a doctor’s office.
No! It was a laboratory. That was all it could be, with its various machines and gauges and beakers lined along walls, with test tubes and examination equipment. And there…there in the corner…an examination table, similar to the one an obstetrician might use, only this one had powerful clamps and straps to hold the patient in place.
The girl remembered that table with horror. Not for herself, for someone else. Someone she’d seen strapped on, unable to move.
Restrained as she was now restrained.
She was remembering her father’s lab! Almost afraid of what he might find, Anton leaned over and pressed his forehead to the girl’s. Images, stark and painful in their clarity, leapt into his mind.
What he saw made his blood run cold. There, in a small cage in the corner of the lab, a creature cowered in fear. Only this was no ordinary animal. Horribly misshapen, with twisted arms and legs and a face that was a hideous parody of both human and wolf, it could only be Manda.
Frightened and lonely, caught in the middle of an incomplete shift from human to wolf, she’d been imprisoned and tortured for years. Anton knew this once-pathetic creature of Daciana’s memory was now a lovely young woman, mate to Baylor Quinn…and Adam Wolf’s twin sister.
Manda was one of them, now. Whole and happy in her life as Chanku after a nightmarish childhood, after years of indescribable pain and horrible mistreatment.
Manda. Dear, sweet, loving Manda.
And this girl had known her. She’d been a child herself, obviously much younger than Manda, but she remembered the strange creature her father kept in a cage for so many years. Remembered her with sadness and a mind filled with questions.
Questions Anton hoped he might soon be able to answer.
He strengthened the mental suggestion to sleep and heal. Daciana relaxed into restful slumber. Slowly, thoughtfully, Anton pulled away from the girl and stretched. So, this was the purpose of her search, the reason she stalked the Chanku. A child’s desire to prove her father wasn’t the horrible man she feared, that he’d had a reason for keeping a strange young woman imprisoned for so many long years.
Too bad her father was everything she suspected, and worse. Anton motioned to Deacon. “Stay with her. She should remain asleep for at least a couple more hours, but call if you notice her becoming restless again. Do not, under any circumstances, tell her what we are or what she might be. She must not know. Not yet. I want to keep her just a bit off balance, for now.”
Deacon nodded. He held up a book. “I’ve got plenty to keep me busy.” He settled into the comfortable chair where Eve had kept watch.
Anton followed Eve down the hallway toward the kitchen, but he veered off and stepped into his office. There was an important call he needed to make. A call to the one person Daciana might actually believe, and possibly even relate to.
Sitting down at his desk, Anton quickly dialed Manda Smith’s number. She and Baylor were in Maine, but it was only a few hours’ flight from them, should she decide to come.
Daciana floated up and out of the most amazing dream. The wind was in her hair and the pungent scent of cedar and pine filled her nostrils. She frowned. There was something else. Something more powerful and terribly attractive.
An unfamiliar scent, yet her body responded immediately. Her breasts tingled and she felt her nipples rise to sharp peaks. She waited for the accompanying ache of desire between her legs, but there was nothing. Not even the slightest sensation from any part of the lower half of her body.
The dream exploded in a burst of reality when she tried to wriggle her toes. Nothing.
Her eyes flashed open. At once fully awake, adrenaline surged. She was strapped down, tied firmly to a flat, hard surface. Able to move little more than her head, she turned to her left and saw only a bare wall with a single window, shaded against the light.
To the right—so that was the source of the compelling scent—a man slept, his long, lean body sprawled in a large, overstuffed chair. A book lay open against his chest with the cover partially hidden beneath his hand. His lips were parted, his eyes closed, but even in sleep he had a look that reminded her of an old-time preacher—dark hair, fair skin, high cheekbones and a long, narrow face.
A strangely compelling face. She frowned. What was it about him that called to her? No matter. She would figure it out soon enough.
She tried to remember what had happened. How she had ended up here—wherever here was—a prisoner. Nothing. Her mind was a blank slate beyond the last few minutes in her hideout. A cougar and a wolf circling beneath her tree, the fear of discovery. Had someone shot her? She tried to move her legs, but there was no feeling at all from somewhere above her waist, all the way to her toes.
Had she broken her back? Her arms were strapped down, but she could wiggle her fingers. Their slight movement settled some of the agony in her mind, but not all. She lay quietly and stared at the ceiling while she slowly catalogued those parts she could feel. Her face. Shoulders and arms, her chest.
Those damned nipples that pressed against her shirt.
How in the hell could she be horny when she was absolutely terrified?
Or was she? There was something weird going on, as if her anxiety level was way down below where it should be. Had they drugged her? Maybe that was it. Maybe she’d been pumped full of drugs. She’d expect that sort of thing from people like these.
Her father said they had strange powers, that they could turn into wolves. They were killers, according to him.
They were the same people who had killed her father.
She’d watched them all this time, hoping to prove he was right, that he’d had a reason for the things he’d done, but she’d still not seen them shift. That didn’t mean they couldn’t.
Why hadn’t they killed her?
She tried to pull her arms free, but the restraints were too tight. They were padded and didn’t hurt, but they definitely held her in place.
She thought about screaming, or maybe just cursing at the guy who slept in the chair next to her. Rolling her head to one side, she looked directly into the most beautiful amber eyes she’d ever seen.
“Are you okay?”
He had a deep voice. Soft and soothing. Probably why they’d picked him to watch her. “Sure. Just dandy,” she said. “I’m tied to a board and I can’t move my legs.”
“It’s a door, actually, and it’s for your safety. Because you injured your back, they wanted you on a hard, flat surface. Logan didn’t want you to try to move before you were healed. I’ll call him in and see if we can remove the restraints, now that you’re awake.”
“Fuck you.” She turned her head away. Like untying her was going to make things better?
“No need to cuss at me. You might think of thanking me. I’m the one who caught you when you fell out of the tree.”
Fell? She didn’t remember falling. Reluctantly, she turned her head and stared at him. “What happened? I don’t remember.”
He shrugged his big shoulders and leaned forward in the chair. His amazing scent tickled her nostrils. She closed her eyes and inhaled before she realized what she was doing.
He’s the enemy, you idiot. Her eyes snapped open. He could be one of them, a person who turned into an animal.
“We had your platform in the tree surrounded—you were, after all, spying on us on private property—and you were coming down. One of the wooden steps in your ladder broke. You lost your grip and fell forward, but your foot was caught. I think you smacked your head pretty hard before you came untangled from the rope. I tried to catch you, but all I managed to do was break your fall.”
She thought about that for a minute. There was no memory of anything he told her, but she really had no reason to think he was lying. Not yet, anyway. “Am I in a hospital?”
He shook his head. “No. We have a doctor and a healer. They took care of you. Once the swelling goes down, you should be fine. You can’t walk yet, but you will. Everything is still bruised. Your spinal cord was injured, but it’ll get better. Adam and Logan can fix anything.”
He said that with such an air of conviction she decided not to argue. “What are you going to do with me?” Damn. She hadn’t meant to ask such a pathetic question. Sweat beaded her forehead. What if she didn’t get better? What if she couldn’t walk? What if…?
“Ah, you’re awake.”
The man who entered her room was older, but so drop-dead gorgeous his age didn’t matter. He seemed strangely familiar. She wasn’t sure if she’d seen him before, but she still felt as if she knew him. As if he knew her.
“I’m Anton Cheval,” he said, answering her unasked question. “I own the house you’ve been spying on.”
He didn’t sound angry, but…
“No. Right now I’m more curious than angry.”
She blinked. Was he reading her mind? How…?
“Yes, I am, Ms. Daciana Lupei. I knew your father.”
“Did you kill him?” She clenched her fists and wished she had better control over her big mouth.
He shook his head. There was a patient, bemused expression on his face. “No. I believe the papers said he died of a stroke. I have no reason to discount their report, but I will be honest and tell you he was not mourned by any of us. Least of all by one of the men who saved your life, Adam Wolf, but that’s a story for a later time.”
She kept her mouth shut. Her mother had always told her she could learn more by listening than talking. Right now seemed like a good time to finally pay attention to Mom’s words.
If only her mother were still here. She’d know exactly what to do. Her mother could do anything. Call the wind. Talk to the spirits, and other, secret things Daci wished she could remember. If only…
Cheval smiled and touched her forehead. His fingertips were cool and dry. Her skin tingled where he touched her. Weird. Definitely weird.
“I would like to have known your mother. She sounds like a fascinating woman.”
“Quit doing that! Stay out of my head.” Her mother could read her mind. Now this guy seemed to have the same ability. Daci gritted her teeth and tried to ignore the strange sensation where his fingers connected with her forehead.
This time he laughed. “I’m not in your head. You’re broadcasting. Quite well, actually, for one who…well, we will leave that for a later time as well.”
She blinked and focused on his face, on the brilliant amber eyes so much like the young man who’d been watching her.
So much like her own.
“What do you mean, broadcasting?”
“I hear your thoughts, much as if you were broadcasting them on a radio station only I am tuned to. I know you are confused, that you’re frightened by your paralysis. Our healers assure me that you will walk again, probably within a few days. There was damage to your spinal column, but nothing that won’t heal. Be patient and lie as still as you can for now.”
“Why are you keeping me here? Shouldn’t you have called 911?”
He shook his head. “Why were you spying on us? And traditional medicine isn’t as good as the healers we have. Without them, you might be facing a lifetime of paralysis. As it is, you should be fine.”
“My father studied people like you. He wanted to help you and you killed him.” She felt a flush of heat across her chest and waited for him to hit her, to call her a liar, to deny her accusation.
He merely shook his head. “Your father was fascinated by things that were different, seemingly impossible. He imprisoned a young woman for more than half her life so that he could study her, much like a lab rat. Do you remember her? The creature he kept locked in a cage?”
She did remember, and the memories made her stomach hurt. “I remember,” she said. “He wanted to help her.”
“You know better than that, Daciana. Be honest. Your father did unspeakable things to her. His curiosity about her origins overwhelmed any hint of human compassion.”
She blinked back sudden tears. “My mother protected her, when she could.”
“I know. I wish I’d met her. You have amazing memories of her. She sounds wonderful.” He sat down on the bed beside her and covered her hand with his. She was restrained or she would have pulled her fingers free. Still, she couldn’t deny that the strength and warmth of his hand felt comforting…and he sounded sincere when he spoke kindly of her mother.
“She was. My mother was…” Her voice cracked and she closed her mouth.
Cheval nodded. “She died much too young. The creature, though. The one you saw? Her name is Manda, in case you’ve forgotten. I’ve called her and asked her to come see you. It may take her a couple of days to get here, but she promised to make the trip. She actually remembers you quite fondly, in spite of the horrible things your father did.”
“After my mother died, one time when I was at the lab with the lady who raised me, I asked my father to turn her loose. He made me leave. I was never allowed back.” She swallowed and wished her arms weren’t tied down. Wished she could sit up and face this tall man who loomed over her. Who reminded her of things she’d rather forget.
He didn’t speak, but he began working at the restraints holding her arms to the board. “Be still, and I’ll release you. I don’t want you to move. Our healers said you could injure yourself further if you put pressure on the section of your spine they’ve repaired, but I think you’ll be much more comfortable if we can take off the restraints. Then I’ll go and get Logan or Adam and we’ll get you off of this door.”
She nodded, almost afraid to say anything as he carefully released the padded restraints holding her arms. The tall young man was suddenly on her other side, undoing those straps as well. She held her breath. She didn’t want to trust either one of them…she had, after all, been spying on them for the past couple weeks. Why were they being so nice to her?
Cheval’s fingers stilled. Daci cringed. He’d heard her thoughts again.
There was no smile on his face now. “You should know,” he said, “that we did think about killing you. Some of the others might still feel that way. I haven’t asked. Personally, I decided against it once I realized who you are. Not because you are your father’s daughter, but because you are your mother’s. It is her legacy that lets you live. Keep in mind, though, that you are not yet accepted by us. Even I don’t entirely trust you.”
With that he went back to unfastening the clasp on her restraints.
Daci closed her eyes and wondered what in the hell he was talking about. Her mother had been amazing, but Daci was nothing at all like that fascinating woman. With that thought came the question—what in the hell was she going to do now?