She closed her eyes for a second and whispered, “Thank you.”
When she opened them again, a burst of energy rippled across my skin, followed by warmth. Gratitude, affection, and worry filtered into my consciousness, and my knees wobbled.
She frowned. “What’s wrong?”
I didn’t have an answer for her. What had just happened?
“Did you feel that?” I asked.
“The breeze?”
Was that all it had been? I could have sworn I’d somehow sensed her emotions, felt them. Maybe the mate bond was hitting me harder than I’d realized. “Maybe. What are you thanking me for?”
She smiled, cupping my face in her hand. “I was thanking you for trusting me and believing I could handle the truth.” She glanced at the clinic. “My brother means well, but I’m stronger than he realizes.”
I hooked her chin with my finger, turning her attention back to me. “He’s right about the danger.” I swallowed the lump in my throat. “It can’t be a coincidence that Deidra hired you. She can’t get to Wendy anymore so she could be planning to use you to get to Chandler or the babies. Now that we have a female who was born a shifter, all bets are off.”
She opened her mouth to speak, but it turned into a gasp as she squeezed her eyes closed. She wobbled, her knees buckling. I caught her before she could fall, adrenaline lacing my bloodstream. “Madison? What’s wrong?”
“My head,” she hissed.
And then I felt it, too. I ground my teeth, keeping us both upright as something compressed my brain in an invisible vise. Fuck. What the hell was happening?
“Help,” Madison whispered. “She needs us.” She hiccupped. “She’s hurting me.”
I growled, holding her tighter. “Set. Boundaries. Tell her to stop.”
The pain was overwhelming me. I wasn’t sure she could even hear me anymore. Somehow, I needed to break the connection between her mind and this other woman. My vision wavered, and an idea flickered. A distraction. Something to bring Madison back to me, to the here and now. I bent my head and pressed my lips to hers.
Just us.
I repeated the thought like a mantra as I kissed her. Gradually, the mental assault receded. Her arms moved around my neck, and a new heat warmed me—desire. Her teeth scraped my lower lip, and I growled in answer.
She drew back and blinked. “Just us.”
My jaw slackened for a second. “What?”
She searched my eyes. “I heard you.”
“How?”
“I don’t know.” She closed the distance between us, brushing her lips against mine. “This connection is… Is it a werewolf thing?”
“Not that I know of.” My parents’ mate bond had never granted them the ability to hear each other’s thoughts or experience what the other one was feeling the way I just had with Madison.
And I hadn’t even told her about her being my mate yet. But maybe she already knew… “Can you hear what I’m thinking right now?” I asked.
She shook her head. “No.”
“We’ll figure this out.” I caught her hand. “What happened?”
“It was like earlier on my run. There was a flash of light, and then I heard that voice again. She’s in pain. I think she was sharing it with me, and it must’ve overflowed into you. Or something?” She took a step back from me, shaking her head. “I can’t take anymore weirdness today.”
I agreed. Telling her about the mate bond could wait for now. First, we needed to figure out how this person was getting into Madison’s head.
“Let’s get back inside and check on Wendy and the twins.” I squeezed her hand. “You’re an auntie.”
Her face lit up with a gorgeous smile. “I’m going to rock it.”
“I have no doubt.”
Wendy’s vitals were stable, and the babies were already nursing. I gave the new family a little space and started cleaning up the room with Madison’s help. She seemed fine now, but I couldn’t keep from stealing glances her way to be sure.
Chandler surprised me, patting my shoulder. “We had the baby shower just in time. We’ve got at least enough diapers for a week or two.”
“Let me know if you need anything else. I can get supplies over to you. You guys are going to have your hands full.” I helped Wendy off the table. Shifters healed a little faster than humans, but after giving birth to twins, she had every right to a little exhaustion. “Are you light-headed at all?”
“No.” She looked over at Chandler. “Just tired and happy.”
Madison grinned at the babies. “Do they have names?”
Chandler nodded, staring at the twins in his arms. “This little guy is Brock after Wendy’s brother, and we both like Brianna for his sister.”
“Oh, I love that.” Madison kissed each tiny hand. “And I already love you both, Brock and Brianna.”
Seeing all of them together with such joy in their eyes made the threats around us more pressing. I retreated to my office and left a voice mail for Adam Sloan up in Reno. He was the Alpha of the wolf pack up there, and his wife was a jaguar shifter who had given birth to a female jaguar shifter, effectively passing on the shifter gene without the Y chromosome. Maybe they could clue me in about our unexpected set of twins.
Wendy and Chandler were both bitten shifters so I couldn’t figure out how I’d just delivered a born female shifter. It made no sense. I thought it was a logical leap since she was a jaguar like Chandler, that the anomaly must be from his side of the gene pool, but it was just a guess. It’s not like there were any medical journals about shifter genetic studies that I could consult.
Madison knocked on my doorframe. “Want to help me install some car seats for the new parents?”
“Sure.” I took her hand as I left my office, enjoying the way her fingers laced with mine as we headed outside.
We unpacked the car seats from the freshly unwrapped boxes and took one to either side to install them. It took me a couple of tries to get mine buckled correctly into the back seat, but it was solid now.
Madison grinned at me from the other side of the car. “Nice work, Dr. Vega.”
“I know you got yours installed first.” I chuckled with a wink.
Chandler and Wendy got the newborns settled into the seats, and we waved as the new parents drove away.
“She looks awfully pale. Are you sure she’s all right?” Madison asked.
I nodded. “Her vitals are strong, and werewolves heal pretty fast. She’ll be okay.” I glanced over at Madison as we walked over to my truck. “You must have questions for me, right?”
She nodded. “And then some.”
I looked up at the sky and back to her face. “We probably still have a couple hours of daylight left. Are you up for a hike to the swimming hole?”
She laughed. “I don’t have my swimsuit.”
“Then we’ll just wade.” I lowered my voice. “Full disclosure, I’m just not ready to take you home yet, and it’ll be safe to talk there without anyone overhearing us.”
“What about all the dangerous people?”
At least she was taking my warning seriously. “There are no cameras out there. We’d probably be safer than being spotted in town, and I’d catch their scent before anyone could sneak up on us.”