Quade stepped into the kitchen, taking a deep whiff of the meaty sauce bubbling away on the stove. His stomach growled, reminding him that he hadn’t eaten since before he’d gone on his mission and came back with Caden. Now that he’d caught the scent, his wolf was demanding to be fed.
A pot of thick, rich brown gravy had been filled to the brim with hunks of beef, mushrooms, carrots, potatoes, and thin strips of bacon. He smiled to himself when he realized Jess must be cooking. She always took care of him when he came back home.
Dipping a finger into the stew, he stuck it in his mouth and groaned. Jess was many things, but a phenomenal cook topped that list. From the delicate notes of the wine she’d used to the seasonings of the beef, everything was spot-on perfect.
“Good evening, dear. Did you have a nice day?”
The voice sent shivers up Quade’s spine, but he turned and pasted on a smile as Jess entered the room, running her hands over the frilly pink apron she always had on, and made her way to the pot, where she took a taste of dinner. One would think that after several years of seeing her, Quade’d be used to Jess, but every time he saw her, he was still a little freaked.
A shade over six feet tall, with dark hair and a sweet scent, she smelled like home to Quade. Which messed with his head, because Jess was a woman in her fifties who lived in the body of twenty-six-year-old Alexander Ryerson. Quade drew in a breath, letting Jess’s scent calm him enough that he could talk about his mission.
“It was… unusual. Came back with a new friend. Well, friend might be laying it on a little thick. If he had a gun, he’d have shot me.”
Jess waved her hand as she looked over her shoulder and graced Quade with a smile. “I doubt it. Who’d want to hurt you?”
Turning back to the stove, Jess hummed as she added a bit more seasoning to her food. That fast, Quade’s resistance melted away, just as it always did. No matter what body she was in, this was Jess, the woman Quade adored.
He stepped forward and kissed the smooth cheek. “Good evening, Jessie, love. How are you?”
She clenched her fingers, then stretched them out. “Darned arthritis is acting up, but that doesn’t mean I can’t cook a nice meal for my family, does it?”
When Quade met Alexander Ryerson, he thought he was just the one guy, but it turned out there were eight different people inside him. Not split personalities, but actual people who had died in a bombing at a mall where Alexander was shopping at the time. Eight people died, but… somehow they lived on in Alexander’s mind.
What surprised Quade the most was how each of them took this life in stride. He wasn’t sure how Jess saw Quade as part of her family, but she did. She cooked for him, made him cookies, and insisted he come to her place to watch movies on the weekends. She had an affinity for old black-and-white ones, which always made her tear up. He’d sit on the couch, handing her tissues until the movie was over.
It was weird, but the cookies were so damn worth it.
Getting used to the people who lived inside Alexander strained what little control Quade had, but he did his best to tamp down his anger. He hated the fact that Jess had to share a body. That she’d had to… die in the first place. If it was weird for him, how must it be for Alexander? He paused for a moment, wondering if there even was an Alexander anymore. Or was he just a mishmash of eight other people?
Alexander, fourteen at the time, was at ground zero when an explosion had rocked the mall he was in. Around him, death and destruction rained down, as people were burned alive. Remarkably, Alexander escaped without a scratch. At least physically. When he was pulled out of the wreckage, he’d changed. He was no longer the happy-go-lucky kid who played on the school’s baseball team, who loved riding his bike and playing video games. He grew moody, pensive. His normally sweet demeanor had darkened, causing him to lash out in a fit of rage.
His parents had taken him to a psychologist, who told them that he had been through a traumatic experience and that they needed to give him time. But as the weeks went by, the changes became more and more pronounced. Alexander began talking in voices that weren’t his own, saying the strangest things. One moment he’d be sweet as the pie he’d just baked—which freaked his parents out even more, because they didn’t know he could bake—and the next, he’d be telling bawdy jokes and cursing like a sailor on a three-day pass.
His mother came home one afternoon to find Alexander standing in front of a mirror, reciting lines from Shakespeare in what sounded, at least to her ear, like a genuine English accent.
They went back to see the doctor, who continued to assure them nothing was wrong, but the changes came faster and faster. Alexander began to draw pictures of superheroes with uncanny accuracy, and then he’d talk in the voice of a little girl who insisted her name was Kelly and demanded to know where her mother was.
That was when Alexander’s parents realized they needed to find help elsewhere. They tried different doctors, ones who medicated Alexander with no success. Others tried hypnosis, which left them with more questions than answers. And finally, one doctor told them he believed Alexander should be incarcerated for his own safety as well as those around him.
Then they found Dr. Desmond, who seemed like a gift from on high. He told them he’d heard about Alexander and thought he could help. So desperate were Alexander’s parents, they told Dr. Desmond they’d pay him anything, if only he could cure their son.
But Desmond already knew the truth. Alexander wasn’t alone in his body, and Desmond knew exactly who was in there with him. Eight people died in the fire they’d pulled Alexander from: Dyson James, Kelly Arnot, Marvin Stein, Jessica Flynn, Sylvia Perry, Eddie Wentworth, Peter McGrath, and Tyler Dempsey.
Each of them now made up Alexander’s psyche. At times of stress, one of them came out to protect Alexander’s mind from splintering further. Each one took control of the host body, but still saw themselves if they looked in a mirror. Dr. Desmond explained it was how Alexander saw things that mattered—the people inside of him saw what they wanted to see, despite how things actually were.
It confused the hell out of Quade, but Dr. Desmond said it had to do with Alexander’s psychic powers. How, on the day those people died, his mind gathered them up and rolled them into himself. If it had been one person, it wouldn’t have been so hard, but eight at once overwhelmed his teenage mind.
So here was Jess, an elderly housewife in the body of a man, cooking a meal for him, but this was also Dyson, the trucker who’d pissed Quade off when he was hunting Caden, not to mention every time he was in charge. It was too much for Quade’s wolf to wrap its mind around, and for once, Quade was in full agreement. Still, he loved Jess no matter which body she resided in. He wondered about her family, how they got on once she…. Shit, he couldn’t say she died, since she was standing right in front of him.
She ran the spoon through the stew, releasing more of the enticing aroma. “So tell me about this new boy of yours.”
Even though the topic was awkward, Quade was grateful for the change of subject.
“He’s not my boy by any stretch of the imagination. He hates me, which I’m not sure isn’t deserved. I almost killed him a few days ago because we thought he’d murdered a bunch of men. Turns out that he had done it, but it wasn’t under his control, so he’s about to become our newest member.”