“You heard me coming, I take it?” she asked, trying to ignore the tingling sensation in her skin she was pretty sure was the damnable wolf in her shouting for notice.
“Why do you say that?” Evan asked arching one dark brow.
“You stopped talking when I approached.”
“We’re vampires,” the man she assumed to be one of his brothers said. “We see all and hear all.”
So she was right. Whatever they’d been saying, they didn’t want her to hear. Evan motioned to the other man. “This is Aiden. The second oldest in the Brooks brothers’ family tree, and therefore, second in charge to me.”
Aiden snorted. “In his dreams and it’s nice to meet you, Marissa. I’m the smart one.”
Marissa laughed, and it surprised her. How could she laugh when she was turning into a rabid werewolf?
“More like the egomaniac,” Evan said, pulling out one of her steel and vinyl chairs from the table in the center of the room. “Come sit with me. How are you?”
Her eyes met his, and the look on his face told her what he was asking. He wanted to know if her wolf was under control. Considering she wanted to shove him on top of the table and just let Aiden watch while she had her way with his brother, she was pretty sure the answer wasn’t what he was looking for. She settled for, “Hungrier than I’ve ever been in my life.”
“We have left over pizza,” Aiden offered, grabbing a box from the fridge as Marissa sat down. “You want it heated.”
She shook her head. “I’m too hungry. Just let me have it cold.” Evan sat down next to her and Aiden in front of her. She snatched a piece of pizza, suddenly aware of just how intensely Evan was watching her, and how much she wanted to inhale the slice of pizza in one bite. She stood up and grabbed the box. “I can’t eat this while two vampires watch me.”
Evan captured her wrist. “Then we’ll eat with you.”
Aiden nodded. “I can always do a pizza justice.”
“I don’t think I can share. I’m exceptionally hungry.”
Aiden chuckled. Evan didn’t. “It’s the wolf.”
She nodded. “I know. I can…feel it.” Emotion welled in her chest, and she knew now that wasn’t a good thing. “Please just let me go eat.”
He stared at her a moment and then let her go. She headed to the living room, afraid now—and not of him, not of the other vampire either. Of her, of what she was becoming.
Male voices sounded in the kitchen and she didn’t want to hear them. She couldn’t deal with anything else right now, didn’t want to hear something that would make her have to. She grabbed the remote and turned up the volume on her decade old television she’d gotten on Craigslist that someone had muted. Then she sat down on her faded brown couch, and started eating her pizza while she was still human enough to enjoy it.
***
“I’m going to help you save her,” Aiden said, the instant she was out of the room.
“You already told me that.”
“Well, I mean it this time,” Aiden said.
Evan arched a brow. “And that would be because?”
“Because you care about her, I saw it in your face when you were looking at her. You met her and something about her found some real emotion in you man. I get it now. I should have gotten it the minute I heard you put your life on the line for her, but you had just met her. We’ll get this wolf and then you can get her the hell out of here and then decide what to do about the rest from there.”
He meant the council and the decision to covert Marissa, for her own protection. But it didn’t matter if he converted her or not. In the end, he’d broken the law, and he’d be punished. He could save her, just not himself.
“There’s always a way,” Aiden said, as if reading his thoughts. “We should have died and we didn’t. And so should she have. Clearly, she wasn’t meant to die any more than we were. I’m envious man. You have something other than ice in your veins for the first time since we were changed. This thing that we do gets mechanical. I have to remind myself we are saving lives, but we’re so removed from those we’re fighting for, it’s hard to remember why that’s important. Maybe keeping the humans at a distance isn’t all we’ve cracked it up to be. Maybe we need to feel something to keep fighting.”
Evan took that in, let it roll around inside him, let it take root. Until Marissa walked into that bar, Aiden didn’t remember the last time he’d felt anything real besides fleeting lust. The fire for vengeance had faded centuries ago.
Aiden’s cell phone rang and he tugged it from his jeans. “Troy,” he said. “And you know without me telling you he’s going to be hard to deal with because of Sarah.”
Sarah, the wolf that had tried to kill him, the one he’d been in love with. “I know,” Evan said. “Believe me, I know.” And while Aiden had always been the one who rolled with the punches and seemed unaffected by the hell of a hundred plus years of fighting. Listening to him talk about Marissa now, Evan wondered if it wasn’t all an act.
“Talk to me my brother,” Aiden said answering his phone. Listening, his gaze lifted to Evan’s almost instantly and Evan knew the news wasn’t good. Aiden snapped his phone shut. “The wolf is headed this way.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
Marissa had just finished—no—inhaled—the last of the three slices of pizza that had been in the box, when she felt a rush of awareness, a powerful energy. She whirled around to find Evan charging toward her.
“Go get dressed,” he said. “We have to leave now.”
“What? I—”
“Just do it Marissa,” he ordered. “Do it now.”
Panic rushed through her, and she could feel the tingling of her skin begin again. She turned toward the hallway, with Evan on her heels, and rushed to her room.
She turned to him, tugging on shorts. “What’s happening?” She asked, yanking a tee over her head, and sliding on her Keds. “Is it the wolf?”
“Yes,” he said, shackling her arm. “It’s the wolf.” He proceeded to all but drag her to the backdoor where an Escalade was waiting. The door popped open immediately and Aiden got out. “Take the wheel and drive north on IH-35.” He was already rounding the truck to get into the back on the opposite side.
Evan motioned for Marissa to get into the passenger seat. Marissa rushed to the other side of the vehicle and Evan reached over and shoved the door open. She froze when she saw the man in the backseat with Aiden, his long blond hair draped over Aiden’s arm as he bent over it. The man looked up at her and she could see claw marks on his face oozing with blood, his silvery eyes piercing hers with what looked like hatred.
“Get in, Marissa, damn it,” Evan shouted.
“Hello Marissa,” came a male voice from directly behind her.
She whirled around to find a tall muscular man with dark hair curling around his face. “I enjoyed playing with you in the alley. Shall we play again?” His eyes went red. She sucked in a breath, the wolf. This was the wolf. She’d barely had the thought before he began to shift, his face contorting, teeth extending. In some distant part of her mind, she heard Evan scream her name—and saw Aiden was out of the truck and lunging at the wolf but he wasn’t fast enough. The wolf sunk teeth into his shoulder. Evan was over the hood of the truck and jumping down on the half-shifted wolf’s back.