Valens sighed and held her as tightly and as close as their injuries would allow.
“I’m sorry I looked into your stalker.”
She shook her head, pouting. “Oh, no way. You can’t say sorry now. You were right to look into him, obviously. I should’ve been more careful. If I had listened to you and let you do your thing, maybe this whole mess would have been avoided.”
Valens shrugged. “At least the lion problem has been dealt with, now.”
“It sure has,” Egon commented. “You good, Isa?”
“Yeah. I’ll be fine. How are we going to explain this to the authorities, though? That is one dead human.”
Elija growled low. “Judging by the setup in the cabin, he was gonna kill you. Torture you to death. The whole place is taped up with plastic wrap and all kinds of…” He stopped when Valens shot him a death glare. “Never mind.”
Isa shuddered. “I’m good not knowing more about that. But seriously. Aren’t you all gonna be charged with murder? There’s the stalker and the lions.”
Egon smiled at her. “I’m the authorities. Don’t worry. No one will even know this happened on our mountain. Shifters operate with different laws. The lion Alpha knew what he was doing. He knew the risks of coming after us. This is done. That Matt kid is gonna take the lions away and the stalker. It’ll be like it never happened.”
Isa was pale and winced. “This is a lot to process.”
“You’ve had shock after shock in the last twenty-four hours. I need to get you home. Tend to your wounds. Make sure you rest.” Valens kissed her softly because, for a moment there, he really thought he could lose Isa forever.
“I’ll oversee this scene clean up,” Egon said. “It’s my job as Alpha and Sheriff.”
“Cool. Does that mean I can go? I really need to get the fuck away from all of this.” Isa sighed, shaking her head.
Valens stiffened. “And just where do you think you need to go right now?”
She blinked at him. “Your place, obviously. We have to patch each other up and then have a long conversation about the future.”
He gulped loudly. “Am I gonna like this conversation?”
“I sure hope so, lucky tiger.” She pressed a soft kiss to his lips, and though one was cut, he didn’t even feel the sting of the pain.
His mate was okay, and she wanted to talk about the future.
Yup.
He really was a lucky tiger.
23
ISA
Isa laid on the couch in Valens’s living room, bundled in some of his clothes and wrapped in a blanket Reina and Noreen made last winter during the off-season. The massive print was a tiger, and its cubs with Thatcher stitched under it. It was thick and warm. Probably too much for a summer’s day, but Isa needed it right now.
The sun had long since set, and after a couple of really long, really hot showers, her skin was clean and free of blood. The stitches on her arms were fixed up, but the scar they would leave behind would be a bit more jagged than it would’ve been had she not fallen.
Had Phil Green not hit her in the head.
She couldn’t believe it, but it was true. Her stalker, the strangely named YourOne&Only, had actually been following her everywhere she went. Elija discovered the man was raking up insane credit card debt in order to follow her.
Phil Green didn’t have a job or a home.
He had spent the last years of his life following behind her for glimpses of her, trying to pretend he was in her life.
It made Isa sad, but it also made her think about how she’d been living. For a long time, she thought being constantly on the move, doing dangerous things, and pulling insane stunts was the only way to not be who her father had wanted her to be.
Now she wasn’t so sure that was true.
She had spent years running, trying to pretend that her life was… well, a life.
It wasn’t.
Luke wasn’t a friend but an employee spying on her for her father.
Tarrah might be a friend, but even that had started as a professional relationship. Isa didn’t even know her roommates. Her room in that house was nothing more than a place to crash between two trips. She had no home.
Not really.
Or at least, that was true before she arrived in Thatcherton. Now she was the proud owner of a whole mountain with a plan to make something great with her money and privilege.
She was also a mate. She still wasn’t too clear as to what this meant, but she was starting to understand.
Being part of a streak, being a shifter’s mate, was like being in the most imposing, friendly, meddling, bossy, loving, welcoming group of people a person could find.
She wasn’t just Valens’s soul mate. She was a piece of the Thatcher puzzle.
It was weird, too, that she should fit in so well with the lollipop addicted Alpha Sheriff and his sweet mate, the charmingly childish Oz who could run a town like nobody’s business, the wonderful Noreen and Bucky, who would do anything for their sons and town.
Then there was how she fit with Valens.
It was fearful symmetry.
They didn’t fit at all when you looked at them on paper. They were the complete opposite. He was a man of medicine who liked rules and order. She was a daredevil who spent the last years of her life breaking every rule.
They really shouldn’t work.
But when they were together? They fit.
It was symmetry, all right. It was fearful because it was so fucking powerful. Even with Valens upstairs talking on the phone with Egon, she could feel the pull between them pulsing in her heart.
Valens and Isa both knew they would always butt heads about pie and cake. About control and all kinds of other things like risks, what to eat for dinner, or where to store his insane amount of stress balls. But it was okay.
They’d love each other through it because he was a lucky tiger, and she was a daredevil.
He brought luck to her stunts, and she brought risk to his very calm small-town life.
So opposite. So completely opposing, yet so damn perfect together.
“You won’t like what I’m about to tell you,” Valens announced, coming down the steps.
She sat up on the couch and sighed. “I’ve already been kidnapped twice today. Are you sure you want to give me more bad news?”
“Well, no. But I also can’t keep this from you.”
Isa shook her head. “Okay. Go ahead. Tell me what’s happened now.”
“A helicopter landed on the lake about an hour ago,” Valens began. He went on, but Isa didn’t need him to keep talking to know what that aircraft meant. “He’s staying at one of the bed and breakfasts on Main Street until there’s an available cabin.”
“Well, this is definitely a surprise.”
Valens watched her carefully as he sat beside her. “Are you okay?”
She nodded slowly.
“Are you sure? You just learned that your dad flew into town the second he learned you were injured. Don’t you wanna go see him?”
Isa considered this for a few moments. “I would if I thought
for one second it was actually about me being taken. He’s probably here to give me shit about the trust fund money I spent.”
Valens shrugged. “I’m gonna choose to expect the best out of the man. I’ll choose to think he’s here because his daughter almost died.”