GRAY Wolf Mate Page 13

He nodded. “Hear me out. I couldn’t tell you any of this when you held me captive.”

  She flinched at that, because he said it as if she’d put him a cage, which she’d never do.

  Not true.

  Oh, wait. She had agreed to send him to a hole in the ground. Flinching internally, she held quiet so he could explain.

  “I was inside the food bank building the night of the bombing. I work for a national security agency—”

  She interrupted. “Which one?”

  “I can’t tell you. There are a lot of things I’m not supposed to be telling you, but I’m going to share as much as I can and trust that you still have the same core of integrity you had back when I first met you.”

  “I can’t promise I won’t share what you say if I think it needs to be passed along for national security.”

  “I knew that coming in here and I’m willing to take my chances. I trust you, even though you may never trust me again.”

  How did he do that?

  One minute she was ready to fill him full of holes and the next he was saying he would give her information that could come back on him.

  Her silence must have convinced him to continue. “I wasn’t supposed to enter the building. We’d been told Jugo Loco was being distributed out of that building. My team was there to observe and place a tracking device on the Black River pack’s truck, then one of our people would have sent information through channels that would reach SCIS.”

  “Why would your people do that?”

  “Because we don’t make the law enforcement collars.”

  Tess took a mental step back at the law enforcement term.

  Cole went on. “We work similarly to military covert operations. We go in, perform a mission or gather intel, and leave with no one knowing we were there.”

  “You screwed that up,” she said in a flat voice.

  “I did,” he admitted.

  She’d meant his team, but Cole seemed to be taking all the blame. “Why were you in the warehouse?”

  “When the truck arrived and entered the building, an elderly homeless woman ducked inside before the overhead door closed. I knew if shifters were there, they would definitely scent a human. The Black River pack would kill her for sport.”

  Tess thought back over the bombing scene. “The woman you were lying on top of when we found you unconscious.”

  “Probably.”

  “She wasn’t burned.”

  “Good.” There was that one word, which said nothing and a lot at the same time. “Our people have taken care of her.”

  Tess hadn’t heard anything about the woman being moved from the hospital. She would be looking into that tomorrow to find out who had taken her and why Tess had not been informed.

  Had Brantley known? Probably. She’d finally hit her limit with him and spent all day doing her own internal investigations. They’d exposed how he’d been working behind her back while professing his trust and support of her.

  As soon as she got through that damned meeting next week, things were going to change at SCIS, starting with Brantley.

  This had been the longest Thursday of her life.

  She gave Cole a nod. “Go on.”

  “Our intel came from a snitch called Sonic. When I got inside the building, there were no shifters, just a mild residue of at least one having been there. I saw the woman hiding near the truck parked inside and gave a hand sign to stay quiet. I’m not sure she understood anything much that was going on. We know now that someone offered her food and shelter to slip inside. That’s all she knew. I found Sonic with his hands taped to a steering wheel and a bomb strapped around his ankles. The best we can figure, someone had to be watching via camera and triggered the timer remotely, leaving me ten seconds to get out.”

  Goosebumps pebbled over her skin at hearing Cole walk through the pre-explosion scene. The attorney in her noted that he did so with the dispassionate analytical ability of a professional, even though he’d been in the middle of the explosion.

  And he’d been burned. Badly.

  Her stupid heart clenched.

  He said, “A note with the Black River icon had been pinned to Sonic’s shirt. I believe the entire scene had been set up for m ... someone in my organization.”

  She’d read his lips. He’d been about to say the bomb had been set for him. Now her heart was off to the races. She could have lost Cole a second time, but would she have known it was him even after a complete forensics workup?

  Maintaining her calm voice, she asked, “So someone died in that bombing?”

  “No. Sonic was already dead. His throat had been slit.”

  She shifted the gun in her grip, but she wasn’t ready to put it down.

  Could she use it on him?

  No. She wasn’t stupid enough to believe she could, and her finger would go nowhere near the trigger. But it was a barrier. A divide between what they were and what they had to be now. She needed it.

  “What else did you find?”

  “Jugo Loco. That and the note on Sonic confirmed our intel, which indicated that was one of the Black River pack distribution points.”

  Speaking of intelligence, he’d just shared something no one at SCIS knew. “Are you sure you found Jugo Loco in there?”

  “Yes. I used a test strip, but it burned in the fire so it’s only my word at this point. Not admissible evidence.”

  “You’re right, if I believe you. Why would I?”

  He shifted his legs in place. Regardless of how he stood, he was imposing, standing above her like a towering force.

  Cole said, “This is definitely something I’m not supposed to share, but I want you to believe me. The three anonymous tips SCIS has received over the last nine weeks are a result of my team discovering fingers of the Jugo Loco distribution network.” He rattled off the exact dates, locations and times SCIS had received, plus additional information that convinced her he might just be telling the truth.

  She recalled that information coming through their intelligence network.

  Still, that wasn’t as big a deal as staring at the man she had once loved who was now a wolf shifter.

  She deserved to indulge in a serious breakdown as soon as she could fit it into her schedule.

  Cole angled his head, studying her in a way that made her think he’d climbed inside of her screwed-up head and caught some of that.

  To cover the secret crazy she had going on, she gave him a surly, “What now?”

  “I can tell by the surprise on your face that you know I’m telling the truth.”

  She forced a blank expression into place. “I’m not confirming or denying anything.”

  “Tess, I’m trying to get you to realize that I work with the good guys who have been helping you.”

  “Again, no way to prove it and I have no reason to trust what you say.” Okay, that was just tired, bitchy noise.

  He raked a hand over his short hair.

  She jerked the gun up.

  “Whoa,” he said, hands back up. “Would you please put that thing down?”

  “No.” One question had churned over and over until she couldn’t keep it in any longer. She might never get a better chance to ask it. “Did you know you were a ... uh ... ”

  “Shifter,” he filled in.

  “Right. A shifter. Did you know when we were ... together?”

  “No.”

  She wanted to believe him. “When did you find out?”

  “The last night I saw you. Remember how I said I needed to go for a run?”

  “As if I could forget the last time I saw you?” The pain rushed through her chest again. He’d made love to her and whispered, “Mine.” She thought she’d found heaven.

  She’d waited and waited while he was gone.

  Then she’d gone out looking. Worrying, she’d called around. When she went to the police, they took her seriously until they checked with the school. The administrative office at their college informed her Cole had contacted them to
say he was joining the military.

  Tess had called them liars. Not her best moment.

  The school representative calmly explained that he answered all the security questions on file correctly and asked that no one contact him.

  She’d turned into a zombie. Empty inside.

  Cole had vanished.

  She’d spent days crying and walking the empty apartment.

  “I’m so sorry, Tess.”

  Sucking it up, she said, “Just finish. What happened that night?”

  His eyes darkened with sadness. “It’s hard to explain, but something inside drove me to go to the woods for my run. I didn’t know why I felt the need to run at night. I’d never run after dark in the woods because of the chance of hitting a hole. I ran like someone was chasing me, but I was alone. At the time, I really don’t think I even realized what was happening to me, and I eventually lost consciousness. When I came to, I had two men standing over me. I thought they were going to kill me. I was shaking, making weird noises and unable to defend myself.”

  She swallowed hard, imagining the threat he’d felt.

  “They took me to a man in charge of a special unit of shifters he trained specifically for aiding the military. He has, well, let’s just call them unusual abilities. He knew what I was and said it was not normal for me to be shifting at nineteen.”

  “Wait a minute. I’ve studied shifters extensively. They’re raised knowing they’re shifters. Many shift anywhere from right after birth to somewhere during the first year.”

  “I’m not like them.”

  “Why? What’s different about you?”

  “I’m trying to tell you as much as I can, but let’s just say that my kind needs to have their animal called up.”

  This was the first she’d ever heard of that and she was considered an authority. “I don’t understand.”

  “Basically, my wolf was ready to make an appearance and my body wasn’t prepared for it. Unlike other shifters who are known to the public, no one had ever told me I was anything other than human, so I had no background for understanding what was happening.”

  The academic side of her that had spent years studying their species wanted to know it all. “What did you do?”

  “Nothing on my part. Like I said, my superior called up my wolf.”

  “You’re serious about that,” she stated in disbelief.

  “Yes.”

  She couldn’t wrap her head around it. “Are you saying this man can just do ... whatever...” she sputtered. “And make someone a shifter?”

  He chuckled at her outburst and her heart curled around the sound. That was the sound of Cole, the man she’d thought she’d be spending her life with forever.

  “My boss can’t make anyone a shifter if the animal is not already part of his or her being. He can only order the animal to the surface. If he was standing here and told me to shift, I couldn’t deny him. He’s that powerful.”

  “He’s an alpha. I know about them.”

  “It’s a bit bigger than just being under an alpha.”

  Good grief. Cole was saying things that skewed everything she knew about shifters. She mused out loud, “You’re special.”

  “I think of us as just ... different.”

  She bent her arms to prop her elbows against her stomach. This damn gun was getting heavier by the second.

  “You got any coffee, Tess?”

  “Huh?”

  “Coffee? I’ve had almost no sleep in the last two days. I’d like a cup.”

  “Are you mental?” she asked, dead serious.

  “No. Think about it. I could have waited until you went to sleep and pinned you down to make you listen.”

  Her mind went to the image of him draped over her, holding her to the bed and ...

  She shook that ridiculous thought off. Man, was she tired.

  Cole wasn’t through. “Put the gun down.”

  “No.”

  “I need to tell you something and you’re not going to like it.”

  Chapter 17

  Cole couldn’t get enough of staring at Tess.

  He hadn’t minded standing here under her barrage of questions, because he could finally see her clearly and smell her sweet scent.

  Even Gray Wolf was behaving. He’d been calm around the Guardian, but now his wolf was downright ... happy.

  Mate.

  Cole wanted to role his eyes at Gray Wolf’s persistence.

  Before breaking into her apartment, Cole had paced around like a schoolboy afraid to walk up to the girl he wanted to ask out.

  But he’d had to insert into her apartment ahead of her arrival.

  Plus, he hadn’t been able to get rid of Rory and Justin, who were determined to watch his six. But when he asked for help without questions, they did their part to get past Tess’s building security, so he couldn’t complain too much.

  Well, except that pair would demand he tell everything in exchange for their assistance. Especially Justin, the nosy bastard.

  The moment Cole stepped inside this room, his body had come alive at the overload of her scent.

  The only thing better than smelling Tess everywhere would be to taste her now, from head to toe in all her sexy places, which was pretty much anywhere on that luscious body.

  Standing this close and holding himself back from going to her tested his ability to maintain his distance, especially after she’d just walked out of the shower all fresh and ready.

  Oh, yes, definitely ready. Her sweet arousal still swirled through the air.

  His wolf had been growling until Cole entered this domain. Gray Wolf wanted Cole to claim her, to make her their mate forever.

  In my dreams, Cole mused silently.

  Mate. Now.

  Not happening, wolf.

  Gray Wolf snarled.

  Cole hadn’t felt this much control in two weeks. He silently told his wolf, “Go to sleep and we’ll run later.”

  Amazingly, after a few seconds, Gray Wolf receded.

  “Okay,” Tess grumbled, waving that gun around again. “What else can you possibly say that’s going to make me any angrier?”

  “There’s no firing pin in the gun. You might as well put it down.”

  She looked at the weapon as if the thing had betrayed her, then cursed and slapped it down on the mattress. Watching her climb off the bed threatened to give Cole a heart attack.

  He sucked in a sharp breath at the sight of her wearing nothing but a short top of thin, white material that failed to hide her dark nipples, and silky red boxers he’d like to tear off of her with his teeth.

  She must have sensed something and looked up.

  In that moment energy pulsed between them.

  He felt it even if she didn’t recognize the mating bond trying to make a connection. That wouldn’t happen unless she opened her heart and body to his bond, which he’d made sure would never happen when he’d told her he was a shifter.

  But that didn’t stop her electric blue gaze from sizzling with a familiar heat he’d seen the last time they’d been together.

  The tips of her nipples promptly turned into hard beads, which that flimsy top failed to hide.

  His jeans were doing no better job at shielding how much he wanted her.

  She must have caught herself staring at that very place where his jeans strained, because she jerked her head up. She fumbled around to grab a kimono off the foot of her bed, mumbling in an irritated tone.

  Didn’t like it that she still reacted to him?

  He exhaled a little relief at that one sign that she didn’t hate him. In fact, her reacting to him as a woman made him downright happy.

  She worked with shifters and had to know that he could hear her heart pounding and smell the tipoff of her arousal.

  Tying the sash with a sharp jerk, she strode past him, slowing only to slash an evil look at the smile curving his lips.

  She warned, “Don’t even think about it.”

  “Too late,” he murmu
red behind her.

  In the kitchen, she put on a pot of coffee and he could tell by the way she was shaking her head every so often that she was deep in a conversation with herself.

  He’d missed that she talked to an empty room when she was sorting out her thoughts.

  Missed so damn much about her.

  She was probably listing all the reasons why just talking to him fell under the heading of insanity.

  When she turned her back to the coffee maker and faced him, she drew up short.

  Cole had moved to only four feet away.

  Close enough to be suffering his own level of insanity for thinking he could come here and walk away without looking back. Had he really thought he could simply explain everything that had happened in the past to clear his conscience, expect her to get on board with his plan for the Black River pack, and then leave as he would on any other assignment?

  Guess so, because here he was.

  Gray Wolf wasn’t happy with Cole, but his wolf was definitely content being so close to Tess.

  The woman who thought he’d walked away without looking back.

  Cole had looked back so many times his head should be facing the other way.

  She asked, “Are you healed?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good.” Then more silence.

  “I didn’t have a choice,” Cole blurted out, then cursed himself for just throwing it out there. Smooth, he was not.

  “Choice in what?”

  “In leaving you without a word. I was basically taken away that night. By the time I was able to contact you it was more than a year later and by then I ... figured you never wanted to hear from me again.”

  He kept waiting for her to yell at him. That little bit of ranting earlier was nothing more than her being caught off guard. She’d had time to process some of what he’d told her by now.

  All he could see in her face was hurt, and that cut him deeper than any claw had slashed him in shifter battles.

  “You’re right and wrong,” she finally admitted. “Part of me wants to scream at you that you don’t matter to me and act as if I’m living just fine without you, but that would be unfair to the woman who mourned losing you. She’s still here and not sure what to think about you showing up again.”

  Shit. He was dying listening to her and sensing just how deeply he’d damaged her even if it had been out of his control.