Page 7 of Fated to Him

Malakhi crouches in front of me. His eyes lock on my face, and the determined glint in them tells me everything I need to know.

I’m not going anywhere.

A second later, I realize I’m naked. I’m moving to cover my bare breasts when something even more important captures my full attention.

I’m not bleeding.

Jerry stuck a blade in my belly and twisted it, and I don’t have so much as a scratch on me. How can that be?

I lose seconds, then minutes examining pale, unmarked skin.

“You’re healed,” Malakhi says, somewhat unnecessarily, a husky note in his voice that makes me lift my head so I can identify it.

Malakhi isn’t staring at my unmarked belly. He’s focused on my breasts, and his eyes are…hungry. As if he’s imagining what they taste like. Or feel like.

“What happened?” I wrap an arm around my breasts, planning how I can club him over the head, steal his t-shirt, and run to the next town over. “And where am I?”

“I bit you,” he says simply. “And you’re home.”

Home?

All my escape plans deteriorate like a cloud of cigarette smoke under a strong wind.

“What?”

He drags his eyes from small breasts not impressive—or substantial—enough to have held his attention for so long. “You were dying. So I bit you. Now you’re where you belong. With me. Home.”

Is this a dream? Am I dreaming all this?

“The wolf.” Maybe he’ll tell me there was no such wolf. That what I saw was just a figment of my imagination. Or maybe I slipped when I was taking the trash out, banged my head, and Malakhi found me and brought me to his cabin on the edge of Ellis Wood so I could recover.

Please let it be that.

But it felt like it happened. There’s no way I could have imagined the searing agony as Jerry twisted the blade in my belly. It happened. So why don’t I have a scar or even a bandage? And why aren’t I in a hospital being pumped full of drugs?

“Was me,” he says, his eyes watchful.

“I don’t understand,” I say, when what I really mean is, did I hear you right?

“I’m a wolf. A shifter. I bit your throat. That’s why you’ve healed.”

He bit my throat?

“You couldn’t have taken me to a hospital like…you know, a normal person?”

A flicker of amusement drifts across his gaze. “I’m not a normal person. And you were dying. It was the only way to save you.”

“Oh,” I breathe, suddenly lightheaded.

“You’re like me now.” There’s no hint of deception in his voice, though I desperately wish there was.

He believes he’s telling the truth.

He could be lying.

Or crazy.

I glance at the door out of the corner of my eye. If I shoved him aside, he’d crack his head on the bedframe, and I could escape.

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