Page 15 of Predator

After Eleanor got the color back in her face, the answer was a firm ‘no’. Though they call it mating, sex is purely for their human sides.

That’s why it seemed so important to Lucas—and to me—to consummate our new mating again last night. And while it took a little more prodding on my part to make sure he understood I wanted him desperately, something about this morning after is even more amazing to me.

Or it would be if I wasn’t so freaked out by this wolf head all of a sudden.

“It’s that,” I admit, pointing at the head while still meeting the curious look in Lucas’s eyes. “It’s weirding me out. Like, it’s a wolf. We’re wolves. It doesn’t seem right to have it up there.”

A muscle tics in Lucas’s cheek. “You don’t recognize it?”

Uh-oh. I don’t like the way he said that.

You don’t recognize it… that means he thinks I should. Or that Jolie would.

Change the subject, Fallon. You don’t want to know?—

I shake my head. “Sorry, but I don’t think I do.”

“That’s the wolf that killed you.”

Goddamn it. I knew I shouldn’t have asked.

“What?” The wolf that— “What?”

The afghan slips from my fingers, landing in a pile on the floor as I left my hand, cradling it against my palm.

I lost my pump. Fleeing like Cinderella through the woods, I kick off the other, only regretting it when the wolf at my heels grows closer. It’s not a shifter. I know that much. It’s smaller, fiercer, and single-mindedly determined to hunt me down…

I shake my head, knocking the flash of a memory out of it as I purposely let my hand fall back to my side.

Lucas frowns. “Fallon?”

If he had called me ‘Jolie’ just then, I think I might’ve lost it.

“Sorry. This is still so crazy to me. Like, I know you want me to believe that I used to be someone else.” And, considering the flashes of memory I keep getting, and the woman’s voice popping into my brain, I can’t pretend that I wasn’t. “But then I look at that thing and I… fuck.”

He’s at my side, taking my elbow. “Are you okay? You’ve gone so pale.”

“There was so much blood,” I whisper.

Because that’s what is running through my mind right now. The chill of the rain, the heat of the excruciating pain as the wild wolf’s claws and fangs tear into my flesh, blood spraying everywhere…

I see it now, and though I don’t snap or hurl like I want to, I tremble.

Blood…

It’s always bothered me. For as long as I could remember, it’s been my one phobia. It was so bad when I was younger, I would pass out whenever I saw the stuff. If it was my own? It was even worse.

Makes sense, though? I get ripped apart by a rabid wolf in a past life… why wouldn’t the sight of blood bother me in the next one?

I have half a mind to knock the stuffed head to the floor.

I don’t. Instead, I turn away from it, look at Lucas. “What happened to it?”

“I avenged you.”

Something in his voice has me turning into him. Rather than let him think that I’m rejecting him this time, I purposely bump my belly against his, wrapped my arms around the small of his back so that we’re touching. Call it instinctive if you want, but it seems suddenly important to make sure he’s with me—and not in the past—as I murmur his name. “Luc?”

He shakes his head, a single curl falling forward, curving near his amber-colored eye. “I couldn’t save you. Jolie… she was gone. I begged the Luna, pleaded, offered her anything so that you’d return to me. I thought she might intervene, and she did. I became the beast the first time that night, and after I tucked my mate’s broken body away, I hunted down the wolf. I tore the fucker’s head right off, keeping it so that I knew that I at least avenged you. I needed that because, when I went back to bury the body, you were gone.”

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