Page 12 of Guarded By a Monster

Not long after, there was a steady stream of health care professionals in and out of my room, making the rest I craved impossible. Nurses came to check my vitals, a general physician came to check on my condition before a neurologist came and declared me fit for discharge. A different nurse came and went over instructions with Kendal. I’d need to be watched for at least twelve hours, preferably twenty-four.

Before I knew it, we were in a large panel van headed to my house. I felt strung up like a harp when we pulled into the driveway. Kendal glanced over at me and must have noticed the strain on my face.

“You can stay at my house if you don’t want to stay here.”

I gave a tiny shake of my head. “No. My cats are here. I’ll be fine once I get inside.” I turned toward her. “You don’t have to stay. I can call my friend Emma in an hour or two.”

“Nonsense!” She grinned. “I sat at the hospital with you. We’re practically sisters.”

I smiled. Somewhere in the tapioca that was my brain, I knew I shouldn’t trust her so fast. She could rob me blind while I slept. Finish the job the man came there to do. She could be a horrible person.

But I’d learned to listen to my intuition, and right now it was telling me she was good people.

Another slide clicked forward in my brain projector and a warm feeling of safety washed over me. “Did your friend lie down with me?”

“Yeah, he did. He said you were shivering, and he knew he shouldn’t move you, so he snuggled up to your back.”

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. “Do you think,” I cleared the sudden frog in my throat, “do you think he would come? Just while I sleep. I don’t know why, but I’d feel better with him here. I don’t have to see him. I promise to keep my door shut and my couch is pretty comfy. I have great blankets and pillows.” My ramble trailed off.

She put her hand on my forearm until I looked at her. “I think he’d love that.”

eight

I stared at myphone screen as my body flashed hot, then cold, then hot again. Kendal’s text was only four words, but it short-circuited my brain.

Jade wants you here.

I wanted to run to her, wrap her in my arms and tell her nothing would ever happen to her again. Knowing she would run screaming from me turned my feet to concrete. An impossible weight my legs could never overcome. I was built for shadows and she was the sun.

Ideas swirled in my mind, rejected as fast as they formed.

Before I knew what I was doing, I was dialing Zeus. The owner and leader of Superhuman Security, Zeus had helped integrate us into Supernatural Society shortly after we escaped the lab that created us. He answered on the second ring.

“Thurl. Is everything okay?”

“Yes. No.” I rubbed my palm over my scarred eye. “There’s a woman. I helped her. Now she wants me to sit with her only…”

“Only she hasn’t seen you.”

I nodded, realized he couldn’t see me, and made a noise of confirmation.

I heard a chair squeak as he sat and sighed. “How can I help?”

“I’m not sure. I can’t think. I don’t know what to do. Drym believes she may be my mate.”

“That certainly complicates things. If she were just a random woman in trouble, I could send one of my guys to pose as her protector.”

I growled and startled at the noise.

Zeus chuckled. “And that’s why that won’t work.” The chair squeaked again. “Thurl, I know this is scary, but you’re going to have to show yourself. If the meeting goes sideways, call me and Supe Sec will deal with it. But if she really is your mate, then she’ll accept you. The fates wouldn’t have it any other way.”

I grunted through the fear that closed my throat. Memories of women, naked and huddling in the corner of my cell flooded my senses. I could hear their whimpers, see their fear written in every bone and muscle.

The times the scientists put women in with us to see how we’d react were the worst. Especially for me and Roul—the biggest among us.

I didn’t want her to look at me like that. I didn’t want to scare her, and I didn’t see how it would be possible not to. She was human. She had no idea supernaturals existed—much less ones who look like me. There was no camouflage for us. We couldn’t hide under a too-big hoodie or shroud ourselves in capes. The hoodie I wore when I killed her attacker only masked my shape and gave me a pocket for my phone. If I hadn’t been moving fast, she would have seen my horns, my fur, my muzzle, my claws.

I shook my head to clear it and opened the group text to my brothers.

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