Page 14 of Salvation

He caught himself there and laughed bitterly. Death. That would be nice. Maybe he’d even get the real thing this time. He could leave this world forever in a worthy way.

But then something brushed his sleeve. He caught sight of Anna, and suddenly, he wasn’t in any rush to greet death any more. Maybe life was worth living, after all.

“Do you know each other?” Sarah asked, looking between the two of them. Her lips moved, and though he didn’t hear the words, she helped out by shooting them into his mind.

Anna stared into his eyes, and he stared back.

“I think so,” she said. That, he heard loud and clear.

Her lips trembled as she said it, and a new scent hit his nose. The scent of a woman interested in a man. Not quite aroused, but not quite at rest. Wondering. Wishing. Hoping, just a little bit.

His pulse skipped. Yeah, he had the same feeling.

I think I know her. I’m sure I do.

The problem was, his memory was pretty hazy on a lot of things since he’d nearly been beaten to death. Had he met her before or after that? Was he imagining it?

He shook himself into action. It was time to finish what they’d started a short time ago. He wrapped his hand around hers — gently enough not to crush, but tight enough to satisfy his bear’s urge to claim.

“I’m Todd.”

“Nice to meet you,” she said, looking at him as if she, too, was trying to place him.

He tried making sense of it all, but he couldn’t think straight. Not with his bear humming and sniffing her scent deeply.

Anna. Mine. Mate.

Whoa.He tried throwing on the brakes, but his bear was already skipping around in glee.

Mate. She’s my destined mate.

Chapter Four

“I’m sorry I didn’t come sooner,” Sarah said, pulling Anna aside by the arm.

Anna wasn’t sorry. She just wanted to stay close to Todd. But Soren was leading him off in one direction, while Sarah steered her in another.

Did Todd feel it, too? The zing of energy that bounced between them when they’d touched? The painful stretch and popping sensation when he’d stepped away? The feeling that they had met before, and not just in passing?

He strode away, shoulder to massive shoulder with Soren, who could have been his brother, they were so alike. They had the build of lumberjacks and the confident step of predators who stood all the way up in the food chain. But while Soren definitely exudedking-of-this-domainvibes, Todd had a subtler, but equally powerful presence. She could see it in the way he moved, in the way he turned his head to scan the area, and in the way people scurried aside when he came near.

“Was something wrong?” Sarah asked.

“Wrong?” She’d never experienced anything that felt more right.

“Todd looked like he was about to kill someone, and you looked a little scared.”

“Oh, um…” She tried waving it off, but the feeling was still there, along with the alarms in the back of her mind. Having Todd play bodyguard had pushed away the panic, but the little niggle was still there.

A man had been watching them from across the street. A man she knew from Montana.

A man she would have been happy never to see again.

He’d arrived in Black River a week after the fire and immediately started asking questions. Weird, personal questions not even the cops had posed, like which of the locals had been friendly with whom and whether any of the victims left behind boyfriends or girlfriends he ought to know about. Why the hell would a perfect stranger inquire about things like that?

She shivered, remembering the first time the man had approached her. Without so much as aSorry about the loved ones you lost, he’d launched into an interrogation.

“I hear your cousin Sarah was friendly with one of the Voss brothers. Is that true?”

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