Page 22 of The Beast's Betrayed Mate
“As a wolf,” she reminded. “You said you felt amazing.”
“I did,” he admitted. “I do.”
“What does it feel like?”
“I don’t know how to describe it,” he replied. “Strong,” he tried. “Focused. And… immersed. All the smells and the sounds. Everything is just… more.”
She felt her skin begin to tingle as there was a soft growl behind the final word, his wolf chiming in. She wasn’t clear on exactly how it worked. The science was murky at best. Before, the change hadn’t made any sense to her; now, she could imagine the cells splitting and combining to create a new body. One that could shift at will. Not because it obeyed the laws of nature that she was familiar with, but because she was beginning to accept how it was reshaping her understanding of them.
He was reshaping them.
A flash of him completely naked in that alley, walking towards her without even a hint of hesitation on him, as though he wanted to claim her for his. She almost had to cross her legs to stave off the ache.
She’d never felt so filled with faith as in that moment, knowing that he wouldn’t hurt her. Knowing it in her bones that he wouldn’t.
He was right.
There was clearlymore.
“How did you manage to change back?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” he said. “It’s frustrating how little I know, but I guess… Ifeltmy humanity somehow. And that allowed it to take over.”
“What about the wolf that bit you? It wasn’t the wolf in the park?”
“No,” he said. “No, that was someone else. I think I might’ve crossed into his territory. He didn’t want me there. But… I don’t know, he went when I assured him I wasn’t going to cause him trouble. He must’ve sensed I was a newborn.” He hung his head, shaking it. “This is all a fucking mess, isn’t it?”
He looked at her again and she had to smile.
“A bit,” she agreed, reaching for her beer on the table, putting the empty bottle next to it. “But if we put our heads together there’s nothing we can’t figure out.”
“I don’t know why you have any faith in me at all,” he remarked.
“Should we talk about that?” she asked, but when he didn’t seem to know what to say about their shared past, she left it. “Let’s look at the research again,” she said. “Try to puzzle it all together. See if it’ll reveal what Michael discovered. Maybe it’ll tell us why he left. Or why… he was taken.”
They shared a look, but Peter nodded in agreement.
Chapter 7 - Peter
Olive had placed the laptop on her lap and was tapping away, trying to make sense of the many different searches. There was no search timestamp included in the saved batch of website links, which made the ordering of them more difficult. But a name mentioned in one article would presumably be found in another, and thanks to it a thread would begin to form. One that she could follow.
There was also the possibility of arranging the articles themselves after their timestamps. Some were obviously older—late seventies, early eighties. Some were more recent, which was trickier as they were all online articles, but there was still a pattern to be discerned. And she was very good at it.
“Here,” she said, leaning back. “Look.”
“I don’t know what I’m looking at,” he said.
“This name… Brendan Rosen,” she murmured.
“What about it?”
“It could be a coincidence, but…”
“But what?”
She got to her feet, wringing her hands. He stared at her, taken aback by how stressed out she suddenly looked. Her face was a mask of agony.
“I shouldn’t have said anything,” she said. “And if I say anything more, then you have to be really, really sure that you want to hear it. Because if I say it… I mean. There’s no going back. I’m not supposed to talk about it with anyone, so it might not be anything but, considering Michael’s family seems to be involved with this Brendan Rosen, it seems like a proper coincidence if what I have to say has nothing to do with Michael’s disappearance.”
