Page 14 of Forsaken By Night

Silence fell, made awkward by the fact that they were both in foreign territory. Literally and figuratively. How could he know someone for years and yet not know her at all?

“So what made you turn back after all this time?” he asked, as much to break the silence as to learn more about her. And was it weird that he missed the wolf?

Yes, he knew the wolf and the person were one and the same, but they were also very, very different. He knew the animal, understood her. But the female sitting next to him was a stranger. A beautiful, sexy, long-legged stranger.

“I don’t know.” She sighed, her full cherry lips parting slightly. “It wasn’t like I didn’ttryto turn back. I did. For years. But I didn’t know how. I have no idea why it was different this time. I just woke up in that lab, and I was like this.” Her gaze met his, and in their jewel-toned depths, he thought he saw a glint of accusation. Or maybe it was his own guilt being reflected back at him. “You said you took me there. Why, if those people hate you?”

Damn, she must have been terrified. Remorse racked him at the thought that she’d awakened in a strange place all alone.

“You’d been shot,” he said, his voice rough with emotion. “MoonBound has a doctor. It was your only chance of survival. How did you get out of there?”

“I ran until I found an exit.” She looked down at her hands, which were folded in her lap. “But I think I hurt one of their females.”

Ah, shit. He was already up to his eyebrows in trouble. This was going to be the final stitch in his death shroud.

“And she was pregnant.”

Double shit. A sinking sensation made his gut feel like it had dropped through his spine and was sitting on the mattress beneath him. Tehya was now in nearly as much danger as he was. Had he saved her just so they could both be dumped in the same shallow grave?

Closing his eyes, he tried to work out all possible scenarios for how this could play out, but every one of them ended badly. Worst of all, he couldn’t see how they could escape from any of them. Hunter might have given up the search eventually—if one of his clan members hadn’t been injured. But now...

So. Much. Shit.

“You said I was shot,” Tehya said. “How bad? Because I woke up healed.”

“It was a critical wound. Probably fatal for any other wolf.” He opened his eyes and stared up at the sagging, mold-dappled ceiling. “But shifting can repair most damage, and it’s probably what saved you.”

Leaning forward abruptly, she gripped his hand in a bruising hold. “Then you need to shift. Your injury—”

“I can’t.” He interrupted her before she got her hopes up. “In order to sneak you into MoonBound, I had to take the clan leader’s form. It takes a lot more effort to do that than it does to shift into an animal, and it temporarily drained my ability to shift into anything.”

She took in a startled breath. “You can assume someone else’s identity? Can I do that?”

If not for their dire circumstances, he’d have laughed at how eagerly she sat forward, reminding him of her wolfy counterpart. If she’d had a tail, she’d have been wagging it.

“I doubt it,” he said, hating the disappointment in her expression. If she’d still been wolfy, he’d have given her a treat and a pat on the head. “The ability is among the rarest of all vampire gifts, and it only manifests in born vampires.” At least, that was what he’d been told by the tribal elders in Sedona after he’d made a pilgrimage there half a century ago. “Even if you could do it, it’s forbidden.”

“Is that why the clan is after you?” She leaped to her feet and peered out a couple of dirt-caked windows, as if speaking aloud about the clan would summon them like demons. He didn’t have the heart to tell her that they didn’t need to be summoned; they’d be here soon enough all on their own. “Because you shifted to save me?”

The devastation in her voice was like a punch to the heart. He didn’t want to lie, but he couldn’t let her think this was her fault either.

He settled on a sanitized version of the truth. “Not entirely,” he hedged. “There’s bad blood between us. This would have happened eventually.”

“Why the bad blood?”

Because MoonBound is full of assholes.He contemplated telling her everything, but time was at a premium, so the abbreviated version would have to do.

“MoonBound’s old chief led an assault against my clan that wiped it out. His warriors found a wolf cub in the bushes, and they tied it up while they finished raiding my clan’s camp. When they came back for the cub, there was a toddler there instead.”

“You?”

He nodded. “Me. Some of them thought it must be a trick, but others wanted to slaughter me right then and there.” At her uncomprehending expression, he elaborated: “Skinwalkers and people who can speak to animals are considered evil by some.”

“That’s horrible.”

“Yeah, well, some vampires are superstitious fools.”

She looked out the windows again. “Obviously they didn’t kill you.”

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