Taming The Shifter. Lisa Childs

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ reluctant agreement. “Not even the truth...”

      “You’re wasting your time here,” Sebastian said.

      “Not if I can save his life...” Then it would all be worth it. Even leaving Sylvia...

      “Then you better find him,” Sebastian suggested.

      “I know where he is,” he said. “With the detective.”

      Sebastian shook his head. “He’s not with Kate.” He chuckled. “Maybe she’s done what she tried that night. Maybe she arrested him.”

      Alarm slammed through Reagan. If Warrick was in custody and changed...

      More than just his life would be lost.

      * * *

      Warrick stared through the bars, his hands grasping the old brass rungs. “Glad you’re here.”

      “Glad I found you, boy,” the old man said. “You’ve been gone for much too long.”

      “I can’t go back.”

      “Not until he’s dead,” Stefan James agreed. His hair was more gray than black, his eyes nearly the same steely gray. But his age didn’t indicate weakness; if anything it represented the reverse. The older and wiser Uncle Stefan had grown, the stronger he had become. He was a good leader for the pack, but he wasn’t Warrick’s father. That was whose advice Warrick really needed, but he could never speak to his father again.

      Because of Reagan...

      Warrick’s hands slid from the rungs and he walked around the partition wall that separated the tellers from the vault area of the former bank. Or it would have had the bank still been operational but it had been deserted...until a few months ago when someone had taken up residence to hide inside the vault. As if that would have prevented Warrick from picking up his scent...

      “You tracked him here?” Uncle asked, sniffing the air.

      Warrick nodded.

      “His scent is old, his trail cold,” the old man remarked. “But you’re still here. Why?” That steely-gray gaze narrowed as Uncle totally focused on Warrick.

      “He’ll come back,” he claimed. But he wasn’t sure. He had only the vampire bartender’s word that Reagan hadn’t left the city. And why should he trust a vampire who didn’t trust him, either?

      “You thought he would come back home, too,” Uncle Stefan reminded him.

      “For her...”

      “But he left his mate alone,” Uncle remarked, watching him closely—probably for that flash of jealousy and rage that Warrick had always exhibited when it came to her. “And he keeps running.”

      “Because he knows I’m chasing him.”

      “You’re not chasing him,” Uncle said with a disparaging snort. “You’re chasing your honor.”

      “My honor or vengeance?” Warrick wondered now. And his hunger for vengeance wasn’t as overwhelming as it had once been. Probably because his hunger for Kate was greater. He shouldn’t have left her...

      “Both, in this case,” the old man asserted. “You cannot lead the pack if you cannot claim justice for crimes committed against it.”

      “I’m not leading the pack,” Warrick pointed out. “You are.”

      Stefan shrugged as if the leadership role meant nothing to him. “It was always your father’s wish that one of his sons take over for him when he was no longer able to fill the role of leader.”

      Warrick flinched, remembering how he’d found his father. All that blood spilling from his wounded heart, leaving nothing but the corpse of an old werewolf as, even dead, he turned at midnight. None of his power or intimidation had remained—nothing of the spirit of the fearsome leader and father.

      But now another memory haunted Warrick more, of Kate lying alone in that alley in a pool of her own blood.

      “Perhaps you are the right one to lead the pack, Uncle,” Warrick said of the role he, himself, had wanted to fill since he was just a pup. But as the younger son, he had never been groomed for the role—had never really been considered a possible candidate by anyone but his uncle.

      Uncle Stefan shook his head. “I am an old man,” he said. “I have no sons now. No one to carry on when I grow too weak to lead. You are the future, Warrick.”

      “Only if I can reclaim my honor.”

      “You set off on this quest for justice,” Uncle reminded him, his brow furrowing with confusion. “Your belly burned with the desire for it.”

      Warrick remembered when the heat and hunger of his rage had consumed him. Rage had ruled his life, had blinded him to anything but vengeance. Blinded him so much that he hadn’t even noticed the woman in the alley until she’d fired those shots into his shoulder.

      It ached still, all these months after the shooting, just as his body ached for hers days after they had touched skin to skin—lips to lips. Now the desire burning in his belly was to possess Kate Wever in every way. She was so beautiful—all silky skin over sleek muscle. As he had once tried to haunt her, she haunted him now.

      “What has changed for you?” Uncle asked. “Did he get to you?”

      He had tried, that night in the alley—had tried to spew his lies and manipulations. That was when Warrick had threatened to rip out his throat, so that he wouldn’t have to listen. He shook his head. “Not him.”

      “But someone has?”

      He shook his head again, unwilling to tell his uncle about Kate for fear of sounding like a fickle boy instead of the decisive man necessary to lead a pack. It wasn’t as if he and Kate had a future anyway. She wanted to arrest him now for assault. What would she do once he’d committed murder?

      He sighed. “Perhaps I am just wearying of the chase.”

      Maybe Warrick had finally realized that his quest had been more about vengeance and pride than justice. But now, after finding Kate bleeding in the alley those few nights ago, it was less about vengeance and more about Kate.

      How could he leave Zantrax when she was in danger, especially when he might be the reason she was in danger?

      * * *

      Blood stained the cement floor of the secret surgical room. Was some of that Kate’s blood? Paige shuddered to consider it, to remember that her friend had been that badly hurt. That strong, fierce Kate had been lying unconscious and vulnerable in an alley.

      “Are you sure she’s all right?” she asked her husband. “She didn’t come to happy hour again.”

      Ben nodded, but there was concern in his dark eyes. “As long as she doesn’t remember being here, she should be all right.” He poured a bottle of something onto the floor that dissolved the blood and cleaned the cement, but it couldn’t remove every trace of the horrors that happened in that room. It СКАЧАТЬ