“None of it was a dream?”
“Afraid not.”
She rubbed her eyes, daring to momentarily take her attention from him, and whispered, “Shit.”
“I’m sorry,” Michael said.
“For helping me?”
“For how that’s going to turn out.”
She sat up straighter, resignation in her expression. “Okay. If it wasn’t a dream, tell me about what’s going on. That’s what you meant, isn’t it, by withholding details? There’s a surprise in store?”
“Truly, now might not be the time for the tough ones.”
“Tough for me, or for you?”
“Both of us, actually,” Michael said.
She fingered her neck. “Your friend came here to tell me I’m going to become something other than human. Since she was pretty convincing, does that make me crazy if I decide to believe her?”
“Not crazy,” Michael said. “Enlightened.”
He watched Kaitlin briefly close her eyes and exhale a slow stream of the air that he had helped to preserve by giving her back her life. Thoughts of that rescue brought mixed feelings because of all the unseen consequences. Still, damn it, if he had it to do all over again, he’d have done the same thing.
“You aren’t a figment of my imagination?” She asked this seriously.
“No figment, Kaitlin.”
She seemed to consider his reply. “If the attack was real, what about the other parts of what I thought was a dream? Did we run through a park?”
“We did. Last night.”
“Naked?”
“One of us didn’t have many clothes on. Clothes get in the way of a shape-shift.”
That shut her up for a long minute. Then she said, “No dream, really? None of it?”
“I’m sorry.”
Her eyes were even wider now, and trained on him in a way that made Michael’s internal wolf whine. Kaitlin’s gray gaze was direct and accusatory. “What is an Alpha?”
Her change in direction didn’t throw him, but her use of that word did. Michael promised himself that he would be having some serious words with Rena later on.
“An Alpha is the leader of a pack,” he said.
“A pack of wolves.”
He nodded, almost able to see the wheels of Kaitlin’s mind turning. The scent of her desperation tinged the air, though she was fighting for control over her part of the conversation, knowing its importance had to override her fear levels.
“I’ve never liked big, scary animals.” She said this breathlessly. “And now I’m supposedly going to be one?” Her eyes found his. “Like you? Like what I think I saw you turn into?”
Michael’s heart picked up its pace. He had made a vow never to get this close to a human female under any circumstances and had obliterated that vow with her because...well, again, he wasn’t sure why this woman affected him so much.
“Not exactly like me,” he replied. “Though you will be something close enough.”
Her jaw tensed, sending a spiral of pain through the wound on her neck, pain that Michael also felt. He supposed he was sharing her feelings due to having placed his blood in her veins, and that blood was giving him a heads-up on a few things. But that kind of sharing deepened his determination to stay as far away from Kaitlin Davies as possible in the future, once she knew the score.
“What does close enough mean?” she asked.
It seemed they were going to aim for the hard ones after all. This little fireball wasn’t about to let him off the hook.
Could he blame her?
“You now have Lycan blood in your veins,” he said.
He saw that the word Lycan didn’t ring a bell.
“Lycans are a very old lineage of shape-shifters,” Michael said.
Her head came up.
“Lycans can’t replicate themselves exactly, unless two Lycans mate and produce pure-blooded offspring. Because you now have Lycan blood in your veins, you’ll be a special combination of wolf and human, two things that can only mix well if the recipient of the blood gift is strong enough to handle their wolf, and pays close attention to the changes.”
“Blood gift? Hell, that’s what you call it?” Her eyes had gone glassy, though they still maintained focus. “Lycan means wolf?”
“Yes.”
“If this is true, I won’t be a real wolf?”
“Half wolf,” Michael reiterated. “And half human. Werewolf.”
She repeated that term to herself in a whisper, as if trying it on for size, and took time to formulate her next question. “You aren’t a werewolf?”
“Lycans are Weres, yes, and yet some older Were families have traits that actually fall under the categorization of shape-shifter. When those like us change, we take on animal form. Wolf form.”
None of this appeared to deter Kaitlin from pursuing her agenda of gaining all the information she could.
“What about the monster that attacked me?” she asked.
“Vampire.”
She closed her eyes and clasped her knees tighter, as if one of those monsters had gotten into the room. Michael sensed the rise in her blood pressure. There was now a faint tinge of pink in her cheeks.
“That was real.” She hung her head. “God. True. There are such things. No joke.”
“Hard to believe, I know,” Michael said. “For me, it’s equally as hard to believe that there are regular old humans that can’t change into anything.”
He walked to the side of the bed and set the paper bag on the table beside it. Kaitlin glanced up again. Beneath that gaze he felt wrong somehow, and that neither of them deserved the repercussions of what he had set in motion. His blood had bound them together in special ways. Before too long, he would have to break some of those invisible chains he already felt linking to her.
“You chased that vampire away,” she said.
“I took care of the problem so that vampire can’t hurt others or make more mindless monsters.”
“You don’t consider yourself a monster?”
“I suppose that’s a matter of perspective. But no, I don’t.”
