Total pages in book: 62
Estimated words: 59422 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 297(@200wpm)___ 238(@250wpm)___ 198(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 59422 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 297(@200wpm)___ 238(@250wpm)___ 198(@300wpm)
“But she left me,” Tyler continued. “Her car was gone from the parking lot where we met. Like I said, it wasn’t like I could chase after her with my balls hanging out.”
“He called me, and I met him at my house for him to get clothes, then we came right here,” I told Rob.
“We have an unmated human who knows you’re a shifter.” Rob laid it out there with one sentence. “Out in Cooper Valley. Freaked and definitely not your mate.”
“Yes.”
“Pack law says we kill her,” Rob said evenly.
What the—
Tyler popped to his feet, wobbled a little, but held his ground. “What? No way! I was protecting her. It’s not like I could have kept my wolf from doing everything it could to keep her safe. She doesn’t deserve to die because of that!”
“Don’t shout at your alpha,” I warned him, even though I agreed.
Rob held up a hand. “No. He’s good,” he said to me. Then his gaze shifted to my son, and the corners of his lips ticked up. “I’m proud of you, Tyler. You did the right thing. She’s safe and unharmed, and that’s all that matters. But now your father’s right. We do have a problem. Especially if she’s already told her dad what happened.”
“You’re not going to kill her?” Tyler practically squeaked.
Rob shook his head. “No. I wanted to see what you’d say. I need to know my pack is made of worthy, protective males.”
Tyler’s chest puffed out.
“But we need to wipe her memory of the wolf as soon as possible,” he continued. “Hell, she may have already told someone. That makes her a liability to the entire pack.”
Tyler sighed, relieved Rob hadn’t been serious about killing her.
“She needs to be taken to Marion.”
Marion. Shit. Marion wasn’t one of our kind, but the Shifter Council used her talents on occasion to straighten out problems with humans. She had the creepy ability to wipe select memories from her victims or even implant new ones. It was an amped-up form of hypnotic suggestion. And she charged a pretty penny for the trick.
What’s more, she lived in Missoula and didn’t do house calls. We’d have to bring Riley to her.
Fuck.
This was getting complicated.
Mind wiping could also be dangerous. But Riley Abbott was young, and it was only one brief incident that had to be replaced. Hopefully, she wouldn’t suffer anything more than a headache. We needed her to believe her date with Tyler had been uneventful, other than a bad kiss.
Rob was right; every second that ticked increased the chance of her telling someone what she saw. Of course, if Marion could reprogram her memory into something more plausible for a human to understand, it would get Riley to explain that she had been confused about what happened with Tyler. Maybe even wipe the mountain lion part away, which could be traumatic in itself.
“I’ll take her,” Tyler said.
Rob shook his head. “She’s probably not going to get anywhere near you.” His alpha gaze shifted to me. “You’ll take her.”
I didn’t disobey an order from my alpha, so I nodded. I’d have to get one of my employees to open at the bar tonight, but that could be arranged. There was no other choice. It had to get done.
Rob went around the desk, opened a drawer and pulled out… shit. He pulled out a syringe and filled it, then capped it and handed it to me. “This is a low-dose horse tranquilizer. It won’t knock her out for more than an hour, but that will allow you to get her to Marion without giving her more memories that need to be erased.”
“Yes, Alpha.”
“Get it done.”
2
RILEY
Tyler had called my phone five times since I ran from him–no, ran from a giant wolf–all the way out of the canyon. I didn’t even know I could run a mile uphill without dying.
I rejected his call again and dialed the number of my best friend, Lila, with shaky fingers.
She’d dated Tyler for three years. Did she know that he was a monster?
“Shit,” I muttered when her phone went straight to voicemail.
God, what if… what if he’d bitten her and turned her into a werewolf, too? What if my best friend was also a monster? Oh my God! My brain spun out.
I was spinning out.
None of this made sense.
My heart thundered as I considered what to do. I replayed the scene in the canyon over and over, but I still couldn’t make sense of it. Okay, to review, I kissed Tyler, and it was not good. Then, he sniffed the air–like a wolf–and right after, the mountain lion appeared. One second, he was about to lose the fight with it; the next second… he was a giant wolf with bone-crunching jaws. He’d killed a mountain lion with his teeth.
Right. So Tyler was a wolf. A werewolf. Either that or he put mushrooms in the sandwiches we had for lunch, and I was tripping.