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C HAPTER E IGHTEEN

Females are selective when it comes to choosing a mate, even when in season.

—Man’s Best Friend: An Essential Guide to Dogs

Helen entered without knocking.

“Good afternoon,” Claire said dryly, propping herself up on the bed with her elbow, smoothing her sundress around her legs. “Come to glare again?”

“Darius wants you to walk the gardens with him.”

Claire looked out the window as if considering the idea. It was a beautiful day. Not a cloud in sight. The blue so bright it hurt her eyes. The idea of stepping outside held its appeal. She’d been cooped up for two days. But his steadfast refusal to help her still pricked her temper. “No.” Her voice came out hard, clipped, implacable.

“No?” Clearly, Helen had not expected a refusal. She shook her head, scowling. “Darius wants you to walk with him. You have to come.”

“I don’t have to do anything.” Leaning back on the bed, she folded her arms behind her head.

Helen clenched her fists at her sides and looked inclined to physically toss Claire off the bed.

Confident that she could overpower the woman, Claire lifted an eyebrow and challenged, “Think you can make me?”

With a grunt, Helen spun around and marched out of the room. The lock sounded behind her.

Seconds passed until Darius’s arrival. Claire eyed his scowl, feeling a flash of satisfaction to see she had cracked his implacable exterior.

His lips pressed into a hard, inflexible line. “Walk with me.”

“No,” she shot back. “I want to go home.”

“This is your home now.”

“No!” Tired of everything in her life being out of her hands, she pounded a fist against the mattress. “I can spend eternity in these walls, but it will never be home to me.”

He strode across the room and yanked her off the bed, reminding her just how strong he was, how dangerous.

“I’ve been patient with you thus far.”

“I can think of several choice descriptions for you— patient isn’t one of them.”

“Indeed?” His gaze crawled over her face, studying her as if she were some strange creature, a bug under a microscope that he’d never seen before. “Would you like to see me truly impatient? Make a comparison?” His voice was soft. Too soft. The hairs on her neck prickled. She wiggled to get free, alarmed at the change in him, as if something had been unleashed.

He brought her flush against him, his hands rough. “I don’t have to wait for the full moon, you know. Four days is a long time to wait for something I want… for something I can have right now.”

She struggled harder, realizing she had been foolish to provoke him. He had lulled her into thinking he was nonviolent. A packless lycan that chose not to feed, not to kill. She had pushed him too far. He was still very much a wild animal. Soulless.

Darius shoved her back on the bed, his body following her down, crushing her into the mattress. She whimpered at the heavy weight of him driving her into the bed and beat against his chest and shoulders.

“I’d rather have you human anyway,” he muttered against her throat, his lips warm, surprisingly soft. The beast within her stirred and she knew in that instant she could let him have her, take her physically, and not hate it.

But he wasn’t Gideon. Her heart would not be involved. Her heart beat solely for Gideon and it always would.

The clipped velvet tones of Darius’s voice rolled over her. “Shifted, we don’t always remember things clearly—I want to remember you.”

Her hands stung from pounding him. He was a brick wall. Impenetrable muscle. She ceased struggling, allowing her hands to fall limply at her sides. Shutting her eyes, she forced herself to lie motionless, for the beast not to respond.

He stilled over her. Slowly, she opened one eye, then the other. He climbed off her to stand at the side of the bed. Looming over her, his chest lifting with deep, angry breaths, he stared at her in the strangest way. As if he didn’t see her at all. As if he saw someone else when he looked at her lying there.

“Go.” His voice was so low she wasn’t sure she heard him correctly.

Claire lifted her head off the mattress. “W-what?”

“I don’t want a corpse beneath me.” He pointed to the door. “Go,” he said more loudly, his voice a crack of thunder on the air.

She scrambled off the bed, distancing herself warily. “Really?”

“Get out of here before I change my mind!”

She flew to the door, looking over her shoulder when he reminded her, his voice as forbidding as a rumble of thunder on the air, “In three days you’ll shift.”

The anger had dissipated from his face. Looking tired, he said, “Try to break your curse. I’ll come for you when you realize you can’t.”

She started to shake her head, to tell him not to bother, to forget her, but he was on her so fast she never saw him move. His hands clamped down on her arms and shook her. “Don’t do anything stupid. Don’t kill yourself. Don’t give up when you realize your lycan hunter can’t save you.”

Her eyes met his steely gaze and she wondered if her own eyes could possibly be that penetrating, that frightening. Or was it just him?

His hands fell from her arms. “Now go.” He stepped back from her, arms falling to his sides. “I’ll come for you before you shift, and I expect you to join me when I do.”

For the first time, Claire considered what he offered—while avoiding the thought of what would occur alone with him in that room once they had shifted. Her mind and heart couldn’t contemplate such a thing. Not after Gideon.

Still, it would give her more time to find her alpha and break the curse. No one would be hurt. She would be alive. Her soul would be safe. Even if her heart wasn’t.

In a barely audible voice, she agreed. “Okay.”

Worrying about her heart was a luxury she could no longer afford. Not when her life and soul were on the line.

Claire sat behind the wheel of the car Darius had loaned her and waited for the red light to change. She thrummed her fingers on the steering wheel, trying to decide her next move.

It wasn’t safe to return to Gideon now that Cooper knew about her. She had to stop relying on him. She had to put her wants and desires aside and cease being the fool Darius claimed she was, holding out for the impossible dream that Gideon could save her.

The car behind her honked, spurring Claire to both drive and reach a decision. Who was she kidding? Nothing could keep her away from Gideon. Not common sense. He at least deserved to know she was okay.

Half an hour later, she slowed to a stop alongside the curb of his house, resting her foot lightly on the brake. Leaning forward, she propped her chin on the steering wheel and studied the quiet house. His Jeep was gone. She stifled the deep sigh welling up inside her. It was selfish to ignore the danger she brought down on his head simply because she couldn’t resist seeing him again. She lifted her foot off the brake.

A sudden movement to her right caught her eye. Claire turned—

The passenger-side window shattered. Glass rained down on the passenger seat, several pieces striking her face and arms. Screaming, she ducked and hit the gas with her foot.

The car surged forward blindly. She felt the tire bump the curb and quickly straightened the wheel, whipping down the street and running the stop sign. She risked a glance in the rearview mirror to see a man standing in the middle of the street holding a gun.

Claire drove several blocks at breakneck speed until her heart stilled enough for her to ease her foot off the gas. Once on the freeway, she let the tears roll down her face in hot trails, unchecked.

Clearly, that guy had been a NODEAL agent running surveillance on Gideon’s house. Did Gideon know? Or was this all Cooper’s handiwork? Either way, it was time to leave Gideon March alone. She didn’t need to complicate his life more than she already had. She had to let him go. For both their sakes.

She swiped the back of her hand against her wet cheeks and glanced down at the passenger seat. Amid the shards of glass, a dark silver ball winked at her in the sunlight. Must have bounced off the seat belt buckle. Keeping one eye on the traffic, she stretched out her hand and flicked it to the floor, out of sight.

A short time later, Claire turned into the parking lot of her apartment complex. She scanned the lot cautiously, her eyes lighting on a familiar four-by-four parked in front of her building. Cooper himself sat behind the wheel. Sinking low in her seat, Claire zipped past and exited the parking lot. Uncertain whether he recognized her, she glanced several times in the rearview mirror to make sure he didn’t give chase.

After a few minutes she sighed, confident she wasn’t being tailed, then sighed even deeper when she realized she was out of options. She couldn’t go to Gideon’s. Couldn’t go to her place. And yet she wasn’t ready to return to Darius.

Grimacing, she drove until she reached her parents’ house. Once there, Claire sat parked behind her father’s truck in the driveway for several minutes, staring in silence at the two-story brick house framed against the smoky gray of early evening. The house looked different, smaller than she remembered.

“What the hell,” she muttered, getting out of the car. After facing down lycans, her parents should be a piece of cake.

Claire usually entered the house without warning, but after her last visit she thought it wise to knock.

The door swung open following her three swift raps.

“Dad,” she greeted, her voice tight.

Genuine surprise etched his blunt features. “Claire,” he returned. “I thought you were at the lake house.”

“I came back sooner than expected.”

He looked over her shoulder. “New car?”

Luckily he couldn’t see the shattered window from where he stood.

She waved at the shiny Buick. “Just a friend’s.”

“Your car’s not running? I can take a look at it for you.”

Claire blinked. Although mechanically inclined, her father had never bothered to look after her car for her. Never even bought her a car. She bought her first car herself, in college, and he always left the care of it to her. Maybe this was a sign. Her father’s way of offering an olive branch?

Bitterness rose from the back of her throat to fill her mouth. It was clear he was trying, but she couldn’t help wishing he had tried years ago when she was a girl in need of a father. The irony wasn’t lost on her. Three days before the end and they suddenly had a chance at a relationship.

“My car’s fine. I just left it at the lake.”

He opened his mouth, and then shut it again, as if he had decided against prying.

She heard herself explaining anyway, out of habit, “My friend met me up there and we wanted to drive one car back instead of two.” She shrugged lamely.

He frowned. “You left it at the lake house?”

Nodding, she held her breath, waiting for him to heap his usual criticism upon her head. Instead, he continued to nod, accepting her explanation.

“Claire?” Her mother hurried past her father to embrace her. “What a surprise.” Ushering her inside, she glanced up at her husband. “Isn’t this a nice surprise, Mike?”

Claire’s father nodded in agreement.

Her mother eyed her closely, reaching up to brush the hair back off her forehead. “I tried calling you at the lake house all week.”

Claire couldn’t think up an excuse for that. At this point, her father would usually dive in with some comment about her being inconsiderate and selfish, but he remained oddly silent as he followed them into the kitchen.

Her mother stuck her head in the fridge and began sorting through the leftovers. “We have some ham—”

“Sounds good,” Claire replied numbly, feeling strange standing in her old familiar kitchen, her parents on either side of her. The last time she’d been in this house she had felt different, changed, but she hadn’t known the reason.

Her mother set a platter of sliced ham on the island countertop. “You want a sandwich?”

Claire nodded and began munching on a slice of ham as her mother reached for the Wonder bread. Her mother moved about the kitchen with boundless energy—a humming vitality that Claire had never seen in her before.

“Can’t say I’m sorry you’ve come back early.” Her mother pulled two jars from the fridge.

Claire arched a brow and licked the salty taste of ham off her fingers.

Her mother dipped her head, color flooding her cheeks as she dug a butter knife out of the drawer. “Your father and I have been playing with the idea of getting away.” Removing a plate from the cabinet, she glanced almost shyly at Claire. “Are you finished using the lake house?”

Claire nodded, frowning at both her parents. They seldom used the lake house.

“Good.” Her mother set a napkin next to her plate, giving it a cheerful little pat. “We’ll head up there this weekend, then.” Glancing at her husband, she suggested, “Maybe we can rent one of those paddleboats.”

Claire nearly choked on a bite of ham. Certainly her father would shoot that idea down. He would want to float in a paddleboat about as much as he wanted a root canal.

“Sure,” he murmured, giving Claire wide berth as he moved to the fridge, further astounding her when he got his very own beer.

Claire looked her father up and down incredulously. Who was this man?

“Miracle Whip or mayo?” Her mother held up both jars.

Blinking and wondering who these impostors were, Claire pointed to the jar of mayonnaise. “Give me the real stuff.”

Her mother lifted an eyebrow at her choice. No doubt thinking of all the calories. Claire usually chose the fat-free Miracle Whip.

“You’re all bones,” her mother clucked, slathering a generous amount of mayonnaise on the bread. “Oh,” her mother added as if suddenly remembering, “the reason I’ve been calling you up at the lake is because your friend Maggie contacted me.”

“Maggie?” Claire echoed.

“Yes, she said that the school’s been trying to get ahold of you because they’re using your room for summer school. She’s said it’s important you come clear out your things. She also said Jill Tanners was looking for you. Had some information on a kid you were worried about. A boy named Lenny?”

Claire drew a deep breath. “Lenny?”

Her mother nodded.

What information could the counselor possibly have? Whatever it was, it was worth investigating. And if she didn’t go, she risked losing all her teaching resources it had taken years to accumulate. If she didn’t fetch her things, it was as good as admitting she was dead. Claire wasn’t willing to do that. Not yet. If she were, she might as well drive back to Darius and offer herself to him. “The building’s already closed for the day. I’ll have to go tomorrow.”

Her mother handed her a large bag of potato chips and placed a fat ham sandwich before her. “So how is that boyfriend of yours?”

Avoiding her mother’s eyes, Claire grimaced and swiped her finger along the edge of her sandwich where the mayonnaise threatened to spill out. Licking the creamy goodness off her finger, she said, “Gideon’s fine, Mom.”

Fine. Safe. As long as she ignored her heart and stayed far away from him.