The Wolf's Surrender. Kendra Leigh Castle

didn’t seem to put her off much. “Jenner. Right, sorry. Look, I don’t know what you thought, but I’m not exactly living a life of leisure back in Philly. I need to get out of here as soon as possible, today if I can. I know you said you needed my help, and I’ll be happy to tell your…your Alpha, or whoever…everything I know about Jeff. But that shouldn’t take more than an hour or so, tops. I haven’t known him long.” She looked away. “I really think we should call the police. I don’t want him coming after me. I can’t have him coming after me. If he does, he’ll kill me. But I can’t stay here.”

      Her blunt assessment, and the resigned way she delivered it, surprised him. Suspicion, always his first reaction, made the hairs at his neck prickle. He tamped it down as best he could, knowing it was unfair. Or maybe he was just hoping it was.

      He still couldn’t shake the feeling that he was missing something important here.

      “I don’t think he was trying to kill you, Mia,” Jenner said slowly, unsure of how close he should get right now to the truth of werewolf bonding. She looked back at him sharply, and in that moment, despite her previous uncertainty with him, he could see the steel spine lurking beneath the surface.

      “Yes he was,” she said flatly. “I saw the knife. He was about to finish it when your men arrived.”

      “Jesus.” Jenner stared at her, astounded she could be so calm about this. “Why didn’t you say something last night?”

      “I didn’t know the knife made a difference,” Mia replied, shifting a little. “I thought it was pretty obvious he was trying to kill me. What, did you think he just wanted to…to make a new werewolf girlfriend or something?”

      Jenner resisted the urge to get up, get away from that too-perceptive stare of hers. “We thought he wanted to turn you and keep you, which is bad enough,” he said, skirting the issue as best he could. “Why would he want to kill you?”

      He knew it was a stupid question the second it was out of his mouth, and Mia’s withering look said as much.

      “Because he’s crazy. He thinks—” She hesitated, then shook her head. “It doesn’t matter what he thinks. He’s insane. I’m glad to know you and your pack are hunting for him, but I really think it would be best to involve the police, too, just to keep the bases covered. They don’t need to know what he is.”

      Jenner’s instincts sharpened. He could hear the uneven beating of her heart, could smell the fear beginning to taint that seductive citrus scent of hers. His feeling that there was more going on here had been dead-on. He could see it in the stiffening of Mia’s shoulders, hear it in that unfinished sentence. But the look on her face, and the weariness still hovering over her features, made him stop. She’d tell him, or tell someone. She was going to have to.

      Given what she’d been through, he’d wait to push her on it.

      But not long.

      “You’re forgetting, our sheriff is on it. Anybody asks, you’ve already been to the police. Buddy will get the word out, but this is going to work its way through both channels, Mia. Isn’t that better?”

      She sighed and shook her head. “I suppose. I wish I’d never met him. Or at least that I hadn’t been so stupid when I did.”

      He shouldn’t have felt relieved, but Jenner couldn’t help himself. All of his questions about her relationship with the feral were now answered. Mia hadn’t been engaged, or in love, or anything much at all with this Gaines. He could read it all over her face. And giving a damn about it, Jenner knew, was bound to put him in a foul mood when he had a chance to mull it over.

      “It wasn’t stupid,” Jenner said, unsure why he was compelled to soothe her. Maybe she had been stupid about it, but he doubted it. “Sometimes we just get…unlucky.”

      He knew more than a thing or two about that, and he could see that she got it right away.

      Mia curved one corner of her mouth up in a small, self-deprecating half smile.

      “Yeah,” she said. “You can say that again. Though fangs and fur kind of pushes the situation somewhere past just unlucky.”

      Jenner chuckled. It seemed like he was going to end up liking Mia D’Alessandro, whether or not it was in his best interest. Her own smile faded away far too quickly, replaced by grim resignation.

      “So about the going home?” she asked. “Like I said, I’ll talk to whoever I need to, but this was only supposed to be a weekend getaway. Just tell me what I should be expecting.”

      “What you should be expecting,” Jenner repeated. He’d never met anyone who treated becoming a werewolf like catching a cold. He shook his head, amazed. “You’re a strange one, Mia.”

      He could see right away he’d said the wrong thing.

      “I’m not strange, I’m trying to be practical,” Mia replied, bristling. “Whatever’s coming, I can handle it. I can even come back at the full moon or whatever if it would help. But before anything happens, I need information.”

      Jenner couldn’t do anything but stare at her. It was obvious Mia needed a few basic things explained to her, and he had no interest in being the one to do the explaining.

      Damn you for sticking me with this, Bane, Jenner thought, taking care to keep it to himself. And though he hated to invade the Alpha’s thoughts almost as much as he hated having his own picked up, Jenner pushed out a request with as much force as he could muster.

       Bane, could you get over here? Mia…that is, the bitten from last night…she’s asking a lot of questions, and I don’t think I’m really the guy to be answering them…

      The response was quick, and though terse, laced with a little amusement at his expense that Jenner didn’t miss.

      You’re one of us. Why not you? I’ll be over later, Jenner. Didn’t expect her to be up and lucid so early. Little busy right this second.

      Jenner set his jaw and fought back a groan.

       The blonde from the bar?

      You got it. Smugness, Jenner decided, came through telepathy just fine.

      “You can’t keep me here against my will,” Mia said. “I don’t care what you turn into, or what’s supposed to happen to me on the full moon, I’m not staying here indefinitely. I want Jeff caught, but as long as someone explains how it all works to me, I’ll handle my own…stuff. At home.”

      The voice Jenner had found rich and warm just a few minutes ago had moved further into just plain “heated” territory. Innocent or not, he decided, this one had plenty of fire in her. Mia was obviously no pushover, nor a simpleton, which meant she’d probably do just fine here. Once she accepted the way things were.

      He guessed an upside of being the bearer of bad news, though, was that Mia would probably want nothing to do with him after this. That would make things a hell of a lot easier on him. At least, he thought as he watched Mia cross her arms over her chest and glare at him with enough heat to set the house ablaze, it ought to. If he could somehow manage to ignore her presence in the Hollow altogether.

      Which was unlikely at best.