Chapter Five
Riel’s heart pounded hard while Sam slept in his arms. She’d fallen asleep just seconds after telling him how good he smelled. It made him wonder at her shifter status again. Wolf-shifters had a very keen sense of smell. When in heat their mate scented better than anyone else to them. He’d called Sophia while Sam had been getting her scan and asked her to check out Sam’s blood. She’d promised to call Raven to get a sample so she could look into Sam’s DNA. Something about the way she acted screamed shifter, but she didn’t have the scent of an animal. It confused the hell out of him.
When he placed her on his bed, her brow furrowed, and she moaned in pain. Anger surged through him. It was clear someone was after his mate. What he didn’t know was why. Too many things had been going on at the same time. Not to mention, he needed to speak to her about their bond. The animal inside him recognized her as his. Nothing would change that, and he needed to figure out a way to make her understand. His gut clenched. For someone to get to Sam, they would have to go through him first.
* * *
“All right. I’ll let him know,” Troy shut off the phone just as Riel walked into his kitchen.
“What’s going on?”
“That was Chase. He said to let you know he can send others to help if you feel you need backup here. I told him to hold off for now. He also said Sophia has the blood sample and will get back to you as soon as she can figure out anything of importance. But it may take a few days because she’s exhausted and needs tons of sleep.”
Riel sighed and sat down by his kitchen table. “I know. Did you question the teens in the area today?”
Troy nodded, grabbed his soda can, and sat in a chair across from Riel. “Yeah. I got around to the families in the vicinity, but none of them was in the area at the time of the bombing.”
Riel scratched his beard stubble. What was really bothering him was Sam’s reaction to smelling him. She’d acted just as a female of his kind when in heat earlier. Her sweet scent still invaded his senses. There was just something different about it. It was faint, but she still had the wild look when he’d been inside her, as if a small, untamed part of her wanted out of an invisible cage. “I need you to do me another favor.”
Troy jerked his head in a nod. “Anything you need, bro.”
“Can you check out her family history? I want to know if there are any shifters in her background.”
Troy’s lifted his brows in surprise. “I did get the faint scent of something from her. Not strong enough to call animal, but there’s something there. Is that what’s got you wondering?”
Riel massaged a hand over the back of his neck. “Yes, but also her actions. They are so similar to those of a female in heat. It’s weird. It could also be she was bitten by a werewolf while in the jungle and just wasn’t aware.”
Troy shook his head and drank from his can. “I don’t think so. If she was bitten she’d have had her change by now.”
“What if something in her makeup didn’t allow her to fully shift? Maybe a genetic anomaly?” He growled in frustration. “I don’t know. It just doesn’t feel right. She’s not what she thinks. I can tell because just her scent is driving me into needing to mate her whenever I’m near her. This is more… This is different. I have to figure it out before something else happens.”
“Have you considered that maybe she’s just a human with some extra hormones that make her susceptible to our kind?”
If that was true, then she might not want him personally but as a boy toy. Maybe her hormones were pushing her to have sex with him to sate her own need to breed. He didn’t want Sam to be with him because of some physical need to have sex in general; he wanted her to want him, to want to be with him, to love him. Fuck. He knew he’d lost his heart to her the first time he’d looked into her big brown eyes. She’d just returned home from boarding school and was about to head off to college.
Happiness had filled his soul when she’d smiled at him for the very first time. It was at that moment he knew she was the only woman for him. Tryx, Chase’s cousin, had always made fun of him and said he was the reason she believed in love at first sight. He’d never wanted another woman after his eyes had landed on Sam. He never went past casual encounters, always knowing she’d come back to him one day. Could fate be so cruel to make the one woman he loved only want him for sex?
He didn’t believe for a second she was hormonal or desperate to breed. Someone knocked on his door before he had a chance to say that. Seconds later footsteps headed toward the kitchen. Natalia and Kane walked in together. Troy growled, and Riel sighed.