Duke(61)

“What kind of trouble are we talking about? I mean, you don’t need to be alerted if a deal falls through.”

“No, it’s an adrenaline and fear thing. When both hit, I’ll know it.”

She smiled. “Yeah well, losing a twenty million dollar deal might qualify.”

“You say, ‘I will keep your secrets’.”

Gen shook her head. “We’ve already talked about this, I’m not promising to keep all your secrets. I’ll keep the ones I’ve learned today, I won’t tell anyone you’re a werewolf.”

God, her boyfriend was a werewolf? And in a motorcycle club! She was going to need some time alone in the tub with a bottle of wine to process this later. Or maybe two bottles of wine. Everyone in the room was looking at her, so she finished her thought.

“But I’ve already told you there are some secrets you just shouldn’t tell me. This doesn’t change that.”

He shook his head. “You think of the secrets you intend to keep — the things you’ve learned in this room. Abbott will test you, make sure it took, so be sure you have it in your mind when you take the drink. If it doesn’t take, we’ll have to do it again.”

“You’re missing something. She needs to know all the facts,” Isaac told him.

Duke rolled his eyes and told Gen. “Sometimes, rarely, the process creates more of an attachment. It means we’ll be able to talk to each other without speaking. We’d be able to think at each other; it isn’t the same as reading each other’s minds.”

Gen looked at Isaac. “How often does this happen?”

“One in a hundred thousand, except with Alphas, and then it’s about one in twenty.”

She let her head drop, considered it from all angles. Bottom line, she didn’t want Abbott messing around in her head, so not taking the oath wasn’t an option. Isaac seemed to be in favor of her letting Duke do the protection thing, but she thought maybe she might want to reconsider.”

“Let’s do the part we have to do now, talk about the other, and maybe do it later?”

Duke looked towards Brain and Isaac, and Brain said, “It’d be better to do it all at once, Duchess.”

“I’m out of my comfort zone,” she told Duke, hoping he’d understand.

“I know, Gen, and I’m sorry. I’ll do my best to put enough power into it to bind you without putting so much into it we can’t get out of each other’s heads.”

“I like that you aren’t making a promise you aren’t sure you can keep.” She looked at her hands, made a decision, and gazed into his eyes.

“I will keep your secrets.” She thought of the secrets she intended to keep, watching him turn into a werewolf, hearing Abbott tell her he was a vampire, and knowing Isaac was involved somehow even though she didn’t know the details, and she repeated, “I will keep your secrets.”

Someone put the wineglass in her hand and she drank it, and as it went down she felt… different. Like she’d somehow joined with Duke, was feeling what he was feeling, sensing what he sensed, smelling what he smelled. For a handful of seconds, she could smell where Abbott was, could smell Isaac behind her, and Brain beside him. Abbott smelled cold. Brain smelled a lot like Duke, and Isaac was similar with a hint of… water? Not exactly a fishy smell, but something that lived in water.

And then she was herself again, and Duke reached out to steady her as gravity seemed to catch her again.

“You okay?”

“Yeah. Do you always smell people like that?”

He nodded. “I know when you’re afraid, when you’re happy, when you’re sad, when you’re pissed, when you don’t feel well.”

“To be honest,” Brain quipped, “we don’t need our sense of smell to know when you’re pissed. You’re pretty good at telling us.”

Gen rolled her eyes and looked to Abbott. “You needed to do something?”

He nodded to a piece of paper and pen at the edge of Isaac’s desk. “Sit down, write a note to your mother telling her about how the guy you’re seeing is a werewolf.”

Duke helped her up, kissed her cheek, and said, “I’m gonna step outside. I need to let him know when I get the hit you’re trying to tell.”

Her hand wrote just fine until she reached the word werewolf, and suddenly she froze. The pen wouldn’t move, her hand wouldn’t move. She couldn’t do it.

In a fog, she heard a knock at the door, and Isaac touched her. “Okay, stand up, walk it off.”

When she was breathing normally again, they had her write a note to one of her friends about Abbott being a vampire. When she failed at that, she had to write a note to her brother about the fact Isaac was some kind of supernatural creature, though she didn’t know what. Each time she froze, a knock sounded at the door.