She raced through the woods, not knowing where she was heading. Just away. She needed to get away.
There were angry voices coming from the parking lot now, and flashlight beams stabbing into the forest. She heard barking. Oh, good, now police dogs had been thrown into the mix.
She ran faster, legs slashing through the underbrush, her sides heaving. There was a river nearby. If she could get to the river, she could wade in the water and lose the dogs, because they wouldn’t be able to scent her.
The voices were getting farther away, she was outrunning them…
She kept running. She couldn’t hear barking or yelling anymore. She’d given them the slip, at least for the moment.
But where would she go? Back to Silver Peak? That would bring the Council for Shifter Affairs down on the pack. But where else could she go?
Something knocked her flying, and she rolled over several times and scrambled to her feet, to come face to face…with an enormous gray wolf.
It was Roman.
And his muzzle was covered with blood.
* * * * *
Before she could run, he’d shifted back into human form and was crouched there, naked and panting. She shifted too.
Roman reached out his hand to her, to help her to her feet. She took it warily.
“I am not mated to that woman! She admitted that she faked the Mate Mark!” he said breathlessly.
She shook her head in astonishment. “Seriously? Chief Tomlinson’s throat has been ripped out, your face is covered with blood, there’s a posse with dogs running towards us, and that’s what you want to talk about?”
“It’s important,” he said. “Since we might get torn apart in the next few minutes. You need to know that the only woman I’d ever Mate-Mark is you.”
“I… Thank you? How did you know I’d be here?” she asked between deep gulps of breath.
“I went to your house, and when you weren’t there, I went to Erika’s house to find out where you were. She told me you were coming here to meet the police chief. I thought I’d get here early and surprise you.”
Chelsea glanced behind her, into the dark, dense woods, in the direction of the parking lot. She looked back at Roman. “I am definitely very surprised right now,” she said. “Why is your face covered with blood?”
“I was scenting around the chief’s body. I wanted to find out who killed him.”
Was he lying? Chelsea’s gut said no. She just couldn’t believe that Roman was a cold-blooded killer.
“Did you pick anything up?” she asked. “My sense of smell’s not that good.”
“Right,” Roman said. “The empath thing.”
“You know?” she said in surprise.
“Yeah, I read it somewhere a while ago. The genetic anomaly that causes an empath is tied in with the sense of smell.”
“I should have told you,” she said, feeling shame wash over her. “People usually freak out when they find out about it. They think that it means I’m a mind reader. I’m not. I’m someone who broadcasts my emotions to others. I’ve spent a lot of time learning how to deal with it, doing meditation and taking medicine to help control the effects.”
He nodded. “That’s okay. There’s something that I should have told you.”
She stiffened. “The Mate Mark?”
“Will you move past that?” he said indignantly. “I did not Mate-Mark her!”
“Kind of a hard thing to move past,” she said, brushing leaves and dirt off her legs. She still didn’t hear any dogs. They were in the clear for the moment.
“It’s about the warrant. It’s from my mother’s home pack, and they did it because they want me to come back and visit. My cousin is getting Mate-Marked in a few months. They figured that if they filed a complaint, I’d have to go back to the county and deal with it.” He grimaced. “I’ve avoided my mother’s pack ever since she died. Brings up bad memories. My aunt looks exactly like her.”
She stared at him in shock. “It’s a trumped up warrant?”
“No, no, I really did steal my uncle’s pickup truck ten years ago and went on the run. I mailed him the money for it a few years back. They kept trying to get in touch with me, and I kept avoiding them.”
All those people trying to arrest him, and he could have solved the whole mess with a simple phone call to his mother’s pack. “You are really an ass. We’ll deal with that later. Who did you scent on Chief Tomlinson?”
“One of his police officers, a guy named Porter. His scent was all over Tomlinson. I recognized his scent because I’ve encountered him a few times, at the Hootenanny. He’s no fan of shifters, and he’s very close to Mitch Rodgers.”