Silence of the Wolf(65)

“Good,” he murmured against her hair.

“I’m serious.”

“So am I. You won’t be able to tear off so easily.” He moved his hands over her hair again. “I don’t want you going anywhere until we resolve this.”

“And I have no say?” She wasn’t upset about it. If he was right, she wanted to learn the truth, too.

“Sure you do. You can tell me if you like tea or coffee for breakfast. We’ve also got cereal and powdered milk.”

“Tea, eggs, and steak.”

He laughed. “Demanding wolf, aren’t we?”

She snuggled against him and smiled.

“So tell me about this brother of yours.” Tom stroked her hair as if trying to coax the information out of her.

She was silent, her smile gone. “Elizabeth, tell me.”

“Half brother,” she said, her voice hard. “Sefton Wildwood, a pure-blooded red wolf. After his mother died, his father mated my mother. Everyone in the pack was upset with my father. Sefton and Uncle Quinton were even more furious when my parents had me. They wouldn’t accept my mother or me, so we lived away from the pack.

“Years later, Sefton fell in love with a she-wolf from another pack, but when she learned he had a half sister who was half coyote, she shunned him, called off the mating, and said he was tainted by association. Sefton tried to kill me then. My father came to my rescue and beat him off me. My uncle tried to murder me, too, and almost succeeded. Then my parents were mysteriously murdered, my mother first, then two days later, my father.”

Tom barely breathed.

“Uncle Quinton was tired of the shame my father had brought to the red pack.” She rolled off Tom and onto her back and stared up at the ceiling.

Tom moved onto his side and slipped his hand under the flannel shirt she wore and stroked her belly, reassuring her, telling her he would have been there for her. That he was not the same as the men in her family.

“What happened when Quinton almost… killed you?” he asked, his voice tight, when she didn’t say anything further.

She looked at Tom. “He tried to drown me, but some random gray wolf teens came to the watering hole, scaring my uncle off, and I got away.”

Tom ran his hand over her hair, his expression concerned.

“I moved far, far away. I thought I was doing damned good, too.”

“Until?”

Elizabeth sighed. “I avoided male wolves all my life. Twice, men got interested in me, but when their friends learned I was part coyote, they gave them a hard time and both times the men shunned me—as if I’d hidden some terrible secret all along. I thought that a human boyfriend wouldn’t be as violent or mean-hearted as my own people, and I got the stupid idea to turn a human into a wolf to save his life and mate with him.”

“You’re mated,” Tom said, frowning.

“Not anymore. He loved being a shifter, and he loved me. Until Gunner lusted after another she-wolf and the woman let him know he was an abomination—part wolf, part coyote. Then he came after me. I got lucky that time, too. The she-wolf’s brother went after Gunner for trying to take up with his sister—partly because Gunner already had a mate for life, but also because he was part coyote. Gunner wasn’t any match for the much bigger, much more aggressive full-blooded alpha wolf.”

Tom ground his teeth.

She raised her brows at him. “Which means I’m free to find someone new, as if that is very likely to happen.” No one could accuse her of not trying to find a suitable mate—at least in the past. But for years, she’d left well enough alone.

Tom’s mouth curved up slowly.

“No,” she said, elongating the word to emphasize that nothing would happen between them.

“You know how you told Silva to spread her wings.”

Elizabeth opened her mouth to refute that idea, but Tom touched his lips to hers and kissed her.

“We’re not all big, bad wolves,” he said against her mouth, and kissed her some more as if he wanted to prove to her just how much this one wanted her.

She pulled away from him to catch her breath, her hands on his bare shoulders. “You say that, and then the next thing I know, I’m fighting the wolf off and running for the hills and…”

“Finding a new home. With me. With my pack. We’re a diverse lot, Elizabeth. Darien mated with a red wolf. Jake mated with a human who had been turned. There’s no way I’d get mixed up with a plain, old gray wolf. It just wouldn’t be right.”

She laughed a little at that. “You might get tired of me and…”

“It wouldn’t happen. Wolves mate for life. I’m not a human turned like the first man you took a chance on.”