Vera stopped in front of a room, her chestnut brown curls twitching with agitation. “I’m sorry. This isn’t how I imagined it would be to meet you. I prayed for you, you know. I didn’t know what your face would look like, or your personality, but I prayed for a mate to come save him.” Vera’s shoulders sagged as she leaned against an open door frame to the bedroom. She slammed her head back. Her eyes were raw and rimmed with tears when she lowered them to Nicole. “Save him.”#p#分页标题#e#
With a heartbroken sound clawing its way up her throat, Nicole hugged Vera up tight. “We will. We have to. I need him.”
“Good, then you will stay with him as much as possible. Calm his wolf. Calm him. Be there for him. Become his anchor to this world. And whatever you do, keep him away from the other McCalls. They feed the insanity in each other. Link has lasted this long because he cut himself off from them.”
“Okay, I will. I promise.”
“The temperature is set to drop tonight, and I don’t want you traveling all the way back home in it. I need to run some tests on Link anyway. Check how his body is handling the McCall Reset.”
“Vera, there was a lot of blood earlier.”
Vera eased back and grasped her hands. “He can take more than you think. His inner wolf gives him the ability to heal from a great deal. Did you bring extra clothes?”
Nicole laughed thickly. “Link had me pack an overnight bag just in case we got drunk over here.”
“Ha! Good, because after the last few weeks, I think we should all let loose. Link especially. You two can have this room tonight. Tell me if you need anything. Tobias is one of those overly prepared men who hoards two of everything. You should see our extra toothbrush drawer. Two of every color, and most of them with sparkles because he knows I like girly shit.”
Nicole squeezed her hands. “Vera?”
“Yeah.”
“I’m glad you’re helping him, too. I love him more than anything.”
Vera inhaled deeply and nodded. “I know. I can see it in the way you look at him. Link is lucky to have found you. Now, let me see that claiming mark.” She turned Nicole in her hands and pulled at the neck of her sweater, then peeled the bandage off.
Nicole winced at the tug of the tape, but didn’t make a sound.
“It’s shallow,” Vera whispered thoughtfully. “If it scars, it’ll be silver and thin.”
“He did better after he marked me, like claiming me settled the darkness in him. I want his bite to scar. I want him to be reminded that I’m his mate every time he sees it. Can you fix it?”
“I have something, but it’ll burn like hellfire.”
Nicole barely resisted the urge to balk and bolt. She wasn’t awesome with pain, but the thought of his mark disappearing when it healed made her braver. Link was going through a lot more pain. She could do this for him, and if there was even a chance it would help as his anchor, it was worth a try.
“This way. You get to see my lab, you lucky ducky.”
Vera’s lab was a huge room at the back of the house. A long table took up the entire length of the space, and it was covered in vials, burners, microscopes, scattered notebooks, and against the back wall was a row of machines Nicole couldn’t even guess at.
It looked like thousands of dollars worth of equipment. “Where did you get all of this?”
“Clayton.”
That name sent a chill through her blood. Link had told her all about Clayton. He was the Silvers’ absent father who had been sending them on kill missions all these years under the guise that he was someone else. He enforced the two most important shifter laws: don’t expose shifter nature to humans and don’t hurt humans. Only Vera used to be human, and he’d hired some asshole fox shifter to Turn her against her will, and then he’d banished her to Perl Island. Apparently, Clayton thought he was above shifter laws.
“You probably think I’m crazy for working for the man who did this to me,” Vera murmured as she rifled through a cabinet full of different colored powders. She turned, clutching a jar of what looked like black sand to her stomach.#p#分页标题#e#
“I’m a little shocked, yeah,” Nicole admitted. “He hurt you. He hurt his sons.”
“Well, Clayton is complicated. He’s a villain and he’s good. He’s a lot like a McCall.” Vera cocked her head and narrowed her eyes, as if she was debating saying more. “We have common interests.”
“Such as?”
“Like saving the McCalls. Specifically one Lincoln McCall. Clayton bought all of this equipment. All I have to do is tell him what I need, and he has it delivered within a week. He understands time isn’t on our side. Sit down there and grip the table. No screaming or Link will be in here in a second with my throat dangling from his teeth.”