Dark Fates (A Paranormal Anthology)(47)

“Miss…” He tried to interrupt, but her movements silenced him. He worried about the way she thrashed her head about. Whoever this honey lady turned out to be, he wouldn’t let anything happen to her. He’d figure out later why he felt that way.

“You need to listen to me, Hayden Chaucer. If you hear nothing else, if it was all just a dream the doctors made me have, then you have to believe me. They’re going to kill you.”

Behind Hayden, Sal sucked in his breath, but Hayden raised his hand to stop him from speaking. Still, the woman turned her glazed glare on his second-in-command. “Is this true, Sal? Does he not know me? Do you not? Is that why you wouldn’t bring him to me before?”

Sal looked at him and shook his head. He had no idea what she spoke of either.

“Oh damn it to Hades.”

He grinned at her terms.

“Okay, listen. None of it happened. I get it. But you are Hayden Chaucer.” She visibly swallowed, her throat clenching. He wanted to reach out and stroke her long neck, but that would be highly inappropriate considering she so clearly needed help of some kind.

“I am Hayden. I mean, yes, that’s me.” He nodded before he crossed to the other side of the room. Max had a small refrigerator, and inside was just what he hoped he’d find: a bottle of water. He took it out and tried to hand it to her, but she didn’t raise her hand to take it.

“Then that much was real. You’re Alpha here. Of the werewolves.”

“Now that we have to talk about.” Hayden cleared his throat. “You have to tell me how you know that. Right now.”

“You wouldn’t believe me. You didn’t then, and you won’t now, but you have to listen to me. They are coming for you tonight, and if you don’t do something about it, they will kill you. They will kill every one of you, and all Savage will find are your torn-up remains.” She teared up, several of the drops falling from her eyes and running unstopped down the side of her face.

“Who is coming to kill the Alpha?” Sal obviously couldn’t hold back any longer. Hayden noted his second-in-command didn’t ask about himself or the others. Truly, Sal’s loyalty knew no bounds. Hayden by contrast, cared more about the second half of her dire prediction. His pack mates counted on him. He wouldn’t let them down.

“The True Believers. They’re coming in a black van. Five of them. A small number. But you’re all shifted and in the tunnels. You won’t hear them until it’s too late. You’ll fight, but they have guns. Big ones. The kind they use in wars. They’ll destroy you.”

She cried fully now. “That can’t happen. There’s too much for you to do. And there’s the moonlight. The way it hits you. The way you tell the Moon that you need to be a human to save me—I mean her—Lily. All of that has to happen, Hayden. Don’t you understand?”

She spoke of so many different things that he quickly lost track. Did she want to talk about the True Believers, or did she want to talk about the story of the werewolf creation? Lily and the Alpha Wolves?

He would have asked, but just then, her eyes rolled to the back of her head, and she collapsed. Hayden darted forward and caught her before she hit the floor. She really weighed nothing, at least not to him.

“Sal, come on, we need to bring her upstairs.”

His second raised a dark eyebrow. “My Alpha?”

“To my room.” He crossed past Sal and into the hall. “Clear out the humans here for the tastings. Kill the lights. Make it look like a power outage or think of something cleverer. I don’t care. Just handle it.”

“Of course, but as your second, I have to point out how ridiculous it is to bring her upstairs. She’s just talked about killing you. About ending all of us.”

Hayden shook his head. “She didn’t talk about doing it herself. She said some people in a black van would.” Or at least he thought she had. It had gotten downright confusing there at the end.

“The killing you in general is what concerns me.”

Hayden shook his head. “That would concern me too if it weren’t for one thing.”

“What’s that?” Sal didn’t move to let Hayden pass with the girl.

“She’s my mate.”

Saying it aloud stunned him as much as it did Sal, whose mouth fell open like a landed fish. At some point as Hayden stood holding her, the scent of honey everywhere, she’d gotten beneath his skin in the rare way he’d only seen happen on a few occasions. The way it happened if the person in question was a true mate. The rarest-of-the-rare findings, the thing some werewolves spent their lives searching for and died without finding.

And she’d rushed into his vineyard. As crazy as he’d ever seen anyone in his life.

“She’s my true mate. My wolf knows it. My destined love. A human woman—and clearly not in her right mind. I’ll ask you to get out of my way. She won’t kill me. Or, if she does, there’ll be some kind of poetic justice to the whole thing.” He growled his last words, and Sal moved out of his way. “I want a whole pack meeting tonight. I’ll discuss this with everyone. As for her prediction of dire circumstances and death, I’ll take it under advisement. We’ll set up extra security. No one will get in here with guns.”

Sal nodded, and Hayden passed him, heading up the stairs. The moon would be in the sky soon, and he wanted his mate in his bed. Not to f*ck her, not yet anyway, and certainly not before he helped her get her mind back in order, if such a thing was possible, but he needed her in his bed, surrounded by his scent and protected in what little he claimed as his own.