Tracking the Bear (Blue Ridge Bears Book 1)(11)

“Chance Kassower, you answer me damn it!” She shouted. “What do you know about this?”

“Everything. I knew everything.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Her voice came out as a choked whisper, instead of the screech I’d been expecting. The betrayal in her tone made my stomach pitch. I had hurt her. I’d hurt my mate.

I reached out a hand, stroking her cheek once. She slapped it away hard.

“Don’t you dare,” she said, shaking her head slowly from side to side. “Don’t you dare treat me like I’m a stupid, fragile little girl. You tell me what’s going on or I’m jumping out of this car and taking my chances in the next town.”

“We’re going sixty-five miles an hour,” I protested.

“Tell me what you know,” she demanded again.

“Fine,” I growled. “From what I was able to gather, your brother underwent platelet rich plasma therapy. It’s a procedure where-”

“I know what the procedure is,” she interrupted me. “Blood is injected into an injured area to help speed recovery from an injury. My doctor suggested I try it.”

“Your brother’s doctor attempted to use shifter blood to speed the recovery even further.”

Lucy froze and her one handed grip on the door handle tightened until her knuckles began to turn white.

“What does that mean for Luke?”

“It means he’s turned into a monster. He’s not like me, Lucy. Made shifters go insane every full moon. He didn’t know what he was doing, but he killed another boy, Keith Page. He’s a murderer, Lucy.”

“No,” she whispered again, tears beginning to streak down her face.

I stewed in the silence as we entered Louisville and I searched for a hotel. If she hadn’t hated me before, she did now. Damn it. I shouldn’t have turned the radio on.

She stayed in the car when I pulled into a nice, upscale hotel. The receptionist at the front desk flirted shamelessly as she helped me select a room. She was a very attractive woman, tall and shapely, but I felt no pull to her. I hadn’t felt attraction to any woman since meeting with Lucy.

It had begun to drizzle when I emerged. I pulled her bag from the back and opened her door, offering her the second keycard I’d requested for her use. She glared at the small plastic card and didn’t reach to take it.

“Come on,” I said, hiking the bag further up on my shoulder. “It’s going to rain. You can’t stay out here.”

“I can, and I will,” she hissed. “I’m not sleeping in a hotel room with the man who lied to me.”

A growl rumbled in my chest as my bear came to the forefront. She was our mate. This wasn’t how it was supposed to be.

“I’m sleeping in 112.” I flicked the card into her lap and closed the door. She could join me inside if she wanted to. If she chose to stay in the cold, that was her choice. I wasn’t going to carry her off into the room like a barbarian.

I turned my back to her and began trudging toward my room. If a night alone with her thoughts is what she wanted, so be it.





Chapter Five


Lucy


I buried my head even further into the flannel shirt I’d balled up as a makeshift pillow. Chance had offered me an actual pillow from the trunk of the car. He’d come to check on me about an hour after going inside. I’d tried to give the room key back to him, but he’d insisted that I keep it, in case I changed my mind.

As soon as I’d been out of sight, I threw the pillow to the floorboard. I didn’t want anything of his. He’d lied to me. He hadn’t been doing any of this out of the goodness of his heart or actual interest in me. All this time, he’d been trying to get close to me. He’d probably been planning to use me as bait to lure my brother out of hiding. Bastard.

I rolled over, trying to ignore the loud thump of rain on the car’s roof. It was coming down in sheets, and every so often thunder would shake the ground. I tried to console myself that being in the car would be reasonably safe.

I huddled in on myself, trying to get warm. The temperature had dropped about ten degrees from where it had been in the morning, and in my thin white tank top the interior of the car was freezing. I gritted my teeth determinedly, trying to keep them from chattering. I was never going to get to sleep this way, no matter how tired I was.

I rolled over and glared at the plastic keycard I’d placed on top of the pillow. He’d probably booked a room with only one bed so he could put his hands all over me. I wished that notion sounded less appealing to me than it did. He was involved in a manhunt for my brother, I was almost certain of that. I shouldn’t want to date the guy who was trying to bring him in.

Or maybe that was past history talking. I had enough bad blood with local cops that I distrusted most of them on principle. If I was being completely honest with myself, I knew that staying in the car had been a bit of an overreaction. He hadn’t outright lied to me. He’d misled me, sure, but he hadn’t exactly lied to me. And he hadn’t been obligated to help me out or take me along.

Maybe, just maybe, he was trying to help me in his own way. I chewed my bottom lip thoughtfully. Maybe the attraction wasn’t all in my head? He’d seemed to hang on every word I’d said all afternoon, seeming as interested in getting to know me as I had been to know him.