Perfect Mate (A Werewolf BBW Shifter Romance #2)(13)

"I am," she said.

"And Julia?" His mouth was dry. He'd never thought it possible.

"Yes."

"Forgive me, ma'am—"

"Please, call me Dee."

"Dee, right." Jordan coughed. The wheels hummed under the car as they sped along the curves of the highway. "But you can't be a shifter."

"Oh?" she said. Damien could hear the dry archness in her tone. "And why is that?"

"We would know!" Jordan said. "You don't have a scent. And you're old! I mean..."

"Old, am I?" Dee said.

From the backseat came a low growl, and the car was flooded with the smell of a foreign shifter. The hair on Damien's neck stood on end, and it was all he could do to keep himself from shifting. The itch to fight strained his will. Then, just as suddenly as it had come, the scent was gone. Disappeared. As though it had never been.

"How did... how did you do that?" Damien asked softly.

Dee leaned forward and put a hand on his shoulder. He felt her warmth through the fabric of his shirt, and her fingers were not frail.

"Tell me something," she said. "Are you Called to my granddaughter?"

Damien swallowed the lump in his throat.

"Yes," he said. "We share the connection."

"Does she feel it?"

"Not as strongly as I do," Damien said, growing more confident as he spoke. "But she feels something. She felt it the first time we met."

Dee leaned back in her seat.

"Then I was wrong to tell her to stay away from you," she said. "I'd thought you were like the others."

"What others?" Jordan asked.

"You told her to stay away from me?" Damien repeated, his words hollow.

Dee took a deep breath.

"Stay on this road for a while," she said. "We have a ways to go before we reach their territory, and we're not likely to catch up to them until it's completely dark. I will tell you as much as I know, and then we will find them. And Julia."

CHAPTER NINE

Red. The world was red.

Julia lifted her head up and gazed out of the window. Trees rushed past her, the stars behind them shining red. For an instant, she had the gut-wrenching feeling of falling sideways, and dizziness overtook her. She put a hand to her head and touched wetness. A shooting pain made her recoil from the touch.

"Ohhh," she moaned softly.

"The girl's awake," a voice said. Julia looked up and saw a man with light blond hair, almost white, sitting in the passenger's seat. He looked back at her with dark eyes illuminated by only the dashboard lights. There was a hunger in them that set off warning bells in her mind.

She was in a car. Alright. Testing her ability to move her head, she turned and looked around her. She was in the backseat of an SUV, a seatbelt across her chest. The world came into focus.

"We're nearly there. Then we'll wait for Trax to come," the driver said. A low, growing voice. Julia could not see him, but he seemed a bit shorter than the passenger, with dark hair.

"Should we? We could start with her ourselves. Nobody would have to know."

"Idiot." The driver's arm shot out and smacked the passenger across the head. "And when the litter is born and it's not purebred?"

The blond man shook his head and sneered back at the dark-haired driver.

"Just a thought," he whined.

"Stop thinking. You're not good at it."

Julia squinted her eyes and breathed deeply. The crash. That's right. Damien. And Kyle—

"Where am I?" she asked.

The SUV pulled off of the highway and swerved hard onto a dirt road. Julia held her head in her hands as they bounced over the potholes in the road. Every bump in the road turned into blinding pain in her head. She'd hit the windshield. Yes. Blood covered her hand now as she pressed it to her head.

"I need help," she said, her voice trembling. "I need to go to a hospital."

"We'll take care of you just fine," the driver said, not turning back at all.

"Yeah, you'll be fine," the blond man said.

The thought made its way fuzzily through Julia's brain: these men are kidnapping me. She reached for the door handle, but it was locked from the outside.

"Tsk, tsk," the driver said. "So anxious? You can get out when we get there."

"Get where?" Julia looked around, her heart beating faster as she regained awareness of the situation. These had been the men in the car behind her. They had run her off of the road. She had to get out.

"Silly girl," the driver said. He looked in the mirror now, and Julia's breath stopped as she saw his face. His eyes glowed blood red, and he was smiling. He was a shifter. They must be working with Kyle. Damien had warned her. He'd warned her, but the men had still gotten to her. The shifter's next words crawled through her nerves and made her shiver in terror.

"We're taking you home."

CHAPTER TEN

Damien and Jordan listened intently to Dee. He'd taken her for a simple old woman, a human whose only interest was her relation to Julia. Now, though, he realized that she was something more. They kept the windows cracked open to make sure they didn't miss a scent, and the night air rushed past his ears as she told their history. Clearing her throat, Dee settled back and spoke in a sonorous voice that reminded Damien of the storytellers of his old pack. The lilting rhythm of her words lulled him into a calmer state, despite his fear for Julia.