Wild Sign (Alpha & Omega #6)(36)

Two men stood on the opposite side of the clearing from her. The larger of the two stood farther away, poised on the balls of his feet as if he were ready to move at any moment, held back by something just barely adequate to keep him where he was. His orange hair hung down in tangled waves over his shoulders. But it wasn’t that one, huge and menacing as he looked, who drew her attention.

About halfway between her and the redheaded man was a Native American man with wolf-gold eyes. She could not look away from him, although she knew quite well what happened when she met the eyes of dominant males, even by accident.

He was big, too, with wide shoulders and graceful hands. He wore his hair in a long braid and, incongruously in a man with such masculine features, gold studs in his ears. In contrast to his rather extraordinary looks, his clothing was mundane: a green flannel shirt, jeans, and worn leather lace-up boots.

Dangerous. She knew that with absolute certainty. This man was dangerous.

“Who are you?” she asked.

Her breath was harsh, her throat sour with bile, as she struggled to accept her current situation and evaluate it while she was still trying to deal with the sudden change of place. She was in danger and she had no idea what to do about it. The urge to run was almost overwhelming, but she fought it back because fleeing would be a terrible mistake.

And some part of her remembered the moment after Justin bit her neck, remembered the harsh hands and the . . . and the . . . She had run then, she knew it. Knew it had done no good. They had outnumbered her.

She fought not to remember it. Not to remember the hands, the greedy mouths—to jump in time to afterward.

Afterward.

Afterward, when she was alone in her apartment, she’d sat fully clothed in her bathtub and pulled up her shirtsleeve. This time, she thought, dragging the silver knife down the inside of her wrist and watching the blood well. This time it would work.

And somehow, Anna knew that memory, of sitting in the bathtub so she wouldn’t cause a big mess for someone else to clean up. That part was true, too. She looked down at her arms and saw long silvery scars. How could there be scars and Justin’s bite still be bleeding?

“Hey,” said the Native American man. He had a deep voice, the one she remembered calling to her in the darkness of her terror. Surely he hadn’t been in the pack meeting room, though that had been where she’d heard him.

“Stay here, sweetheart,” he said. “Stay with me.”

She put her hand to the side of her neck, felt the sting of the open wound and the stickiness of blood. But she didn’t look at her hand. She couldn’t take her eyes away from the man who had spoken to her.

He was scary—she knew people were scared of him. How did she know that? And why did it make her sad? Jeepers, her mind was in a muddle. She had to cling to the present moment because she was in danger—later, when she was safe, she could figure it all out.

Why did she want to go to him?

Someone growled and she jerked her eyes to the second man. Second werewolf, she understood. They were both werewolves. His face was twisted in rage and her breath caught.

“Tag,” said the first man without looking away from Anna. “Go back up to the sign. You are scaring her.”

Tag. She should know that name. She knew that name.

She put her hands up to her face, covering her eyes. Stupid thing to do, the scared woman inside of her said. But there was something wrong with her vision; she was seeing two different things and she didn’t know what was real. “Seeing” was the wrong verb, but she couldn’t find a better one. “Remembering” wasn’t the right word, surely.

“Anna.” His voice was very soft.

She jerked her hands away from her face and saw that the other stranger, the one with red hair, had gone away. Her werewolf had taken a seat on the ground.

Hers.

“What is scaring you?” he asked. Then even more softly, “Why are you afraid of me?”

She knew not to talk to them, to the dominant wolves. That never went well. She’d been taught better. She raised her hand to her jaw, but that had healed a long time ago.

“Anna? Will you tell me? I would like to know what’s going on.”

She made a sound that was half laugh, half sob. She would like to know that, too. She opened her mouth to tell him about where she had been before she’d suddenly found herself here on the side of a mountain. Maybe he knew how she’d gotten here.

But what came out of her mouth was “Justin.”

He half closed his eyes as they flared to an even brighter gold and his whole body twitched, causing her to flinch back. There was a long moment of silence.

“Justin,” he said with deliberate calm she didn’t believe. She knew what rage looked like—and knew that it was more dangerous when it wore a mask of composure. “Justin cannot hurt you ever again. Justin is dead.”

Oh, how she wished that were true.

“No,” she said. “I just . . . He was . . . He was . . .” She reached up to touch the wound on her neck, this time for reassurance. It hurt—he had just bitten her. She wasn’t wrong. She had proof.

“I just saw him,” she told the seated man. “He was just here—I mean, I was just there. With him.” She remembered the smell of him, could still smell him on her skin, and it made her sick.

“Anna,” the man said, “Justin is dead.” There was finality in his tone. “Can you hear the truth when I speak it?”