Dreaming of the Wolf (Heart of the Wolf #8)(62)

“But this time?” Lelandi probed.

Jake bit his tongue to keep from saying anything about this time being personal. But he was having a damn hard time not voicing his opinion. He sighed. He and his brothers would have reacted the same way as Alicia did, truth be told. Even Lelandi had responded the same way concerning her own sister, which had gotten her into a world of danger. So he couldn’t really blame Alicia. Although in their case, they were wolves and the thought of a female human going it alone didn’t sit well with him.

“The man I worked for did me a favor. He let me go after Danny Massaro and Mario Constantino on my own,” Alicia said.

Lelandi rubbed her lower back. Evidently the babies were giving her spine trouble again, which prompted Darien to move his chair closer to hers and to begin rubbing the area she was attempting to soothe. She smiled at him. “Thanks, honey.” Then she frowned at Alicia. “It seems to me that these men are awfully dangerous sorts. I would think the man you worked for would have worried about your safety as well as your success.”

“I…” Alicia wouldn’t look at Jake, her head slightly bowed. Then she raised her chin in defiance. “I had inside knowledge. My informant wouldn’t deal with anyone else. So the bondsman had to let me do it if he wanted any assurances that the men would be taken into custody.”

“Hell, the informant was that bastard Ferdinand Massaro. And he was the one who changed you,” Jake growled. “Why did he have designs on you in the first place?”

He couldn’t help the way he felt about it. Not only was he pissed off that the man had turned her, still hating himself for not having been there to protect her, but the possibility that the man had raped her rested heavily on Jake’s mind. The vehemence in his voice had all eyes engaged on him. All except Alicia’s. She was wringing her hands in her lap, staring at the table.

Taking a deep breath to settle his irritation, Jake swept a curl away from her cheek and pressed a kiss to her temple. “We’ll take care of them.” His words were spoken quietly now but with dark resolution.

“But you don’t have a bounty hunter’s training. You can’t turn them in without it,” Alicia said, looking up at him.

“If they’re werewolves, Alicia,” he said, taking her hand in his and caressing the palm with his thumb, “they can’t go to jail.”

Her eyes were wide, filled with a fresh shimmer of tears. “But they can’t be allowed to get away with murdering my mother. They can’t!”

When she tried to pull her hand away from his, he held on even tighter, unwilling to let go of the tentative connection they had. He realized then she probably didn’t even know about werewolves’ longevity.

“We live long lives. Very long lives. If you’ve read any werewolf lore, you probably know it’s not easy to kill us. But what you might not know is one of the reasons werewolf legends have persisted from ancient times is that we live so many years.”

“You… told me you… were thirty,” Alicia said cautiously.

He cleared his throat and glanced at his brothers, then at Lelandi. Their faces were expectant, almost pitying. He had never expected to fall in love with a woman who would be newly turned. He wasn’t sure how to acclimate her to their ways without upsetting her. Then he squeezed her hand as her eyes filled with worry and questioning.

“Thirty in human years. In werewolf? We have a very slow aging process. Once we turn eighteen, the aging process slows down. Many humans look youthful for years—and it’s hard to tell exactly what age they are, but for us, the length of time is even longer. Charles II was crowned the King of Scots at Scone, the year I was born. The same year that the English forbade the transportation of goods produced in the colonies to England on non-English ships.”

Alicia glanced at Lelandi. She smiled. “I’m not quite that old. But any man who would ask a woman’s age is not a gentleman.”

Jake raised his brows at Lelandi, then turned to Alicia. “That’s part of the reason we can’t go to jail. Let’s say the men did get life in prison. They would outlive everyone. And appear to age way too slowly. If they’re not one of those who have very few human influences in their family roots, like Lelandi, a royal, they would have to shift sometime during the phases of the moon. Except for the new moon.”

He paused and stroked her hand again. “Can you imagine what the prison guards would say if they caught their prisoners pacing in their cells as wolves? Orange prison jumpsuits lying on the floor? The two men gone? If we determine they’re not werewolves, they can go to prison. You can turn them in for the bounty money even. But we’ll take them down.”

Alicia took a deep breath. “What if they are wolves?”

“We take care of ours in our own way. They won’t get away with murder, Alicia.”

She nodded and slid her free hand over his thigh. He smiled at her, sure that the look was as hungry as he felt for her.

“What did you plan to do today?” Darien asked Jake. “A couple of police detectives investigating the break-in at Alicia’s motel in Crestview called earlier this morning and said they wanted to get Alicia’s statement. I said they could speak with her in an hour or so. Hopefully, she won’t have the urge to shift. Beyond that, what do you intend to do?”

“I wanted to take Alicia to see Grandfather’s old homestead. But I need to locate Mario Constantino and Danny Massaro, too. And find out what happened to the other two thugs that vanished from the motel. The one she bit and the other who got away without injury. I need to learn if any of them were wolves.”