Werewolf Wedding(36)

“Yeah, I can see that. But on the other hand, what if this is just some kind of weird power play between these two? Some kind of... I dunno, challenge? Whichever one gets a mate first, they get to be the alpha?”

“How do you know so much about all this stuff?” I asked her. “I had no idea you were an expert on werewolves, or vampires, or zombies or witches.”

“Zombies are dumb,” she reminded me. “And I’m not. I just read a lot of weird magazines. I never really believed any of it until it became pretty obvious that we were dealing with a real-life lycanthrope. And I’m still not sure about vampires. Although I saw an episode of House M.D. where someone had apparently turned into one.”

“Porphyria’s just a blood disorder,” I said, doing anything to distract my mind from the very distinct possibility that Jeannie had just casually lobbed my way.

What if it was just a stupid game? Two alpha *s fighting over some hapless woman, winner take all and damn the consequences? And what if this kidnapping was just Dane’s way of playing the game where Jake’s was to be suave, caring, stupendous at kissing my ladyparts, and really good at making scrambled eggs?

Two sides of the same coin. Two approaches to the same problem.

My stomach sank into my toes, and then felt constricted by the shackles on my ankles. God, it all made so much sense. How one of them showed up in my life and then a day later the other shows up, all threats and posturing.

“How could I have been so stupid?” I asked, my voice hollow in my throat and echoing in my head.

“You’re right,” Jeannie said, a confused look on her face. “Porphyria is just a blood disease. What are you talking about stupid?”

I shook my head, pushed myself to my feet and peered out the window. The sun stung my eyes, which could have been either the drug or a mark of how long I’d been unconscious. Either way, I felt like the heat from it was welling up in my belly, exactly the same way the heat from Jake’s fingertips had made me feel when he... Another tremble, a quake, spread from the base of my spine to the tips of my fingers. I knew I couldn’t think about that right now, or I’d go crazy from worry, or paranoia, or both.

“Nothing,” I said, trying to ward off the feeling of impending doom that was bearing down on me with the tenacity of a locomotive. “Just yammering. I was stupid for getting taken, stupid for falling into all this in the first place. It was all just a stupid dream.”

“Now that is stupid,” Jeannie chided me.

Before she could really get into the list of reasons why my logic was incorrect, a groan from an adjacent room struck my ears. “What was that?” I asked in a hushed hiss. “Did you hear something?”

“Master... Somerset,” a weak, feeble voice said again. “Where are... you?”

“That, I heard,” Jeannie said. “And it is creepy. Is this some kind of prison? With, er, lots of wood paneling and really expensive carpet and crown molding?”

“It’s his mansion. Jake’s, I mean. Or the family’s. I’m... honestly I’m not really sure who owns the place.”

A heavy, thick thud sounded from the massive oak doors at one end of the room, and immediately both Jeannie and I sat bolt upright. She looked like she was going for something she kept in her pocket, and I just didn’t have the first idea what the hell to do.

“Son of a bitch,” I heard Dane grumble, before a key turned in the lock, and then he kicked the door open.

“Ruined my entrance. But it kept you from trying to run, so win some and lose some, I guess. Oh!” he got very excited when he noticed I was standing. “Just the mate I’ve been waiting to see. Or should I say ‘prize’?”

What must have been an innocent question from Jeannie suddenly came right back. The knot in my stomach, the lump in my throat. What if this was all some kind of cruel game and I was just the idiot caught with my pants down, in the middle of it. How the hell did I get myself into this? I thought it was just a date, just a weird guy wanting a statue, and then I was sitting there, kidnapped by some guy’s brother after I accepted a marriage proposal?

Standing had gotten to be too much.

In one entirely graceless motion, I let my knees relax like I was going to plop down in a chair. Only, the chair didn’t exist, and my ass hit the ground hard enough to make me bite my tongue. I let out a wild yelp, and then some words that probably didn’t make a whole lot of sense. I mean, they didn’t even make sense to me, so I’m sure they sounded like a squid with a mouthful of spaghetti to anyone listening.

Dane cocked his head to the side. “Wait,” he said. A wide, used car salesman grin spread across his face as he widened his stance and put both of his hands on his hips. When he did that, it emphasized how thin his waist was compared to the massive bulk of his chest and his legs. “You mean to tell me that my brother hasn’t...”

The look on my face, partway between confusion and terror, caught his attention. For a moment, his eyes flashed and the grin that crossed his face was almost childlike in its giddiness. “Oh, my,” he said, invoking memories of my grandma Gertrude. “Oh he didn’t, did he? Oh this is wonderful! I never imagined I’d get to claim you and rat out my brother for the scumbag he really is!”

It was the exact same way I saw my brother act when he had his seventh birthday party at a Chuck E. Cheese, and someone fell off the slide. Just pure, unadulterated joy coursed through the big man with the slicked hair. I noticed then for the first time that part of his hair – a shock on the front left side of his hairline – was starkly white, which sort of glimmered amid the sea of inky black. Whatever he was inside, the outside of the man was absolutely gorgeous.