For a price.
*-*-*-*
Carta, Washington
“Tell me one good reason why I shouldn’t kill you,” Ethan said to the small woman that he’d spent the last twenty-five years looking for.
“Hmm?” she murmured distractedly as she continued glancing around the hotel room he’d rented for the night, taking in every detail as he sat there, trying to figure out why the bitch would risk everything to hide this woman from him.
“Tell me why I shouldn’t kill you,” Ethan repeated, looking for any resemblance to the bitch only to frown when he didn’t find any.
While the bitch that would pay for what she did to his son was painfully beautiful, this woman…
Was not.
She didn’t have Mary’s golden curls, her pale blue eyes, or her perfect figure. What she did have was a pair of curious bright blue eyes, an adorable face, long wavy caramel hair that he hadn’t been able to resist running his fingers through when he’d found her curled up fast asleep in her small bed, and an otherwise unremarkable figure that he shouldn’t have noticed.
“I can’t,” she said absently as she frowned down at the comforter with a curious tilt of her head.
“You’re not going to beg for your life?” Ethan asked, trying to decide if he should just cut his losses and kill her now or bring her with him.
Then again, if this turned out to be another trap…
“No.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t see the point,” she said with a small shrug as she shifted her attention to the nightstand with that curious frown that she’d been wearing since he woke her up with a gun pressed beneath her jaw and a quiet warning.
“And why’s that?” Ethan asked, rubbing his hands roughly down his face as he sat there, struggling to stay in control when all he wanted to do was go see his son with his own two eyes, but that wasn’t an option right now. Not until the sun went down. So, until then, he was going to stay here and get answers.
“It only makes things worse,” she said with another careless shrug that had him once again wondering what he was dealing with.
Then again, he’d been wondering that for the past twenty-five years since he found out that the bitch had gone to the ends of the earth to hid
e a female infant from him. At first, he’d thought that she’d hidden her child to keep her safe, but that would have meant that she’d cared, which they both knew she didn’t. As far as he knew, she’d only had one child, a male, who she’d killed when he’d started to show alpha tendencies when he was barely two years old.
Instead of cherishing that child and protecting it until it reached its immortality for the good of her Pack, Mary slit his throat and tossed his small body aside. The conniving bitch killed off her Pack’s Alpha a long time ago and would do whatever it took to maintain control of her Pack, which made him wonder about the small woman that she’d tried to hide from him.
That had him wondering what she was and why the bitch had risked half her Pack to protect her. Whatever she was, she was his now, he decided as he glanced at the heavy curtains that he’d pulled shut earlier to block out the light and made sure that they were still closed before shifting his attention back to the woman who was frowning down at the comforter.
“What do you think those white stains are?” she asked, making him frown as she drew his attention to one of the many reasons why he preferred seedy motels like this one.
They covered his scent.
At least, they normally did, but right now, all he could smell was the intoxicating scent coming off the small woman that he was going to focus on as he struggled not to lose his damn mind.
Trace was alive.
Right now, that had to be enough.
“Where are we going?” she asked when he pulled her to her feet and headed towards the bathroom when he realized what she was looking at.
“Are you going to tell me what I need to know?” he asked, shoving the bathroom door open and headed for the rust-stained bathtub.
“Probably not,” she mumbled with a sigh, as her small shoulders dropped in defeat and he found himself staring at the artery in her neck, imagining just how good it would feel to slide his fangs through that lightly tanned skin and-
“My blood is dangerous,” she said with a shrug as she glanced around the small bathroom, taking everything in while he ran his gaze over her, noting the old Mickey Mouse tee-shirt that was a little too small for her and the faded flannel pajama bottoms that hung off her.