Charming the Beast
Page 10

Eric pointed to Duncan. “The werewolf we recovered at the safe house—get him. Make him tell you every single thing he knows about this Keegan.” Then he looked at Chloe. “And you tell me everything you know.”
But Chloe shook her head. “His name is all I know.” Her hand lifted. She tucked her hair behind her left ear. “Just his name, nothing more.”
Eric’s gaze had noted that movement. His stare slid toward Connor.
Connor’s muscle locked down because he knew that Eric was about to say—
“Connor, make her tell you everything she knows.”
***
Harris had been tortured. Tortured. He’d been bleeding and Keegan had driven his claws into the guy.
Chloe paced the small quarters that she’d been given. Bonus for her, she wasn’t back in a silver jail cell. Instead, she’d been returned to the first room she’d been given at the base, the room she’d awoken in hours before. The narrow bed was still there. So was the table. The chairs—well, the chair she’d threatened to use on Connor was still tossed on the floor.
She paced back and forth, her mind spinning. She had no idea what the Eclipse was, but midnight would be there all too soon, and Chloe figured she’d be finding out all about the place real fast.
I’m not going to let Harris die for me.
Whatever Keegan wanted, well, she’d face him.
She just wondered when the guy had turned into such a complete psychotic jerk. Maybe he always had been, though, and she hadn’t even realized it. Maybe—
The door opened. Connor was there, filling that doorway. His broad shoulders brushed each side of the door frame.
As soon as she saw him, heat swept through her. Her reaction to Connor was just way beyond normal. Surely it wasn’t healthy—or safe—to want a man as much as she wanted him? Especially when the man in question came equipped with both claws and vampire fangs?
He stepped into the room. The small space suddenly got even smaller.
His gaze swept over her face. A muscle jerked in his jaw, and he turned and shut the door behind him. That faint click made her jump.
“You lied to me, Chloe.”
Connor, make her tell you everything she knows.
“I can tell when you lie.”
She wished that she could tell when he was lying. It would sure make things a whole lot easier for her.
“What do you know about Keegan?”
She turned to face the bed. “He met with my father. Since he had claws in the video, well, I’m taking that to mean he’s a werewolf.” Keegan had not shared that fact with her before. But surely he must have known what she was?
“According to the intel that Duncan just got from the werewolf we brought in, Keegan is the alpha of his pack.”
Alpha. Crap.
“Not only that…but it seems that pack used to belong to none other than David Vincent.”
Her eyes squeezed shut. Things just keep getting worse and worse. “I didn’t know that. I didn’t even know Keegan was a werewolf until a few minutes ago.” But now she had that horrifying image of him seared into her head. Nausea swirled in her stomach.
“With David out of the picture, Keegan took over the pack. According to the werewolf we’ve got—a real chatty bastard named Dennis who apparently didn’t like being shot in the face—Keegan is one sick sonofabitch. And guess who he has a complete and total fixation on?”
She licked lips that had gone desert dry. “Since he wants me in the trade, I’ll just assume that fixation kind of centers of me.”
“Kind of,” he muttered back.
She whirled to face him. “I didn’t know!”
He stared back at her. “Dennis said Keegan has been killing members of his own pack. If they don’t follow orders, he takes them down immediately. Sure seems like this guy is a real charmer.”
“I. Didn’t. Know!” Did he want her to write it in blood? To swear on her soul? “He was a guy I met at my dad’s office one day. He was wearing a three piece suit, not sporting claws! It’s not like you can just look and instantly say…” She snapped her fingers. “Werewolf! You don’t know until the person shifts. I just…I thought he was normal.” He’d seemed so incredibly normal. “When he asked me out for coffee…” And this was one of the most humiliating parts, but she forced herself to say, “I was just happy a normal guy wanted to go out with me…me, the freak who was so far from normal.”
Connor’s eyes began to glow.
Uh, oh. “Connor?” She inched back a bit.
“You dated him.”
He made those words sound like the worst crime ever. Her spine stiffened. “We met for coffee, and, yes, after that, we went out a few times.” With a sinking heart, she now understood why her father had seemed happy that she was going out with Keegan. Not because he’d been some up and coming young politician like she’d assumed. But because he’d been a werewolf.
Her father had probably been imagining werewolf babies running all around.
Oh, God…this is why my dad messed with my scent! He wanted Keegan to fall for me! Her father had given her the last injection after her third date with Keegan.
Her dad hadn’t realized that was her last date with the guy.
“You dated him?” Connor took another step toward her and shook his head, as if the thought were truly mind boggling.
“I didn’t know! Okay? It was just a few times. I didn’t—didn’t feel a real spark or connection, and I broke it off with him.” She waved her hands in the air. “Then, you know, things kind of went to hell. I found out that my dad had been working to take out the Para Unit. He was trying to push all the wolves to attack, and I was just trying to stay alive.”
Then things had reached an explosive level. Her father had died, and Chloe had lost everything she’d had.
Including my sanity? Some nights, it sure felt that way. Because I killed him. My father didn’t just die. I killed him. I shot my own father and I don’t even remember doing it.
“Did you f**k Keegan, too?”
His words were low, lethal, and absolutely designed to enrage her—Chloe was sure of it. Her hands immediately fisted to her sides. “How is that relevant?”
“It’s relevant, believe me. The guy kidnapped a federal agent. He’s stalking you, doing anything to get you back…so I have to wonder…did you have sex with the guy?”
But there was such a banked rage in his eyes. She could see it. “Jealous?” Wait, no, I didn’t mean to say that, did I?
Everything was so screwed up.
“No.” She shook her head as her breath expelled in a hard rush. “No, I didn’t have sex with him. Things never got that far. It was only a few dates, so I have no idea why the guy is freaking out and stalking me.” But this was more than just stalking. He was killing.
“Yes…” Connor hissed the word.
She frowned at him. Yes, what?
“I’m f**king jealous. I already hated the bastard as soon as I saw what he was doing to Harris. But to know that Keegan was close to having you…” His eyes glowed brighter with the fury of his beast. “I want to rip him apart.”
She exhaled slowly. “Why do I feel like this is the first time you’ve, um, been jealous?”
“Because it is!” Those words exploded from him. “The first time in my entire life!”
“Sucks, doesn’t it?”
“You have no idea…” He gritted out the words. “I will never be like him.”
“Wait, you think you’re like Keegan? Um, you’re not, Connor. I could never imagine you hurting—”
“Not him. My father.”
“What?”
“He was a sick, twisted psychopath. He said he loved my mother, but he was obsessed. He couldn’t let her go, not even when she tried to run. And she did run, Chloe. She ran again and again. She took me and my brother and fled with us. But he kept coming after her.” He paused. “It’s not easy to escape a werewolf, especially when you’re a human and the alpha wolf has your scent.”
She reached out to him. “Connor, I’m sorry.” Her fingers curled around his arm. His muscles were rock hard beneath her touch.
“The last time he found us…she put me and my brother in a closet. She was trying to hide us, and she was terrified. I can remember seeing the tears on her face. She wanted us to stay quiet. My mom…she said if we stayed quiet, we’d stay safe.”
She didn’t want to hear the rest of this story.
“I was so young, so damn little, and I didn’t like the dark.” His voice had gone hollow, all of the emotion bleeding away. “I ran out. I-I screamed. He found me. He found me and mom, and then he killed her right there.”
She didn’t just hold onto his arm then. She threw her body against his and held tight. His voice was so emotionless, but Chloe could feel his pain. “I’m so sorry, Connor.”
“It was my fault. If I’d just kept my mouth shut. If I’d stayed in the dark…”
“No!” She was adamant. “You were a child. Anything that happened…that was on your father. You didn’t cause her death! You didn’t!” She tilted her head back so she could stare into his eyes. “Connor, you’re a good person. You’ve helped me all along. Put yourself at risk and—”
“David Vincent was right about me.”
“Stop it,” Chloe whispered. She didn’t let him go.
“I spent my life in my father’s pack. That Keegan bastard has nothing on my old man. I saw things…” He shook his head. “I’ll never be able to forget them. And my father couldn’t abide a weak son. He was determined to make me stronger, no matter what.” He backed away from her. “Ian McGuire didn’t raise the weak. He killed the weak.”
She wanted to reach out to him again.
“When I got away from that bastard, I changed my last name. Went back to using my mom’s name, Marrok. Because I wanted nothing of his. But I couldn’t escape him. Not really. I’ve always carried his mark on me.” Connor lifted his shirt. He stripped it over his head and threw it to the floor. The light hit him then, falling right on his powerful chest. The muscles rippled. The muscles, the golden skin, and the scars…
So many scars.
“Werewolves can heal, so can vampires, but my father marked me when I was still a child, long before my first shift.”
She had to blink away tears.
“Every time I didn’t fall in line, every time I fought, every time I tried to get away, he’d use his claws.”
There were so many scars on him. Too many to count.
“When I stopped fighting him, when I acted like the f**king psychotic wolf he wanted me to be, he stopped peeling my flesh away.”
“Stop,” she whispered.
He didn’t. “When I was his wolf, I did things I never want to think about.” He swallowed. “But one day, one f**king day, I got away. I left him. I was alpha on my own, and I wasn’t ever going to bow down to anyone again.”
“What happened to him?”
“Don’t you know?”
She waited, wanting him to tell her.
“From what we can tell, he was in on the plot with your father. Senator Quick was rounding up as many werewolf allies as he could get. Purgatory was originally a set-up. Quick wanted the most powerful paranormals brought together because he planned to use them all. My sick old man was another of Quick’s pawns.” His lips curved in a grim smile. “But my father didn’t make it out of Purgatory. He died there, and I got to see it all go down.”
She shivered.
“That’s who I am, Chloe. I’m not some safe guy that you can fool around with. Me, jealous? That’s not what you want. That’s not what anyone wants. Hell, I know I’m dangerous. Because I’m more like that bastard than I want to admit. What if I snap one day? What if something pushes me over the edge?” Now emotion was breaking through his voice. “I already do want you more than I should, but, baby, I am my father’s son.”
She stared at all of those scars. So many scars, all on the outside, easy to see.
“My scars aren’t on the outside,” Chloe confessed.
“Chloe?”
“He never left scars on the outside. Reporters might have seen them, and my father was far too smart to make a mistake like that.”
He’d shared his past. And hadn’t Connor said before…if one shared, the other would, too? Such an exchange of past pain only seemed fair.
“Donald Quick was charming. He was handsome. He always knew just the right thing to say to the right people. You looked at him, and you wanted to believe every single thing he said.” Even though his words had been lies. “But who he was in public, that man wasn’t anything like the guy I saw in private.” A man given to screaming rages. A man consumed by the idea of power—power that would come from being a werewolf.
“My mother ran away when I was a child. She fell in love with someone else, and she just…left. But she didn’t get far. For years, I believed that she’d been the victim of a hit and run, but, on my eighteenth birthday, he told me the truth. He’d killed her. Because she wanted to leave him. If I tried to leave—because then, I was so sick of his rages and the constant tests he was doing on me—he said he’d do the same thing to me. You see, no one could be allowed to humiliate the senator. No one.”
And right then, Chloe made a decision. She’d already been thinking about what she would do to save Harris. And now she knew what she had to do to save herself. To keep that little bit of soul that she still had.