.
didn’t rush out and try to track me down months ago, when this all started. So tell me the truth. Why— Now?”
She held his stare, and he could tell she was planning on just waiting him out, until she let herself really look him in the eye. Whatever she saw there, whether it was anger or his sheer determination—it made her frown deepen. Forcing the words out between her quickening breaths, she told him, “It was the right time. I felt...raw. And I suddenly knew I could find you. When I was in danger, the bond started to pull at me—”
“So you feel it, too?” he cut in sharply, interrupting her explanation. His heart started trying to pound its way through his chest with hard, violent beats, and it was all he could do to stay in his damn chair in his relaxed pose, instead of surging to his feet and grabbing her shoulders, demanding she tell him everything.
Still scowling, she cast a wary look toward the hand still holding his glass, as if surprised it hadn’t shattered in his brutal grip. Her chin lifted in assent.
“I’ve wondered about that.” He tossed back his drink, slamming the empty glass onto the table, while his thoughts churned. He felt pain, frustration, loss. But mostly rage. A deep, seething rage for everything that had happened, and why.
He cleared his throat, his hooded gaze locked in hard and tight on her face, trying to read her expression. The bond should have enabled him to feel her emotions as easily as his own, but it didn’t, because it was only half-formed. He’d realized that right from the start, though it’d taken time to sort out exactly how the partially formed bond would affect him. And it’d kept him up at nights, wondering if Carla was being affected in the same way.
When he couldn’t get a damn thing from the look on her face, Eli lowered his gaze to the table and heard himself saying, “For what it’s worth, I didn’t even realize the bond had taken hold until almost a week after I left. By that time, I was already in South America.”
When he looked up to see her reaction to his confession, she turned her head to the side and laughed again. The sound was hollow and heavy, sounding as exhausted as she looked. “Well,” she murmured. “I guess it’s good to know I’m not the only one stuck in this hell.”
His jaw tightened, but he forced out a slow breath, not wanting to rise to her bait. And she was definitely baiting him, spoiling for a fight. Damn it, he was handling this all wrong, but it was like a train wreck he couldn’t stop from happening right in front of him. He was pissed at how badly he wanted her. At how fucking sexy she looked. How angry she was at him.
Knowing he needed to change the subject, he asked, “What were you in danger from?”
Her mouth flattened with irritation, as if she hadn’t meant to let that bit slip out either, her reluctance making him even more suspicious. He could feel it in his gut, the fact that there was something she didn’t want to tell him. “I’ll sit here all damn night and wait you out if I have to,” he threatened in a low voice. “But you’re going to answer that question.”
She took a deep breath, her nostrils flaring a little, and he felt the pull down in his lower body get even tighter as he wondered if she could scent him the way he could scent her. Not just on a Lycan level, but one that went even deeper. And if she could, was it affecting her, making her hungry for something only he could give her?
Her head dropped back on her shoulders, then dropped forward, and he could have sworn he heard her give a soft growl. Then she lifted her head, looking right at him, and nervously licked her lips. “I know Eric’s been leaving you messages at a number he had for you, asking you to come home. Didn’t he tell you about Elise?”
Because he was so often in places where cell phone coverage was nonexistent, and hadn’t had a permanent base since leaving the pack, Eli had used a couple of different messaging services for both work and his family. It was one of those numbers that Eric had been calling.
Answering her question, he said, “I haven’t heard from Eric the last couple of weeks. He sounded pretty pissed off in his last message, because I hadn’t returned any of his calls. But I wasn’t in a situation where I could talk to him,” he explained, which was only partially true. “What is it you think he should have told me about Elise? Is she all right?”
“Two weeks ago, Elise was kidnapped by Sebastian Claymore.”
He shot forward to the edge of his seat. “Was she hurt? What the hell happened?”
From what he’d been able to piece together from Eric’s messages, Eli knew that a Lycan named Roy Claymore had assumed control of the Whiteclaw pack, and Sebastian and Harris Claymore were his nephews. Eric’s last message had mentioned something about Harris being under suspicion for hassling their sister, Elise, and that had been enough for Eli to know he needed to get his affairs in order so that he could head back, even though he’d known it would mean facing Carla. Elise had already been through too much not to have her brothers there looking out for her. He just hadn’t realized the situation would escalate so quickly. Had thought he still had time to make it back, before he was needed.
“She’s fine, Eli. She made it out of there that same day, and she wasn’t...they didn’t hurt her.”
“Eric mentioned that the Runners were having trouble with the Whiteclaw, but said he’d go into more detail when I got in touch with him. What exactly did the Claymores want with her?”
“It’s a long story, and not one for someplace this crowded. She was scared, but she wasn’t harmed. I made sure to give them a hard enough time that it kept them busy.”
“You were with her?” he asked sharply, while the mother of all headaches started pounding in his temples.
“I was taken as well,” she murmured, clearly not wanting to make a big deal out of it. “They were able to sneak up on us, and we were taken back to Hawkley together.”
They’d taken his woman and his sister to Hawkley, the Whiteclaw pack’s hometown? A place where they would have been surrounded by those bastards?
Oh, hell, those sons of bitches are gonna die.
There were about a million questions he wanted answers to, but Eli scraped out the most important one first: “Did they touch you?”
The idea of her in danger—a danger he hadn’t been able to sense because of the weakness of their bond—was too much for him, making his inner beast seethe for release. His gums ached from the heavy weight of his fangs, the tips of his fingers burning as his claws prickled beneath his skin. He couldn’t believe he was a fraction away from shifting in the middle of a goddamn human bar, but that’s how this woman had always affected him, making him do things he’d never thought he would otherwise do.
Instead of tensing up and getting riled by his demanding tone, her posture had relaxed, one lightly muscled arm hooked over the back of her chair. “That isn’t something that should concern you.”
“Did they touch you?” he asked again, his voice now little more than a snarl.
Cocking her head a bit to the side, she studied him through her lashes. After a heavy silence, she finally said, “I would have been raped if I hadn’t managed to get free. As it was, I just got knocked around a bit.”
He wanted to roar at how casual she sounded about that, when it made him want to go for the blood of every Lycan who’d hit her, gleefully ripping them apart, one painful piece at a time. “How did you get away?”
“I knew that when the Runners realized we were missing, Wyatt would—” She paused suddenly, giving him a strange look. “Uh, when Eric left you messages, did he happen to mention that Elise and Wyatt Pallaton are bonded now?”
“I didn’t know it’d happened, but Eric thought it was headed that way.”
He could tell she was trying to figure out how he felt about his sister permanently attaching herself to the male who was Carla’s Bloodrunning partner, but he didn’t know. Until he saw the two of them together, he wasn’t forming an opinion. If Pallaton