Chapter 2
Vaughn
No, not Elizabeth, of course.
This girl is far too young.
But there’s something about those huge green eyes, the heart-shaped face—
“I’m her daughter, Lily,” she says.
And just like that, my chest seizes up. Black spots appear in front of my vision.
“Her daughter?” I echo and my voice comes out as a rasp.
I take in this feisty, half-drowned thing, glaring at me with arms folded, eyes blazing. Make-up smudged under her eyes, hair plastered down, and wet clothes clinging to what look like dangerous curves.
Yes, Elizabeth’s daughter. Protectiveness surges in me. The same protective instinct I had for her mother.
I’m damned if she doesn’t smell a little like her mom, too—sweet, honey, citrusy. Riper though. Elizabeth was still a teen when she disappeared, but Lily smells like a grown woman. And my animal notices. It’s pushing up beneath my skin, agitating me.
I shove my beast back down, and I realize two things—the thought of her mom seems to make Lily sad, and she’s shivering like crazy.
“Let’s get you inside.” I snatch a key out of my leathers and stride toward the front door.
“You have a key?” she demands. Vulnerable, but full of fire, just like her mom.
“Sure do.” Now is not the time to explain everything. I unlock the door and hold it open for her.
She stalks through and hesitates. “I don’t know if I should be inviting a stranger into my house.
” She narrows her eyes at me, but there’s a flicker of nerves in them, and it strikes my chest like a dart.
She’s scared at the thought of being closed up in the house with me.
I don’t blame her. I’m at least double her size.
If she’s part shifter, as I think she is, she can probably tell I’m an Alpha.
And I probably look intimidating as hell in my leathers.
The last few years have been brutal. I’ve been brutal.
This house is the only time I’m soft; the only time I remember soft things. And the last thing I want is for Lily’s daughter to fear me.
“I’m Vaughn,” I tell her. “An old friend of your mom’s. She gave me a key when she left. I promised to keep an eye on the place for her—”
She shakes her head fiercely. “She didn’t tell me anything about this.”
I take a long, slow breath. I have a real bad feeling I’m not going to like the answer to my next question. “Why don’t you call her and check?”
Her eyes fill with sorrow. But then she composes herself, like it’s something she’s done a bunch of times before. “I can’t. She’s dead,” she says flatly.
“Dead?” Pain lances my heart. I close my eyes as the news hurtles through me like a freight train.
All these years, I never stopped thinking about my old friend.
Wondering how she was. Hating myself for failing to protect her when her family took her away from here.
Hoping so much that Elizabeth was living a happy life somewhere.
“She got sick, and she died a month ago.”
Just a month ago? Shit. “I’m so sorry,” I get out at last.
“You cared about her, didn’t you?”
I straighten up and look her right in the eyes. “A lot. That’s why she trusted me to look after this place for her. I always hoped she’d come back one day.”
Her nostrils flare. “My dad didn’t let her go anywhere.” She’s speaking matter-of-factly, but I sense the self-control it’s taking to hold everything together.
“Lily, you can trust me,” I tell her. “I was your mom’s best friend.” I see that she’s still shivering, and that there’s now a pool of water around her drenched sneakers. “Let’s get you dried off, then we can talk.”
She stares at me for two long beats. Long enough for me to notice the freckles scattered across her nose, and the sweet rosebud shape of her lips. She doesn’t look so much like her mom. Elizabeth had a wide mouth that was always laughing, and eyes that sparkled with excitement.
Lily looks watchful. Hard-edged. Like someone who’s had to look out for themselves for a long time.
“Okay,” she says at last. “I’ve got to get my stuff out my car though.”
I crook an eyebrow. “You mean the Alfa Romeo parked up right in front of the gates?”
“Yup. It’s my dad’s. He’s rich.” Her voice fills with bitterness. She’s not showing off. She hates him.
My beast snarls and anger crackles through me.
I’m desperate to find out what’s happened to this poor girl.
But, first things first. I need to get her to trust me.
Then, as soon as I’ve gotten the truth out of her, I’m going to track down anyone who’s ever hurt her, and fucking pulverize them. Make them wish they’d never been born.
“I’ll bring your stuff in here for you—save you getting soaked again,” I add, when she continues to give me distrustful eyes.
She hesitates a beat longer, then she puts her hand in her pocket and hands me the car keys. “Thanks.”
“Bathroom upstairs,” I tell her.
“I know,” she says, and for the first time, there’s a twinkle of playfulness.
“Fresh towels in the cupboard.”
I leave her standing in the hallway and I go out to her car.
Cars are not my thing. Cages for losers we call them—I’m a biker through and through. But the Alfa Romeo is a sleek piece of metalwork, and I admire its purring engine as I steer it through the driveway and park it outside the house.
Lily’s house.
All these years, I’ve been calling it Elizabeth’s house. Imagining the day when she’d finally return, and I’d show her that I’d taken good care of it. Kept it ready for her.
Foolish daydreams. Because now I know she’s never coming back.
She’s dead.
The thought knocks all the wind out of me again. She was alive all these years, while I was thinking about her, hoping she’d somehow receive my thoughts telepathically.
Until a month ago.
I wish so bad that I’d seen her one more time. Wish I’d had the chance to say all those things to her.
We loved each other like brother and sister.
When we hit our teenage years, my hormones went haywire, and my feelings got a little less, uh, platonic.
Elizabeth was the most beautiful girl I’d ever met.
She was also the most fun and fearless, and I would’ve had to have been dead from the waist down to not fantasize about her from time to time.
But I always knew nothing would happen between us.
She saw me as her kid brother. I was two years younger, and she used to tell me about the boys she liked at school.
I was her playmate, her confidant. She never saw me that way.
I got it. It hurt my childish heart, but I got over it and instead, I vowed to be her loyal protector.
Until suddenly, she changed. She got nervous and edgy. She thought her parents were up to something shady.
And then they all left. She was gone from my life for good.
Some protector I was. I snort out a grim laugh. I was fourteen years old, and her dad was a real asshole. I was no match for whatever the Moreno family had gotten mixed up in.
I changed a lot after that day. I got real angry and bitter at the world.
And then I found out that my grandad had been cast out of his own pack.
Finally, I had a new purpose in life. I was young, full of fire, and grieving Elizabeth’s disappearance.
I needed to leave the house and all the things that reminded me of her.
So, I hunted down the pack and went to reclaim my rightful place.
I fought and fought, and at last, I became Alpha of a savage, warring pack.
But I never forgot Elizabeth. Maybe that’s why I never found my mate. And now I’m an unmated Alpha. My pack thinks it’s weird. Rival packs think it’s suspicious. I just never found a female who lit me up inside like Elizabeth did.
Until—
I close my eyes for a second and replay that moment when a small, hurrying figure and a thunderbolt were on a collision course.
When I swept her up into my arms and crash-landed in the dirt, her sweet, curvy body cradled underneath mine.
When a pair of big, terrified eyes stared up at me. It felt like…
Like the skies crashing down over my head.
Like fate.
Like she was already mine.
But no. That’s not possible.
Lily is so much younger than me. I don’t even know if she’s legal. She can’t be my mate. It wouldn’t be right.
I’m going to keep her safe, that’s all. I’ll protect her with my life. There’s no way I’m going to let this Moreno woman down.
Inside the house, a trail of small, wet footprints runs along the hallway and up the stairs. Tenderness twinges in me at the sight. I grab Lily’s suitcase, which I’ve retrieved from the trunk of the flashy car, and follow them to the bathroom door.
I can hear the shower going. I knock on the door, but there’s no answer.
She’s singing though. I pause and listen.
A smile tugs at my lips. I don’t recognize the song, but she’s good.
Real good. Elizabeth used to love to sing, but I used to tease her that she sounded like a cat in heat. Which was true.
I knock louder. “I’m leaving your stuff right outside the door.”
The singing stops abruptly. “Okay. Thanks,” she calls back.
I drop off the suitcase, doing my best to ignore my wolf, which is insisting I hang around, try to catch a glimpse of her in just a towel, or even better, nothing at all.
Pervert. Not happening.
I head out to my bike and haul a bunch of supplies out of the panniers. The rain has stopped and the sky is perfectly clear. Storms don’t usually blow over so fast in these parts. It’s like it rolled in, did its work and disappeared.
What work exactly?
I think again how close Lily came to being struck by lightning. If I hadn’t been there—
I shake my head. And I vow I’ll never leave her alone like that again.
Mine, my wolf growls.
No, mine to protect. That’s all.
Back indoors, I get out of my leathers, then I lay out a bunch of Tupperware boxes on the kitchen counter. Whenever I ride over to Perdue Town to check on the house, my pack’s chef sends me off with a bunch of cooked food and instructions on how to reheat it.
I open the boxes—steaks, ribs, deer meat stew.
It smells hella good. But it’s all wolfy food, and I worry that Lily isn’t going to like it.
No problem, though—it’s not like we’re out in the sticks.
There are a bunch of places in Perdue that do delivery.
After all she’s been through today, I’ll make sure she gets to eat her favorite food.
By the time I’ve pulled some plates out of the cupboards, there’s a click from upstairs—the sound of the bathroom door opening.
My wolf strains its ears as Lily descends the stairs. She’s moving slowly, uncertainly. Probably feeling uncomfortable about the strange guy in her house.
I’ll fix that. This is her house, and I want her to feel comfortable here.
Even if I have to find someplace else to sleep tonight—
My wolf’s snarl rips through the air, cutting that thought right off.
Not going anywhere.
I groan. True. I’ve already decided there’s no way I’m leaving Lily alone here. Especially not before I’ve found out what made her drive all the way here, across three states, in her daddy’s fancy car.
Because she’s in danger. I feel it deep in my bones. Every bit of her is tense with nerves—with something that’s been scaring her for a long time before I showed up.
I turn my back to the door as her bare feet traipse along the hallway, going slower and slower.
“Hi,” she says uncertainly.
I turn back nonchalantly. And my own greeting dies in my throat.
Because she’s absolutely gorgeous.
Her hair is dry now, and it falls in chestnut curls to her shoulders.
The dark make-up smudges beneath her eyes have disappeared, and her face looks fresh and naturally stunning.
She’s dressed in a navy V-neck shirt, which shows off a pair of big, round tits, and a pair of black pants clings to her rounded hips and sweet, thick thighs.
My cock surges, desire charging through my body.
Mine, my wolf roars, shoving up beneath my skin.
Jesus H Christ.
Things just got a ton more complicated.