Enigma

Dedication

For the Annas and Patricks of the world, because heredity isn’t destiny, and no one is too broken.

Prologue

Seven months earlier

She’d been staying at the small, one-bedroom apartment over the bar for so long it was starting to feel like hers. That made it even stranger when Anna unlocked the door and invited Patrick McNamara in for the second time.

The first, she’d been riding high on victory, a fight won, and every instinct had urged her to extend that exhilarated feeling with good booze and even better sex. Patrick had seemed like the perfect remedy, right up until he’d carefully turned her down.

“I work, and then I play.”
In retrospect, a damn good idea, considering how things with the cult had shaken out, but at the time she’d been disappointed and mortified.

Neither feeling had gone away.

She tossed her keys on the coffee table and set his bag down by the couch. “How’s your back?”

“It stings.” His voice was dull now, lacking its usual undertone of wicked humor, and it hurt to hear. “Thanks for giving me a place to crash.”

“It’s no trouble.” Just in case he thought she had ideas about both of them being there, she added, “Sera said I could stay with her. Kat’s not going to be there anyway.”

“Okay.” Every movement seemed precise. Careful, like moving too quickly would hurt more than his back. He eased down onto the couch and stared blankly at the coffee table. “Do you have anything to drink?”

She had water, diet soda and the bottle of top-shelf whiskey she’d filched from the bar the night she’d intended to seduce him. “Did they give you any pain meds?”

He dug a bottle out of his pocket and tossed it on the table. “Haven’t taken them yet.”

He could have those or the booze, but not both. So she pocketed the bottle of pills and poured him a glass of the whiskey.

Handing it over should have been the end of her duties—Christ knew she was no good at taking care of people—but she found herself asking anyway. “Do you want me to stay or go?”

Patrick stared at the liquor and didn’t answer. Not directly. “It’s so damn quiet.”

There it was again, that odd tightness in her chest that left her wanting to reach for him. She sat down instead. “I’m sorry about Ben.”

“Thank you.” Automatic words, like he was thanking her for passing the salt, not for acknowledging the loss of his brother. A shudder wracked his large frame as he tilted back the glass and gulped the whiskey.

Shit, she wasn’t good at this. Everything she could think of to say felt silly, trite, and the last thing she wanted to do was sit and spew inane platitudes that would do nothing but irritate already raw wounds.

Nick would know what to say. Then again, Nick would have already gotten to know Patrick, and he’d be sitting there with a friend instead of her, a woman more comfortable with weapons than hugs.

Anna drew her legs beneath her and opted for the truth. “I don’t know what to do. I wish—I just wish you didn’t have to hurt.”

Oddly, the words made him smile. “Me too, Lenoir. No magic bullet for this, is there?”

“There’s magic for everything else,” she whispered, “but no. Not for this.”

“Then what’s the point?” His expression barely changed, but the glass shattered in his hand. “What is the goddamn
point
?”

“I don’t know.” He’d managed not to cut himself, though she wasn’t sure how. She tugged him away from the shattered glass and led him down the hall to the bedroom.

He sank to the edge of the bed, and she knelt beside it to tug at his boots. “You’ve got to be exhausted, and you’re hurt. You need to rest.”

“I know.” He looked down. Met her eyes. “Don’t leave. Please, Lenoir. I just…can’t handle the silence. Not tonight.”

“I won’t leave.” She’d stay if it eased the pain bracketing his eyes and vibrating off him in miserable waves.

She’d do anything.

Anna rose and threaded her fingers through his hair. Her heart thumped, and she touched her lips to his temple. He turned in to her, pressed his forehead to her shoulder.

He was utterly, completely silent. Even when the first tear splashed on her collarbone, he didn’t make a sound. She held him closer and wished like hell she knew what to do, how to bring him peace, if only for the night.

In the end, all she could do was kiss him again. “I won’t leave, Patrick.” She would stay, comfort him with her presence and her touch and her words, if he wanted them.

Anything.

Chapter One

She hated this part.

Anna never bothered to tell anyone how much she disliked hunting because she wasn’t sure they’d believe it. People, as a general rule, wanted to think things were simple. Easily classified. She was good at tracking, even better at eliminating threats. Knowing she hated every moment of it wouldn’t fit with anyone’s expectations of a badass bounty hunter.

She stopped in her tracks as a breeze kicked the scent of iron and cotton into her nose. Anna pushed through the dense foliage of the forest floor and found a torn T-shirt under a pitcher plant, the blood so fresh it could only belong to the man she was tracking.

Wolf.
Forgetting wouldn’t do either of them any good. He wasn’t a man, had tried to be one again and failed because he’d discovered his human body didn’t fit right anymore. That was why he was there.

Why she’d followed.

She picked up the trail and ran, nose to the ground, paws rustling through the moss and ferns. The track ended in a shallow stream, little more than a trickle, and Anna growled.

If she didn’t find him…

Doubts were indulgences—wasn’t that what the Conclave instructors always said? Every moment wasted on second-guesses was a moment someone could die.

One path beyond the stream led farther into the depths of the bayou. The other, back toward the tiny town whose scant lights twinkled through trees heavy with Spanish moss. Intellect told her the darker path was too facile, too obvious. If she were on the run, she’d head toward town, double back and catch her pursuer at his heels.

But the man had come here because his wolf had pushed down everything rational in his mind and let instinct take over. Instinct would tell him to flee from signs of man, to take to the woods and stay there. Live as the animal he was.

If it were that clear-cut, Anna would have been content to leave him be. But the man would always push back, struggle to reassert control over the beast. Sooner or later, the memory of what he’d once been would drive him to seek out humanity—with disastrous, deadly results.

Anna took the dark path and forged deeper into the swamp.

Too much thinking, and it almost got her. She rounded the end of a fallen tree and stumbled into a small clearing—the perfect place for an ambush.

Her paws dug into the earth as she scrambled back, but the sharp snap of a twig heralded the attack. The feral wolf sprang from the cover of the trees to her left and took her down hard. She twisted, barely avoiding the massive jaws aimed at her throat.

Anna came up biting. She wasn’t part of his pack, and they weren’t playing. He’d go straight for the kill, and that gave her an edge. Let him try it, exhaust himself with lunge after lunge. Eventually, he’d tire. He’d make a mistake.

He was strong and he was desperate, and the fight dragged on long enough to worry her. The magic spilling out of him wasn’t dominant, and in other circumstances she’d have tried her best to cow him and end the fight with submission instead of death.

But crazy men didn’t surrender, and that was exactly what he was, only worse.

Finally, he stretched too far as he charged her, baring the vulnerable expanse of his throat for a shade too long. One lucky shot and she took it, sinking her teeth in deep and holding on.

For as long as the fight had lasted, he died quickly, the light seeping from his eyes like his blood into the soil. Anna imagined that he looked grateful in those last moments, but she knew it wasn’t true.

Ken Trumaine of Corpus Christi, Texas, hadn’t wanted to die any more than he’d wanted to be bitten, turned into a wolf and driven insane by the whole fucking experience. He probably wanted to get drunk on Bourbon Street, pay a stripper way too much for a two-minute lap dance and go home with some goddamn hilarious war stories about his long weekend in New Orleans.

He hadn’t wanted to die.

She didn’t realize she’d shifted until she heard her own hoarse, muttered curse. Anna rose and stumbled back, caught herself before breaking into a sprint. She could run, but what was the point? Nothing to run from here, just a dead wolf and a man whose family would never find him.

She could run, but she couldn’t run away.

Anna Lenoir had gotten tattoos.

Crouched against a tree, Patrick let his gaze slide over her naked skin, indulging himself in the few moments he had before this crossed the line from cautious to creepy.

Maybe it already had. Charms masked his scent, little wooden discs etched in runes and blooded with power. They throbbed against his skin under his black T-shirt, their prickling energy a reminder of his own weakness. The last time he’d raced Anna Lenoir for a kill, he hadn’t needed magic. He’d had his own, the power and spells etched into his skin instead of wood.

She’d beaten him then too, without even knowing it.

Any second now, she’d realize he was there. His charms might hide him from most of her senses, but Anna was a wolf, a creature of instinct. She’d feel his gaze soon enough, and then he’d have a damn hard time explaining why he’d crouched in the bushes, admiring her ass, when he should have been making sure she was okay—or throwing her some damn clothes.

But she had
ink
. When he’d last seen her naked, she hadn’t had any. They’d been in the bayou then too, preparing for a battle. It hadn’t stopped him from fixing her surprisingly curvy figure into his mind.

Now he focused on that ink. It stood out against her skin, provided fascinating contrast even though he wasn’t close enough to make out the distinct shapes. He wanted to get closer. Touch her.

Damn, he
was
creepy. Closing his eyes, he whistled sharply. “Lenoir, it’s McNamara.”

Her ragged, indrawn breath carried in the still night. “What the fuck are you doing here?”

“Showing up late to the party again. You’re fast, woman.”

Her cheeks glistened in the moonlight, and she swiped at them with the back of her hand. “There’s no paycheck attached to this one, so you may as well go home.”

She was crying. Guilt punched through him, and he rocked to his feet, stripped off his T-shirt and tossed it into the clearing before turning his back. “Wasn’t about the paycheck. This is my town now too.”

“Sure.” The word was muffled, and her footsteps rustled out of the clearing. “You can tell Alec it’s done if you want.”

His shirt came down to her knees, covering everything he’d been leering at a few minutes ago. “I wasn’t really thinking. You probably want to change back to get out of here instead of walking barefoot.”

“No,” she said too quickly. “I’m fine like this. Thanks for the shirt.”

“No problem.” He glanced at the wolf—dead, a neat, fast kill. Merciful. “Walk back with me?”

She hesitated, then nodded and fell into step beside him. “I didn’t know you were on this one. No one at council headquarters tells me shit.”

“I volunteered.” Patrick shrugged. “Not that Alec tells me much, but Julio’s always willing to put me to work.”

“It’s not that you’re not handy to have around,” she muttered. “If it sounded that way, it’s not what I meant, okay?”

“You just sounded like you wanted to be in the loop. I don’t blame you.”

She sighed almost inaudibly. “How have you been?”

No one asked that question wanting to know the answer. Not really. “Doing good. Living the posh life in the Southeast council headquarters. I’m surprised Julio and Sera don’t bully you into coming over for family dinners.”

Anna stopped and looked up at him until he met her gaze. “How have you
been
, Patrick?”

Stupid him. Anna wasn’t everyone else. “Still in one piece, more or less. You?”