Wolf’s Heart (25 page)

Smiling, she spoke barely above a whisper, “Peaches, you don’t have to marry me. I don’t have any plans for running off. I mean, I do still have some things that I have to take care of, but I was planning on letting you in on those plans this time.”

He turned her so that his eyes were looking directly into hers. His expression was serious, and the tone of his voice was firm.

“No one said ‘have to’, Carlee. I
want
to. You could never understand this. Shit, I don’t understand it myself. What I do know is that the wolf part of me is more loyal than any human can ever be. When wolves mate, it’s for life. You are my life. Before you get that crazy head of yours going, it is
not
just for the wolf, but also for the man. Putting it simply, Buttercup, you are mine.”

The emotion in his voice as he spoke shook her. He was dead serious. There were no second thoughts in his mind at all. He spoke as a man who had absolutely decided on what he wanted. Her mind, on the other hand, was running the gamut of emotions. She had a hard time deciding what color socks she would wear. She tried to make him see what she already knew from her past.

“But, Peach, what if a year from now you decide that…”

Slowly shaking his head, Ryden smiled. “Not happening, Buttercup. You cannot possibly come up with a reason not to marry me.” He paused, became dead serious and whispered, “Unless you don’t love me.”

Golden eyes studied her face. She knew he was sensing her emotions. “Peaches, I can’t imagine my life without you in it. We have our whole lives. There is no reason to hurry.” She paused, becoming thoughtful. “I’ll tell you what, we’ll make a deal. Let’s go for a long engagement. That will give you time to see what you’re getting yourself into.”

A glint shined in his eyes as he pulled her closer. “I will not be changing my mind, and you know I won’t take that for an answer. I don’t have a lot of patience, Carlee. I usually get my way.”

He pulled her into a kiss that nearly had her ready to call a preacher. Her stomach growled. Giggling into the kiss, she pulled him out of bed. “Come on, feed me. Wait, no. Shower, then feed me.”

The shower was another test of exactly how soon they would be finding that preacher. She again stood as he washed her from head to toe. Loving hands moving across her body as his eyes and fingers took in every inch as if committing each touch and sight to memory.

When they finally made it to the kitchen an hour later, JT was standing at the sink. The scowl on his face and remembering the car ride here left no doubt in Carlee’s mind how he and Lou were getting along. Not at all. Lou jumped up from the table and blocked Carlee’s way to the coffee pot. “Oh, sweet! You can still walk. Now, let’s see if you can still talk. Would you please tell Mr. Neanderthal over there that I am not a doctor? This little vacay is bordering on a scene from
Deliverance
. I’m sure he has a banjo hidden in a closet somewhere around here. So if you don’t mind, set him straight so I can get the hell out of here and back to civilization.”

Carlee did a side-step getting past Lou, opened the refrigerator and looked at the contents inside. “I never said Lou was a doctor. She was just there, wrong place, wrong time…or right time. Do you seriously
eat
this stuff? Bacon? Sausage? Oh my God, that poor little piggy was probably rooting and playing in the mud one day, then the next he was hanging on a hook! The momma is probably
still
looking for her baby. Don’t you have anything non-animal in this place?”

Ryden sensed something and was at her side in the same instant that JT came to the refrigerator. Reaching in and grabbing a pack of cheese, he slapped it into Carlee’s hand.

“I eat meat. It’s the way things are supposed to be.”

The glance between Ryden and JT was tense. Ryden’s voice was firm, nearly a low growl. “Something you need to talk about, JT?”

Lou sat back down hard in the kitchen chair, the legs grating across the linoleum. “He isn’t a wolf; he’s a bear with a sore ass. He probably got a pricker in it while running naked through the woods last night.”

She kicked out the other chair, propping her feet on it as JT growled. Carlee was getting dizzy looking from one to the other.

“I think I’ll just have coffee. Got any French vanilla creamer?”

JT’s growl turned to a snarl. Moving quickly between him and Ryden she made her way to the coffee pot. “Black is fine…very good actually. Yum yum…who doesn’t love a good cup of black coffee?”

This was gonna be loads of fun…

The tension was so thick in the room a bomb going off wouldn’t have provided a suitable distraction. Ryden moved in front of Carlee to keep JT from doing something that would surely mean his death.

“Back off, JT.”

Ryden growled out a warning and JT looked at him, diverting his eyes quickly before he crossed the kitchen and moved into the den.

Ryden turned back to Lou, seeing her smirk as she sat there drinking her coffee. “You’re treading on dangerous ground, lady. You wanna tease a dangerous animal? JT isn’t the one to mess with. What you saw in that room last night was nothing. I don’t want to have to kill my best friend because you insist on pushing his buttons.”

She gritted her teeth, flipped Ryden the bird, and then took a sip from her coffee mug.

Carlee opened the cheese and put a few slices between two pieces of bread. Ryden poured her a cup of coffee, adding a bit of milk from the fridge and handed it to her with a kiss. “Let’s go in the den. We got a lot to talk about.”

She followed him out, and he gave Lou another warning glance. Lou looked away and pretended interest in her nails. JT was sitting in the den looking at the paper while he drank his coffee. He was, hands down, the most reliable person Ryden knew. Even among his unit, JT would be the one Ryden could rely on the most. He trusted all of his men with his life, and they knew he would have their back.

Never in a million years would he have thought he’d find himself in a position of leadership, Alpha to a wolf pack no less, and looking at his unit as if they were his family. For all intents and purposes, they were family. Most of them had no family, so relying on each other was imperative.

While JT was deferential to Ryden when it came to his treatment of his mate, JT was much more dominant than Ryden who respected that. They played on an even field, neither looking to get the upper hand on the other. Within the pack, they were an anomaly. If Ryden could ever convince JT to come back into the field, he would gladly hand over the command of the unit. He was more experienced, stronger all around. But would JT take the offer? Not likely. For some reason, JT preferred to be in the background now.
He had been the one leading
the unit before Ryden’s change. He never had the desire to lead again, or so he said.

Carlee sat down beside Ryden on the sofa. He pulled her feet up on his lap and massaged her calves. “Carlee, we need to figure out who’s behind MedVision. Just after you left, the computer scan you were running turned up more information. Unfortunately, it all went up in flames when the fuckers crashed my car.”

She gasped. “Ryden, no! Your car!?”

“It’s just a car. You’re more important.” She took his hand and held it tight. “What popped up wasn’t what I expected. It was your parents’ names. Somehow, they are connected to all this.”

Carlee was up off the couch and on her feet looking back and forth between Ryden and JT when she heard Ryden mention her parents.

“No, no, no, my parents wouldn’t be involved in that. Well, okay, I mean they wouldn’t, like, be big into that. Or they…”  She let the thought trail off. There was a lot that Ryden didn’t know about her life growing up, but he had a feeling he was about to get a crash course in the life and times of Carlee O’Shannon.

She took a deep breath, paced and twisted her fingers and talked.

“Okay, here’s the short version. When I left the hotel the other night, I went to my place, which was trashed, by the way, and will take me a month to clean up if I ever get to go back.”

Ryden cleared his throat. “You going back isn’t on the agenda Carlee, so forget that thought. Just keep talking.”

Carlee noted the tone of his voice; it was a decree, not up for debate. Letting out another breath, she said, “Okay, so when I was at my apartment, there was a call from the Major, umm…my dad. He said Kyle needed me.”

Ryden was patient as he waited for her to explain. JT, on the other hand, crossed his arms over his chest with a huff, impatient as ever.

“Kyle is my brother. He was born with a disease, beta thalassemia. His red blood cells are too small and don’t carry enough oxygen. Let’s just say that he needed blood transfusions, like a lot of blood transfusions, and eventually a bone marrow transplant. Bad news was that my parents were not a match. That’s where I came in. I was conceived right after they found out about his disease. I was supposed to be the match. Blood-wise I was. I gave him blood every month, and when he was really bad or got sick, I did a couple times a month. Everything was okay until it was time for the bone marrow.”

Taking a breath, Ryden could see she struggled to keep talking. “I got sick. I did everything they said, ate everything, mostly meat,
rare
meat because I was anemic. The doctor finally said I couldn’t give Kyle any more blood for a while. My parents pushed for the marrow test. When the doctor wouldn’t do it, they kept shopping until they found one who would. Money buys anything.”

Sitting back down on the sofa, Ryden moved to sit beside her, his arm wrapping around her back and pulling her close to him. Thinking back, he remembered a scar on her back near her hip. It was almost like a sickle in shape. He saw her hand drift to her hip where the scar was as if she could still feel the pain from the testing.

“When they did the test, I wasn’t a match and my parents sent me away. To them, I failed. I couldn’t give marrow, and at that point, I couldn’t even give blood. So, it was off to boarding school for me.

“It wasn’t all bad. I missed Kyle the most. They would send someone when he needed a Carlee Booster Pack as Kyle used to call them. But I didn’t get to see him. I’m not even sure where he is, but I have to find him. If my parents are involved in MedVision, it is because of Kyle, looking for the bone marrow, giving them some funding, dropping names to get funding to keep the place going, but they wouldn’t be running a place like that if that is what you’re getting at.”

He hadn’t said a word, just listened. While he couldn’t read minds, emotions were difficult to tune out. He could tell by the tone of a person’s voice, heartbeat, body language and even the scents coming off them what they were feeling. If they were lying, nervous, anxious, angry…most of the time it was easy to figure out. His mate, however, was crashing, denying to herself what was in plain sight.

As she spoke, anger boiled to the surface. How could they have dated for so long and he never knew the story? He thought back to times when she was tired and chalked them up to her heavy schedule at the University. Had her parents forced her to donate for her brother? Those thoughts only fueled his anger, something which he knew he needed to get in check. The unfairness of life is normal, but some things are just so out of place as to be inhumane. Bringing a child into the world for the sole purpose of healing another was wrong on so many levels. Carlee had no say in what they did to her body to keep Kyle alive. She had been forced to give blood until the doctors finally refused to allow her to donate anymore. She was then shipped off like an insolent child who wasn’t worth their time to care for properly. Any parent who would do that to their own flesh and blood would do most anything to keep Kyle alive, including delving into some bad mojo.

Staying silent, Lou walked into the room while Carlee talked. She might have some answers as to who was the head of MedVision, but Ryden seriously doubted it. JT sat by and listened, giving no indication of what he was thinking.

“Carlee, I know this is hard, but what if they
are
the ones behind MedVision? What if they’re so desperate to find a cure for Kyle, they’d even do something illegal?”

She jumped up from the sofa, agitated to the point she couldn’t even stand still and her hands flew as she talked. “No, Ryden, they wouldn’t do that! Yes, they fucked with my life, but they weren’t
that
bad! They gave me everything I wanted, an education, my career; they supported me in whatever I wanted to do. I failed them in taking care of Kyle, and if he’s in trouble, I have to find him!” Exasperated she sat back down on the sofa but kept a distance between them. Her head settled in her hands, and she rubbed at her temples as if she had a headache.

Ryden turned to Lou where she sat in the corner of the room. He had the feeling she was hoping they’d forgotten about her. “Lou, do you have any idea who was behind MedVision, who your boss is?”

“Somehow, I knew that question was coming.” She looked at the three of them, and he felt she was sincere in her next words. “I honestly don’t know. I clocked in, did my work and clocked out. Paychecks are direct deposit into my bank account, and I’ve never met anyone higher up the chain of command than my boss. All we did was research into diseases, trying to find cures or medications to help people. I’m sorry, there’s not much more I can tell you.”

Ryden nodded. “It’s what I suspected anyway, Lou. Thank you. I see no reason to keep you here. I am sorry we forced you to come with us, but at the time, it was what I thought was best.” He turned to JT, and he nodded. “JT will take you anywhere you want.”

JT stood and pulled his keys from his pants pocket. “The sooner the better. Let’s go.” Without even looking back, he walked out the front door, obviously expecting Lou to follow.

“Where did you find him? He’s got the manners of a goat and the disposition of a bear.” Shaking her head, Lou stood and went to Carlee, kneeling down and taking Carlee’s hands in hers. “I’m sorry for my part in what happened at the lab. I was doing my job, nothing more. But if they found anything from that sample they took, they won’t stop until they find you. Be careful, Carlee, stay safe.”