E.A. Price - Valentine's Wolf (Grey Wolf Pack #11) Read online

  She hoped he said yes. No, she hoped he said he loved cats. He’d need to, to put up with her moggy. Tumbles could test the patience of the most devoted cat lover.

  “I certainly like this cat.”

  Unexpectedly, he rolled to his back, pulling her with him so she was straddling him. The sheet slipped from her body, and she felt a compulsion to try and cover herself. But why bother? He’d seen every single inch of her already in just about every angle imaginable.

  Instead, she leaned over him and rubbed the hard nubs of her breasts against his chest, purring softly. “I meant house cats,” she breathed, delighting in the ragged moan he let out.

  “I’ve never had one,” he admitted once he regained his breath.

  “I have one.”

  “Yeah? Wow, cats stick with other cats,” he mumbled, and she nipped his arm.

  “He’s a bit of a terror,” she admitted ruefully.

  Jake narrowed his eyes. “He?”

  Val blinked at him for a couple of seconds before guffawing loudly. He was jealous of her pet cat! Hilarious. Tears actually escaped down her cheeks.

  “It’s not funny,” he grouched, although she could see the hint of humor trying to curl at his lips.

  “You’re right, he’s my boyfriend, many a night has he spent curled up on my lap. Not to mention the way he likes to lick my fingers after I’ve eaten tuna fish.”

  She barely finished that last part for laughing.

  Jake gave her a reproving glare. “I know you’re joking but I really am starting to get jealous now.”

  “Well, you’ll just have to learn to live with your issues if I’m going to be sticking around. Love me, love my despotic cat – and no, I don’t mean Venus.”

  “So you’re sticking around?” he asked with a huge amount of smugness.

  “If you want me to,” she said, suddenly feeling a tad shy.

  He cupped her face. “You’re my mate, Valentine; I’ll be with you until you tell me to go, and maybe still then.”

  “You’re not only saying that because I’m a shifter now?” Her leopard gave her a disapproving huff and Val shushed her. She needed to make sure.

  He wasn’t angry by her doubt; he was quiet and reassuring. “No, I wanted you when you were human, but I didn’t want to freak you out by asking you to move in with me straight away.”

  “You want me to move in with you?”

  Her eyes darted around the room. Ooh, what would she change first?!

  “Or I could move in with you,” he offered nonchalantly.

  She didn’t know that much about wolf shifters; but wasn’t it really hard for them to leave their packs? “You’d move to Ursa to be with me?”

  “Of course.”

  Val was about to reply when her ears pricked up. She could hear the faint strains of the Game of Thrones theme tune – her ringtone. Yeah, she wasn’t much of a sci-fi or fantasy fan, but she loved that show – well everyone has to have at least one guilty pleasure!

  “Can you hear that?”

  Jake leaned up on his elbows and strained to hear. “Jeez, kitty cat, your hearing is unbelievable.”

  She snorted. “Must be my big ears. Seriously, that’s my phone. I should get it just in case it’s work. I need to know what’s happening.”

  Val scooted off him and wiggled her butt when he slapped it. To say he wasn’t really into spanking, he certainly seemed to have a fixation on her derriere. She knew having an overly round butt would come in handy one day.

  She found her purse downstairs on his kitchen table. Hmmm, how had they avoided the kitchen table last night? There was always tonight – or ten minutes from now.

  Instinctively, she sniffed her purse and realized it smelled of Jake’s deputy, Deanna. Her leopard snarled, remembering that the little bobcat once had a crush on her mate. Val shook her head and giggled. She was being silly. Jake was hers. And besides, Deanna was now mated to someone else. It was sweet of the young deputy to drop off her purse.

  She fished out her phone and was surprised by the four missed calls, all from Hilary’s mom, Martha - who also happened to be calling at that moment. Val eagerly answered.

  Martha’s grieved voice choked down the line. “Valentine…”

  “Martha what’s wrong?” she asked shocked by the change in the usually self-composed woman.

  “It’s Hilary,” she whimpered.

  Oh lord no! “What’s wrong?”

  Jake stepped into the kitchen wearing some boxers. His smile faded the moment he saw her fear-stricken face.

  “She was attacked,” sniffled Martha. “Someone attacked her when she was walking to her car. They think it was with a baseball bat. Who would do that? What kind of monster hits a beautiful, young woman with a baseball bat? They don’t know if she’s going to make it…” Her voice trailed away, and she sobbed into the phone.

  “Oh, Martha, I’m so sorry, I’m on my way. Which hospital are you at?”

  Martha told her in between hiccups.

  “I’ll be there as soon as I can, do you have someone with you?”

  She answered that she did, and they both ended the phone call, crying.

  “What’s going on?” asked Jake bluntly as he grasped her arms to stop her from crumpling to the floor.

  “My best friend, Hilary, she’s been attacked. They don’t know if… she might…” She snapped her eyes to his. “I have to go see her.”

  His jaw twitched. “To Ursa?”

  “Yes, she’s…”

  “It’s not safe.”

  Val was barely listening; all she could think of was getting to Ursa, getting to her best friend. She’d always been there for her. “Whoever attacked her is probably long gone.”

  His face looked grim. “No, not because of that. Someone is killing your kind.”

  “Women?” she mumbled absently. She started searching on her phone for flights to Ursa.

  “Well yes but...”

  She scowled at her phone. “Leopards?”

  “I don’t know,” he answered gruffly, frustrated by her lack of attention.

  “Redheads?”

  “Valentine, stop guessing! Hybrids, okay? There is potentially a serial killer in Ursa murdering hybrids.”

  Val gave him a searching look. “Jake, Ursa’s a big city – there are murders there every day. It’s never freaking safe! I can’t not go. The odds of me being hurt…” She rolled her eyes to the ceiling, thankful for the mewling support of her leopard. “I have to go.”

  Jake stared at her sternly for a few beats. “Okay, book two tickets.”

  “You’re coming with me?”

  “Yes, I said I’d stay with you until you tell me to go, and I meant it.”

  Fresh tears trickled down her cheeks. “Thank you.”

  “Oh, sweetheart, there’s no way I’d let you go to Ursa on your own. No way in hell.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  They picked up a rental car at Ursa International Airport, and Jake was driving them to the hospital. Every minute that passed, he became tenser. It was a toss-up as to which one of the two was unhappier. Val was fretting her heart out over Hilary while Jake spotted danger lurking behind every shifty looking stop sign.

  She wasn’t entirely sure his presence was helping her. At the airport, they first decided on taking a cab, but after Jake had decided the cab driver was looking at her ‘funny like,’ and he frisked the poor rabbit shifter down to within an inch of his sanity, they decided to rent a car instead. It was more convenient to have their own vehicle, and it was less likely that Jake might get arrested.

  Val knew he was worried; she knew that during his years of working for the SEA he probably came across some brutal cases, but she just didn’t believe anything would happen to her. She’d lived in the busy city for years, and yes, she had been mugged, her car had been stolen, she was once in a store during a robbery and, of course, someone had broken into her apartment… She forgot her point. Maybe it was that despite all those things
she was fine. Although she was seriously starting to wonder why exactly she continued to live in Ursa.

  “Valentine!” he snapped peevishly. “Are you listening?”

  No, she wasn’t, but she bet she could fudge it and pretend she was.

  “You were telling me to be careful.”

  “Damn straight.”

  He’d been telling her that over and over since they left Rose.

  “Don’t shake your head. You have to be careful of what you are. Half-witch, half-shifter mixes are pretty rare. Usually, kids of mixed races are one thing or the other – not both. And there are some people in the world who think it’s wrong for species to interbreed. It wasn’t that long ago that people who were born as both were killed on sight, or worse. Witches used to drain their energy to make themselves stronger. For want of a better word, half-breeds weren’t considered people, so they got away with it.”

  She turned to look at him, aghast. Her leopard snarled. Half-breed made them sound like they were half a person! “Seriously? That’s ridiculous.”

  Although something about the use of the word ‘half-breed’ tickled at a memory. Where had she heard that before?

  Jake huffed. “I know it’s ridiculous, but years ago people were scared of your kind. They worried they were too powerful, and so they killed creatures like you before they could prove them right.”

  Her cat prowled unhappily. “That’s silly. I mean, look at me? I may have a stonking great leopard in me, but I’m not so powerful that I could just take over the world!”

  “I know, sweetheart, but people can hold onto stupid prejudices for a long time. Hundreds of years ago, wolf shifters were practically at war with witches, and to this day there are still wolf packs and witches circles who refuse to have anything to do with one another.”

  Val shook her head. This was all getting a little too heavy for her liking. “Look, I get it, there are some mean assholes in the world, but I still don’t think I have to worry. The odds of me being the next victim must be pretty slim.”

  Jake flashed her a pained look. “My last case at the SEA was trying to catch a witch who was torturing and killing people like you.”

  “Is this the long story?” she asked softly.

  He nodded and tightened his hands on the steering wheel.

  “But, you solved that case, right?”

  He snorted. “Yes, but there were a fair few casualties. We found out the guy – he was called Morgan - was going after a woman named Astrid…”

  “Your friend Astrid?”

  “Yeah, she is now,” he said tightly. “So we had a protection detail on her – my most trusted agent, Leo. Turns out, he was helping Morgan – he felt the same way about hybrids – so he was feeding him information. And when it came to it, he handed Astrid over to him.”

  Val gasped. “But she’s alive, she survived didn’t she?”

  “Yeah, just. It took her a long time to recover. They tortured her for hours before we found her. In the end, I had to kill Leo, a man I considered a friend before I killed Morgan, and I had to send a bullet through Astrid’s shoulder to do it. I almost killed her myself. By trusting Leo, I put her in direct danger.” Jake let out a grunt of disgust. “Leo had been leaking information to that psycho for months, and I was too stupid to see it. If I couldn’t see something as basic as that – it made me wonder what else I would miss. So that’s when I quit. I couldn’t trust myself anymore.”

  There was such abhorrence in his voice that it sent a chill through her heart. Just talking about it ripped him apart, she could only begin to imagine what he had been going through for the past few years. He hated himself for what happened.

  She didn’t say anything; she just reached out and caressed his cheek. It seemed to calm him a little, and he even rubbed himself against her hand. Oh, her poor, noble wolf.

  Jake let out a harsh sigh. “Morgan’s gone, but he has his very own copycat killer right here in Ursa. I’ll bet the fucker would have loved to have seen this - to see his work being continued.”

  Val could sense his anger boiling and quickly tried to cut him off. “But, just by looking at me, you can’t tell that I’m a hybrid, can you?”

  “Well, I admit that…”

  “So no one else will either,” she said convincingly.

  “We don’t know…”

  “Then everything will be fine. It’s not like I’ll be running around Ursa, anyway. The only places I plan on going are the hospital and my apartment.”

  Jake rolled his shoulders a little, trying to lose some of the tension gathering there. “You don’t plan on going to work?”

  “No, I’m here for Hilary, and given that my boss appeared to be trying to get me arrested for embezzling, I really can’t be bothered with all that. Besides, I don’t really trust myself enough to be out in public at the moment. I mean, I seem to have an understanding with Venus, but what if I go nuts and start zapping people? What’s to stop me from turning into the wicked witch of the west?”

  “You could never.” He treated her to the beginning of a smile. He wasn’t relaxed enough to smile fully, but she could see the start of one trying to break free.

  “Thank god, does this mean that I can go out in the rain and continue to bathe?”

  “I’d say so – in fact, I insist on the bathing.”

  “I regret that I won’t have any flying monkey minions, but it’s worth it – I enjoy being clean too much to melt every time I step into the shower.” She grinned and then faltered, feeling guilty for joking around when her best friend was in the ICU. “Dumb jokes aside, I am just here for Hilary, I can’t go anywhere until Hilary’s okay, and I don’t plan on doing much else other than being at her side.”

  Jake gave her a look of sympathy that came out more like a grimace. “I know. But after we go to the hospital, I wouldn’t mind actually catching up with Robyn about the case.”

  Robyn? Where had she heard that name before? Wait a moment! “Robyn, as in your ex-wife Robyn?”

  He’d mentioned her a couple of times in conversation. He hadn’t said much about her; he was adamant there wasn’t a lot to say on the subject of their defunct marriage.

  “Yeah, she’s leading the case,” he told her placidly. “She’s a smart woman, I’m sure she’ll catch whoever’s doing it, but she did ask if I wanted to consult, and I am curious.”

  “Not that smart,” muttered Val sullenly.

  He creased his brow. “Why?”

  “She let you slip through her fingers.”

  “We were incompatible.” He dismissed what she said, but his eyes softened a little, and she could tell he was pleased.

  “Good, you don’t have feelings for her.”

  “No, none,” he said quickly and emphatically.

  “Then you can just go see her while I’m at the hospital.”

  Jake scowled. “No, I’m not leaving you.”

  Val rubbed his shoulder in a placating gesture. “I’ll be at a hospital surrounded by doctors, nurses, and security cameras – I’ll be fine. I don’t really want to meet your ex or learn anything about the case, so this is the best solution. You go find out about it while I stay with Hilary, you can come by the hospital when you’re done.”

  “I don’t like it…” he began grimly.

  “Well, we’re in a relationship now, so maybe you should get used to doing things you don’t like, like antiquing and visiting my grandma.”

  She tried to be teasing but it had the same outcome as if she were trying to tease a boulder. No reaction and a stony face.

  “Those I can handle, leaving you alone and putting you in danger - I can’t.”

  “You’re forgetting, I’m a big, bad leopard.” On cue Venus let out a ferocious roar – darn tootin’!

  Jake shook his head. “You’re…”

  “Not taking no for an answer,” she said more gently. “Seriously, I kind of want to see Hilary on my own - to see how bad it is. And if she’s awake now, she might not want someone
she doesn’t know in her hospital room.”

  “I suppose,” he ground out reluctantly.

  She threw caution to the wind and unsnapped her belt so she could scoot over and kiss his cheek. He muttered something about it being illegal to not wear her seatbelt, but he didn’t say no to the kiss.

  Safely ensconced back in her seat, she said, “I’ll text you when I find out which room Hilary’s in, and when you’re done with that woman…”

  “Robyn,” he interjected with an amused lilt.

  “Yes, her, when you’re finished with her, come find me.”

  “Fine,” he growled. “But I’m going on the record as saying that I don’t like leaving you alone.”

  “Duly noted.”

  She chewed on her thumbnail and stared out the window. She was too worried about Hilary to take Jake’s concerns seriously. He was just being overprotective. At that moment, all she could think about was her best friend.

  *

  After a terse conversation with the nurse at the front desk, who did not want to be helpful at all, Val was rushing to the elevator to get to Hilary’s room.

  She slipped in and pressed the button for floor two. The only other occupant of the elevator was currently camouflaged under an enormous bunch of flowers. She wrinkled her nose at the sickly floral scent. Her heightened sense of smell was definitely going to take some getting used to.

  Val turned her back on them and pinched her nose. Her leopard growled uneasily, and she felt a shiver of fear. Before she could wonder at it, two firm hands roughly grabbed her from behind. The scream died in her throat as she felt a prick on her neck, and lethargy overcame her body.

  She collapsed and was vaguely aware that she was crushing the flowers now littering the floor. Her vision blurred and the last thing she heard was a very familiar voice that said, “Hello half-breed.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Jake smiled and flicked the visitor badge he’d been given when he arrived. He’d visited the Ursa SEA offices a few times before. They were practically a carbon copy of every other set of SEA offices around the country – they were reassuringly beige, bland and boring.

  Being back there wasn’t so bad. But he supposed part of that was knowing that he could hand over his visitor’s badge and leave anytime he wanted. He wouldn’t want to work there again. Give him his sheriff’s uniform, his poky office and his missing cats any day of the week. Speaking of cats…