Ashlee’s head spun. She sat back on her butt and touched her forehead. Blood stained her right hand when she pulled it back. She must have really gashed open her head. Gagging at the sight of her own blood, she looked at the ground to regain her equilibrium. Two bare feet obstructed her vision and she jerked her head upright to look.
A man stood before her, completely nude. His hair was the same shade of black as the wolf who’d attacked the short assailant and saved her.
He knelt on the ground next to her. His hand pushed up against his shoulder to put pressure on a bleeding wound. This man was the black wolf. She’d thought she’d accepted the fantastical when she broke Tristan out of the wolf pen, but her stomach still rolled at the thought that this person and the wolf were the same being.
His eyebrows raised, he looked at her. “Are you hurt badly, ma’am?”
Ma’am? She had one second to register the man’s kind voice in her brain before Tristan attacked him. Her wolf leapt into the air and toppled the stranger onto the ground.
His teeth shown, he growled just as fiercely as he had at that their attackers. Tristan’s face loomed over the stranger’s only inches apart.
Ashlee staggered to her feet “Tristan, he saved me!”
He didn’t struggle under Tristan’s attack. The black haired stranger lay perfectly still. “It wasn’t me, Trip. I swear it. I know you think it was, but I didn’t do it. I got there too late. I swear it, brother. I’ve searched for you for six months. I didn’t betray you to Father’s men. I’ve been following them, looking for you.” His voice sounded raw with emotion, Ashlee could hear him gasp as he tried to get enough air. “Rip out my throat brother, if you don’t believe me. Rip it out.”
Tristan stared down at his brother and stopped growling but didn’t move from his attack posture.
“I saved your woman. She is yours, isn’t she? I can smell it. Why would I save her if I wanted you dead?”
Tristan bowed his head and his brother took a deep breath. Ashlee watched Tristan step off the other man’s body and limp over towards her.
She gasped. “You’re hurt?” She leaned down to touch his front paw. He yelped.
“Yes, they’re both hurt. And it’s exactly this kind of grandstanding that I haven’t missed for the last thirty years.”
Ashlee jerked her head around, her mouth dropped open. Her mother stood before her, completely naked. Suddenly embarrassed, Ashlee covered her eyes with her hand to not see her mother’s nude form.
She swallowed and turned around so she couldn’t see her mother. She opened her eyes. “Mom, what are you doing here? I mean…I can explain.” She didn’t know how she was going to explain, she’d already confessed her intentions in the note she’d left. Wait a minute, what was her mother doing there and why was she naked?
“No, Ashlee, I think I’m going to have to explain. When I got home I read your note and I could smell your fear all over the house, so I followed the GPS signal your father had installed in your car.” Her mother’s voice sounded tired.
The GPS signal in her car? Why had her father felt the need to spy on her and what had her mother meant by smelled her fear? Ashlee opened her mouth to question her mother but Rex answered her first.
“Victoria?” Ashlee opened her eyes and saw Tristan’s brother had stood up and walked towards Ashlee’s mother, his hand on his shoulder again.
“It’s me, Rex. Only everyone here calls me Vicki. I’m exhausted. I haven’t been in wolf form in nearly two decades. Come. My mate is a surgeon, and he knows about all of this.”
Tristan growled at that last statement.
“Oh hush it, Trip. Why would he expose us? He’d be dooming his own daughter if he did that.”
Ashlee turned to look at her mother, her mouth hung open in disbelief. Her mother was also a wolf? What the heck was going on? Her mother stared at Ashlee, her mouth slightly ajar. “I knew you were extraordinary, Ash, but I thought it was just a mother’s pride talking. Never in a million years did I think you would end up the mate of one of the Royal Six.”
Mate? “The what?”
Tristan nudged at her leg with his nose and she moved to the car.
She’ll explain this to you when we get to your home. Or I will. Tristan’s voice soothed Ashlee’s strung out nerves.
Her mother turned to walk towards the darkness. “I’ll take care of cleaning up this mess and I’ll meet you back at home. Ashlee, take the princes back with you to our house.” Ashlee nodded even though she doubted her mother could see her.
Her car door still hung open and despite his injured paw, Tristan leaped easily into the backseat. Ashlee closed the door behind him and got into the front. Rex, that’s what her mother had called Tristan’s black haired brother, climbed into the passenger front seat. Ashlee handed Rex the emergency blanket her parents made her keep in the backseat. He wrapped himself up in it. Tristan growled.
Rex groaned. “Come on, Trip. I just got you back. I am certainly not making a play for your mate. She already shares your scent. She’s yours. I get it. I’ll climb in the back if it makes you more comfortable.”
Rex turned around in his seat, still holding his shoulder, and manipulated himself over the console to the backseat. Tristan climbed through the center and sat in the front passenger seat next to her. Ashlee, unable to resist the need, reached out and stroked his fur. He lay across the front seat, eyes upwards and gazed at her. She swallowed away the strange unknown feeling that had formed in her stomach.
She put the key in the ignition and started the car. Rex stretched out in the backseat and yawned before saying, “My brother isn’t usually so possessive. But then again he’s never been mated so maybe this is just how he is.”
Can it, Rex.
Ashlee laughed and so did Rex. She pulled out of the zoo parking lot, leaving behind three dead bodies, all with their throats ripped out, and her alarm code plugged into the zoo security system to explain it. She was going to be in so much trouble.
“I’m going to get blamed for those bodies.”
Rex leaned forward in the backseat. “I can hear your mother in her car. She’s on the phone with some people who are going to handle this. You won’t be in any trouble.
Victoria appears to be a woman of influence, even in some less than upstanding circles.”
Rex paused. “Excuse me, miss, I’m sorry, I don’t know your name.”
Her name is Ashlee, pup. But I don’t see why you need to use it.
Rex laughed again and then groaned. He grabbed his shoulder. “Because it’s more polite than saying ‘hey you’. Ashlee, do you think I could borrow your cell phone?”
“I don’t have it with me. I ran out of the house in my pajamas.” She took her eyes off the road and examined herself for a moment before she groaned at her appearance. She grimaced and returned her eyes to the dark road. “I have so many questions.”
Of course you do.
She touched his head again. She wasn’t usually this affectionate but she needed to touch Tristan. “Are you in much pain?”
He closed his eyes under her touch. A bit. Ashlee looked in the rearview mirror at Rex. His eyes stared out the window for a moment before he closed them. The two wolves in the car with her were exhausted. Two wolves. In the car. With her. Why did the nonsensical seem so okay?
And what had her mother meant by mate?
Chapter Two
Ashlee sat across from her father as he finished stitching Rex’s shoulder. Tristan’s brother, shirtless but clothed from the waist down, endured her father’s ministrations without complaint.