Annabella shook her head to clear her thoughts. She was too tired to think, and there was nothing she could do anyway. She’d sleep and then deal with everything tomorrow. She turned and made her way to the room with the number “15” on a flap above the door.
She gripped the lever and entered. The room was small and tidy. A hospital bed fitted with white sheets was centered on the opposite wall, a beige blanket folded across the end. Another door, kitty-corner to the entry, was ajar, the gleaming edge of a toilet promising a private bath. Nothing fancy, but clean.
Okay. She could rest here for one night. Rudy, the linebacker-turned-nurse, wouldn’t let anything get past him. Maybe this was the best solution after all.
The console above the bed had an overhead light, and Annabella moved forward to find the switch to turn it on for a little extra protection. As she was fiddling with the switch, the door closed behind her.
Her sleeping pill? Her bag?
She turned and found a soldier. His hair was buzzed, jaw square. Bulging arm muscles, bronzed by the sun, were displayed by a tight army tank. He wore baggy camo pants tucked into black boots. No bag.
When he didn’t say anything, she was forced to ask, “Yes?”
He cocked his head at a sharp, oblique angle, chin tilted slightly downward. Gaze fixed on her.
Maybe the guy was confused. “Rudy, the nurse out front, assigned this room to me,” she explained.
The soldier took a predatory, silent step forward. Light from the bed lamp broke over his features, softly highlighting old acne scars across his cheeks and his yellow eyes.
A chill skittered over Annabella’s skin as her heart fluttered. She let her hand fall on the hospital bed railing and pressed the call button for the nurse.
The soldier took another stealthy step, shoulders slightly hunched as he approached.
Her heart clutched hard over two gulping beats before accelerating into a rush that pounded in her head. The soldier was familiar, but her mind refused to recall how.
He sniffed at the air. “I can’t smell so good now.”
Annabella flattened herself against the wall and console, and the light cascaded over her shoulders, bright at the edges of her vision. Her consciousness sparked at last, though she had known from the moment she saw him. “Wolf.”
He skulked forward again, upper lip curling to bare teeth. The yellow of his eyes became consumed by black, the irises swallowed by deep and shifting shadow.
“Who—? How—? I don’t understand.” Hysteria rose like bile in her throat.
“What are you?” the wolf asked, his voice soft, husky, and low, rumbling from his chest. He tilted his head again, moving in closer.
Annabella gripped the bed railing, torn between climbing over it and staying beneath the light, her place of protection. Not so much protection anymore—the wolf now stood in the dim illumination of the room. “What are you?” she asked back.
He considered her question.
“I am the hunter.” He bent his head to the exposed skin at her neck. “You and the other one trespassed in my territory.”
She craned her head away, but he brushed his cheek there anyway. Nuzzled, his hot breath in her hair and curling around her ear.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. What do you want from me?” Sobs clogged her question. Though her body was painfully tense, a deep shudder had her trembling beneath him.
He groaned, almost a growl, before answering. “This body wants to be inside you. To fill you. Is that where you keep your magic?”
“Oh, please, no.” Tears slid down her cheeks. Her knees threatened to give.
“Then how do you glow? Why does magic obey you? How do you light Shadow?” His low voice was full of wonder.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she gasped.
Hot, slick teeth pulled at her earlobe. “Show me again.”
“Show you what?” she whined, insinuating her arms between them to push him away.
“Bridge our worlds.” His hand found her ass and he ground his pelvis against hers. “But you feel so good, I almost don’t want to go back.”
“Please go back,” she begged. “You don’t belong here.”
“I could stay a while longer, like this, with you.” He growled again. “Feels so good.”
“Go back.”
His other palm skimmed up her waist. He cupped her breast. “I’ll stay. I think I can bridge our worlds a little myself.”
Annabella’s next breath released in a frightened whimper, high and weak. A sound somebody else would make. Somebody who let bad things happen to them. Somebody who didn’t think to fight. Not her.
The realization was a spark of cold anger in her head that spread down her body to tighten her stomach. The muscles in her legs warmed with her new resolve. Trembling, she shifted slightly to fit her body to the wolf’s just so. He squeezed his approval. Then she brought her knee up fast and hard, with a lifetime of strength and technical accuracy behind it.
He yelped and recoiled, stumbling back a few clutched steps, hands at his groin. When he lifted his face, it was devoid of color, the faint veins around his eyes bleeding inky black with pain and surprise.
Annabella ducked out of her corner, but he blocked her passage to the door. “Somebody help me!” she screamed. They said she’d be safe here. Where was Rudy?
“Why did you do that?” the wolf ground out, straightening slowly.
“Stay back, or I’ll do it again.”
His eyes turned sad, confused. “But we could be so good—”
If he said “good” one more time, she was going to rip his “bridge” off him and shove it down his throat.
A light courtesy rap on the door, and it opened, Talia peeking her head in. “I’ve got your bag.”
Damn, not Rudy. Pregnant Talia. Annabella couldn’t have the one nice person in this place, and her babies, harmed because of her. “Get out, Talia. Now.”
The wolf’s head snapped toward the door.
Fear flickered over Talia’s features, a hand on her belly, but she didn’t run. Her expression hardened as she pushed the door open all the way.
“It’s the wolf, Talia, run!”
But Talia didn’t listen, her gaze fixed on the soldier. “You’re a creature of Shadow?”
“Yes,” he said, voice a murmured undertone. “What are you?” He drew the you out into a wolfish croon.
“Banshee,” she said.
Banshee? What the freak was that? Nothing made sense, and there was no time for an explanation. Not with him prowling toward Talia.
“Wolf,” Annabella called sharply, “you want me.”
“And I’ll have you,” he answered over his shoulder.
The room darkened perceptibly, the shadows gaining substance and thickness, layering the room. The bed light dimmed to a faint glow. Annabella’s breath caught and held until her lungs screamed.
“Go back to Shadow,” Talia commanded. Darkness whipped and snapped around her, the room filling with a kinetic energy.
“No!” the wolf barked, the sound ripped from a human throat.
“I said,” Talia’s voice took on shattering intensity, painful to the ears, “Go back!”
The wolf staggered, contracting as if sucker punched, then burst into a splattered cloud of flickering darkness, like a swarm of chattering moths. The shadows gathered into a dark, dense pulse, then rushed past Talia to skim the hallway out of sight, blending in the deep patches formed by obstructed light.
Annabella’s mind blanked for a moment. Her body complained for air and she finally exhaled, grabbing the wall for support and gulping deep. She almost crumbled to the floor, but Talia beat her to it, her knees cracking with impact on the linoleum. Annabella darted forward to catch her before she fell onto her swollen belly.