Chapter 15

Darren & Aria

Darren

When I burst out of the hospital and saw Liam advancing on Aria like that, I thought it was too late. She was done for; he had his mind set on ‘dealing with her’, especially now that she had tried to make a run for it, and I hadn’t moved fast enough.

Time seemed to move in slow motion as I ran to her in the parking lot. In those moments, only one thing was on my mind: saving her.

I didn’t know how or why, but she was special to me. I couldn’t bear to see harm come to anyone, but especially not her.

But then came the blinding light. It emanated outwards from her chest, like a hundred bolts of lightning all at once. It lit up the sky like it was on fire.

What happened during that flash was a blur. All I knew was that a moment later, I had her in my arms. And she was…

Unharmed.

She should have been dead. Liam could have snuffed out her life in a matter of milliseconds with one snap of his jaws; it would have been quick, painless, over in an instant.

But here she was, in my arms, completely unscathed.

And my Beta was sprawled out on the ground in his human form, groaning.

As soon as I followed the source of that light and pulled her sweater aside to reveal the crescent-shaped mark glowing on her collarbone, I knew what had happened. I didn’t know how it happened, didn’t even think it made sense, but…

“Mate,” I whispered, my hand brushing her cheek without even really meaning to. “You’re my mate.”

Aria slapped my hand away and stumbled back, eyes wild. Her hair had come loose from its braid, brown waves flowing over her shoulders. “Your what?” she all but barked.

Behind me, Liam groaned again and climbed to his feet. He pointed a trembling finger at her, his other hand clutching his abdomen, and choked out, “She’s your Luna?”

I didn’t know what to say. Aria, for her part, looked caught somewhere between debating whether to run again or to collapse to the ground. She seemed to settle on the latter, and I caught her just before she fell, scooping her up with ease.

“Let go,” she muttered, hitting at my chest weakly as I began carrying her back inside. But she didn’t protest any more than that.

Edward was standing in the doorway as we approached, his eyes wide. “It’s a damn good thing our human visitors and most of the staff are gone for the night, you know,” he said, holding the door open a little wider to allow us access.

He didn’t need to tell me twice. After that little display, any humans in the area would have called the police and any werewolves with a vengeance would have joined Liam in his efforts to kill the human.

Not that anyone could harm her now, because, well… She was my Luna, apparently. Which meant that pack members wouldn’t be able to hurt her without facing the same repercussions that my Beta had faced.

“I knew there was something special about her,” Edward mused as he followed us back to the room. “I’ve been puzzling all day over how she survived that rogue attack… Not to mention carrying Lucas through the forest in her wolf form.”

I clenched my jaw, thinking. As far as I knew, Aria really was a human; I couldn’t sense that she had an inner wolf or a pack bond or anything of the sort.

But if she was a human, then it should have been impossible for her to be my mate.

Unless…

“Should I take a blood sample, Alpha?” Edward asked, noticing my expression.

I nodded and glanced down at Aria, who was half asleep with exhaustion by now.

“Yes,” I said. “I think that’s a good idea.”

…

Aria

Darren handed me a cup of steaming soup. “Eat. You’ll feel better.”

I didn’t have much of an appetite now, for obvious reasons. My life had been turned upside down, someone had tried to kill me, and now apparently I was the ‘mate’ to the man who had hired me, all in the span of less than twenty minutes.

Still, I took the soup and sipped the broth. I really was starving.

Thankfully, Liam had taken Lucas away to get changed into some real clothes, leaving me and Darren alone in the hospital room—although I think he just couldn’t bear to look at me after what he’d just tried to do.

Seeing him like that, as an impossibly enormous silver wolf… That image would haunt me for a very long time.

Over the rim of my soup cup, I dared to glance at Darren. I wondered what he looked like as a wolf—bigger than Liam? Black, like his hair?

No, Aria. I shook my head to dispel the thought. I didn’t want to picture it right now. Or ever, really.

“You’re not going to try to kill me again, are you?” I asked, setting aside my soup.

Darren’s jaw clenched. “I never wanted to kill you. That was my Beta.” He looked me up and down and added, “No one in the pack can hurt you now. Not now that you’re my mate.”

“Right…” I frowned and pulled my sweater aside to look at the crescent-shaped mark again. It was no longer glowing, just a little pink scar in the shape of a crescent moon. I shivered and quickly hid it again. “So… Does that mean I’m a werewolf, too?”

Darren shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess we’ll find out.”

I would have laughed out loud, had there been any humor left in me. Me, a werewolf… Unlikely. I would have said that it was impossible, but… Well, I wasn’t so sure about that anymore.

“Is everyone here a werewolf, then?” I gestured around, recalling how the doctor and the nurses in this place had acted so strange earlier.

“Yes. This is a werewolf hospital.” Darren stared down at his hands. “We do take human visitors during the day, but the hospital is mainly for werewolves.”

I supposed that was why I had seen humans and dogs in hospital beds earlier—the various forms of werewolves.

There was a long, awkward silence before I blurted out my next burning question. “So what does it mean? That I’m your ‘mate’, I mean.”

Darren took a deep breath before answering. At least he was being open now. There was no point in lying anymore, I supposed.

“Think of it like a… soulmate,” he explained. “Only more… concrete. Werewolves don’t really operate on a ‘dating until finding someone you love’ basis. We all have one mate, one soul linked to ours. Once we find them and mark them, they become our lifelong partner.”

“So I’m your wife now, basically,” I retorted.

Darren tilted his head from side to side, considering, before nodding. “In a way, yes.”

Great. “I don’t love you or anything like that.” If anything, I sort of hated him right now… For ‘marking’ me against my will.

“Nor I you,” Darren replied quickly, his eyes flashing. I think my words might have hurt him, but it was hard to tell. “It’s not like I intended to mark you when we kissed.”

My cheeks heated at the reminder of the night at the club. No wonder the kiss had felt so electric, so passionate. “You marked me then?” I whispered.

He nodded. “Like I said, it wasn’t intentional. I didn’t even consider it as a possibility, since, you know… You’re not one of us.”

“Fair enough.” There was another silence before I asked, “So, since I’m your… ‘Luna’... Does that mean that Liam will be punished for what he did? I mean, you’re the ‘Alpha’ around here, right?”

Darren swallowed. “I am. And he will,” he replied coldly. “But you have to understand that he did what he did not out of malice, but fear.”

“Right.” I scoffed. “Like he needs to be afraid of me.”

“It’s true. Werewolves might be powerful, but there are a lot more of you than there are of us. The history is too much to get into right now, but I’ll say this: humans hunted and brutalized my people for a long, long time.”

He looked away and shut his eyes for a moment as if the thought pained him. “We’ve worked hard to keep our true nature hidden. And unfortunately, the only way we’ve been able to accomplish that is to… kill any humans that discover us.”

I felt my lip curl back in a sneer. It was a sad story, but killing people? I couldn’t get behind that.

“Would you have let me die if I wasn’t your mate?”

“No.” Darren looked at me then—really looked at me—and there was nothing but sincerity in his eyes. “I wouldn’t just stand there and let you die.”

I swallowed hard, unsure of exactly what he meant. But rather than asking about that, I blurted out, “What about Lucas’s mom? Is she your mate, too?”

Darren stared at me for a moment as if shocked. I wondered if I had struck a chord, since he’d never mentioned her before. But then he simply answered, “No, she wasn’t.”

Before I could ask anything else, the door swung open. To my chagrin, Liam appeared with a boisterous Lucas at his side, now dressed in little overalls and a striped sweater.

“Mommy!” Lucas giggled, running up to me.

On instinct, I flinched away from him, yanking my hand out of reach as he went to grab it. He stopped in his tracks, his eyes immediately welling up with tears.

Shit, I thought. Liam and Darren were one thing, but I never wanted to hurt Lucas. He was a child. A… pup.

So I put on a smile just for him and crouched, hugging him—even though it sort of felt like I was hugging an alien.

Suddenly, the door swung open again and Doctor Edward entered, brow furrowed as he studied a folder in his hand. This was it; the moment of truth.

“Well, I’ll be,” he said, scratching his head. “Now this… This is something I’ve never seen before.”