Outcast (Supernaturals Book 2) (18 page)

On the fourth day, Dave called to say that Sam would be at the house around noon. Whatever news she had convinced Daniel to open his pack to us if we felt we needed safety.

I told Leigh that Dave and Danielle would be coming for lunch that day with Sam, who might be able to help us. I didn’t know how to explain to her who Sam was, so I said that she was an investigator working with the cops to figure out what was going on. I also told her that another acquaintance had offered us protection if we needed it.

She questioned the word protection, and for a brief second was scared we had gotten caught up in a gang or mafia-type thing, but I assured her that wasn’t the case. Every day it got harder and harder to keep things from her. All the little white lies and half-truths were getting to me. I only kept the secret because her parents begged me to. They were just getting to know their daughter, and they didn’t want to lose her when she found out the truth.

Danielle and Dave had informed Sam that Leigh didn’t know about the supernatural world, and she had cussed a blue streak but agreed to keep the secret. When the three showed up, Leigh was in the upstairs bathroom. She hadn’t felt well all morning, and we both figured it was nerves.

I ushered the trio into the dining room when they arrived and out of earshot of the hallway. Sam eyed the stairway that led to our bedroom with a furrowed brow.

“Is something wrong?” I asked the woman.

“Have you told her yet? About what you are, I mean?” Sam asked.

“No. Her parents don’t want me to. I’m not sure how much longer I can hold off though. She knows I’m…we’re hiding something from her. I think the only reason she is trying to go with the flow is because so much has happened already, she isn’t in the mood for more change.”

“You should tell her and soon. A great deal of changes are coming her way.”

“Can you see the future?” I asked.

“No. I can see the present, and…” She turned to look at me, shook her head, and said, “That isn’t important right now. Let me tell you what I know before she comes down.”

“Danielle, are you guys here?” Leigh called from the top of the stairs.

“Yeah,” Danielle called back and the three of us walked into the hall.

“I’m so sorry,” Leigh said. “I don’t feel well. I have a headache and my stomach feels unsettled.”

I started up the stairs to tend to her, but she put up her hand. “No, you need to talk to Sam. You said we need her help. I just wanted to apologize for not coming down. I don’t want to be rude, but I think I need to go back to bed.”

“Okay, sweetie, I’ll tell you everything later when you get up,” I said.

“Thank you. It was nice meeting you, Sam,” she said, turning to look at the woman.

“You too.”

We went back into the dining room to talk. Sam told us that a witch had been harassing us in Washington. Sam didn’t know who the witch was working for or with at the moment, but she had searched the area around both our apartments and jobs and found magical residue at all four places. Based on what she could find in the home the witch had stayed in while in Washington, the witch was staying with two other people, a male and a female.

She was seventy-five percent positive the male was Jacob, but considering how badly burned he was, she couldn’t be sure. She confirmed that Leigh and I were mated. Our souls were linked the same way Dimitri and Abby’s were, but since the couple was so secretive about their relationship and with Dimitri’s bloodline being magical, she wasn’t sure how the mating would affect Leigh.

Sam extended Daniel’s invitation for us to come to the pack if we ever needed assistance. She said our meeting Dimitri and Abby was dependent on what she told the pack. I had a feeling she would tell them good things about us.

Chapter 20 ~ The Supernatural

~~~Leigh~~~

I napped all day the day Sam came. I felt horrible for doing it, but I had awoken with the first headache I can remember having in a long time, and it was so bad that I could barely open my eyes. The headache was probably stress induced, and that made it even more annoying.

Ryan was a bit vague on his conversation with Sam when I asked him about it the next morning. He seemed to stutter and stammer around things as if he was trying to come up with ways of giving me as much truth as possible without giving me too much. He was trying to save me from worry, I was sure, but he was pissing me off.

Something else was going on besides my stalker, but I didn’t know what. He had this odd way about him that I noticed while we were in Washington but that seemed more prevalent once we were home. His nose and ears twitched like an animal’s does when he smells or hears something. I always thought my senses were sensitive, but his are extraordinary. He’s strong, too. Stronger than he looks by a lot. He totes me around as if I weigh nothing. He moves the furniture as if it were doll furniture. And sometimes, I swear I see his skin ripple. One time I’m sure I saw his hand transform into a paw.

I haven’t confronted him about it. I know he will think I’m going insane or blame what I saw on my mind, saying I’m seeing things due to stress which is most likely the problem—I mean, only a crazy person would be able to see someone’s hands shift into paws…right? At the same time, growing up, I noticed my family do some of these things as well. Not the body shifting part, obviously, or I would have checked myself into an asylum years ago. My family has always been a little off. They’re secretive, way too attuned to emotions, sounds, smells, overly paranoid that a specific person was paying them too much attention. My gut told me there was something important going on with all of the people from Pine Hollow that I needed to know, but I wasn’t brave enough to ask.

I watched my family and Ryan like a hawk for the next month. To my annoyance, I could never seem to catch them doing anything that they couldn’t explain or anything that I couldn’t think of a logical reason for its occurrence. Thankfully, in that time things appeared to settle down. My stalkers hadn’t followed me, or if they had, they thought messing with me was no longer a good idea. We were nowhere near close to figuring out who was behind it all, but Sam was sure she was on the right track. The way that girl looked at me when she came around made me uncomfortable. Her eyes kept telling me she wanted to tell me something, but she almost never talked directly to me. She did bring me some wonderful herbal teas that helped with my headaches and stomachaches, as I seemed to have them all the time.

Ryan and I did well, for the most part, staying cooped up in the house together nearly all day every day for weeks. I felt bad that my parents were paying for everything, but they promised they were keeping a tab for us. I was sure they weren’t, but we would pay them back some day. To occupy myself, I started writing down Ryan’s and my story. I thought a lot about Mrs. Weston while we were staying there. Her desire to tell the stories of the two men she had loved so deeply made me want to tell our story. I thought it might make a good romance novel with our non-stop sexcapades adding just enough spice to have the readers fanning themselves. Ryan worked on odd things for Dad when they had work he could do from home.

The only time I got any fresh air was when I took out the trash or did something in the yard Mom thought needed doing. The highlight of the yard work was the beautiful gray and white wolf with the most mesmerizing sky blue eyes that joined me nearly every time I was out there. At first he was hesitant, but it didn’t take him long to approach me. Normal people, I told Ryan later that first night I saw the wolf, would be afraid of such an animal, but I knew the moment I set eyes on him that he wouldn’t hurt me. Ryan didn’t seem worried about him either and told me that the creatures can sense when someone is afraid of them or mean them harm. He figured the wolf knew I was a good person and that he probably sensed I needed protecting which is why he stayed so close to me.

I hoped that was the case and started spending more and more time outdoors as we neared the end of our second month in the house. The longer we stayed confined, the more anxious I felt, no matter how safe I knew I was with Ryan in the house and the wolf patrolling the tree line surrounding the back half of my parents’ property. Sam was acting more and more cautious around me, and some days I thought Ryan was literally going to burst if he didn’t get out of the confines of the house soon. My family was on edge every time they came over. To the relief of everyone, despite how it happened, something transpired that broke the tension before anyone lost it.

The night I found out the truth about everything, I had carried out a bag of trash, noticed the bin was full, and decided to wheel it out to the road. My dad usually did it for us because he didn’t want us crossing the gate and the edge of our property. I didn’t know why that was a big deal. I figured that if I was that far from the house going one more foot to the curb wouldn’t matter. I was wrong.

I pulled the bin to the curb and was about to close the gate when a kitten darted into our yard. Forgetting about the gate, I followed the cat—because that is what you do when a stray kitten comes into your yard.

“So you’re the human that has Sophia’s panties in a bunch,” a female voice said from behind me, startling me.

The cat had stopped running, and it was about to let me pick it up. I instantly forgot about it and spun around to see who had suddenly appeared in my yard. The platinum blonde woman in tight jeans and a white halter who had just spoken was closing the gate behind her. I opened my mouth to speak, to tell her she wasn’t allowed on my property, to ask where she had come from since I hadn’t heard a car and I know no one had been on the other side of the gate when I wheeled out the bin, but someone behind me had clamped a hand over my mouth.

“You didn’t have to mention me. Damn it, Shawna, now she knows I’m linked to her troubles,” Sophia said over my right shoulder. I tried to scream, tried to wiggle out of the woman’s grasp, but for a petite thing, she was supernaturally strong.

“What does it matter? You aren’t expecting her to live through this, are you?” Shawna said, sounding annoyed.

“No, but…”

“Then don’t worry about it. Now, do you want to rough her up a bit first, or do you want me to go ahead and drink her?” Shawna asked, taking a step toward me.

“Drink her and hurry up about it. Ryan will come looking for her any minute now. I don’t want him to know I had anything to do with this, so he won’t refuse to marry me once he has forgotten all about this stupid human,” Sophia said, shaking me like a rag doll.

I tried to scream, but no sound escaped my lips. I could struggle though, so I did that with vigor. I didn’t believe in vampires, couldn’t believe in them, but the way the woman was looking at me made me fear that she believed she was a vampire and that she fully intended to bite me. My struggles and silent pleas did me no good.

“Fine,” Shawna said and moved in even closer to me. “You are a luscious little thing. You will taste divine, that’s for sure. The pregnant ones always do.” She ran her hand down my cheek to my neck over my pulse point.

My eyes popped open at her words. I knew I hadn’t heard what she said. And if I was, she couldn’t know, I didn’t think, but… I wasn’t… I couldn’t… I started to really struggle then.

“Stop moving, or I’ll pop your neck,” Sophia said to me. “What do you mean she’s pregnant?” she asked Shawna.

“She’s knocked up. About a month, maybe a little more, I would say. Does that change anything?” Shawna asked as she moved the hair back from my neck with one hand and placed her other on my lower stomach.

“N… No…” Sophia stammered as if the idea hadn’t occurred to her and that she might actually regret having me killed. “She obviously didn’t know she was pregnant. And if she didn’t know, then Ryan doesn’t. He won’t be grieving the child, so that shouldn’t hinder my plans.”

“Great. Now let’s see how sweet you taste,” Shawna said, licking her bottom lip.

Sophia pulled my head to the side, and in a flash, Shawna sank her teeth into my throat. The pain was so horrible that I passed out screaming for God to save the possible child I was carrying and me. The two could have been lying about the baby to scare me even more than I already was, but I had a sinking feeling that they were telling the truth.

When I came to, I was lying on the ground facing the gate. Sam was there, and she was wrestling Sophia to the ground. Another man was there. I didn’t recognize him. He was barking orders at a pack of wolves that had gathered around the gate.

I blinked, and in the second it took me to do that, a woman appeared in front of me. She leaned down, pushed the hair back from my face, and smiled at me. Behind her, a set of wings blocked the sight of the baying wolves.

“What the…” I said or tried to say.

“Shh. You’re going to be all right.” She put her hand over my eyes, and I fell asleep.

The next time I woke, I was lying on the sofa. The house was full of people, and all of them were talking, arguing. I opened my heavy eyes in time to see the white and gray wolf with bright blue eyes rush into the room looking fierce. His lips were curled back from his teeth, and he was growling menacingly. I jerked into a sitting position and pushed myself into the back of the sofa in fear that he was coming after me, and he was. Before he reached me, though, his body lengthened, stretched, stood up, and turned into a naked man…my naked man.

“Ryan,” I screamed and nearly passed out again. In a flash, he was next to me on the sofa. He swept me into his arms and told me everything was all right. My scream had silenced everyone in the room.

After a moment of Ryan petting me and telling me to calm down, I did, then started bombarding him with questions. “What the hell is going on here? Were you just a wolf? Why are you naked?”

“Hey, man, let me take care of that for you,” a male said from behind the sofa. I looked toward the voice to see a man I had never seen before. The man placed his hand on Ryan’s bare shoulder and in a blink, Ryan wore a pair of grey sweats and a black t-shirt.

“Thanks, Devan. I appreciate that,” Ryan said, nodding toward the man.

“Ryan?” I said again. My head was spinning, and if someone didn’t start explaining things soon, I was going to lose my mind.

“I’ve got you baby, you’re fine.” He pulled me into his lap a little more firmly and kissed my temple.

“No, I’m not. What happened to me? Did I hit my head? If I did, I think I did some serious damage or I’m going crazy. I’m seeing things that can’t be possible—wolves, wings, and vampire fangs. I think someone drugged me.”

“You aren’t going crazy and no one drugged you. Everything you saw was real. I’m a shapeshifter. In fact, most of the people in this room are shapeshifters. Sam is a witch, and Serena is an Angel,” he said, referring to the woman I had seen lean over me while I lay on the ground outside bleeding from a vampire bite. “Everyone else are shapeshifters. Shawna, the woman who bit you, is a vampire, which I’m sure you’ve figured out. She got away before we could take her into custody.”

I looked around to see that my parents, Danielle, Dave, and a few other people I didn’t recognize were all looking at me. I shook my head wanting to deny it, but I had seen Ryan change from a wolf to a human. I had seen Shawna’s teeth before she bit into my neck. And the only thing that had been behind me when Shawna had come upon me was a cat, not Sophia. My gaze settled on Sophia who someone had tied to one of the kitchen tables, looking defeated yet extremely pissed off.

“You,” I snapped and jerked out of Ryan’s lap and lunged for the woman. Sophia flinched, and Ryan caught me around the waist. “You bitch,” I screamed. “You’re behind this. You wanted that woman to kill me. Have you been the one behind everything that has been happening? Innocent people could have been hurt. I could have been hurt. I could have died tonight, and my…my…”

I broke down in Ryan’s arms. I turned to face him to tell him, but I was crying too hard.

“It’s okay, baby. You’re fine. You’re going to be all right,” he said, pulling me to him, so that I could cry into his neck.

“No it isn’t, not until she pays,” I said in a low voice. “That Shawna woman said that I am pregnant. I don’t know if it is true, but if it is, she would have killed our child tonight. She has to pay.”

“What?” Ryan shouted, pulling me away from him so that he could look at my face. “What did you say?”

“I think I’m pregnant. I don’t know for sure. That’s just what the vampire woman said. She said humans taste better when they’re pregnant. Ryan, I swear I didn’t know. I still don’t know for sure. I…”

Ryan looked at my face then down to my stomach. His nose flared, his ears twitched as if he were trying to sense something. Gradually an angry look spread across his face.

Before he could say anything, Sam spoke up. “She’s pregnant. About eight weeks as far as I can tell.”

“How…” I started to ask.

“I’ve known since that first day I arrived. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you, but you had just conceived. I wasn’t sure if it was something you guys wanted or were trying for, and with all that was going on, I didn’t want to add any more stress to you. You’re human, so there was a possibility you wouldn’t carry for long. I wanted to wait until I was sure the pregnancy would stick.”