Shift of Fate: A Wolfguard Protectors Novel Read online

  Adrenaline coursed through my veins. With each breath, I felt Willow getting farther away from me and closer to danger. I should have called for backup. If everything Soren had told Payne were true when he hired us, it was only a matter of time before Willow’s father’s enemies caught up to her. God. The could be watching her right now. I hadn’t sensed anyone tailing us when we left Denver. I made doubly sure before pulling in to the rest stop. But, what if I were wrong?

  Ever since I laid eyes on Willow Rousseau, I felt like my brain and senses had short-circuited. She affected me. She called to my darkest nature in a way I’d never felt before. I had to figure out why. And I had to find a way to convince her I wasn’t her enemy.

  I flew down the highway. No Willow. I accelerated, weaving through traffic. Each car I passed, I looked for Willow. Had she left that rest stop willingly, or had someone gotten to her?

  I sensed no fear in her scent as I trailed her. At least, not primal fear. She had likely left of her own choosing. But why? What in God’s name was she running away from? Payne told me my job was to get her to Soren’s estate in Virginia safely. I assumed the threat came from someone else. But, maybe Jason Soren was more worried Willow would try to run.

  If that were true, this entire assignment was based on a lie. As soon as I knew Willow was safe, I had to talk to Payne again. I needed to know more about what we were doing here. Nothing felt right about this job at the moment.

  I almost missed the turnoff to the train station. Angry drivers blared their horns as I cut through two lanes and took the exit ramp going almost eighty.

  The train station parking lot was filling up with cars. I said a silent thank you we weren’t in a bigger city yet. If this were Union Station, Willow would be that much harder to track. This was just a tiny little station practically in the middle of nowhere.

  I pulled into a spot and barreled out. My nostrils flared. My heart pounded practically out of my chest.

  She was close. Close enough I could feel her pulse thumping almost alongside mine.

  Mine!

  Down, wolf. Not now. I couldn’t afford a single mistake. Not again. I’d already blown it letting my attention be diverted back at the rest stop. I would not make a stupid error like that again.

  Over the PA, the dispatcher called out boarding for the next train to headed west. My breath left me as I sensed a shift in Willow’s mood. She was nervous. Afraid. On the verge of panic.

  I leaped over a turnstile. With every cell in my body, I knew where she was headed. A crowd of passengers was already boarding the westbound train. I didn’t see Willow among them, but I knew she was close.

  I ran down the yard, scanning the windows to the train. She was in there. I was sure of it. One of the station attendants tried to stop me.

  “Sir,” he said. “Can you show me your ticket?”

  “I’m not here to board,” I said, my voice more animal than man. “There’s a woman on that train who may be in danger.”

  The attendant straightened. His eyes flashed. He looked me up and down. I pulled out my ID and showed it to him. There was something about the way he looked at me that told me he was an ally.

  Then, I understood why. I sensed his animal. A jaguar. He glanced at my card and nodded. The Wolfguard Inc. logo meant something to him.

  “Be quick, man,” he said. “I could lose my job.”

  “You won’t,” I said. I thanked him and slipped him a hundred dollar bill. Then, I boarded the train.

  My senses heightened. My vision tunneled. Willow was just a few feet away. One more train car. I could have found my way to her blindfolded. Her scent poured over me and stirred my wolf.

  It wasn’t anger or fear that coiled through me as I got closer to her. It was desire.

  Mine!

  I tried to shake off the feeling. I had to stay focused. I wasn’t here to scare her or hurt her. I was here to keep her safe. I needed her to understand that.

  The door to the next train opened automatically. She was sitting against the window. Her jaw set hard. She locked eyes with me and anger flashed in hers.

  I took a breath. I took a step. I sat in the empty seat beside her.

  “Willow,” I started.

  “How?” she said. She turned to me. Her eyes glistened with tears. It was like a knife in the gut. “How the hell did you find me?”

  I didn’t know what to say. I just knew I didn’t want to lie to her. Not ever. Her trust meant everything to me at that moment. She was terrified.

  “I’m not your enemy,” I said. “I was sent here to keep you safe. I can’t do that if you don’t tell me what’s going on. What are you running from?”

  Her tears fell. She looked out the window again. The conductor called out a warning. We’d be pulling away from the station in a few more minutes.

  “You know someone tried to kidnap you,” I said, keeping my voice low. “You know what your father does for a living.”

  She let out a breath. She had turned back to me, and it caressed my arm like a whisper. It stirred more than my wolf. I had the strongest desire to take this woman in my arms. I knew I would protect her with my life and it was more than just a paycheck.

  “Will you come with me?” I said. “We’ll go somewhere else. For lunch, maybe. I need you to tell me what you’re running from.”

  “You work for my father,” she snapped.

  “No,” I answered. “I told you. My firm works for Jason Soren. He cares a lot about you. Enough to pay my employer to make sure nothing happens to you.”

  The words burned in my mouth. Willow was a client. I couldn’t afford to have anything but professional feelings toward her. And yet, I also knew this was out of my control. Something was happening to me on a cellular level when I was around her. I tried to brush those thoughts aside. If she suspected...if she knew…

  “Let’s just talk,” I said. “That’s all. I don’t care who’s paying me, my job is to protect you. That’s what I’ll do. On my life, I swear it. But, I can’t fully do that if I don’t know what’s wrong. Will you trust me? Give me an hour.”

  She searched my face. I couldn’t read her mind, but I felt strongly that she was about to ask me what I’d do if she said no.

  She didn’t. Her cheeks flushed. Her tears dried. I couldn’t be sure, but I sensed something changing in her just like it had in me as she looked in me.

  “Come on,” I said, rising. I held out my hand to her. “A talk. That’s all I’m asking. After that…”

  “You’ll let me go?” she asked. It gutted me. She had the wrong idea about what I was and at that moment, nothing mattered more to me than her knowing she could trust me.

  “And I’ll listen,” I said. “I swear it on my life.”

  She didn’t know me. A day ago, I didn’t even know her name. Now, I felt my world shifting on its axis as she slowly rose and took my offered hand.

  With that one gesture, she’d given me the greatest gift of all. Her trust. I knew in my heart I would spend the rest of my life earning it.

  Chapter Six

  Willow

  Val was so strong, so sure. His hand warmed mine and as I looked into his pure, blue eyes, something happened inside of me. I could feel my heartbeat slowing, my nerves settling. One touch from him felt like instant Xanax.

  Maybe I was just looking for something solid to latch on to. He was definitely that. As we walked down the aisle toward the exit, I caught every female passenger staring at Val, most of the men too.

  I wanted so hard to trust him. I never felt more alone in the world. There was no one on my side. No one. It was just me.

  Val was something to behold with his towering height and well-defined muscles beneath his crisp, black suit. Something about it didn’t seem right. Almost as if he were too rugged, too wild to wear something so conservative. We stepped out onto the platform. One of the station attendants held the door for us. He gave Val a knowing look that sent heat flashing through me. I wondered if he’d paid the
guy off to let him on the train. Probably. It’s what I would have done.

  “Come on,” Val said. “We don’t have to hurry. My car’s this way. We can just sit and talk for a while.”

  Talk. Now that I’d agreed to go with him, I had no earthly idea what I’d say.

  The SUV was parked out front. I saw my reflection in the gleaming, black paint. I looked...small...scared. I stiffened my back. I hated feeling so vulnerable.

  Val held the passenger side door open for me. I thanked him and climbed in, tossing my backpack to the back seat.

  He got in and started the car, but didn’t take it out of park. He turned to me.

  “So, what’s going on?” he asked.

  I opened my mouth to answer, but realized I had far too many questions of my own.

  “How did you find me?” It all sort of slammed into my brain at once. My cellphone was still sitting on the kitchen counter of my old apartment. Whatever tracking app my father had on it would have done Val no good. And yet, within ten minutes of my getting on that train, there he was. That feeling of panic and unease started to return. I couldn’t breathe. My pulse quickened. I needed air. I wanted to get out.

  “Willow,” he said, his voice thick and deep. He gripped the steering wheel. A tiny vein jumped near his temple. He looked like he was having trouble with his own rush of adrenaline.

  “Willow,” he said again. “I said it once. I’ll say it a thousand times. You don’t have to be afraid of me. I’ll protect you with my life if that’s what it takes.”

  “What if I just want to get away from you? From all of you? You don’t feel like my protector, Val. You feel like my jailer.”

  “I’m not,” he snapped. “I swear to you. I’m not. But you’re scared out of your mind. It’s pouring off of you.”

  He barely got the last sentence out. It was almost as if my heightened state was affecting his. My heart raced. Val took a deep breath.

  “I’m going to need you to calm down,” he said. On some deeper level, I knew he meant it literally. He needed me to calm down. So he could.

  I closed my eyes and exhaled. I ran a hand through my hair. A moment later, I did feel calmer. Val released his grip on the steering wheel and turned to me. “Tell me what you’re really running from,” he said.

  How the hell could I? He told me time and again that he worked for Jason. If that were true, he was probably duty bound to tell him everything I said.

  “This is just us,” Val said, as if he could read my mind. “Whatever you tell me doesn’t leave this car unless it’s a safety risk. Deal?”

  I had to be out of my mind. He was so convincing with those piercing eyes. He stared at me with such intensity, as if I were the only other person in the world.

  “I know what you must think of me,” I said.

  “And I promise you, you don’t.”

  I sighed. “It’s not easy being Danny Rousseau’s kid. If anybody else heard me say that, they’d roll their eyes. I’ve had everything. It’s true. Fancy houses, traveled all around the world. Luxury cars when my friends were driving clunkers. Private schools. No such thing as student loans in my world. I mean, what could I possibly have to bitch about?”

  “Nobody’s life is perfect,” he said. “And I know something about the weight of family expectations.”

  “Right,” I said. “But it comes with a price. I can never know whether someone is real with me. Not ever. I mean a little, at first. Until they know who my father is. Half of them just disengage completely. The other half usually want something from me. But even those people, I can see the fear in their eyes. Like oh, better not cross Willow or she’ll sic her father’s thugs on you. Or they assume I’m there because of some string Daddy pulled. A lot of the time, they’re right. But...I’ve never just been able to relate to someone out of something pure. They’re either afraid of my father...or on his payroll.”

  My throat grew thick. A bit of the color drained from Val’s face. He knew he was no exception, no matter who signed his check.

  “I thought Jason was a way out,” I said. Now that I’d started, the words just tumbled out of me like water from a faucet. I knew in the back of my mind I should stop. I’d said too much. No matter how good Val was at pretending to care, I could never forget why he was here.

  “I’ve known Jason Soren since I was fourteen years old. He was nice to me. And he was the first person I knew who didn’t have to be. His family is even more powerful than mine. I was just some pesky kid who probably annoyed him more than anything else. Then...I wasn’t. He lived in Prague for a while. For years, actually. Just after I turned eighteen, he came back home. We started talking. Eventually, he asked me to marry him and it felt like a fairytale. He knew all the right things to say. I told him everything and he listened. So, I said yes, but only if I could go build a life for myself first.”

  “So you went to college? Why Denver?”

  “They have an arts program and a community that appealed to me. I first picked up a camera when I was like seven years old. I can...it lets me see the world through other people’s eyes, or at least a different version than my own. I’ve been happy in Denver. Happier than…”

  “Will you show me?” he asked. “I mean...I assume you keep a camera in that backpack of yours.”

  My heart fluttered with heat again. I swear I saw it go through him too. I couldn’t explain it, much less understand it, but I knew in my core my moods seemed to impact his. It was empathy. Or he was the most brilliant actor on the planet.

  I reached over the seat and grabbed my backpack. I pulled out the little Nikon I used on the fly. I turned it on and handed it to Val, flipping open the viewer.

  I showed him how to scroll through the images. He went silent as he looked.

  “They’re unfinished,” I said. “It’s just what I’ve been working on.”

  I had the idea for a series last month. I’d been taking pictures of the same couple in the park. They were man and wife. The woman was in the advanced stages of Parkinson’s. She needed a wheelchair most days. But, she loved watching the little kids play on the jungle gym while her husband sat beside her. There was joy in her face, but always worry in his. They held hands and touched in a million tiny little ways.

  “These are amazing, Willow.”

  I got self-conscious. Val sensed it and snapped the camera closed. Smiling, he handed it back to me.

  “Have you shown any of these?”

  “Not those,” I said. “Like I said, they aren’t finished yet. But, I did have a gallery showing a while back. The owner thinks I have real promise.”

  “I’m not an expert, but I’d say they’re right.”

  It made me like him a little more. And it felt like one more way he managed to dial in to me. I found it unsettling and strangely familiar all at once.

  “You don’t want to marry Jason Soren,” he said. His tone seemed authoritative. Was it a question or a command? Whatever it was, something hard lit behind his eyes when he said it.

  “I don’t…” I had to be careful. I’d not given voice to my doubts to anyone yet. I knew what it meant. If I backed out on Jason, it could spell disaster for our families and embarrassment for my father. He was already on shaky ground with his associates and my uncle.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe. I did. I was sure of it. Jason’s always been a friend to me. I’ve never felt pressured. We’ve taken time to get to know each other, but it’s been mostly through old-fashioned letter writing and texts. I haven’t actually seen him in almost two years.”

  “Then it sounds like you have a lot to talk about,” Val said. There was no pleasure in his voice.

  “I just need a minute to breathe, you know? So I can figure out if this is really what I want.”

  “Reasonable,” Val said. “Except, I don’t understand the running. You’re obviously a smart girl, and talented. And you know your father has enemies that would use you to hurt him. Why put yourself in that position? It seems...well
...childish. Naive, at least. And I’m not trying to make you angry. I just get the impression people are in the habit of not telling you the whole truth.”

  He took my breath away. He was right. Nobody had ever been so blunt with me before. They were too afraid of getting on my bad side because of who my father was. I found it weirdly refreshing and infuriating.

  “I’m not a child.”

  “I said you’re acting like one. Those are two different things. You’ve got me chasing all over the state for you. You’ve made Jason Soren feel like he has to have someone like me to protect you. You’ve got to take responsibilities for your own choices, Willow.”

  “How dare you?” I said, anger rising. “You don’t even know me.”

  “I know you were willing to take off and leave me behind to clean up your mess. You don’t know me very well yet either. But, I’ve been straight with you. If you want some time to think or to make some different choices for yourself, there are better ways to do that besides scaring the hell out of your father and fiancé and sending me running after you. That is...unless you just like the attention.”

  “Go to hell,” I said. I grabbed my backpack and grabbed the door handle. I pulled it frantically.

  “You’re a liar,” I said, my voice rising to hysterics. “You’re my jailer, Val. Nothing but a hired gun.”

  Val stayed calm, stoic. Only the tiniest smirk lifted the corner of his mouth. He raised his index finger and lowered it in a wide arc. He pressed the button to release the door locks.

  “Well,” he said. “You can run. I’m not being paid to kidnap you. That’s your choice. Or, you could let me drive you to the Bay like I’m supposed to. And you can talk to Jason Soren face to face. Tell him how you feel. Like a grownup. If he really loves and cares about you, he’ll understand. Even if he’s not happy, he’ll understand. If he doesn’t...well...I guess that’s valuable information to have.”

  “That’s what I’m afraid of. He could hate me for this.”