Wolf Undaunted. Shannon Curtis

brown, and every now and then there was a fleck of gold. Fascinating. Damn it.

      “I’m as confused as you are,” he answered truthfully.

      She folded her arms, her lips pursing in a tight, tempting little pout. “Who are you?”

      He inclined his head. “Zane Wilder, Alpine Pack Guardian,” he said formally.

      She sneered. “A mutt? How dare you come into my home.”

      He held up a hand. “Trust me, princess, this is the last place, and you are the last woman, I’d ever want to hang with.” He shuddered. Ugh. Vamps. So full of themselves. They carried the stench of death with them. Usually. Vivianne, though, had quite a pleasing scent. And again, he was not going to focus on that tempting, seductive, sassy little fragrance.

      “I find myself...stuck.”

      “Stuck?” Vivianne’s eyebrows rose as she grappled with the word.

      “On you.”

      “On me.”

      “Stuck on you,” he clarified.

      “Stuck on—”

      “This conversation is going to be a long one if you’re just going to repeat everything I say,” he muttered.

      Her brows drew together, and her eyes flashed. “Forgive me, I’m trying to understand how a dog got stuck on me.”

      Zane narrowed his eyes. He was getting tired of her dog and mutt references. “And I’m trying to figure out how I got hitched to a soulless bloodsucker.”

      She lifted her chin. “When?”

      “When what?”

      “When did you get stuck to me?”

      He shrugged, frowning. “I don’t know. I woke up inside some hospital room, and then all hell broke loose.”

      “And?”

      “And what?”

      She rubbed her forehead, as though an ache had started behind her eyes. Good. He hoped he made her head ache. His head pounded from trying to piece together the puzzle, particularly when he only had half the pieces.

      “And what happened after that?”

      He gestured around the room. “This happened. Where you go, I go. I’ve tried to walk away. Hell, I’ve tried to run away, and it’s like a revolving door, I’m running away, the world tilts, and I’m right back where I started.”

      “With me.”

      He nodded. “With you.”

      She crossed her arms, then raised her hand to her face, nibbling on her thumbnail. It was an unconscious gesture, and possibly one of the most vulnerable he’d ever seen her do. She turned, took a couple of steps, hesitated.

      “So...you’ve been with me for...a while.”

      He nodded.

      “Since I woke up?”

      He shrugged. “I guess so.”

      “The hospital room—what can you remember of it?”

      He frowned. His memory was a little fuzzy. He was pretty sure there was a massive hole in it, somewhere. “You were lying in a box, your douche of a brother was there, some cute chick, and a guy in motorcycle leathers.”

      She nodded. “Yeah, that’s pretty much when I came out of a coma.”

      He frowned. “Why were you in a coma? You’re a vamp.” Vampires, like werewolves and other shifters, had the ability to self-heal. He’d never heard of vamps succumbing to a coma.

      She started pacing again. “It wasn’t a normal coma,” she murmured. He rolled his eyes.

      “I gathered that. I don’t normally float around coma patients.”

      She shot him an annoyed glance. “I was put in a coma by a witch because I was attacked—by one of your kind.” She said the last words with bitter animosity.

      Fleetingly, the thought of her being attacked, of being hurt by another, bothered him. But fortunately he was able to tamp that down, squish it into a dark place where nobody would know a werewolf briefly cared about what happened to a bloodsucker.

      “Rafe Woodland,” he said quietly, a fragment of memory surfacing among the murk of his brain.

      Her eyes narrowed. “How did you know?”

      “Your douchebag of a brother brought you to our camp, looking for revenge.”

      “I was attacked on Nightwing land,” she said, frowning. “He had every right.”

      “He had no right,” Zane corrected her harshly. “Rafe had been cast out of Woodland. Whatever he did, he did on his own. Woodland wasn’t to blame.”

      “He practically killed me,” she exclaimed. “He bit me.”

      “And your brother bit me,” Zane snarled. “What should his punishment be?”

      Vivianne’s eyes widened, and he watched as realization crept in. He nodded. “Yes, I’m that mangy mutt, that measly little mongrel who cost you your river access,” he snapped in disgust.

      Her mouth opened, but no words came out as she struggled to process his words. Her doorbell rang downstairs, and she clapped her hand over her mouth. “Uh-oh.”

      She whirled and ran over to scoop up the red dress, stepping into it quickly and dragging it up over her body, slipping the robe off her shoulders as she did so. There was a tantalizing glimpse of golden skin, and then she turned, contorting as she pulled the zipper up and slipped into her shoes at the same time.

      Zane frowned. “What are you doing?”

      “I’m going out,” she muttered, checking her reflection in the mirror, spritzing herself with some fragrance, then plucking up the clutch purse she’d placed on the bed.

      “You’re going out?” he repeated, incredulous.

      “Yes, I’m going out. I’m going to have dinner with a good-looking man, have some conversation that doesn’t involve—” she waved her hand in his general direction “—weird, freaky stuff, and I’m going to have a nice evening that I’m going to enjoy like a normal woman.”

      She hurried over to her bedroom door as the doorbell pealed again from the floor below. She hesitated, then turned back to him.

      “Wait a minute, were you stuck with me all of the time?” Her gaze darted toward her en suite bathroom.

      His lips quirked. “Yep.”

      Her cheeks bloomed with heat, and her mouth parted, then she snapped her lips together. “That wasn’t gentlemanly,” she hissed as she backed out of the room.

      He chuckled. “That’s because I’m no gentleman.”

      * * *

      Vivianne forced her gaze to Mike’s. “So, it sounds like a lot happened when I was...away?” She sat for a moment, digesting the information. Woodland had a new alpha prime, light warriors had been discovered after hundreds of years of folks believing they’d been completely wiped out, and one of the most prominent men in Irondell society, Arthur Armstrong, was now dead.

      “It’s great gossip, isn’t it?” Zane chirped, his hands cupping his chin as he leaned on the table between her and Mike.

      She glared at him. He’d appeared in the car—God, what an awkward trip that had been, with him chattering away in the back seat. She tried to ignore the lycan—a difficult task seeing as he was six foot three, built and ripped, and mildly gorgeous. For a lycan.

      “Who is managing the Armstrong interests?” Arthur Armstrong had been a wily competitor. She’d