“All right, same as with the ones who want to join the pack, Tom. I want the guy watched. Do a background check on him. Report anything suspicious to either Uncle Sheridan or me. With this situation with Lelandi and her sister, we can’t be too cautious. Any other business?”
Jake raised a finger. “Rosie delivered twelve vases of flowers for Lelandi, but she told me secret admirers sent four of them.”
Darien snorted. “Hell, what next? Have the anonymous buyers traced.”
“And then?” Jake asked.
“I’ll talk to them.”
Tom chuckled, but quickly coughed to cover his response when Darien gave him a sharp look.
Trevor hurried into the living room, his face hard. “I thought her parents were supposed to be dead.”
Darien stared at him. “What? Who?”
“Silva said Lelandi got flowers from them.”
Lelandi stared at the card signed: Love, Mom and Dad, typical order called in and signed at the flower shop. “It has to be a sick joke.” Her eyes filled with tears, and she looked up at Silva, but disbelief filled her face. “Bruin’s deputies told me my parents had died in a car accident. He put me under guard, but I escaped shortly afterward. They murdered my parents because Larissa ran away. I kept wanting my parents to move, but they wouldn’t budge. I knew our pack leader would take revenge.”
Silva pulled a chair over to the bed and took a seat. “What if your parents’ deaths were faked? What if this Bruin character wanted you to look for your sister, then he’d know what became of her? Maybe he had you followed? The guy wearing the hooded copper coat, maybe?”
Bruin? Oh hell, she’d let the pack leader’s name slip. “He put me under armed guard. He said he’d have me mated to his brother after he declared… my sister was dead.”
“Her husband? Bruin’s brother?”
Why did she have to mention his name? Great, just great. “What do you know about my sister?” Lelandi asked, before she gave away her whole frigging past.
She had to get off this pain medicine for good. Although she was surprised after Ritka had said that the Green Valley deputy knew who she was, Darien never mentioned it to her. Maybe it was a hoax.
“I’d never tell anyone else what Larissa told me in private. But I thought you should know. She was really worried someone would find her. I assumed it was her red pack or her family. That they wouldn’t approve that she’d taken a gray mate, although she said she was a loner and had no living family.” Silva glanced at the card in Lelandi’s hand. “I never in a million years dreamed she might have been mated and the guy was still alive. Do you think he’s the one who put a contract out on her?”
“But someone was blackmailing her before this. That makes me think it was someone else who knew she was mated, and she didn’t want him to tell Darien.”
“Yeah, that’s a pretty low blow for a pack leader. So,” Silva said, her eyes round, “was the other guy she was mated to high up in the chain?”
Lelandi ignored the question. “He’s abusive, drinks too much. I… I wanted my family to leave—to find my brother. To settle somewhere new. But… they wouldn’t.”
Silva patted her hand. “Ties too strong to the pack?”
Lelandi didn’t say anything. They had no ties to the pack—usurpers. Just a connection to the land. But revealing too much wasn’t a good idea. As if she hadn’t already.
When she didn’t respond, Silva took up the slack. “Darien said he’s returning you to your pack. But I figure the way he kissed you means he’s changed his mind. You don’t want to return to them, do you?”
Lelandi’s face heated. “They killed my parents! I’m not returning. The pack leader will force me to mate his brother. I won’t go back.”
“You can’t run off on your own on some wild lupus garou chase looking for your brother either. What if you never find him? You could be found out, hurt, killed. What about this guy in the copper coat? Is he a family member, or one of the pack?”
Lelandi shook her head.
Silva took a breath, then abruptly changed the subject. “I tried to get Larissa to tell me what was bothering her. I thought maybe it was the pregnancy. Hormonal imbalance kind of thing. ”
Her sister had been pregnant? Lelandi stifled a cry and tears pricked her eyes.
Silva’s eyes widened. “I… I thought you knew. Oh, sweetie, I’m so sorry. I’ll get you a box of tissues.” She hurried into the attached bathroom and opened a cabinet.
Lelandi couldn’t believe her sister had been pregnant when she couldn’t get that way with Crassus. Had she been taking birth control measures behind his back? No wonder Darien was so devastated. Not only had she died, but his offspring had as well. Oh, god, the travesty of it.
Silva returned to the bedroom and put the box of tissues on the bedside table. “Something about Darien and your sister’s relationship was all wrong. Do you believe in soul mates among lupus garous?”
“No.” Lelandi dabbed her eyes with a tissue. No. She didn’t believe in such a thing even if a hunk of a lupus garou had invaded her dreams for the last several months. Alpha pack leaders often decided who could mate. But she’d never heard of their kind finding their own soul mate. Silva studied her so intensely, Lelandi finally opened up as she pulled the covers to her chin. “I’ve had really vivid dreams, and I sure wish the guy was real.”
Silva’s eyes widened. “Omigosh, you’ve been dream mated with… with…” She looked down at the floor, then gave an almost imperceptible smile.
“What?”
Silva’s gaze shifted to Lelandi. “Dream mating. That’s what Julia Wildthorn, the romance writer, calls it. When soul mates can’t locate each other in the real world, if one has the ability he or she can reach out to the other, offer the bond that unites them. If the other accepts, they’re dream mated.”
“I don’t understand how she can make all that stuff up. She says the lupus garous talk like humans in their wolf forms, stand upright even, and worse? Their clothes vanish when they shapeshift into the wolf’s form and reappear on their human form without any effort.”
“She can’t reveal our true nature,” Silva huffed. “Besides, I love how her lupus garous find meaningful, heartfelt relationships. We deserve something like that. Your sister said Darien told her he dreamed of her—that’s why he pursued her. Except she didn’t live up to his expectations in real life. Rumors abound that Darien’s grandfather, father, and a couple of his uncles were dream mated.” Silva took a ragged breath. “What if that’s the reason he went after her? Only she wasn’t the right one. What if you were? What if your sister realized this, too?”
Her heart racing, Lelandi stared at the bedcover, her thoughts in turmoil. What if everything Silva said was true? But she never saw her dream lover’s face. Never heard his voice. Couldn’t smell his scent.
Silva stood and looked out the window. “What if she was so depressed because she didn’t want Darien to learn you were the right woman, and she probably wouldn’t want you to know either? On top of that, she was mated to the beast before she met Darien, and she couldn’t let Darien know about that either? Damn, I could see why she was so depressed.”
Her sister couldn’t have done this to her. How could she? But to get away from Bruin and Crassus, Lelandi could understand why Larissa had left. She deserved to be loved.
Silva turned to Lelandi. “What did he look like? This guy in your dreams?”
“I…” She shook her head. She wasn’t sure.
“Maybe Darien isn’t the guy.” The elusive smile was fixed once again to Silva’s lips. “Another thing is…” She let her breath out. “I think Larissa had some affection for a gray working in the silver mine.”
In disbelief, Lelandi stared at her. Her sister couldn’t have been having an affair with someone else.
Silva dropped into the chair. “What if that had something to do with her depression? She’d found the real guy of her dreams, and she couldn’t have him. Three living male lupus garous at once who pegged her for their own is just not done.”
How could Larissa’s life have gotten so screwed up? Lelandi closed her eyes, fighting tears. “The medicine’s making me sleepy.”
Silva didn’t move for what seemed an eternity, and then she stood. “All right, honey. You get some sleep.” She strode to the door and closed it behind her.
If Larissa had had a lover, who else had known? How could she have done this to Darien?
In the hall, Trevor talked to Silva in a hushed voice.
“Darien can’t believe in dream mating. Damned hogwash if you ask me. That’s why he mated the red?”
“Sounds to me like it,” Silva said. “But I think he got the wrong girl.”
Then everything grew deathly quiet.
Lelandi’s head was spinning out of control. The damned medicine? Or Larissa’s unbelievable sordid tale of the double mates, and a lover to boot. But was Lelandi really Darien’s dream mate? What if she wasn’t and she fed into his delusions that she was? She’d be no better than her sister, and she couldn’t do that to Darien. Not after all he’d been through.
The medicine slipped through her blood, and Lelandi fell into another world, always the forest, near the creek where the water flowed over rounded stone in a never-ending, steady stream, crystal clear, but silent.
“Lelandi,” her dream lover whispered to her while she read his lips. Why couldn’t she see more of him?Speak with him? Know him. She pressed her fingers to his mouth, and he kissed them.
No, no, she wanted to read his lips. “Say something,”she implored, but he took one of her fingers and sucked.
Her skin heated with desire, but she shook her head, pulled her finger free, and tried again. Pressing his fingers to her lips this time, she said her family name,