He pulled me to him and kissed my mouth passionately.  He bruised my lips further.  Still, I felt a stirring within me and tentatively responded.  His hands tugged at my clothing.

“Stop.  You can’t mate with her.  Not yet.”

The man kissing me lifted his head with a feral growl.

The leader didn’t back down.  Instead, he partially shifted.  “She’s weak.  She’s died on us twice already.  You need to be in control, not newly Claimed.  Wait.”

My hands, still bound behind my back, prevented me from catching myself when the man I’d bitten abruptly let go.  I fell backward, landing hard on sharp rocks that bite into my thighs and buttock.

Dream and reality blended in that moment.  Rocks still bit into my butt, but they bit through my jeans.  I needed to wake up but couldn’t open my eyes.  The dream still lingered.  I hadn’t died yet.  I always died...except for those dreams with the Taupe Lady.  Why hadn’t I died?

Something settled over me gently.  The physical contact gave me what I needed to pull myself from the dream world.  My eyes popped open.

The bronze-haired, hazel-eyed man from the mall swam into focus.  He hovered over me.  His hands were on my hoodie.  We stared at each other for a heartbeat then he moved, straightening the hoodie over my shoulder.

I scrambled to my feet. My eyes never left his as he slowly stood from where he’d been crouched on the balls of his feet next to me.  How could something so cruel still make my stomach flip in such a toe-tingling way?

We stared at each other for several long moments.  His eyes swept over me with a tender look.  Concern clouded them when I involuntarily shivered.

He lifted the hoodie still held in his fingertips.  “My name is...”

That’s as far as he got before I tried to deliver a swift kick to his balls.  He dodged smoothly, but his easygoing expression changed to one of wary shock.

I didn’t wait for him to recover but turned and scrambled up the embankment to reach the road.  It was pointless.  I knew he was much faster.  Still, I pushed on.  Stones slid under my feet.  He caught me from behind while I was still scrambling over the loose stones and pinned my arms to my side.

“Easy, luv.  Unlike you, I mean no harm,” he spoke softly near my ear, sending tingles along my spine.  His grip, though firm, wasn’t rough.  He turned and walked back under the bridge, carrying me easily.

My heart freaked out, going into a very painful overdrive.

He surprised me by letting me go.  I spun to face him again with my knees bent and weight on the balls of my feet, ready to move.  His expression seemed more concerned than wary.  Probably concerned that someone would hear.  We were fairly close to town, no doubt the reason why he pulled me back under the bridge.

“As I was saying, my name is Luke Taylor.  And you are?”

“Not yours,” I answered automatically.  “Touch me again and I’ll sac tap you so hard you’ll be coughing semen for a week.  And this time I won’t miss.”

I felt a moment of pride at my tough words, but that quickly passed as the details of the life I’d just dreamt continued to filter in.  I’d survived the fight, but at only fourteen, I hadn’t survived long in the hands of my mate.  He’d been rough and brutish but not completely uncaring.  As his leader suggested, my fragility hadn’t withstood him.

I was older in this life and determined not to be as fragile.  I wouldn’t be used that way again.  They’d wanted to control me to influence a decision.  I wasn’t sure what decision yet, but I knew it involved the others like me.  The ones who had briefly shared the womb of the Taupe Lady with me, the ones I sometimes dreamed of.

In response to my eloquent threat, his lips twitched as if he wanted to smile.

That gave me pause.  Something about this was wrong...

The wind rattled through the empty branches while I tried to pinpoint the problem.  I risked looking away to scan the bank and trees behind him.

“What are you looking for?”

It wasn’t until I looked back at him that I realized what I’d looked for—what was wrong.  “Your pack of murdering dogs.”

Surprise flashed in his eyes. “I’m alone.”

I snorted in disbelief.  They were never alone.  Always in a pack.  I stayed tense, waiting for his next move.  I knew better than to try running again.  Who knew how long his humor would last.

He didn’t say anything, just continued to study me.  After a time listening to the dry rattle of barren tree branches and dead weeds around us, he sighed and sat down on the patch of rocks where we’d started.

I flicked the briefest glance at the trees again, puzzled.  “What are you doing?”

“Waiting for you to decide your next move.  Keeping up with you is exhausting.  I thought giving you money would keep you in one place long enough so you could get the sleep you obviously need.”  He pulled his knees up and rested his forearms on them in a relaxed pose.  “So what are your nightmares about?”

The reminder that he’d been in my room had me narrowing my eyes.  “All of the ways I’d rather die than bite the neck of a disgusting werewolf who’d be willing to rape a fourteen year old girl just to have control over her when Judgement comes.”  The lingering memories of my young past life still haunted me, and the words were out of my mouth without thinking.

He flinched as he looked down at the ground. I didn’t know what I meant by it all, but the ring of it sounded so right.  Something in what I said struck a chord in him, too, because with a clenched jaw, he paled.  Satisfaction coursed through me.  About time one of them felt guilty about what they did.  Just as I had that thought, an angry red flush flooded his face.

“Has someone hurt you?”  His softly intense words sounded strained.  The veins on the back of his hand stood out.  This wasn’t a mystery to me.  I’d witnessed this many times in my dreams.  He struggled to contain the beast.

I recalled the word I’d used.  Werewolf.  So laughably impossible to me a few short months ago, I embraced the truth of it...him...and of the nightmare of my life.

“Tell me who,” he demanded.  When he looked up, his eyes were larger in his skull.  The pupils dilated as he struggled to maintain control.

I didn’t bother wondering why he cared.  They were territorial creatures, possessive of their unclaimed women.  Even more so of their mates.

“In this life? No one yet.  But it looks like you’re about to fix that.  In other lives, they’ve already died.”  I thought about my dreams and wondered if that was true.  Was this my first life in this cycle?  I knew I could be born several times in the same cycle, making it possible to meet some of them in more than one life.  I’d dreamt that very scenario.

My words seemed to turn off a switch in him.  His change receded.  “This life?” Confusion laced his voice.

He’s good, I thought.  The rest had just bullied and beat me.  No one had tried acting like they cared.

I narrowed my eyes at him.  “Why are you toying with me?  We both know what you want.”

He shook his head slowly and stood, pulling something from his pocket.  Hand outstretched, he offered me the cell phone I’d tossed into the garbage at the last hotel.  “Press call.  I have a...friend, Gabby.  She sent me to look for you.  Thought you might be like her.”

His words burst a bubble of anger within me.  For a moment, I just struggled to breath.  One of my original sisters?  This was different.  New.  Still, I couldn’t trust him.  They’d talked about the others like me before, but we were never in their control at the same time.  Not for very long, anyway.  We kept dying on them.  The thought made me smile briefly.  It faded into a frown.  I didn’t want to die again.

Looking up at the overcast sky, I decided something felt different this time.  Some balance had been tipped.  I just wished I knew in whose favor.