“I’ve been asking myself that every minute since I saw her. I can only hope you are right, and someone is forcing her somehow.”
He turned to the side, picking me up and shifting me to face him before taking my hands in his. “I have to tell you something. You can’t get mad at me, promise?”
“Are we twelve again? Just tell me,” I said.
“About six months ago, Stella came to my house. She begged me to sleep with her. She had this crazy notion we were mates. I refused, but she persisted. She stripped down to the skimpiest lingerie I’ve ever seen and begged me. She was desperate to find her mate, and she made an excellent case for it being me.”
I pulled my hands from his. “And what case would that be? That she looks good in crotchless panties?”
“No. She was sure the reason we were so close and got along so well was because we were fated.”
I thought that over. “I guess that could make sense. Even though the same goes for you and me, and we aren’t mates.”
“We may be close, but we don’t always get along. You and I argue… a lot.”
“Yeah, okay. Whatever. I’m guessing you caved?”
“I did. Twice. Once as humans and once as wolves. It devastated her when nothing happened either time.”
“Didn’t you say this happened six months ago? Why am I just now finding out about this?”
He looked like a puppy who just got busted peeing on the carpet. He was almost as cute. “Because she begged me not to tell you. I’ve felt like shit for keeping it from you, but I couldn’t bring myself to betray her.”
“I get it. I wouldn’t have told you either.”
“You mean if she had begged you to screw her, and you did? If that ever happens again with any female, please, I beg you, tell me all about it. Everything,” he said with a smirk.
I laughed and punched him in the arm. “You’re a pig.”
“Oink, oink, baby.”
“Wait. I know she’s always wanted to find her mate, and we recently joked about her being a slut trying to find him, but why the sudden desperation?”
“I guess it doesn’t matter if I tell you now.”
“Tell me what?”
“Her dad is sick. It’s why they moved. The only shifter hospital treating his disease in America is in Oregon. Her mother started dropping hints that a grandchild might help him get better. The guilt made Stella sick. She started sleeping with any unmated, of age male in the pack. I think she may have even ventured out to the other packs as well. Each time nothing happened, the more depressed she got.”
What in the holy fuckballs? I stared at him as if he had two heads. My brain could not understand what it had just heard. Stella. Little Stella Johnson had screwed most of the pack. On top of that, she was willingly kidnapping shifters. For a second, I wondered if she was drugging them to find her mate, like a date rape thing, but women were involved. And while I knew sex with women could be mind-blowing, it would not produce offspring or the mate bond.
“How the hell can Doug be sick? He’s a shifter. We don’t get sick. And why would Sheila do that to her?”
“Doug has lupo-leukemia.”
My jaw dropped. Lupo-leukemia is the only disease we can get, and it’s extremely rare. Like rarer than rare. In all the millennia-long shifter history there were only three reported cases. One back before we went into hiding, before it had a name, but the description of the man’s death was the same as the next case which was in the eighteenth century. The most recent case was in 1948.
That was it. Only those three existed in our textbooks. There was a very remote chance a shifter had the disease, and we didn’t hear about, but that was unlikely since we don’t get sick. A sick shifter would be obvious.
And now Doug Johnson had it. “Liam,” I called out.
“Yes,” he said as he stepped inside again.
“Lupo-leukemia. Your lab working on anything for that?”
He looked from me to Isaac and back again. “If this is about Douglas Johnson, my scientists and doctors are working around the clock to help him. He’s receiving the best treatment out there.”
“What in the hell? Does everyone know this shit except me?”