“I was…they were—” I began on a stammer, wanting to believe they were just bad guys out to do bad things and I’d gotten in their sights, but knowing in my gut it was something different.

Very different.

Freaky different.

“Hunting you,” he finished for me.

How’d he know that?

“They were just—” I tried again but cut myself off this time when he leaned slightly toward me.

“Hunting you,” he bit out.

“That’s what it felt like,” I said quietly.

“’Cause that’s what it was,” he replied, straightening.

“Why?”

He lifted his shoulders in a shrug. “No fuckin’ clue.”

“You…you”—I scooted back several inches on the bed—“just killed three men and two dogs.”

He shook his head. “Not dogs. Wolves.”

What?

“Wolves?” I asked, my voice pitched high. “What are wolves doing in a city?”

“Hunting you,” he replied, losing patience. I heard it in his tone, saw it in his face, even in the lines of his body, and actually felt it in the room. “Now shower.”

“You killed them,” I reiterated.

“I did,” he agreed nonchalantly, like he did that crap every day.

And he could.

He probably did.

Yes, neon, blinking, huge letters In Trouble.

“Why did you do that?” I pushed. “How did you do that? There was only one of you and five of them.”

“Jesus, you need to shower,” he clipped.

“I’m not going to shower!” I cried. The terrifying insanity of the situation finally crashing down on me, I lost it—justifiably, to my way of thinking. “You just killed three men and two wolves! You’re covered in blood. I’m covered in blood and in a crazy basement room under a Dumpster where I do…not…want…to be!”

“Would you rather be dead?” he returned.

“No,” I snapped, then went on sarcastically, “but, you know, phoning the police rather than ripping five beings apart might have been a better option.”

“Yeah, good idea,” he retorted, matching my sarcasm. “I call the cops, they come in, and then those boys in blue are all dead because those things, they were not gonna stop until they took you out. They’d destroy anything that got in the way of them doin’ that. You want that on your conscience? Because I sure as fuck don’t.”

“Cops have guns,” I pointed out.

“And those things can take a bullet to the heart and survive it.”

Was he insane?

“That’s crazy,” I scoffed.

Suddenly, his face was an inch from mine.

But he didn’t move.

Or I didn’t see him move.

Even so, there he was.

Right there.

I sucked in a breath.

He spoke.