Author's Note: Sorry for the delay in updates everyone. Life got a little crazy especially in the last week. If you're not already, be sure to join my facebook group so you can keep up to date on what's going on with my stories.

Chpt. 6 CPOV:

"Christian."

My name on her lips is all it takes for me to lose the little hold I had left on my wolf. I can no longer fight the urge to feel her lips against mine and to taste her. I slowly lower my head, my eyes darting between her lips and her beautiful blue eyes, watching for any sign that she's not okay with what's about to happen. When her uninjured hand lands on my chest I freeze for a moment, waiting for her to push me away, but she doesn't. My wolf silently growls when he senses her acceptance; with patience I didn't know I even had I slowly bring my lips to hers.

My arm around her back tightens, gently bringing her even closer to me. When her hand tightens around the damp shirt on my chest, I bring my lips down to meet hers. Instead of closing my eyes like she does, I leave them open, needing to see her.

Take her. Claim her. She's yours.

My wolf is growling in need, or maybe desperation, and it's all I can do to keep him at bay. I don't understand his fascination with Ana. Don't get me wrong, she's beautiful and kind, but why is he so drawn to her? When I feel her tongue at my lips, I forget about all reasons and open to her. She lets out the softest moan when her tongue finds mine. My fingers move to her wet hair as I gently urge her to head to the side so I can deepen the kiss. I groan when she gives me exactly what I want.

Her grip on my shirt tightens as she arches closer to me and I want nothing more than to strip the towel away from her. When I rushed into the bathroom a few minutes ago after hearing her cry out in pain, it didn't even dawn on me that she might not be covered. My only concern was reaching her as quickly as possible and making sure she wasn't hurt again. But when I saw her, naked in the water, the entire reason I rushed in here left my mind as I took in her beautiful body. Her small but perk breasts were sticking out just above the water, almost enticing me. It wasn't until she moved that I realized I was staring; I quickly turned around before remembering why I rushed in here in the first place.

And now it's taking everything in me to stop my wolf from pulling the towel open and feeling her body now that he knows what lies beneath it. Ana slowly reaches up to my face, cupping it for a moment before sliding it further back. I groan when her fingers tangle in my hair, the need to have her touch on me stronger than it's ever been. I've never wanted, no needed, someone to touch me the way I need her right now.

My hand slowly slides down her, until I reach the soft bare skin of her legs. Her breath hitches at my touch, but I know it's not out of fear or concern. My dick hardens underneath her which I'm sure she can feel. Just knowing that the only thing separating us right now is the small wet towel that is barely wrapped around her is an incredible fucking turn on. But when my fingers glide over a deep scratch on her leg, it's nearly the equivalent of having a bucket of ice thrown on my crotch. As much as I fucking want to take her into my bed, pull the towel from her and kiss every inch of her stunning body, I can't forget that she's seriously injured.

"Ana," I whisper against her lips as I slowly pull back.

Fuck when her eyes open I nearly lose it all over again. She looks up at me, her eyes filled with desire and want and it fucking kills me. If she wasn't hurt right now I don't think I'd be able to stop my wolf from taking her into the bedroom. The again, if she wasn't hurt she wouldn't be here sitting on my lap right now either.

"Sorry," she blushes as she quickly apologizes.

"You have nothing to be sorry about," I can't help but lean down and quickly kiss her one more time. "Let's get you to the bed so you can get dressed."

She nods but doesn't say anything more. Keeping her close to my chest, I step out of the tub but instead of placing her on the step like I said I would, I grab the towel and carry her into the bedroom. I laid out several towels on my bed when she was in the tub, but I could care less if she gets it wet. Part of me doesn't want to put her down, but at the same time I know that if I don't that things will likely pick up right where they left off in the bathroom which is not what Ana needs right now. So reluctantly I place her on the towels on my bed, handing her the dry towel to dry off with.

"Thank you."

"Anytime, just yell when you're done changing. I'll be right outside the door."

Before I close the bedroom door, I make the mistake of turning back to check on her. Seeing her in my bed, nearly naked, does things to my wolf that I can't explain. She's certainly not the first woman that he's seen in my bed, yet he's never reacted like this to any of them. When I close the door, he's pushing to the surface, threatening to come out. Reasoning with him is impossible when he's like this. What the fuck does he expect is going to happen if I were to shift right now? He would scare the shit out of Ana. She's barely wrapping her head around the fact that I can shift; I don't thinks she's ready to see me as a wolf again.

"Christian?"

Her soft voice forces me to take control and push my wolf back down yet again. When I open the bedroom door, I find Ana sitting on the edge of my bed thankfully dressed this time. Though it doesn't stop the image of her sleeping in my bed next to me from appearing.

She belongs there, she belongs in our bed.

"Fuck."

"Is something wrong?" Great and now I've worried Ana.

"No, sorry," I mumble.

"What is it then?"

"Inner argument," I explain as simply as I can.

"With…"

"Yeah, he and I don't always agree."

"You can talk to him?"

"Yes, but he doesn't always listen."

"That's… I just can't imagine."

"I know it probably seems bizarre to you-"

"I don't know if bizarre is the right word. It's different… I can't imagine talking to someone in my head, though I suppose it's like when I talk to myself."

"I suppose it's probably like that," not that I know what that's like because if I talk to myself I'm talking to my wolf as well. "But I doubt you have someone arguing back at you when they disagree with what you're thinking."

"Very true," she giggles and I swear her smile lights up the entire room. "But maybe that's not a bad thing. Maybe he talks you out of making stupid decisions."

Her smile fades with her words, the light in her eyes quickly disappearing and I'm left with the Ana that I've seen the most since I met her in the woods. The one that is guarded, on edge and anything but carefree.

"How would you like to go out this evening?" the words come out of my mouth before I have a chance to question.

"What? I can't… he has people looking for me. They'll see me and tell him where I am-"

"Calm down, I just meant out but still on the pack's land," I assure her. "Taylor and Gail are having a few people over for a campfire and grill tonight. You could come with me, if you want I mean."

I wasn't going to go tonight and I certainly wasn't going to invite Ana, but after seeing her smile and laugh, I'd do anything to see her like that again. Sitting around here all day can't be good for her. Even though she's supposed to be resting so she gets better, I'm guessing it's giving her time to think about what happened.

"I… I don't know. You're sure it would be safe? They won't mind me tagging along?"

"They won't mind and you'll be just as safe there as you are here. Taylor only lives a short distance from here, our yards actually connect just beyond the woods in the back. I'd drive us over of course since you chair can't exactly go through the woods."

"And everyone that will be there… they're all… I mean they…"

"Everyone there will be part of the pack."

"Oh."

I know this conversation has to be weird for her, but what she doesn't know is it's just as odd for me. I've never brought someone into the pack that wasn't a shifter. Hell, I can't remember anyone ever bringing a human into the pack for any length of time. Every so often someone will get lost and somehow wonder down our long private road, but the security team always stops them and redirects them. I've never had to explain us to someone.

"Okay."

"You'll come?"

"If you're sure they won't mind."

"They won't, Gail always makes more than enough food. I swear she thinks the entire pack will show up."

"What if they ask questions? What do we tell them?"

"Obviously Taylor already knows about you, so I'm sure Gail knows as well. Elliot might be there with his wife Kate. I don't know if my dad told him about you, so they would be the only ones who wouldn't know. But, even if others are there you need to know that our pack… we protect everyone who's in it."

"But I'm not –"

"You are. You're staying here, so you're part of the pack."

"But I'm not… one of you."

"You're not, but you're here. You can trust everyone in the pack; they will protect you because you're here."

"Just like that?"

"Yeah, just like that."

She shakes her head as if she doesn't believe me.

"What?"

"Trust like that… it's so hard to believe. How do they trust me? I mean I wouldn't but how do they know I won't… "

"Because if my father had any doubts about you, you wouldn't be here. The pack trusts our leader to protect us and to know what who would and wouldn't be a threat to us."

"But your dad doesn't know me. I mean, he saw me for only those few minutes."

"He knows, he can tell."

"Trust like that doesn't exist in my world," she shakes her head.

"Don't get me wrong, trust like that doesn't extend beyond our pack. We're all very leery of humans; we keep to ourselves, to protect ourselves and the pack. We may work in your world, but that doesn't mean trust your world."

"But you trust me."

"Yes."

"Why?"

"I don't know. Maybe for the same reason that you're finding yourself trusting me."

I know it doesn't make any sense, but somehow I know that I can trust Ana. I know that when she leaves here she won't tell anyone what she saw when she stayed with us. I've never felt that I could trust any human the way I trust Ana. Even our staff at the law office where my dad, Elliot and I work, that have been with us for years, have no idea about what we are. But the moment I saw Ana, the moment I felt her against me, I knew that she was different.

I don't know how much Ana trusts me, but I feel like part of her must have known that she could trust me or else she would have insisted on leaving. She may not have trusted me when I was a wolf, not that I could blame her since she's not a shifter. But I hope, now at least when I'm a human she knows that she can trust me. She wouldn't be staying here if she couldn't right?

"So you'll come?"

"Yeah, it might be nice to… "

"Did you leave a lot of friends… when you left?"

"No," she laughs sadly. "He slowly cut off all contact from my friends. Within three months of our marriage I had stopped talking to all of them."

"He wouldn't let you talk to your friends?"

"No, well he never really said don't talk to them but he made it impossible. He would screen my calls, my text messages and my emails. He told me it was for my own good, that he was just trying to keep me safe. He said that because of his work I was at risk, so he had his team making sure I was safe. He gave me a new phone, but only his people could have the number."

"What an ass."

"He had this way of making you believe that he was doing it because he loved you."

"What does he do for a living?"

"He works… in the casino industry."

"How did you meet him?"

"You know that saying what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas?"

"Yeah, usually it's because people can drunk and do stupid things."

"Well that pretty much sums it up," she shakes her head. "I went to Vegas with a friend for her bachelorette party. She met some guy who was loaded and offered to fly us all out to Vegas on his private jet."

"Nice."

"Yeah it was. I hadn't been to Vegas before so I jumped at the invitation. We went for a long weekend and had a blast. On the last night we went to see a show, her fiancé had gotten us amazing seats for it with backstage passes and everything. Backstage we were treated to complimentary drinks and snacks before we met the cast. From there we kind of club hopped and somewhere along the way we met Tony and a few of his friends. He was the perfect gentleman, bringing us drinks and food, making sure anyone that we didn't want around stayed away, that type of thing."

"So you stayed in touch after you left that weekend? He convinced you to move to Vegas to be with him?"

"I wish," she huffs sarcastically. "Much of that night is still a blur, thanks to the amount of alcohol I consumed. We had been drinking all weekend, but that night we all hit it hard because it was our last night in Vegas."

"What did he do?" I growl at the idea of where she's going.

"I don't know that he necessarily did anything, like I said much of the night is still a blur. But I do know I woke up in his bed the next morning… with a wedding ring on my finger."

"He married you?"

"I-"

"Fuck I didn't mean it like that," I quickly interrupt. "I meant that he married you when you were drunk, so drunk that you couldn't remember what happened the next morning. Though I guess if he was that drunk too-"

"He wasn't," she shakes her head. "I mean, he had a few drinks through the night but he wasn't drunk. I remember joking with him that he was barley drinking; he made an excuse saying it was because he wanted to make sure we all got back to our hotel safely."

"He took advantage of you!" I growl.

"He did."

"Why not get the marriage annulled the next morning? If one party was drunk, they can't consent to marriage. You could have gotten an annulment."

"He refused," she sighs and starts ringing her hands. I sit on the bed next to her even though my wolf is getting more and more antsy hearing how this bastard treated her.

"Why?"

"He said he was a devout catholic," she laughs. "Which given what I learned later about him, makes it very hard to believe. But he said that he didn't believe in annulments and thought that we were brought together for a reason. He convinced me to give the marriage a chance rather than give up on it without trying."

"You stayed in Vegas."

"I did. Rather than flying home with my girlfriends, I stayed in Vegas. They were all thrilled for me, and to be honest part of me was as well. I always wanted a family, for as long as I could remember, that's what I wanted. My therapists would always say that I wanted what I never had growing up," she shrugs.

I can't imagine growing up without a family like she did, it's just not heard of among shifters. If something happens to a child's parents, the rest of the pack steps in. Taylor's father died when he was a toddler and his mother was killed when he was teenager. My parents took him in and raised him right along with their own children. It was never an option for him to be raised outside of the pack.

"He arranged for someone to pack up my things and have them shipped to his house. I didn't have much," she continues.

"How long were you married to him? Before you left I mean… "

"Almost six months."

"Thank God you left when you did."

"I should have left sooner, I shouldn't have let it get to this point."

"You left when you could."

"I guess."

"It's all behind you."

"For now."

"He's not going to find you Ana."

"Not while I'm here, but at some point Christian I'm going to be better and I won't have to stay here any longer. I can't see him giving up after only a couple of weeks of not being able to find me, I just need to hope he doesn't think that I would head this far east."

"He's not going to find you," I growl. "I won't let him."

"You won't be there Christian. I'll figure something out, maybe change my appearance before I leave or something. He can't look for me all over the country, but if I disguise myself-"

"You don't need to leave, you can stay here."

"I can't stay here Christian."

"Why not?"