His head tilted as he heard the roar of an engine. Several engines. Big vehicles. SUVs. Coming fast toward their location. His gaze shifted to the human on the floor. Then back to Jane. “I’m the man who is going to keep you alive.”

Her laughter was sharp and disbelieving. “You’re the only threat I see here!”

“I hear them coming for you.” There wasn’t a lot of time to waste. But he’d try to get her to leave willingly with him. If that didn’t work…

She will still leave with me.

“The enemies coming didn’t follow me. I didn’t lead them to you.” He wanted her to understand that. “And no one else followed you when you left that bar. I made sure of that.”

She licked her lower lip. A nervous gesture.

One that made him ache. It has been too long since I’ve been with her.

A growl rose in his throat. “So if they didn’t follow me…or you…someone else must have told them where you were.” The someone who was now trying to crawl his way toward the door.

He wasn’t escaping.

Alerac leapt over and grabbed the human. Alerac lifted him up and shoved the man against the wall. “She called you, didn’t she?” Ah, yes, now he recognized the fellow. Dr. Heath Myers. Alerac had seen a grainy photo of the doctor before. Alerac’s human informant had briefed Alerac about the man.

The man who’d found a lost woman walking on the edge of a swamp. A woman with no memory. No past. A woman who had a thirst for blood and who weakened in sunlight.

Not a lost woman, but a lost vampire.

“Jane told you I was at the bar, that I knew what she was,” Alerac said.

The doctor didn’t speak. He didn’t need to. Alerac realized exactly what had happened.

Rage building, Alerac charged, “You realized you had to act fast, or you were about to lose your payday.”

“Stop it!” Jane grabbed Alerac’s arm and tried to yank him away from the doctor. Not happening. Even on his weakest day, he was far stronger than she could imagine. “You don’t know what you’re talking about! Heath is here to help me!”

No, he wasn’t.

“Two minutes,” Alerac told her. He kept his hold on the squirming doctor. “That’s how long you have before the others get here.”

She stared up at him with those big, blue, f**k-me eyes. “O-others?”

So many enemies. All eager to use her. “Come with me,” he told her, “and I’ll make sure you live.”

She shook her head.

If that was the way she wanted to play it.

“I don’t even know you, Alerac O’Neill!” She yanked harder on his arm. “But I know Heath. I trust him.”

She shouldn’t.

“He saved my life! Helped me to—to live in a world I don’t know.”

Then Alerac felt it. The hard, fast slice of a blade in his chest. A silver blade. There was no mistaking that familiar burn.

His gaze shot to the doctor. The man wasn’t squirming any longer. He was smiling. “I know how to kill your kind,” Heath whispered.

Silver. Right to the heart.

Normally, that was an effective method for killing a werewolf.

He backed away from the doctor.

Jane got a look at his chest and the knife protruding from it. She screamed.

Normally. Alerac’s knees gave way. He sank to the floor. His fingers curled around the knife’s handle.

Heath grabbed Jane’s hand. “Let’s go!”

If Jane left, she’d be dead.

But she wasn’t running. She was staring at Alerac with horror filling her eyes.

“Jane, come on!” Heath jerked her toward the door.

Wrong move.

The guy had probably just bruised her.

Alerac slowly pulled the knife out of his chest as the smoke drifted from the wound. “You don’t know anything about my kind,” he said to the doctor. The knife hit the floor. He didn’t need that weapon. Razor sharp claws burst from his fingertips. “But you will, human. I promise, you will.”

Heath dragged Jane through the broken door. She’d caught sight of Alerac’s claws. And, judging by the fear flying across her face, she hadn’t been prepared to see them.

The woman looked as if she’d never seen a werewolf’s claws before.

Fuckin’ Lorcan. He’d done this to her. Taken away her past. Destroyed her memories.

“Run, Jane, hurry!” Heath’s shout.

Alerac followed them to the doorway. The sound of approaching engines could be heard clearly now. Those growls were too close. “Go with him,” Alerac called, “and he’ll turn on you.”

Jane’s breath panted out, but she pulled away from Heath. Whirled back to face Alerac.

“Trust me.” He wanted her to come to him. To take that step. Willingly.

But Jane shook her head. “I don’t know you.”

Then she jumped into her truck. Heath was already inside, sitting next to the passenger door. Jane floored the vehicle. It lurched forward.

Heath glanced back. Flipped him the middle finger.

A low whistle came from the Alerac’s right. “I guess we get to kill that human, huh?” Liam. Alerac had known that the wolf waited just outside the building. Liam hadn’t attacked because Alerac had told him to stand down.

But now…that human…

“He’s a dead man.” Alerac lifted his hand to his chest. His heart hurt, but it would heal.

With his shift.

The shift that was already pulsing through him.

Jane wasn’t getting away, and he wouldn’t fight the men who thought to take her in human form.

No, for their crime, they’d face his beast.

And they’d all die.

***

“Turn left,” Heath’s words snapped out, and Jane automatically yanked the wheel to the left. The truck heaved, then jerked into the narrow gap between two buildings.

Her white-knuckled grip on that steering wheel never eased as Jane spared a fast glance for Heath. “Did you see his hands? And why was he burning when you hit him with the bat?”

“Because it was silver. And because he’s a freaking werewolf.”

A werewolf. “What?” She slammed on the brakes. The pick-up shuddered to a stop.

“Don’t stop! Keep driving!” Heath glanced over his shoulder. “He’s going to come after us. I heard that once a werewolf gets your scent, he doesn’t lose it. He’ll track us—now shove down that damn gas pedal!”