Overcome (4 page)

Several minutes later, could have been an hour the way she felt, but surely the station wasn’t that far away, Stern Face spoke again. “You okay back there?”

Anna grunted in response, afraid to open her mouth.

“If it’s like you say it is, then they’ll let you go as soon as it’s all straightened out.”

Please, just shut up. Don’t try and be a nice person now.

“You don’t look so good.”

I don’t feel so good, moron.
She sucked in a breath and held it, praying to any god who would listen not to let her throw up.

“Did you
take
something?” His accusatory tone made it sound like he was questioning her use of crack when she really only wanted one of her pills.

“Migraine.” She grunted and laid her head back on the headrest. A peculiar smell in the back did not mix well with the nausea.

The car slid to a stop and the door jerked open beside her. “Migraine. Right. I think you took something. Inside.”

When the hell, and
how
the hell, would she have been able to take something with her hands shackled? He grabbed her arm and wrestled her out into the blaring sunlight.

Anna stumbled in front of his insistent push to the front door of the police station. She’d never seen the inside of one before, not that she’d see one now with half her vision being precluded by a dancing string of lights. She needed a pill and a dark room. Fast.

“Did you get my purse?” she mumbled.

“Yeah, lady, I got your purse.” He shoved her into a seat, and she promptly folded in half and rested her head on her knees, nearly tipping onto the floor. The station was loud and bright, and all she wanted to do was sleep. Her stomach said that wasn’t going to happen.

It revolted. All over the floor to her right and the shiny shoes of Mr. Stern Face.

“Fuck.” The shoes jerked backward. “Get one of the medics in here to look at this chick, would ya, Frank? She just puked all over me.”

One of her finest moments. The best one would be when she laid down on the scuffed tile to take a nap because the floor was quickly coming up to get a closer look at her face.

She moaned and curled into a ball on the cold surface, praying for release. Or relief. Or the gun of Mr. Stern Face to end her torment.

•●•

“What in the shit did you do our mate, Jackson?”

Marc flipped a lock of hair off the cheek of their sleeping mate and smiled when she turned her face into his hand. A bruise had bloomed above her left eye, courtesy of Anna’s up close and personal meeting with the floor. They’d be lucky if she didn’t have a concussion on top of the migraine Jackson hadn’t believed she had. Behind him Colton questioned Daniel Jackson, part of their pack and the officer who had pulled over and falsely arrested—or brought in for questioning as he claimed—Anna for stealing her own car. Colton was looking into who had made the claim in the first place, though both of them felt it had to have been her ex, now known as Peter Belky.

“Nothing, Alpha. I swear. She started looking sick in the car and said something about a migraine. I thought maybe she was on something. As soon as I got her into the station, she puked all over me and then just kind of fell over. I’m sorry, Alphas. I called you as soon as it happened, since she said she’d been talking to you.”

Marc snorted, and with one more caress of his thumb over the knot on her forehead, stood and turned to Jackson. “You deserved to get barfed on, dumbshit. Didn’t your mama teach you better than to treat females with such disrespect?”

“Yes, sir.” Jackson’s cheeks were ruddy with embarrassment. He fidgeted with his hat, ready to bolt at the word go. “I didn’t know she was your mate, Alphas.”

“No one does. We just found her today.” Colton stepped closer to the couch.

“And since we haven’t even spoken to her yet, you’ll do well to keep your mouth closed until further notice. Do we understand each other, Jackson?” Marc crossed his arms over his chest and begged Jackson to say anything other than yes.

“Absolutely.”

“Good. Now get out of here. Oh, and where’s her car?”

Jackson stopped his quick retreat from the lieutenant’s office where they’d taken Anna to lay on the couch when she’d fallen off the chair, and swallowed. “Probably already at the pound. I called it in right after I stopped her for speeding and learned the car had been reported.”

“Fine. We’ll take care of it.” William Shine ran the pound, and he was one of theirs. They’d have no problem retrieving Anna’s SUV. In fact he watched Colton pull his phone from his pocket and dial before Jackson had completely exited.

Now their mate was sacked out on the couch, dead to the world after one of their paramedics had given her a shot of something for the pain. Must have been one hell of a headache to make her throw up and pass out on the floor. Having never suffered from such a burden, he couldn’t comprehend.

“How often do you think this happens to her?” Colton kneeled next to the couch after his quick phone call and stared at Anna. Marc could tell his brother wanted very much to touch her.

“Hell if I know. Not too much, I hope to God.”

“Zach went through her purse and found a bottle of prescription pills.” Colton gave in to temptation and drew a finger slowly down the skin of Anna’s arm. “That means it happens enough she has to carry it with her. Damn thing was just filled two weeks ago, and he said there were two missing. He also found an epi-pen, which means she has some kind of severe allergy to something. We’ll have to find out what and be hyper-aware until we can mate her.”

“Damn. On both counts. Thank God for shifter DNA. It’s always made human mates healthier and live longer in the past, so it should help with this also.”

“I sure as shit hope so. I won’t be able to stand watching her be in pain.”

Anna moaned and curled into her hands beneath one cheek. A second later she grimaced and opened one eye. It blinked several times at them, as if trying to decide if she really saw two men standing in front of her or had double vision.

“Am I in prison?”

Colton threw his head back and laughed while Marc joined him again in his kneeling position.

Anna reared backward. “I really don’t see anything funny with going to jail.” Her eyebrows lowered and swiped a hand across her forehead. “Where am I, how long have I been here, and why do I feel like I’ve been hit by a truck? And why is there cotton on my tongue?” Pushing her tongue in and out, trying to moisten it, she made a move to sit up, and both Colton and Marc took an arm to help her.

“At the Grundy County police station, a couple hours, and probably because you conked your head on the floor. There’s a pretty good goose egg there now. As for the cotton, that’s most likely due to whatever the medic gave you for pain. Apparently you were pretty vocal after you fell off your chair.”

She blinked again when Marc finished. “Who are you?”

“Marc Newberry.” He offered his hand when he would have much rather pulled her into his arms and kissed her senseless. If he didn’t think she’d take immediate offense, he would have.

Her gaze lasered into him for a moment and then shifted to Colton. “And you, Detective Albatross, what are
you
doing here?”

Colton growled, which had Anna backing up again and sucking in a breath. “A: my name is Montross. Colton
Montross
. B: this is my station, the one I’m assigned to, and C: I’m here because Officer Jackson called me when you mentioned my name to him.”

Anna frowned. “I did not… Hmm…” Her top teeth came out to bite into her lower lip. “Okay, so maybe I did say something to the effect that you stole my house.”

“I didn’t steal anything.” Colton’s wolf was close to coming out; Marc could tell by the way the other alpha’s eyes started to glow.

“Says you.” Anna’s voice rose as did she. At least she tried, but her knees buckled before she could stand all the way, and she flopped back on the couch.

“Anna.” Marc determined now was the best time to step in to avoid either Colton losing control to his wolf or one of them deciding to bite into her delectable little neck and marking her for all to see. Neither seemed a good idea at this particular moment in time.

“We had no idea there were two people who owned the house when we bought it. If we had, we most certainly would have had all parties sign the paperwork or not taken it.” He stood, towering over her.

She crossed her arms, and honest to God, pouted. And his cock hardened. Damn. She was going to have them wrapped around her little fingers in no time.

“By the way, I teach at Bravo Elementary too, so…welcome.”

Anna scrunched her nose. “If I don’t find someplace to live, I won’t be teaching there at all.” Her imploring gaze lifted to search both of their faces. “I was supposed to start over in that house. He just gave me his key on Friday, said, ‘here, have the house. We don’t need it.’ And I was going to bleach away all traces of Candy Apple and live there for good, not just on the weekends, and I came to plant a tree Peter always said I couldn’t put there, and then I find you there, living in
my
house with your barbecue pit on my deck, and my apartment’s lease is up in less than a week, and I just got this job, and now I have no place to live and no tree in the yard of my perfect house with my perfect windows looking out over the perfect lake.”

She gave a girly squeal of a sob, fell sideways onto the arm of the couch, and Marc shared an identical what-the-hell-are-we-supposed-to-do-with-that look with Colton, because never in all his thirty-three years had he ever had to deal with this kind of problem.

And the small, pale woman with blonde hair spilling over her reddened, puffy, crying face with fathomless blue eyes made ever brighter by the tears, was all theirs.

To have and to hold until death do them part in eighty or ninety years, God willing.

What the hell else could he do?

He bent over, took her face in his palms, and kissed her.

Anna nearly swallowed her tongue. She would have had it not been tangled up with
his.
A stranger.

But he’s a teacher at the school. He can’t be that bad, can he? Who would trust a bad man with small children? Not to mention the rugged good looks. Dirty-blond hair, blue eyes, cheeks touched by the sun, and a nose that had obviously been broken at least once before.

He tasted minty and smelled sooo good. His tongue slid deeper, a tad roughly against hers as if he were trying to take in as much of her as he could. She leaned into him, tilting her head to the side, giving him better access and so she could taste him better. It wasn’t until her own moan broke the otherwise silence that she paused and came to her senses.

She jerked back, and mortified, stared at him. He grinned cockily back at her.

“What was your name again?” She remembered Marc something or other, but she also wanted to make a point. She didn’t know him from Adam. When his face fell, it was all she could do not to laugh.

“Marc.” His growled response came as he rose, giving her space once again.

Not that either of them were really giving her space. And what was up with that? Talk about crowding someone’s personal zone. They both stood at her feet, arms crossed over their chests, waiting for her. Albatross was the opposite of Marc’s pale, sandy looks. He had darker, more chocolate-colored hair that stuck up in spikes around his head and hazel eyes. He also had a scar above his right brow, something she didn’t remember seeing back at the house, not that she’d been paying much attention to anything other than Peter having lied to her, the utter bastard.

What they were waiting for her to do, she had no clue.

“Am I still under arrest?” If they weren’t going to move, that was their problem. She wouldn’t let them cow her.

This time the other one spoke. Albatross. “You never were under arrest.”

“The circles on my wrists beg to differ.
And
he read me my rights.”

“He said that you made him.” Marc’s lips curved at the corners.

He gasped and she suddenly found her right wrist shackled in his big paw. Tender, yet shackled all the same. Come to think of it…paw might be an accurate description. Was Detective Albatross a wolf?