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She watched the fire as though it held the answers to every question she had ever asked.
Behind her, the Christmas tree twinkled with a million lights, the gaily wrapped presents beneath it gleaming with brilliant colors.
He'd never experienced Christmas. He'd been out of the labs for ten years, but it had been ten years struggling to aid the survival of the breed communities. The feline compound of Sanctuary as well as the Colorado-based wolf breed compound, Haven.
Christmas had been just another day for him, until now. Until he saw all the careful planning and the joy that would have gone into it for Haley.
Decorations filled the kitchen and living room as well as the outside of the house. From the groceries that were delivered that morning, he knew she planned to bake. He knew she was praying the danger would all be over before her family arrived on the twenty-third. He knew there were more presents in her bedroom to be wrapped. A pile of them. And he knew she was fighting the same needs, the same hungers he was fighting.
He stood just inside the living room, having just finished a call from Jonas. They were moving in on the person responsible for the leak in Haley's identity. The information they were tracking through their own servers as well as spyware slipped into Brackenmore's and Engalls's computers was turning up some interesting information.
Information that might end this sooner than any of them imagined.
There was a reason why Uriel had been so erratic in the past years. A reason why Brackenmore and Engalls had found the information about mating heat and ultimately the aging decrease. Mating heat always slowed aging in mates. Because Uriel was definitely a breed, and obviously in mating heat. That damned phenomenon was enough to make any breed slightly off center, but for a hired killer, it could be more dangerous than to most.
"They've had a break in the investigation." He kept his voice low, kept a careful distance between them. "Jonas is certain he'll have the identity of the person behind this within days."
She tensed. The fiery scent of her arousal seemed to intensify as he spoke to her.
As she turned, her hair fell over her shoulder, the flames gleaming over it, turning it to fire as well. The sight of it was nearly mesmerizing. Dazzling.
"Within days," she said softly. "That's pretty fast."
Jonas was pushing. He was breaking mandates and laws and working silently to identify Uriel, the hired assassin who had attempted to kill her. Not that he would get caught, even if the spy-ware was eventually detected.
"Jonas made you a promise to protect you, Haley. He'll keep it."
She lowered her head, staring down at her fingers as she twined them together.
"And when it's over?" She lifted her head and stared back at him somberly. "What then?"
"Sanctuary and its backers rebuild the library, restock it, and you get your life back," he told her.
"The way it was?"
He inhaled heavily, staring back at her, uncertain how to ease the pain he could sense inside her.
"That's up to you," he finally told her.
The memory of her touching him seared him then—a flash of heat hotter than the flames as the glands beneath his tongue made it feel thick, unruly. The hormone was growing more potent, torturing him. The arousal was building inside him, and he knew he had only a short amount of time before he was forced to walk away from her or risk destroying her trust in him.
Trust was such a fragile commodity, especially for a woman. He'd known of matings that had worked when that choice was removed. Love had grown, and it had thrived. But he had sworn he would never take that choice from his mate. That he would never take that choice from Haley. But time was running out for him.
The choice had been taken from him a year before, when he first saw that smile. When he first scented her, first felt the glands swelling beneath his tongue and realized what was going on. And he hadn't left. He had stayed. If he had left, he might have had a choice.
"My choice," she whispered before shaking her head and l
owering it again. "You don't make things easy do you, Noble."
"Was I supposed to make it easy?" he asked her, feeling the growing tension rising inside him. "Did you want me to take the choice from you, Haley? Would you have hated me for it?"
Haley stared back at him, having no-answers. All she knew was the need that didn't go away, the knowledge it was never going to go away. She had somehow always sensed that. That Noble would be the one man she would never be able to forget, never be able to get over if she fell in love with him.
And that had been what had held her back.
"I wouldn't have hated you," she finally whispered. "But it's too late for that, anyway. I do know. And knowing changes things."
"It didn't change anything last night," he bit out. "You loved touching me, Haley. Tasting me. I saw it in your face."
