Chapter 9: Settling In

When I woke up the next morning, the house was quiet. I couldn't hear Evan moving around. My whole body ached from sleeping in the same position all night. I'd been so tired that falling into bed and falling asleep had been pretty much simultaneous. Suppressing a groan, I rolled over and mentally reviewed everything that happened last night.

Marsh and Tasha were really nice. The rest of the pack wasn't bad. I was just too uncomfortable with all of the speculation to really see it clearly last night. I knew time would help. I just needed to get to know them. Except for John; I wasn't much interested in getting to know him. I couldn't fault him for his interest, but the way he went about expressing it was completely wrong. Intimidation and entrapment were not the way to a woman's heart.

Then again, Evan had been pretty damn possessive. "She is mine and don't ever forget it," is that what he said? Something like that. Did he really mean it or was he just making a claim on me to get the others to back off and leave me alone? More importantly, which answer did I prefer? I wasn't sure. Certainly, he'd expressed interest. I had two scorching kisses that testified to that. The wolf in me was rumbling in approval, she certainly liked Evan well enough. But what about me? Was it all the wolf, or did I have an interest in Evan, too?

He was certainly attractive enough, I thought. He'd worn dark jeans and that dark blue shirt last night to the party. He'd brushed his blonde hair back, but by the end of the night it was the slightly disheveled look I was used to. But nothing compared to my memory of him walking toward me in the moonlight wearing nothing but his underwear. Sexy didn't begin to cover it.

It wasn't just his looks, though. He'd held me gently in his arms, wounded and bleeding, and assured me he would save me. He'd stayed at the hospital with me, provided me a place to live and a pack of people I would eventually call friends. He'd protected me from one of his own and made it clear that no one was allowed to treat the women in his pack that way. No, it wasn't just his looks. It was everything. Evan was the type of man I'd be attracted to even without the wolf.

The house was not just quiet, it was too damn quiet. I rolled out of bed, took a shower, dressed and headed down stairs. Next to the coffee pot was a note.

"Went into town for some supplies, back in a few hours. Call my cell if you need anything, Evan."

He'd jotted his cell phone number and the time he'd left underneath his signature. He'd already been gone over an hour. I rummaged around in the cabinets and brewed a fresh pot of coffee. I was helping myself to some left over fruit salad when Noelle wandered in.

"Hey you, I was hoping you'd be up. Evan called and said he would be a while yet so he asked me to come over and keep you company."

Company or protection, I wondered. Knowing Evan, I decided it was probably both. Not that Noelle could take anyone, she was all of 110 pounds soaking wet. She helped herself to coffee and demanded a recap of what happened on the deck last night. I told her about John, but kept the kiss and the vision about Marsh to myself.

"Noelle, Evan said something funny last night. I'm not entirely sure how to take it. When he had John down on the ground, Evan said 'She's mine.' You don't think he was actually staking some kind of claim on me, do you?"

She fiddled with her coffee cup, circling her finger around the rim as she answered, "I don't know. Normally, I would say he was claiming you as part of his pack and putting you under his protection. But, I saw him kiss you, even if it was rather chaste. It piqued my interest, so I sort of kept an eye on the two of you all night. You weren't together much, but Evan kept his eyes on you all night long. When he saw you and Marsh laughing, he moved in to find out what was going on. I don't know what he meant by claiming you, but I'm not ready to put it down to an Alpha protecting one of his pack just yet. You should talk this over with Evan. He's the only one who can tell you for sure what he meant."

I knew she was right, but I wasn't ready to have that talk yet. It could wait for a bit and maybe time would sort the situation out, one way or another.

"I will, just not right now. I haven't known Evan very long at all, so it feels stupid to ask him, 'Hey, do you like me or were you just doing your Alpha thing last night?'"

Noelle giggled and agreed that it did sound a little grade school when I put it in that context. We wandered out to the great room and curled up in front of the TV. Noelle put some cooking show on and we chatted about various wolves in the pack. Well, Noelle chatted. I listened. Honestly, I liked Noelle, but the only time I'd been alone lately was when I was sleeping or in the bathroom. And neither Evan nor Noelle seemed to consider that a private area. Both of them had just walked right in whenever they wanted. For someone who had been living alone for the better part of the last ten years, it was getting to be a bit much.

"Hey Noelle, would you mind if I just grabbed a book and hung out on the deck? I'm sure Evan will be home soon. I'm fine here on my own, I promise."

She looked uncomfortable as she explained, "If you'd like to go read, that's fine. But I have to stay until Evan gets back. When the Alpha gives an order, it must be obeyed. I'm sorry. I can go into the kitchen or something, but I can't leave until Evan is home."

Well, that was irritating.

"No, please, make yourself comfortable. I think I'll just head upstairs and take a nap. I'm still pretty tired out from yesterday."

It was all I could do not to stomp up the stairs. Noelle had been nothing but nice to me. It wasn't her fault I was beginning to feel like a caged animal. I already felt bad about being rude, stomping would only make it worse.

When I got to my room, I poked around in vain for a book, any book, to read. There wasn't a single one to be found. Not in my room, anyway. How in the hell did someone live without books? I growled in frustration and thought about turning on the television, except, I really didn't like watching TV, even when I wasn't already crawling out of my skin. I started to pace, but realizing that Noelle could probably hear me irritated me even more. I ended up curled up in a corner of my closet, sitting on my hands so I wouldn't put my fist through a wall.

That's where Evan found me.

He stood in the door of my closet. I lifted a lip and snarled at him. Slowly he walked in and crouched in front of me. "Kimber, what's wrong?"

The wolf inside me was growling in fury. I held onto my control by the thinnest of threads as my eyes locked on to Evan's. "My name is Lauren Anne Summers. I like books and computers. I hate watching TV. I don't need a babysitter or to be entertained constantly. I miss my best friend. I miss my fucking horrible job and my quiet, empty apartment and I want to go home."

Evan nodded, "I know you do. I wish you could go home, too. But we both know that's not possible. For better or for worse, your name is now Kimberly Ann Sparks and this is your home."

The truth of his words hit me like a sledgehammer. I was so damn homesick and I knew I could never go back. I felt a tear slip down my face as I closed my eyes against the sympathy in Evan's. I felt him take my hand and squeeze it gently. I would not cry. I would not do it. I couldn't look at him until I knew without a doubt I had the tears locked away. Crying wasn't going to help anything.

"Just give us a chance, Kimber. I promise you this can be a good life, you just have to accept it."

"I won't give up everything I am. It's bad enough I'm in the corner of a closet fighting to stay human. I have nothing of who I was before. I can't give everything up. I'll break, Evan. I can't just forget everything I loved."

"You don't have to, I promise. You can still be you. You just have to do it with a new name and some new friends now. Okay?"

His blue eyes held mine. Silently, I nodded and he helped me off the floor. I thought he would let me go, but instead he pulled me into his arms and just held me. Undone by his comfort, the rest of my anger and frustration slipped away. He dropped a tender kiss on my temple before he released me completely.

"Let's go downstairs. I brought lunch home with me."

"Oh? What kind of lunch?"

"The pizza kind."

"Evan, don't take this the wrong way, but I love you. Pizza is exactly what I need right now. Thank you."

He shot me a grin, "I had a feeling."

Noelle was gone when we went downstairs. After lunch, Evan slid two folders across the table. "This is part of why I was in town. I thought you needed to see this, but I needed to clear it with the relocation agency so you didn't get into trouble for it."

The first folder was my new identification. It had a passport, driver's license, social security card, birth certificate, and a small personal history for Kimberly Ann Sparks. I was officially a person again. There was also a notification that my resettlement money had been deposited in the same bank account as my CanUS salary. Now I had a little extra cash.

The second folder was a different story. Inside that folder were copies of news articles and printouts from my Facebook page, Twitter, and the website communities I had been active in before the accident. There was a copy of my obituary. It felt odd to look at my face from before the attack. It was the only thing I had to remember how I used to look. I put it aside before it could upset me too much.

It was hard to look through it all. The news articles about the sudden and tragic explosion that had killed Lauren Summers were surreal. I was alive and well, reading about my death. The building had burned to the ground and apparently my body had been identified through dental records.

"Evan, what body? How did they 'identify' my body? I'm clearly not in that burned up building."

"Relocation provides a corpse, generally a homeless person who died and nobody claimed. Then they swap that person's dental records in for yours. Justin and I called them that night once we got you out of the building. We knew we needed to have a fire to take care of the vampire's corpse and to get rid of the evidence of your attack."

That sort of made sense. "But what about the vampire's corpse? Didn't they find a skeleton or something along with the one put there to be me?"

"No, when a vampire burns he becomes a pile of ash. There was nothing left for them to find. Relocation dropped the body and picked us up for transport to the hospital. Shortly after we left, the building blew up from the gas explosion. The dental records were swapped before the fire was out. They know what they're doing."

Well, that explained everything. It was weird looking at all the things people had to say about me after my death. My Facebook page was filled with people saying nice things and how much they would miss me. Yet, I hadn't talked to many of them for several years. Somehow, I doubted those people were sincere. Still, my true friends had all said some really wonderful things and it was hard to read them and know I could never respond. Finally, there was a message from Caleb.

"Lauren, I can't believe you're gone. It's impossible for me to believe that my phone's never going to light up with your number again. That I'll never hear your silly giggle or have another rock star guitar battle for championship of the world. I'm not one for public displays, but I have to hope you know how much I love you. You're the best friend I've ever had and the only person I can say really knew me. Since I can't stand the thought of you being gone, I'm just going to convince myself you're in the Bahamas having that drink on the beach. Maybe I'll see you there, someday. Caleb."

My resolution not to cry took some serious effort. Evan had taken the printout from me and looked it over, "Rock star guitar battle for championship of the world?"