Gemma
Gemma took a deep breath. Hers was a long and complicated story. “I am a pure white wolf shifter. I am the only one that has been born in my pack in more than a century. When I was born, and the elders discovered I was a pure white, they decreed I had to be sacrificed to the moon goddess on or before my twenty-fifth birthday. The sacrifice would happen with them cutting my heart out while I was still alive.”
She looked at Theo’s face and saw she had his full attention. He didn’t say anything. He just waited for her to continue.
“My parents didn’t believe in the old ways. So, they decided to sneak away with me in the middle of the night. Unfortunately, some of the elders had anticipated this, and they waited by the door of our house. Mom ran with me while Dad fought them to hold them back and give us a head start. They killed him,” Gemma said, gulping back the hard knot that had formed in the back of her throat.
“Mom and I stayed on the run for a long time. Every few months, we would go to some different place – a big city – so we could try to blend in with everyone else. Mom’s best friend, Aliyah, a mundane human, helped us. If it wasn’t for her, I don’t know what would have happened to us,” Gemma said.
Theo’s eyes were glued to hers as he processed her story.
“The wolf pack has a policy of not hurting mundane humans unless they are directly involved with Mom and me. This means that Aliyah has put herself in a lot of danger. Anyway, when I was ten, we were hiding out in a huge apartment complex in Dallas, Texas. Mom must have sensed something bad was going to happen because she gave me this necklace and a photo and told me to only come here if I absolutely had no other choice,” she said, fingering the jade necklace humming faintly.
“Some of the pack who had been hunting me my entire life had found where we were hiding. I escaped while Mom fought them. She was killed. I was ten,” Gemma stated flatly, trying not to become emotional at the horrible memory of seeing her mother’s broken body lying on the floor, yelling at Gemma to run.
“You’ve been on your own since you were ten?” Theo asked.
Gemma nodded. “With Aliyah’s help. She would buy bus tickets for me and rent apartments in her name until I was old enough to do it on my own. She would always find a way to get money to me, so I could buy what I needed.”
“Wow,” Theo said under his breath.
Gemma wasn’t sure if that was a wow of admiration or something else.
“I’d been in Rhodes, Spain, for quite some time. I have identifications and passports with different identities, so I could try to hide from them. I was there for almost a year and thought that maybe I could stay hidden until after my birthday. But then, I saw some of them following me. I came to Las Vegas, hoping I could blend in. I was asleep in my hotel room when five of them busted in and tried to take me. I fought them off and barely escaped,” she said.
“Wait, you want me to believe you fought off five grown male wolf shifters by yourself?” Theo asked incredulously.
“Sir,” she said with force, “when you have been hunted as prey your entire life, you learn how to fight. I’m damn good at it.”
Theo nodded as though her explanation made sense.
“I was hiding in a public bathroom when the necklace heated. I knew it was time to use the address my mother gave me,” Gemma explained.
“Did any of the wolves follow you here?” he asked.
“No,” she said simply. She decided not to tell him about the bus driver who helped her get to his place.
Theo looked at her for a moment, and Gemma could swear she could almost see the gears turning in his brain.
“You can stay here for now. You have a sticky problem because it involves your entire pack. I need to think about your situation and how I can help you,” Theo said. “Come with me. I have a guest room you can stay in while I try to come up with a solution,” Theo said.
They walked up a marvelously carved set of stairs that looked as though an ancient wood smith had taken years to make. He took her into a huge room decorated in green, Gemma’s favorite color. The bed looked big enough that an entire family of six could sleep in it. There was a bathroom, also decorated in emerald, attached to the room.
A balcony door led to an outside terrace where she could view the entire mountain.
Theo saw her gaze and said, “It is an amazing view, but since you are here hiding, I would strongly suggest you not go onto the balcony.”
Gemma nodded her agreement. She didn’t want to put Theo into any danger, although she hadn’t quite made up her mind about how she felt about him.
