Nemesis - Book 3 of the Hunted series.

Chapter 5 - Arriving in Rio

A few hours sleep, interrupted by the breakfast, made for a very tired me. I ate and tried to read the documents Elena had sent me, ignoring the bump-bump of the plane as it bounced around, or the small shape of it, or the fact that I couldn't run. Or walk. Things the wolf side of me wished I could do right now to work off this growing anxiety. Reading seemed to help and Nick came to sit inside the capsule with me, the roomy legroom making it easy for him to sit under my legs, reading his own 'Lonely planet guide to Brazil'. Any plans of telling him off this morning faded. Having that scent, that heartbeat, that touch, it eased my anxiety a little more. Even Clayton seemed less strung out than the night before, even if he still kept addressing me rather than Nick.

Savannah just seemed amused at Nick appearing out of the blue. She offered a USB so I could copy the documents onto her laptop and sit in Nick's seat so we could read them and comment softly on what we'd found.

I read what Elena had found, recognising the Chupacabra one, feeling my long abandoned inner geek stirred up. Maybe this was a delayed reaction but... there were werewolves! Vampires! Witches! Sorcerers! For the first time since I'd been bitten I felt a kind of excitement at this news. When the alpha had taken me, I'd been the kind of girl who believed in UFOs and loved to discuss this stuff, the kind of crazy artist person who decided to do hypnotherapy to help people explore past lives. Being bitten and captured, assaulted, and treated like an animal had somewhat made me more practical and a little bit more violent... but now suddenly it seemed to be interesting again. Like some part of me had woken up and come out of hiding The part of me that believed in things, that had hope, wonder at things and that was almost native...

I didn't want to loose that again. Sure, I'd grown up, life had forced that, but loosing that wonder of the world... he'd tried to break me. Tried to tear apart what I was and rebuild me into some kind of pet for himself. I couldn't loose that wonder again now. Couldn't abandon it or pretend it wasn't aprt of me.

I glanced down at Nick and grinned a little. "Nick?"

"Mm?" He glanced up, pressing a kiss to my legs.

"Want to know something about me that I didn't want to tell you when I met you?"

He nodded, curious, sliding closer.

"I believe in aliens."

The look on his face was priceless. He shook his head, slid a hand under my pants bottom as if he was checking to see if I was feverish, then shook his head again. "The little green kind or the little grey kind?"

"All kinds."

"Since when?" He was blinking at me, maybe not sure if I had gone mad or not.

"I was four. Saw something odd then while we were camping."

That got his attention. As long as we'd been together, as long as he'd helped me build a new life, we'd never spoken about my past. Nick knew a few more things than others, true, but it was mostly general stuff. My family's ages and why my nephew was older than me. What I'd studied. He knew that I'd had no boyfriends before him, something he'd failed to notice apparently when we'd had sex the first time, but I still had no memory of that. Other than that he'd never probed and I never offered. Focusing on the future was always easier for us than the past.

Now, whether he believed in what I saw or not, I'd just spoken of my past. It was another minor breakthrough for me- being able to speak of the time before the bite, time when my parents were alive, to connect my past with right now.

We went quiet as the flight attendant went past, Nick's arm snaking around my leg as he went back to his book, as if he was pushing all his questions down for later.