Claimed (The Lair of the Wolven #1) by J.R. Ward

“Sheriff?” she said.

“I gave you a chance,” Eastwind said to Daniel. “To do what was right on your own. But you didn’t.”

“What are you talking about?” Lydia glanced over her shoulder. “What’s going on here?”

Daniel closed his eyes.

“He’s not who you think he is.” Eastwind took a folder out from behind his hat. “Daniel Joseph is an alias. He never worked at any of the businesses he provided you as references—”

“Hold on.” She put her hands up and shook her head. “I don’t know what you’re—”

“Candy gave me his résumé yesterday morning. She wasn’t sure she had done the background check right, and she was worried because he was … getting close to you. When I went deeper than she did? Nothing exists.”

As the folder was pushed forward, she took it with a shaking hand. Then she looked back into the kitchen. “Daniel?”

Eastwind spoke up. “I’m not going to tell you how to run your life, Ms. Susi, but whatever this man has said about himself, whatever he’s done for you … you can’t trust it. I can’t even find his true identity. He’s literally a ghost.”

There was a tense silence. And then Daniel gave her the only answer he could.

He bent down and picked up his saddlebags. Slipping them onto his shoulder, he thought about the night he’d spent beside her, staring up at the ceiling, looking for a way out that included her not hating him.

There hadn’t been one.

“I don’t understand. Daniel … what is he saying.”

Except she was catching on. Even without looking at whatever the sheriff had put in that folder, she was coming to understand the truth—her heart was just having trouble getting on board with what her brain was evolving to.

“I called,” she said insistently, looking back and forth between him and Eastwind. “I spoke to the apartment building and they told me they loved the work you did—”

“Who exactly did you talk to?” the sheriff asked. “Because I also called the numbers and every one of them gave him a glowing report. But then I checked the websites and the numbers listed were different. And when I sent a friend of mine to some of the addresses? Sure, they were apartment buildings and schools—just with other names. And none of them had ever had a Daniel Joseph working for them.”

Lydia stared down at the folder. And then her eyes returned. “Daniel?”

With a grim stride, he walked forward, and he met her stare the whole time. Because he deserved every bit of the disbelief and dawning anger that was coming over her face.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“So he’s right?” She opened the folder, but didn’t look at the report. “You lied to me?”

Daniel narrowed his eyes at the sheriff. “I was leaving this morning.”

“You’re still here,” the man said. “So you’ll excuse me for not believing—”

“Why.” As Lydia spoke up, she stepped into Daniel’s path, blocking his way out. “Why did you come to the Project in the first place.”

“I never intended to hurt you—”

“Why are you really here? It clearly wasn’t about a job for a drifter.”

“I protected you. Back at that deer stand. With the locator—”

“That is not an answer to my question.” She put up her hand. “Actually, don’t bother. I’m not going to believe anything you say and you are not going to tell me the truth, anyway. Are you.”

“Lydia—”

“Get out of my house.” She moved aside, so that she stood next to the sheriff. “And I will say this in front of law enforcement, I don’t want to ever see you again. If you come anywhere near me, I will protect myself in any way I have to and to hell with the legal consequences.”

“You won’t see me again,” he told her.

“Good.”

Daniel left out of the front door. And after he walked over to his Harley, he off-shoulder’d his saddlebags and made quick work of strapping them on the back of the bike.

This was not how he’d pictured going out.

Then again, he did feel like he’d been shot in the chest—and he’d always seen that kind of injury in his future.

It had just been literally, of course. Not because he was leaving a woman.





LYDIA REMAINED STANDING as long as Daniel was on the property. But the instant his bike disappeared down her driveway, she weaved on her feet.

“Here, you should sit.”

Eastwind took her over to the couch just as her knees went out from under her. With a wave of dizziness making her eyesight fuzzy, the folder fell from her hand, and as the three or four pieces of paper flew across the rug, he chased after them.

“You want some water?” the sheriff asked as he put the sheets back where they’d been and laid the folder aside.

“No.” Actually, she was pretty sure she was going to throw up. “I’m fine.”

As she went to push her hair back—which was still damp from the shower she’d taken with Daniel—her hands shook so badly they were a blur.

But she was not tearing up.

No, she was not doing that.