Free Her Lone Wolves by Diana Castle Page A

of Everett’s penetrating gaze on her, but it seemed important to them.
    “I’ve had dreams about a man who was a wolf or a wolf who was a man. I’m not sure which. He...it...was in a cave and there were all these people around and they were singing or chanting. And the man-wolf was having...” she stopped and swallowed “....sex with all these women.”
    Everett and Avery looked silently at each other.
    “What?” Jane demanded, the feeling of anxiety now hollowness in her stomach. “It was only a dream.”
    “When did these dreams start?” Everett asked.
    “In high school. At least that’s when I started have the...um...the sex dreams. When I was younger I used to dream about wolves running in the woods. But it doesn’t mean anything. They were only dreams.”
    “Where were your parents born?” Everett asked.
    Jane blinked at the suddenness of the question. “My parents? They were from St. Louis.”
    “Were?”
    “They’re both dead. My father died of a stroke. My mother developed cancer not long after.”
    Everett exchanged a meaningful glance with Avery. Then he turned back to her. “I’m sorry, Jane.”
    “It’s alright. I’ve...I’ve learned to live with it.”
    “What were their names?” Everett’s voice was softer, gentler.
    “Albert and Grace Evans.”
    “And they were born and grew up in St. Louis?”
    “Yes.”
    “Were you an only child?”
    “Yes, but what does that have to do with any of this?”
    Avery suddenly snapped his fingers. “Jane, were you adopted?”
    Her eyes widened. “Yes, I was.”
    “And do you know who your real parents were?”
    She nodded. “They died in a car accident. I was only a baby.”
    Everett suddenly took her by the arms. She looked up at him, surprised at the glowing intensity in his eyes. “Jane, this is very important. Who were they? What were their names?”
    She hadn’t thought about her real parents in years. She’d found out she was adopted when she was a sophomore in high school. She’d happened across the documents about her adoption when she’d been rummaging through her father’s desk looking for a pen.
    She brought the evidence before her parents. Her adoptive parents. At first, they didn’t want to discuss it, dismayed that she had found out. But when she pressed them on it, they finally told her about the accident that had killed her real family and about how the authorities tried to find any other living relatives, but were unable to. It had hurt, at first, knowing she wasn’t really their daughter and that they had kept that secret from her. But over time the pain had gone away. But not the awareness that once she’d been someone else’s child and a part of someone else’s family.
    Everett shook her, bringing her attention back to him. “Jane, what were your real parents’ names?”
    She gazed up into his eyes, but this time she saw only concern in their dark blue depths.
    “My parents told me the only identification found in the car was a birth certificate. It was mine. It had my parents’ name on it. My mother’s name was Heaven. My father’s Elijah. Elijah Monroe.”
    Everett let go of her arms and stepped back, an expression of stunned surprise on his face.
    “What’s wrong?” she asked.
    ”Elijah Monroe was a shifter, Jane,” he said. “A werewolf. Like us.”
    Her mouth dropped open. “What? You knew him? You knew my father?”
    “No,” he said. “But I’d heard about him. He fell in love with a woman named Heaven. She wasn’t a shifter so he was forbidden from marrying her. They ran off together. They were never heard from again.”
    Jane slowly sat on the couch, disbelief thrumming through her. It couldn’t be. Her father, her real father, had been a shifter? A werewolf? No, that wasn’t possible. But she’d never known him. He could have been an alien for all she knew.
    “I’m not a werewolf,” she said firmly, as much to herself as to Everett and Avery who were staring at her.
    “No, not a