Callum stopped.
“I know him,” she whispered and flipped the list back to Callum. Peering over it, she pointed to a name then her head snapped back and her eyes caught his. “I met him at the mansion. We talked a couple of times. He was very sweet to me.”
There was more than one name of one wolf she talked to a couple of times at the mansion on that list. Which meant, from the troubled expression clear to read on her face, Callum had to get it away from her.
He held his hand out and ordered, “Baby doll, give me the list.”
She defied him and took another step back, shaking her head and she looked at the list again.
He started moving toward her but she kept moving back, her eyes scanning.
“Sonia –”
He stopped speaking and moving when she halted and gasped. Her head snapped back again, this time the movement sharper, her eyes were wide, her face ashen.
“Honey –” he began but she cut him off and when she did her voice was trembling.
“Tell me there are two of your men named Waring.”
Fuck!
He moved faster but she retreated just as fast, skittering across the room, her gaze locked to his all the while begging, “Tell me, Callum. Tell me that’s a common name for your people.”
It was rare his people’s names were common. Since wolves didn’t have last names, their parents often had to get creative. At the very least, they carried a name that no one in their town or village shared.
Callum had lived over three hundred years and he’d never met another wolf named Waring.
Except the one Sonia knew.
She ran into the wall but lifted her arm, hand out, palm up, to ward him off.
“Tell me, Callum.”
He ignored her arm and her palm hit his chest as he got close and framed her face with his hands.
Then, trying to be gentle with her, he whispered, “I can’t, little one.”
She closed her eyes tight and turned her head away.
She didn’t open her eyes when she whispered back, “He saved my life.”
He did. But Waring did more than that.
“I know,” Callum shared. “He saved mine too.”
Her eyes jerked back to his and Callum saw stark terror mixed with her grief.
“What?” she breathed.
He swiftly debated the merits of telling her the story but her hands came up to his at her face and her fingers curled tightly around them, fisting the paper in her hand as she did so.
Then she demanded loudly, “What?”
Callum sighed then quickly he explained, “I’d been targeted. I was defending myself against six attackers, maybe more. Waring drew several of them away, dispatched two but was killed by the third before I could aid him.”
“Oh my God,” she breathed in horror as her fingers tensed.
“Honey, it’s war,” he explained gently.