Page 13 of Protected By Her Mate

He quickly switches gears as well, dropping into the chair across from mine. “On the body?”

“I think so. Can you get us in to see it?” It would have been removed from the scene once the building was rendered safe.

A phone call and a short drive later, and we’re at the city morgue. I flash my credentials to the security guard while Lennox signs in.

“Lennox Wolven-North.” A woman in a lab coat approaches us, then surprises me by giving Lennox a lingering hug. Eventually, the woman steps away from him, her sharp gaze searching his face. “It’s good to see you again. You’re the lead detective on my shifter body?”

“Yes,” he says, stepping away from her, his body language stiff. Nodding in my direction, he says, “Along with Fire Investigator Lopez.” Lennox turns to me. “Charlie, this is Doctor Edie Thornton, our shifter pathologist.”

As Edie Thornton looks at me, her gaze unblinking, glacial hostility emanating from her, I have to fight the urge to step away from her. Something primal is telling me I’m standing face-to-face with a predator who is more than capable of killing me.

When I blink, the hostility is gone as if I’d imagined it. The doctor’s expression is smooth as she says, “Please call me Edie.” She gives my hand two quick pumps before holding up a clipboard. “Follow me.”

I stare after her for a few seconds, perplexed, then follow.

A frown teases Lennox’s features and I wonder if he caught the weird moment. Maybe there’s history between them. The hug certainty seems to point in that direction. Jealousy shoots through me. I don’t want Lennox to have any kind of history with another woman. But he’s over 700 years old, so of course there’s going to be history.

After spending the entire previous night searching the internet for clues, I couldn’t find even a hint of another woman in his life, despite his age. He seems to have lived the life of a monk. A monk partial to law enforcement.

I steel myself as we step into the morgue’s examination room, wrinkling my nose against the smell of death. Except there’s no smell other than the usual bleach smell associated with hospitals.

The room is brightly lit and has just enough space for the three of us to stand around the metal table where our victim rests.

I try to glance at the body without looking directly at him, starting at his hairy toes. Dead bodies give me the heeby jeebies, but this particular body is connected to my fire, so I don’t have a choice but to suck it up and spend time with him.

Meeting Lennox’s gaze, I nod at our dead wolf. “It’s on the back of his wrist, or, er… foot. The front right one.”

“Ah, you’re talking about the brand,” Edie says, pulling on gloves and lifting his front right paw from the table, turning it over.

I shuffle closer, squinting. Edie uses her index finger to shift the fur above his paw, revealing a small patch of skin, rough and raised in an image. It’s obscured by singed fur and skin, but I recognize it.

“What is it?” Lennox asks, leaning over for a better look. “It looks like a beetle but with jagged edges.” He shakes his head. “If he’d died in his human form, we’d have a clear view of it.”

“I’m sure he’s sorry he can’t accommodate you,” Edie says sarcastically, replacing Greystone’s paw on the table. I don’t want to say anything about the brand in front of Edie so I keep silent as she continues. “We don’t have a clear cause of death yet, but there were no defense wounds. His attacker left no evidence on the body.” She moves around the gurney, pointing as she speaks. “The heart was removed posthumously. There is no smoke in his lungs which means he was already dead when the fire was started.”

“The crime scene investigators have determined that he was killed elsewhere, then moved to the warehouse,” Lennox says.

We finish going over the body before saying goodbye to Edie. Ignoring Lennox, she shakes my hand, holding it a little too long and hard for my liking. As she releases me, her glittering gaze on my face, I step quickly back, feeling safer next to Lennox. The shifter pathologist is one strange lady.

As we leave the morgue, I ask, “You’ve known her a while?” I’m starting to think most shifters know each other.

He nods but doesn’t offer anything more, his attention on the body we left behind.

Now how do I know that? It’s almost like I was mining his thoughts, the image of the dead shifter clear in my head. Which is weird considering I very studiously avoided looking directly at it.

“She seems intense,” I prompt.

“She lost her mate,” he offers, as though I’ll understand. “She’s been working with the police for almost as long as I have.”

“So she knows her stuff?”

“We’ve worked together before,” he says carefully, but doesn’t agree with me. Huh. There’s definitely history between Lennox and Edie, but I’m clueless as to what it could be. Too bad social media was a recent invention.

He waits for me to unlock my truck, then opens the driver side door for me before loping around to the other side. I marvel at his old-fashioned chivalry as he climbs in next to me but don’t comment on it as I eagerly turn to him.

“I have to show you something.” I pull my legs up onto the seat and flip around to face him, draping one of them over the console, my booted foot landing on his thigh. “Look at this.” I twist my knee to the side and pull up the cuff of my jeans, showing him my ankle.

He leans over, staring for several long seconds before lifting his eyes to meet mine, dawning realization making his dance with excitement. “Fire bug.”

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