Dark and Damaged: Eight Tortured Heroes of Paranormal Romance: Paranormal Romance Boxed Set Read Online Free PDF Page A

Collar.
    Seamus flinched again as Nadine pulled a bandage tightly around his torso. “You’ve done this a lot,” he said to her.
    Nadine returned the things to her box and carried the tweezers and anything bloody to the sink. She’d wash them then boil them and wipe them with alcohol. “You’d be amazed how many idiots with guns get themselves shot. Including my own son, God bless him.”
    Bree’s emotions surged again, which she hid by quickly looking away.
    “If you’re a Shifter,” Nadine said to Seamus from the sink. “Why don’t you have one of those Collars?”
    “Mom.”
Bree raised her head to glare her mother to silence. “I was trying not to mention it.”
    “Well, we need to know.” Nadine kept her attention her task. “I thought they all had to wear the Collars to keep them from turning into wild beasts or something.”
    Seamus had gone very still, and his eyes … changed. One moment they looked as human as Remy’s, the next they’d flicked to the tawny, slit-pupilled eyes of a cat. A wild cat, holding himself quiet until he decided to strike.
    “I won’t hurt you,” Seamus said.
    “Damn right you won’t.” Nadine dried her hands and extracted another cigarette. “I just patched you up. It would be very bad manners.”
    Seamus still had hold of Bree’s hand. His fingers tightened on hers, as though he worried she’d pull away and run.
    Bree wasn’t sure what she wanted to do. On the one hand, no Collar meant no shock devices to control Seamus if he went crazy violent and started to tear up the place. Collars were supposed to keep Shifters from reverting to their wild ways. A Shifter who’d never worn a Collar …
    She’d never seen a Shifter without one. Most Shifters had been Collared twenty and more years ago—those who hadn’t were rumored to be dead and gone. But there Seamus sat, his neck clear and free of any chain.
    On the other hand, Seamus had jumped into her pickup and forced Bree to drive him away. He’d essentially abducted her.
    On the third hand, he hadn’t hurt her, and he obviously needed help. Seamus held on to Bree not so much to keep her from running, but as though holding her soothed him. She’d heard that the touch of a mate could heal a Shifter.
    On the fourth hand—Bree had no idea what to think. What the hell? If she’d been back in Louisiana, she’d have called someone in a Shiftertown—she’d made enough friends to get hold of one—and asked them what to do about a Shifter without a Collar sitting in her kitchen.
    Bree hadn’t had a chance to meet any Shifters here, which was why she’d gone out tonight. Here, she had no contacts, no friends, nothing. The emptiness of that kicked her in the gut.
    Seamus broke the silence. “I’ve never had a Collar. I was separated from my clan when I was very young—they were taken, and I escaped.”
    Nadine opened her mouth, smoke curling out of it, to ask more questions, but Bree shook her head the slightest bit, and her mother subsided.
    Seamus’s matter-of-fact statements, which clearly hid much more, spoke to her. Seamus was alone, his family gone. He was hurt, down, scared, though a man like him would refuse to show it.
    Bree knew about that loneliness, when you’d lost what you loved and wanted to curl up and hide until you stopped hurting. It never went away, that hurting.
    “You can stay here tonight,” Bree said quietly. “Mom will make up a bed for you on the couch. We won’t say anything to anyone, all right? It wouldn’t be hospitable. You’re hurt, and you needed our help. In the morning, if you still think you need to go, you go. You were never here.”
    Nadine ran water from the sink and set a pot on the stove. “It’s kind of an unwritten rule in the Fayette family. If you’re under our roof, we take care of you, even if you’re a fugitive.”
    Seamus caught Bree’s gaze with his Shifter one, and Bree couldn’t look away. His golden eyes bore flecks of green, the irises ringed