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shaking Ryan’s hand firmly. “And I’m sorry I hurt your sister. I’m going to do what I can to make sure it doesn’t happen again.”
    “Just…” Alex looked at him, and Jim could see the war going on inside him. His hazel eyes were browner than normal. Part of Alex was still pissed at him. “Talk to her from now on. Don’t leave her like that again.”
    “Yeah. I don’t think you understand exactly how bad things were.” Ryan grimaced. “She was dying , and there was nothing we could do about it.”
    “Wait.” Jim held up his hand as a cold chill went through him. “When I got the call I was told she was stable and in the best possible care.” Jim watched the cousins exchange grimaces. “Seriously? Dying? Why was I told she was going to be all right?”
    Alex and Ryan scowled. “Who told you that?” Alex growled.
    Well, shit. “My mother.” It was right after he told her he was going to find Spencer whether she liked it or not.
    The two men shared a confused look. “That doesn’t make sense.”
    Alex was watching him suspiciously, as if he thought Jim was lying to him. “Aunt Laura told me she’d called and told you about Chloe.”
    Jim shook his head. “Nope. I never spoke to her until I got there and Chloe was already awake.”
    “What the fuck, man?” Alex looked confused as hell.
    Jim shrugged. “Maybe something got confused?” God, please let it be that and not my mother being a bitch. “I know your aunt was upset. It’s possible my mother just didn’t understand what she was being told.” A remote possibility, it was true, but still there. He refused to believe his mother had lied to him on purpose.
    Ryan shot him a sharp look. “You kept telling her she was too young for you.”
    “She is.” Jim still couldn’t get over the age difference, but he’d have to. There was ten years between them, and she’d practically been a baby when he first met her. “When I visited her in the hospital no one told me how bad she’d been.” She’d been bruised, battered, scared and scarred, but she’d been awake. Her green eyes had glowed when she’d first seen him, dulling when he told her that they couldn’t be together.
    Fuck. If he’d known then what he knew now, he wouldn’t have been able to stop himself from being with her. As it was, he’d been so torn between his duty to Spencer and his desire for Chloe that he’d become a bear to live with.
    “If it weren’t for Julian, she would be dead.”
    Jim almost howled out loud.
    The cousins exchanged another, unreadable glance. “Speaking of Julian…”
    “You might want to have a little chat with him.” Ryan cleared his throat. “The two of them have a…connection most other shifters don’t.”
    Connection? Oh, Jim’s Wolf didn’t like the sound of that. Not one little bit. It didn’t matter boo-squat to him that Julian DuCharme was madly in love with his mate, Cynthia Reyes. He squinted at the two men, noting how uncomfortable they looked all of a sudden. “What kind of connection?”
    Ryan zipped his lips as Alex shook his head and held up his hands. “Nuh-uh. Talk to Super Bear. Or better yet, Chloe. Let them explain it.”
    “I’m not even sure I could if I tried.” Ryan frowned, looking confused. “It’s not a mate bond, but it’s really close.”
    Jim surprised himself with a loud, animalistic snarl. The world lost color as his eyes shifted, the reds and greens of the parking lot turning yellow and brown. Anyone with a mate-like connection to Chloe that Jim didn’t have deserved pain.
    Ryan wagged his finger at him. “Now you know how she felt whenever she saw you with another woman.”
    Jim took a deep breath, trying to calm his Wolf. “I haven’t been on a date in over a year.”
    “Bullshit,” Alex coughed into his hand.
    “Seriously. The one time you all saw me out I was with a colleague, someone I was trying to lure into my practice. Remember Doc Klein?” He waited until they both nodded.