Slip the Skin

by Shanley, Tera

  Fighting the instinct to cover the back of her neck with her hands, she whispered, “Linden?” in a trembling voice. Please, please let her remember.

  The frantic movement behind her stopped and a wet nose pressed against the wound on her arm. Red agony bloomed from the wound as Linden inhaled. This was it. Linden had realize she was locked in a small place with a human, and now she would eat her.

  Something wet brushed against the back of her neck. Hard, stony teeth grazed her skin and she wanted to scream. Linden licked her again and whined.

  “Oh, thank God,” Meredith breathed.

  Gravel pinged against the undercarriage of the car and Meredith strained to hear better. They must be on Tristan’s driveway. And though they probably still had a half a mile to drive, they were getting closer and her galloping heart pumped another wave of adrenaline through her bloodstream.

  Sheer terror took her as the car slowed, and Linden nuzzled her neck. “Remember,” she whispered shakily, “attack him as soon as he opens the door.”

  Even though it was evening, the dim light contrasted with the pitch dark she’d been laying in, and she was blinded as the trunk popped open. Linden hit her bad arm as she leapt over her and Meredith fought to follow her, stumbling from the trunk as the man who’d shot her fell backward under the weight of the animal. A short scream of pain burst from his throat and a gunshot echoed through the clearing.

  A man near the driver’s side door aimed his handgun again, and Meredith lunged for his stomach. The shot zinged past her shoulder as she tumbled into him. “Run, Linden!” she screamed.

  The Hell Hunter shoved her to the ground and took another shot, but Linden was already bolting past the first grove of trees the lined Tristan’s yard, just a flash of dark fur as she disappeared.

  At least one of them had lived.

  Horror took her as she realized she was all alone. What a terrible way to die. The man jammed the barrel of the gun into the injury on her arm and she shrieked in shock and pain.

  “Mac, track that bitch and kill her.”

  “Yeah, boss,” another bald man said, then trotted off in Linden’s direction. Mac was taller than the other two, and jogged with a limp in his gait. The back of his shaved head was raked with four long scars, like something had clawed him. The clatter of the long, silver blades he had strapped to his back followed him into the woods.

  “You,” the man hovering above her said. “You had my brother fooled good, didn’t you. Jonny, you hurt?”

  The Jonny in question was sitting on the ground, even paler than she’d seen him in the hotel room, and his sickly looking eyes had gone wide. Crimson dripped down his arm from where his skin lay open at the inside of his elbow.

  “Shit, please tell me that ain’t what it looks like,” the man with the gun said.

  “She was a woman, Nate. She wasn’t supposed to be a Lycan. She can’t be.”

  “You’re going to turn into the thing you hate,” Meredith growled triumphantly. She wished she would live to see it.

  “Don’t listen to her,” Nate said in an empty tone. “I won’t let you turn.”

  Jonny the psychopath actually looked relieved.

  “Wait, what do you mean?” she asked. “You have a cure?”

  “Sure do,” Nate gritted out, yanking her upright by her hair. In one smooth motion he lifted the handgun to Jonny’s face. “Say hi to Pa for me.” He pulled the trigger and Meredith looked away just in time not to see the gore inflicted by the man who held her trapped.

  “You just killed your brother,” she breathed in disbelief. “You just killed your own flesh and blood!”

  “No,” he drawled with a smile that didn’t touch his eyes. “I set him free.”

  They were crazy. Hell Hunters weren’t some order of ancient line gifted with the skills to hunt Lycans. They were a group of murdering psychopaths who had sold their souls somewhere along the line in their quest for supernatural blood.

  And now, she was at their mercy.

  She stared in horror at Jonny’s crumpled form. His eyes stared vacantly at her, and his lips were twisted in a smile, like he was grateful Nate had pulled the trigger on him.

  Tristan.

  Linden, Little Frankie, Barret, Dan, Wayne, Cesar, hell, even Graham. She was going to miss them all when she got to wherever she was going. And oh, she was going there fast.

  Her arm wasn’t working right and it hurt so bad, she was going to pass out again soon. Hopefully before whatever torture Nate intended. With her good hand, she clawed at his grip in her hair, then kicked viciously at him. Rearing back, he backhanded her so hard the world turned on its axis and she fell backward. Before she hit the ground, Nate yanked her back by her bad arm and she screamed at the pain. No one was around to hear her now. She could make as much noise as her little shredded heart desired.

  A noose dangled from the towering oak nearest the car, and Meredith balked against the forward momentum. Grabbing her by the throat, Nate said, “I was going to wait until your Lycan was here before I did this, but I just lost my brother and need my anger soothed by blood. Yours will do for now. It will be almost as satisfying to see his face when he pulls up and sees you dangling cold from this tree.”

  How many times had these men done this? Killed people just for what they were or who they associated with? From the detached, business like passiveness on Nate’s face, she thought more times than he probably even kept count of anymore. Like his brother, his head was shaved bald. Maybe it was a requirement of Hell Hunters to be hairless in contrast to the shifters they hunted, she didn’t know. He was pale and his eyes a muddy brown. His nose was large and crooked, like it had been broken several times. She hated him.

  “He’ll kill you.”

  “No. He won’t even have time to try. Four Lycans are no match for me and Mac, much less two packless rogues. They’ll join you hanging from this tree, darlin’. At least you’ll go out with your precious pet monsters.”

  “You’re the monster.”

  Nate ignored her and tugged the noose loose and pulled it over her head, then secured a zip tie around her wrists. The tug on her injury felt like hellfire, blazing through every nerve in her body.

  The fibers of the rope were rough against her skin, and he tightened the loop until it was hard to breathe. She struggled, but another backhand rattled her brains and the edges of her vision were starting to blur.

  She hadn’t told Linden goodbye. Her mother and father would bury their only child and never know the reasons she was brutalized.

  Tristan would never know how much he meant to her.

  Warm tears streaked her face from fear and pain and she wished she could be braver at the end. The frigid metal of Nate’s gun never left her for long—never let her forget she was at his mercy.

  The noose was too tight, suffocating her and she resisted as he shoved her upward onto a step ladder. God, she hoped Mac couldn’t find Linden.

  A strangled sound came from her throat as he pulled the rope tight over the sturdy tree limb above. The air was leaving her, depleting her lungs and depriving her of precious oxygen. Wheezing, she struggled in vain to free her arms from the zip tie. Everything hurt.

  A cruel smile twisted Nate’s lips and he rested the toe of his shit kicker boot on the edge of the step stool under her. “Why don’t you give me one last little scream?”

  “Fuck you,” she snarled.

  She lifted her gaze to the canopy above. Dim evening light filtered through the bare branches. Closing her eyes, she took one last, slow breath. She wasn’t ready for death, but she wasn’t going out giving him the satisfaction of witnessing her terror.

  The howl of a wolf rose into the air.

  Another joined in the song, low and haunting.

  And another.

  And another.

  And another.

  They were too late, but her wolves had come.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Nate’s eyes went wide in the first emotion
she’d seen from him.

  The automatic weapon she hadn’t noticed in her fight to survive made a zipping sound as he slid it from his back to ready position. His finger brushed the trigger.

  “Mac!” he yelled.

  “Mac’s dead,” Graham’s deep voice rumbled from the shadows. “Perhaps you should’ve stayed together. Safety in numbers and all.”

  “You’re a two wolf pack!” Nate shook his head in denial but even Meredith could see him slowly accepting his mistake. He’d miscounted, miscalculated and misjudged his prey. The Hell Hunters had waited for Graham to call in reinforcements, and when he didn’t, they’d assumed he and Tristan were alone.

  “Wrong,” Meredith said with as much of a smile as her bloodied lip would allow. “You’re just as dumb as Mac and your brother. And just as dead.”

  With a furious battle cry, Nate kicked the step stool out from under her and peppered the woods with silver shot. The height hadn’t been high enough to break her neck, but she was suffocating as she gasped for breath and struggled and bucked to rest her toes on the ground.

  Tristan appeared out of the shadows and hit Nate across the face, then snatched the gun from his hands as he brought his knee into his stomach. The quiet snick of a knife whispered with every practiced motion, and Tristan pushed him with the force of an eighteen wheeler. The Hell Hunter flew backward and landed with a dull thud fifty yards away, gripping his bleeding belly. Spinning, Tristan pulled her upward and cut the rope above her head with the swift swipe of his blade. She folded into his arms and he ripped the noose from her neck.

  Sliding a glance behind him, his lips crashed onto her lips and he closed his eyes as he pressed his forehead against hers. Some of the tension left his rigid body as he held her. “Stay here,” he growled out, eyes light and inhuman.

  Yeah, no problem. She was still gasping to catch her breath, and her raw throat wasn’t helping. It had been crushed and rubbed raw, and her lungs were still desperately trying to suck air that was coming much too slowly. All she could do was crumple to her knees and try to breathe.

  Seven wolves stalked Nate, who had pulled two silver blades from leather sheaths on his hips.

  He backed toward his car slowly, but Graham was leaning against the door like he hadn’t a care in the world.

  Linden appeared beside her, naked as the day she was born, and with a knife that looked like the ones Nate was slashing through the air when one of the wolves got too close. Maybe she’d lifted it off Mac’s body, wherever it lay in the woods. Linden cut the zip tie, freeing her hands, then helped Meredith to her feet.

  “I’m not going to kill you right away,” Graham said, his voice rattling with a feral snarl.

  Nate spun and looked from the approaching wolves to Graham and back again. It seemed he couldn’t figure out who the greatest threat was.

  “Danny deserved better than your clean death to avenge him, and so do all of the people you have killed,” Graham explained, straightening his spine.

  Tristan was herding Nate toward Graham, but he turned and ordered over his shoulder, “Linden, get Meredith inside. I don’t want her seeing this.”

  “Okay,” Linden whispered as she nudged her shoulder under Meredith’s good arm and helped her toward the house.

  Meredith couldn’t drag her eyes away from the graceful movements of Graham dodging the knives as Nate fought him. They never touched his skin as he ducked and punched, threw elbows and arched back out of the way again. Nate’s eyes were wide and desperate, and Graham seemed to be toying with him. Teasing him into thinking he had a chance, but even Meredith, with her dull human senses, could see Nate’s doom coming.

  The car window shattered with a tremendous crash as Graham slammed Nate’s body against it like a ragdoll. The blades fell to the ground and Graham tossed him into the grass in front of the wolves. “Avenge Danny. Bleed this Hell Hunter, but don’t kill him. I want him fully turned before I take his life.” Graham turned his roiling silver gaze to Nate. “You’ll die a Lycan.”

  The wolves lunged.

  Meredith couldn’t see Nathan anymore as she stepped through the front door of Tristan’s house, but his echoing screams followed her. Likely, they’d haunt her for the rest of her days.

  Inside, Linden snatched a pair of jeans and a shirt out of her suitcase in the bedroom she and Graham had been staying in while he tried to regain his humanity. Killing Nate was probably a step back in that little venture, but Meredith wasn’t a therapist, so who was she to overanalyze Graham’s mental capabilities.

  All she could think about right now was the pain in her arm. She hadn’t looked at it yet and on purpose. If it looked half as bad as it felt, she’d lose the arm.

  Linden led her into the bathroom and began rifling through the cabinets. “I swear I saw a first aid kit in here somewhere. Here.” Pulling out a plastic bin, she sat heavily on the floor and popped the top.

  Meredith turned toward the mirror. Better to be brave now and get it over with. Oh. She frowned and leaned toward the glass. It wasn’t that bad. Granted, it looked awful and was a long line of open flesh across her tricep, but it looked like the bullet had grazed her and missed the bone. It looked gory and her sweater was ripped and soaked in crimson, but a year from now, this injury would be just a scar and a story.

  “Options,” Linden said, with a stack of medical supplies in her arms.

  “All right, lay ’em on me.”

  “Go to the hospital and get you stitched up, but have to explain your face and why you were shot.”

  Hmm, her face had definitely been abused by Nate the Mega-Dick. And explaining away a gunshot wound was probably beyond her bullshitting capabilities.

  “Or,” Linden said, pushing her shoulders until she sat on the counter. “I can stitch you up. Or we could maybe get away with butterfly bandages.”

  “That works. Sounds less painful.”

  “We have to disinfect it either way.”

  Meredith scrunched her face in the mirror, ruddy eyebrows drawing down with the mention of disinfecting. This was going to suck.

  By the time the door to the house opened and Tristan shadowed the bathroom door frame, she was butterflied bandaged, gauzed and clean. She was even sporting some of Linden’s clothes and didn’t reek of blood anymore.

  He looked exhausted, haunted, and his eyes were still too light to be completely human. Her heart pounded at the sight of his rugged beauty. She’d come so close to never seeing him again.

  “It’s done. Graham asked me to tell you he’s ready to go,” he said to Linden. “The pack is waiting out front for you.”

  Meredith slid off the counter she’d been resting on and began to follow Linden out.

  “Not you,” Tristan said low, sliding his hand around her hip to stop her. “You’re staying with me tonight.”

  Warmth pooled low in her belly and her breath caught. “Okay.”

  Linden squeezed her hand and smiled at Tristan. “I’ll call you tomorrow,” she said over her shoulder as she left.

  Tristan wrapped his arms around Meredith’s lower back and pulled her against his chest.

  “Do I even want to know what you did with the bodies?” she asked.

  “Best if you don’t know. You’re already too involved.”

  Too involved with the pack, or with him?

  She rubbed his arms and dared a glance up at him. His hair had come loose from a leather band he’d pulled it back with this morning, and feathery strands fell in front of his face. His eyes held such worry, it caused a pang of hurt in her chest. He stroked his fingers softly against her swollen face, against the rope burn on her neck. “You shouldn’t be a part of this at all. Knowing us has hurt you.”

  She stopped his hand with hers. He wasn’t going to push her away. Not now. Not after everything they’d been through. “You said you chose me the other day. Did you mean it?”

  “I did,” he said in a throaty rumble.

  “And do you still mean it?”


  “Meredith,” he warned.

  “Because I still choose you, Tristan. When I was out there, about to hang, I couldn’t stop thinking about how I was going to die without telling you how I really felt. I spent my whole life pushing people away, because I didn’t want to get hurt. And you scared me from the day I met you. But I’m in it now. All in with you.” Her voice hitched and she drew a long, shaky breath. Like a coward, she dropped her gaze to his feet when she whispered, “I love you.”

  Lifting her chin with his crooked finger, he asked, “Are you sure this is what you want?”

  His eyes were so open and vulnerable, she could see his beautiful soul. He wasn’t his father, that unfeeling man who didn’t understand love. Tristan was kind and gentle, and someday he would open up to her enough to care for her back. Even if it wasn’t as deep for him as it was for her now, it could be. And that possibility was enough to make her want to try. He deserved that.

  “I want you, Tristan. You’re my mate.”

  A small smile curved the corner of his lips and reached his eyes. “What have you done to me, woman?”

  “I gave you feelings. You’re welcome.”

  “Mmm.” The rumble in his chest caused delicious vibrations against the palms of her hands. It also said he didn’t know if her giving him feelings was good or bad.

  Bending slightly, he picked her up as if she weighed nothing and carried her to his bedroom. She’d never been in here before. Of all the times she had come here to spend time with Linden over the last few weeks, she’d always felt it was too private for her to even peek inside of. This was his den, and it meant something now that he was allowing her in.

  The walls were deep brown and his comforter forest green. He seemed to prefer to bring the outdoor colors into his living space. Setting her gently on his bed, he unbuttoned his jeans and slid out of his clothes until he was a naked Adonis, standing here for her to appreciate.