by J. L. Wilder
She lowered her sandwich slowly.
“What’s my alternative?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “I just don’t like the idea of taking you back. It doesn’t feel right, somehow. And that’s never happened on a job before.”
“Why don’t you want to take me back?”
“I wish I knew.”
“You know they’re not bad people, right? They’re not going to do anything to me.”
“They’re going to mate you against your will.”
“It’s not really against my will,” she said. “They’re going to choose a mate for me. It’s tradition, that’s all.”
“But is it what you want?” he persisted. “If you could choose anything. If you didn’t have to worry about what anybody else wanted except yourself. Would you still choose this? Would you go back to your pack and mate with whoever Matthew decided to pair you up with and raise as many litters as they decided you should and spend the rest of your life in that house? Would that be your choice?”
She picked at her sandwich.
“It wouldn’t, would it?” he said.
“I wish you wouldn’t ask me these things,” she said, and when she looked up, he saw tears in her eyes. “Can’t you see that it doesn’t matter? That is my life, Emmett. That’s what has to happen. I have to go back. I have to play my part for my pack, just like you have to play your part for yours. We can’t just decide to leave. Could you leave your brothers?”
He didn’t answer. The truth was, that for her, he was beginning to think he could, and that was terrifying. It was too terrifying to speak it out loud.
Instead, he said, “I don’t want to give you to them.”
“Why not?”
“Because they don’t appreciate you.”
“You don’t know them, Emmett.”
“I know they weren’t looking for you,” he said. “I know that after you went missing, they just sat around feeling vaguely sad about it.”
“They hired you.”
“They hired me because I went to them and solicited work. They weren’t looking for help. Help literally walked up and knocked on their front door.”
That surprised her, he could see it on her face. “Is that true?”
“Yes,” he said. “And even then, they were reluctant. Your alpha accused me of being one of the Savage Rangers, of trying to trick him into paying for your return.”
She looked stunned.
“And all I can think now is, why would he care?” Emmett asked. “He clearly has the money to spend. Why would he care who he was giving it to if it meant getting you back?” He shook his head. “I don’t think they deserve you.”
“I don’t have anywhere else to go,” she said quietly.
He heard—or thought he heard—the implied question in her voice, and his mouth was forming the answer before his mind had time to rationalize it. “You can stay with me.”
She stared at him.
Immediately, he could have kicked himself. How could he have said that? How could he have let that thought escape his lips? It was what he wanted, yes. He could no longer deny that. But it was against everything the Hell’s Wolves were about. As long as he’d been their alpha, he had made it clear to the others that settling down with women in any kind of permanent capacity was inappropriate and dangerous. They couldn’t bring women on the road with them. That could lead to pregnancy. And they definitely couldn’t have pregnant women and babies on the road.
Of course, this risk was dialed up to the next level when the woman in question was an omega, for God’s sake. He couldn’t keep her with him, as much as he wanted to. He knew that.
But neither could he turn her back over to the Coywolves. They would probably just let her get kidnapped again.
What choices did that leave him? What was he supposed to do?
He could leave his pack behind.
The idea sickened him. But wasn’t that what he was asking her to do? Maybe that was the only way they could be together. He could take her away from the Coywolves and away from the Hell’s Wolves and they could start a new pack together, just the two of them.
God. He must be delusional.
“I can’t really stay with you, can I?” she said quietly, and not with the tone of a question. She’d been following his every thought, he realized, and she’d landed in exactly the same place as he had. There was only one way they could make it work, and that way wasn’t practical at all.
“I guess not,” he said quietly.
“I have to go back to them,” she said. “It’s where I belong. And you have to go back to your pack. They need their alpha.”
“They do,” he admitted. He thought about Pax, his second-in-command, who would ascend if he left his pack. Pax was a good man and a good fighter, but he was rash and incautious, and Emmett knew he would lead them into trouble. Judah had a level head, but Judah took rank seriously and would never challenge his alpha, no matter what kind of danger the pack was in. Dart, impetuous and rebellious, might go so far as to go off on his own, but none of the others would follow him. And Xander was just young. Without a good leader to guide him, he would grow into something Emmett didn’t want him to become.
He picked up the receipt and went to the cash register to pay the tab, suddenly wanting very much to escape this conversation. Looking at Hazel was hard. He kept remembering what she looked like naked, what she had felt like in the shower this morning as she’d come apart in his arms. He couldn’t stop thinking about the scent and the taste of her. She was the most amazing woman he’d ever come in contact with. She hardly seemed real.
The hell with my pack. I should take her.
This was too dangerous. Thoughts like that were dangerous. He couldn’t allow himself to think that way. He had to take her back. Having her with him was making him forget about the things that were important. He was an alpha and his primary responsibility was the well-being of his pack. She was an omega. Her responsibility was to bear offspring for her pack.
It was bad enough that he’d slept with her. Bad enough that he’d outright told her he wanted to keep her with him. He was going to have to get himself under control, and quickly.
He paid the bill and led the way back out to the motorcycle, which was parked in the narrow strip of asphalt between the diner and the highway. He climbed back on and felt Hazel take her seat behind him. Riding tandem had become natural to both of them now. He was used to the feeling of her holding on, and her grip had become less fearful and more easy. He could picture going on long runs with his pack with Hazel sitting behind him, her hair blowing in the wind, her cheek pressed to his back.
He had to stop picturing that.
He engaged the bike’s engine and pulled slowly out of the parking lot and onto the highway. If they kept going as they were, they would reach the Coywolves’ house sometime tomorrow and Hazel would be out of his life.
Maybe, he thought, it would be best to take one more detour. Just to make sure they’d lost the Rangers. Maybe he should dip down south for a bit before taking her home.
That was probably for the best.
Chapter Eleven
HAZEL
Hazel couldn’t believe it. He would keep her. He had said he would.
And never mind the fact that he’d turned that right around and said that he couldn’t keep her. Never mind that she knew as well as he did that it was impractical and probably impossible. The point was that he’d wanted to. Which meant he was feeling the same things she was feeling. It wasn’t just a crush. She wasn’t being silly and naive and girlish.
There was something real going on here.
But they had left the diner now, and they were heading back toward home. The idea of it made her feel like crying. When she’d been with the Savage Rangers, home had seemed like a utopia she might never get back. When she had first heard Emmett say he planned to take her there, it had seemed like a miracle. But now, it was the last place she wanted to go. Now, she a
lmost thought that getting kidnapped had been worth it. It had given her access to, and knowledge of, a whole other way of life.
It had allowed her to meet Emmett.
How was she going to go back to the Coywolves and feign interest in the boys there? She had known all her potential mates for her entire life, and not one of them stirred in her the kind of feelings Emmett did. How would she look at whoever Matthew assigned to her without seeing all the ways in which he couldn’t measure up to Emmett? How would she be able to go to bed with someone who could never be his equal?
That doesn’t matter, she told herself sternly. You won’t be doing it for fun, the way you were with Emmett. You’ll be doing it to conceive. You’ll be doing your duty. That’s all it is. Do your duty to your pack.
But why? Why should her life be about duty and responsibility? Everyone had a role to play in the pack, it was true. but the rest of them got to enjoy their lives too. They were allowed to leave the house. They were allowed to choose their own mates, or choose not to mate at all if that was what they wanted. All her life, she had been told how privileged she was not to have to get a job, not to have to work hard. She had been told she would be provided for. And that had always been true. But now, it occurred to her that having the freedom to lie around all day wasn’t the same as having freedom. It couldn’t compare, really.
It wasn’t just Emmett she wanted—although she did want him, and desperately. But she also wanted to be free to choose Emmett. She wanted to choose her mate for herself, not to let Matthew choose for her.
Would he allow that? He wanted her mated, but maybe he would let her help decide who her mate was. She thought that was possible. Hadn’t Rita said that if she expressed a preference, Matthew would take it into consideration? Hazel had felt apathetic about the whole thing at the time, but she didn’t now.
Would Matthew allow her to choose Emmett?
That seemed far less likely.
She knew what her alpha thought of wild wolves, and it was nothing good. Matthew would be appalled to hear of the way she’d been living since she’d been with Emmett. It wasn’t just the sex that would shock him—although, God, she hoped he’d never find out about that—but the dirty diners in which they’d eaten, the motels in which they’d stayed, the fact that she’d ridden through several states on the back of a motorcycle. Matthew would hate all those things, and she thought he might hate Emmett for introducing her to them.
Just because we’re wolves, Matthew liked to say, doesn’t mean we have to be animals.
But there was something so appealing about the animal side of her. It was something she’d never been able to explore until she’d been kidnapped. Pregnancy, she supposed, would bring out something a little more animal than what she was accustomed to. Motherhood would heighten her wolf instincts. But until now, her whole life had been extremely human.
And this was just the tip of the iceberg. There wasn’t really anything very animalistic about eating in a diner, was there? That was only wild by Matthew’s uptight standards. Hazel wondered how truly wild Emmett could get. He’d mentioned hunting for his dinner. The idea frightened her, and yet, something about it spoke to her. Matthew would hate that too, she thought. He would call Emmett a beast.
Emmett pulled the motorcycle over to the side of the road and dismounted. Hazel followed suit. “Are we taking a break?” she asked.
“We’re taking a sleep break,” he said. “We’ve been riding for about twelve hours. We need to be fresh for tomorrow.”
It hadn’t felt like twelve hours. It had felt more like two. Hazel couldn’t believe how fast time seemed to go by when she was riding with Emmett. She would have been happy to stay on the bike with him for hours more.
Now, though, she looked around and felt baffled. “There’s not a motel here,” she said.
“No,” he agreed. He took the bike by the handlebars and pushed it off the shoulder and into a cornfield by the side of the road.
She followed. “There’s not anything here. Where are we supposed to sleep?”
“We’ll crash here in the field,” he said. “It’s plenty safe.”
“Last time we slept in a field, we were attacked!” she reminded him.
“This time’s different,” he said. “The Rangers are west of us. They’re not going to find us here.”
“You don’t know that.”
“No, I’m pretty sure,” he said.
“Can’t we get a motel?’
“Not if we want to keep being able to eat,” he said. “I’m running low on funds.”
“So, we’re just supposed to sleep here?” she asked. “On the ground?”
“Haven’t you ever been camping?” The look on his face made it clear that he knew perfectly well that she hadn’t.
“We don’t have a tent,” she pointed out. “How can you call it camping without a tent? Before, the night we got attacked, we at least had that tarp.”
“There’s nothing like sleeping under the stars,” Emmett said, propping his bike up on its kickstand between two rows of corn. “Besides, it’s not cloudy or anything. It’s not going to rain on us. You’ll be fine. Come on, let’s find a good spot.”
She followed him dubiously. “How are we going to know a good spot when we see one?”
“This spot here looks pretty good,” he said, gesturing around.
Hazel looked at the ground, then turned in a slow circle, taking stock of her surroundings. She couldn’t see how this patch of ground was any different than any other in the immediate area. “This isn’t some kind of practical joke, is it?” she asked weakly.
He smiled. “Come on. You wanted to know what it was like to live like me, right? Well, this is how I spend most of my nights.” He took her hand and sank to his knees, pulling her down with him. “If it makes you more comfortable, we can shift and sleep in wolf form,” he said.
She stared. “You can sleep in wolf form?”
“Um. Of course?”
“You don’t just shift back to human once you’re asleep?”
“Why on earth would that happen?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “I’ve only used my wolf form in training exercises.”
“What training exercises?” He laid back and held out an arm and she leaned back and rested her head on his shoulder. “Is this something else Matthew came up with?”
“I have no idea,” she admitted. “I always thought it was a normal thing.”
“Well, what did you train to do?”
“It wasn’t, like, to do anything,” she said. “Running, mostly. There were races in human form and races in wolf form. Men against men and women against women.”
“Did you ever win?”
She laughed. “Of course not. I’m not very fast. Besides, the others had things like gym memberships and daily jogs, and I was stuck in the house all the time. I never exactly had the chance to increase my fitness level.”
“What was the point of these races?”
“They were good for us,” she said, shrugging. “That’s what Matthew always said.”
“Another healthy choice, huh?”
“Just exactly what do you have against health?” she asked him.
“Nothing,” he said. “But I do think that if you spend some time outside every once in a while, healthy choices happen naturally. You just end up running and walking. Matthew’s approach seems to have been to keep you indoors as much as possible and then to let you out for short stints and try to cram all your exercise in at once.”
“He was just trying to keep me safe,” she said quietly.
He didn’t answer, but she knew what he was thinking. It was the same thing he’d articulated to her back at the diner. Matthew had done a terrible job of keeping her safe. And once she’d been kidnapped, it seemed, he hadn’t really even tried to bring her home.
She was beginning to feel as though everything she knew about her alpha was wrong.
“You’re safe here,” Emmett said quietly
. “You know that, don’t you?”
She snuggled close to him and didn’t answer.
“I know they found us the last time we were in a field,” he said. “But that was just a few miles from where they’d had you in that bunker. We’re hours away now from where we saw them last. Whole states away.”
“Where are we?” she asked, tipping her head up to look at him.
“Virginia.”
“Virginia?” She frowned. “I thought we were in Ohio before. That’s what you said.”
“I did. We were.”
“I thought you said we were going back?”
He didn’t answer.
“Virginia isn’t between Ohio and Rhode Island,” she said. “You took a detour, didn’t you?”
“Okay. Yes. I did.”
“You think they’re still following us?” A shudder ran through her.
He pulled her close. “No,” he said. “I don’t think that. Not really.”
“Not really? What does that mean?”
He sighed. “I wanted another night with you,” he said. “I couldn’t bear to take you back. So, I convinced myself that we needed to take a detour, that it was the best way to get you back safely. The truth is that we probably didn’t need to do it at all. But I wanted to spend more time with you.” He looked at her. “Are you angry?”
In answer, she craned her neck to meet his lips with hers. She felt the relief course through his body as he kissed her back, his arms circling her and holding her close.
One more night, she thought, delirious with happiness. He wanted one more night together.
Side by side, as if by unspoken agreement, they undressed. Hazel ran her hands all over Emmett’s naked body, moving slowly this time, luxuriating in the fact that they had nowhere to be and that their enemies were far away. They shouldn’t be doing this, she knew—there would be trouble if they were found out—but anyone who might want to stop them was also distant. Nobody knew where they were.
“Go slow,” she whispered as he moved to enter her.
He paused. “Did I hurt you last time?”
“No. I just want to make it last.”
