Cowboy in Wolf's Clothing

by Kait Ballenger

  He squeezed her shoulder in reassurance. “There’s a major gap in their formation to the southwest side of the cabin. Nine o’clock.” He indicated the spot with the flick of his eyes. “When the first of them show themselves, I want you to run in that direction, and I don’t want you to stop running until you reach the stables. Take your pick of the horses. Don’t stop until horizon breaks, long after these fuckers will be back in their covens hiding from the sun. You understand?”

  Belle gulped, but she gave a small nod. “What about you?” she whispered.

  Colt shook his head. “I’m going to hold them off while you get out.”

  “Colt, you can’t. With this many, they’ll…” Her voice trailed off.

  Take you alive. It was unspoken, but her message was clear. He knew it. That was these bloodsuckers’ plan after all. But he wasn’t about to see this woman get hurt. Not by a long shot. And Colt Cavanaugh, high commander of the Grey Wolf armies, never backed down from a fight. Never. It wasn’t his way.

  Tears streamed down Belle’s cheeks, whether from fear for her own life or his, he couldn’t be certain.

  He pegged her with a hard stare. It was intended to fortify her, strengthen her, but it only caused the tears to fall faster. “No crying, Belle. Just action. Do you understand?”

  “We didn’t even get to say goodbye.”

  He sensed the subtle movement in the darkness. The vampires were closing in, preparing for their attack.

  “Usually women are angry because I said goodbye, not crying because I didn’t.” He shook his head. “I’m not worth your tears, sweetheart.” He reached out and twisted the single curl across her cheek, gently tucking it behind her ear. “Run, Belle, and don’t look back,” he growled as the first of his enemies tore through the tree line.

  Belle shifted into her wolf and bolted toward the tree line. Colt ripped his concealed blade from his boot, then vaulted over the patio railing. He landed in the snow with a thud before he charged toward his enemies, blade swinging. In his peripheral vision, he watched Belle run to her escape before he launched himself into the melee. The first one to reach him lunged from his right. Colt spun away from the attack, slicing his blade across the vampire’s throat. It wasn’t enough to kill the beast, but it would leave it temporarily maimed. When another attacked at his left, he met it blow for blow, engaging in a lethal killing dance until he staked it straight in the heart.

  He managed to take out five before they overwhelmed him by sheer numbers. Tackling him, they pinned him to the ground. He continued to struggle, even once a pair of silver handcuffs was clenched around his wrists.

  Karma’s payback for his treatment of Belle, he guessed.

  Dragging his head up by the hair, they eased him to his knees, and Colt wasn’t surprised in the slightest to find himself face-to-face with Lucas again. Only this time, the bloodsucker had enough backup, which meant some of Colt’s men had likely lost their lives.

  He growled.

  “Commander, good to see you again.” Lucas grinned, his sharp fangs protruding to make his delight as sinister as it was ugly.

  “I’ll bleed you myself, Lucas,” Colt snarled.

  Lucas’s eyes transitioned to their bright, glowing red. “We’ll see if you feel the same way when you’re strapped to my experiment table.” With a quick nod of his head, Lucas’s men gripped Colt by the arms, hauling him kicking and fighting into the woods.

  As they dragged Colt into the darkness, his only reassurance was that even if they killed him, Belle had made it out alive. He’d given her the freedom he promised. And for a man like him, who’d faced death more times than he could count, for now, that was enough.

  Chapter 10

  If Colt died here tonight, it wouldn’t be in vain. He couldn’t remember the last time they had given him water, and his limbs ached with dehydration. Nausea churned his stomach. Metal clanged against metal as he rattled the chains that held him in place. It had become a game of sorts, a reminder to his enemy that he’d yet to give up.

  Not even with the tip of the vampire’s silver blade shoved against his windpipe.

  “I’ll ask you one more time, Commander.” The deep voice echoed against the steel walls. His enemy eased the blade ever closer to Colt’s jugular. “Will you surrender to me?”

  It was the game they played. The sick fuck favored slow, sadistic methods intended to break a wolf.

  Colt wasn’t any wolf.

  Summoning the last bit of fight left in him, Colt closed his eyes, leaning into the searing pain of the blade without fear. In the freezing air of the dungeon, even with his body broken in ways he couldn’t have begun to fathom, it didn’t take much imagination to bring himself back there to the memory, fresh and new in his mind. To the silent, snow-covered forest. To her.

  She was a vision, naked and writhing beneath him. His hands fisting and tangling the dark curls of her hair as he drove himself into her. She was dripping for him as she wrapped her legs around him and moaned with pleasure that he felt all the way from his balls to that thumping organ in his chest he dared call a heart.

  Staring up at him with heavy-lidded eyes, the hazel starbursts of her irises shone all the more emerald from the pale cream of her cheeks and the just-kissed pink of her swollen lips.

  “I see you, Colt. I see all of you,” her eyes seemed to say.

  And did he revel in it—like a refreshing burst of spring water to his shriveled desert of a soul. He’d been consumed by the desperate ache. She filled a deep need inside the cavern of his chest in a way he hadn’t realized he craved until she stormed into his life. And for that moment, it was enough to keep him going, to refuse to cave to his enemies for another day.

  His death would mean something, even if he died here now. Not for Maverick, not for the Grey Wolves, the pack that loved him and called him their own. The very same pack that would shun him if they knew what he truly was. No, if he died tonight, it would be for her.

  For her protection. For her life. For the bliss she’d gifted him, a gleaming diamond gem in an otherwise dark life.

  Even though the promise in her eyes wasn’t true. As much as he wanted it to be, deep down, he knew it. Despite the night they’d shared, she hadn’t seen the real him, the monster beneath the carefully crafted warrior exterior.

  But on that cold silver table, death hovering like a ghostly promise over him, with his enemy’s blade at his throat, for a brief moment, he allowed himself enough delusion to believe it.

  And that delusion fueled his resolve.

  “Kill me then.” Colt opened his eyes, his irises glowing the fierce gold of his wolf as he turned his gaze toward his enemy. The snarl that tore from his throat was laced with lethal intent. “But I refuse to break.”

  Lucas smiled with malicious intent. “Well, in that case…”

  Colt jolted awake, his heart pounding and his breathing labored. Despite the cold sweat running down his torso, he didn’t need to take in his surroundings. He knew he was lying safely in his bed, in his apartment, inside the main compound of the Grey Wolves’ ranch at Wolf Pack Run, yet his heart raced as if he were back there again in that godforsaken cell.

  They hadn’t killed him as the memory promised, though they’d tortured him until he’d barely remembered his own name. He’d healed from the injuries, but the memories still tormented him. God-awful nightmares. He’d had dozens of them in the handful of weeks he’d been back home on the ranch, but still they remained clear, so vivid he could practically taste his own blood when he woke.

  He sat up in bed, checking the clock on his nightstand. Just before sunrise, which meant it was high time for him to get some breakfast before he headed out to the pasture. Calving season was due to start any day, and the cattle weren’t going to bring themselves in near the barn. He also was eager to get the work done before Maverick and Wes returned from their meeting with th
e Seven Range Pact this afternoon. If he wasn’t finished by then, the torment of waiting a moment longer for the final news of the Pact’s decision would kill him.

  Rising from bed, Colt showered, then dressed and made his way down to the mess hall. After chowing down on more than one round of bacon, eggs, and hash browns, he rode one of the ATVs out to the stables, met up with the other Grey Wolf ranch hands he was working with, saddled up Silver, and rode into the pasture.

  This time of year, the cattle weren’t far out. They stayed close to the barn where they’d been fed most of the winter instead of venturing out where the grass was still sparse. Moving them in near the fences made for easy, enjoyable work, and the day passed by in a blur. The work distracted Colt, allowing him a refuge from his thoughts, from the guilt and blame and the rage that had niggled at the back of his mind since his packmates had rescued him from the vampires. And her…

  It was early afternoon by the time they finished. Having brought the herd in and separated out the pregnant cows about to drop calves, Colt rode Silver back to Wolf Pack Run. Maverick and Wes would be back shortly, and since he planned to ride back out to the pastures to operate the hay baler until dinner, he didn’t have the mind to take Silver back to the stables.

  When they reached the main compound, Colt tied Silver to a quartering post, a development that caused Silver to huff in distress. Colt tried to appease the beast by retrieving an apple for the horse from his saddlebag.

  He held the apple out, but after giving the Granny Smith a tentative sniff, Silver nudged the apple out of Colt’s hand with a distasteful grumble, knocking it to the ground.

  Colt frowned. “You’re damn wasteful, Silver.” Apparently, nothing but Honeycrisp would do for the equine prima donna.

  Silver had been downright moody and despondent since Colt’s return, but honestly, Colt thought it had more to do with the absence of a certain she-wolf than Silver being angry about Colt’s enforced absence. He patted a hand through the beast’s mane. Even his horse preferred her.

  Retrieving the apple and returning it to his bag, Colt headed to Maverick’s office. He’d give the Granny Smith to one of the other horses in the stable later. Then maybe his horse would be a bit more appreciative.

  Situated in the center of the main compound and attached to an adjoining security room lined with the pack’s latest technologies, Maverick’s office served as the Grey Wolf Pack’s command central. Colt passed his own apartment on the way in. Aside from Maverick’s private office, the main compound housed the apartments of the pack’s ten elite warriors, including Colt’s, along with their security offices, several conference rooms, and a rec room.

  Colt knocked, then entered. He stepped inside the office to find the back of Maverick’s leather desk chair facing toward him, a clear sign that the packmaster had yet to return from his meeting. The chair sat behind a custom wooden desk, the burled edge artfully carved from the trunk of a massive oak. Colt sat down in one of the chairs in front of it and waited.

  A few moments later, the door to Maverick’s office swung open, and the Grey Wolf packmaster stepped inside.

  Upon his entrance, Colt immediately stood. “Packmaster,” he said. “I have the status reports for the day and I—”

  “Cut the ‘packmaster’ bullshit, Colt. We’ve known each other since we were kids. I’ve never once told you to call me packmaster outside of formal ceremonies, and we both know why you’re here.” Maverick crossed behind his desk and set down the large stack of files he’d been carrying. “The front lines have been a ghost town since you returned. All quiet on the western front.” He glanced up at Colt. “You’re here about the Seven Range Pact vote.”

  “Am I that transparent?” Colt asked.

  Maverick smiled, but it didn’t quite reach his eyes. “Only since I’ve known you so long.” The smile faded, and he released a hefty sigh. The Grey Wolf packmaster wasn’t one to pull any punches. “The vote was a no, Colt.”

  For a moment, Colt didn’t say anything. He just stood there, contemplating the ramifications of the Pact’s decision.

  When he’d escaped the vampires’ torture, he and his packmates had returned to Wolf Pack Run and recounted the horrors to Maverick. Every gruesome, hairsplitting detail from the moment he’d laid eyes on Lucas in the clearing up to the moment his fellow elite warriors had arrived to rescue him.

  The only detail he’d left out was his torrid affair with a Rogue she-wolf, who also happened to be the former physician of the Wild Eight. Colt was a man of his word, and when he’d promised Belle to never speak of her to any other Grey Wolf as thanks for saving his life, he’d meant it—even if it meant lying to his packmaster. He knew he’d never see her again, but that didn’t matter. As soon as he’d returned to Wolf Pack Run, he’d wiped her name from their files, disposed of all information on her, and told Maverick that the Belle Beaumont he’d had captive at the Missoula pack headquarters had been killed in the melee. For all intents and purposes, Belle Beaumont no longer existed…

  Despite that minor lapse in truth, Colt had outlined his suspicions that the vampires were plotting to find a way to feed off werewolves. He had no proof of this for the Grey Wolves other than his word and the eerie fact that they’d taken several vials of his blood while he was in captivity.

  Maverick had promised to take the issue up with the Seven Range Pact. The goal was to get a counterintelligence strike, manned by Colt, approved to gather further intelligence before they launched a full-fledged attack. Maverick had expressed his concern that the Pact might not deem retaliation for the sake of one still-living commander worth risking the lives of their most elite troops on a covert mission for which they had little definitive proof, but Colt hadn’t actually anticipated they’d vote against him.

  As he tried to hold in the anger growing inside him, Colt’s hands balled into fists. His anger shook him to the core, like a bucking bronco he could barely contain. “How did you vote?”

  “Colt,” Maverick said.

  Colt raised his voice. Not at all the usual reverence he gave his friend and packmaster. “How did you vote, Maverick?” he asked.

  “That question is uncalled for. You—”

  “How did you vote?” Colt snarled. He couldn’t hold the anger in any longer. Packmaster or not, he couldn’t. Not this time.

  Maverick held his gaze, his emerald eyes burning with an emotion Colt couldn’t identify. If Colt’s insubordinate tone angered him, he didn’t show it, or at least he was willing to tolerate it, for now. “I voted against it,” he said.

  Without warning, Colt turned to leave. He couldn’t do this. Not now. Not without telling Maverick exactly how he felt about him and his fucking Pact’s decision. Colt had been loyal to this man his whole life, but his loyalty to the Grey Wolves went far beyond Maverick.

  “Colt.” Maverick spoke his name with a mix of concern and censure in his voice that only fueled Colt’s frustration. It was like pouring hot oil on already burning flames.

  Colt kept his back turned, his voice barely above a whisper. If he spoke any louder, he knew his rage would get the best of him.

  “You weren’t there, Maverick,” he said. “You weren’t there in that room. You didn’t hear their taunts, feel their silver blades against your skin, smell the scent of their coppery breath as they leaned over you to torture you one more time. You. Weren’t. There.” He punctuated each final word with every ounce of his anger.

  “You’re right,” Maverick said from behind him. “You’re right. I wasn’t there. But I know the facts, Colt. By all accounts, the Pact’s scientists say it’s not possible. This was some twisted mental game the vampires wanted to play, and if we hadn’t gotten you out of there when we did, they likely would have killed you. That was their end goal. Nothing more. We even searched for the missing bobcat and cougar you mentioned, but we didn’t find anything. Even if they had access to your blood
, it wouldn’t be possible for them to feed from werewolves. That would mean they had found a way to alter your DNA or theirs. All our techs say it isn’t feasible.”

  Maverick was wrong. Colt knew it without a doubt.

  “I can’t possibly know what you’ve been through, but I think you would realize that I understand the depth of your hatred for them.” Maverick spoke indirectly of the death of his former mate, killed at the hands of a vampire shortly after he’d become packmaster. The packmaster’s tone softened. “I understand the need for revenge.”

  Colt shook his head. This wasn’t about him or his need for revenge. “It isn’t about me. I told you their request before the Missoula attack, about what I overheard. It’s not personal.”

  “And you don’t think that was a ploy to rile you? An attempt to cloud your judgment before battle? You’re the high commander of the Grey Wolf armies. Aside from myself and Wes, you’re the sole man responsible for all the deaths of their coven members and allies. The pack is under my leadership, but you’ve led our troops, you’ve won the battles. They purposefully approached at a time when they knew you would take the meeting, and then they took you captive and tortured you with the intent to kill. Thank God, they didn’t get that far.”

  Maverick’s frustration grew with each passing word. “I am man enough to admit that if anyone bears the responsibility for what you went through, I’m that man. I never should have allowed the situation to begin with. It was an error in judgment, and I’m sorry for it.”

  Colt inhaled several deep breaths, keeping his breathing level. He refused to address Maverick’s apology. He wouldn’t even give it any validity. “They’re plotting something against the pack and I know it, Maverick. Allow me to conduct reconnaissance, to find out the truth.”

  “You know I can’t do that, Colt. During wartime, the Seven Range Pact acts as one. Their decision is my decision. It’s out of my hands.”

  “I need to protect the pack.”