Hungry Like a Wolf (Claws Clause Book 1)

by Jessica Lynch

Maddox checked his eyes—gold but not glowing—and his teeth—pointy but not long enough to worry the human—before making sure that his fingers had nails, not claws, and his back was straight, not hunched. His wolf was lurking right on the edge. It wouldn’t take much to switch forms, but his beast kept prowling inside his chest. Even it realized that being in its two-legged shape would make this easier.

  After giving the bulge in his jeans one sorry pat, adjusting it so that his hard-on wasn’t so damn obvious, Maddox exhaled and opened the door before the Ant had the chance to ring the doorbell for a third time.

  Just like he expected, the man who stood on his porch was from the Grayson PD. Tall and lanky for a human, the cop was at least a decade older than Maddox. A touch of grey started at the edges of his thick dark hair, his tanned skin lightly lined. Still, he had a friendly sort of air to him, despite the serious way he regarded Maddox.

  “Good morning, sir.”

  “Morning.”

  “Are you Maddox Wolfe?”

  Maddox nodded.

  “Please step outside, Mr. Wolfe. I’d like to talk to you, if you don’t mind.”

  Yeah, right. Like he had a choice.

  He made sure to keep the door open behind him as he stepped onto the porch. For one thing, it told the cop that he had nothing to hide. For another, he was able to sense Evangeline easier this way. He would know if she left the room with enough time to block the door before the cop found her inside.

  Maddox offered the Ant—his nameplate said Diaz—a tight-lipped smile. When it came to the police, a shifter couldn’t be too careful. He didn’t want to give Diaz a reason to reach for one of the weapons on his belt because he “felt” threatened.

  “Can I help you with something, Officer?”

  “I’ve come about an Evangeline Lewis. Is that name familiar to you?”

  The cop watched him with a gleam in his dark eyes that Maddox took as a dare. Okay, so this guy had come prepared. He knew exactly who Maddox was and all about his relationship to Evangeline. For whatever reason, Diaz was testing him.

  “Of course I do,” Maddox answered. Probably not what the cop expected him to say, but he was proud to admit the truth. “She’s my mate.”

  “She’s also missing.”

  “Tell me something I don’t know. I’ve been trying to find her ever since they let me out of the Cage, but no one will tell me where she is.”

  “Are you sure you don’t know where we can find her? Her mother’s frantic. It seems Ms. Lewis hasn’t been back to her apartment in a day or two and that’s very unusual. We’ve tried contacting friends and family. You’re the next one on my list. Can you help me?”

  Keeping his expression neutral was harder than he thought. Diaz seemed earnest but Maddox called bullshit. If he didn’t suspect Maddox, he would’ve tried talking to him first by reaching out to Colt; that was the only number left in his file at the Cage. Plus, Maddox only nabbed Evangeline early yesterday afternoon. The cops couldn’t know she was already missing.

  Could they?

  It seemed to him as if someone had watched his house and, the second he entered it, the cops were sprung. He hadn’t stepped foot inside of it in years, though he was grateful that Colt kept it ready as if he expected his brother to come back any minute.

  There was no deception coming off of the cop. Didn’t matter. Diaz was up to something. Maddox was sure of it. While they might not have proof that Evangeline was with him—otherwise he’d be back in silver shackles and she’d be ripped away from him again—they were as certain as they could be. Now all they had to do was trick Maddox into confessing.

  Ha. Not likely.

  Maddox wasn’t about to waste time beating around the bush, either. Officer Diaz could dance around the subject all he wanted to see if he could get Maddox to trip up, but Maddox had his unpredictable mate to worry about. The quicker he got this over with, the quicker he could get back to her.

  “I’ve been searching for her for more than a week myself, Officer. I’m sure you already knew that, just like I’m sure you know that I’ve only just been let out of the Cage myself. It’s a no-brainer that the first thing I would do after getting out would be go after Evangeline. But, if you know anything about my story, you’ll know that my bond with her was severed. It’s why I thought she was dead. It’s why the warden finally signed off on my release. I’m rehabilitated, right? So, yeah, I know she’s out there but I don’t know where.”

  “Really? Is that true?”

  There was something in the way the Ant asked that. Somehow, Diaz knew he was lying. But, unless Maddox confessed, the cop couldn’t prove anything. This wasn’t a real interrogation. Not yet, anyway.

  It was like high noon in Dodge City. Two gunslingers facing off, their hands on their weapons just in case. No one knew who was going to make the first move. Diaz wasn’t ready to simply take Maddox’s word for it. Maddox refused to admit to anything.

  The sound of a car door slamming cut through the standoff. Maddox broke eye contact first, glancing over at the cruiser parked along the curb. Once he determined that it was safe to take his stare off of the shifter, Diaz followed Maddox’s gaze.

  A second cop came storming across the lawn.

  This one… this one Maddox recognized. He’d dealt with him on a couple of occasions when he was in the Cage and always got the impression that the guard didn’t like him. He realized he was wrong as the blonde officer came rushing toward him. This Ant didn’t just dislike him—that was hatred clinging to his uniform.

  It put Maddox’s back right up. “Wright?” It was a growl. “What are you doing here?”

  Wright’s good-looking features twisted into an ugly grimace. “That’s Officer Wright to you, asshole.”

  Maddox had to give Diaz credit. For an older guy, he was fucking quick. Before Maddox could launch himself at Wright, bristling at the rage coming off of the livid cop, Diaz inserted his body between the two, pressing his hand to Wright’s chest to force him to take a couple of steps back.

  “Cool it, man.”

  When Wright tried to lunge around him, Diaz stopped him again, more forcefully this time.

  “I said cool it. Bennett let you come on the ride-along if you agreed to stay in the cruiser. You gotta back down. I got this.”

  Wright shook him off. “Fuck you, too. What would you do if one of these bastards made off with Connie, huh?”

  Diaz didn’t like that. But that got through to him. Dropping his hand, he didn’t try to stop the other cop again.

  Wright took that as his cue to whirl back on Maddox. “Where the fuck is my girlfriend?”

  Maddox heard his claws unleash with a menacing snick. He curled his fists so tightly that the points sliced right into his palm. The small jolt of pain grounded him and he was able to keep his voice calm. “I don’t understand what you mean.”

  “The fuck you don’t. Eva! I’m here, babe. Where are you? Answer me!”

  Wright took a step toward the house, then stopped when he realized that, while he was a big guy, Maddox was so much bigger. There was no way he could go through Maddox, and when he tried to feint and get past the shifter, Maddox turned his body just enough to ensure that Wright couldn’t see anything inside the house before reaching behind him and slamming the door shut with his bloody palm.

  Wright growled. The fucking Ant actually growled at him. “I know you have her,” he spat out, stepping up to Maddox until they were toe to toe. “Give her to me now, you animal.”

  “Even if I had her, I wouldn’t. She’s not yours.”

  “Fuck you, Wolfe. She’s not yours, either. You don’t have a bond with her. If you did, you would have known she survived the accident. You would have been there for her these last three years like I was. She’s mine now.”

  Maddox’s whole body tensed, then froze.

  Half of his attention was back in the house, waiting to see what sort of move Evangeline would make. The other half was on the uniforms in front of him a
nd the guns they had strapped to their hips. He wasn’t going to make any sudden movements that would allow them to draw their weapons and use the Claws Clause to their advantage. Bonded shifters without their mates could be put down if they posed any threat and he’d told them he didn’t have Evangeline with him.

  Rehabilitation wouldn’t mean anything if he lost his shit now.

  His conversation with that prick Wright was almost on autopilot. He could tell the Cage guard was trying to goad him, bringing Evangeline up like that. Right. As if he believed that this guy even knew his mate. If he did, he would’ve known how much she hated being called ‘Eva’.

  But the way Wright snarled ‘mine’ roused Maddox’s wolf, the possessive need to assert his claim over his mate almost unbearably hard to resist.

  And then the wind shifted. His nostrils flared, automatically searching out the scent of his sudden rival. Because there was no denying that Wright was telling the fucking truth. Maddox knew that scent. He’d smelled hints of it all over Evangeline before her scent came back and overpowered it. With a stifled growl, he narrowed his gaze on Wright’s nameplate.

  A. Wright.

  “Adam,” he snarled. He knew in an instant that he had made a huge mistake. Didn’t matter. He couldn’t have stopped his reaction if he wanted to.

  This was the man who had tried to steal his mate from him?

  Wright’s shit-eating grin was huge. “Eva tell you about me? She remembers me, you see. Can you say the same? What kind of bond do you think you had with her if she forgot you so easily?”

  If Maddox hadn’t been too busy kicking his own ass for slipping up in front of Diaz, he would’ve turned on Wright. That—and timely intervention by the other police officer when Diaz realized Maddox was going to lunge at Wright again—was probably the only thing that saved the Ant’s life.

  Diaz grabbed Wright by the shoulder and hauled him about five feet away from Maddox’s front porch. Did he forget that Maddox was an alpha wolf? The distance wasn’t anywhere near far enough to keep their conversation quiet. Though Diaz dropped his voice to a whisper, Maddox’s shifter senses picked up on every word over his angry panting.

  “Adam, what the hell are you trying to do?”

  “He’s got her, Lou. I know he does.”

  “We’ve got to do this right, you know that.”

  “She needs me.”

  “Sure she does, but do you think it’s a good idea to rub his face in the fact that you knew his mate when he was locked up in the Cage?”

  “What’s he gonna do? He wolfs out, you shoot him. Plain and simple.”

  “I can’t—”

  “That’s the beauty of the Claws Clause, Diaz. Yes, you can.”

  Then, before Diaz could get another word in, Wright stomped back over to Maddox, hand out, pointer finger extended.

  “You weren’t supposed to get your paws on her. I watched her from afar, took care of her while she recovered. When it seemed like you might go after her again, I kept her safe from you. It was easy, too. Fucking animal follows its nose, right? So I hid her scent trail, made you work for it. But you got to my girl anyway. Tell me. Tell me, Wolfe. How did you find her?”

  Maddox’s gaze strayed back over to Diaz’s gun. It was a struggle to keep his voice steady, but he did it by forcing himself to remember that he couldn’t bond with Evangeline if he had a chest full of silver bullets.

  “I didn’t.”

  Truth. Maddox hadn’t found her.

  Colton had.

  “You’re lying,” spat out Wright.

  Diaz shook his head. “He’s telling the truth.”

  “How the hell would you know? You a witch or something?” Then, as if realizing how he had spoken to a fellow officer, Wright regained some composure. Wincing, he said, “Sorry about that. You know I don’t honestly think you’re one of them.”

  Of course he would apologize to Diaz. Because, to an Ant, accusing a human of being a Para was the lowest of the low.

  Diaz didn’t seem to care. He waved Wright off before jerking his thumb over his shoulder at the waiting cruiser. “It’s fine. Don’t worry about it. But do me a favor? Get back in the car. You’re not helping either one of us here.”

  It seemed as if Wright wasn’t going to listen to the other officer for a moment before he huffed and started to back off. He must have felt incredibly guilty over his low blow to give in so easily.

  It was Maddox who wasn’t ready to end this. It was reckless and stupid and basic macho bullshit, but he wasn’t done with the man who thought he deserved Evangeline just yet.

  “If she was yours, wouldn’t she have come out when she heard you here? You’re making enough racket to wake the dead, Wright. And I don’t see her. So if you’re right, and she’s here, I guess she’d rather stay with me than come running to you.”

  That stopped Wright right in his tracks. His momentary calm? Gone.

  “How do I know that you don’t have her chained to a bed somewhere?” sneered Wright. “Anything to keep her from trying to escape. That’s how you animals operate, right? With your precious ‘mates’.”

  Okay. At the beginning of this confrontation, there was an invisible line drawn in the sand. Ever since the cruiser pulled up to his house, they had all been dancing around it, even tiptoeing up to it, but no one had dared cross it.

  Until then. Every one of them knew at that moment that Adam Wright hadn’t just stepped over it. He had fucking flown right past that line.

  Maddox’s eyes flashed, burning brightly like liquid gold. That… that was a challenge.

  “Do you think I would do that?” he snarled. His fangs started to lengthen, his face turning sharp as his features began to shift. “Do you really think I would chain up my mate? I love her!”

  In one fluid motion, Diaz yanked his gun from his holster. “Stand down, sir. Show me your hands. Now.”

  Maddox held up his hands. Thank fucking Alpha they were human hands. As angry as he was, shifting more than he already had would have been a very big mistake. Even his wolf knew that.

  Didn’t stop him from having the last word. “I would never hurt her. If I knew where she was.”

  If she was still where he left her.

  The closed door mocked Maddox, Wright’s taunts about Evangeline ringing in his ears. While it kept her from showing herself—or letting that bastard Wright peek inside of the house—it also cut him off from his mate. He couldn’t sense her as easily through the wood, not when he was so preoccupied with keeping his cool in front of these cops. Had she run again? He needed to know.

  “Is there anything else I can help you with?” he asked, trying to hurry them along.

  “Yeah, you can let us in so I can check your place out for myself.”

  There was no way in hell he was going to let that happen. This cop wanted to pretend he was playing by the rules, well, Maddox could do that, too. “You got a warrant, Wright?”

  “I told you, it’s Officer Wright. And if you were innocent, you’d let me in without a warrant.”

  “No. If I were stupid, I’d let you in without a warrant.”

  “Wright—”

  Wright ignored Diaz’s warning. He poked Maddox right in the chest and was fucking lucky he didn’t lose that finger. “You want a warrant? I’ll get a warrant. But you better be here when I get back, Wolfe.”

  “I’ve nothing to hide, Officer. I’m not going anywhere.” At least, he thought to himself, he wasn’t going anywhere until he was sure being home again wouldn’t be enough to help Evangeline’s memories along.

  “If she’s in there, I’ll bring you up on kidnapping charges so fast, your head’ll spin. And if she’s not…” Wright might not be a shifter, but his sudden grin was so shark-like, Maddox almost started second-guessing him. “If she’s not, then I’ll put you back in the Cage.”

  “You can’t—”

  “I can. And I will. Ordinance 7304, asshole. You’re still nothing but a shifter without his mate. Maybe this t
ime I’ll suggest putting you down.” He sniffed angrily. “They never should’ve let you out again. Your kind should all be locked up.”

  “Okay, that’s enough. Wright, get back in the cruiser before I tell Bennett what you’ve been up to.”

  When Wright made like he was about to argue, Diaz reached for the walkie clipped to his belt.

  That shut the other cop up. With one last hate-filled glare thrown at Maddox, Wright turned on his heel and marched back over to the cop car. Climbing into the front seat, he slammed the door behind him.

  Diaz waited until the echo from the slam died down before he nodded over at Maddox. He looked embarrassed. “He’ll be trying every judge he can within the hour. I don’t blame him, either. He’s going to do everything he can to get his girl back—just like I would expect you to do the same. I know I would for my Connie.”

  Then the dark-haired officer leaned closer and did the last thing Maddox ever expected. With a secretive little smile, Diaz dropped his glamour long enough to let the inky blackness of his gaze fall away until Maddox was looking into a pair of strikingly violet eyes.

  Fucking hell, he was a witch. Which meant that he knew what he was talking about when he said Maddox was telling the truth before since most witches could sense a lie the same way that Maddox could scent emotions. Diaz probably also knew that every other denial about knowing Evangeline’s location was an out and out lie.

  Shit.

  “Officer, I—”

  “I’m sure we’ll be back the second he gets his hands on that warrant. Wright’s a good cop and an okay guy, but to fuck with a bond? Humans don’t understand. I’ll stall for as long as I can. Do what you have to do.”

  “Why are you helping me?”

  Officer Diaz’s eyes were back to their black color as he studied Maddox closely. “Because you were telling the truth when you said you loved her.” He nodded over at Maddox. “I’m sure I’ll be seeing you soon. Good luck, sir.”

  Maddox stayed on his front porch until even he couldn’t see the tail end of the police car. He glanced around, feeling eyes on him. A blue-haired biddy across the street from him was peeping through her curtains. Maddox lifted a hand and waved, not even a little surprised when she dropped the curtains and disappeared from the window.