by Kele Moon
And hot.
Rich beat the trunk with his fist. “The more you move around like that, the worse you’re making it on both of us.”
She started growling and struggling in earnest, desperate for attention. She tried to make as much noise as she could, because she needed out of the darkness. She needed…
Amber moaned and arched her hips, shifting impatiently.
“I said stop wiggling!” A fist hit the hood once more, before his voice dropped to a low grumble. “Fucking Leroy. Hope Desmon eats him. I got bitches in Reno, plenty of ’em.” He pounded the hood once more. “You don’t want me to open this trunk. I’ll make it worth the punishment, I promise!”
13
The rain made everything a thousand times worse.
Desmon knew tracking Amber’s scent would be nearly impossible. The harder the rain fell, the more hope of picking up her scent washed away, and his wolf was half insane by the time he got to Amber’s house.
Amber’s sister Katie was sitting on the porch waiting for him, smelling of fear so strongly, even the rain couldn’t hide it. She jumped up as Desmon shifted at the bottom step.
“Here, they’re Merl’s.” Katie tossed a pair of sweatpants at Desmon, her gaze averted from his naked form as she reminded him, “Bea’s here.”
Desmon was too terrified to do anything more than step into the sweats Katie handed him. The material was difficult, because Desmon was dripping wet. He fought not to rip them apart in a fit of anger. His hands were shaking, his braided hair heavy against his back as he fought to find some semblance of control.
“You think the Goodwins have her?” Katie asked in a low, fearful voice while Desmon moved under the cover of the porch to make dressing easier. “You think—”
“Be quiet about that.” Desmon sounded harsher than he wanted to. He couldn’t stop thinking about Amber at the mercy of the Goodwins, and it was making it hard for him to fully hold his human form. “Tell me what happened.”
“She left to get ice cream from the store, that’s it,” Katie said in a rush. “And we can’t get ahold of her. We’ve called her a million times. She’s not answering.”
“Can you track her phone?”
Katie shook her head quickly. “No.”
“Her laptop.” Desmon’s breathing was still rough as he silently fought the battle to turn off his wolf side so he could problem solve through human issues. “Can you get into it and log into her phone that way?”
“Maybe.” Katie turned toward the door. “I’ll go check.”
“I’ll wait out here.” Desmon knew he was on the edge of losing control, so he didn’t trust himself around humans, but especially Amber’s youngest sister. “Keep Bea inside.”
Katie met his gaze for one long moment, and then nodded like she understood. She went back in the house to search Amber’s computer for information, but Desmon couldn’t sit on the steps and wait. Instead he paced in the rain, back and forth, knowing he was losing the battle against his baser nature, even if he was still holding human form. Every muscle in his body was tense as he fought down the wolf howling under the surface for him to shift and run headlong into Goodwin territory.
The problem was, he didn’t know where she was, and it would be easy for any wolf to get killed in Goodwin territory, because like it or not, Leroy Goodwin and his brother Gary were formidable alphas with a strong pack behind them.
He wanted to rip off the harness as an outlet, but he kept it on, and instead stepped under the cover of the porch as the need to fight raged a war with the images of what the Goodwins would do to a human like Amber. He pulled the .45 out of its case on Miles’s harness, dropped the magazine to check the bullets, and then racked the slide to make sure everything was working smoothly.
It was un-shifter-like to fight with weapons, but he didn’t give a fuck.
He’d shoot a hundred wolves to rescue his angel.
His breathing became more ragged, and he was finally losing his ability to stay fully human when a van came speeding onto the muddy patch in front of the yard.
Jazz sprang out from the driver’s side and shouted to the females in the back, “Stay here!”
Desmon snarled at his best friend when Jazz came rushing at him, but the sound was more wounded than furious.
Jazz grabbed Desmon and half-dragged him around to the side of the house, away from the open front door. “You can’t be near the humans. Her sisters—”
Something about that only compounded the fear, crippling Desmon to the point that he fell to his knees in the mud, desperate and overwhelmed. He half-shifted out of necessity, the hair long on his arms and face.
“If they have her…” He felt lost already, the images in the back of his mind making him physically ill. “We’ll never find her. There’ll be nothing left.”
The look on Jazz’s face was savage, haunted in the dark shadows and misty rain from the porch lights. They had never found Jazz’s mate, and though they never talked about it, everyone knew why.
“Listen to me, Des.” Jazz fell down into the mud with Desmon and looked him dead in the eye. “We’re going to find her. Even if we have to rip apart the Goodwins wolf by wolf.”
“By then—” Desmon shook his head, remembering what his mother had gone through at the hands of Albert, and she’d been a wolf at the time. “What will they have done to her?”
“Whatever it is, you’ll help her heal.” Jazz’s voice was more wolf growl than human. “I’ll fight to the death to keep you from losing your mate.”
“I will, too.”
Desmon looked up, seeing Miles coming around the corner with Jason in tow. His cousin was dressed in military combat wear, with camouflage pants and his brown hunting vest. Like Desmon, Miles’s hair was braided. He held a rifle in his hand that told the world he was ready to fight. In stark contrast, Jason wore only sweatpants like Desmon. Bare-chested and barefoot, he was there to fight too—only he preferred fur.
“You know we got your back, Des,” Jason assured him.
Desmon hadn’t even heard them get here, which should have scared him, but he was past that. As much as he appreciated his pack being there, it felt like the guilt was ripping up his insides.
“You were right,” Desmon confessed to his cousin, his voice still the growl of a wolf, rather than the smooth timber of a man. “I should’ve stayed with my mate tonight.”
“I tracked her phone!” Katie came running around the corner before Miles could answer, blonde hair clinging to her face and neck in the rain. Miles stepped in her way, blocking her from Desmon and Jazz, who were both still kneeling in the mud, but that didn’t stop her. “S-She’s on Curly Road, but her dot isn’t moving, and—”
Katie stopped talking when Jazz’s phone started ringing.
Jazz leaned back and reached into his jeans pocket for his phone. “It’s probably one of the other enforcers. I sent out a group text. Jason was just the first to show up since he doesn’t run for the full moon.”
But Jazz paled when he stared at the screen. He glanced up at Miles, who was still standing in front of Katie, and the two of them must have silently communicated something.
Jazz suddenly jumped up and ran toward the woods at the back of the house. At the same time, Miles sprang forward, tackling Desmon to the ground just when he would’ve run after Jazz.
Even from a distance, Desmon could hear the growl of Leroy Goodwin’s voice from Jazz’s phone, but the actual words were lost as Miles fought him rather than let him go. He heard Jason drag Katie back inside over the snarls and growls Desmon only dimly realized were coming from him, as he and Miles rolled in the mud.
Miles fought better in skin than Desmon did, he was more comfortable with it these days. Even half-transformed, Desmon couldn’t get away from him, and when he tried to lash out, the mud made Miles too slippery.
The terror made him vicious, and somewhere in the back of his mind, he felt his father’s disappointment when he shifted completely and sank h
is teeth hard into Mile’s forearm.
Miles shouted in shock, because Desmon had never done that. No matter how pissed off he was, he’d never attacked his cousin in fur since Miles’s accident—it wasn’t fair—but his wolf didn’t give a fuck.
Desmon used his shock to slip out from under Miles, and then shifted back to human form, fighting with the sweatpants that got tangled when he was a man once more. Miles made a move to grab him again but Desmon took off, running at Jazz.
Jazz stood his ground in the rain, the phone held to his ear as Desmon barreled at him. He already knew the Goodwins had her. He’d known it the second he heard the echo of Leroy’s voice from Jazz’s phone. Desmon wasn’t sure what he was going to do to Jazz when he got to him, his best friend—and the man who now knew if Amber was already dead.
Maybe Desmon would’ve tackled and fought him until he told him the truth—but the way Jazz’s hand dropped, the phone still tight in his grip as he stared at Desmon, drained all the fight out of him.
A howl of wounded horror and rage came from the center of his chest, and he dropped right there in the mud on Amber’s property.
Desmon knew right then, if Amber was gone, he was done, even at the risk of abandoning his pack. Before, protecting them had been enough. This time it wouldn’t be—Desmon was sure of it.
“She’s not dead,” Jazz whispered, but the grim tone of his voice made it sound like she might as well be when he walked over to Desmon.
Desmon blinked through the rain to look up at him, a small glimmer of hope bursting to life in the center of his chest.
Jazz swallowed hard. “Leroy changed her.”
Desmon must’ve heard him wrong. “What?”
“Some bullshit story about an accident on the road. He claims he did it to save her life.” Jazz choked as he said it. “He already emailed a notice to the Alliance saying she’s part of his pack now.”
Desmon jumped to his feet, still in human form. “She’s my mate. I tasted her. Nature says she belongs to me. Fuck the Alliance!”
“You’re not mated though,” Jazz reminded him with a wince. “It’s his blood changing her. Technically, she’s under his protection, unless she can find a mate outside his pack. It’s against the law to go into someone else’s territory and take one of their females to mate by force. You know damn well he’s going to lie and accuse you of just that if you rescue Amber. He’s been spoiling for a fight for years, trying to make us look like we’re the aggressors. He contacted the damn Alliance to make them think this was a mercy change. Total fucking bullshit. We know he took her. But that’s the info he gave. You go after Amber, our entire pack will pay for it.”
“He’s right. It’ll be war if you get her now.” Miles’s voice came from behind them. “And we’ll be the ones guilty of starting it. Unless she’s off their pack land when you mate her—”
“Which she won’t be.” Jazz’s voice was edged with ice. “There’s no way Leroy’s letting her close enough to the borders to reach our territory.”
“I’ll go rogue to get her back. You keep the pack,” Desmon decided for all of them, because Amber was alive, and suffering through the change in the center of the Goodwins. Even five seconds in their clutches felt like too long. “Now the war’s with me and I’m the only one guilty. She’s my mate. I’ll stand trial if I have to.”
It was Desmon’s job to protect his mate. It was a rule of nature, one they all respected and understood completely.
Still, Jazz shook his head. “We need a better plan.”
“We don’t have time!” Desmon gestured to the direction of Goodwin territory. “I get my mate back. I deal with the consequences. That’s it!”
“You can’t run into the center of Goodwin territory by yourself! You know this is a trap. They’ll be waiting for you,” Jazz shouted at him. “It’s suicide!”
“Not if I go with him,” Miles cut in. “We slip in, slip out. The rain will mess with their noses. They can’t track well if they can’t smell. That’s their only magic trick. We’ll have an advantage.”
“It’s not enough,” Jazz argued frantically. “It’s way too much to risk!”
“Fuck the risk!” Desmon growled at him. “My wolf knows she’s mine. You’ll have to put me down if we don’t do this.”
“If you do this, you’ll be putting yourself down, and Miles along with you,” Jazz argued. “If I’m going to agree, I need a five-minute fucking plan before we throw you both to the Goodwins. If your wolf’s got you so nuts you can’t see that, then you’re just going to have to trust that I’m right about this—because if she’s really your mate, you’ll be dooming her, too, by running into a trap and getting yourself killed. Remember, she’s a wolf now. She won’t survive losing you, either. Is that something you want to risk?”
“Amber has Leroy Goodwin’s blood running through her veins right now—changing her!” Desmon’s voice was completely inhuman, and it was only his lifelong trust in and friendship with Jazz that allowed him to agree. “You got three minutes to come up with a plan. Starting now.”
14
“Rich,” Amber called out in a singsong voice. “Open the trunk.”
“I said no.” Rich was clearly miserable, because Amber had been toying with him for a while. “Alpha’ll make it horrible. It’s not worth it. I got bitches in Reno better than this one.” It sounded more like he was talking to himself than Amber, and he hit the hood of the trunk for what had to be the thousandth time. “Now shut your fucking trap.”
Amber had gotten free from her bindings a while ago. Between one flash and the next, something happened, sharp teeth and fur, and she’d been able to suddenly wiggle free.
“Just let me taste you.” Amber’s voice was low, husky with the rasp of need. “They can’t smell that, can they, if we just play around a little?”
“It is raining.” Rich sounded unsure. “If I pull out before—” The ring of a phone cut him off, and he cursed. The weight of the car shifted like he was moving to get it out of his pocket. “Hey, Alpha, I haven’t fucked her.”
“Are you sure? Cause it sounds like you’re planning on it…after I told you not to.” The alpha’s voice was clear and highly irritated through the phone, which was as strange as everything else. Amber heard it in a way that was foreign as he growled, “I’m sending Gary your way. The Nightwinds are attacking on the north border, right where we wanted them, but there’s a lot of them. Something about that makes me nervous. Desmon wants this one more than I thought if he’s willing to lose pack wolves and risk the Alliance coming down on him. This is more than full moon entertainment now, and you know you’re my weak link, Rich. You could fuck it all up.”
“I know, Alpha,” Rich whispered despondently.
“Stay in the south end until Gary gets there. I have enforcers surrounding the whole area. You have one job in this pack, and you know you’re in danger of losing it. No more humans for you. You’ll be our pack entertainment if this goes bad. So sit there on the trunk and don’t move for anything. You’re not fighting. You’re just sitting. It’s an easy fucking job. Can you do that?”
“Yes, Alpha, and I was thinking—”
The phone clicked off before Rich could finish, meaning the alpha hung up without a goodbye. Not all that shocking. Rich started to kick the trunk harder, over and over, letting Amber know it was a stress outlet.
She sensed his fear.
It almost felt like she could smell it as a new scent flooded into the trunk from above, bitter, unpleasant, like the burn of battery acid…and it gave her an idea.
“He’s going to see you opened the trunk when he gets here,” Amber called out in the same sultry voice. “He’ll know you were bad.”
“I didn’t!” Rich shouted, sounding suddenly terrified. “I wasn’t!”
“How can you prove it, though?” Amber kicked the trunk pointedly, using the heels of her bare feet. “I’m not tied up anymore, Richie Boy. How’d I do that if you didn’t let me out?”
“Oh no.” Rich groaned in panic. “Fuck!”
He jumped down, and a pulse of excitement started throbbing through Amber’s body at the thought of being free. He couldn’t possibly be that stupid…
But he was, because the hood popped open in the next second.
She rolled onto her back, spreading out over the bungie cords as she licked her bloody lips and cupped her tits. Rich’s gaze followed her hands obediently, before he leaned down to smell her with a low, drunken groan.
In a flash, it happened, and Amber lashed out with a furious snarl, sinking sharp teeth into Rich’s neck.
This time she savored the heady, dark taste of blood on her tongue as she clenched down harder, feeling the deadly strength of her jaws. Rich’s pained yell turned into a whinny screech of agony when he shifted, and the two of them fell to the ground.
He was the one who’d held her back from her mate, no matter how many times she’d begged him to open the trunk. She wanted him to die, but more than that—she needed Desmon.
Thinking his name made her taste the blood in a different way, and she noticed the Goodwin alpha’s tang all over again. Even under the taste of Rich, Leroy was still in her mouth and sticky on her skin. She felt like his blood was everywhere, tainting her.
She let go of Rich when the smells hit her next, and it was a thousand times worse, crushing in on her from all sides. She couldn’t tell the difference between them, not when there were so many.
Scared, disoriented, she fought to free herself from the clothes, ripping at them with her teeth, hating them. She moved to break free when Rich, now a brown wolf, caught her tail with his teeth. She snarled and snapped at him, the terror making her vicious enough that Rich jumped back with another yelp.
Amber took off running after that, not bothering to look behind her. She followed the sound of the water, wanting to be clean, desperate to have all the scents off her.
