by R. E. Butler
Too far gone to stop himself, he stalked to the man struggling to get up from the floor and broke his neck with one swift tug. He deserved to suffer, but there was no time. He dialed Mason as he knelt next to her, grateful she was still breathing.
He barked two short sentences and hung up, carefully picking out the shards of mirror imbedded in her fur. “Alyssa’s hurt. Get here now.”
Time seemed to leak slowly by, but in half the time it should have taken at normal speed, he finally heard the roar of Cairo’s truck and the squeal of brakes. “Tell me she’s alive, please,” Mason begged, kneeling next to them.
“Yeah, her chest is moving but she’s out cold. I think something’s broken, too, I thought I heard a crack. Maybe a rib, I don’t know.”
Cairo gestured to the man impaled on the wall. “You want me to kill this one or what?” He’d been begging to be let go, apologizing, whining. Dante had tuned him out immediately.
“No. We need to find out what’s really going on. Mason, go grab some towels from the supply closet and help me get her to the back room onto the couch.”
Cairo found a tarp and began to wrap up the dead thug’s body. After pulling off the knit cap, Cairo said that he recognized the man as one who hung around Grady during matches.
Alyssa had a few marks of dried blood on her fur, but otherwise appeared to be free of any serious injury. Pressing gently against her sides, she made a small, pained noise, but he couldn’t feel a break in any of her ribs and hoped that meant one was just badly bruised. She would heal faster in her shift, so letting her rest as long as possible in this form was what was needed. And it wasn’t as if they could take her to the hospital in that form anyway.
Free of the broken mirror, he and Mason carried her, using one of the towels as a stretcher, and laid her down on the couch. Mason looked up at him with grief in his eyes. He might be goofy, but he was also very tenderhearted.
Dropping a hand to his shoulder, he said softly, “You stay here with her in case she wakes up. I’m going to help Cairo with our guest and run out to that all-night supply store in Glasston to get wood to board up the doors. It’s going to be a long night.”
Nodding, Mason knelt next to the she-wolf on the couch and rested his hand on one of her stark white paws. Dante knew that he wouldn’t move an inch until she woke up.
Before he went to get wood to board up the doors, they gave a once over to the other goon from Grady’s posse. He seemed to be under the delusion that they would let him live if he talked, and he blubbered like a baby while cradling a towel to his injured hand. They had no intention of letting him live, but helpful captives were better than ones that needed torture, because torture was time-consuming. They most definitely needed to be out of there with the bodies before dawn.
He looked at the man and then at Cairo. “It just doesn’t make sense that he’d go to kidnap and rape to get you to throw a fight, after trying to make you lose twice before.”
Cairo knelt down next to the man and gave him a friendly smile that was only for show. “What happened to that guy who slipped that poison in my water? You know him?”
The guy laughed lightly. “We took care of him.”
Dante cast a quick glance at Cairo and said, “What do you mean?”
“I mean,” the guy said, “that he screwed up, so Grady had him taken care of. Killed. See, the guy, his name was Tim, he got in over his head with some gambling debts to Grady. He asked for an extension and promised to win big. He drugged you without Grady knowing, see? And then when you lost, he won big. Grady told him to do it again, but he got caught because he was an idiot.”
Cairo hummed in his throat. “And Grady probably lost big-time when I won.”
“Oh hell yeah. And then Grady figures you’ll be too much on your guard to get drugged again, so he thought we could provide a little extra motivation by taking the girl with us. If you hadn’t come back and interrupted us, you would have gotten a call from Grady later on tonight explaining how you’re going to tank the fight in three weeks.”
Dante shook his head in disgust.
Cairo’s smile shifted slightly. “You like how our girl looks?”
He snorted. “Yeah, Grady saw her at the fight, said she was a real piece of ass and that he’d let all the guys at the gym have her until your match, and then he’d give her back to you if you lost. If she survived, anyway.” He laughed in a loud and mocking way, completely forgetting that Dante had called her his mate, and Cairo had said she was their girl. Humans were certainly stupid sometimes.
The laughter choked off suddenly as Cairo’s large hand squeezed his windpipe. They hadn’t asked his name, because in the end it didn’t matter. Cairo leaned into the man’s ear but Dante heard the harshly whispered words anyway. “She belongs to us, you miserable fuck. Did you really think we would let you live?”
The sound of his windpipe being crushed was followed by the thud of his body as it fell, lifeless, to the floor. Wiping his hands off on his jeans, Cairo stood. “You go get the wood for the doors; I’ll wrap him up and get him in the trunk. We’ll burn them in our fire pit and close the gym for a few days to take care of Alyssa.”
“And if she protests?” he asked.
Cairo cracked his neck. “I don’t give a fuck what she wants right now. Until we figure out what’s going on with Grady, she’s under house arrest. Our house.”
Nodding at his logic, and appreciating the ferocious protectiveness seeping from his brother, Dante took the keys to Cairo’s truck and headed out. An hour later, armed with a Skilsaw, Liquid Nails, and sheets of thick plywood, he and Cairo secured the front doors. While he was getting the supplies, Cairo had cleaned up the glass and mirror and poured bleach everywhere that blood lay, sopping the mess up with gym towels.
He helped him finish the first cursory cleaning, loading the towels into the industrial washers in the back and then securing the night deposit and computers in the wall safe in his office.
“She’s so quiet; when will she wake up?” Mason looked incredibly young suddenly, perched exactly as he’d left him, worry creasing his face.
“When her body’s healed. Let’s get her in the truck and get home. It’ll be light in a few hours. We want those bodies turning to ash as fast as possible.” There was no question of getting the human authorities involved. This was clan business. He and Mason lifted her still form onto the towels and carried her out into the truck, laying her across the bench seat. “You drive her home, D,” Cairo said, touching one of her paws tenderly before shutting the door. “Mase and I will follow in your car.”
A can of spray paint was used to write across the plywood that they were closed for renovations until Monday. Padlocking a chain to the outer doors, he climbed into Cairo’s truck, Alyssa’s pretty wolf form stretched out on the seat next to him, and headed home. This was definitely not the way that he’d planned to bring her home the first time. He drove quickly, but Dante and Mason took their time driving his car so they wouldn’t risk getting pulled over. He could explain a wolf. They could not explain bodies in the trunk.
When they were home and she was on his bed, with Mason keeping vigil again, he and Cairo dumped the two bodies into their fire pit, a hundred yards back from the house in a clearing in the woods. He wrote down the information found on their licenses in their wallets before tossing them in the fire, too. Hyenas were not tied to the full moon like wolves, but they often communed in their hyena forms and burned the carcasses of their kills to honor their ancestors. This certainly qualified. They had defended Alyssa, and killed those who would have harmed her. This was a fitting tribute to their mate.
With gasoline coating the bodies, they went up in flames like the Fourth of July, but he knew from burning large game that they would have to keep the fire going with wood and burn it for a good week before there would be nothing left. Bone and teeth were incredibly resistant to fire, and they wanted nothing tying themselves or Alyssa to the dead men.
Cairo used
a long metal poker to roll the bodies and tossed dry logs over top of them. “I’ll stay here for a while. You go check on Mason. He’s torn up something bad over her being hurt.”
They all were. Dante had told him what happened before he left to take the deposit. He had been certain that the gym was empty, so they must have snuck in and then hidden. He blamed himself for her injuries and the fact that she was nearly raped, and most certainly terrorized. He had no idea how to make it up to her.
Cairo put his hand on his shoulder. “There’s no telling how long those guys were in the gym. They clearly knew that you took the deposits out on Thursday. I stayed until five. Mason was there until nine. If we didn’t know that there were men hidden somewhere, how could you have known? Don’t beat yourself up. She’s going to be okay.”
“Physically, yes, but I don’t think this has endeared us to her at all. She was already so angry.”
“Yeah, but she shifted to help you. Most females would go for the phone and call for help. She fought for you the same way that she did for me. She may deny with her words that she cares for us, but I think her actions, and her body, betray her.”
Maybe. Hopefully. He looked towards the darkened shape of the house. Underneath it, in a carefully designed cavern, was their winter den. Most humans didn’t know that hyenas denned-in for the winter; it was something that they associated with bears. While were-bears took to their homes for the winter, so did hyenas. Dante hoped like hell that this year, Alyssa would be with them when they went down into the den.
* * * * *
Her fur was so soft and thick; Mason couldn’t stop petting her, hoping to comfort her while she slept. He didn’t know how long she needed to stay in her form, but if she was like them, then she had to keep the form for a few hours regardless, because shifting back and forth quickly was very draining.
She was lovely in her shift, dark gray with sprinkles of white, with pretty rust-brown patches on her hips and legs. Her underbelly, paws, and the tip of her muzzle were snow-white and soft like rabbit fur.
“Has she moved at all?” Dante asked, coming to stand by him, where he was kneeling next to her on the bed. It had taken him several minutes to climb up beside her without upsetting the bed and jarring her.
“No. She’s been in her form for almost four hours, though. Hopefully when she wakes up her side will be healed.”
“I think so. You should probably cover her with a blanket, just so she doesn’t freak out when she shifts and is naked. Considering the last thing she may remember is being hurt by two masked men, if she doesn’t completely wig out when she wakes up, then I’d be surprised.”
He nodded, pulling a soft blanket from the bottom of the bed up around her. Dante got in the shower and Mason stretched out carefully next to her, his hand resting on her paw for his own comfort as much as hers.
He fell asleep as the night began to wane, and he dreamed he was sleeping down in the den for winter. On the special pallet that they’d made a few years ago for sleeping as a group, covered in prepared soft hides and blankets, Alyssa was nestled against him, warm and wiggling to get further under the covers. He liked this dream. It felt very real to him. Her soft skin that he’d longed to touch these past three weeks, the scent of her that was like sun-heated honey, and the way that her smaller body fit perfectly against his.
And then the dream didn’t feel so much like a dream, but like reality, as he heard a decidedly female yawn. He went very still, not wanting to freak her out or wake her up. Several minutes passed and she moved against him, where she’d apparently rolled over into his chest after she shifted back to her human form. He’d been so exhausted that it hadn’t even woken him up.
With a gasp of awareness, she bolted upright and looked around in alarm. Her eyes landed on him and he smiled. “It’s okay, you’re here, in our home.”
She looked at him like he was speaking another language. And then she looked down at herself and he couldn’t help but follow her eyes with his own. The blanket was pooled in her lap and her beautiful breasts were fully on display.
Her arms crossed slowly in front of her chest, cutting off his view, and she met his eyes. “Is Dante okay?”
“Yeah, of course. Do you want me to go get him?”
She nodded and he slid off the bed. Still in jeans, which hid the erection from his waking dream, he opened the bedroom door and went out to find his brother. It was early evening, and he followed the sound of quiet talking to the kitchen. Dante and Cairo were making dinner.
“She’s up, and asking for you, D.”
He dropped the spoon full of spaghetti sauce in surprise and it clattered on the white tile floor. Muttering a curse, he scooped it up and dropped it into the sink, reaching for the roll of paper towels.
“She still injured?” Cairo asked, stirring the pot with a new spoon.
“She didn’t say. She just woke up and then asked for him.” He didn’t want to feel slighted, but he kind of did.
Dante called from upstairs about fifteen minutes later and asked them to bring up dinner. They snatched the steaks they’d cooked for her out of the oven where they’d been keeping warm, and carried them upstairs.
She wasn’t thrilled when they said she had to stay at their home for her own safety. She seemed to want to fight but she didn’t want to get close enough to confront them. Eventually she got up and locked herself in the bathroom and refused to talk to them.
Dante told them later, as they ate their own dinner at the kitchen table, that she’d thrown herself at him — then, just as abruptly, she’d pulled away like she’d made the biggest mistake of her life.
“I felt the same way in the locker room. It was like the most incredible kiss I’d ever had, and then she just turned a switch or something in her brain and that fucking blank look was in her eyes.”
“Why is she acting like this?” Mason asked. It wasn’t enough that she smelled good enough to eat – literally – and that she had all of them wrapped around her fingers without even trying, but the fact that she was actively pushing them away when they had glimpses of her attraction to them was baffling.
“I don’t know, but I’m getting damn tired of it.” Dante ran his hands through his hair in frustration. “I was planning to talk to her last night. That was fucked six ways from Sunday.”
They spent a long time sitting at the table talking about their problem after they were done eating. The sun had set, and the full moon had risen in the sky. They hadn’t come up with any ideas as they hovered near the sink while Cairo did the dishes. And suddenly it hadn’t mattered. A lovely gray wolf trotted through the kitchen and scratched at the back door. They couldn’t let her go out alone, so he and Dante stripped immediately and shifted, and Cairo opened the door for them before shifting and joining them.
He watched her dart through the trees; in the mixed light and dark shadows, only her white legs were really visible all the time. They chased after her and she led them around, faster than they were by only a little, because of her slightly longer legs. They let her take lead because it was her full moon cravings that were leading the chase.
Eventually she wheeled around and roused a nest of rabbits from a dense thicket of shrubs, and when a large bird took to the sky, she leapt gracefully into the air and snagged it, cracking its neck before her paws even hit the ground. They chased after the rabbits, because they couldn’t stop their natural reaction to prey. They were near the clearing, the rabbits trying to find refuge as they lazily chased them.
Mason was about to snag a rabbit that he’d been stalking for fun, when it was suddenly gone. Alyssa trotted away from him, the dead bunny in her jaws and a muffled sort of wolf laugh coming from her throat. She laid down several yards from where he’d been stalking the bunny and ripped it apart. Was there anything sexier on this earth?
She eyed him carefully while she ate and then surprised him by tossing half the carcass towards him. He caught it deftly in his jaws and ate it quickly while she watched.
He didn’t think that wolves normally shared their meals, but hyenas did. Taking care of their clanmates was something they took great pride in doing. He would have given her the bunny anyway, but the fact that she shared it warmed him.
He licked across his muzzle and straightened, looking at her. She was such a feisty thing. She stalked slowly towards him, circling around and sniffing, and then she bumped his hindquarters with her nose so he sat down. He watched as she circled him once more, then pressed her muzzle into his neck and scented him further, making a pleased humming sort of noise in her throat. She pulled back and gazed at him, and for a moment it was like they were trapped in a spell together and there was nothing but the two of them in the woods on the full moon. Surprising him further, she licked the side of his short muzzle and then darted away, glancing back over her furry shoulder as she bounded around their communal firepit, which was still burning.
