The Struggle: Hollow Crest Wolf Pack Book 2

by C. C. Masters

  Kannon hung back at my pace while we ran through the darkening forest. I loved the exhilaration of bounding through fall leaves, dodging obstacles and bouncing off logs or rocks. These were the moments that I lived for. I chased Kannon up a hill and then launched myself over a ten-foot rocky ravine. Kannon waited until my paws hit the ground with a thump before taking off again. My soul soared with joy as I chased him and heard the distant howls of the rest of my pack. Kannon paused in a small clearing so that we could howl back and give them our position. The voices of all five of us blended together in the most perfect way possible.

  Once our voices had trailed off, I whirled around and pounced on Kannon. We rolled around and wrestled in the grass until I felt a sharp pain in my back. I couldn’t hold back a small yelp of pain and Kannon stopped immediately. “Are you alright?” he asked with our bond.

  “I think I just rolled over on a rock or something.” I got to my feet and stretched my neck as far as I could, but I couldn’t get to the source of the pain.

  “Hold still,” Kannon told me gently. I felt his muzzle on my back and then the hot lick of his tongue when he found the wound. “It must have been a sharp rock to get through your coat, maybe we shouldn’t have been wrestling together.”

  I hoped he could feel my eyes rolling through our bond. “I’m not a delicate flower, accidents happen. It’s just a stupid cut.”

  Kannon licked away the blood on my coat. “It doesn’t look too deep, it should mostly heal when you shift.” Despite his encouraging words, I could still feel his worry.

  There was silence between us. A full-blooded alpha wolf would be able to shift into her human form and then back into a wolf again to heal minor injuries. But if I shifted back into my human form then I would be stuck that way for the rest of the night. I didn’t have enough magic left inside of me for any more than one shift tonight. Shifting into a wolf had already taken too much out of me.

  “It’s too early to head back,” I told him bravely. “Let’s keep going and see if we can catch up to the other guys.” The last thing I wanted to do was ruin Kannon’s night. Who knew when we would get another chance to come out here?

  I took a couple steps away from Kannon and tried to shake out my coat, but the movement was painful. I could feel Kannon watching me carefully when I trotted off towards our other pack mates. He followed me hesitantly so I put a lot of effort into trying to make my gait look normal. But it was a lot more difficult than I thought it would be; it felt like I was being prodded by a hot poker with every step I took.

  Kannon circled around the front of me to make me stop before we had gone far. “Lori, the guys are heading back here.” Embarrassment and sadness flooded through me. I hated being the weakest member of the pack and I hated that I was the one putting an end to our fun tonight. I let out a huff and lowered myself to the ground, irritated that I was so relieved to be able to stop moving through the pain.

  When the other guys found us they circled around me and sniffed at the wound. “You’re still bleeding,” Grayson told me. “I’m going to shift so that I can get a better look at the wound.” He knelt next to me in his human form and I held in my tears as he probed the wound gently with his fingers. “I can feel something under the skin,” he murmured. I let out a pitiful yelp when hot pain flashed through me again. “Got it,” he said triumphantly. “You still had a small shard in there.”

  I could feel Corey shoot an accusative glare at Kannon so I let out a small growl in his direction - just to let him know that he was out of line in accusing Kannon of anything. “I rolled over on a sharp rock,” I told the pack. “It’s no one’s fault but my own for not paying attention to my surroundings.”

  “Would it have gone through your coat and skin if you hadn’t had a hundred-and-sixty-pound wolf jump on top of you?” I narrowed my eyes at Corey. He was lucky he had sent that thought to just me and not the entire pack. It was not cool for him to try to make Kannon feel guilty.

  I got to my feet and arched my back cautiously. It did feel a little bit better now that Grayson had gotten the extra shard of rock out.

  “Let’s head back,” Grayson suggested. “We still have time for a movie night before bed.”

  “Kannon can pick,” Wyatt suggested.

  I wanted to argue with them and say that I was fine to keep going, but the truth was that I really wasn’t. They were being nice by giving us an excuse to go back and not forcing me to admit my weakness to the whole pack. They were good wolves.

  Grayson led us back to the SUV but kept it at a slow pace that an injured wolf could keep up. I had never been so relieved to see a vehicle before in my life. I went over to my pile of clothes and made sure that no one was looking before I shifted back. I didn’t have a problem with getting my pants and shoes back on, but my injury was right where the band of my bra would have to rest. That wasn’t going to be happening tonight.

  “Hey Kannon?” I called softly as I used my shirt to hide my breasts but leave my back bare. “Can you look at this for me?”

  “Of course,” he murmured as he came around to where I was standing. “Shit,” he hissed. I knew it was probably not pretty because I could feel a trickle of blood over my skin. “That’s a really good gash. Can I call Gray over?”

  “Yeah,” I murmured with my head down. I wasn’t exposing anything but my back to them, but it still made me feel vulnerable to be standing topless in front of males. Grayson ran his hand gently up the curve of my spine but stopped before he got to the gash in my flesh.

  “You might need stitches,” Grayson said regretfully. “We don’t have the kit with us so we’ll have to wait until we get home.”

  I sighed. This was not going to be fun.

  Kannon cleared his throat. “Maybe you could put your shirt on, but tuck it up on the back so it doesn’t touch the wound?”

  I glanced back to make sure they weren’t looking. Kannon’s face was red and he had turned sideways to face the lake. Grayson was staring up at the sky as if the stars were the most interesting thing he had ever seen. I hurriedly shook out my shirt and pulled it over my head but hissed when the fabric hit my wound. Kannon gently pulled my shirt back and did his best to tuck it up under the neck-band so that it wouldn’t fall back down, but it was incredibly awkward for me to hold it over my breasts to make sure it didn’t come up in the front as well. By the time we succeeded, my shirt was showing a good portion of my midriff, which was far more than they had ever seen before. I crossed my arms over my chest to try and hide the fact that I was braless but it was pretty obvious. Especially since I was carrying my pink polka bra in my hand.

  There was a lot of throat clearing as all the guys did their best not to look directly at the mess that I was. That was why I think we were all too distracted to be able to prepare for what happened next.

  The loud blast of a rifle shattered the quiet calm of the night. The sound echoed all around us and it felt like the next few minutes happened in slow motion. My jaw hadn’t even finished dropping in shock before Grayson roughly shoved me to the ground. I landed on my side instead of my back, but it was still a hard landing. A second blast rang out and I heard a thud above our heads as the bullet buried itself in the car door. I tried to stay calm and I turned my head to get a visual on the rest of the guys. Kannon was lying beside me with Grayson crouched beside us. I couldn’t see either of the twins, but I could feel them close with our bond.

  I didn’t realize right away that Kannon wasn’t lying on the ground just because Grayson had pulled us both down - not until I smelled the blood. The sharp coppery scent was much too strong to be from my small wound and my brain took too long to process what had happened. I saw Kannon’s eyes wide in shock and pain. I felt Grayson’s terrified rage when he put his hand against Kannon’s side to stem the flow of blood. My whole body shook as I put my weight on my hands, trying to lift myself from the ground. I blinked to get a speck of dirt out of my eyes and it felt like that blink took an eternity.

&n
bsp; Reality snapped back into focus when Grayson shouted my name for the second time. “Lori, I need you to put your hands here and press as hard as you can,” Grayson ordered. “We need to stop the flow of blood.” Kannon’s skin was slippery with blood, but my hands took the place of Grayson’s while he whipped off his shirt. “We’re going to use this,” he explained as he moved my hands and quickly pressed his wadded up shirt against the wound.

  The shirt was turning red much too fast and Kannon’s breathing was becoming erratic. I panicked. It hadn’t been too long since my mother had bled to death right in front of me while I had been helpless to save her. Losing Kannon would rip what was left of my heart right out of my chest.

  “Lori,” Grayson said roughly. “Take a deep breath. I know this is hard, but you can do this. You can save Kannon.” He pushed a wave of determination and confidence my way and I did my best to use that to push my panic aside. My mind cleared of the fuzzy panic and the situation in front of me came into clarity.

  “The college! Is Dr. Green a real doctor?” I asked abruptly.

  “My phone is in the front console,” Grayson said, barely hanging onto his calm tone. “Get it and call the contact listed under ‘emergency.’ We can get someone to meet us.”

  I started to stand but Grayson shouted at me. “Stay down and go around to the other side of the car.” It felt like it took forever to crawl on my belly and get to the driver’s side door, but it probably was less than a minute. I hesitantly raised my arm for the door handle and when no more shots came I became braver and opened the door.

  I scrambled into the car and fumbled with Grayson’s phone. I cursed as my shaking hands clumsily dropped it and I frantically did as Grayson said. The phone rang once, twice, three times and no one picked up.

  My panic started to flood back in. Kannon needed help now. He couldn’t keep lying on the ground here in the middle of nowhere. We needed to get him to a doctor, not be calling someone who might not even help.

  On the fifth ring someone finally picked up. “Kannon’s been shot,” I blurted out. I had no idea if the person on the other side of the line knew who Kannon and I were, but I wasn’t going to waste time getting to the point.

  “Tracing your location now,” a male voice said on the phone. “Are the hostiles still on the scene?”

  I raced back around the vehicle, keeping low, to where Grayson was kneeling next to Kannon. “The twins went after the guy?” I didn’t see them anywhere and I knew they wouldn’t leave our side for any other reason.

  Grayson nodded and I put the phone on speakerphone. “The twins went after them,” I told the man on the other side of the phone with a slightly less frantic tone.

  “Sending an extraction team, based on your location ETA is 18 minutes.”

  “Eighteen minutes? Can Kannon last eighteen minutes?” I asked Grayson, my eyes wide with fear.

  “He’s going to have to,” Grayson said with grim determination. “I’m not going to let him die.”

  Chapter 21

  Corey

  My head whipped around at the first rifle shot. I was in the process of shifting before the second one rang out. I glanced back at Grayson to see that he had pulled Kannon and Lori down to the ground to protect them. “Go!” Grayson shouted.

  My brother and I tore out in the direction that the shots had come from. Whatever asshole thought that he could shoot at us like ducks in a barrel was going to learn a hard lesson today. I hesitated after Wyatt and I pushed our way through the brush and came to a well-worn path. The shot had come from this direction, and if I were going to lie in wait for someone to come back to our SUV, I would have done it from the raised outlook eight hundred meters away. That would have given the shooter a clear view of the vehicle.

  Wyatt and I shared a glance and I saw that he was on the same page that I was. Without needing to speak we split into opposite directions, hoping to trap the shooter between us before he could get away. My muscles burned as I pushed my body to go faster than I thought it would have been capable of. Whoever shot at us wasn’t going to just give up because they had missed. They would keep coming and next time the shots might hit one of us when we least expected it. We needed to take out this enemy now.

  I slowed slightly as I approached the outlook and tried to remain aware of all my surroundings. I caught the faint scent of a male wolf in his human form, telling me that our enemy was close. Disgust flooded me when I realized that it was one of our own kind that had targeted us. With all the enemies that the wolves had, why were we fighting each other?

  I crept closer, keeping my body low to the ground as I followed the scent to my prey. I did my best to stay hidden in the dark forest, but another wolf would be able to sense me much more easily than a human could. The sweet scent of an herbal cigarette floated towards me on the breeze and I heard the voice of a man. “Come out and play, friends of Lori.”

  I could sense my brother approaching from the opposite direction, not far from where I was. “What’s the plan?” Where I was tempted to succumb to my instincts to simply rip my enemy limb from limb, Wyatt was a strategist. I would let him take the lead until he gave the signal to attack.

  “He has the rifle on his lap,” Wyatt told me. “We need to get close enough to be able to kill before he can pick it up and fire again.”

  I found a bush to creep underneath so that I could have a position to evaluate the situation from and stay out of sight. “I’m going to shift and distract him,” Wyatt told me.

  “NO!” I sent to him. But it was too late. I felt the small burst of magic that let me know that my twin had shifted back into his human form.

  To his credit, Wyatt strode through the clearing completely naked and unafraid. He gazed up at the stranger without fear. “I’m assuming you’re Baracus?”

  Baracus nodded with a grin. “And you’re one of the assholes that’s fucking sweet little Lori. Do you know how long I waited for that pussy to ripen up only to have it taken away before I even got a taste?”

  Wyatt stiffened but didn’t react. “So, you come here to try to kill Lori because she escaped from you before you could rape her?”

  Baracus laughed. “I’m not here to kill Lori. I’m here to make sure she feels the pain of everything I went through. I want her to lose what she loves most. Her bitch of a mother is already dead, so I had to settle for a couple of you assholes.” He closed his eyes to let out another breath of cigarette smoke and I took the opportunity to move closer. “I’m disappointed that I only got one of you with the first round.” I stiffened. Grayson hadn’t looked hurt when he sent us after Baracus but Kannon and Lori had both been on the ground. Had one of them been shot?

  Rage flooded through me and it took everything I had to stay still. I wanted to rush this piece of shit, kill him, and then get back to my pack. I had no idea what was happening back there, but I knew they needed me.

  Baracus opened his eyes and looked right at me. “You won’t be able to sneak up on a pack master, son. I know more tricks than you will ever be able to comprehend.” He turned his gaze back to Wyatt. “I realize that I’m only going to be able to kill one of you before the other has his jaws around my throat. But the question is – which one?”

  My entire body froze at the thought of losing my brother. He might be an uptight prick but he was my uptight prick of a brother. No one fucked with him but me. I took a breath and realized what I had to do. My pack would be fine without me, I was just dead weight and an extra mouth to feed. I would never be able to live with the guilt of letting my brother die for me.

  I pictured Lori’s smile and her pretty eyes twinkling at me, wanting that to be my last thought. If she or Kannon was shot, then Wyatt needed to be able to get back to them now. I was willing to sacrifice my life in order to save all of theirs.

  I sprung to my feet with only a small shred of regret. My legs pumped and I kept Baracus in my sights as he picked up the rifle. I was getting close, but not quickly enough. He was raising the rifl
e in my direction and was going to be able to fire before I made it to him. It was at that moment that I knew I was going to die. I didn’t regret giving up my life, but I did regret the way that I wasted the last year of my life.

  I should have treasured every moment that I had with my brother and the rest of my pack. I wish I hadn’t been an angry asshole that made life more difficult for them. I should have welcomed Lori, helped Kannon take care of her right away. Not freeze her out and make her feel unwanted the way that I had. I should have told my brother that I loved him. I should have told Grayson that none of what happened was his fault. I didn’t blame him for getting kicked out of the pack and I didn’t regret leaving that life behind. I should have told Kannon that he was growing into a wolf that I was proud to call my pack mate.

  I surged forward when I saw Baracus’ finger arch towards the trigger, knowing that I was too far to reach him. I would still be twenty feet away when the bullet ripped into my body and he wouldn’t miss at that range.

  What I didn’t expect was for my brother to have predicted my actions. He knew exactly what I was going to try to do. And as Baracus squeezed the trigger with triumph in his eyes, Wyatt crashed into me, knocking us both to the side. Shock hit me as I felt the bullet graze my shoulder. Pain set my flesh on fire, but I ignored it. It wasn’t enough to compete with the rage that was burning inside of me.

  Wyatt and I both got to our feet and I saw Baracus fumbling with the rifle. He had thought he had a clear shot, but he had thought wrong. I closed the distance between us and knocked into the barrel of his rifle just as he squeezed off another shot. The rifle blast took my hearing completely, but it didn’t stop my jaws from closing around his neck.

  I shook my head back and forth with his neck in my jaws, severing the arteries that kept him alive. Wyatt had shifted back to his wolf form and was also tearing into Baracus. Neither of us stopped until we were more than sure that he was dead. I backed away from the pieces of his body and met Wyatt’s gaze. An understanding passed between us and we turned to run back to the SUV. I just hoped that we weren’t too late.