The Hunter's Heart (Wilde Creek Book Seven)

by R. E. Butler

  “I didn’t do anything to you. Why are you doing this?”

  “My brother is the leader of our nest.”

  “Nest?”

  He nodded. “We’re raven shifters, and we don’t tolerate anyone messing with our people. You may not have done anything, but your mate did.”

  “I keep telling you that he’s not my mate.”

  “Then it’s going to be a long and painful death for you.”

  The group left, closing and locking the door behind them. Mia stared up at the ceiling, tugging on the bonds a few times even though she knew she wasn’t strong enough to break the leather. Her body tingled, and it reminded her of the way her natural heat started. Eventually, if the ravens were to be trusted, Mia would slip into a mating heat that would overwhelm her. She’d want to have sex to assuage the pain, and in time it would hurt so badly that she’d take anyone, even knowing that she’d be tied to the male as a mate forever.

  She’d believed that Lucian was her mate, but he’d shut her down so effectively, squashing any hope. Was it actually possible that he knew they were mates and had been trying to protect her by staying away?

  She mentally shook her head. He told her she was of no consequence to him. The hope that was threatening to bloom inside her wasn’t going to do anything but make her crash even harder when he didn’t come for her. Because she wasn’t sure he would. Maybe, if he didn’t want to hurt Malachi, he’d try to get Antonio free so that she didn’t die. But if he couldn’t accomplish that feat then she was as good as dead. She’d never see her brother or her parents or her friends again. She hadn’t even gotten a chance to say goodbye.

  Closing her eyes, she let the tears fall.

  * * *

  Lucian was furious. First, the video call requests had come from Mia. He was certain she hadn’t had his number, and figured it was a way for Nila to meddle some more. But then he’d gotten the text from Antonio with a picture of a naked, chained-up Mia. Everything inside him went as cold as ice, and the beast he kept tethered banged around in his skull. The next time the video call app pinged, he answered.

  He’d wanted to reach through the phone and kill Dario right then. Not only had Mia been taken, but they were planning to force her into a mating heat. Ravens were as interested in science as they were crazy, and he had no doubt that the injection they’d given to Mia would do exactly as they said. In a few hours, she’d be in the throes of a mating heat, and he’d lose her forever. Two hours was not nearly long enough to plan an extraction that wouldn’t get him caught by his own people, so he’d have to go in fast and dirty, and he would need help.

  As he dressed in black tactical gear, his mind raced over the two-hour time limit. His apartment was forty-five minutes from the hunters’ office. The raven’s nest was four hours east. It really didn’t matter how fast he got Antonio out; he would be out of time no matter what. Strapping on his weapons, he secured a bullet-proof vest to his chest. He grabbed his cell and called Simon as he walked out of his apartment.

  “It’s fucking midnight,” Simon said, grousing.

  “Code Seven. I’ll be there in ten.”

  “I’ll alert the others,” Simon said.

  Lucian ended the call and got into his car, rushing to Simon’s. Code Seven was something he and his teammates had devised for when they needed help, no questions asked. It meant a life was on the line, someone that was important to one of them. They’d all sworn to answer the call and do whatever was necessary. His mind spun with possibilities on how to get Antonio out of the holding cell. He knew it wouldn’t be easy, but with his crew he should be able to get in and out without any loss of life.

  He stopped at the curb in front of Simon’s home long enough for him to jump into the passenger seat. He waited until they’d picked up Neil and Isaac before he headed toward the office and explained what had happened. He was able to play the video call for them, and just hearing Mia’s frightened voice was enough to make his beast push the bounds of the tattoos. It wanted to be set free to save Mia.

  “How the fuck did they find out about you? Your real life is buried. Like fucking deep,” Isaac said. As the head tech guy for their team, Isaac knew almost everything about Lucian. Almost.

  He shook his head. “They followed me, and I suspect they followed you guys, too, but it was Mia’s bad luck to be seen with me.”

  “What’s the plan?” Neil asked.

  “I just need your help to get Antonio out. I can’t do it on my own.”

  Simon said, “You think we’re going to let you go to the ravens on your own? They’ll kill you.”

  “They won’t.”

  “How can you be so sure?” Isaac asked.

  “Because you know everything about me, except one thing.”

  “Okay, I’ll bite. What?” Simon asked.

  “I’m not entirely human.”

  And he wasn’t going to say anything more than that.

  Although they asked, he didn’t respond, and by the time they reached the office, they’d resigned themselves to his non-answer. He parked and turned to face his friends. “You can turn away now and I won’t hold it against you. What I’m going to do tonight will burn me with the hunters. You don’t have to go down in flames with me.”

  Neil leveled his gaze at Lucian. “She’s yours, right? The wolf?”

  Lucian nodded. His knuckles cracked as he tightened them on the steering wheel, and he forced himself to relax. Just hearing her name made him tense.

  “Then it’s worth it to save her. It doesn’t matter if you’re burned here. It matters that she’s safe. I think we all know that someday there will be someone worth walking away from all this for. It’s your time now,” Neil said.

  “You tried to keep her safe by staying away, and it didn’t work. Makes me rethink everything,” Simon said.

  Lucian snorted. “Neil, stay with the car and be ready to take off when we have Antonio.”

  “I’ll jam the phones, comms, and cameras so no one will know what’s happening until we’re gone.”

  After gearing up with supplies from a secret compartment in his trunk, the three males headed to the underground facility. It wasn’t an issue getting inside; Lucian simply entered his passcode at each point. When they reached the containment area, Lucian glanced up at the security cameras and saw the red lights blink off, and he knew Simon had done his job.

  “Now,” Lucian said, stopping in the middle of the large room of cells. The guards – males that Lucian had known for years – looked at him in confusion. One of them opened his mouth to speak, but just then the lights went out and the guards shouted in alarm.

  Lucian, Simon, and Isaac pulled down their night-vision goggles and moved swiftly while the guards yelled at each other in confusion. Antonio was standing by the cell door with a smug look on his face.

  “I knew my ma would get me out,” he said, chuckling darkly.

  “Shut the fuck up,” Isaac warned.

  Lucian pressed the comm and said to Neil, “Unlock cell D.”

  “Got it,” he said.

  The door clicked open and Simon used a key to unlock the cuff on Antonio’s wrist. Before the raven could blink, his wrists were behind his back, locked in silver cuffs, and Lucian and the others hurried him out of the cell.

  “Lock the elevator!” one of the guards shouted.

  “The whole system is frozen!” another answered.

  In mere minutes, Lucian was stuffing an annoyed raven into the trunk of his car and they were speeding away from the office.

  Neil said, “Everything’s back online now. I wiped the security-camera footage and the codes that you entered.”

  Lucian rested his head on the back of the seat. “It doesn’t matter. The guards saw my face.”

  Simon said, “I hope they realize that it would’ve been easier for us to kill them.”

  Isaac snorted. “Only you’d think that killing innocent guards during an entirely illegal jailbreak would be easier.”

&n
bsp; “Tell me I’m wrong,” Simon said.

  “You’re right and wrong,” Lucian said. “But like I said, it doesn’t matter. The guards recognized me and there are probably hunters on the way to my apartment.”

  “What are you going to do?” Simon asked.

  “See a ghost about a beast.”

  Chapter 5

  Mia’s body was humming. Under other circumstances she would’ve thought the feeling was nice, but right now, in this place with these strangers intent on causing her harm…well, there wasn’t anything pleasant about it. When her heat had come on her before, she was in her house with a wolf from another pack who helped her go through it. Reese was a college friend, and there wasn’t anything romantic between them. It was just a week of sex. He used condoms, and they never even really kissed. She’d fantasized that it was Lucian’s hands on her, drawing her to pleasurable peak after peak.

  That fantasy was entirely shattered now, though. There wouldn’t be any rescue. She’d heard Lucian say it was impossible to get Dario’s brother out of wherever he was being held. There was so much she didn’t know about Lucian or his work. All she’d ever been told was that he hunted rogue shifters, ones who had broken with their group and gone on to commit crimes.

  Most shifters were naturally interested in being part of a group of their own kind, but there were some who, for one reason or another, would drift away or be forced to leave their people. Those were known as rogues. She’d met a rogue wolf once when she was a teenager, but he’d ‘gone rogue’ because his mate was a human woman, and his pack was anti-anything-but-wolves. Mia knew that that wasn’t really the same thing as the rogues who caused harm to others.

  Which made her wonder just what Lucian was doing in his job as a hunter, because Antonio was clearly not a rogue – as he obviously had family who cared about his well-being – although she had no doubt he was a criminal. But more than that, her current situation made her wonder if she really knew the tattooed male at all. It was hard to think of a male she’d known nearly her entire life as being a complete and total stranger, but she couldn’t help but think that she’d been very foolish and naïve. He’d told her his life was dangerous, and she hadn’t really believed him.

  She fucking believed him now.

  Not that it mattered at all what she thought about anything.

  The lock turned, and she tensed, wishing very much that she wasn’t naked and tied down. She might be able to handle the humiliation of the heat if she was at least wearing panties and a bra. But naked, on top of the straps, on top of the warm-and-fuzzy horny feeling inside her, was just too much.

  A young woman walked in, carrying a tray. A male held the door, his gaze raking over Mia. She blushed, her hands tightening into fists as she fought against the arousal that bloomed. She knew she wasn’t actually attracted to the male; it was the damn injection.

  “I’m allowed to feed you,” the woman said. “Dario is my cousin. My aunt said you should starve, but Dario said that you need your strength for the next injection.”

  Mia jerked on the restraints. “Let me go!”

  “I can’t. Even if I could, I wouldn’t. Dario would beat me.”

  Her mind spun. “I need to pee.”

  The female bit her bottom lip and hesitated. Then she said, “I can get a bedpan.”

  Mia groaned. “Never mind.”

  So much for possibly tricking her into letting her free.

  “I cooked a steak for you,” the woman said as she put the tray on Mia’s stomach. She jerked at the cool metal, and the woman apologized as she lifted plastic wrap from the plate on the tray. “There isn’t anywhere for me to put the tray but on you.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Fawn.”

  Mia’s stomach rumbled at the scent of cooked meat. “Fawn, can you ask Dario to let me go? I’m not important to Lucian; he won’t do anything for me.”

  Fawn stabbed a piece of meat with a fork and gave it to Mia. As she chewed swiftly and swallowed, Fawn said, “Dario said that the hunter has no choice.”

  “I wasn’t given one either,” Mia pointed out.

  Fawn shrugged as she fed Mia another bite. “You tied yourself to a dangerous male. You brought this on yourself.”

  Mia thought about protesting, but she knew it wouldn’t change anything. As Fawn fed her an entire steak, Mia tried to ask questions about Antonio and Dario, but after a while, the male at the door told Fawn to stop talking, and she did. After declining the bedpan, Mia watched as Fawn walked out with the tray.

  “Your boy has thirty minutes to call or you’re getting another shot,” the male said.

  Mia stared at the ceiling, not moving a muscle.

  She heard footsteps, and the male loomed over her. Her body warmed further, her stomach twisting and her skin tingling. He inhaled and his eyes turned pale bronze.

  “You smell good, little wolf. You’ll smell even better in a few hours when you’ve had the full course of injections and your pussy is hot and wet.”

  He laid his hand on her stomach and she bit back a moan.

  It’s the injections, not me. It’s the injections, not me.

  “Get off me,” she said evenly.

  “Aw. You don’t want to play yet? Still hung up on that human? I thought wolves were pickier about who they fucked, but I guess it won’t matter in a while anyway. The nest is taking bets on how long it will be before you start begging for cock.”

  “Get. Off. Me!” she yelled, jerking on the bindings and rattling the bed.

  The hand disappeared, and there was an angry shout followed by a banging sound. She turned her head in the direction of the sound and found Dario standing over the male, who’d been thrown into the wall.

  “I fucking said no one touches her,” Dario said.

  “She was begging for it,” the male said, as he rolled to his knees but didn’t get up.

  “I have video cams in here, asshole. Go to your quarters and stay there until I decide what to do with you.”

  Dario watched the male rush out of the room, and then turned to face her. “It’s a good thing I happened to come down here and see that the door was open. He didn’t hurt you, right?”

  “No. Dario, please let me go. I just want to go home.”

  “I’m sure you do, but you can’t until I get my brother back. For your sake, I hope it’s before the next dose is due.” He glanced at his watch. “You’ve got twenty-three minutes.”

  And then she was alone once more.

  The door locked.

  The silence was almost deafening in that weird way that having too much time alone with your thoughts can make you go batshit crazy.

  She quickly calculated how much time twenty-three minutes was.

  Thirteen-hundred and some seconds, each precious one slipping away no matter how much she wished that time would just stand still.

  * * *

  Lucian called with a minute left to the two-hour time limit. The problem was that he was an hour out from his destination, which was a further two hours from the ravens’ nest, where he’d need to transport Antonio in order to get Mia.

  “I need three hours,” he told Dario when he answered the video call.

  “You were given explicit instructions on what would happen if you didn’t show up here with my brother in two hours.”

  “You asked the impossible. The nest is four hours from the office.”

  “A smarter male than you would have found a way.”

  Lucian smashed his fist against the steering wheel. “Give me the time I need!”

  “You can have it, but your girl will suffer. The second dose is worse than the first, of course. It all just builds up in the system and will slowly break down her resolve. Eventually she’ll beg for cock. I’m sure you won’t hold it against her.”

  His beast twitched inside him. Anxious. Furious.

  “Please,” Lucian said, his teeth gritted against the roar in his throat. He didn’t want to think of Mia suffering.
It made him want to open the trunk and beat the living hell out of Antonio.

  Dario smiled in an entirely creepy way, and then the camera panned to Mia, still naked, still bound to the hospital bed.

  “No, please,” she groaned as a male in a lab coat came near her with a needle. “Lucian!”

  Her pleas wrapped around him like wool. He felt like he was choking.

  “Mia! I’m coming. I won’t let you down.”

  Dario chuckled as Mia writhed on the bed, repeating Lucian’s name. Then Dario’s face filled the screen. “Two more hours or she’ll get dose three.”

  He glanced at the clock. “I’ll be there.”

  “Come to the stronghold with my brother – alive and well – and I’ll let you take your girl home. But if you kill my brother, I won’t just slaughter Mia; I’ll kill her entire family, starting with that cute little half-wolf boy. What was his name? Oh, right. Jack. And I’ll be sure to let them know that you betrayed them all before I send them to the afterlife.”

  Lucian felt his beast stirring white-hot within him. The bonds were holding it in check, but for the first time in his life he honestly wondered if the magic was strong enough to keep it down.

  “She better be untouched, too,” Lucian said.

  “Well, if she begs me nicely, I won’t be able to say no for too long. She smells really good. Hot and wet. I’d hurry if I were you.”

  The screen went dark as the call ended. Lucian put the phone down, got out of the car, and popped the latch on the trunk. Antonio blinked up at him, not looking the least bit worried. Lucian punched him, smiling at the minuscule measure of joy he got from hearing Antonio’s nose crack.

  He slammed the trunk closed and stalked back to the driver’s seat. He wished he had a faster car, that was for damn sure. But he’d get there in time to save Mia. There was really no other option.

  He hadn’t made this journey in years, but he still knew exactly where he was going. His foot was on the floor as the car raced to his destination: a house he hadn’t been to in twenty-three years. When he turned onto the long gravel drive, he saw the mailbox with his original last name, Rhodes. Dismissing the memories that surfaced, he followed the curving drive that cut through a wooded area until he reached the top of a hill.