Protecting Ally

by Tianna Xander

  “Will you stop calling me that?” Ally clutched at her stomach, willing the pain to go away. She couldn’t take anymore. Much more of this and she’d go crazy. She knew she would. “I’m not your sweetheart. I don’t even know you.”

  With a groan, she fell to her knees clutching her stomach. Almost immediately, she felt Kalen’s hands on her shoulders.

  He tucked her under his arm and whispered in her ear. “Let go, Ally. Don’t fight it. Just let it come.”

  “I can’t. It hurts too much.”

  “Of course, it hurts. You’re fighting it. Just let go. Let the pain wash through you as you reach for your wolf.”

  “I can’t. I told you, it hurts too much. I don’t think I could, even if I knew how.”

  “You can, Ally. I know you can. Remember what it felt like to be a wolf? What you felt like when you changed? Reach for that. Concentrate on it and imagine yourself becoming your new animal side.” He rocked her in his arms as another wave of pain wracked her. “Reach for it, Ally. Remember what it felt like when your hands became paws, when your beautiful face changed into a muzzle and when your arms turned into the legs of a wolf.”

  “It hurts. So much for getting my legs waxed yesterday. They’ll be all hairy again in a minute,” she said with a snort.

  Kalen choked on a laugh. He wasn’t quite sure if she was finding humor in her situation, or if she was serious and upset at thinking she’d wasted her money.

  “Oh, come on. You know that was funny.” She stiffened up as another wave of pain hit.

  “Reach for it, dammit!” Kalen growled, most likely at her stubbornness. “And stop making jokes unless you’re going to try to make this work.”

  He was certain she would change so much faster and with less pain if she just reached for her other side and embraced it. Ally looked up at him and wondered how he could be so sure?

  “I know you don’t have any reason to believe me, Ally. After all, I could be just as bad as that kook who calls himself a scientist. But what could it hurt to listen to me just once? Just once, Ally. I’ll even help you. Trust me to help you. Just this once.”

  Ally made up her mind when another wave of pain began. It felt as though someone was taking a blow torch to her insides. Each painful wave was worse than the last and even though she fought it with everything in her, she knew she would lose the battle in the end.

  Was it better to give up the fight and reach for the change? Was he telling her the truth, or would the agony persist as though she never made the effort to give him even a modicum of trust?

  A rivulet of perspiration ran down the side of her face and he wiped it away. “You need to hurry, sweetheart. Billy and Bobby have managed to escape the hold I had on them. They’re on their way and they aren’t on foot. It won’t take long for them to get here.”

  He moved away. “I’m going to undress now. Don’t be alarmed, I don’t intend to touch you. I’m going to turn into my wolf. Those two might have four wheelers, but we have the speed of our wolves. With luck, we should be able to stay a step or two ahead of them. Plus, the men won’t be looking for two wolves, so that’s to our advantage as well.”

  Chapter Eight

  Kalen watched as several emotions chased across her face. What was she thinking? With the powerful connection they had, he could probably just enter her mind and take the information, but he didn’t want to. He needed her trust. Dammit, he wanted her trust, and he wouldn’t get it by invading her privacy.

  Cocking his head, to the side, he listened for a minute. They didn’t have much time. The four wheelers the two men rode were loud. The whine of the engines and their straight-pipe exhausts were loud, and they were getting uncomfortably close.

  When Kalen finished undressing, he folded his clothes, rolled them into a tight ball, and stuffed them into his neck pack with her t-shirt and skimpy panties. After adjusting the strap, he hooked it around his neck. It was a bit tighter than before. Reaching up, he turned the pack around to the back of his neck, because he needed to run faster this time. That would be hard if he had the overstuffed pack bumping his forelegs as they dashed through the woods. Better that it slapped him in the back of the head. At least that wouldn’t slow them down.

  “Have you made up your mind?” he asked as he turned. He grinned then and stared down at Ally who lay in the fetal position with her eyes squeezed tight.

  “I didn’t look, I swear.”

  That statement wasn’t altogether true. Kalen could tell by the blush spreading over her cheeks and down her neck. “It doesn’t matter if you did,” he said with a chuckle. “I got used to walking around naked a long time ago. Those of us born into our species have learned that there are much worse things than someone seeing us naked.” He shrugged. “We must strip every time we change, and we’re naked when we change back. It’s not a big deal.”

  “That’s easy for you to say. Your family or pack or whatever, brought you up that way.”

  He grinned. “Have you seen me staring at you?” He hoped she hadn’t. He’d tried not to stare at her. She was beautiful with her lush curves in all the right places. She was perfect, just the type of woman he would love to fuck all night long. Hell, it was possible that if he ever started making love to the beautiful Ally that he would never get enough of her.

  Shaking his head, he tried to dispel the image. He did not want a mate. Shrugging, he turned his back just to prove he wasn’t staring.

  “Nakedness is natural to our people. You’ll get used to it.”

  “I doubt it.” Her words came out little more than a grunt of pain and he sighed. “Will you trust me to help you now?”

  “I’m laying here naked, aren’t I?”

  If he lived another five lifetimes, Kalen didn’t think he would ever tire of hearing her smart mouth. He’d just met her and he already loved her snark. He frowned at the thought. Spending five lifetimes with Ally was not on his agenda. He wasn’t ready to settle down. He wasn’t even sure he wanted to settle down. Ever. Mating with anyone was not on his to-do list—at least not anytime soon.

  Another moan of pain had him forcing his way into her thoughts. He did his best to block as much of her agony as he could while he helped her visualize the image of her wolf.

  Help me, Ally. You must think of your wolf, visualize it and reach for it. Imagine what it felt like the first time you changed. How your pelt grew long and thick, how your hands and feet turned into paws, how your face lengthened into a muzzle.

  “Stuff it, Kalen. Face it, I’m a dog. I have.”

  Kalen shifted into his wolf form while still merged with her. Did you feel that, Ally?

  “I didn’t feel a thing, but the damned pain in my hands, my face. Heck, Kalen, even my bones hurt.”

  The woman was in agony and the best curse word she could come up with was heck? Kalen shook his head with a grin and smoothed her silky hair from her face.

  Of course, your bones hurt, he replied with a shake of his head. They’re changing shape, some lengthening, others growing shorter. Even your teeth are changing. What I was trying to get you to realize was that it didn’t hurt me to change.

  You were born doing it. She shifted to mental communication, most likely because it was easier.

  Actually, I wasn’t born doing it. None of us are. We don’t make our first change until we’re going through puberty. You really aren’t much older than I was when I made my first shift.

  I’m twenty-seven years old!

  Kalen tilted his head to the side and made his wolf grin. It’s still a lot younger than I am, sweetheart.

  He would have argued with her, but another wave of pain seemed to come from nowhere and she clutched her stomach with a low moan.

  I can’t do this anymore. If you have even an ounce of compassion, you’ll kill me and put me out of my misery.

  Not on your life. Kalen wanted to kill those so-called scientists. How could anyone do this to someone else so indiscriminately? What was wrong with that damned lu
natic who called himself a fucking doctor? How did he justify what he did to others? Was it in the name of science, or did he call it patriotism? He had met many patriots in his lifetime and not one of them ever used an innocent civilian to further their cause.

  The thought made him growl and Ally glanced up at him with fear-filled eyes. That look only pissed him off more. No one had the right to do this to anyone, to take away their life, their choices, as though they didn’t matter.

  Ally screamed with her pain. Kalen could feel the men moving closer, but this was something he knew he couldn’t hurry along, no matter how urgent their situation might become.

  Kill me. Please, Kalen, just kill me.

  For the first time in his life, Kalen wanted to hunt a man down and kill him slowly, just for the fun of it. If he had his way, Doctor Richard Thornton would only die after he begged for it, the way his victims did.

  Reach for it, Ally. Feel your wolf there, just beneath the surface of your humanity. Think about the way it made you feel. Your sense of smell is stronger, your hearing is stronger. Remember what it felt like to run like the wind, the freedom, the joy of running through the woods.

  Finally, Ally’s wolf burst free. Her face elongated into a muzzle, her ears shifted, moved to the top of her head, cocking forward to listen to the sounds of the woods surrounding them. Her nose twitched as she sniffed the air, her beautiful eyes stared up at him, and she blinked.

  Why wouldn’t you kill me? I begged you to put me out of my misery. She continued to stare at him as though accusing him of some great crime. I told you, I don’t want to live like this... I can’t live like this. Don’t you understand? This isn’t natural. I’m an aberration.

  Kalen snorted. You are nothing of the sort, Ally. If anyone involved in this damned mess of changing people into shifters against their will is an aberration, it’s that crazy scientist who keeps injecting innocent people, and ending their lives as they know them before moving on to his next victim. He is the aberration. Not you. No, not her. Never her. She was everything that was normal in an otherwise crazy world.

  He cocked his head to the side to listen for their pursuers. Those two idiots have abandoned their four wheelers to creep up on us. They heard your last scream, and they’re close. We need to leave before they find us.

  Ally stood and stretched, then shook the leaves and dirt from her coat. She looked up at Kalen with shock. How did I do that? It felt...weird.

  Kalen chuckled into her mind, then trotted into the brush, away from the men his senses told him were not more than seventy-five-feet away from them. It’s instinct, sweetheart.

  I told you to stop calling me that. She growled, then trotted after him. Are they close?

  Yes. They are very close. I wouldn’t be surprised to hear them crashing into the clearing we just left in a minute or so.

  Then we should run, shouldn’t we?

  Kalen would have liked to have been able to run, but he knew they couldn’t afford to leave the two men with the knowledge of their existence.

  They now knew about shifters, and he’d lost control of them. If they left them alive, they would soon start contacting other humans about their kind until they found someone who would listen to them. And if they waited to call in a team, the men might run and never return to the cabin. He couldn’t have that. Not now that they were at war, fighting to keep their species secret while that lunatic, who called himself a doctor, kept injecting innocent humans with an agent that turned humans into shifters.

  If only their alpha would come home from his honeymoon trip, get the formula, and get rid of the good doctor who had developed it. They could repopulate their species with those like the MacDonald brothers who wanted to become shifters instead of injecting innocents who merely wanted to continue their lives, blissfully ignorant of anything they would consider abnormal.

  Kalen sighed, trying to figure out a way to tell Ally that he would have to kill those two mentally challenged humans. How would that make him any better than they were in her eyes? He squeezed his own eyes closed at that thought.

  Why did he want to be better in her eyes? The feelings growing so deep inside him were not welcome. His wolf fought him at every turn as he denied wanting a mate. Perhaps Kalen Tolbert didn’t want a mate to share his life with, but his wolf did, and the beast had chosen Ally.

  Unfortunately, I’m going to have to deal with those two. They no doubt look at me as some sort of prize, or trophy animal they want to hang on their wall and brag about. By now, they suspect the same of you. They’ll want the five minutes of fame they’ll get by proving that werewolves really exist.

  Don’t be ridiculous. She snorted. Werewolves don’t exist. They can’t exist.

  Perhaps not. We are wolf shifters or were-beings, though the world calls us werewolves. Regardless of the semantics, we are werewolves to them, and they’ll most likely kill us to take us in to prove it.

  Why was she so adamant in denying the truth of her situation? Was she that desperate to hold on to what little bit she could of her old life? Her old life couldn’t have been all good. She’d been a motel maid, for goodness’s sake.

  Kalen nudged her shoulder, turning her away from the clearing and trotted a distance away with her at his heels. How do you explain us if weres don’t exist, Ally? What would you call what you are now? Stopping, he turned to look at her. For some reason, he needed to see her, to look into her beautiful violet eyes. You certainly aren’t just human anymore. Humans don’t turn into wolves and run around the woods on all fours. What are you if you’re not a werewolf, Ally? What are you now?

  Ally didn’t have an answer for that. With a snort of disgust, she turned around and headed away from him.

  Where are you going?

  Anywhere is better than here.

  Even back into the hillbilly twins’ clutches?

  Uh, well, no. She frowned, her wolf’s eyebrows drooping over her eyes. Of course, I don’t want to go back to them. Do you think I’m some sort of idiot?

  No. I don’t think you’re an idiot. I do, however, think you have a poor sense of direction. If you keep heading that way, you’re going to run right into them. They’re only about one-hundred feet or so in that direction.

  Ally spun around, shoved her snout in the air and headed off with a sniff.

  Don’t go far. Find a spot to hide in and wait for me. Otherwise, we could end up in Texas with your sense of direction.

  Kalen left her to find a hiding place while he crept up on the two unsuspecting men. Keeping himself hidden in the low brush, he was able to get almost close enough to touch them. Peering out through the bushes, he noted that they both carried guns.

  Damn.

  What is it?

  Ally’s question startled him. She shouldn’t have been able to pick up his thoughts, even with their bond. She was much younger than he was. The reason for it that came to mind wasn’t something he wanted to examine too closely.

  They’re both armed. I was afraid of that. I can’t take either of them on as long as they’re together.

  Then we should leave.

  We can’t leave, Ally. They have seen me change. I can’t leave them with knowledge of our kind.

  Then you shouldn’t have let them see you like that. That’s a no-brainer.

  It didn’t matter that their lives were in danger. Kalen wanted to laugh at her attitude. Since he was the only experienced shifter here, it was up to him to educate her about their kind, at least until he managed to escort her to safety or to their alpha, Jake, and his mate. Too bad they were out of town for the foreseeable future.

  As their leader, Jake would see to it that Ally had a job and a residence. Judging by her previous form of employment, he would hazard a guess that Ally would be better off as a werewolf than she ever was as a human. The two men wandered into the clearing, holding their guns at their sides.

  “I know those two are here somewhere, Billy. I can almost smell her perfume.”

  “Yeah, me
, too,” Billy said with a chuckle. “She smelled pretty. I wonder if she’ll smell that nice when we tie her down and screw her before we skin her.”

  “Uh, uh, I think she’ll smell even better. After all, she’ll be turned on like that girl a few months ago. You remember her.”

  “I sure do. That one lasted almost a month before she died.” He smiled almost wistfully. “I wish we’d get more like her. I like it when they last a long time and they hurt so much like she did. She must have liked it, cause she lived so long without her fingers.”

  Okay. That’s it, Ally said with a snarl that drew the men’s attention. I’ll draw their fire and you kill these two. I have never met two men who deserved it more—except for the jerk at the hotel who turned me into a dog.

  You’re not a—

  Shut up, dammit! I don’t want to hear it.

  Kalen didn’t want her risking her life like that, but he didn’t have much of a choice.

  You’re going to use me and like it. If they kill me, I’ll be in a better place. I don’t want to live like this anyway.

  You don’t know what it’s like to live as one of us. You should give it a shot before you write yourself off like that. I would guess that you’ll live better as one of us than you ever did as a human.

  I doubt it. A maid is a maid is a maid. I don’t know how do to anything else.

  I don’t know any shifter that’s a maid. We all take care of each other and so far, new shifters have been given jobs at Loup-Tech, but we can talk about that later. They’re heading your way. I hope you’ve moved from where you were when you growled earlier.

  Kalen heard a slight rustle in the brush to his left.

  Of course, I have. I may not care if they kill me, but I don’t want them to kill you. You’ve been...nice to me and you treat me like an equal, not like the help.

  You are my equal. In our society, there aren’t many who we would consider above us or below us. Only the alpha’s family gets preferential treatment.

  Kalen watched, waiting for Ally to make her move. He had to move fast because if he didn’t, she could very well wind up dead and he didn’t want that.