by Terry Spear
She heard movement and saw Jared in the brush, sneaking nearer to where Mike was prowling the snowbank in his wolf form.
Furious with Jared, she veered off to tackle him, knowing she wouldn’t be very successful because of his much larger size, but he wouldn’t be expecting it. Or at least she thought he wouldn’t. As soon as she charged him, he turned and snapped his jaws at her. She wasn’t used to fighting wolves for real, so his reaction startled her. But she had gone too far and couldn’t back down now. She wasn’t going to let him attack Mike if she could stop him. Hopefully, Jared would back off when he realized she wasn’t going to put up with his actions. He had no business being here.
From a distance, Mike growled and snarled. She didn’t want either man hurting the other, but she knew if she turned and headed inside, Jared wouldn’t stop trying to fight Mike. Not when Jared was the pack leader’s brother and second-in-command. He had to prove to Mike and the others that they needed to keep their paws off her and everyone else in the pack.
She snapped back at Jared, lunging and biting at him. He dodged back, and she assumed he didn’t want to hurt her. How would that look to the pack? She was their doctor, and if he injured her, it might turn pack members who’d been on the fence about her helping Dr. Denali against him.
She continued to bite at Jared, and he finally ignored her and charged at Mike, who raced to reach them. Her heart about gave out as the two wolves clashed. Then she saw two more wolves running full out to join them. One was Ted; the other, Aidan. She bit at Jared to get him to quit as Mike and Jared stood on their rear legs, their front legs resting on the other wolf’s shoulders as they danced around, teeth exposed, biting, trying to get the best of each other.
As soon as Aidan and Ted drew close, they snapped and bit at the big gray. Jared was tenacious, not wanting to show defeat in front of the other wolves and not wanting to show he’d back down. Holly tried to separate the wolves, still believing Jared wouldn’t want to harm her and she could get him to stop. But Jared turned on her so quickly that she couldn’t jump away in time, and he sank his teeth viciously into her shoulder. She yelped, then growled. She didn’t know if he’d bitten her on purpose or by accident, but she tore into him, furious. Damn his male wolf pride.
Probably feeling guilty that he’d bitten her, he didn’t fight her back, and she backed off. But Aidan moved in to fight the wolf. She barked at Jared to go home. He was bleeding, and so was she. Once Aidan clashed with him, he was too. And so was Mike. What a mess.
She had so hoped this would be a simple mission, but now she was certain Ronald would declare war on Aidan and his pack. She was torn between returning home and taking care of Jared’s injuries and trying to smooth things over with Ronald, just for her family’s sake, and staying with Aidan. But once she’d made the decision to leave the cabin and work with Aidan, she had made her choice.
Her brother came out of the cabin in his wolf coat, and then Nick emerged too. They caught Jared’s attention, and he stopped to stare at them, as if he couldn’t believe they were both here in the enemy’s camp too.
All the wolves waited to see what Jared would decide to do.
Because they didn’t just kill him, she assumed they were trying to keep the peace and not have an all-out war with her pack. Aidan was standing so stiffly that she knew he was ready to tear into the wolf again, waiting for any slight move on Jared’s part that indicated aggression. Jared switched his growly attention from Aidan to her. This was it. She could turn and head back to her parents’ cabin and Jared would go with her, or she could stay with Aidan and his men.
She looked at Jared’s growly expression and was reminded of how much he’d been like that lately. She needed a break from the pack. Maybe permanently, if things went well with Aidan. Right then and there, she decided she was staying. She and Aidan stood a good chance of being mated wolves and solving the problem with the others.
Letting Jared know where she stood on the issue, she headed toward the cabin. She felt bad for her family, and she felt bad for her people. But she had known all along she would someday leave them to find a mate. She supposed she was like Nick, needing to have an offer of a pack or home before she could make the change.
Aidan turned and loped with her toward his place, while his men waited with Jared, making sure he would return home and not come after Aidan or her. She hoped Ronald wouldn’t punish her family for this, but she’d get in touch with them right away to let them know what had happened. Aidan licked her cheek and considered her injured shoulder. He looked so growly that she wanted to reassure him she’d be fine. Though her shoulder was burning like the devil. She might not be able to handle falling into a crevasse very well, but she’d play-fought with wolves over the years, and though she was a smaller female, she could get some good bites in.
Greg joined them and drew close, nuzzling her cheek with concern and affection. She licked his face, knowing he had wanted to take on the big gray too, but Nick had been standing on the porch with him, making sure Greg didn’t move in that direction. She loved Nick for it.
She wanted to witness what would happen next, to see if Jared left, but she didn’t want him to know she was anxious about it. It would be a disaster if they killed Jared, but she figured he’d run off to their resort and tell the pack what had happened. His version anyway. Knowing him, he’d say he was trying to locate her, worried about her, when he came upon the cabin and Mike attacked him without provocation.
She ran through the wolf door first, Aidan and Nick waiting on the deck to ensure Mike and Ted had more backup if they needed it.
Greg went inside with her and raced up the stairs after her. He went to the guest room he was staying in. She headed to Aidan’s bedroom and shifted, turned on a light, then grabbed a towel from his master bath. She wrapped it around herself, not wanting to put on one of the pool robes and get blood on it. Her shoulder was bleeding and throbbing, which just made her madder at Jared.
“Hey, Sis,” Greg called out from near Aidan’s bedroom.
“Coming.” She left the bathroom, but he walked into the bedroom, passing her, and entered the bathroom.
“We’re in trouble now.” Greg rummaged around in the bathroom and emerged with a first aid kit in hand. “Why don’t you take a seat, and I’ll fix that. You probably want to take care of the doctor next and Mike too. I can’t believe Jared bit you. Then again, I couldn’t believe you bit him.”
“I was trying to make him go away and not fight Mike. To let him know I was here of my own free will and he wasn’t wanted. He was getting ready to attack Mike, and Mike hadn’t seen him yet.” She sat on a chair in the sitting area of the bedroom.
Greg crouched down to wash her bite wound. “You should have known he would bite you back. It was a stupid thing to do. He’s aggressive enough, and he was angry you were here. I would’ve bitten Jared myself, but Nick growled at me to stay put.”
“Good thing too.” She sucked in her breath as Greg applied antiseptic to the wound.
“Sorry. Don’t you think we’ll be in trouble?”
“Yeah. If we were with a normal pack, we wouldn’t be. It’s not our fault our leader is such an isolationist. If he wants to be that way, fine. We shouldn’t be forced into it too. We didn’t bring Aidan and his men into the resort to be among our people. We went to see them. And that should be fine.”
“Except that Jared thinks you belong to him.” Greg put some salve on the wound and then began to bandage it.
“He was the one who called it quits, just because I said I wanted to see Aidan. We really didn’t see eye to eye on a lot of issues, and there was never any spark between us.”
“Not like you have with Aidan, right? Ronald was pushing that business with you and Jared, thinking if you mated his brother, you’d never leave us.”
“Believe me, it would never have happened.”
A wolf pounded up
the stairs and quickly ran into the room. Aidan. His eyes hard and his mouth grim, he shifted and stalked over to check out her bite mark. Greg quickly removed the bandages to let him see. “You did a good job, Greg.” Aidan’s voice was growly, hard with steel, angry.
“Did he leave?” Holly prayed Jared had come to his senses and gone back to their cabins. She hadn’t heard any more fighting, so she figured he must have left. She still felt she needed to return to take care of his injuries, as much as she was fuming with him for coming here. She was still the pack doctor.
“Yeah. Took him a while. He kept staring at the bedroom window where he assumed you were. He must have seen you moving around up here. Then he paced for a time.” Aidan said to Greg, “You can put the bandage on Holly again. You did a fine job.”
Greg beamed at the compliment. Aidan was good with kids of all ages, it seemed.
“Maybe you’ve found your calling,” Holly said to her brother.
“Being a doctor?”
She expected him to say no way, but instead, he glanced at Aidan as if getting his opinion on the matter.
“Packs can always use their own doctors.” Aidan pulled on a pair of boxer briefs.
“Yeah, well, maybe I could. Uh, I’ll let you take care of the doctor, Sis. I’ll check on Mike.”
“Thanks,” Aidan said. “There’s another first aid kit downstairs in the bathroom.”
“On it.” Greg hurried out of the room.
“Let me take care of you.” She checked Aidan over and tugged gently at his boxer briefs.
He helped pull them off and then stood still while she went over all his bite marks with antiseptic, then covered them with salve and bandaged them. “I’m so sorry.” She knew Jared was only picking a fight with Mike because she was here. Seeing Greg and Nick had probably put him in a worse mood. She couldn’t help but feel responsible.
“You had nothing to do with this. I really had hoped it wouldn’t come to this. I suspected it might, if they were keeping as close an eye on you as you had indicated. I hope you’re not regretting your decision to come see me. I feel responsible for you, and for your family, if anything should happen to any of you.”
She snorted. “This is all Jared’s fault. Not yours.” She finished bandaging Aidan and then was torn about leaving. She worried Ronald would gather a bunch of his men and attack Aidan and his men. If she returned to the cabins, she might be able to calm Ronald down.
“I wasn’t going to return to the cabins tonight, but I believe I need to.”
Aidan rubbed her bare arms with a gentle caress. “I was afraid you’d say that. If you go, we’ll have to take you. You’re not going alone. I really don’t want you to return there tonight.”
“I don’t want Ronald to gather his men and attack you here in the middle of the night. And they’re likely to do that after Jared tells him whatever he wants them to hear. He’s liable to say he was searching for us, worried because Greg and I hadn’t returned to the cabin, and followed our scent trail here. Then Mike attacked him without provocation. Then the rest of you ganged up on him. I know how he manipulates the truth to suit his own agenda.”
“All right. Then we leave now.”
“What? Just pack up and drive off? You mean, we’d head out to Montana? In the middle of the night?”
“We can drive to the private airport near here and take Nick to Montana, or we could head down to California, stay at my place until everyone gets some sleep, and then head out later that day for Montana.”
“What about my family?” Holly had to get word to them right away. She couldn’t believe she was even considering just taking off. She didn’t want to leave her family in a bind either.
“We can pick them up first.” Aidan crossed the floor to his bedside table and handed her his phone, looking serious about taking care of them too, no matter the danger to him and his men. “Call them and see what they want to do. We can drive there and pick them up. Or they can slip out to meet us on the road near there. They have their own vehicle and didn’t ride with someone else, I take it.”
“Yeah, they have a Suburban. I’m afraid they’re not going to want to leave Seattle permanently. They’d have to sell off their business. I imagine Ronald would make it difficult for them to return.”
“They know him better than we do. It’s entirely up to them. If they want our help, they’ve got it.” Aidan tugged on his jeans, shirt, socks, and boots. He pulled her in for a hug and kiss. “I’m going to check on Mike. I’ll be right back.”
She kissed him back, telling him this was where she wanted to be. With him. Now and in the future. She decided to let it be her parents’ call.
She called her dad, but he wasn’t picking up his phone, and she got voice mail. She tried her mom; same thing. “Come on, come on, wake up and answer your phones.”
Chapter 20
Holly kept trying to get hold of her parents, then called her sister, who slept harder than her parents, so she didn’t believe she’d reach her.
Aidan returned to the bedroom, and as she called each of her family members again and got no answer, she shook her head. “They must be asleep, though I thought Dad would at least hear his cell phone ringing.”
“Unless Jared has reached them already and taken their phones away so you couldn’t contact them,” Aidan said.
“I don’t think Jared would have made it to the cabins this soon. Not when he was injured and hanging around here for a time.” At least she was really hoping he was still making his way back and didn’t howl a warning. Then again, she suspected her parents would have heard the howl if nothing else.
“Then we wing it. We try to get there before Jared does and slip them out. If we run into Jared or Ronald, we’ll tell them we want to speak to your family and see what they want to do. Maybe we can deal with this man to man instead of as wolves. Though I don’t trust Ronald or his brother to be honorable. Not after what Jared pulled here tonight.”
“I agree.”
“And if they don’t want to go with us? What do you want to do?” Aidan asked.
“Go with you.” She decided that’s where this was headed, no sense in prolonging the situation any longer. Then Aidan’s phone rang, and Holly was so relieved when she said to Aidan, “It’s Mom.” She took a deep breath. “Mom, trouble is headed your way.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Can you pack up and leave? Don’t even pack up. Just leave.”
“What’s going on?”
Holly could hear her father moving around in the background, opening drawers.
“Jared attacked Mike, one of Aidan’s bodyguards. Aidan and Jared got into it, and Jared even bit me when I tried to break them up.”
“Ohmigod. Are all of you all right?”
“Yeah. Jared’s on his way back there, but he’s wearing some bite marks, and you can imagine what he’s going to tell Ronald. I want you and Dad and Marianne to leave. Now.”
“We’ll let you know if we make it out okay.”
“Hurry. As soon as Jared reaches Ronald, all hell will break loose.”
“Okay, got to go.”
Holly couldn’t believe the turn of events. But they had another issue. What if her people’s blood cells were changing too? What if by causing this trouble for herself and becoming friends with Aidan and his men, she wouldn’t be able to test her pack members to learn if they needed help too?
She decided she wouldn’t worry about it for now. She would try to reach some of the pack members when she could and see if they wanted to be tested behind Ronald’s back. She did feel bad about her parents’ business, their home and hers, and the pack members who would no longer have a wolf doctor to care for them.
Searching in Aidan’s drawers, she found another pair of sweats, navy blue this time, and pulled them on.
She’d been so thrilled about work
ing with Aidan, initially thinking she would be keeping in touch long distance after the holidays. She’d never expected this to happen. That she’d want Aidan like he wanted her.
She hoped her parents and her sister would leave the cabin and make their escape before Ronald stopped them. She couldn’t help worrying he might catch up to them and try to use them to force her to return.
As soon as she was dressed, she hurried downstairs to see what was going on. Ted was rushing to pack the car. Greg and Nick were helping him, though Greg was told to just bring down the bags, not take them out to the car in his sock-covered feet in the snow. And Aidan had warned Nick not to use his sprained wrist. Aidan was finishing bandaging Mike, who had a comforter on his lap.
“I’m so sorry, Mike.” Holly squeezed his uninjured shoulder.
“I’m finally getting paid for what I was hired to do. No problem.” Mike smiled at her. “I’ve got to run up and dress.”
She still felt bad. “What can I do?” she asked Aidan.
“Help me to pack.” Aidan tore up the stairs, and she followed him.
Aidan quickly threw his clothes from his chest of drawers into a bag, while Holly grabbed the clothes in the closet.
“What’s going on with your family?”
“They’re getting ready to leave.”
“Tell them to meet us at the private airport near here. We can fly them out to Seattle or anywhere they want to go until they decide what they want to do long-term, just to keep them safe until Ronald and his brother cool down.”
“There’s a private airport out near us. We don’t live in Seattle. We needed a place to run. We could go there first, drive out to our houses, and at least pick up some of our stuff. I told them not to pack, just go.”
“I imagine Ronald will be suspicious when he hears their vehicle leaving the resort.” Aidan headed down the stairs with bags in hand.
