He started toward Phil, not even bothering to shift first, but then something hit him in the back of the head. He whirled in fury, ready to tear apart whoever had attacked him… and then stopped cold. Standing not ten feet away was a tiny, dark-skinned human female—that friend of Dani’s, Alisha he thought her name was. It was literally the last thing he expected to see, and the shock of it actually cleared his mind a little. He looked down at the ground to see what had hit him—it was a shoe, he realized—and sure enough Alisha was standing barefoot and hefting her remaining piece of footwear as if she were about to let it fly at his face. His mind cleared a little more.
“What do you think you are doing—” he started. Then he saw that the hand which held the shoe was shaking. Her entire body was shuddering like a leaf, in fact. Nonetheless, she stood her ground.
“You listen here,” she snapped, her eyes flashing fire. “My very best friend is out in those woods—out there where there are hunters! What in the hell are you doing fighting your own kind when she could already be in their hands? Go and get her right now! You too, Phil. I don’t want to hear another word from either of you furry mutts until my friends are back here safely!”
This situation was not something Mason’s wolf instincts knew how to handle. It was a direct challenge to his authority, but it carried no threat. The absurdity of it broke through his anger completely and he regained control. He turned to Phil, and spoke quickly and with authority. “Call together the pack.”
The pack assembled quickly, and Mason addressed them. “There are hunters in the woods, and Dani and Portia may have been taken,” he said simply. “Every male who wants to remain in this pack, come with me now. The females will stay here and wait for us to return. Cal, you go and gather all the medical supplies you can find, because we may need them tonight.”
He watched the faces of the members of his pack as he delivered the news, and was pleased to see loyalty and determination in their eyes. He shifted without even bothering to undress first, sending torn fabric flying from his massive form. He bounded toward the door, sensing without seeing that his pack was following behind him.
* * *
Dani had been carrying Portia for well over a mile, and the house was still nowhere in sight. Worse, she could hear hunters throughout the woods around her, although she hadn’t been spotted yet. Portia’s breathing was ragged and she had lost consciousness.
As she forced herself to go on, painful emotions hammered at Dani’s mind. This was all her fault, she thought. If she had not been so proud and foolish, she would have accepted the protection of Mason’s pack after they had dinner together that first night, and she wouldn’t have ever been captured by hunters in the first place. If she had just told Mason the truth—that she wanted very much for him to claim her—she would be his by now, they would be safe together with the pack, and Portia would not be on the verge of death in her arms.
The best she could do now was get Portia home and hope that Cal could save her life. After that, Dani decided, she would just leave quietly and slip into the night. Mason would never want to claim her now after all she had put him through, if he was even alive and not captured by the hunters, and the pack wouldn’t want someone whose foolish actions had risked all of their lives. A tear ran down her face, and then another, and then she was crying. She truly would have loved being with Mason, she thought, and now it was too late. Damn my pride, she cursed herself silently.
Still, what mattered now was saving Portia, she told herself. She pressed on, willing herself to keep moving forward even as her body ached and her feet bled from a hundred tiny cuts.
At last, she came to the edge of a broad clearing, and she saw the lights of the house in the distance. All she had to do was cross this clearing and make her way through another few hundred yards or so of forest on the other side, and then she would reach safety.
She stepped out into the open, moving as quickly and silently as she could, but then she heard a gunshot ring out in the clearing. She felt a whoosh of air as the bullet missed the left side of her face by only inches. Thankfully Portia was over her right shoulder and the shot missed her as well. Dani turned and dashed back into the woods as quickly as she could, hearing another two shots which slammed into trees on either side of her. The hunters had set a trap and waited for her!
She could hear hunters shouting in the clearing now, dozens of them, and worse still she could hear more of them in the direction from which she had come. There was nowhere to go. With no other option, she pushed through the brambles into a dense thicket and set Portia on the ground as gently as possible. Mason, please be alive and please find me, she begged silently.
As the hunters came closer, she gripped Portia’s hand and stroked her hair. “I’m so sorry, Portia, I’m sorry,” she told her unconscious friend. Then, with tears running down her face, she shifted and crouched down, waiting for the first hunter to approach the thicket. If she was going to die tonight, she was damn well going to take some of these bastards with her.
* * *
Having sniffed out a trap, Mason led his pack carefully in a wide circle around the clearing. As they made their way through the woods near the edge of the trees, he heard a shot, then two more a moment later. Dani!
Breaking into a run, he threw caution to the wind and charged into the open straight for the nearest group of hunters. He saw Phil break off, leading another group of wolves toward a different truckload of hunters, and a third group followed Tyler.
The hunters were foolishly concentrating all their attention on the wolves they had been shooting at moments ago, and with all of the yelling back and forth between them they didn’t even hear the pack approaching. By the time the first hunter turned and saw Mason coming, he didn’t even have time to fire a shot before he died. Through all the other smells that assaulted his keen nose, Mason had caught Dani’s scent—the scent of his mate, who was in danger—and it drove him wild. All the rage and fear that had built throughout the day was let loose, and he killed with insane fury. Gunshots echoed through the clearing and several wolves went down, but the pack’s vicious attack had caught the hunters off guard, and the combination of the darkness and their sheer terror ruined the aim of most of them.
He caught sight of Phil out of the corner of his eye, as his second-in-command leapt into the bed of a moving truck and made short work of the hunters trying to fire at the wolves from what they had thought was a safe place.
He made his way toward Dani’s scent, killing everything in his path, until finally there was nothing left in his way and he saw his beautiful red wolf crouched over the fallen body of a hunter who had gotten too close to her. Behind him, he could hear the sound of screeching tires as the last of the hunters beat a hasty retreat, leaving their dead behind.
He shifted as soon as he reached her side, and she did the same. Without a word, he pulled her body close to his and kissed her deeply. He wanted more, and he wanted it now, but she broke away from the kiss and pointed deeper into the thicket.
“Portia… she’s hurt badly…” Dani whispered.
When he reached Portia’s side a moment later, Mason’s joy at finding Dani was replaced just as quickly by fear and sorrow. Portia was alive, but just barely, and the entire area around her right shoulder was black. The wolf from the other pack had been right, he thought. Those hunters had been using silver-cored bullets. How many of his pack had been shot in the fight? Would they survive?
Putting those questions aside, he lifted Portia into his arms and then set out for the house at a run. As he ran past Phil—now back in human form as well—he yelled out orders for all the wounded wolves to be brought back to the house as soon as possible. Cal had his work cut out for him tonight, and Mason prayed that he would be up to the task.
* * *
Mason had been going from room to room, helping Cal in any way he could with the treatment of Portia and the six males of the pack who had been wounded in the battle with the hunters. It was
a testament to Cal’s skill and dedication that not a single wolf had died that night, despite the fact that every one of their wounds came from a silver-cored bullet.
Finally, after nearly five hours, Cal had removed the last shard of silver from the final wounded wolf, and it was now just a matter of waiting for their natural healing abilities to take over and repair the damage. Many of the wounds would have easily been fatal for a human, and even with the silver out of their bodies it would still take time for them to heal.
Dani, meanwhile, had been sitting in Portia’s room for well over three hours, watching her friend and crying. For the first hour after they arrived at the house, she had hovered over Portia, stroking her hair and face and speaking to Portia softly through her tears. Cal had managed to pull out the largest pieces of the bullet right away in order to stop the spread of the poison, but then he had needed to leave to attend to a couple of the males whose wounds were even more grievous than Portia’s.
When he had returned, he had ordered Phil to get Dani out of the way, and Phil and Alisha had escorted her to her room. Alisha had run a bath for her and, reluctantly, Dani had gotten in the tub and washed the dirt and dried blood from the already healed scratches and cuts she had suffered on her trek through the forest in human form. Alisha had even insisted that she stay soaking in the tub for another twenty minutes after she was clean, to allow her to calm down and stop crying.
After that, though, Dani had returned to Portia’s room—by that point Cal had left again to assist the other wolves—and her tears had returned right away, although she had done her best to keep calm and stay strong for her friend, who was now conscious although she often drifted briefly into sleep and when she was awake she was hazy.
Dani looked up as Mason and Cal entered the room, and she overheard them talking quietly.
“Mason, there is nothing else you can do for me now,” Cal said, as firmly as he could when speaking to his pack leader. “All of the wounded are going to make it; they just need time to heal… lots of time, for some of them. You need to go and get yourself cleaned up, and then deal with Dani.”
“The pack needs me right now. They need to know that I appreciate what they did tonight, and how bravely they fought,” Mason argued.
“What they need is a pack leader who is in his right mind. They have that at the moment, but if you don’t do what needs to be done they might not have it for much longer.”
“You’re right,” Mason conceded, and left the room, presumably to go and wash the blood and dirt from his body.
Dani’s tears increased, and she even sniffled a little, but Cal paid no attention to her as he focused on Portia.
“She is recovering really well,” he muttered to himself. “This one's a tough little wolf; she is healing faster than some of the males in fact.” The second statement was louder and probably intended to cheer up Dani, but she barely heard him.
Deal with Dani… the words echoed in her head over and over. She knew exactly what Cal meant. They couldn’t have a foolish girl like her in a the pack, someone who would put them all in danger because of her silly resistance to being claimed by a man she knew she wanted. Dani had resolved earlier to flee the pack once Portia was safe, but hearing that Cal wanted her gone made it even worse.
She recalled what Cal had said just a moment ago: Portia was recovering and she was going to be fine. Dani had wanted to speak to Portia once she was fully awake and attentive, and tell her how sorry she was for getting her injured, but now knowing that even Cal wanted her gone from the pack, she realized that Portia was never going to forgive her either. She didn’t think she could face Portia’s condemnation when she awoke, and she decided that it would be better to leave now.
She hated the idea of leaving without even saying goodbye to Alisha, but she had seen the looks which passed between her and Phil, and she knew that Alisha would be in good hands. Dani would write her a letter later, once she had found a new place to live and started over somewhere far away.
All she had to do now was grab some of her things from her room and then slip out of the house.
* * *
Mason washed himself quickly, but then lingered in the shower for a few moments to compose his thoughts. He knew what he had to do now. He had to do what he should have done that very first night at Dani’s house. He thought sadly about what a fool he had been, and what a terrible cost his pack had paid for it. It amazed him that they had remained loyal to him in spite of everything, and he swore that they would not regret it. Phil, especially, needed to be told how much Mason owed him. He needed to thank that little human girl, too. When it came down to it, he thought, she might have been the bravest of them all.
First things first, though. He had to deal with Dani right away, before his mind started to cloud again or she did something silly or both. Now that his mind was made up, in fact, he had to admit that he was looking forward to claiming her—he certainly couldn’t deny that he had wanted to take her long and hard and thoroughly since he first set eyes upon her.
He dressed quickly, and headed for Portia’s room. Not finding her there, he began to worry a little, but figured she had just gone back to her room to sleep at last, and he went quickly to her door.
He considered knocking, but decided that doing so would not properly set the tone, since what was about to happen was going to happen whether Dani liked it or not—it was for her own good as well as his. He didn’t want to startle her though, so he opened the door quietly… and then stopped in his tracks.
“Just what do you think you’re doing?” he demanded, as Dani stood frozen in place with a look of shame, fear, and sadness on her face. She had the window open already, and had obviously been about to climb out with a small satchel, presumably filled with some of her personal things.
She did not answer for a moment, and he went on, fury building inside him. “I cannot believe you would think of leaving this pack after all they did for you tonight, after all they sacrificed. Portia barely survived, and six other wolves are badly wounded. Any one of them could have easily died tonight—died to save you!”
She burst into sobs.
“I’m so sorry, Mason. I know this is all my fault, and I understand why you don’t want me anymore. I wanted to wait until Portia was awake so that I could tell her goodbye and that I’m sorry, but after I heard you and Cal talking I couldn’t bear to wait any longer. I know Alisha will hate me for leaving without saying goodbye,” Dani said, sobbing even harder, “but I’m going to write to her once I get to… wherever I end up going.”
Mason’s anger melted into confusion. “After you heard me and Cal talking, you wanted to leave?” he asked, trying to think what Cal had said that could have possibly triggered that reaction. “Does the idea of me claiming you repulse you so much that you would leave even after tonight?”
“No, it isn’t that. I sincerely regret not telling you how I felt the night that we met.” Dani looked down. “I wanted you to claim me that night because I wanted to be yours, but I couldn’t come to terms with that enough to ask you myself.” Dani’s eyes glistened with fresh tears. “I understand why you don’t want me now, though, and I understand why Cal wanted you to get rid of me, since I have brought the pack nothing but trouble. The sooner I’m gone, the better it will be for everyone.”
Mason’s heart almost broke hearing her, but then only a moment later he was filled with elation. She wanted him to claim her! She had wanted it all along. What a damn fool I’ve been, he cursed himself yet again, but he didn’t waste time with regrets. He had come to her room tonight to claim her whether she wanted it or not, but to find that she did want it was the best news he’d had in a while.
* * *
Without another word, Mason crossed the room quickly and took hold of her. He pulled her to him and bit down at the base of her neck on the opposite side of his original mark and tugged.
Dani threw her head back as he nipped and sucked and bit down and over her collar bone. She
was writhing again as he marked up her entire neck. He ripped her shirt from her with a single motion, and she wrapped her legs around his waist as he pressed her against the wall and made scratches down her chest. “Mason…”
She yelled long and loud as he bit down on her nipple and sucked. It was the oddest mix of pain and pleasure that Dani had ever felt. “Mason!” she cried out, forgetting everything which had been on her mind. She bucked while his teeth tugged at her other nipple, and he continued to mark her up until she was moaning and on the verge of climax. Dani moaned louder as he began to trail his tongue up her chest and then delve into her mouth. She began to leave scratches of her own, and then he picked her up in his arms and set her on the edge of the bed.
Mason climbed onto the bed and moved them towards the middle. “I should have done this sooner,” he told her, his voice deep and hungry.
Dani laced her hands in his. “I’m sorry that I am so stubborn—”
Mason kissed her punishingly. “Shhh,” he whispered against her mouth. “No more thinking today. Just relax.” As if to emphasize his words, he tore off her pants and panties, and then quickly undressed himself.
Dani was suddenly lost in a blur of white noise as he began to work his fingers in and out of her. It was even better than the last time because he had taken away the stress of her trying to decide if she truly wanted to belong to his pack and ultimately to him. She arched her hips up and grunted.
“Please…” Dani pleaded with her words and also with her eyes. She had waited so long for this moment. Mason withdrew his fingers and moved her further up on the bed. She felt her juices eagerly dripping down her thighs in anticipation and begged again. “Mason…”
He positioned himself in between her legs and nibbled along her thighs. “You are mine, Dani, and nothing will ever change that.” He began to slide himself inside her slowly while keeping his eyes on hers. “I claim you as my mate for life.” Mason moved deeper and Dani cried out.
Marked by the Alpha Page 7
