He helped her climb to her feet. Her knees were shaky and her throat was dry. She was trembling all over as she leaned against Austin, and he hugged her to him.
She closed her eyes, resting her head on his broad chest. Slowly, the dizziness faded. Their situation was grim, but somehow, being here with Austin was keeping her from full-blown panic.
Savannah flicked a glance at Roy. “Why isn’t he attacking us?” she whispered.
Austin shrugged. “Who knows why he does anything?” he murmured. “I don’t think even he knows.”
She frowned in thought, trying to brush aside the cobwebs in her mind. “Well, the fact that they locked us in here with a shifter who’s known to be feral pretty much means that they want us dead. If he doesn’t kill us, they’ll kill us themselves.”
Austin nodded grimly. “I know, so we’ve got to plan accordingly. When they open the door, we stand to the side. They’ll barrel in spraying silver bullets. I heal very quickly, so you’ll stand behind me. I’ll send a wave of power at them and force them to change. I’ll try to clear a path for you. I want you to run straight for the woods. Roy will go after them, too. No matter how calm he is at the moment, once they come in shooting, he’ll attack. That will help distract them, give you time to get away.”
He glanced at Roy. Roy was still ignoring them completely.
“No,” Savannah said. When Austin started to argue, she shook her head. “Don’t try to take away who I am,” she said. “Running like a cowardly bitch while my mate fights to the death? That’s not me.”
“Your mate? I had no idea you felt so strongly about Roy.” Austin smiled grimly.
She managed a laugh. “Now who’s being sarcastic at the worst possible time?”
He bent down and kissed the top of her head. “We’re so alike, with our obnoxious, asshole sense of humor. It’s like we’re meant for each other.”
She leaned in to him.
“If you stay by my side and fight, you’ll probably die.”
“I know,” she said quietly. “But if I run into the woods and leave you behind to die, then surviving’s not worth it.”
“You understand I don’t have a future, right? We have no future either way. So you’d be sacrificing yourself for nothing.”
Savannah felt anger rolling through her. This again? Roy seemed to pick up on her flare of anger, because his ears flattened against his head, and he growled.
Austin went stiff and stared at Roy.
“I think you saying that is pissing him off,” she informed him. “And it’s damn sure pissing me off.”
“Savannah, I don’t want you to die for nothing. I don’t want you to die for a crazy man. What if I go feral and I kill you?” Austin’s voice was bleak and despairing.
“Oh, for dog’s sake!” she snapped. “What if we mate, and nothing goes wrong, but then ten years from now I get hit by a bus?”
Before Austin could say anything, they saw the barrel of a gun poke through the slitted window.
Quickly, he pushed Savannah out of the way, closed his eyes, and sent out a wave of power. They heard screams of pain as he forced the men outside to shift. Smart thinking. In animal form, they wouldn’t be able to shoot. Savannah could feel the thick wave of power, and she fell to her knees and crawled to the corner of the room.
The gun barrel vanished. Howls of agony twisted up through the air outside the bunker.
She watched Austin as he stood there, power flowing from him, warping the air around him. She knew he wouldn’t be able to hold them forever. After a few minutes, he stopped and bent over, hands on his knees, panting for breath, and she heard shouts and groans as the men outside changed back.
Roy just sat there, staring blankly at the door. Savannah thought about asking him to help them, but she was afraid she’d just set him off. At least he wasn’t currently trying to kill them.
After a couple of minutes, the gun barrel poked through the window again. Once more, Austin sent out the wave of power, and held them for a few minutes before releasing them.
This time, it took about five minutes for them to recover.
Finally, there was a weak, whining shout through the window. “You can’t last all day, shithead! Give up now and we’ll kill you quick! You don’t cut this shit out, we’re going to tear your heads off!”
“Come try it!” Austin yelled back. “After I finish gutting you, I’m going to rip the fur from your flesh! I’m gonna skull-fuck your eye sockets, bitches!”
“Eww, gross,” Savannah winced. “I mean, well-deserved, but gross. Also, could you maybe do the first thing but not the second thing? Because if you did the second thing, I feel like it would flash in front of my eyes at the wrong moments and ruin all future boinking sessions.”
Roy’s shoulders started shaking. He was making an odd noise.
Savannah looked at him in alarm. His lips were curled up. Was he laughing while in wolf form?
Outside, she could hear angry muttering. She and Austin stood there, leaning against the wall. The men outside were frustrated. They couldn’t get close enough to shoot into the room without Austin knocking them on their mangy asses with his power. Same thing with pulling the door of the bunker open.
They were at an impasse, but she was sure they hadn’t given up.
As the minutes ticked by, she grew angrier and angrier.
She didn’t want to die like this. Not betrayed by her own kind. Not for money. Not when she’d met her mate, the man she loved, the man she wanted to spend the rest of her life arguing with.
Suddenly, she heard the crack of gunfire and screams of pure agony twisting up into the air.
There were different people nearby, she could scent them. Not the Deep River Pack.
Austin stepped in front of her. “My brothers!” he said. “My packmates. I smell them.”
Roy went very still.
“Austin, it’s Cliff! Can you hear me?” a man’s voice called out from right outside the little window.
“Well, if I couldn’t, then how the fuck could I answer you?” Austin yelled back.
“Fuck yourself right up the ass, Austin! Stand back!” a man’s voice yelled. “We’re blasting the door open!”
They hurried to the back of the room, and Austin pushed Savannah up against the wall, shielding her with his body. Roy just sat there by the door, tongue lolling out, eyes fixated on the handle.
“Damn it, Roy, get over here!” Savannah screamed at him.
He twitched an ear but didn’t move.
An explosion sounded outside the door, ringing in Savannah’s ears and making her teeth ache. She smelled a bitter, acrid scent. After a minute, the door fell straight outward and landed on the ground with a clang.
One of the men facing them screamed, “Look out!”
Roy lunged straight for his throat.
Chapter Thirteen
Minutes later, Roy lay on the ground in human form, panting and dazed, his eyes rolling back in his head.
It had taken the combined powers of Austin and his brothers Cliff and Grant to subdue him. Then Austin had fetched the chains and restraints from where he’d stowed them in his truck. There were about twenty pack members with Cliff and Grant, and they were cleaning up the bodies of the former Deep River Pack and taking their cubs into custody. The air stank of blood and gunpowder and rage.
“What will happen to the cubs?” Savannah asked, and Austin saw her face soften as she watched the crying cubs being led towards several vans that were now parked in the clearing.
“They’ll be adopted by the nearest large pack. And it will be the best thing that could have happened to them.” Cliff shook his head in disgust. “This place is a trash-heap. They didn’t send their kids to school or teach them how to function in the modern world, the cubs are practically feral, the adults cut themselves off from other packs. From what I gather, they didn’t have a Council of Elders or a pack charter to guide them. I’m going to recommend to the managers of the database that
we start identifying packs like this, paying them visits, and ensuring that they’re not behaving like a bunch of rogues who just happen to have an Alpha.”
Austin avoided looking at his brothers. Their arrival had stirred up the usual bitterness of memory, a gritty sediment that normally settled at the bottom of his soul but came burning to the surface whenever he was near them.
Savannah was staring right at Cliff and Grant, though, with a mildly puzzled look on her face.
Grant quirked an eyebrow at her. “Are you looking at us like that because Austin told you what a bunch of evil, greedy, backstabbing fucktards we are?”
Savannah laughed. “I’m trying to remember…nope…the specific word fucktard was not used in reference to either one of you. As for the rest…” She gave a delicate little shrug and blinked up at him as she flashed a sardonic smile.
Austin saw Grant looking at Savannah appraisingly, and moved to stand next to her so fast that it was almost a blur.
“This is my True Mate,” he informed Grant. “Savannah Orman, soon to be Savannah Bronson.”
“Oh, so now you’re a believer? ‘Old wives’ tale, dumbest idea you’ve ever heard’, that’s all in the past now?” Grant had a mocking glint in his eye.
“Fuck off. Also, if you even think about trying to flirt with my mate, I’ll do things to you that no healer can fix.”
“Austin!” Savannah cried. “Settle down. Please. They saved our lives.”
“It’s all right,” Grant said with a shrug. “It’s actually fair enough. I used to flirt with everything that had a pulse and peed sitting down, including Cliff’s mate before they officially sealed the deal.”
Cliff shot him a look of disgust and snarled. Then he turned his back on him and started talking to one of the men who’d come with them, a tall redhead named Rusty.
“But I am now a reformed man,” Grant continued. “I have a beautiful, perfect mate named Celeste, and a cub named Jeffrey, and another cub on the way. A baby girl. My dick does not wander. My eye does not wander.”
“Congrats!” Savannah said politely. “On the baby, and I guess on the fact that your dick now stays close to home. And thank you for saving our lives.” She nudged Austin. He sighed.
“Thank you,” he said, his tone more grudging than it should have been. Cliff and Rusty turned their attention back to him, and he scowled at Cliff.
“How did you guys know where to find us?”
Cliff shrugged. “Ever since your friend Tully called us, we’ve been trying to track you down. Then we heard that you went after Roy, and we came to help. We hacked in to your phone and tracked you, and here we are.”
“Why the sudden need to be with me, when you’ve only wanted the opposite for the last…let’s see…my entire life?” Austin’s tone was cool as he fixed Cliff with a steady stare.
Cliff met his gaze, expressionless. “Tully told me something that made me concerned about your welfare.”
Grant flashed his brother an angry look. “What? Why?” Grant demanded of Cliff. “First I’ve heard of it. You’re keeping things from me?”
Cliff’s face remained a blank. “That’s frequently true, yes. I’m the Alpha of one of the biggest packs in the country. I give out what information I consider necessary. The only one I tell everything to is my mate.”
Grant’s face twisted in scorn. “You’re only Alpha because I let you win the Alpha trial.”
“Keep telling yourself that,” Cliff snarled.
Grant shook his head in disgust and let out a low growl. Cliff replied with a rumbling growl of his own. Their fists clenched, and they slowly turned to face each other. Rusty’s gaze swiveled back and forth between the two of them, his expression pained.
“Excuse me!” Savannah called. “Point of order. If you guys all jump in and kick each other’s asses, and Roy wakes up again while you’ve knocked each other out, we’re screwed. He could break free from these chains and kill everyone here.”
Grant and Cliff settled down, grumbling and turning away from each other again. Austin almost laughed out loud. They’d just been sent to their corners by a fierce little fox shifter who was a third of their size.
Savannah glanced over at Austin’s truck. All the doors were open. “Has anyone seen my rifle and my tranqs? Are they in there?”
“There was nothing like that in the truck,” Rusty said. “I’ll go search the cabins. But we also brought our own.”
“Normal tranqs don’t work on him,” Savannah said firmly. “My family makes a special formula that’s stronger than anything else on the shifter market, and if we don’t have those, my friends, we are in deep shiitake.”
Rusty hurried off, and she heard him telling his men to help him search.
“You want to know why Cliff was looking for me for the last six weeks?” Austin said to Grant. “Because Tully told him about the fucked-up visions I’ve been seeing. He told him that I’m going crazy. Turning rogue.”
Grant looked at him with a surprisingly good imitation of concern. “Fuck, Austin. I’m sorry. I really am.” Or maybe it was genuine. Austin could never really tell what was what, with his family.
“You’re not going crazy,” Cliff growled.
Austin felt a surge of anger. Nice try. Lull him into trusting Cliff, and then Cliff would grab him, tranq him, and shove him in a padded room for the rest of his life. The crazy brother dilemma, solved.
“Yeah, thanks for that. You’ve spent so much time with me, you’d definitely know,” Austin said. “And Korbin would disagree with you.”
“Korbin is the healer for Jason Washborn’s pack,” Cliff pointed out. “And he’s Jason’s uncle. He’s loyal to Jason. Jason loathes you and would do anything to get rid of you, because you publicly humiliated him and handed him his ass.” He held up his hands as Austin started to argue. “I’m not saying it wasn’t deserved. From what I’ve heard, he got what was coming to him. I’m just pointing out that of all the healers in the country that I’d trust, Korbin would be last on the list.”
Savannah was staring at him intently, squinting up at him.
“What?” Cliff said defensively.
“You’ve got a tell. There’s a tiny jump in the muscle next to your left eye when you lie,” Savannah said, frowning in concentration. “But what are you lying about?”
Austin grinned fiercely. His mate didn’t miss a trick, and unlike most people, she didn’t let Cliff’s bulk or his air of dominance intimidate her.
Roy stirred on the ground, and they all froze and looked down at him. He was still unconscious, thank God. But how long would it last?
If they couldn’t find their rifle and tranqs, they were screwed.
Cliff looked annoyed at being called out by Savannah. Good. People should stand up to him more often. “Well, foxy little lie detector, I’m not lying about Korbin. Austin is a Seer. I can’t tell you how I know this, I just know. How am I doing now? Lying, not lying?”
“I…think you’re telling the truth. You think Korbin would actually lie?” Savannah demanded, sounding astonished. “He’s a healer. He took an oath, bound by a Truthmaker.”
Austin hated the hope in her voice – hated it because it gave him hope too. If it were anyone other than Cliff talking, he’d feel differently, but he’d learned from bitter experience how far he could trust his brother.
Hope was sharp and pointy and dangerous. Giving up was easier than fighting. It was easier than wanting Savannah more than anything, wanting to be the man who would protect her and love her and father her cubs, the reason she laughed, the man who made her smile in the morning, the man who made her cry with pleasure at night. Because if he let himself dream of a future like that, only to find out that he’d fallen for more of Cliff’s lies…it hurt too badly even to think about. And he was a man who’d had been shot in the heart with a silver bullet.
But this was worse.
“All that means is that he was telling the truth at the time that he took the oath,” Cliff po
inted out. “Which, in Korbin’s case, was twenty years ago. Things change. I think Korbin decided that family politics were more important than his oath. I don’t trust anyone in Jason’s family. I didn’t trust his father, I don’t trust Jason, and I don’t trust Korbin. They’re a nest of snakes.” His voice was growing more and more heated.
Austin was puzzled. He’d never known that Cliff hated the Washborn Pack that much. In fact, he hadn’t even been aware that Cliff was that familiar with them. The bigger packs were aware of each other’s existence, sure, and they met up from time to time, but the Washborns and the Bronsons weren’t close. The Washborn Pack was in the stock market and investment business and lived in Washington State. The Bronsons were in the pharmaceutical business and they lived in North Dakota.
“We’re seeing other healers,” Savannah said firmly, putting her hand on his arm. “You hear me?”
“I don’t want you to let Cliff get your hopes up,” Austin said to her. “Let me tell you what happened the last time I trusted Cliff. I was sixteen. Everyone knew that Cliff wanted to replace my dad as Alpha. When I hit my teens, I got stronger, and all of a sudden I started regularly tying with Cliff or even beating him in sparring contests. Then one day Cliff asked me to sit down and talk to him at lunch, and I ate the sandwich he handed me, tasted something funny, and woke up in military school. Where they regularly beat my ass, starved me, and held my head underwater until I passed out. Then I ran away from military school, and years later, I found out that Cliff was the one who convinced dear old dad to send me away. I don’t play happy families any more. The end.”
Savannah looked at Cliff with horror. “You fucking dick!” she spat at him. “Seriously. How could you? Your own brother?”
Austin felt a glow of warmth inside. She was genuinely furious with Cliff. She absolutely had his back. Anyone who hurt him was on her shit list, instantly. Until he’d met Savannah, Austin had never realized how much he’d craved that feeling. When he’d joined Tully’s pack, it had been more of a business arrangement. Oh, they liked him, he liked them, but they had asked him to join because he was a stone-cold killer, not because he felt like one of them.
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