Bo turned and looked up at him. “I’m going to be late. What is it?”
He’s still unhappy with me from last night.
Ryker stepped in very close to the other and lowered his head. “I know you won’t be late,” he growled softly. “I know that you always add extra time to your commute so you’ll never be late.”
Bo’s lips quirked in a reluctant smile. “Yeah, I do. So, what exactly do you want from me?”
“Just this,” Ryker breathed, and touched his lips to Bo’s.
They had kissed before, with hunger and sex thick in their thoughts. Kissing simply to kiss, to be close to another person, was something they hadn’t done yet because of the walls that still stood between them. Now, however, Ryker was about to go out and do something very stupid. He knew it was stupid. He had no intentions of dying, or even being drastically hurt—with some luck, he wouldn’t be hurt at all—but there was no telling what was about to happen.
If something did happen, he wanted to leave Bo with something special to carry him through. And he could think of nothing more special than this.
It wasn’t the best kiss. In fact, it was really very clumsy because they had never kissed in such a calm manner before. Bo’s lips were soft though, and his breath tasted of mint toothpaste.
Finally, Ryker drew back and peered into the eyes of his mate.
Bo looked worried. That wasn’t what he wanted to happen at all. Damn. “What was that for?”
Ryker snorted and looked away, hiding behind what he hoped was his usual behavior. If everything went right, Bo would be none the wiser. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I just wanted to kiss you. You’re mine, omega.”
Bo smiled a little, slightly reassured. “Okay, puppy. I’ll see you tonight.”
“Yes,” Ryker agreed. “Tonight.”
He waited until Bo was gone, and then he waited even longer. When he figured that the omega was past the point of no return and wouldn’t be coming back for anything, Ryker stepped outside the apartment and shut and locked the door behind him.
Then, he took to the streets as a wolf.
Not for lack of trying, he hadn’t been able to get ahold of Merissa again. Either she was avoiding him, captive in her own pack, or dead. No matter which was the truth, it just meant that he hadn’t been able to get any more information about what was being planned against him. And though he often saw others from his pack, they were never the members that he wanted to see. In fact, though some of the wolves he saw in the shadows carried the scent of his pack, he didn’t know them at all.
Maybe, just maybe, the wolves who were still loyal to Ryker were being hidden away inside the shelter. Held captive. No doubt Jeriko had come up with some convincing reason for it, but now Ryker was concerned. Who had Jeriko convinced? Had he convinced the loyal wolves that hiding from Ryker was for their own protection, or had Jeriko convinced the ones who followed him that the loyal ones were untrustworthy?
All of it was too confusing to follow. Ryker had never been much good at strategizing. In fact, that was exactly the reason he’d had a small council and a beta as his second-in-command. They made up for his slack. He wished he had someone like that now, but he was on his own. And when he was on his own, he always took the same course of action: direct assault.
Snarling to himself, he picked up his pace as he threaded his way through the alleys, heading straight for the shelter on the outskirts of Seattle. The oppressive dark cast of the sky didn’t fade, and wouldn’t no matter how far he ran, but the reflective grey of corporation towers changed to modest flashes of suburban color as he passed from business districts to home neighborhoods. Apartments and shared duplexes were the norm, most of them with small yards or tiny porches. Beginner places. Nothing to be proud of but everything to revel in.
Ryker paused at the top of a slight hill, looking down the street to his left. It led to a cul-de-sac, one he remembered intimately. It had no particular significance for him, but he’d often passed it...before.
Continuing on now past the stop sign, the scenery changed once again. The change was slower this time, less abrupt. It came in like the tide, creeping gradually. Here and there, a porch step was rotten. A window was in need of replacing, and momentarily boarded over with freshly-damp pieces of cardboard. A chain link fence with a gap or two, missing shingles, spots of rust and mold. Weeds sprouted from the sidewalk, and leaves clogged the gutters. There was nothing particularly bad about any of it—at first. All things were sometimes neglected. All small signs of wear and tear couldn’t be immediately fixed, or had no need to be. However, the signs of breakage began to increase more and more in frequency. Those boarded windows were now on every house, and the cardboard covering them had been replaced by permanent sheets of nailed plywood. Doorframes were cracked from frequent abuse. Trash clogged dumpsters that hadn’t been emptied out for some time now, and broken appliances filled parking spots and driveways in greater frequency than the vehicles. A bus that had broken down five years ago had been simply left to rot and rust where it lay; the risk of fetching it for repairs too great, and the danger of the area too prevalent. Now, the bus was hardly recognizable. Covered in graffiti, it had long since been stripped of tires and useful parts and had been used as a getaway for lustful teens before it became too filthy and neglected even for that purpose. Now, strange brownish weeds protruded from the windows and grew in the molding foam of the desecrated seats.
It was a landmark. Local kids called it the Stink. And stink it did. Ryker gave the thing a wide berth, wrinkling his snout as he passed and huffing as he hurried on to clear the fragrant air from his nostrils.
Home was close—at least, the place where home once was—was close by. Everything the alpha saw filled him with pangs of loneliness and familiarity, one of which sapped his strength while the other replenished it. The scent markers set here and there by his pack made it quite clear that no stranger was welcome in the territory of the ghetto. And he was a stranger now. Yet, he really didn’t feel like one. He felt as if he was simply returning home, as if he’d been away only on an extended vacation. An urge to prance and howl, to announce his presence, filled his chest. He snapped his jaws against it and continued on.
All those years ago, when he took leadership from the current pack alpha, Ryker immediately found them this shelter. He had chosen it after much deliberation, and for quite a few different reasons. The first and foremost among those reasons was simply that it was an unlikely location. Those were the easiest to defend, when your potential enemies would have a difficult time locating you. A simple enough conclusion, really. Perhaps it wasn’t the most child-friendly location, but at the same time it was also one of the safest places for a young wolf shifter pup to be. And that was because those who lived in the ghetto were incredibly used to turning a blind eye to the strange happenings of the world around them. Most of the time, that meant robberies and drug deals. However, it also meant that if a person were to glimpse large dogs in the vicinity, or to catch sight of a human becoming one such large dog, they would ignore it and turn away from the sight. The people living here just wanted to exist. What that existence included was of their own decree.
And there were a great deal of people living in the area. Ryker could name many of the families just off the top of his head, knowing their scents as he passed. Though the ghetto might have seemed abandoned and forgotten, it was really only the people that the world had forgotten. They were there, in droves, but they preferred for the most part to keep to themselves. No one would come running in the direction of a howl, or several howls. That simply wasn’t the law here. The law was willful ignorance.
And that made it a very good home.
Ryker passed by a cigarette store, from which emanated the sweet reek of marijuana. His paw-steps echoed emptily along the sidewalk in front of a church. He skirted between two competing liquor stores, both of which brewed illegal drinks in their basements.
Turning another corner, he st
opped and looked at the long, low building slung across several lots before him. It resembled a prison or a drab school, but it was a factory which once produced glass bottles. It had been lying abandoned for some time, and was surrounded by the burned remnants of empty apartments that had been taken down as well by the fire that put an end to the factory’s glory days.
And it was within the belly of the sleeping monster of a building, that his old pack lived.
His heart started pounding in his chest. Ryker shook his head, growling warily. For a moment, the spell that seemed to have ensnared his thoughts was broken and he was left only with a sense of himself and all that he was feeling. Anger, frustration, hate, fear, and trepidation. All of them seemed so similar and yet each one was an entirely different hell unto itself.
He managed to struggle through the barrage of emotions, and he dug his claws against the concrete. Deep furrows trailed after the dull points, reminding him of the absolute power he held in his body. He was an alpha. This was his territory. He would take it back.
Lifting his nose to the air, Ryker tried to scent out any wolves who might be patrolling the area but all he caught were dull traces. No one had been nearby in the past several hours.
What that meant exactly, he didn’t know.
Well, he did know one thing. It meant Jeriko had abolished yet another rule Ryker upheld, which was to have the home shelter watched at all times. It was, after all, a shelter. A shelter was meant to protect, and to do that it had to be protected.
A nagging sense of wrongness settled in his gut, and he started forward again. He kept his pace slower this time, his paws soft upon the concrete of the huge parking lot before the factory. Ears flat and fur slicked down, he moved from shadow to shadow. More dull traces of scent came to his snout, but found nothing particularly noteworthy.
The lot was strewn with cracks that resembled lightning bolts, and enormous pot holes. However, Ryker knew where each obstacle was. His pace was precise and unhurried, assured of his own confidence by the fact that his body moved on without his thoughts. It was muscle memory at its finest.
He stepped off the parking lot and onto the damp earth that encircled the factory. Unlike most fires, this one had not cleansed the ground and encouraged more growth. Instead, it seared chemicals into the dirt itself that then prevented anything else from ever growing.
The front entrance was sealed, obviously. Ryker went past it and worked his way around the side, still slow, senses pricked for the first sign of any provocation. Nothing. And each moment there was nothing, he only grew more and more worried.
He skirted far around the side entrance and continued on to a crumbled hole in the side of the building. This was the entrance he preferred.
Lowering himself down so that his soft belly fur touched the scorched black earth, Ryker crawled inside. His hunter eyes adjusted immediately to the darkness, helped by random spurts and shafts of light from the areas where the building had collapsed from fire and age. He stood along the side of the main work area, rusting and ash-coated mechanisms forever paused in their work. Higher up, he saw the observation area where he occasionally posted a second guard.
For a second, he thought he saw a glimpse of movement but when nothing else happened, he told himself it was nothing.
The pack didn’t live here, in the middle of this disgusting mess. It was definitely no place to raise pups or sleep with a loved one, or enjoy a sense of belonging. The roof and walls did not keep out the rain, which meant ash constantly dripped as sticky grime all over the place. It was drafty and uncomfortable, and not exactly safe.
Moving carefully along the wall, allowing some of the grey ash sludge to smear into his dark coat to help him hide better—since shadows were hardly ever just pitch black—Ryker sought out the set of stairs that would take him lower into the stomach of the factory.
Locating them quickly, as stairs tended not to change location, he started to pad quietly down them. All the while, he was braced for someone to jump down on him from above but it never happened.
Then, the stairs leveled out and he stepped onto the softness of a row of welcome mats. Dirty, grimy welcome mats that had seen a great deal of use. Most of the grime was a smeared mass, but here and there Ryker caught glimpses of clean pawprints. Small and large alike, they were a tribute to the life of his pack.
Bracing himself for the pang in his heart it was going to bring, Ryker slowly lifted his gaze from the welcome mat.
They weren’t the first ones to live in the factory. Ryker had always known that. He hadn’t had to take it from anyone, but it was quite obvious that others had lived here at one time. Homeless humans perhaps, as he’d never caught a scent of another shifter.
The lower floor of the factory had long since been cleared of the smaller bits of machinery and debris, leaving only the larger walls of belt and counter and protruding cranks that couldn’t be shifted by any means. That was fine with Ryker, who had enlisted the help of a wolf with an interest in architecture to actually make use of those so-called natural barriers. The pups loved to climb around on the old, rusted cranks, too. Small fortresses of wood and scrap had been forged to make homes, which were adapted upon and reinforced by the wolves. Other areas were marked off by sets of curtain and tents. Fake trees of all sorts had been placed here and there, and even gathered into a small grove for relaxation. Christmas lights were strung through the rafters, and sun- catchers hung in the high basement windows. Children’s drawings hung here and there. There was a section for the library, and a large white tent for schooling.
It was home. Ryker felt as though it had always been his home, as though he had never had any other place to live in his entire life. This shelter was a part of him, as much a piece of his life as the blood that ran through his veins.
And it was all abandoned.
Every scent was stale. He heard nothing. He saw slight movements in the flapping of material, but it was only from the drafts. Rats moved and squeaked in the shadows, their tiny claws scrabbling. But there were no wolves here. In fact, it seemed as though there hadn’t been any wolves here for quite a long time.
They left, Ryker thought, his heart sinking. His heart was so heavy, so leaden that it turned his paws to brick and his tail to a bag of sawdust. Every part of him dragged low, and he dropped his head down so that the tip of his snout dragged in the dust. They haven’t been here in days. I was gone for too long.
He had come all this way, but for what? For nothing.
For a moment, the entire world seemed to tremble around him as his head sank lower. All of what he had felt, which had urged him to this, drained away and left him so weak that it was all he could do to just slump down on the cold, concrete floor. Laying his head on his paws, Ryker let out a pitiful whine.
The pack still had to be in the area. They had to be in Seattle, or else why would he still catch glimpses of wolves who smelled like his pack? Surely if Jeriko left assassins behind, they would have made their move by now. A month was an extremely long time to do nothing.
Ryker winced. He couldn’t really use that against Jeriko, however. After all, Ryker himself had done nothing for that entire month, too. Nothing but come dangerously close to falling in love with Bo, which he wouldn’t allow himself to do until this all was over. Unfortunately, he was even further from the finish than ever.
He picked up his head, and then slowly pushed up to his paws again. Of course! A soft yip left his mouth, echoing disturbingly in the empty space. The garage. He needed to check there, to see if the bikes were still around.
With a renewed vigor, Ryker started off through the shelter. Navigating from one side to the other took a bit longer than it would have, because of all the obstacles in his way, but he relished in the opportunity to move through his home again. He drank in all the sights, and brushed his fur against soft fabric to remind himself of what it was like to brush flanks with others as he walked. That had happened often, especially since the walkways were so narrow an
d winding.
The “garage” was nothing more than a giant hole in the wall. Ryker suspected that the homeless people who’d lived here before had smashed the bricks and removed them piece by piece, forming a large hollow with a dirt base that was used for food storage. When Ryker got his hands on it, he enlarged the space even further with shovels, and had then laid down a cement floor. A garage for the gang to stow their bikes. In addition to that, he met again with the architect wolf to dig out a long ramp that sloped at a shallow angle and emerged out on the surface quite a distance away from the factory. The ramp was reinforced with brick sides and more poured concrete. Wide enough to ride two-by-two, it was a convenient exit and entrance that helped to keep their vehicles safe.
He was truly very proud of it. No one else would have ever thought of such a thing. No one!
If the bikes were still there, Ryker could safely assume that the pack were completely gone. What he would do then?
He didn’t know.
And he would never find out on his own, because he didn’t make it that far.
Something stirred in the darkness inside the makeshift school tense. He nearly dismissed it as a rat, as the sound was very small, but then he stopped. No, that hadn’t been a skittering. It was scrabbling, dull nails across concrete.
And then he heard it. A different sound this time. A low, mournful whine that seemed to almost be a voice. A voice that seemed to almost be whispering his name.
Ryker threw himself through the entrance flaps of the tent, snarling and bristling with all his fur standing on end. And then he froze, so horrified that at first it hardly registered what he was seeing. Only that it was bad.
Red flooded across his vision. His breath came in pants. His tail trembled. Nothing existed. And then the voice came again, begging softly. Pleading.
A voice he knew well.
At his feet lay the tangled and bloodied remnant of a woman Her eyes torn away, her ears were bitten stubs, and her mouth was filled with more blood than teeth. Perhaps even more horrible than that, her luscious golden hair had been torn out at the roots, a handful at a time.
Wild Ride: An M/M Shifter Mpreg Romance Bundle Page 10
