by Chant, Zoe
It was in the kid’s essential chivalrous streak.
The only woman in Luke’s life had been nice to him. He wouldn’t want to see another woman get hurt, even if he didn’t know her. That had made him help them out before, and it would make him help them out again.
“I don’t know that I’m right,” he said. “Maybe we won’t find him anywhere near her. Maybe we won’t have the first clue where he is until I get a whiff of him and he rushes us again. But it doesn’t have to come down to a fight, Luke, not if I can find him before he finds me. But it’s not the fight part that bothers me. It’s how I might feel if he shows up—and he has a newly minted wolf with him, one who’s really a terrified woman dragged into all this against her will. I don’t know that he’ll do it. But you can’t know that he won’t. He’s desperate.”
Luke was almost shivering. He had to fight his instinctive loyalty to Eli like it was some kind of fever.
“Eli’s my alpha,” Luke said desperately.
“He doesn’t have to be. You can have a pack that doesn’t have Eli in at all. You’ve got Mel. You’ve got me.”
“And me,” Aria said. “I think humans count, even if Eli doesn’t.”
“You two don’t even know me,” Luke said.
“Yeah,” Colby said, “but we’ve got a good feeling about you.”
Mel put one arm around Luke. She was so small, she had to put it around his waist rather than his shoulders. She hugged him to her sideways.
“They’re right,” she said quietly. “Letting go of Eli doesn’t make you a bad person or a bad wolf. It’s the right thing to do. And I promise you won’t be alone at the end of it.”
Luke screwed his eyes shut.
Aria unexpectedly said, “She lives near the preserve, doesn’t she? In one of those cabins on the western side?”
Luke’s eyes shot open. “How did you know that?”
“There aren’t many places in town where you can find deer, but the preserve is one of them. And it would be pretty hard to lug a whole dead deer any distance, especially since it doesn’t seem like your cousin has a car. I live in the area. And I know somebody near there had been seeing wolves—when you were all mostly careful to stay hidden.” She shrugged. “It was a lucky guess.”
She was a genius. Colby could have kissed her.
To be fair, he could always kiss her.
“That means you barely have to tell us anything,” he said gently. “At this point, we could find her even without you. All you’re doing is making sure we find her fast enough to protect her.”
Luke took that in. Then he nodded.
“I don’t know her name,” he said. “But she’s in the cabin with the blue shutters. The one that faces the preserve.”
Aria groaned. “That’s Susan, all right. Dammit, she’s been the girl who cried wolf this whole time. I just thought that if she didn’t recognize his actual description... I screwed it all up. You only had my word to go on, and I got it wrong.”
“You didn’t get anything wrong,” Colby said. “You had two minutes to ask questions that couldn’t give away that you were looking for a werewolf. Even if I’d gotten to talk to her, I don’t know that I would have done any better. He always dated the other women. We couldn’t know he’d break his pattern this much.”
He could put together why, but only now that he knew everything. Eli had decided he wanted to found a dynasty, so he had tried to turn Amanda. When it had failed—and when her murder had brought more heat down on them—he’d had to get careful. He had looked for a woman who was already a werewolf, but Mel was too much for him to handle.
So he’d fixed his sights on another “weak” human woman, one who was exactly his type. But this time, he had decided he wouldn’t be seen anywhere near her. His name would never come up in her life. He would go slowly, and when the time was right, he’d make his move.
And if the transformation failed, well. Eli could live with that just fine.
Colby was going to take a lot of pleasure in slapping the cuffs on him.
Luke looked back and forth between them. “So I helped?”
“You did. Thanks, Luke. You’re a good ki—” Colby stopped. “Good man,” he corrected.
Against all odds, Luke grinned at him.
*
Mel Wondery hugged him as he was headed out the door.
“Don’t be a stranger,” she said, before turning and hugging Aria too. “Either of you.”
She fixed Colby with a steely look that reminded him yet again of how this tiny, Tinkerbell woman had become one of the most badass alphas the area had to offer.
“I miss your father too, Colby. We can all be your friends just like we were his. Don’t stay away so long again.”
It was a simple request, but it hit him hard.
“I won’t,” he promised.
He meant it. He’d spent enough time being lonely.
“Luke will be counting on you now. I will be too.”
“I’ll try to be worth counting on, then,” Colby said.
Mel smiled. “I have a feeling you’ll pull it off.”
“I liked her,” Aria said once they were back in the car. She had her hands clenched together, and Colby knew that she was trying to keep herself calm.
“I liked her too. But I think you understood her better than I did. You knew just how to get her to start spilling the beans.”
Aria smiled. “Only because of what you’d said before about the way pack loyalty works.”
“Well, then you listen to me better than I do.”
“I probably find your voice a lot sexier than you do, too. Unless you’re really vain.”
“Total narcissist.”
Aria turned her head, looking out the window as they sped by pine trees and street signs. The worry on her face got too strong to hide.
“I’m scared, Colby. At least when Eli was coming after me, I knew I had you to protect me. And I knew that I knew wolves, that I was armed, that I was ready. Susan doesn’t know what’s headed her way, not really. And she’s not... she’s not tough.”
“I know. But don’t forget, we’re headed her way too, now. And we can get there fast.” He started the car. “Dig into the glove compartment and get my flasher, would you?”
“Flasher?”
“It’s a clip-on police light. It’ll tell everyone to get out of our way—and tell any local cops not to pull me over if I start breaking speed limits left and right.”
“Got it.”
She dug into the compartment and produced the small single flasher. Colby clicked it on, rolled down his window, and smacked it against the hood.
Then he got as close to flooring it as he was willing to risk.
He asked Aria to start calling in his team.
16
Colby would have preferred—by an astronomical measure—to have dropped Aria off somewhere safe, maybe back at the police station with Wilson. But he couldn’t be sure he had the time to go that far out of his way. Martin had said he shouldn’t ignore his instincts, and his instincts were all but screaming at him to get to Susan Fowler as quickly as possible. And he wasn’t willing to stop and let Aria out on the way, not when it would mean leaving her unprotected.
The only thing he could think of was taking her with him.
He didn’t like it at all.
“I hope your team gets here fast,” Aria said. “You need backup.”
He couldn’t believe she was thinking about how he needed protection. Then again, he didn’t think he’d ever shake the image of her standing in her trashed living room, cold as ice, pointing a gun at two werewolves and calmly lying to them about having silver bullets. She was a hero.
“They’ll be fast,” he assured her. “They’ll probably fly, and pegasi and dragons can outrace cars without even breaking a sweat.”
“What about Gretchen?”
“She’ll catch a ride with one of them.”
He risked turning his head slightly to catch t
he full effect of that statement as it really sank into her. The one thing guaranteed to lift anyone’s spirits was the thought of sitting astride a dragon or a flying horse.
Show-offs, his wolf said, miffed. We can protect our mate as well as any dragon, and three times as well as any pegasus.
Hey, buddy, those are my friends we’re talking about.
Just because we can’t be ridden doesn’t mean—
Trust me, Colby said, she’s perfectly happy with the kind of riding we can offer her.
There was a pause, and then he had the distinct impression that he’d managed to scandalize the mutt. Inner animals were always really gung-ho about mating, but just in a slightly earthier “your aunt who keeps asking when you’re going to get married” way. They didn’t want specifics.
There was a wide bank of gravel up on the hill that served as overflow parking for the preserve. This morning, with crime scene tape still wound around the preserve’s entrances, the lot was deserted. It gave the whole little neighborhood a feeling of eerie calm.
The cabin with the blue shutters was right on the end of the row of houses. Its back was towards the preserve.
Susan Fowler had a spacious deck back there, with a patio table with an umbrella. That was probably where Eli had first seen her.
“He’ll break in as a wolf,” Colby said, thinking it through. “He doesn’t have the social skills to talk himself in as a human, especially since they’ve never even met.”
“And most single women won’t let a strange guy into their house anyway.”
“Right. There’s one part of Eli’s pattern that we know he’s still sticking to. It’s not just in his criminal history, it’s in your wrecked living room too. He barrels in.”
“So the fact that Susan still seems to have her front and back doors,” Aria said, craning her neck to double-check the back, “means that he hasn’t made his move yet.”
“That’s what I’m hoping.” He unbuckled his seatbelt. “I’m going to go get her out of there.”
“Great. I’m coming with you.”
He put his hand on her arm. Even now, with so much at stake, the feeling of his bare skin against hers sent little shocks running through him.
He couldn’t lose her.
It wasn’t even about how devastated he would be if his life somehow went on without her, when she had become as essential to him as his own heartbeat. He couldn’t imagine the world without her. Her absence would be a smoking crater at the center of her family; their happy, bustling world would be razed flat in a single moment. The natural world they both loved would be poorer without her there to capture its beauty and argue, passionately, for its protection.
The universe needed her smile, her mind, and her warmth.
He felt too tongue-tied to say everything he meant to.
He would never object to her going on the long solo camping trips she needed to in order to get the shots that had made her reputation. But this was his field, not hers. Just because she knew how to shoot didn’t mean she was trained for an actual firefight.
“Please stay,” Colby said simply. “I’ll have backup in just a few minutes. If Eli shows up, you can ram him with the car, and I’ll put the cuffs on him.”
A tiny smile flitted across her face, and he was guessing she liked the mental image of driving straight into the man who’d caused all this trouble.
“What if you cuff him and he just shifts again?”
“He wouldn’t be able to.” He put his hands behind his back to show her. “Sure, his forelegs as a wolf would be skinny enough to slip out of these, but he’d be changing with his arms—those same forelegs—twisted behind his back. Try to picture a wolf in that position.”
She did, and the immediate result was a visceral cringe.
“But he’d have to be human for you to cuff him. And you were just saying that you don’t think he’ll attack that way.”
“I’m going to try to convince him to turn human,” Colby said grimly. “Because I can’t arrest a wolf.”
He cupped her cheek.
“Please,” he said again.
She turned her head and kissed his palm.
“I’ll stay,” she said. “But if he comes anywhere near here, you’d better believe I’m ramming the crap out of him.”
“I’d never believe you wouldn’t.” He started to get out of the car, but then he turned back to her one last time. “Aria, I—”
“Don’t say you love me.” Her eyes were glittering a little with unshed tears, but her jaw was set. “Don’t act like you need to say goodbye. Go in, get Susan, make sure she’s okay. Do whatever you have to to make sure Eli doesn’t hurt her or anyone else. But don’t say goodbye.”
He couldn’t stop the corner of his mouth from twitching in a kind of smile. He wouldn’t argue with that.
Saying a real goodbye to her, with everything he would need to say, would take way too long anyway.
*
Susan Fowler whipped the door open before Colby had even finished knocking.
At least he hoped she was Susan Fowler. He hadn’t gotten a good look at her the night before, and he didn’t even want to try to figure out whether or not she fit whatever bust-related description Eli had given Mel.
“Susan Fowler?”
“Yes. Thank God you’re here.”
Right: she already knew she was in trouble, more or less. If Eli had made a habit out of lugging dead deer to her back door, no wonder she’d had a low-level case of the creeps for a long, long time.
He started to say something, but she cut him off.
“You’re Animal Control, right?”
Shit. He knew where this was going.
Eli was close. Close enough for Susan to have spotted him yet again.
And now they had Animal Control headed for what was about to be a werewolf-on-werewolf fight, and that was a risk of exposure they couldn’t afford.
Eli might even agree with him on that—though his proposed solution would probably just involve ripping the Animal Control officers to shreds for daring to interfere with him.
He kept his voice steady. “I’m a US Marshal, ma’am. My name’s Colby Acton. I have reason to believe that you might be in danger from a federal fugitive we suspect is in this area.”
At least right now he wasn’t catching another wolf’s scent on the wind. He still had a little time.
Susan gasped. “The sex fiend? My neighbor mentioned seeing him. A shirtless man?”
“Yes. I’d like to get you to safety.”
“Of course—” She froze. “Wait. Aria said he was tall, with dark hair. You’re tall. You have dark hair.”
“Ma’am—”
“I can’t believe this.” Tears shimmered in her eyes. “I’ve been calling Animal Control about it for weeks. When they got over telling me I was wrong and it was just a big dog, they finally came out, but the stupid thing has a gift for high-tailing it out of here the second someone comes along to grab him. So now they don’t even think I’m wrong, they just think I’m making it all up. And now you might be...” Her lower lip trembled. “Now you might be some crazy person.”
Colby needed to think on his feet.
“Actually, I’m interested in helping you with your wolf problem too.”
“The US Marshals handle wolves?”
“We do a little bit of everything,” Colby said. That part wasn’t even exactly a lie. “And my office has some expertise in wrangling exotic animals.”
“Okay...”
“The important thing is to get you out of the way in case the wolf decides to attack. If it’s been hanging around here, there’s a chance it’s established this area as its territory. It might see you as a threat.”
He had the horrible feeling that she might just say, That sounds made up.
Luckily for him, Susan Fowler didn’t know as much about wolves as Aria did. And maybe after having been repeatedly dismissed by Animal Control, she was just glad someone was taking her complai
nt seriously.
“You can’t come inside,” she said.
“I don’t need to.” It would be easier if he could, but he wasn’t going to argue the point. “But you should really leave, ma’am. Just go to the mall, or go out to lunch. I can wait around here to see if the wolf turns up again.”
Susan studied him for a minute and then nodded. She rubbed her eyes.
“I’m sorry. It’s just been such a horrible month.”
“I understand.”
“Just let me get my purse,” she said. She darted back into the house.
Colby turned back towards the car and made sure he could still see Aria. She had moved over into the driver’s seat, ready to run Eli down if necessary, and she gave him a little wave.
This was all going well.
Maybe too well, his wolf said.
What do you mean?
Something doesn’t feel right.
Pay attention to your instincts, Martin had said.
Maybe Eli was learning from Colby in the same way that Colby was learning from him. It was the dark reflection all over again.
Maybe Eli, now that he was desperate, was reaching out to humanity not just to make Susan part of his pack—but to hunt down Aria.
And Susan Fowler had called Animal Control recently enough to expect them on her doorstep.
She rejoined him, her purse now slung over her shoulder.
“Great,” she said, giving him a shaky smile. “I’m ready to get out of wolf country.”
His wolf’s howl almost split his head in two.
SMELL.
He didn’t smell another wolf.
What he smelled were exhaust fumes.
He was sprinting before he even realized he’d turned around.
A truck was barreling towards them, ready to smash right into the car. With Aria still inside.
17
Aria saw the truck in the rearview mirror.
It felt like reality slowed down.
She could see Eli Hebbert in the driver’s seat of the truck, bare-chested, his mouth twisted in a snarl that looked out of place on a human. Seeing him again made her feel almost sick with fear.
But not paralyzed with it. She had too much to live for to stand still and let fate just rush at her.
