by J. L. Wilder
I emerged quickly from my room (shifters get used to fast changes), and all three of the men’s heads swiveled toward me. Their expressions were a spectrum of inscrutable.
“Well?” I asked, tugging at the shirt hem a bit. “Do I look all right? I know it’s a bit large, but—”
“Looks good,” Tristan said bluntly, before turning to a sheet of paper laid out on the kitchen table.
Good? That was the closest he’d come to saying something nice to me since … uh, ever.
Caine, echoing my thoughts, laughed. “You a fashion expert now, Tristan?”
The alpha sighed, already bored of this game. “She’s suitably attired for any training, or if it comes to it, escape.”
“Escape?” I squeaked. I’d known this was a transient base, but I figured we’d hunker down here for at least a little bit.
Tristan raised a calculating eyebrow. “You know your boyfriend is fairly persistent, right?”
“Ex,” I muttered.
“Pardon?”
“Ex-boyfriend,” I clarified loudly.
Tristan nodded. “Fine, ex-boyfriend. In any case, we’ve gotten word that Brock is gearing up. He doesn’t know where we are, not yet, but I doubt it’ll take him long. He’s got more money and manpower at his disposal than the Hell’s Wolves MC.”
I balked. “I’m sorry, are you saying you’re not in a position to defend me? That’s what I hired you for—for protection. Not just a one-time extraction.”
Caine fidgeted, looking like he wanted to speak, but knowing full well that when the alpha was handling business, the beta couldn’t offer any kind of dissenting opinion. That’d be tantamount to breaking from the pack.
“We will defend you,” Tristan vowed, his eyes darkening as they bored into my own. “On my life, we will.”
“Then why are you talking about escape? That doesn’t sound like protection, it sounds like fleeing.”
Tristan’s face turned stormy, like the bank of the sea during a monsoon. He moved out from behind the paper-covered table and stalked toward me. Daniel’s and Caine’s heads turned to follow him, but they made no move to intervene. Though they’d both been kind enough to me, I was a nobody, certainly not worth crossing their leader for. My heart raced. Was I about to lose the Hell’s Wolves? They might be outlaws, but they were the closest thing I had to safety.
Tristan came to a stop about a foot away, standing tall and looming over me.
“We do not flee,” he spat out. “We don’t have a home base. We drive where our Wolf instincts tell us to go. You fell in with a motorcycle club, and if you don’t like that, Emma, you can walk out the door. But you knew what you were getting into when you hired us. You knew we lived on the outskirts of society, that we were transient. Make your peace with that, or leave.”
We were face to face, hot breath pouring out from our mouths. I knew that, in that moment, we were closer to Wolf than human. If I’d taken even a half step forward, we both might have shifted.
But I couldn’t risk it. Tristan was right. My new life wasn’t perfect, and I didn’t trust these Wolves for a minute, but they were better than Brock. Anything was better than Brock. So I needed to get off my high horse, stop waiting for a secure home like the compound I’d come from, stop hoping for different, more upstanding Wolves to be my protectors. This was the bed I’d made, and now I needed to lie in it.
“Fine,” I agreed at last. “I’m staying.”
Caine whooped with excitement, but Tristan steadily held my gaze, daring me to question his abilities again. I stayed silent.
“You’re staying, Emma,” Caine crowed, punching a burly fist in the air.
I spared him a lazy grin, breaking my stare-down with Tristan, and the tension in the room diffused—or at least, became bearable.
Tristan strutted back to the table while Caine made his way to me, throwing an enormous arm around my shoulder. Daniel shook his head at the whole scene, and sat quietly on the couch, pulling out a piece of paper and pen from a pocket and beginning to sketch mindlessly.
“You’re in with the crew now,” Caine murmured into my ear. “You’re a Wolf straight outta hell.”
Chapter 4
“All right,” Tristan said, interrupting Caine’s words. “Emma, come over here so I can show you the plan.”
I followed him obediently. Though I was now sensitive to taking orders—years under Brock’s thumb will do that to a girl—I had to cede to Tristan’s authority. And besides that, I wanted something as solidly reassuring as a ‘plan’.
The papers Tristan had been bent over turned out to be a stack of maps with loose patterns drawn all over them. At this, I had to laugh.
“What’s so funny?” he asked, bristling at my amusement.
“Er, nothing, nothing at all.”
“What is it?” Tristan demanded.
I sighed. “It’s just that … it’s 2018. Who the hell uses paper maps?”
Caine, now stationed on the couch opposite Daniel, let out a large guffaw, and Daniel in turn snickered at my remark.
“She’s got a point,” Caine told Tristan.
“Yeah, if you weren’t so paranoid,” Daniel muttered to his alpha, “maybe I wouldn’t be up until 3am most nights doing cartography.”
“Enough,” Tristan snapped to his Wolves. To me, “They’re paper because we don’t get a Wi-Fi signal down here.”
So we were underground; my suspicion had been correct. Not that it made me feel any better. This was one thing I hadn’t wanted to be right about. I felt immediate claustrophobia set into my bones, but tried to ignore it.
“Tell her the whole story,” Daniel said under his breath. “Tell her about the—”
Tristan cut him off, telling me, “Fine, yes, we could get a signal down here if we wanted.” The next part was said to not just me, but to the room. “We could, but it would make us infinitely more trackable, and mean we’d have to be on the move more often.”
“Yeah right,” Caine snorted. “You just don’t want me to bring home any more Wolves from the message boards.”
At this, I had to laugh. The ‘message boards’ were the shifter world’s equivalent of online dating sites. People posted short descriptions, detailing what they wanted in a mate—short or long-term—and others responded with their gender, age, and shifter identity. It was simple, but then, so was shifter lust. I had no trouble believing Caine cleaned up on the boards.
Tristan replied drolly, “That was an added benefit, sure.”
“Come on, Tristan,” Caine pleaded. “We get Wi-Fi back, maybe you could go on a date for the first time in, oh, ever.”
This took me by surprise. Tristan was an alpha; he’d be desirable to any straight female Wolf, just by instinctual pull. Not to mention the fact that he was classically handsome: the slight shade of stubble over his square jaw, the arched brows, those full lashes. He looked like a military captain straight out of Anna Karenina.
“We’re not discussing this again,” Tristan growled, indicating that this wasn’t the first time Caine had prodded him on the subject of dating.
“I know, I know,” Caine groaned. “Lone Wolf, blah blah. But come on, T, isn’t it time to move on—”
“Enough,” Tristan barked, and this time, Caine shut up for good. It was the firmest I’d seen Tristan really be; clearly, his dating life was a sore subject. Daniel chuckled a little at their exchange, but said nothing (this seemed to be his M.O. for most social interactions).
Caine sat back, looking chagrined, and Tristan ran a hand through his already perfectly kept hair.
He took a breath, and gazed at me. “As I was saying, we have no Wi-Fi. For safety reasons. Hence, the maps. It buys us more time … to prepare.”
Prepare for what, I wondered, but Tristan wasn’t done.
“We have, I’d guess, a month before Brock finds us.”
“How’s that possible?” I asked. “We’re underground, with no internet connection, and last I saw, in the middle of
nowhere. How would he find us, ever?”
No sooner had I uttered the question, than I knew it was a stupid one. Brock had ways. He’d hire trackers, shifters who could find us by scent alone, or he’d set his invisible network of spies to work throughout the States, pressing every person associated with the shifter world to give him info on our location. Like I said: he doesn’t take kindly to loss of property (in this case, me).
Tristan seemed to realize I’d already figured out the answer, but he responded anyways. “Brock will make it happen. Besides, he knows you’re riding with us. That was part of the deal, remember? He would’ve known anyway, because of our bikes, but that’s neither here nor there.”
“Right,” I muttered. The part where I’d agreed to let them publicize my joining up with the Hell’s Wolves. Stupid omega ‘gift’.
“So, we need to prepare,” Tristan finished, “for the inevitability that he will find us. Find you.”
“How do we prepare?” I asked, my voice rueful. “He has an army, Tristan. There’s no amount of preparation that will change that. There’s three of you, and an endless number of them.”
“Four,” Tristan corrected.
I looked around. Had I missed one of the Wolves?
He clarified. “I mean you, Emma. You’re riding with us, which means you’re fighting with us.”
“That’s—no,” I stammered, shaking my head. “You don’t understand. I’m not … I haven’t fought in years. Ever, really. But Brock wouldn’t let me stay in shape, or train. I thought it was weird then. Now, obviously, I understand he was trying to keep me weak.”
My utterance made the room fall silent. I realized I hadn’t admitted that before, that I hadn’t really spoken to anyone about all the ways Brock kept me submissive and under his thrall. Physically weakening me was just one prong of his multi-part subjugation.
“I’m sorry,” Tristan murmured, breaking the silence.
I looked at him, and saw that, for the first time since I’d walked in, his expression had softened.
“That’s all right,” I managed to reply, trying to brush it off. “I’m fine.”
Daniel, without warning, stood up from his seat on the couch, and moved quickly to join me and Tristan at the table.
“It’s okay not to be fine,” he said, his voice soft as the touch of a feather.
Caine joined the throng too, adding, “And besides, we’re gonna make you all tough and stuff. So that no one can ever hurt you again.”
“Thanks, guys,” I responded, smiling at Caine’s brash confidence.
There was no trusting the Hell’s Wolves, not yet, at least. They were an unknown element, and I wasn’t about to drop the walls I’d so carefully constructed. But, as I looked around at their faces, I realized that maybe, down the line, things could be different. If I lived that long, anyway.
“So,” I said. “Where do we begin?”
Tristan laid out my training schedule. Caine would help me build up my physical strength, which was sorely lacking, for the first few hours of the day. Then, Daniel would teach me survival strategies−in essence, how to MacGyver anything to my advantage. Tristan’s work with me would round out the day, with lessons in military strategy and opponent game theory.
After the explanation of the plan, the men looked at me expectantly.
“How does that sound?” Caine asked me. “You excited?”
“It sounds … overwhelming,” I admitted. “What if I don’t improve that much within a month? Assuming we even have a month?”
“Do you plan on putting every ounce of your energy into this preparation?” Tristan inquired, his voice calm and clear.
“Of course.”
“Then you’ll be ready,” he concluded, with a tone that broached no possibility of other outcomes. “You start today.”
This was surprising, but I couldn’t back out now. “Okay. Let’s go.”
I saw a flicker of a smile cross his face before he returned to alpha mode.
Caine raised his hand. “Me first. Get ready, pup, we’re gonna work you hard.”
With a little blush, I looked down at my already ill-fitting clothes. “I don’t have workout gear,” I explained lamely.
The three Wolves laughed at me in near unison, reminding me of their pack ties.
Caine wiped his eyes, and asked, “Were you planning on wearing lycra in Wolf form?”
Realization dawned. “We’re … shifting?”
“How else would you train? Not like Brock’s coming for us in human form.”
“Oh. Right. That makes sense.” Duh, I thought. Then, with increasing delight: “So, we’re going outside?”
Tristan nodded. “For a limited period of time, yes. It’s night, now, which will help give you protection. But still, be smart. Don’t get caught. This is a provisional freedom I’m allowing you both, and if I think you’re being careless, it’ll be revoked.”
This was fair. Caine, loveable as he was, did strike me as the ‘getting caught’ type. I turned to my new training partner.
“Let’s run,” I said with a grin.
Chapter 5
Caine was even readier than I was. Without warning, and in full sight of me and the other Wolves, he stripped naked. I sucked in a breath, and tried very, very hard not to stare.
He was gorgeous. I mean … oh lord, ripped beyond belief. His muscles had muscles; his skin appeared to suction to every pec and ab, giving them outlines so clear cut you could trace his entire musculature with a marker. I immediately felt a deep, primal desire within my womb, and had to force my eyes toward the ceiling.
“Not a bad view, eh?” he chuckled, flexing his arms.
Daniel, obviously the leanest of the men, rolled his eyes at this. “Yeah, very impressive, Caine. Subtle too.”
Caine took this on the chin, but I puzzled at the interaction. Why had Daniel sounded so … miffed? And what did ‘subtle’ mean? Caine had been flirty earlier, but was Daniel suggesting the beta really intended to take it further? I wasn’t ready to earnestly consider linking up with another mate, not after everything Brock had done to me. Though, looking at Caine’s rock-hard body, I thought, perhaps, in due time, I could reevaluate the proposition.
“Put a blanket on,” Tristan ordered Caine, his voice equally firm. This was weird, packs were rarely uncomfortable with nudity amongst one another.
Did I smell competition in the air? It scared and flattered me in equal parts.
Caine obliged reluctantly, wrapping his lower half in a blanket he appeared to conjure out of thin air, and then threw me one.
“You can undress in your bedroom,” he offered.
I could, sure. But I needed these Wolves to think I wasn’t intimidated by them (even though I most definitely was). Besides, they’d already seen me running naked toward them at the gas station. It was too late for human modesty.
So, I stripped naked in the middle of the living room while Caine, Daniel and Tristan all did their best to avert their eyes. How chivalrous, I thought with amusement. These rough and tumble Wolves were still trying to stand on something resembling ceremony. Maybe they weren’t exactly the motorcycle hellions the shifter world painted them to be.
Caine, without looking up, passed me the blanket which I wrapped around myself, secretly grateful for the coverage.
“Great,” he said, looking up once I’d tucked one edge into another (meaning he’d obviously been watching from the corner of his eye). “Let’s run.”
He bid the other boys a hasty goodbye, then led me toward one of the many rabbit warren-esque doors. It wasn’t hidden, save for the fact that it was indistinguishable from the other doors. I tried to mark it in my mind, but I knew I was just as likely to walk into one of the men’s bedrooms if I risked trying to exit on my own. Besides, it was a tiny space—they’d all hear me in a heartbeat (thanks, heightened Wolf senses).
We moved through the door, which Caine bolted behind him.
“You’re not gonna blindfold me?” I a
sked with curiosity.
He raised a devilish eyebrow. “Not unless you want me to.”
I stammered, “Oh, no, I didn’t mean that, it’s just—I figured maybe you guys wouldn’t want me to know how to get out.”
As the words left my mouth, I realized that, while the Hell’s Wolves probably had motives I didn’t know about, my anxiety about finding exits and figuring out the lair’s layout had mainly been a product of my abuse at the hands of Brock. These guys weren’t upstanding citizens, sure, but not everybody wanted to control and own me. I was ashamed at my assumption, and at the same time, glad to discover that I was capable of seeing when it was my abuser talking, and not my logical mind.
Caine shook his head. “You can leave when you want,” he explained. “I mean, it’s not a brilliant idea, but theoretically, you could always go.”
I knew what he meant: if I stepped outside of their protection, and into a foreign area, I’d make myself an easy target. Better not to test the waters.
After passing through two more doors, and ascending a long set of stairs, we reached a trap door in the ceiling, the kind you’d find in a tornado shelter. Caine threw it open, and I squinted my eyes, expecting light to flood in.
Except, of course, as Tristan had already mentioned, it was night. You’re not a great listener, I scolded myself. Apparently, I was in pretty desperate need of Daniel’s survivalist classes, if I couldn’t even remember what time of day it was.
Taking in the world around me, I realized we’d shifted from a desert setting into a forest. The trees were high, and obscured what little sheen the moon provided. I smelled redwood, a scent that reminded me of home—or at least, what had once passed for one. Laying a hand on some thick, scratchy bark, I inhaled deeply. Yes, this felt right.
“You ready?” Caine asked with a nearly wicked grin.
“Always.”
He dropped his blanket, and I dropped mine. We were alone and naked in the forest, and suddenly, his silly grins and boisterous laughter didn’t seem immature or boyish; no, he was all man.
