by Kari Cole
“Where is she?” Vaughn asked. The look on her face right before she touched him. “She thinks—shit! I am a fucking asshole.”
Jessie rounded on him. “Pretty much. But then, so am I.”
Diego used the window seat to pull himself to his feet. “Can someone explain to me what—what the hell I’m seeing whenever I close my eyes?”
“I told you,” Jessie said. “She must have used her ability and shared her visions with you.”
“Visions?”
“Not the future,” Vaughn said. “The past. She’s psychometric.”
“She’s what?”
“Not important right now,” Jessie said. “Long story short, Hannah is the strongest psychometrist I’ve ever heard of. She knocked me for a loop just sharing what she saw when she touched a patio chair. I didn’t even know you could share your own memories. But before she left with that crazy bitch, she said she showed you the truth.”
The hair on Vaughn’s neck stood on end. “What crazy bitch?”
Chapter Forty-Four
“Come on! Move!” Sharon yanked on Hannah’s arm and dragged her over the bench seat.
“Did we crash into a tree?” The resinous scent of pine filled the cab. Pine needles and safety glass fell from her hair and shoulders.
“Yeah, the one they knocked down into the road.” Sharon pulled her out the truck door. She hit the pavement on her knees. Ow, ow, ow. “Into the woods. Run!”
Gun suddenly in hand, Sharon snapped shots off at something behind them. They jumped over a fallen log and ran down the slope, slipping and sliding through the undergrowth and fallen leaves. A bullet slammed into a tree trunk right next to Hannah’s head, and she screamed.
Sharon pushed her behind a tree. “Can you shift?”
Hannah started to nod, but then the scent hit them and they froze.
Four male werewolves fanned out behind them. Half a dozen feet in front, two more emerged from the trees. One in human form, the other in his fur. She knew them both instantly, though she’d only ever met the wolf in person.
Tall and rangy, like he’d been whittled down to bone and sinew, the human pointed a pistol at them. He smiled. “Hello, Sharon. It’s been a long time.”
“Too long,” she said. “I wanted to rip your throat out ages ago, Caine.”
“Charming as always.” He looked at Hannah and raised a brow at her snarling.
“You killed my family.” Pain shot down her arm. She hadn’t even realized Sharon was holding her back until she pinched the nerve in her the crook of her elbow.
“Don’t,” Sharon said.
“He killed Mama!”
“Hmm. I wondered,” Caine said. “We found your hidey hole above the garage. Ingenious little panic room your father had there. Too far from the house, though, as he learned the hard way. Did you watch us work on the video feed, or did you just see the aftermath? From your scent, we could tell we’d just missed you. Angelo was disappointed.”
Hannah yanked her arm out of Sharon’s grip and bared her teeth at the brown-and-tan wolf. “How can you be doing this?” she shouted at him. “He killed your packmates.”
He shifted, and in a matter of seconds, Bryce Angelo, her pack’s enforcer, stood before her, naked and raking her with his eyes. “She must have missed the show, Caine. Otherwise she would have seen me playing with Mommy.”
* * *
“You need to slow down. We can’t catch your girlfriend if you drive us off a cliff,” Diego said. “Besides, we don’t know that the report of gunfire had anything to do with her. They could be half an hour ahead of us, going in the opposite direction.”
Vaughn curled his lip and stepped on the accelerator. “It’s them,” he said, loud enough for the Expedition’s microphone to pick him up over the engine’s roar.
“How do you know that?” Dean asked. His voice came through the speakers with a crackle of static.
Because that was Hannah’s luck. Every time something weird happened lately, it had to do with her or Sharon Beck. “Just do.”
“Good enough,” Dean said. “We’re already on the way.”
Vaughn ended the call and held up a hand to interrupt Diego’s next argument. “She’s not my girlfriend.”
“Really? I’ve seen the way you look at her.”
“She’s my mate.”
That shut Diego up for a few seconds. Christ, he was almost as bad as Dean.
“Oh,” the male said finally. “You can sense her? But you guys don’t smell like—”
“We haven’t had a chance to mark each other yet. Been kind of busy.” And wasn’t that another kick in the teeth? If they’d completed the mating dance, Vaughn would be able to home in on her, or at least know whether she was alive or dead.
“Oh,” Diego said again.
“Yeah.”
Vaughn rubbed a hand over his face. His head was still throbbing. Was this how Hannah felt every time she touched something? Hannah. It was so strange to think of her by that name. It explained so much, though. Now that he knew, he wanted to kick his own ass.
“She should have told you the truth,” Diego said.
“Why? Because law enforcement has done so well by her? I’ve been hunting Apex for months, and I didn’t see what she was running from.” Vaughn slammed the steering wheel. “Fuck! She’s my mate and I was so closed off she thought I believed she killed her own family. Did you see her face? If something happens to her because—fuck!”
“I swear I didn’t know about Apex, Vaughn.”
“I know. I have a nose. I can smell that you’re telling me the truth.”
Diego nodded. “Wish I had used mine. Those kids, those people in my head...is that real?”
Shifter kids stuck in cages. Adults strapped to chairs, their eyes bulging, spittle dripping from malformed jaws. “I’d like to say no, but yeah. I think it is. Remember the bear shifter we told you about yesterday? He was like that.”
“Sonofabitch. How much farther to where the shots were heard?”
“About three miles.”
“What happened with Elena?”
Vaughn shot him a look. The male’s forehead was pinched in pain. He looked miserable. What the hell? If Diego cursed him for just being who he was, he didn’t care anymore.
“I thought we’d be mates,” he said. “The dance hadn’t kicked in, but I thought that was because I wasn’t being honest about myself. I told Elena I could hear my eagle and she flipped. She never had any intention of mating me. She was young and having fun with the forbidden. I don’t blame her for that now. But when she found out I really do have both beasts inside, she didn’t want anyone to know she’d been with me, or worse, to chance having a dual shifter child.”
Diego stared at him in shock. Vaughn could feel it burning into his skin.
Then Diego groaned. “I—Jesus. What I said... I’m sorry. I—”
“It’s done.” The disgust in Elena’s eyes was something that had haunted him until a blue-eyed whirlwind had blown into his life. He looked at his right arm. The skin on the inside of his bicep was unmarked and he hated it. It should have his mate’s mark there.
Despite the need to go faster pounding in his blood, Vaughn eased up on the gas pedal. There was a blind curve coming and—
“Shit!”
He stomped on the brakes, narrowly avoiding T-boning the white pickup Jessie said Sharon used. It was butted up to a felled white pine, the passenger window smashed in.
After throwing the Expedition into Park before it even stopped rocking on its tires, he jumped out and sniffed the air.
Eight, his wolf told him. His mate, Sharon, and six others. One he recognized. A growl built in his head and spilled from his lips.
“What is it?” Diego asked, scanning the tree line as he shed clothes.
“Cai
ne.”
Chapter Forty-Five
“I’m going to kill you,” Hannah told Bryce as he patted her down. “I’m not going to feel a lick of remorse afterward either.”
Caine and his wolves had tied her and Sharon up and dragged them through the woods to a past-its-prime hunting cabin on the edge of a canyon. She was tired, sore, sweaty, and terrified. But mostly, she was pissed.
“So you keep saying.” Cruel hands searched her pockets and finally found the memory card in her bra. It took way longer than necessary to remove it. “Aw, thank you, darlin’. That was fun.”
Heat burned her cheeks. She had about three inches in height on him, but he was one of the scariest males she’d ever encountered. Still, she bent down and looked him right in the eye. “No remorse at all.”
Wolf gold flooded his eyes and she reared back. She didn’t get far, though, thanks to the viselike grip on her arm. He flipped the case to Caine. “That what you looking for?”
While Caine looked it over, she asked Bryce the question that had plagued her since the very first night. “Did my father know what Genysis is doing?”
Her former packmate snorted. “Daddy didn’t want to know. He turned himself into pretzels to avoid being forced to admit what the pack was doing. All thanks to his brilliant legal work.”
Tears burned in the back of her throat. Oh, Daddy.
“It’s the same size and brand that Crawford used,” Caine said as he walked toward them. “Ms. Cochran, is this the same memory card you stole from your father’s safe?”
When she didn’t answer, he slapped her across the face. Hard. “Ms. Cochran?”
She had no idea where the sass came from. With a sniff, she raised her chin. He hit her again, and her ancestors saw stars. Bryce’s hold kept her from falling to the ground. Not that that was a kindness. He shored her up and shoved her toward Caine.
Caine held up a hand. Before her eyes, fingernails changed into claws. “I don’t like wasting time, Ms. Cochran. My patience with you is done. Failure to answer in a satisfactory manner will result in the destruction of your lovely face. Understand?”
Swallowing the lump of terror in her throat, she nodded.
“It is?”
“N-no. That’s a blank one. I don’t have the real one on me.”
“You stupid cow,” Sharon said, struggling against the hold of a bald male with a goatee.
Caine raised that damn brow again. “Did she mislead you? Ah, the tangled web we weave, right, Arachne?”
He’d surprised Sharon. She tried to hide it, but she was taken aback by his knowledge of her secret name. The male grinned, and it was so unpleasant, Hannah’s wolf cowered in her mind.
He redirected his attention to her. “Did you make a copy of the memory card you stole?”
She wanted to tell him, Yes. In fact, I’ve made a hundred, and if I’m not safely returned in five minutes they’ll be sent to every pack leader in the Continental US. But he’d trapped her with the specific question. He’d know she was lying. Besides, how could she when she couldn’t even get into the damned thing?
“No.”
“Where is it?”
“I hid it.”
Four claws poked her face, from just under her right eye to her ear. “Where?”
His nasty growl overrode her common sense, and she thrashed in Bryce’s grip, cutting her cheek on Caine’s claws. He grabbed her by the throat and got right in her face. The look in his eyes promised death, but his tone was as conversational as if he’d asked her to pass the salt. “Where is it?”
No matter what, she couldn’t—no, wouldn’t—give it to him. As long as the card was out in the world, there was a chance someone who could help would find it. A minuscule one, but she’d take it. She’d done all she could to safeguard it.
As Caine squeezed her throat until she saw spots, tears fell down her face. Not because she was about to die, but because she had failed so many people. Her family, the kids, Vaughn.
She thanked the goddess they hadn’t completed the mating dance. She’d hurt him enough and prayed he could find it in his heart to forgive her one day.
A high-pitched cry rang out, and suddenly Caine let go and she could breathe.
Bryce shoved her to her knees. “Don’t move.”
“Just...catching...my...breath.” The jerk kicked her, catching her in the hip. She fell on her face in the dirt.
Another shivery cry echoed through the canyon.
“There!” Caine said, pointing to something in the sky.
As soon as he did, Sharon bashed her head into the nose of Goatee Man. Blood spurted and he yelled. Caine spun around, and a gray-and-white wolf streaked out from the woods and leapt for his throat.
Frost!
Hannah screamed as they fell to the ground. She tried to scramble to Frost, but a heavy foot stomped on her back and knocked the wind out of her.
“I said, don’t move, bitch,” Bryce said.
Frost was big, strong, and smart, but he wasn’t as strong or vicious as Caine. The werewolf threw him off into a tree trunk.
“No!”
Chaos erupted as a shadow raced over the field in front of the cabin and the biggest eagle she’d ever seen swooped in, grabbed one of Caine’s wolves by the scruff of its neck, and flung it off the cliff.
Bryce drove a knee into her back, keeping her pinned to the ground. He had a gun, and he fired at the raptor. She could smell the silver bullets. Thirty feet away, Vaughn’s huge brown wolf bowled through Goatee Man like he was nothing more than a breakaway banner at a pep rally.
Bryce pointed his gun at Vaughn. Hannah didn’t hesitate. She ripped off both gloves with her teeth and grabbed Bryce’s ankle with her bare hand. Only two fingers made contact with his skin thanks to his pants, but it was enough. She hit him with the first memory she’d gotten from Macon Crawford’s ring: a boy, maybe fourteen, screaming as he was dragged away. That one woke her up at night. A lot.
Bryce jerked, letting up the pressure on her back. She rolled into his other leg and knocked him over. The gun went flying.
Screaming like a banshee, she kicked and bit and scrabbled in the dirt, her hands closed into tight fists. They rolled and rolled, fighting for the dominant position. He cracked her a good one on the eye, and her head spun. She drove her knee up into his balls and ground them into the dirt.
Maybe he was dazed from the vision, or his gonads being driven up into his throat, or hell, maybe her ferocity threw him. Either way, she ended up on top and she intended to stay there. Grabbing him by the ears, she gasped when he caught her with a lucky shot on the still-tender gunshot wound. She had the inane idea that from afar, they probably looked like lovers, her straddling him and cupping his face in her hands.
Especially once she leaned over him and whispered, “This is for my family.”
When she’d shared her visions with Vaughn and Diego, she’d dropped her shields and let the awful memories pass to them. With Bryce, she shoved them at him. The world’s worst slide show. Every single horrible, disgusting, heartbreaking thing she’d seen thanks to Macon Crawford and that vile little memory card.
It didn’t take long, maybe a few seconds, before she’d run through them all. She staggered to her feet and looked down at the male who was supposed to help protect her pack. Blood ran from his nose and the corners of his wide-open, blue eyes. Dead.
She felt nothing.
“Told you,” she said.
* * *
Could a man die from seeing someone else fight?
Vaughn thought he might if his wolf didn’t get across the damn field to Hannah right now. Fucking Caine and his rogues in their territory again.
Kill them, Eagle urged.
Trying, Wolf said. He spun to avoid the snapping jaws of one of the rogues, and raked the male with his hind claws. The sa
tisfying scent of blood rose in the air. He didn’t screw around—he went for the male’s throat and finished him off.
Just in time. Hannah was in trouble, rolling on the ground, fighting some buzz-cut asshole with a gun. Jesus, they were close to the edge of the cliff.
Faster, Eagle cried.
Wolf put on another burst of speed and was tackled from the side. The air whooshed from his lungs as he hit the side of the cabin. A black wolf bared its fangs and prowled toward him.
A sharp cry that pained Wolf’s ears rang through the canyon, and Diego’s eagle swooped in and tore at the black wolf’s back.
Brother, Eagle shouted, triumphant.
A howl went up in the trees, and was answered by several more voices. Vaughn sighed in relief. The pack had come.
Outnumbered and bleeding badly, the black wolf retreated, loping off down the ridge. Run, coward, run.
Diego flapped his wings and rose back into the sky. He’d just cleared the trees when a gun went off with a loud pop. He jerked and fell, crashing into a fir and sliding to the ground.
Damnit. The goateed rogue Wolf had knocked over before stalked toward Diego with a rifle. He raised it, and Wolf barked a warning. The gun popped again, the bullet blasting a chunk from a tree trunk.
Suddenly, Frost streaked past, running on three legs. Vaughn shouted when he saw what had roused him. Caine, in wolf form, was running toward Hannah.
Claws digging into the hard-packed dirt, Wolf raced for her.
Faster, Eagle cried again.
They weren’t going to make it in time.
Frost leapt into the air, trying to intercept Caine, but he was too slow. The black-and-gray male slammed into Hannah with the force of a speeding car. She flew through the air and off the side of the cliff.
No! No! No!
The word burst from him and his beasts like a nuclear bomb.
The river below was dry. The cliff too high. Even werewolves had their limits.
No! No! No!
They couldn’t exist without her.
Wolf never stopped running.
Fast. Fly faster, Eagle cried, and Wolf leapt from the cliff after their mate.
