Last Wolf Hunting

by Rhyannon Byrd

  God, the thought of Jeremy made her chest hurt, and she pressed her hand between her breasts, as if she could stop the ache. But this was a wound that she couldn’t heal—one she wasn’t even sure she could survive.

  Pulling her tired body from her sofa, Jillian had just turned toward the hall, thinking she’d lie down for a while, when her door rattled with yet another knock. For a split second, she was sorely tempted just to ignore it.

  But the knocking came again, louder this time, and she quietly muttered, “I’m coming, dammit. Hold your horses.”

  Yanking open the door, Jillian almost slammed it shut again when she found Elise Drake’s big blue eyes blinking back at her. Chewing on the corner of her lower lip, Elise said, “Can I come in?”

  Jillian crossed her arms over her chest. “Are you here because of what happened yesterday?”

  “I need to talk to you. Please, Jillian,” she begged, the Lycan’s eyes glistening with a sheen of tears as she held her cold gaze. “It’s important, but I can’t talk about it out here. I need to explain what happened.”

  “You’re welcome to try—” she sighed, stepping aside to let her in “—but it won’t change anything, Elise. I thought you were my friend.”

  Elise came inside and stopped with her back to the front window, arms wrapped around her middle, her sleek silver leggings and long charcoal-gray tunic giving her a wraithlike appearance. “I am your friend, Jilly. Which is why I’m going to tell you what happened. All of it.”

  With a frown tugging at the corners of her mouth, Jillian closed the door.

  * * *

  Eighty-nine. Ninety. Ninety-one.

  Jeremy’s knuckles were bruised from the endless beating they’d taken as he pounded the hell out of his punching bag, but he kept going, kept pushing. He didn’t have a choice. He needed the physical burn of pain to keep his mind blank. The second he slowed down and gave himself time to think, he knew he was going to fall apart, and this time he didn’t know if he’d be able to pull himself back together again—or if the rage would simply overtake him, destroying who he was.

  Too much of a risk. And so he kept pounding away at the bag.

  Mason had dropped by earlier, wanting an explanation for his return to the Alley, but he hadn’t been able to deal. Thankfully his partner knew him well enough to understand when to leave him alone, and had gone back home to his wife. Probably losing himself in married bliss, Jeremy thought with a sneer, switching to his right leg for high kicks. It was unfair of him to be snide, but he couldn’t help it.

  Finally, his muscles demanded a break from the relentless torture. Exchanging his drenched sweats for a pair of jeans and T-shirt, Jeremy slipped on his boots, wrapped a towel around his neck and headed into the kitchen. Standing at his sink, he watched the weak threads of sunlight struggle against the heavy storm clouds scarring the horizon. The promise of more foul weather matched his mood, irritable and on edge, with an uneasy heaviness in his gut…as if he were waiting for a hammer to fall.

  And it was headed straight for his head.

  He wanted to pace from one side of his cabin to the other, but the key to control was remaining still, reining in the driving, visceral urges of his beast. Like heat building from the bottom of a pan set over flame, it roiled beneath the surface of his hot skin, eager for the chance to prowl…to rage…to seethe. It wanted to rip itself from the confines of his flesh and sink its claws into something. Wanted to experience that rich, drugging rush of pleasure that came with the savage act of pure, mindless destruction. But he was a man, as well as a wolf; he’d learned long ago to control that darker side of his nature and temper it with reason.

  Unfortunately, his reserves of reason and restraint were already running low.

  When he heard a knock on his front door, he wondered if Mason was back for another shot at getting the sordid story out of him, but found Sayre Murphy standing on his doorstep instead.

  “Sayre?” he rumbled, shaking his head with surprise. “What are you doing here?”

  “Hi, Jeremy,” she said shyly, her pale cheeks tinged with a soft flush of color. “I hate to bother you at home, but I really need to talk to you.”

  His muscles cramped, and Jeremy knew it wasn’t from his work out. No, it was the thought of having to sit here and talk about Jillian, but he couldn’t be a bastard to Sayre and send her walking. The kid was just looking out for her sister; she didn’t deserve his anger. “Do your folks know you’re here?” he asked her, stepping out of the way so that she could come inside.

  “No…” she sighed, while he grabbed the end of the towel, rubbing the remaining drops of sweat from his face “…and I’d like to keep it that way.”

  “Just promise me you’re going to be careful,” he lectured, making his voice stern. “You shouldn’t be out by yourself. There’s too much weird stuff going on in the mountains right now. It isn’t safe.”

  “I know,” she said with a small shiver. “I was careful, I promise. I just really needed to see you,” she told him, the look in her big eyes too solemn for his peace of mind.

  “It’s good to see you, Sayre,” he breathed out on a soft burst of air, “but if this is about Jillian, I don’t wanna hear it.”

  “Please, Jeremy,” she implored. “She doesn’t know that I’m here. In fact, she’s probably going to kill me for interfering, but I really need to talk to you.”

  He cursed a silent string of words in his head, then jerked his chin toward the kitchen. “Come and take a seat at the table. I’ll put on some coffee.”

  Sayre followed him into the kitchen and folded herself into a chair while he went about putting on a fresh pot. When the machine began to gurgle and hiss, steam rushing from its top, Jeremy propped his hip against the counter and crossed his arms over his chest. “Okay, I’m listening.”

  She shifted nervously, her hands folded together on the tabletop—to keep them from shaking, he suspected. “Um, has Jillian ever told you about our mother?”

  He arched one brow, wondering where this was going. “What about her?”

  “If you have to ask,” Sayre murmured, a crooked smile on her lips while that sad look still lingered in her eyes, “then she hasn’t told you. I’m also guessing that she hasn’t told you about the way of a witch and her heart.”

  The way of a witch and her heart? What the hell did that mean?

  “I’m trying to keep it together, Sayre, but if you don’t just spit it out, I’m gonna lose what little of my sanity is actually left. Have mercy and just say whatever it is that has you grinning like a little urchin.”

  For the next few minutes, Jeremy found himself listening, stunned, as Sayre told him the story of the man Constance Murphy had fallen in love with while away at school; the Lycan who was Jillian’s biological father.

  “You see, Jeremy, when a witch opens herself sexually to a man,” she explained in a low, soft voice, her face burning with embarrassment, “he’s given insight into her soul…into her very heart, right down to every emotion, every private thought and feeling that she holds for him. All of it, every intimate detail, is shared through their connection. When Jillian’s father realized how thoroughly our mother cared for him, he used that love against her, because he didn’t love her in return. He didn’t cherish the gift he’d been given, and though she’s happy with my father, there’s a part of her that’s never healed.”

  Silence settled between them, followed only by the cracks of thunder rolling in hard and fast, heralding the sudden arrival of another violent storm. Jeremy stared at the gleaming finish on his kitchen floor, his mind taking him back over a decade ago, to the time when he’d fallen in love with a golden-haired imp who made his heart soft and his body hard; who turned his entire world on its ear. “So all this time, Jillian has pushed me away because she was afraid of me seeing…”

  “How much she loves you,” Sayre finished for him, her voice watery with the silent tears rolling down her cheeks. “All her life, our mother has been wa
rning Jillian of what would happen if she gave her love and her body to a man who didn’t return that love.”

  Oh, god, he thought, while a searing pain crushed through his head…through his heart.

  Christ, it all made such perfect sense now that he could see the pieces that had been missing. He’d been so intent on protecting himself, that he’d never opened himself up to her, never revealed his feelings. Not then. And not in the past few days.

  He’d told her that he wanted her, that he needed her. Hell, dozens of times. But he’d never—not once—admitted that he felt something more for her than lust.

  “I’ve got to talk to her,” he rasped, taking the towel from around his neck. He’d just tossed it on the table when Sayre suddenly reached out, grasping his right wrist with both hands as he moved past her.

  “Jilly is in trouble,” she whispered, her eyes shocked wide in fear, voice so soft he could barely hear her.

  “What?” he grunted, staring down at her, but she was…gone, her eyes glazed…her mind in another place. “Sayre,” he barked, taking her shoulders and giving her a gentle shake. “Sayre, come back, honey. What are you talking about? What’s wrong with Jillian?”

  Blinking rapidly, she lifted her gaze, staring up at him while a cold look of horror spread over her fey face. “I—I don’t know how to explain it, Jeremy. I just…feel things…sometimes. I can’t control it. But something in my head is screaming that she needs you. That she’s in danger!”

  “Goddamn it,” he growled, grabbing his keys and cell phone off the nearby counter, cursing a foul streak of words when he saw that his battery was completely dead. Tossing the useless piece of technology back on the counter, he rushed out of the kitchen as Sayre followed beside him, her eyes huge in the paleness of her face. “I want you to get Mason and tell him to meet me at Jillian’s as fast as he can,” he told her, pulling open the front door as he gave her a hard look. “Then you stay at the cabin with Torrance, Sayre. No matter what, you’re not to head off into the woods alone. You understand?”

  She nodded, trembling, clearly terrified for her sister, and Jeremy’s heart turned over in his chest. “It’s going to be okay, honey.” He tried to give her a reassuring smile, but knew it looked strained by his own fear. “You just do what I said, and then start trying to get through to Jillian on the phone. If you can get her, tell her I’m on my way.”

  * * *

  “I don’t expect you to forgive me,” Elise rasped, glancing nervously out the front window, while Jillian settled back on the sofa. “But I want to explain the reason I went to Jeremy’s house yesterday.”

  Turning away from the window, she said, “My father is having both this house, and Jeremy’s house, watched. When he saw you leave yesterday morning, he waited to see if you would go to Jeremy. When you did, he called me and told me that I was going to help him get the Runner out of town once and for all. Said he had important plans and that Jeremy couldn’t be around to get in his way.”

  “And you agreed?” Jillian asked, shaking her head in confusion.

  A wry sound that was too brittle to be laughter fell from Elise’s lips. “At first? No, I told him to go to hell. But he’s lost his grip on reality, Jillian. He told me that if I didn’t do as he said, he’d make sure the Runners turned their sights on Eric, said he’d fix it so that evidence turned up that would incriminate my brother and make it look as if he was in league with the rogues. I panicked, and so I…I did it. I only live around the corner from the Burns’s house. Like a puppet,” she sneered, curling her lip with disgust, “I jumped to do his bidding and put on that stupid, horrible act.”

  Jillian wet her bottom lip with the tip of her tongue, a strange tingling sensation surging through her limbs, her skin feeling shivery and hot at the same time, while ideas tumbled over themselves, one after the other in her tired mind. “So then…it was all an act? It was a setup, because Drake wanted Jeremy out of Shadow Peak?”

  Elise nodded, looking miserable, and lifted one shaking hand to tuck the burgundy fall of her hair behind her ear. “Think about it, Jilly. I may not shape-shift, but I’m still a Lycan. I could scent you the second he opened the door. I knew you were there, even though I couldn’t see you. I’m so sorry,” she sniffed, and Jillian held up the box of tissues. Elise took one with an unsteady smile, then collapsed into the chair beside the sofa. “Anyway, I panicked and didn’t know what else to do,” she confessed in a low, broken voice. “I couldn’t let my father do that to Eric, and he would have. I know he would. He’ll use any of us, any way he chooses, so long as it gets him what he wants, and he’s angry at Eric for refusing to support him.

  “Then, this afternoon,” Elise rasped, a fresh surge of tears spilling from her eyes, “I heard him talking to Cooper Sheffield, and I knew it was about you. You’re in danger, Jillian. I don’t know what they have planned, but they said something about using you as an example of what happens to those who befriend the Runners. I think—”

  A jarring burst of laughter came from the street, and Elise flinched, the slim line of her brows pulling together in a frown as she glanced toward the front window. Standing, she went and looked around the edge of the sheer curtains. “I guess there’s a challenge tonight,” she murmured. “There’s a crowd out on the street, heading toward the woods.”

  It was nearly impossible to pull her mind off Jeremy and Drake and what she’d just learned, but Jillian closed her eyes, trying to remember. “This whole week has been a blur, but now that I think about it, I think there is a challenge planned for tonight.” She opened her eyes, frowning. “I should be there, but I’m not up for it.”

  Elise slanted her a weary look. “Me, either.” She sighed, rubbing at her forehead. “And we need—” In the next instant, she screamed, stumbling forward, and then she went down hard on her hands and knees, her body jerking as if she were having a violent seizure.

  “Elise!” Jillian shouted, rushing forward, but Elise’s head shot up, her top lip pulled back over teeth that were slowly lengthening into fangs. “Don’t!” she moaned, while tears poured from her eyes, drenching her face. “Oh, god, Jillian. Don’t come near me. I don’t…I don’t know what’s happening.”

  A raw, wrenching sound of pain ripped out of Elise’s throat, another hard wave of spasms racking her body, and Jillian could see the ridges of her spine shifting beneath the thin cotton of her shirt. Elise whimpered, her words garbled as the delicate bones in her jaw began cracking…lengthening. Blood poured out of her nose, and trickled from her left ear in a thin, meandering trail. “Jillian, get out! I c-can’t…can’t control it. It’s coming. Get out of here!” she growled, her voice growing deeper, more guttural, and Jillian finally registered the danger she was in.

  If Elise couldn’t control the change, there was every chance she wouldn’t be able to control her wolf, either. Which meant that the second her shift was complete, Jillian would become her prey. Squeezing her eyes shut, Jillian hesitated. She wanted to help her friend, but she knew she would be no match for a feral werewolf. Elise could rip to her shreds within seconds, and Jillian would die without ever getting the chance to set things right with Jeremy.

  Oh, God…Jeremy. She didn’t want to die without seeing him again—without ever telling him how much she had always loved him. How sorry she was that she’d allowed so many things to stand between them.

  A crackling surge of lightning struck the top of her house, jarring the walls, at the same time Elise let out a sharp, sinister howl…and Jillian suddenly realized she was already too late.

  Her time had just run out.

  Chapter 15

  Knowing her only chance for survival lay in a sprint for the door, Jillian opened her eyes and found a fully formed werewolf blocking the exit, its long claws flexing sinisterly at its sides, reddish gold fur rippling as it drew in each deep, bellowing breath. Above the muzzled length of its snout, blue eyes glowed like the inside of a flame, its upper lip curling to reveal the long, deadly length of it
s fangs.

  Now she was going to have to fight her way out, when she knew she was still too weak from healing Carly to win, and hope she could make it to her car before Elise caught her. Jillian knew she didn’t stand a chance, but for Jeremy, she was willing to try.

  “Elise?” she whispered, but there was no flash of recognition in the beast’s eyes, only the steady, relentless burn of savage aggression, its nostrils flaring as it scented her fear. Jillian shook her hands out at her sides, searching for every last ounce of power she could scrounge up from the depths of her soul, when suddenly there was a terrible banging against her front door. The wolf lurched at the sound, and Jillian nearly collapsed with relief as a deep voice roared her name.

  “Jillian! Are you in there?” Jeremy shouted, and the door rattled so hard that the frame began to crack. “Open the goddamn door!”

  She cried out at the sound of his voice, the pour of relief flooding through her veins so intense, she felt light-headed. The wolf snarled in reaction, then threw back its head and let out an unearthly howl that shook the glass in her front window…and had Jeremy shouting even louder, his deep voice stark with terror.

  “What the hell is going on in there?” he roared, and something solid and heavy hit her door, like his shoulder, and she knew he was breaking it down.

  The werewolf’s head lowered at the noise, a coarse chuffing sound surging from its chest, and Jillian took a step back, sensing that it was only a matter of time before it attacked. “Hurry!” she called out, and the seething beast instantly lunged for her, taking her to the ground with its overpowering weight, slamming her into the floor. Screaming, Jillian watched as its long, deadly fangs flashed toward her throat, glinting silvery white in the pale light of the room. She called up every ounce of power she could find lingering in her body and mentally pushed at the wolf, at the same time she lifted her arms, sinking her fingers into its warm fur as she fought to hold it at bay…but she wasn’t strong enough to throw it off.