by Mia Rose
“My family won’t be hunting near the nature preserve on the other side of town. I could meet you there this evening.”
Declan nodded, “I have to wrap up a few things here, but I’ll be there.”
He could hear Noelle smiling through the phone, “I’ll be waiting.”
“I would think that you’d remember the sound of my voice by now.”
Chapter 20
Predator
“I’m learning all about a much more frightening type of wolf these days.”
Wide, flat stones were pressed into the lush, vibrant grass of the Cripple Creek nature preserve. The paw prints of the deer, birds, and large animals that hid deep within the four-acre wide nature setting had been sealed into each of the stones. A woeful grin spread across Noelle’s lips as she walked across the paw print of the gray wolf that could be seen sauntering through the preserve. Usually in the spring and fall. Noelle remembered learning about the gray wolf as a little girl, and the park ranger told her third-grade class that the lone, gray wolf was an apex predator. And that it usually scouted the area for newborn deer calves.
I’m learning all about a much more frightening type of wolf these days.
Noelle stopped just before the tattered boards of a broken fence. The other half of the wooden fence had been preserved, but it looked like something massive (maybe a truck), had blown through the other half of it. She leaned against the half that was still intact, and peered down the road. There was a dirt road just before you reached the stones at the front of the nature preserve, and her dark colored sedan was parked at the end of the road. She listened for the sound of Declan’s car rolling over the dirt; the only sound that filled the air was the creak of the broken fence.
Noelle reached into the back pocket of her jeans and took out her phone. She dragged her finger across the screen and the screen read, 10:54 PM. Noelle slid her phone into her back pocket and raised her eyes to see Declan standing at the end of the path.
She grinned, “You decided to show up? I didn’t think you’d keep me waiting.”
Declan shuffled across the stones and said, “I’m not used to people complaining about my punctuality.” He smirked, and Noelle tucked a stray piece of hair behind her ear.
“Because you’re the boss!”
“That’s right!”
Noelle stepped forward and rested her hands against the thin cotton of his t-shirt.
The muscles underneath his shirt flexed underneath her fingertips, and she said, “Why did you want to meet? Just business?”
Declan shook his head and held up his right hand. He gripped two arrows in between his fingers.
Noelle’s eyes widened and she asked, “Where did you find this?”
Declan’s palm fell open and he held the arrows out to her, “One of these sailed right into one of my pack members. A newer wolf, he was hardly a threat to himself much less a human.”
“Shit. Can I see that?” She plucked the arrows out of his hand and held them a few inches away from her face. “These are from a crossbow.”
Who went out last night? I could have sworn that Mom and Dad were asleep by the time I went to bed last night.
Noelle shook her head and handed the arrows over to Declan, “I don’t know anything about those.”
A shiver ran down her spine as she watched Declan’s eyes carefully scan her face for any tell-tale signs that she could be lying. His nostrils flared, and she knew that he was breathing in her scent… more than likely checking for a change in her, or smelling the air for the scent of any hunters that might be lurking nearby.
Noelle cleared her throat and took a step forward, she checked to the left of her before wrapping her arms around his neck.
“Declan. I don’t know anything, honest. I told you that I didn’t want to make an enemy out of you, and I meant it.”
The muscles in Declan’s face tightened and he allowed his hands to hang limply at his sides while she embraced him.
He sighed and said, “Okay. If you’re serious about staying out of our way, I’ll drop it.”
“You’ll drop it?”
Declan nodded, “I’ll just have to look into it some other way.” He raised his arms and circled them around her small waist.
A brief flash of nervousness decorated Noelle’s face before she shook herself out of it. She allowed her mind to come back to the present moment, and to feel the heat of Declan’s skin against her arms.
“I’m sorry that I can’t be more help,” her breath was hot against his ear, “maybe there’s something that I can do to take your mind off of everything.”
Declan wrinkled his nose, “everything” had been tugging at the back of his mind all afternoon, it tortured him on the drive from Clifton Towers to the nature preserve. The only time that his mind granted him a reprieve was when he spotted Noelle leaning against the fence, looking more delicious than any kind of meat that he’d ever snagged in between his teeth.
“What did you have in mind?” Declan asked smiling.
Noelle kissed the soft, sun-kissed skin on Declan’s neck. Her fingers danced in the ends of his slick, black hair. She inhaled, waiting for Declan’s usual cedarwood and shower-fresh scent to hit her senses.
Noelle pulled away from him with a sexy grin on her face, “I’ve been thinking about you, and not just because of all of this werewolf business. Have you been thinking about me?”
Declan nestled his nose into the crook of Noelle’s sweetly scented neck and mumbled, “Constantly.”
A wave of pleasure spread through Noelle’s chest and she disentangled herself from him. She snaked her hand down the length of his arm and interlaced his fingers with hers.
“Come on.”
She tugged him toward two dirt paths that led to the bird watching and pond area. Noelle pulled the large man behind her to the pond area, she looked over her shoulder with a cheeky grin on her face.
“Follow me.”
Declan chuckled, “How could I get myself into trouble by following a huntress into the woods? I feel like we’ve done this before.”
“Shush,” she replied.
They stomped through a patch of trees and many unique plant species. Noelle led him down two rows of blue and yellow flowers; the long stems were stretched until they fell over, and the petals at the end of the stem grazed against the dirt.
“Do I even get a hint of where you’re taking me?” Declan questioned.
His question was answered when Noelle’s footsteps slowed underneath the base of a sequoia tree. The leaves that dangled from the branches above them provided a cool shade from the bright moonlight. Noelle pulled him close to her and pressed her body against his chest.
Her breasts rested against him and she said, “You can let go. Stop thinking.”
She released his hands and tucked her fingers underneath the ends of her shirt. Noelle pulled it over her head, freeing the pale skin underneath. Her eyes connected with Declan’s.
He said, “I already have.”
He pressed his fingers into her skin until his fingernails left half-moon-shaped marks. Declan ran his tongue over the skin on Noelle’s collarbone. With a soft moan, she tipped her head back and gave him the freedom to explore her body. His tongue roamed in the crook of her neck, and in between her bare, soft breasts. Declan lifted his face up from Noelle’s skin to reveal a smirk.
“You must have been thinking about this for a while.” He flicked one of her stiff nipples and shoved her against the trunk of the tree.
Noelle hissed, the hard bark of the tree scraped against her back. The sting began to spread throughout her skin.
“Oh no, I don’t want to hear any whimpering.”
He slipped his hands underneath her jean-clad thighs. Noelle smashed her teeth down on her bottom lip as Declan carefully shredded the fabric of her jeans. She sucked in a short breath upon seeing the fierce claws where his fingers had been. He ripped the seat of her jeans open as well as the damp fabric of the white panties that she wore.
His husky voice traveled into her ears, “You’ve got a few things to learn about being with an alpha.”
Noelle’s fingers fumbled against the trunk of the tree, hoping to snag any loose bit of bark to hold onto. She tightened her legs around Declan’s waist and he freed his hard cock from inside of his jeans. She groaned, the weight of his warm cock pressing against her thighs. It lit her blood on fire.
With a growl, she squeezed against him, “Come on, Declan. Fuck me.”
“Shut up!” he instructed. And a wave of pleasure passed over him as the blood rushed into his cock.
Declan eased himself inside of her, and slapped a hand over her mouth as a loud moan ripped out of her throat. She giggled as he pumped his hips inside of her, the flaming red skin on her lower back and thighs scraped against the bark of the sequoia.
Her walls tightened around him, trapping him as he rammed himself deeper still. His cock pressed against the back of her pussy, and her lips wandered over his neck and shoulders in lust and breathlessness.
Drops of sweat fell off of Declan’s forehead, and dribbled onto Noelle’s skin. Noelle took a sharp inhale as her legs quivered around him. Her muffled cries rose up and into the treetops until the moon moved from its position directly overhead, to reveal the black, star-lit sky above them.
“I’m learning all about a much more frightening type of wolf these days.”
Chapter 21
Luck
“I like to be lucky.”
Noelle threw her arms over her thighs as she stepped in the open patio door of her parent’s home. She let out a sigh of relief upon realizing that the television and surrounding lamps had been shut off for the night. Noelle assumed that her parents had finally resumed their old habits of creeping up to bed around nine, remaining unseen until the sun rose over the rooftops of the other colonial style houses nearby.
She crept through the dark living room and took careful footsteps down the hall toward her bedroom. Noelle steadied her hands as she twisted the doorknob to her bedroom. She stepped inside and quietly shut the door behind her. Noelle ran her palms over the light scratches on her thighs, and a coy smile rested at the edges of her lips.
I should get changed.
Noelle peeled off the shredded remains of her blue jeans, a casualty that she would have mourned over months before. But the strips of denim would serve as a cheeky souvenir of a night with Declan. She pulled open her dresser drawer and changed into a pair of red and black flannel pajama pants. Then she easily slipped on a faded t-shirt from high school over her shoulders. Exhausted, she flopped down onto her creaking bed frame.
She chuckled, upon hearing the rumble of her belly. She’d been so focused on savoring every moment of her time with Declan that she’d passed on the dinner that her father had made. Noelle pushed herself off of the bed and opened her bedroom door, she crept down the hall toward the kitchen.
Her eyes widened, every light in the kitchen was on and the raised voices of her parents passed through the walls. She paused, and pressed herself against the wall upon hearing her name.
Abigail’s weary voice said, “I just don’t know how much longer she can keep doing this.”
Garrett scoffed and replied, “Could you hand me that polish? I don’t want the guns to wear.”
The sound of Abigail lifting a metal tin off of the table rang in Noelle’s ears, and she listened as she heard her mother say, “I don’t know, Garrett. I just don’t know if we made the right decision when we told her everything. Did you see the look on her face when we told her that the rest of the family would be coming to town?”
“She’s probably just not looking forward to entertaining her aunts and uncles, and the cousins that she never sees. Ask any twenty-something, they don’t exactly look forward to prying questions from relatives.”
“Noelle isn’t like that, though. She’s always been a good girl, always done what she’s told. I wonder if this is too much for her. I wonder if she wishes that she had a normal life and could just come home from university on the weekends. I feel like we took that away from her.”
I can make my own decisions. Why doesn’t she ever think that I can think for myself?
Noelle shook her head and lifted her head away from the wall, and readied herself to walk into the kitchen.
“I’m less concerned with that and more concerned with that mysterious cut she came home with a little while ago. What kind of experienced hunter injures their forehead like that? She must have been in la-la land for days before she went on that hunt!”
Noelle’s cheeks burned bright red and she curled her fingers into a fist against the wall.
Or I was headbutting a four-hundred-pound beast so that I could scramble free. No one needs to bring my hunting ability into question.
Noelle recalled her first few hunts, and how she’d outdone her father by far in wrangling a small pack that had taken up in the woods at night. She remembered the way that the female in the pack wrestled in her grip, and the bite that she narrowly missed upon sliding underneath the wolf. Her father’s face had been burned into her memory that night, the wide-eyed stare he wore as Noelle dragged her blade down the belly of the wolf then rose to her feet, soaked in blood.
No one gets to question my ability. They were the ones that were doing such a piss-poor job of getting anything done, so much so that they had to recruit their own twenty-one year-old daughter.
Noelle gritted her teeth together to contain a yell and pushed away from the wall. She slinked away from the kitchen, under the darkness of the living room.
Gabriel eased into Declan’s computer chair, rolling his eyes at the cold stare he might soon receive from Declan once he made it to his office.
Staying up all night just to figure out where the hell these arrows came from earns me a little time in this chair. I don’t see him making any progress for the pack… just slipping off to be alone and wandering throughout the night.
Gabriel shook his head and pecked his fingers across Declan’s keyboard. On the screen, a long, complicated list of hunting equipment was displayed. A local blogger had put together where one could find some of the best bows, arrows, and guns for big game hunting in the dense woods spread throughout Cripple Creek. Gabriel hoped that if he studied the preferences of big game hunters long enough, it would at least bring him closer to finding out what they were up against the other night.
In his palm, were the two arrows that Declan recovered the night of Keith’s attack. His eyes passed over a passage describing the different types of arrows that you could find in Colorado.
He read aloud, “You could always go with a simple bow and arrow to take down things like an ornery buck or lost deer, but you’re going to get the neatest kill with a premium crossbow. It’s more powerful than a traditional bow, and far easier to load and fire.”
There was an image beneath the passage of a long, crossbow arrow. The arrow in the photo was much darker than the ones inside of his hand, but the length and style were similar. Gabriel squinted and leaned closer to the monitor, cursing Declan for being too cheap to upgrade to a monitor with a higher resolution.
“One of Julianne Jack’s arrows that you can purchase on the edge of Cripple Creek. Julianne and her husband Miles hand make each arrow. The arrow pictured here is an older one, made of walnut wood.”
Gabriel snatched a green and blue note pad off of the edge of Declan’s desk and scribbled Julianne Jack onto it. In a separate tab, he typed the name of the shop owner into the search bar. Within seconds, an address and a local business page appeared. The outside of the shop looked like a small shack, the area around it was free of any grass or shrubbery. The dark, red roof stuck out like a sore thumb in an area that was mostly residential. And if you looked far enough into the photo you could spot the gray rooves of the neighborhood nearby.
“Right under our noses,” Gabriel mumbled, and lifted his head as the door to Declan’s office creaked open, and Declan poked his head inside.<
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“I knew that you were sitting behind my desk, I could smell you from the other side. What are you doing?”
He slipped into the room and shut the door behind him. Gabriel raised his eyebrows at Declan’s disheveled appearance, he looked as if he just spent the last hour tumbling around in the dirt. His emerald eyes were alert, and he smelled of pine.
Gabriel redirected his attention to the matter at hand, “I’ve been doing some research, for Keith.”
Declan leaned against the wall and crossed his arms. His eyes were sunken, and he inhaled deeply, as if he were trying to find a reason to keep himself awake.
“Well, what did you find?”
Gabriel ripped off a page of the notepad and held it up, “It turns out that the arrows you found are from a local distributor. It’s a couple, called Julianne and Miles, and they make handmade weapons like the arrow.”
Declan nodded, “Interesting, so now we know who makes arrows for crossbows that are strong enough to take down a fully transformed werewolf. We’ve got a lot of work on our hands for tomorrow.”
Gabriel nodded then swiveled his head around.
He cocked his head to one side and said, “How did you know it was from a crossbow?”
“What?”
“How did you know?” Gabriel repeated.
Declan shrugged and said, “My shitbag of a dad used to hunt on the weekends, it was a nice break for him. What are you worried about that for?” Declan waved his hands in an ‘up’ motion and commanded, “Get out of my chair.”
Gabriel scowled and said, “I just didn’t know you to be so updated on all of the newest hunting equipment, that’s all.” Gabriel rose out of the chair and brushed past Declan.
“So, what are we going to do about this?”
Declan eased into his chair and leaned back until it touched the wall.
“I think that we should pay Julianne and Miles a visit, and figure out who likes to hunt with crossbows. I’m hoping that it’ll take us less than a week to narrow it down, and a few expertly placed pack members.”
