Alphas Unbound: 8 Sexy Shifter Romances

by Elsa Jade

  Maddie nodded. “I wonder what message he was trying to send.”

  “Maybe just ‘I’m here.’ Or maybe, ‘I’m here. Where are you?’ Prehistorical sexting.” Dare turned to aim the camera out to the valley and clicked. With the sun setting, the shadow of the mesa spread long, as if it could reach across all Four Corners. But the vista was too vast and wild and empty for any one hand. She let the camera fall again and lifted her chin. “Where are yoooooou?”

  The wind caught her voice and seemed to amplify it, carrying the long note out into the dusk. Maddie shivered, but Dare only clamped her hand over her mouth with a giggle.

  “See? That’s what I’m talking about.” She pointed.

  After another wary glance to the horizon, Maddie followed Dare’s finger. She remembered ogling this figure before. He was a petroglyph rather than a pictograph, etched into the rock with painstaking precision, the exposed grain of the gray basalt just different enough that he seemed to shimmer silver in the lambent light. He was larger than life, arms raised ecstatically upward as if he would leap from the stone. And he was most definitely male: the phallus jutting from his loins was also larger than life.

  Dare’s camera whirred. “What did you used to call him?”

  Maddie’s cheeks felt warm, even though a cool breeze whispered up from the darkening valley. “Hot dong.”

  “That’s right, because of his dog head.” Dare reframed the shot, aiming higher toward the figure’s V-shaped upper body, presumably to get a safe-for-work angle. “It does look like he has a perked ears and a muzzle. And see how the rock is chipped deeper? I never noticed that before. The angle of the light is different tonight. Maybe those are supposed to be fangs. Like he wanted to capture the spirit of a wolf.”

  She traveled farther along the cliff face, clicking as she went. Maddie tapped the boring rocks under their feet to scare away any snakes…and to remind herself that she was standing in this world. There was something about the petroglyphs that felt out of place or out of time…otherworldly in a way that made her pulse quicken as her blood raced.

  She hustled after Darling who had switched to flash, which made Maddie realize just how dark it was getting.

  “Maybe we should finish this up for now.”

  “Sure, sure…” Dare said, even as she recorded a series of abstract images, mostly wavy lines, spirals and circles, sunbursts, and more hands—just like the tattoos on Kane. She looked down at the camera for a moment, flipping back through her shots. “These are going to look great on the town website.”

  Maddie cast a distracted look at her. “I thought Rafe took your camera.”

  “He did. So I liberated”—she glanced over at Maddie with a cheeky grin—“this one from work. If that Villalobos boy tries to take this one, I’m going to sic that new sheriff’s deputy on him for theft of county property.”

  “I’m pretty sure Rafe isn’t a boy anymore,” Maddie muttered. And if he had grown up anything like his cousin, even a city slicker cop lost in the boonies would know not to challenge him.

  Dare tossed back her red hair with an indignant snort. “That sort of boy never changes.”

  Maddie wasn’t really listening anymore. “I think we need to make our phone call and head back to the Fiat so Chuck can find us.”

  “Okay. I have enough now anyway. But let’s walk around the backside of this standing stone. You’ll get a better signal from there.”

  It was cool enough now and the sun close enough to the western hills that any snakes would have retreated to burrows for the night. Maddie was eager to retreat too. Something had her hackles prickling.

  As they picked their way around the tumbled boulders on the rougher side of the rock wall, Maddie kept checking her phone for bars. One. From here, she could look down toward Angels Rest. Maybe she could just yell really loud for Chuck… Two. Relief eased through her. “I think I can make that call—”

  Dare let out a little shriek.

  Maddie jumped forward, one finger punching in 9-1… and her other hand tightening on the lug wrench she hadn’t yet put away.

  But Dare was already laughing. “Sorry, sorry. He just scared me.”

  Maddie halted next to her. They were basically on the flip side of the stone wall from the giant aroused man, and here was the wolf spirit he’d been chasing.

  This petroglyph was done in the same style, etched into the stone so the silvery heart was exposed. But it was somehow more primitive, the outline ragged with no details to gentle the impression of bestial ferocity.

  No wonder Darling had yelped. The man on the other side was lucky he’d never caught up with the wolf.

  The flash went off several times as Dare took some pictures, muttering to herself, and Maddie focused on her phone as she finally got to three bars. She dialed the shop and waited impatiently for the first ring. It would take four rings before it switched to voice mail. The gas station was closed for the night, but she knew Chuck would be screening the calls in case there were any accidents or stranded motorists that required a tow.

  On the first ring, she glanced over at Dare. The flash of the camera picked up a metallic gleam beyond the rock face, something that shouldn’t have been there.

  On the second ring, she realized they weren’t alone.

  On the third ring, the wolf howled back.

  Chapter Eight

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  Darling straightened and spun around. “Was that a—?”

  Not waiting to hear what she thought it might have been, Maddie grabbed her arm and hauled her back toward the shelter of the rock wall. “Quiet,” she hissed. “I can’t tell how close it is—”

  A sharp retort cracked the dusk. Beside them, jagged chips of stone exploded outward. Dare flinched back with a whimper, her hand over her eye. Scarlet leaked between her fingers, as bright as her hair in the failing light.

  Maddie huddled close to her. “Shit. Since when do wolves have guns?”

  “Someone must be hunting them,” Dare said. Her peridot eyes were wide with shock. “Are they allowed to do that? Aren’t wolves endangered? And why are they shooting this way? Can’t they see us?” She shook free of Maddie’s frantic grip and launched to her feet. “Hey!” she screamed. “Knock it off. We’re not—”

  Another bullet slammed into the rock, even closer this time.

  Instantly comparing the two shots, Maddie hauled Dare behind another boulder. Assuming there was only one shooter, they should be out of the line of fire.

  Unless the shooter moved.

  “I don’t think they care we aren’t wolves.” Crouched low, Maddie checked her phone, shielding the lighted screen to not give away their new location. Dammit, blocked by the solid rock, she’d lost every bar. Had the call gone through? Would Chuck hear any of what was happening? Even if he did, would he be able to figure out where it was happening?

  And what the fuck was happening? The rural country around Angels Rest had a lot of responsible hunters. And a few gun nuts too, but none she’d heard of were murderous, at least not randomly so.

  She and her friend were being hunted. And they were on their own.

  She turned to Darling. “Let me see your face.”

  Dare let her peel her protective hand away. “I can’t see.” Though her fingers trembled, her voice was steady.

  Maddie squeezed her hand. “It looks like a shard cut you just above the eyebrow. Not too wide, but it’s dripping into your eye. That’s why you can’t see.” She ripped a flounce off Dare’s three-quarter sleeve and pressed the white fabric to the cut. “Hold it tight. We need to stop the bleeding and clean you up so you can see in case we need to make a run for it.”

  In the dark. Over loose rock. In crappy sneakers. On the edge of a high cliff. With someone shooting at them.

  She opened her satchel, numbly surprised she hadn’t dropped it, and took out the water bottle. She took a long swig then passed it to Dare. “Drink.” After she did—three long gulps of the lukewarm beverage; her mouth must
be as desert-dry as Maddie’s—Maddie tore another flounce from her sleeve.

  She froze when Dare groaned. “Did I hurt you? Are you hit somewhere else?”

  “No. Well, my pocketbook. I special ordered this shirt from a big girl shop online.”

  “It was cute.” Maddie gently but quickly wiped the gore from her eye. Relief weakened her knees when the gemstone green glinted back at her. But she tightened every muscle to shore herself up. “You can see now, yeah? Okay. We gotta be able to move.” They needed a hiding spot with a clear cell signal. And out of reach of wolves, apparently. Since when was that a deciding factor? Although, since when did she need to run from assassins either? She’d come back to Angels Rest with the idea that somewhere in the peace and quiet she’d find whatever was missing in her life.

  Now she wondered if she was going to have a life at all.

  She took Dare’s hand, which felt clammy. Whether from the water, the blood, or shock, Maddie didn’t know. “What do you want to drink at Gypsy’s?”

  “What?” Dare’s voice was starting to sound thready. Shock, then.

  “Just a beer? A mocktail? Or should we just line up whisky shooters down the bar?”

  “All of the above.”

  “Sounds like a dare to me. But before we go down, we’re gonna go up.” Maddie pointed.

  Dare followed her gesture up the cliff face. “Take the high ground?”

  “And you said everyone told you an online history degree was useless.” From up there, they’d get a cell signal and call that damn sheriff’s deputy. And if the shooter came closer, his angle of fire would be too sharp for visual targeting, while if he dropped back, his accuracy would suffer. If he tried to climb after them, at least he wouldn’t be shooting at them. Plus, they could drop rocks on his head. “Ready?”

  Dare blotted at her forehead one last time and then nodded. “I’m right behind you.”

  Maddie crossed the satchel over her body and turned to the rock wall. “Stay in this groove. It’s protected”—she hoped—“and it’ll have more handholds. Go fast, okay? We can’t risk…” The words petered out when she realized how badly this could go.

  “I get it,” Dare said. “We have to risk.”

  The last of the sunlight was almost entirely gone from the sky, and the fissure in the rock was darker yet. And for some reason, as Maddie grabbed the first protrusion over her head, her brain decided to remind her of rattlesnakes. Not helpful.

  She hauled herself up that first handhold, then another, then another, surprised at how someone shooting at her had given her such athletic prowess. In two more pounding heartbeats, she was higher than she was comfortable being above the ground—well, above the mesa top. Below her, Dare’s rasping breath reminded her that they’d sneaked out of gym class more than once in high school to avoid exertions much less strenuous than this.

  The night breeze from earlier had sharpened. It tugged at her sweat-dampened T-shirt with cold fingers, as if trying to find a grip to pull her away. She refused to go.

  Until one rock—bigger than her butt cheek and much, much harder—broke away in her hand.

  With a choked scream, she wrenched her body sideways to deflect the tumbling rock away from Dare’s head somewhere farther down. Her foot slipped out of the crack where she’d wedged it, and for a moment she dangled by one hand and one sneaker. Her spine slammed into the wall of the fissure, and even through the partial protection of her satchel, she felt stone grind against bone.

  That would hurt. Later. When she had time to swear about it.

  Grimly, she pulled herself back to the wall. “Dare?”

  “I forfeit,” came the wavery reply.

  “Keep your ass moving.”

  “Then get your ass out of my way.”

  She climbed, hand over hand, and then her hand reached up and found…nothing.

  She’d gone as far as she could.

  Hauling herself over the rounded top of the rock, she anchored one arm around an outcropping and held her hand down to her friend. “Get up here, girl.”

  “Whose idea was this?” Dare gasped as she belly flopped onto the stone beside Maddie. The camera looped over her head and shoulder stuck out from her back like a little fin as they crawled away from the edge.

  Maddie stared at it, a nasty thought creeping in to gnaw at her. “How bad did Rafe not want you to take those pictures?”

  Dare peered up at her. “You think he…? No. No, Rafael Villalobos is an uptight, sanctimonious jerk for someone with so many tattoos, but he wouldn’t shoot me.”

  Maddie frowned. “Rafe has tattoos? Like the petroglyphs?”

  The moon, close to full, broke over the horizon and highlighted the ruddy stain of a blush on Darling’s cheeks. “I… Last summer, a young golden eagle was zapped by a power line downtown. It fell into the street outside the traveling library where I was volunteering. I went out…but he was already there. He took off his shirt to wrap it around the bird’s wings, said he’d take it to a wildlife rehabilitator, and I, um…looked. For awhile. He has the petroglyphs, some I’ve never seen before.” She lifted both eyebrows at Maddie. “How do you know about those?”

  “Kane has them too. I didn’t realize it was a Villalobos thing.”

  “They’ve always lived up here, solitary like,” Dare said. “But I don’t think they’d kill anyone for trespassing.”

  “Their house is near here, isn’t it?”

  “Just over the ridge and through the trees. It’s on the same side of the mesa, overlooking town.”

  “Maybe they heard the gunshots and will come investigate.”

  Dare stiffened. “But he could get hurt.”

  Maddie didn’t think they were thinking of the same he. “No Villalobos I know would track down a gunshot without a weapon of his own.” She rolled to her side, keeping her head down while she pulled the satchel strap over her head. “But I think they’d appreciate some back-up… Shit.”

  “What is it?”

  “My phone is cracked. Must’ve happened when I almost…” Almost fell to her death. She swallowed hard and thumbed the black screen. Nothing. Dead.

  She wished she’d stop thinking about death. “And I wish you weren’t such a technophobe about phones. You like computers well enough.”

  “Because I can type, not talk. And anyway, I told you before, phones never work when you need them.” She hooked a thumb at Maddie’s high-tech coaster. “Exhibit A.”

  Maddie let out a short laugh. “Okay then.”

  That was as far as she got before the next shot pierced the whine of wind over stone.

  Dare made a soft sound of distress, and Maddie gripped her hand. “That came from the other side of the petroglyphs, and that side is too steep and sheer to climb. It wasn’t aimed at us.”

  Though she tightened her grip, Dare shook her head. “But they were shooting at someone. And that’s the way to the Villalobos house.”

  This wasn’t trespassing. It was a full-out assault.

  Maybe Kane and his cousins weren’t even at the house. Maybe the sheriff’s deputy was already on his way, if Chuck had gotten her call.

  Or maybe not. Maybe she was alone, just like always, trying to figure out her way, and the only way she knew was getting her hands dirty.

  Maddie looked over her shoulder. “Dare, I have to go—”

  “I’m going with you.”

  Oh right, because she wasn’t really alone. She’d run away from Angels Rest once, halfway to fatally wounded—or so she’d thought at the time—by Kane’s rejection. She’d wanted so much to belong—somewhere, to someone—but she’d been so afraid of the second half of the killing blow that she’d dealt it herself and never stopped anywhere or with anyone long enough to try again.

  But here she was again, and she had a second chance. Angels Rest was where she wanted to be, and though she’d been too chicken to make a place for herself before, this time she’d be like an eagle—or maybe a wolf—and fight for her home, no mat
ter what.

  The rocky spires of the petroglyphs where they’d climbed was like a second, smaller world atop Mesa Diablo. While whoever was shooting had to maneuver over boulders and through the scraggly juniper below, Maddie and Darling were able to hurry across the open stonescape, bare except for the lichens glowing almost neon orange and green in the rising moonlight. They jumped across the black gashes of cracks in the rock, not looking down.

  Another heart-wrenching sound, not a gunshot this time, but the hungry wail of a beast. It sounded so close…

  “Maddie,” Dare gasped. “I don’t know if—”

  Kee-rak!

  Another gunshot. Closer yet. The shooter must be almost right at the base of the petroglyph spires. Had he been sneaking around to try to catch them from behind? Or was he still stalking the wolf?

  Was it a wolf?

  Maddie had no comparison except nature shows and horror movies, and she didn’t think either of those counted. This beast sounded…vicious and furious. And somehow mocking. As if the answer to the question of who was the hunter and who the prey was still up for grabs.

  Suddenly, she wondered if she might be rescuing the shooter.

  As they neared the edge of the spire, she gestured for Dare to drop lower. They crawled the last few feet and peered over.

  From this angle, what had seemed a steep and sheer cliff face actually looked more like giant stair steps, each higher step blocked by the one below so they presented an imposingly singular façade.

  She thought she could descend in much less time than it had taken to climb.

  Of course, one wrong step would make the trip very, very short.

  Dare nudged her elbow and pointed toward a thick stand of juniper. The moon—just a few nights from full—cast a surreal silver light but it was still so low in the sky that the shadows were preternaturally long. In the darkness of the low branches, an even darker shadow waited.

  Maddie strained her eyes, wishing she was an eagle for real, but she saw no telltale glint of steel. And the shadow, though terrifyingly large, was not as tall as a man.