When he captured her gaze, he put every ounce of power into his visage to will her to listen to him. Guilting her into it would work for him as well as anything else. He’d take what he could get.
Feigning more weakness than he felt could work to his advantage. He had to get the broken blade out of his chest somehow without going to the hospital, and he couldn’t risk returning to his place by the lake. It wouldn’t take much effort for Riker’s gang to track his trail all the way back.
Aiden hadn’t been worried about being followed when he’d left his place, and going back now would only leave a trail of blood they could sniff out for miles. They’d have a much harder time tracking him if he went somewhere completely unrelated.
Until his pack returned to town, it was too risky for him to take them down on his own.
Much as he liked to think of himself invincible, that didn’t mean he could handle someone willing to fight with any underhanded means they had available to them.
Most shifters followed an unspoken rule not to use silver.
Riker’s gang didn’t appear to have a problem with cheating.
There was a good chance that Lee Riker and his brothers would be waiting at his home ready to finish what they had started. If he could get this young lady to let him go to her home tonight he would have time to heal and would be able to defend himself when he came back into contact with the Riker clan of shape shifters.
Aiden knew the magical spell he could cast with his eyes and stared straight into those beautiful brown eyes.
He watched as she wrinkled her little button of a nose. Her mahogany skin looked warm and inviting in the soft blue glow radiating from the dashboard. Her pouty mouth finally showed the promise of her weakening. Her lips slowly relaxed, and he could see her shoulders slightly drop as she surrendered to his persuasion, and pulled back onto the road to head for her spot in the city.
Aiden congratulated himself on his skill set and leaned his seat back to rest for the ride.
***
The wolves raced along the game trail through the wooded valley until the path opened like a yawning mouth to a lake. The full moon’s light glittered on the gentle ripples of water like stars.
The moon glowed so bright that even a human could discern every detail around the lake.
Lee, leading the pack, stopped at the water and lapped at the edges until he could catch his breath. His sides heaved from the exertion and excitement.
Behind him, he heard the others approach. Following their alpha’s moves, they all ran up to the lake and began to drink of the pure water.
The creatures sat on the edge of the lake and through their slow and painful process, returned to the shape of seven human men, sitting naked in the moonlight. They felt no embarrassment or shame from their physical state. It was natural for a shape shifter to revert to the human state when they were resting, or trying to heal. Human forms required a slower metabolism rate than the wolf forms required.
Clothing was something that shape shifters wore to stop humans from being curious about them. If the shape shifters had their way, they would have no garments binding them and stopping them from having freedom of movement.
Lee looked at the members of his clan gathered around him. They weren’t the prettiest of men, or wolves. He knew when the last three babies born to the pack had been born with severe birth defects that the pack was going to dry up and go away if he didn’t get fresh blood mixed into their own.
He knew that by adding a new blood line into the clan they would start to produce better specimens that were smarter, faster, and better equipped to run this mountain area. The women from Aiden’s clan would make excellent breeding stock. They could be kept to breed and to care for the children.
The men of Aiden’s clan could be useful as slaves, and if they were willing to switch alliances, they could even be useful as hunters. Some of the men would even be beneficial as breeders with the women of his own clan. He simply had to get rid of their leader and make them see that he was the stronger alpha so that they would follow him instead.
His plan should have worked if not for that little interruption.
For months, Lee and his pack had watched Aiden Kinsey’s clan, tracking their movements, counting their numbers.
He’d seen their hunting grounds and wanted them. He did not admit to his pack that they hadn’t tracked Kinsey’s den for fear of alerting the rival pack to their presence and risk spoiling their plans to take over before the right opportunity.
They were well formed and muscular, the lot of them. The women were attractive, and he hadn’t seen any that were fat or lazy. The men were smart, their children smarter, and it seemed that they had an easy life in the valley.
Lee wanted that easy life.
And he was willing to do anything to possess it.
His pack had grown so stupid it took every ounce of to maintain order and manage them. He needed more men to oversee the simplest of tasks.
It was enough to make him want to rip his hair out.
Violence only went so far to maintain order.
He couldn’t see the work that the Misty Springs clan had put into their homes and their surroundings that gave them an easy life. People were not chasing and tormenting the creatures, because the werewolves never fed on a human within one hundred miles of their homes. Never.
Lee could not see this.
He’d seen the nice secluded dens the shifters had built, the expansive hunting grounds, and the comforts they had amassed. He saw the beauty of the women in the pack and the children who looked nourished and healthy. All of these things were things he wanted for his own clan.
He didn’t know about the rules and the self-discipline that the clan used to keep their homes safe and peaceful. Where Lee and his clan were from they were constantly hiding from humans with guns. The humans knew of their existence even though they had never killed a werewolf that they could display.
Lee’s pack scrounged for food every day. They lived in squalor. Some in the woods under the elements, and others in abandoned trailers with the floor rotting out beneath their feet and roaches scurrying around the walls. Lee’s home, a trailer, had so many holes in the floor that he’d taken to just walking on the support beams, and his child had gone through the floor of his bedroom and gotten stuck at the waist.
They’d glutted on the local wildlife until most of it had moved to other areas to survive, forcing them to live off humans and their livestock. He hadn’t thought of it as being too lazy to hunt more difficult game, or that they needed to maintain their human identities and live in the human world with human jobs and livelihoods.
Pretending to be human was too much of an effort. And his people tended to get strange looks.
Hell, just looking at them himself made Lee’s skin crawl. Ugly sons-of-bitches. No wonder none of them could get a job. They were idiots.
And they smelled like wet dogs.
Moving in on the Misty Springs clan would make his brethren like Aiden’s brethren.
One of the men lying on the ground, Jesse, looked at Lee as Lee stared at him for too long. “What we gonna do now, Lee? You think he’s dead?” Jesse asked.
Lee rolled his eyes and cleared his throat of phlegm, spitting on the ground. “We ain’t gonna get through this that easy. I stuck him, sure, but he got away. All’s it’ll take is him pullin that blade out and a few hours he’ll be healed. We gotta get rid of him afore his pack comes back from that festival. I heard they’ll be bringing back new mates.”
Joey, his younger brother by four years, grinned and rubbed his hands together.
Lee crossed his arms over his chest. “Don’t get too excited just yet. Kinsey was hunting around here, so we just gotta sniff around and we’ll find his place. He’ll come back eventually. We just gotta be here waiting on him when he does.”
“Why didn’t we go to the festival if that’s where all the women are?” Joey asked, looking thoughtful and out of place.
&
nbsp; Lee snorted. “We wouldn’t get no willing ones with the looks y’all got. Just look at yer reflection in the lake. Would you wanna fuck you?”
Joey looked at himself, his tawny red hair standing on end. His eyes, also too close together like his brother’s, a mushy nose and flat lips with a big jaw that stuck out begging for someone to punch it sideways. But he was also as broad as a door, muscular, with hands that could crush an enemy’s skull with little effort. Joey laughed. “I ain’t gotta be purty. Just bigger, stronger, and meaner than everyone else. That’s what you told me.”
“That’s right,” Lee said. He stood, signaling the discussion had ended.
The rest of the pack began to reluctantly get up and start off in the direction of the forest trail they had come in on. Before they even reached the edge of the clearing, Lee caught a whiff of the scent he hunted, and began the transformation back into a wolf.
The excitement of the hunt caused almost an immediate transformation reaction in the group and they raced through the thick underbrush.
Aiden’s trail snagged Lee’s sensitive nose, drawing him around the edges of Misty Springs and up the side of the mountain. His muscles worked overtime, and only through sheer determination was he able to keep pushing himself to follow the trace of his enemy.
A couple of miles northwest of the town, the trail led the pack down into the valley that Aiden called his home. The closer they got the stronger the scent, until it seemed like an invisible finger crooking come hither to them.
Lee whined with excitement. His brethren yelped and woofed behind him, echoing his enthusiasm.
The pack raced up to the edge of the clearing and stopped to survey the surroundings before they entered the open clearing around the structure that was Aiden’s den. A log cabin sat on the grounds like a sprawling old man with its back to the mountain range, and its front facing a small pond. To the right of the area, a thin stream babbled over mossy rocks down the mountain side, feeding into the pond.
Everything looked peaceful and serene. No light shone through the windows lining the building’s façade like eyes, but that didn’t mean anything.
Aiden was also a shape shifter and had vision as good as theirs in the night. If he wanted to hole himself up in the dark, it wouldn’t be no skin off his back.
Lee lifted his snout in an attempt to sniff out blood. There should be fresh blood where he had stabbed Aiden. Even if there were bandages covering the wound he should be able to detect the hint of blood in the air.
He could smell nothing, however.
Puzzled, Lee cocked his head. Tension tightened the muscles of his thick neck and shoulders. He padded forward, cautious, glancing side to side for signs of ambush.
Slowly the pack circled around the cabin. They carefully kept their eyes peeled for any sign of a trap, or sign that Aiden had returned to the cabin after the accident. There were no such signs.
The property looked abandoned. At least for the night.
He didn’t regret sniffing out this place until now. Hunting their prey felt exhilarating.
When they cleared the outside of the property and felt certain no one lurked around to attack them, they headed up to the cabin.
They walked in a line around the exterior of the house, methodical as they sniffed the ground, looking for traces of their prey.
Lee cocked his head, listening for any disturbance within the dwelling.
No sounds reached his ears save those of their own hassling and night insects chirruping in the background.
A breeze tickled the fur lining his back, making Lee’s hackles raise with anxiety.
He knew Kinsey was no fool. He wouldn’t go to a hospital to extract the blade Lee had broken off in his chest. If it didn’t kill him, he’d find some way to pull it out himself.
They hadn’t stuck around to see what happened after the car came.
Maybe they should have. They wouldn’t be in the dark now if he’d had just a little more forethought.
Lee wrinkled his muzzle, feeling stupid. He hated feeling stupid.
Though they didn’t possess the ability to mind speak with one another as he’d heard some clans could, his pack knew him well enough that they could sense his disturbance, and back away from his anger.
With their tails tucked close to the ground and their skittering movements, Lee could see his mood giving them anxiety.
Losing patience with the game and feeling like he’d done nothing but make the wrong move, Lee led them around the back of the house to the back door. The assault on the pitiful defenses lasted only as long as it took them to bust through the locked door and smash through the windows.
Once inside, the smell of their enemy launched them into a frenzy. Still as wolves, they tore through the house. In the living room, they shredded the couch’s cushions until bits of polyester and foam fluttered in the air like snow. Joey took the cushions in his muzzle and tore at them with his paws, then whipped the remnants in the air like a rabid dog.
Lee snarled and knocked over the tables and lamps, gratified to hear the tinkle of busting light bulbs. In another room, he caught the smell of piss as someone marked their spot—probably Kinsey’s bed.
His lips curled over his fangs in a mouthy grin.
Shifting into human form for ease, Lee ripped frames off the walls and threw them onto the floor, smashing the pictures with his bare feet. He cut his foot but ignored the pain, tracking blood down the hall as he healed the minor injury.
The others, followed suit to their Alpha, resuming human form as they continued their frenzied ransacking of the house.
Not a single cushion or pillow remained in one piece. Every drawer was strewn around, the fronts broken and the handles ripped off as their contents were upended in the floor. Aiden’s clothing joined the brickabrack on the floor, most of it shredded by hands and teeth.
Someone had tipped the refrigerator over and busted glass bottled beer all over the linoleum rather than drinking them. They were a frenzied pack, and at times, did things that had no rhyme or reason.
He frowned.
Sometimes, they were real fucking idiots.
“Who the hell spilled all the beer?” Lee demanded when his saw the puddles of amber liquid.
No one said a word. Cowards.
Lee backhanded the closest member to him, Thomas. Thomas stumbled in the door frame and rubbed his jaw, spitting out blood as he moved out of range should Lee choose to take another swipe at him.
Their rage fed by the destruction of Aiden’s home, his pack’s sudden cease of movement signaled that most of them had expended their last reserves of energy. They looked spent and exhausted.
“Well, I reckon we better eat. Y’all see what’s left in the fridge. He could come back at any time, and I want us to be ready for him when he gets here.”
“How long will that be?” Thomas asked, holding his jaw as if it still hurt.
Lee peered at him through one squinty eye. “Don’t matter unless his pack comes back. We got time. This fight ain’t over. Not by a long shot.”
Chapter Four
The car jolted to a halt in front of a cozy, white house with blue shutters on the corner of the street.
Aiden slammed forward, catching himself with one hand on the dash instead of with his face. He looked at Nydia like she was crazy.
“Sorry!” Nydia said, wincing at his grimace of pain.
“It’s okay. Just get me out of here before you do anymore damage,” Aiden said tiredly, leaning back into the seat as if pained.
“I’ll be right back,” she said.
Nerves jangling like she’d drunk too much coffee, Nydia rushed out of her car and into her house. The tiled foyer opened into a small living room with a long couch and two chairs. The first thing she did was grab a new shirt from her bedroom so she didn’t look like a maniac outside. Clothed, she went back into the living room and snagged the blanket she always kept tucked into one of the recliners and dashed back outside to get Aiden.<
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Even with the late hour and lack of traffic, she still had to worry about nosy neighbors poking their heads out and catching sight of her dragging a naked man into her house. Plus, he still had blood streaming down his chest and mud all over his body.
They might think she’d taken pity on a homeless man, but it was better not to give them anything to wag their tongues about.
She preferred keeping her business her own.
Running around to the passenger side, she opened the door and draped the blanket over his naked body, striving to keep her eyes averted from the exquisite muscles that carved a rippled swath down his belly. Over that muscled expanse, a dark line of hair arrowed from his chest straight down to the biggest set of junk she’d ever clapped eyes on.
Savage Instinct Page 3
