Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Garrett
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty-one
Daire
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Curran
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
“One of the best erotic romance writers writing today!”
—Ecataromance
Praise for Running Wild
“The best anthology I have ever read! Sarah McCarty did an excellent job weaving her three passionate tales together . . . Her captivating characters, scorching love scenes and dramatic plot twists kept me on the edge . . . I could not put it down.”
—Night Owl Romance
“Sarah McCarty delivers a well-written story with sizzling romance . . . [she] has taken paranormal romance to a whole new level.”—Romance Junkies
“You are going to love this trio of stories . . . Sarah McCarty definitely takes you on a wild ride . . . [with] fast-paced story lines and super-hot sex scenes.”—Lucrezia Magazine
“This one is a scorcher . . . If you’re looking for a romance to raise the temperatures, then look no further than McCarty’s Running Wild!”—Romance Reader at Heart
“Provide[s] werewolf romance fans with a strong, heated collection. Fans will be Running Wild.”—Midwest Book Review
More praise for the novels of Sarah McCarty
“[A] pulse-pounding paranormal.”
—The Road to Romance
“Masterfully written.”
—The Romance Readers Connection
“Powerfully erotic, emotional and thought provoking.”
—Ecataromance
“Has the WOW factor . . . characters that jump off the pages!”
—Just Erotic Romance Reviews
“Toe curling.”
—Fallen Angel Reviews (recommended read)
“Ms. McCarty is a genius!”
—Romance Junkies
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This book is an original publication of The Berkley Publishing Group.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
Copyright © 2009 by Sarah McCarty.
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PRINTING HISTORY
Heat trade paperback edition / December 2009
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
McCarty, Sarah.
Wild instinct / Sarah McCarty.—Heat trade pbk. ed.
p. cm.
eISBN : 978-1-101-15165-5
1. Werewolves—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3613.C3568W55 2009
813’.6—dc22 2009029051
http://us.penguingroup.com
Garrett
One
THEY were coming.
Sarah Anne stared down the hillside, her night vision casting the trees and rocks to a high contrast of black and white touched with glimmers of silver. Through the shifting mist, she watched bits of deeper darkness weave through the natural shadows. Werewolves. Biting her lip, she glanced back over her shoulder into the cave at the women and children there. She’d tried so hard to keep them safe, but there was nowhere left to run. They would have to fight.
She glanced up and then down. At least the rugged cliff surrounding their small hiding place would give them some advantage. Josiah, her five-year-old son, came up beside her, his sister inevitably trailing along. He looked down. It was too much to hope that he wouldn’t see what she saw. His small canines flashed white in the night as he snarled. Though he was half human, he was wolf to the core in all aspects, his senses so acute already that she was beginning to wonder if he carried a deeper heritage—that of Protector. If he were pack, he would be assessed, protected, trained. But he wasn’t, through her choice. Sarah Anne dropped her hand to his small head, desperation pulsing through her like a living nightmare. She had to keep him safe.
Her three-year-old daughter, Megan, as human as her father—tiny, delicate, ever so vulnerable—clung to her brother’s hand and gave name to the emotion scenting the interior of the cave. “Mommy, I scared.”
So was she. “There’s no need to be afraid. We’ve prepared.”
Three women, armed with a few guns, ammo and a mother’s drive to protect, were going to hold off ten werewolf soldiers. They didn’t have a prayer. Teri and Rachel left the backpacks they were organizing and came up. The soft scuff of their feet over the dirt floor scraped across her nerves in an accusation. From Rachel, a full-blooded werewolf, Sarah Anne could detect no emotion, but from Teri, there were all sorts of betraying scents. Fear, anger, determination.
“Are they the McGowans?” Teri asked from behind her.
“No.” When she’d sent the letter two years ago, after her husband died, she hadn’t been expecting much. Mixed bloods were never welcome. When an invitation had come from the newly formed Pack Haven three months ago, just after Teri’s attack, she’d been astounded. She’d even taken it as a sign that things were changing, staying put as ordered by the Alpha, Wyatt Carmichael, until the Pack Protectors—Donovan and Kelon
McGowan—arrived to escort them home. Home. She set her teeth. She should have known better than to have pinned her hopes on that word. The promise of help from the Haven pack had just been another shimmer of illusion. And while she’d sat waiting, the rogues had come calling again. She’d only had time to dash off a desperate e-mail to Haven before retreating to the caves. She’d hoped the McGowans would arrive yesterday. She’d been praying they’d come this morning. Now she was sure she was on her own, the way she’d always been since the day it became evident that her tainted genetics had left a mark. She’d come to the human world to avoid persecution. It had found her anyway. And now it endangered her children. Because she’d put her faith in pack.
Teri spun on her booted heel. “I’ll get the guns.”
Sarah Anne exchanged a glance with Rachel. As a human, Teri had no idea what they faced. The guns would delay, but not prevent, the inevitable.
Rachel watched Teri retreat, her near-golden eyes narrowing with worry. “We should probably tell her.”
Sarah Anne shrugged and moved Meg back from the cave entrance. “She already thinks werewolves are monsters. No sense proving it and removing all doubt. Not when we have to fight.”
They couldn’t afford for Teri to break down now. She’d been incredibly strong for the past couple months, but it was easy to scent the tension stretching her nerves thin.
“She wouldn’t be here at all except for her pregnancy.”
“She wouldn’t be pregnant at all except for them.” With a wave of her hand, Sarah Anne encompassed the encroaching scum. She wouldn’t call them soldiers. Wolf soldiers didn’t rape. Wolf soldiers had honor. Integrity. They protected women. They didn’t abuse them.
Behind them a shotgun cocked. Sarah Anne spun, right along with Rachel.
“I told you before, what happened isn’t your fault.” Teri stood, feet apart, shotgun in one hand and a rifle in the other, her tousled, short black hair and slanted green eyes giving her the look of a pixie gone bad. Dark red rows of newly healed scars peeked out from beneath her black mock turtleneck, completing the look. Shame flooded Sarah Anne anew as she stared at the furrows. Right behind that came guilt. All she’d done by running was to endanger those she loved.
“They wouldn’t have found you if not for me.”
Teri handed the shotgun to Sarah Anne. “That’s ridiculous.”
Being human, there was no way Teri could understand the sense of unity and responsibility that was part of werewolf culture. What one member of the pack did, good or bad, reflected on them all. And the wrongs committed against Teri had been perpetrated by members of Sarah Anne’s former pack.
“I still feel guilty.”
“Well, don’t. I wouldn’t trade our friendship for the world.”
The lie was in her scent. If Teri could, she’d go back in time and erase the friendship that had exposed her to the wolves who’d breathed her scent, recognized her as a potential breeder and raped her, responding to instinct rather than logic. Half-blood children had no worth. Sarah Anne couldn’t blame her any more than she could bring herself to dispute Teri’s claim. The woman had just regained her emotional feet. And strangely, the pregnancy had provided the vehicle.
“So what’s our plan?” Rachel asked, calm as always, her de meanor as restrained as the bun that always held back her long black hair. No matter what, Rachel was always serene.
“Same as before. Shoot as many as we can.”
Teri smiled a cold smile. “That works for me.”
Sarah Anne cast a glance at Teri. If she was terrified, she was hiding it well. “Remember, shoot for the organs and the brain. Do as much damage as possible on each individual. Wolves don’t go down easily.”
Only a catastrophic series of injuries could bypass a werewolf’s ability to heal.
Teri smiled again. “I’m good with that.”
The scars were the tip of the iceberg when it came to the injuries Teri had sustained. Sarah Anne could easily believe she was fine with anything that had to do with taking out a male wolf. She carefully checked the trail. The shadows glided closer. Still only ten, as far as she could tell. It might as well be one hundred.
“Rachel.”
“I know.”
She needed to say it anyway. “Don’t let them get my son.”
Rachel placed her hand on Sarah Anne’s arm. Her scent, her energy, all radiated comfort. Sarah Anne didn’t know how Rachel held on to hope. “Things aren’t going to be that bad.”
They already were. “Take Josiah, shift, go out the side entrance and then run like hell.”
Rachel grabbed Josiah’s hand. “Maybe I can carry—”
Sarah Anne shook her head. “We already discussed it. You can’t carry Meg, and she can’t change.” Like her mother. “She’ll never be able to keep up.”
Meg, hearing her name, sensing the tension, puckered up and stamped her foot. “I want ’Siah!”
Every instinct in Sarah Anne echoed Meg’s cry. Sarah Anne pulled Meg against her thigh, rubbing her hands up and down her tiny ribs. How was she supposed to make this choice? She stared at the figures getting closer, the wind carrying the taint of their scent, and she knew. She just did. “Josiah’s going with Aunt Rachel.”
“No.”
She met Josiah’s stare. Someday he’d be an Alpha, maybe a Protector, but right now he was a baby, and staring down his mother was beyond his capacity. But not by much. “You go with Rachel, Josiah. You do everything she tells you and you make your father proud.”
His little feet were planted shoulder-width apart. A snarl rumbled in his chest as his nostrils flared, scenting the danger riding the wind. “I’m not leaving you.”
Sarah Anne blinked at the flash of the man he’d someday be. His father would have been so proud. Smoothing her hand over the rich chocolate color of his hair, she blinked again, this time in an effort to hold back the tears. “You have to go. Rachel needs protection, too, and I don’t have anyone else to send with her.”
His chin set. “She can stay here.”
He also had her stubbornness. “No, she can’t. She has to take an important message to Pack Haven.”
“I do need you, Josiah,” Rachel interjected.
His chin trembled, and he suddenly became a little boy again. Her little boy, who was trying so hard not to be scared as she asked the impossible of him. Meg hugged her leg and looked up, hazel eyes big with the belief that her mother could work miracles. “Please, Mommy?”
Sarah Anne heard the faint swish of brush against clothing as the soldiers approached. They were out of time. She grabbed Josiah and drew him in, bending to hold her son and daughter close in her arms one last time—her life, her future—breathing in their familiar scents, playing over in her mind every good memory she could find, bonding them together in that moment, just in case there wasn’t another. “Remember who you are, Josiah,” she whispered into his hair. He nodded, the tear he wouldn’t let her see seeping through the thin cotton of her shirt.
“I’m a Protector.”
He was so convinced of that. “And a Stone. Don’t ever forget that, or think it’s not a valuable part of you.”
Another nod.
“We have to leave now, Sarah Anne,” Rachel interjected quietly.
With one last squeeze, Sarah Anne let Josiah go. “Be careful.”
Rachel put her hands protectively on Josiah’s shoulder, a small, strained smile on her face. “I’m the careful one, remember?”
Sarah Anne remembered that, along with many other things.
Teri looked out the entrance. “It’s now or never, guys.”
A bolt of pure fear stabbed through Sarah Anne. Josiah’s escape out the side entrance had to be perfectly timed so he wouldn’t be seen or scented, and even with perfect timing the plan had only a scant chance of success. The weight of impossibility strained Sarah Anne’s voice as she lifted her daughter up. “Run very fast, Josiah.”
He nodded, looking like a little boy again as
he asked, “And you’ll meet us at the south ridge, come morning?”
Nothing short of death would keep her away. “That’s the plan.”
It was enough for him. She caught Rachel’s hand as she turned away, tugging her around. She had to say it. “Thank you.”
The words were so paltry compared to the emotion backing them. If they got out of this alive, Rachel could ask anything of Sarah Anne, anything at all, and Sarah Anne would grant it.
Rachel inclined her head. “Anything for the Alpha female.”
“I’m not pack.” Even after eight years, it still hurt to say that. “Let alone Alpha.”
Rachel sighed as if the truth were a deception. Teri looked at them both and shook her head. “If pack means family, then I think we’re it.” She hefted the rifle. “Now, if nobody objects, I’ve got some damage to do.”
GUNFIRE echoed through the canyon.
“You can’t fault them for courage,” Garrett murmured as a woman and a boy slipped out the side entrance of the cave, shifted and then started to run perpendicular to the hillside, blending into the night, the female shielding the cub. The gunfire from the interior picked up in a rapid spate, no doubt in hope of keeping the main group distracted.
Beside him, Cur snarled as two bigger shadows slid into the night behind the woman and child. “Can’t fault the woman and kid for a damn thing, but I’ve got a hell of a bone to pick with those SOBs hunting them.” He touched his hand to the transceiver attached to his ear.
“Daire, you’ve got two friendlies in fur heading your way.”
Daire’s distinctive, gravelly voice rumbled over the connection that linked all five Protectors on this mission. “I’ve got them.”
Wild Instinct Page 1
