Wild Instinct

by McCarty, Sarah

  “They’ve got company following.”

  Daire’s satisfied growl preceded his, “Good.”

  “Nice to know his reputation isn’t inflated,” Cur grunted over his and Garrett’s private frequency as he angled wide to cut off two soldiers heading up toward the side entrance.

  Garrett supposed it was. He moved to the left, flanking the two soldiers who comprised his targets. The scum didn’t know it yet, but they were surrounded. Whoever had sent the note had been a bit vague on her directions, causing a critical delay. But they were here now and the matter would be settled.

  “I’m just glad he’s on our side.” Daire was a big son of a bitch, even for a were, and he wore the violence of his history in the scars on his body. It took a hell of a lot to scar a were.

  “Thought when he went freelance, he went rogue?”

  “I’m not sure he hasn’t.”

  Garrett wasn’t sure of anything when it came to this new pack, least of all Daire’s reasons for joining this mission. His and Cur’s motivations were easy to see. Neither had chosen to become part of the packless lost, and when the McGowans had approached them in the bar and offered them pack status, they hadn’t hesitated; they had run to accept. The McGowans were legend. Fierce fighters. Old-school Protectors, who put pack and honor first. It would be a privilege for any Protector to be asked to join forces with the McGowans. For outlawed rogues like him and Cur, it was a prize without equal.

  Below, there was movement. Garrett sighted his rifle on one of the soldiers closing in on Kelon McGowan, just in case. He switched his transceiver back to all frequencies. “You’ve got trouble on your tail, Kelon.”

  Through the sight, he could clearly see the smile of anticipation flash across Kelon’s face. “Thanks.”

  The enemy leapt straight for Kelon’s seemingly unprotected back. The rogue might be a soldier, but Kelon was a Protector, and that much faster, that much stronger, that much more pissed. He spun and caught the wolf midleap, evaded the swipe of the soldier’s claws through the simple expedience of breaking his arm, and then, in the split second while the man hung helpless, delivered justice with a graceful, lethal simplicity that Garrett admired. When the signal came, he’d do the same to the two men marked as his. These men hunted women and children of his new pack. They would not survive the night.

  The sense of rightness strengthened as Garrett slid the rifle into the scabbard on his back and moved forward, ears tuned for the call to battle, adrenaline pumping through his body in a familiar rush, enhancing the drive of muscle, the acuteness of his senses. For the first time, he entered battle not to defend himself, or an ideal, but in defense of his pack. Satisfaction and pride blended with cold calculation as he crouched and waited, his marks in sight, one moving up the slide of rock to the cave entrance, the other tucked behind a tree ten feet away, gun aimed at the cave mouth. Garrett smiled, claws extending. The bastard would never get that shot off.

  “Everyone in position?”

  Donovan McGowan’s question whispered through his earpiece.

  Four echoes of “Go” whispered back.

  Garrett looked up toward the entrance. His second target had reached it, fanatically dedicated to his mission, clearly confident he could overpower the women inside. Garrett couldn’t wait much longer.

  Gunfire flashed from the mouth of the cave.

  A second later the McGowan war cry split the night, reverberating across the valley. Garrett leapt for the sniper, the element of surprise making the kill simple. Too simple for the rage pumping through him. Without hesitation, he picked up the battle cry echoing around him and raced up the hill. A hint of a woman’s fear blew down on the wind, catching on some instinctive recognition inside, pulling it forward, centering his rage, his focus. A baby screamed. A woman cried out.

  He sent his promise ahead on another howl.

  Touch them and die.

  Two

  THE enemy was on them.

  Sarah Anne shoved more cartridges into the shotgun as a shadow became the broad-shouldered silhouette of a man. Beside her, Teri fired the rifle. Meg screamed, the terror in the sound an echo of the emotion churning inside Sarah Anne. Damn the bastards. Just one more thing to lay at their feet. Until that moment, Meg hadn’t known real fear.

  The silhouette stuttered, but didn’t stop. Teri fired again. This time the shadow didn’t hesitate. As it came closer, Sarah Anne could make out the face of a wolf in battle heat, face slightly mor phed, claws extended, death in his dark eyes. Teri’s next shot produced only a metallic click.

  Shit.

  “Drop back to Meg and reload,” Sarah Anne ordered, yanking up the shotgun.

  “You can’t fight them off alone.”

  No, she couldn’t, but she couldn’t stand Meg’s screams. “The shotgun does more damage.”

  Another scream from Meg. The note in this one different, whipping her around. “Mommy!”

  A quick glance over her shoulder showed another man in the cave reaching for her baby, claws extended. “Meg!”

  She swung around, aimed the shotgun, knowing even as she did she couldn’t risk the shot. From behind her, down the hill, came a wild cry. Feral, primitive, deadly. A Protector’s challenge. Help was coming. Too late. Teri was already in motion, running for the man, gun held up like a club.

  “Teri, no!”

  The soldier turned, and waited, meeting Sarah Anne’s gaze over Teri’s shoulder. A sense of horror washed over Sarah Anne. She knew him. Colin. The werewolf from an affiliated pack whose suit she’d rejected. Teri didn’t stop, just issued a challenge as feral as any Protector’s.

  “Get away from her!”

  From outside the cave, more battle cries rose, so close, yet too far away to do any good. Stone scraped over dirt behind her. Her breath locked in her throat, she braced for the tear of the other soldier’s claws, diving desperately for her daughter and Teri. She heard the impact of two heavy bodies colliding, followed by snarls. She didn’t care. Nothing going on behind her mattered. All that mattered was her daughter and the woman so fiercely determined to pit her fragile, human body against a full- blooded were-soldier.

  From behind, a man’s voice barked, “Get back.”

  Her soul picked up the silent litany. Get back! Get Back! Get back!

  It was as futile as her last burst of speed. Colin caught the rifle stock and with a cold smile ripped it out of Teri’s hands. Sarah Anne froze, knowing what he was going to do, begging with everything in her for mercy, a fruitless “please” shaping her lips. Please don’t kill my daughter. Please don’t hurt Teri. Please, please, please.

  She watched helplessly as Colin’s claws swept downward toward her daughter.

  “Mommy!” Megan’s shriek etched its horror into her soul.

  Oh God! She wasn’t going to make it in time. “No!”

  “Fuck.” A hand hit her shoulder, tossing her to the side as a man surged past her. “Get back!”

  Time slowed to a crawl as she seemed to float, her gaze locked on the vicious curve of claw as it swiped down toward her screaming daughter. Too late. They were too late. Yet still, she prayed.

  Please, save her!

  She heard a scream, disembodied, that floated with her and then the impossible. Teri, dear God, Teri somehow managed to inject herself into that small space in time, between prayer and contact, covering Meg’s body with her own, taking the devastating impact instead of Meg. Teri’s cry cut off in a strangled gurgle as the deadly claws bit deep into her side. Blood sprayed. Sarah Anne hit the ground, the impact whipping her head back against the stone wall, and for a few precious seconds she saw nothing but stars.

  When her vision cleared, she could see Teri lying in a motionless heap, blood pooling around her still body. She couldn’t see Meg. With another battle cry that reverberated painfully around the cave, the stranger slammed Colin into the wall. Colin retaliated with blows that, had they landed, would have killed the stranger, but the stranger was a Protector. Fas
ter, meaner, deadlier than a soldier could ever dream of being. One of the few genetically superior werewolves born to every generation.

  Legend was that nothing could come between a Protector and his goal. Watching the stranger pulverize Colin as she struggled to her feet, Sarah Anne believed it.

  The room spun as she crawled toward Meg and Teri. Grief dragged behind every flex of muscle. She’d already lost her pack, her husband. She couldn’t lose her friend and her daughter. She couldn’t. There was another disturbance behind her. She didn’t look, didn’t care. She reached Teri’s side. For all the blood beneath her torso, Teri’s shoulder was clean. It gave her a place to put her hand.

  “Teri, get up.”

  The other woman didn’t move, didn’t moan—just lay there. And under Teri’s deadweight lay her daughter. Little Meg who was too fragile to take that much weight without suffocating. Sobbing, praying, cursing in one big jangle of panic, Sarah Anne pulled Teri off, hoping the act wasn’t the fatal last straw. Her stomach heaved at sight of the blood. As soon as Teri rolled to the side, Meg started screaming. Nothing had ever sounded so good. Sarah Anne snatched her up, holding her blood-soaked body to her chest, feeling her tiny arms hug her neck, her screams dying to sobs before she reached back for the woman lying on the ground. “Auntie Teri. Auntie Teri.”

  Sarah Anne tucked Meg’s face against her shoulder, away from the grisly sight, as she moved to the pile of rocks in the corner. At the front of the cave, the fighting continued. She set Meg down in the dirt behind the biggest rocks.

  Holding her gaze, she ordered, “Stay here. Don’t move. No matter what.”

  Meg nodded. Sarah Anne figured she had about five minutes tops, and only that, because her intrepid daughter was terrified. She turned back. Nothing had changed. Teri was still lying there, still bleeding, and she still had to think of something to do. Except she couldn’t. She wasn’t a surgeon and humans didn’t mend from the inside out.

  The three steps back to Teri’s side seemed to take a lifetime. Teri stared up at her with pain-filled eyes, blood trickling out of her mouth. Her best friend in the world and all Sarah Anne could do was kneel bedside her, take her hand and give her a pale shadow of a smile. “Thank you.”

  Teri shook her head. Her hand lifted toward Meg, and then dropped to her stomach.

  “Okay?”

  She meant Megan. “Thanks to you.”

  A flick of her fingers dismissed the gratitude. That was so much like Teri. She always put others first, which was probably what had led her to become a doctor. This time, she’d put Meg first. Because she saw her as family. For all that she was human, Sarah Anne always thought Teri would make good pack.

  Teri’s hand dropped to her stomach, and she asked again. “Okay?”

  She wanted to know if her own baby was okay. Growing up with no one, Teri had come to see her baby as a start of a long-held dream of family. From the moment she’d realized that she was pregnant, despite how the pregnancy had come about, she’d loved her baby. Focusing on that love had given her a road out of hell. And now she was in danger of losing it.

  “She’s fine.” At least Sarah Anne hoped so. She checked on Meg. She was still out of sight behind the rocks.

  Teri looked over Sarah Anne’s shoulder. Her eyes flew wide. Her lips worked. Her hand pressed weekly against Sarah Anne’s arm in a parody of a shove. In the next split second, Sarah Anne felt what Teri saw. A male presence. Snarling, she spun, swinging for the point she thought his groin would be. She was wrong. He was taller than she’d thought, and, looking up from this angle, extremely intimidating.

  Catching her hand, and using her momentum to move her a step aside, the werewolf knelt beside Teri, giving Sarah Anne a gentle smile as he informed her, “Your aim is off.”

  Sarah Anne bared her canines—the only wolflike conversion she could manage—as he released her hand. “I’ll do better next time.”

  “Good.” He turned that smile on Teri as he lifted the bottom edge of her shirt. “Your baby is fine and will be fine as long as you are.”

  When Teri attempted to view the wound, the man blocked her effort with a finger under her chin.

  “Rather than looking, I need you to close your eyes and focus on slowing your heartbeat.”

  Teri shook her head, coughed and squeezed Sarah Anne’s hand, pleading with her eyes.

  “She’s not wolf. She’s human. She can’t—”

  The stranger cut her off with a shake of his head that sent his black hair sliding over his shoulder. “She can do it.”

  It wasn’t so much what he said, but the way he said it. As if there was no doubt that the impossible could be achieved simply because he commanded it. And because she desperately needed to believe in something, Sarah Anne whispered to Teri, “Try. Please.”

  Teri nodded.

  The man reached for the buttons on the bloody shirt. “That’s my girl.”

  The growl surprised Sarah Anne, coming out of instinct rather than plan, hovering in her throat, too soft for human ears to hear, but the man heard the betraying sound.

  “I’m not here to hurt.”

  She snarled again. Teri couldn’t bear to be naked. Not after what had happened to her.

  “Get yourself under control.”

  No one had ever told her that before. It had never been necessary. After one more assessing, sidelong glance, he turned back to Teri. “Close your eyes now and do as I say. You’re safe now.” Touching his finger to the device in his ear he murmured, “Daire, did you find the other two?”

  He had someone hunting Rachel and Josiah? No matter how Sarah Anne strained, she couldn’t hear the answer to the vital question.

  The man looked at her, the near black of his eyes more pronounced as his rage faded. “The boy and the woman—do you have a plan to meet up with them later?”

  She met him glare for glare, fighting the instinct to drop her eyes before him, so clearly an Alpha. “Who wants to know?”

  “Kelon McGowan.”

  Her gaze dropped. Immediately. One did not challenge a Protector. Especially one of the legendary McGowans. “We’ve arranged to meet tomorrow.”

  He spoke into the transceiver again. “We’ll pick them up tomorrow. They should be safe until then, since the threat has been eliminated. I need you back here.”

  She looked at the bodies around the cave. The threat has been eliminated. That was one way to put it.

  There was a pause in which Kelon was clearly listening to something else, and then Kelon smiled again at Teri before saying, “Daire?”

  “What?”

  “Make it fast.”

  “What can he do?” she asked, getting to her feet, realizing she didn’t know where the first man had gone. When she saw him, a snarl rumbled up from her toes. Kelon’s hand on her arm prevented her from lunging at the stranger who had picked up her daughter.

  “I don’t know, but I’m banking he’ll come up with something. He’s an inventive son of a—” He glanced at Meg, who stared at the man holding her, caught between terror and fascination. “He’s inventive.”

  Sarah Anne knew just how her daughter felt as the stranger approached. She couldn’t take her eyes off the man who walked toward her with the lethal grace of a predator. She couldn’t look away from the strength in his broad shoulders, move away from the haunting lure of his scent, step back when he reached out and caught her hand, his eyes glittering with a combination of silver and black.

  Electricity flared from her hand up her arm, flashing down to her center in a wave of heat. As he met her gaze, his smile sent another jolt through her. She had the strangest sense that she knew him, but they’d never met. She would have remembered meeting someone like him. Meg issued a startled little noise as Sarah Anne’s shoulder bumped her side as he drew her in.

  Meg quieted as the man whispered, “Shh . . .” never taking his eyes from Sarah Anne’s as he wrapped his arm around her back, enveloping her body in his strength and her senses in a rich,
luscious scent. Masculine. Pleasing. Addictive. She inhaled. He smiled.

  His face was equally as luscious, with chiseled features harboring an impressive strength. His eyes were neither round nor oval, but somewhere in between. They were incredibly compelling beneath the aggressive slash of his eyebrows, which clearly reflected the force of his personality. This was not a man people trifled with.

  “Let’s get the little one away from here, okay?” He pulled her toward the back, and for all that he was fascinating, or maybe because of it, she still felt that start of fear as he tried to take her and Meg away from Kelon and Teri. It was not unheard of for male weres to kill the offspring of women they were interested in, and the scent of this man’s interest surrounded her as strongly as his arm supported her. The snarl ripped from her toes. “Let me go!”

  “Way to go, Garrett,” another male scoffed as he came up and knelt beside Kelon.

  Garrett. The overwhelming man was named Garrett. In her night vision, the newcomer’s hair was a charcoal color streaked with silver, which meant that in the sunlight it would be brown mixed with blond. Only mixed-bloods had blond in their hair. Pure weres always had dark hair.

  “Shut up, Cur.”

  She gasped at the insult. Garrett’s thumb stroked over the back of her hand. “Relax. That’s his name.”

  That didn’t make it any less a horrible thing to call someone. She barely kept from blurting that out.

  “What’s Garrett done now?” A man who looked remarkably like Kelon asked as he ducked into the cave.

  Cur applied more pressure to Teri’s wounds. Her groan was so weak. “Ticked off our newest pack member, Sarah Anne.”

  Her, he was talking about her. Sarah Anne had forgotten she was no longer packless.

  The man walked over, a smile on his handsome lips. “Want me to teach him a lesson?”

  “You’re welcome to try,” Garrett countered, handing Meg to her while moving her back another step—away from the other men, she noticed.

  This had to be Donovan McGowan. She just stared, hugged Megan, and shook her head, swallowing hard. Wyatt Carmichael hadn’t lied. He had sent them for her. “You really came.”