“It’s empty,” he snarled.
Kiara stuck her head in. She wasn’t sure what she expected to see—books pulled off the shelves, his computer smashed—but with the exception of the desk chair spilled onto its side, nothing appeared to have been disturbed. That, somehow, made her more uneasy.
“Keep walking. Please.” Joel from the elevator had followed them and pointed to the large conference room at the end of the hallway.
The silhouettes of four standing people were evident through the large glass window, with a fifth who was seated in a chair at the table. She could tell from his posture that it was Nathan, and the fury that she’d managed to keep in check all evening bloomed hot in her chest.
Cole started down the hallway. Kiara should have called for him to wait, but decided against it. He was smart enough not to do anything stupid. Probably.
A man opened the door as they neared. He held an assault rifle casually in one hand. Cole ignored him and walked past, Jamie and then Ryn followed, and Kiara brought up the rear.
Joel followed, closed the door behind them, and stood in front of it.
There was an angry red bruise on Nathan’s cheek, and his broken glasses sat on the table in front of him. He squinted, and Kiara knew his vision was bad enough without his glasses that he had trouble seeing who they were.
Cole growled, low and vicious, and Nathan rolled his eyes. “Seriously? When someone tells you it’s a trap you’re not supposed to walk into it.”
Another man stood behind Nathan and rapped him across the back of his head. “You warned them?”
Nathan winced and rubbed at the spot.
“Professor Ackbar, really, Sandeep? Mr. Roberts wasn’t exactly subtle.” The Huntress stepped forward. Her hand rested casually on a Taser as she watched Cole, whose eyes were rapidly draining of color.
“No one touches him again.”
“Oh, this?” Gingerly, Nathan touched his cheek. “It’s nothing. A scratch. You should see the other guy.”
The Huntress looked down at Nathan and arched a perfectly shaped eyebrow. He swallowed, snapped his mouth shut, and sank into his chair.
“What’s your play here?” Kiara asked the Huntress. “I don’t think you’ll really hurt Nathan—not when your whole mandate is to protect humans.”
“Sacrifices can be made if necessary.” Her hand fell onto Nathan’s shoulder and tightened until he flinched. “But I don’t think we’ll need to go that far. I know GNAAW has told you to hand the lone one over. If you disobey them, it won’t just be us who will hunt you down.”
“There won’t be any more need for hunting.” Kiara stepped back until she stood side by side with Ryn. She clapped her hand to the side of Ryn’s neck. “She’s pack now.” Ryn’s pulse beat steadily under her palm; something electric sparked between their skins.
“You can’t do that,” Sandeep spoke up. “You’re not the Alpha, you can’t add members to your pack. We’ve done our research.”
“Things have changed.” Cole moved to Kiara’s side. She lifted her hand from Ryn’s neck and laid it on his. Jamie stepped up next, neck bared, and allowed Kiara to do the same to hers.
“We’re pack now. The four of us. Ryn isn’t lone, and you cannot have her.” Kiara dropped her hand from Jamie’s neck, and when she turned back to the Huntress she knew her eyes had gone stormy gray. “Now, give us Nathan.”
The Huntress’s eyes flicked between them; clearly she was no longer certain. “GNAAW doesn’t know about this.”
“GNAAW will. You can’t touch us now.”
A ghost of a smile flitted across the Huntress’s face. “Your faith in that organization is… endearing.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Ryn spoke up before Kiara could stop her.
The Huntress shrugged gracefully. “They’re the ones who brought you to our attention. They sent us your location, your details. A lycan named Davis said they’d been having trouble here with the lone ones lately, that they needed someone to clean up before there was an incident like the one last year.
“GNAAW sent you to the club?”
“Davis has been feeding us details on the lone ones for months. He sent us there and then to your friend Mr. Roberts’s apartment. He was adamant we take care of your new packmate for him.” The Huntress shrugged and stepped away from Nathan.
“I see.” Kiara wasn’t sure what to do with that information. She had no idea how to process the knowledge that the GNAAW rep had directed the Huntsmen right to them.
It didn’t matter, not right now. Right now she needed to get her pack out of here, and that included Nathan. “Get up,” she ordered him. “We’re leaving.”
Nathan eased out of the chair with one eye on the man standing behind him as though he expected to be shoved back into it. When Sandeep didn’t move, Nathan scooped up his glasses and edged around the table. Jamie grabbed his hand and pulled him into the middle of the pack. Cole stepped directly in front of Nathan, hiding him as much as he could, though Nathan was nearly a head taller.
“We’re done here then?” Kiara wanted confirmation from the woman that this was over.
“For now,” the Huntress agreed. “Keep your pack under control and you won’t see us again. But if you don’t…”
“Well, hang on now.” Joel spoke up from the back. “I don’t see how this changes much. I mean, y’all can’t just magic a pack into existence, can you? That doesn’t seem very—” He sucked his teeth. “—sporting.”
“Joel.” The edge to the Huntress’s voice was sharp.
“Now, ma’am, I think we need to consider this further. I mean, is this new pack GNAAW registered? Are they complyin’ with all the regulations? Cause from where I’m standing,”—between them and the door—“it seems like, instead of a brand new pack, we’ve just found ourselves three additional targets. Me ’n some of the boys have been talking, and we think maybe it’s time our understanding with GNAAW came to an end. These critters are dangerous, and where I come from, you don’t reason with something that might eat you. You just make sure you kill it first.” He pointed his gun at the center of Kiara’s chest.
Chapter Twenty-Two |
Kiara let out a slow, even breath. If the bullets in Joel’s gun were silver—and she had no doubt that they were—he could inflict serious damage, maybe death.
Nathan laughed. “Okay, for starters, you’re in a room with four fully grown werewolves. With one exit. That you’re standing in front of. Do you really think there’s any chance of you doing this and leaving here alive?” He snorted. “Yeah, you’d probably get one good shot off. But then you’ve got three pissed-off, fully grown werewolves who are avenging their Alpha. You think that ends well? You think that ends with you on top?” He shook his head and pushed past Cole to stand side by side with Kiara. “And let’s imagine that it does—how are you going to explain a shootout in the library? And a dead librarian?”
Kiara caught Cole’s flinch out of the corner of her eye.
“We have resources.” Joel’s mouth twitched with irritation. “We’d clean it up.”
“I have resources,” the Huntress said. “Stand down, Joel.”
“No.” His eyes darted past her, seeking backup from the two other Huntsmen. Sandeep shook his head, and the third man remained silent. “No,” Joel insisted. “We can’t make deals with ‘em. They aren’t human. They’re rabid and they need to be put down.”
“You know our mandate, Joel. We seek a cure, not a kill.”
“We’re not diseased,” Ryn snarled. “We don’t need—”
“Not the time,” Kiara commanded.
Jamie placed her hand on Ryn’s shoulder to keep her in place. Ryn would hate being ordered to shut up, but Kiara had to demonstrate that she would be obeyed by her new pack and especially by Ryn.
“Stand down,” the Huntress repeated.
<
br /> “Fuck it.” Joel’s pulse spiked, and Kiara sprang forward. He pulled the trigger as she knocked his arm up. The bullet plowed into the ceiling, and Kiara and Joel crashed to the floor. He struggled under her, but his size was no match for her inhuman strength. She grabbed his arm that held the gun and dug in her fingers until she could feel the blood under her nails. He swung a fist at her, and she didn’t so much as rock when it connected with her cheek.
Kiara’s pack had formed a solid line between the Huntsmen and Kiara. With a hand against his chest, Cole pinned Nathan to the far wall out of the line of fire as Nathan squawked in indignation. Cole ignored him and growled low and steady at the Huntsmen.
“Drop the gun or I tear off your hand.” Kiara tightened her grip on Joel, and he paled.
“I’ll let her do it, Joel.” The Huntress shook her head at her two other men, who’d trained their weapons on the other werewolves. Slowly, they lowered their guns.
Joel swore, but dropped the gun.
“Jamie.”
Kiara’s cousin obeyed immediately. She picked up the gun by the butt and set it on the boardroom table.
“I’m going to get up, and we are going to leave. And you are going to stay down.” Kiara stared at the man on the ground before her. He met her stormy gray eyes with a hard stare of his own, but gave a short jerk of his head in response.
Carefully, Kiara rose. No one else moved.
“Are we done here?” she asked the Huntress for the second time. The woman nodded; her lips were thinned into a hard line that promised Joel’s day wasn’t going to improve.
“Good. Let’s go.”
She turned, went out the door, and took an immediate left to the staircase, ignoring the elevator farther down the hall.
Nathan was close on her heels, Ryn behind him, and Jamie behind her with Cole at their backs. She didn’t speak as they clattered down the stairs; her ears were pricked for sounds of the Huntsmen following them. When Nathan tried to say something, Jamie hushed him, and his irritated silence accompanied them the rest of the way down.
In the lobby of the library, Nathan shoved to the front. He pulled the ID card from the clip on his jeans and swiped the keypad to unlock the front door.
“Do I want to know how you got in here?” he asked.
“No,” Kiara responded.
Tires screeched as a car share rounded the corner and skidded to a stop in front of them. Deanna shut down the car and flung herself out of it.
“Ohmygod.” She dropped an overflowing purple backpack to the ground and threw herself at Nathan, who staggered under her weight. “Oh, man. Oh, boy. Oh, wow! I got here as soon as I could.” She pressed her face into the side of his neck as he held her close. “I’m so glad you’re okay.” She finally pulled herself off of him. “I am so glad that the rest of you aren’t naked.” She nudged the backpack with her toes, and it fell over, spilling out a jumble of clothes. “I was really worried you’d all be naked.”
“That’s what you were worried about?” Nathan asked.
“Well, like, and that you’d be murdered by some psycho werewolf hunters but, yeah, I was worried about the naked part.” Deanna bit her lip and somehow managed to look adorably sheepish. “I kind of knew everyone would save you, though. They’re good at that.” She met Kiara’s eyes and smiled. “And this is, like, Cole’s second time saving your ass, so—”
“So let’s not make it a third,” Kiara said pointedly.
“Right! Everyone in.” Deanna gestured at the car.
“Hang on—” Jamie rubbed a hand over the back of her neck. “Babe… do you have any cash? We, uh, kinda owe the bookstore. And I have to pick up some security tapes.”
Deanna looked as though she was about to ask, but just shook her head. She reached into her purse, took out her wallet, and pulled out a handful of bills. “I don’t know if this is enough, but—”
“It’ll do,” Kiara decided. “Jamie, you’ll destroy the tapes and meet us at your place?”
Jamie nodded. She planted a quick kiss on Deanna’s lips, then jogged off toward the bookstore.
Cole had already opened the car’s rear door and ushered in Nathan, who grumbled, “I said ‘shotgun.’”
Deanna picked up her backpack and tossed it into the footwell of the passenger seat as she dropped into the driver’s. Ryn smiled sweetly at Kiara. “You’re smaller,” she said.
“I’m the Alpha,” Kiara countered.
“The small Alpha.”
A muscle in Kiara’s jaw twitched, but she didn’t want to give the Huntsmen any more time to change their minds about letting Ryn go, or for Joel to convince them they were all a threat. Without a word, she crawled into the backseat and forced Cole to move into the middle. He didn’t seem to mind, and had an arm around Nathan before Kiara found her seatbelt.
***
“All right, let me get this straight.” Deanna paced the carpeted floor of her and Jamie’s living room. “The GNAAW rep was the one who tipped the Huntsmen off in the first place? And not just about Ryn at the club, or that she existed, but that we were at Nathan’s? How did he even know about that?”
Kiara shrugged, her mouth full of bagel. She hadn’t eaten since breakfast that morning, and all Deanna and Jamie had in the fridge that was easy to make was bagels and cream cheese. This was Kiara’s fourth bagel, and she was strongly considering a fifth.
“You’ve all got phones, right?” Nathan sprawled across the carpet, one hand flung over his relatively useless eyes and Arthur’s head propped lovingly on his stomach. “Maybe they’re tracking your phones.”
“That’s like some NSA shit,” Ryn remarked. “Is that even legal?”
Deanna stopped her pacing and stared incredulously at Ryn. “Are werewolves?”
“Good point,” Ryn allowed.
“Speaking of.” Nathan raised himself up on his elbows. “How are you gonna register your new pack? Is there a form you have to fill out?”
“New pack?” Deanna dropped to sit beside Kiara on the couch. “What does he mean, new pack?”
“Well.” Cole finished spreading cream cheese on a bagel half. “We kind of made a new one. Or Kiara did. And the rest of us joined.” He gestured with the bagel to encompass Kiara and Ryn as well as himself.
“You’re, ah,” Kiara paused, not sure how to say it. “You’re kind of still part of our dad’s pack.”
“I’m what?” Deanna squeaked. “I’m not part of a pack!”
Cole winced. “Kind of, you are. We weren’t—I mean—it’s not like—it’s a bit different when you’re a human.”
“Like no one actually tells you?”
Kiara nodded. “I mean, we thought Jamie…”
“Jamie what?” Jamie unlocked the front door and stepped through. She was wearing her own clothes and carried a small bag that she tossed to Cole. Evidently she’d picked up their clothes from where they’d stashed them before shifting.
“Apparently,” Deanna said, ice in her voice, “I’m part of a werewolf pack.”
“Oh. Um. Yes.”
Deanna glowered.
“It didn’t seem like a big deal?” Jamie offered. She shot Kiara a murderous glance. “It’s not really a thing, and only some people ascribe significance to it. But, um, yeah. My uncle kind of… added you.”
“Your uncle added me to your pack, and you didn’t bother to tell me?” Deanna’s voice rose, as did her eyebrows.
Jamie winced. “It was kind of presumptuous on his part. I mean, we weren’t even living together. And I wasn’t going to say anything because it wasn’t really a big deal.”
“Except now we’re a part of different packs?!”
“Uhhh… yes. That’s also new.” Jamie sent a beseeching glance to Kiara.
“For the love of…” Kiara rolled her eyes. “Do you want to join my pack?”
“Obviously.”
“Okay, come here.” She beckoned Deanna over and licked the cream cheese off her fingers before slapping her hand to the side of Deanna’s neck. Deanna blinked and looked at Kiara expectantly.
“What?” Kiara said, withdrawing her hand. “That’s it. It’s not like a naked, howl at the moon, blood-sisters ritual.”
Deanna looked disappointed. “That’s uninspired.”
“You’re uninspired,” Kiara shot back, offended.
“Well, you’re the loser who just added an uninspired person to your
pack, so that means you’re double—”
“How about we get GNAAW on the phone,” Cole interrupted.
“Why would we do that?” Ryn asked. “From literally every interaction we’ve had with them this week, I think it’s pretty clear that they can’t be trusted.”
Nathan sat up, dislodging Arthur. “We’ve—well, you’ve—only talked to that Davis guy, right? It’s just been him?”
Kiara nodded.
“Maybe it’s not GNAAW as a whole, then. Maybe just that guy.” He shrugged. “Let’s go over his head.”
Kiara thought about it as she washed down her bagel with a glass of milk. “All right,” she decided.
“You can use my phone, Alpha,” Deanna said with a wink and tossed it to Kiara.
Chapter Twenty-Three |
“This is ridiculous,” Kiara groused. “What kind of emergency line has someone on hold for,” she checked the clock on the oven, “twenty-three minutes?”
“Apparently that happens sometimes with 911. I bet the werewolf emergency line has a smaller staff, so it’s really not that surprising.”
“Shut up, Nathan.” Kiara glanced into the living room to make sure that the rest of the pack and Nathan, who couldn’t see the screen but seemed content to lie with his head in Cole’s lap and listen, were thoroughly engrossed in Captain America: Civil War. She got up from the kitchen table. She silently eased open the freezer and took the pack of cigarettes she’d stashed there the last time she’d dog sat.
Huntsmen (The Better to Kiss You With Book 2) Page 16
