by Debra Dunbar
Aware that I could hardly interrogate this man as a gorilla/lizard/wolf/shark, I sent my beast back into my skin and assumed a human form, keeping the talons and some of the shark-teeth. I also kept the lizard eyes because I knew they were probably fucking terrifying.
“Where are my wolves?” My voice was like gravel. “Where is my girl and the baby?”
“Screw you,” the man panted.
I extended a serpent tongue to lick his cheek and hissed, showing him those lovely shark teeth, knowing he’d seen me bite through his friend.
He blanched, swallowing hard. “Screw. You.”
There was an easy way to do this, and I no longer cared whether Jake scolded me not. Mir wasn’t here, that much I knew, and the longer I stood here bantering with this guy, the more time whoever took her had to get away.
I tore into the man’s mind, hacking my way through the stupid inane memories of his sad childhood and whiny-ass emotions concerning some woman he couldn’t get to go out with him. Within seconds, I was where I wanted to be, absorbing his experiences with the hunters, witnessing his thrill at the attack on the compound, seeing him arrive back at the cabin with Mir and the baby and his friends. Then I saw the rest. I saw what had happened in the hour and a half it had taken for us to arrive. I felt sick at all the perverted thoughts and images that filled my head. Nausea turned to anger as I came to an image that had caused this man much joy. Mir, naked, crying as the humans laughed and did unspeakable things to her, one off to the side with a knife to the baby’s throat.
It was my fault. Why had it taken us so long to arrive? Why couldn’t I teleport? Why couldn’t I have gotten to Mir before they’d activated their transportation device? Why couldn’t it have been me, instead of my young, innocent friend?
I snarled, guilt shifting to fury. Death was too good for this man. Death was too easy for him. My only regret was that the others were already corpses on the floor.
“You all are monsters. None of you deserve to live,” He gasped his last bit of defiance and tried to spit in my face, the liquid dribbling down his chin instead.
“They’re not the monsters, I am.” I smiled at him and stroked the side of his face. I knew Jake would be unhappy with me, but my beast needed some quality time with this man. Perhaps a few decades and I’d let him go. Maybe.
“I’m the real monster in this room,” I told him. “And that girl you hurt? The pain you caused her is nothing compared to what I’m going to do to you.”
He screamed, his voice growing hoarse as I ripped him slowly from his body, tucking him safely away in that spot within me that I’d created just for him. Then I tossed his empty body onto the floor and went outside.
Chapter 26
“They escaped,” I told Jake as I snatched my clothes from the Jeep and yanked them on, stuffing my phone in my back pocket. “Mir took the baby and ran for it.”
The news didn’t seem to cheer him any. “There’s blood here—Mir’s blood.”
I thought of the memories of the man I’d just killed and Owned. Of course she’d bled after what they’d done to her—all seven of them.
“I’ll track her. I can find her.” Even without the blood, I’d find her.
“It’s a lot of blood,” Jake warned.
She was a shifter. The physical wounds were no doubt healed within minutes. It was the emotional ones I was worried about.
I picked up her scent, wincing at the volume of blood at the edge of the forest. Every quarter mile or so there was more blood, making me realize how quickly Mir must have been moving.
Then suddenly, after five miles of twisting, off-trail path, Mir and the baby’s scent just vanished. I sneezed a few times and pinched my nose, then inhaled again. “Do you pick it up anywhere?” I asked Jake.
He knelt down and inhaled. “She’s good at this. I don’t like to bring too much attention to it, but her skills in the weekly games are some of the best in the pack. She doubles back, takes to the trees, covers her tracks, even heads down the middle of the darned river swimming under water to hide her scent.”
Smart girl, especially when she didn’t know what sort of tracking skills or magic these hunters might have. I let Jake crawl around on the ground and jumped, scaling the nearest tree. Then I closed my eyes and inhaled, sorting through all the complex scents. There. So faint that I could barely pick it up. I wasn’t sure how Mir had done it, but she’d managed to climb a tree with a baby in her arms, and jump from limb to limb. Following her path and admiring her freakish monkey abilities, I climbed down near a stream.
Jake had followed me from the ground and was now frowning at a spot by the stream. He stirred the leaves with his foot and the smell of blood wafted up to me—Mir’s blood.
How was she still bleeding? How badly had those men hurt her?
“She got in the water,” Jake told me. “But I don’t know which way she went. We’ll need to split up, then call each other when we pick up the scent again.”
We did the same, one of us heading upstream while the other headed down. Two miles I waded, crossing back and forth between the different banks just to make sure I didn’t miss her exit point.
I did almost miss it. If it hadn’t been for the watered-down puddle of blood on a rock, I would have kept going. Instead, I texted Jake, frustrated that there didn’t seem to be cell service where I was, then followed her trail, only to have it vanish again in another mile. I climbed trees and scoured the area, starting to panic when I couldn’t find a trace of her anywhere.
Then I saw it—a giant deadfall where a rockslide had taken out an entire grove of trees and piled them all up in a jumble of decaying wood and leaves. I approached it slowly, then called out for her.
“Tupper? Oh, Tupper.” I heard her sob, then the soft cry of a baby. “I’m in here, but I don’t think I can get out without bringing the whole thing down on Emma’s and my heads.”
She crawled out, naked, the baby securely tied around her with a pair of jeans. Tears streaked through the dirt on her face, her eyes puffy and her nose red.
And she was covered in dried blood and bruises. Not just dried either. I smelled fresh blood on her and the baby, and choked back a sob of my own.
Mir fell into me, the baby sandwiched carefully between us as we hugged.
“They were going to sell us, Tupper,” she said in between tears. “They yanked my clothes off, then held a knife at Emma’s throat and told me to do what they said. Then they took turns with me and made me do…things. And they put things in me and laughed and it hurt and I wanted to kill them all, but I was afraid they’d hurt Emma. They could do that stuff to me, as long as they didn’t hurt Emma.”
“They died too quickly,” I told her, smoothing a hand over her hair. Well, except for that one I’d kept. He was going to pay for every moment of Mir’s pain. He would pay for the sins of every last one of those hunters.
“When they were done and thought I was broken, they put Emma down. That’s when I made my move. I hit one of them as hard as I could, then grabbed Emma and ran. I took my pants, but didn’t have time to put them on. I ran so fast, Tupper. I tried. I tried.”
“You did great,” I told her soothingly. “You saved both yourself and the baby. You did great.”
“They shot me before I got to the forest,” she choked out. “A few inches to the right and they would have blown Emma’s head off. I turned into a wolf in seconds, but I grabbed Emma and my pants with my teeth and ran so fast. It hurt. It wouldn’t stop bleeding. I knew what it was, but I didn’t want to stop because then they’d get Emma.”
My heart stopped. “They shot you?”
Slowly my hands roamed her naked body, finding the open wound in her shoulder. The bullet had gone all the way through, but it wasn’t healing.
It wasn’t healing. But she wasn’t still a wolf, and she wasn’t dead. I didn’t smell rotted tissue. Was Mir a Nephilim? Did she have something about her that made her immune? She still needed immediate medical attention,
but I didn’t get the feeling she was on the verge of death.
“I had a vial of antidote in my pants pocket.” She laughed and it choked on a sob. “I’d put it there when the alarm for the attack when up. Mom is such a worrywart that it was second nature for me to run to the supply cabinet and grab one. But I gave Emma some of it just in case some of that bullet had nicked her. You should have seen me trying to get it out of the pocket and get the stopper off with my paws and teeth. I did it, though.”
Now it was my turn to cry. I hugged her so close that Emma let out a squawk, then pulled back, planting a kiss on Mir’s forehead. “Jake should be here soon,” I told her.
She looked down at her breasts and flushed. It made me laugh that after all she’d been through, she was worried about her Alpha seeing her like this. Sheesh, it wasn’t like the pack hadn’t seen everyone naked on pretty much a daily basis.
I stepped back and yanked my shirt off, them shimmied out of my pants. “Here. I’ll take Emma. You put these on.”
“But then you’ll be…” her eyes widened as she realized I wasn’t wearing either a bra or underwear, and that given my propensity for waxing, my numerous piercings were in plain view—including the one in my hood. “Is that…?”
“Yeah. And I’m not worried about being naked.” I winked. “Jake’s seen it all before anyway. Trust me, he’s had an up-close-and-personal with all my body parts. Put my stuff on.”
She eyed the top. “I’ll get blood all over this.”
“Bloodstains are cool.” They were, although I wasn’t too pleased about them being from Mir’s blood. We needed to get her to a hospital. I could carry her the eight miles back to where the hunters had been holed up, then take one of their trucks. I’d let Jake carry the baby, because I wasn’t much of a baby kinda gal. I’d never liked children. I’d never wanted children.
But for some reason, I glanced down at Emma, at her little fists waving in the air, her pissed-off expression as she glared up at me. Would my kid look like this? Mine and Jake’s, if we ever decided that was something we wanted?
I envisioned a mocha-skinned baby with fierce blue eyes and wings. Yeah maybe.
Then I looked up at Mir and smiled. She was okay. The baby was okay. Lots of bad guys were dead, and I had my own personal one to torture and play with for as long as I wanted.
Better yet, I had a pack. I had a friend. And I had something I’d never thought I’d ever have—a mate.
Chapter 27
Normally there would have been no bribe or threat in the world that would have made me go to a giant wolf-pack barbeque down in Juneau, Alaska. Normally there would have been no bribe or threat in the world that would have made me go to a wedding/mating ceremony. But here I was.
Jake and I had flown down the day before where I’d actually sat in a church for an excruciatingly long religious service without combusting into flames. Kennedy wore an elegant cream-colored gown, her dark hair in coils on the top of her head, her sexy, sleepy eyes expertly made up. The woman knew how to pick her cosmetics as well as apply them. She was stunning. And Brent was a grinning, love-struck fool holding her hands and stumbling through his lines, all the time shifting from foot to foot trying to hide the fact that he was sporting a woody in the middle of church.
Afterward we’d all gone to their Alpha House, which was big enough to rival Jake’s, and witnessed a repeat ceremony where instead of exchanging rings, they bit each other on the back of the neck with a vow to be as one flesh, one mind, and one soul for as long as they lived. Kennedy’s blunt human teeth barely made a mark on Brent’s skin—a mark that healed within seconds—and Brent was oh-so-careful to leave more of a hickey than a bite on the back of his bride’s neck. Still, the two glowed as they received everyone’s congratulations, the fact that one was human and the other wolf not mattering one damned bit to them or anyone else—even Kennedy’s parents, who looked on both ceremonies with teary-eyed fondness.
The next day was the barbeque with a food-laden drunken debauchery that was more in line with my tastes. Many from both the Swift River Pack as well as the Denali Pack flew down to join in, goofing off in the pool, playing volleyball and drinking games. Brent and Kennedy vanished early on into the upper reaches of the Alpha House, leaving Sabrina in charge. The skinny redhead looked like she was two seconds from abandoning her post to the young, good-looking werewolf who was the third in the pack and dragging her hot bear shifter off into the woods.
It made me want to drag Jake off as well, but he was in business mode, making the social rounds and discussing what sorts of security and procedures should be put in place to ensure something like the attack on our compound never happened again.
Our compound. I glanced over at Jamie, who was doing shots with that Juneau Pack third—Zac, I think his name was. She’d been unexpectedly gracious about my elevation to almost-mate. I was pretty sure we would argue about a lot of things, and that some of those arguments might end up with blood on the floor, but I knew that she respected me.
And I respected her, which was something totally new for me. My pack. They didn’t all trust me, and most of them were still scared of me, but they knew I’d fight for them. They knew that when they had a need, I’d be there, standing at Jake’s side, to keep them safe and defend their way of life. That was another first. I’d never had it in me to lead. I’d never be an Alpha. But I was perfectly happy to be the muscle, the weapon that Jake launched toward our enemies. And with him as a moral compass, and my beast well in hand, I no longer feared that my violent tendencies would harm my own.
That was the trick. I’d needed to consider them mine. Just as I would never have wantonly destroyed a beloved pair of jeans or a favorite piece of jewelry, I wouldn’t harm those my beast saw as her possessions. Yeah, she thought my pack mates were her possessions. And that was a little secret that was best kept to myself. The means didn’t matter as long as the end was what it should be.
And Mir… My heart softened then ached as I looked over at her by the pool. She spent more time alone lately. And sometimes when I looked at her, I could see the darkness of a shadow that seemed to seep deep down into her soul. She tried to be her old self, but both of us knew that was impossible now. We’d gone to get that piercing, even though I’d pleaded with her to wait. It hadn’t helped. Nor had the tattoo she’d insisted on that covered the scar from her gunshot wound.
Covering scars, ornamenting a part of her body that held the most horrifying memories of her life wasn’t going to help her heal, but I didn’t know what would. I wanted so badly to make things right for her. She was planning to return to the human school this fall, but all the joy she’d once had about finishing high school with her friends was gone. Most of her joys about anything were gone. I hoped that tiny spark of innocence inside her hadn’t completely died out, because I don’t think either my beast or I could take it if that happened.
I grabbed a couple of beers from the cooler and walked over to her, biting the caps off with my teeth and spitting them into the pool. Sitting down, I extended one toward Mir.
“I’m sixteen,” she told me, her voice wooden under a forced cheerfulness.
“Do I look like I give a shit? Drink the damned beer.”
There was a ghost of a smile as she raised the bottle to her mouth. “I like Brent’s mate,” she confessed. “I think werewolves should give human men and women more of a chance when thinking about a possible mate, because Kennedy is pretty cool for a non-shifter.”
“You thinking of a boy from school?” I asked, remembering her saying she’d had a few human sexual partners.
Mir shuddered. “No. I don’t think I can ever be with a human again. Not that way. Not after…”
Okay. No humans. I didn’t blame her one bit for that.
“Maybe you should give bears a chance,” I told her, looking over at the very-hot Karl, then at a cluster of male grizzly and Kodiak bears that were clawing a big oak tree. Jake had told me that bears, especially brown b
ears, tended to be reclusive, but Karl had convinced a group of his buddies to join him.
Yeah. I couldn’t imagine Karl having buddies. They were all guys, because female brown bear shifters didn’t like to hang with the males, or even other shifters, preferring to live a human-like existence except for a few times a year when they felt the mating call of their own kind too strong to resist. There were five of Karl’s friends at the party, their insanely oppressive dominance like a weight on everyone’s chest. Three looked to be in their twenties, one old enough to probably be even my grandfather, one of them about Mir’s age.
She looked over and flushed bright red, jerking her eyes back to the pool. I felt her stiffen and pull deep inside herself. “No. I don’t want a bear anymore. Or a wolf or a human. It’s my junior year in school. I need to really study if I’m going to get into a good college, so I don’t think I’m going to date much for a while.”
“And that’s what you want?” I asked her gently. “To go to college?”
She nodded, her hair shielding her expression from me. “I take my SATs next spring and I’ll start touring and applying to colleges next summer. With early admission, I’m hoping to get accepted by next fall.”
I watched her carefully. This was the first that Mir had mentioned college. “Where are you thinking of going?”
She sucked in a ragged breath. “Florida. Georgia. Maybe Louisiana.”
Those were all states, not colleges. Mir was set on a location as far from Alaska as possible within the U.S., not on a particular course of study or a college known for excellence in that area.
