Wolf's Choice

by Laura Taylor

  But that would all have to be dealt with another time. Aside from the inconvenience of not being able to use her wolf form at the moment, it was a problem that could wait.

  The man was still standing there, hands up in surrender, a look of concern on his face. Her finger tightened on the trigger as she seriously considered shooting him. He’d led a team of soldiers right into their home, killed eight of her friends, injured a dozen more…

  But less than a minute ago, he’d saved her life. He hadn’t tried to shoot her. He had given her his gun.

  And if what he said about wanting to leave the Noturatii was true… Well, it was hard to shoot a man, regardless of his past, if he’d just realised the error of his ways and wanted to make amends.

  But he was Noturatii, and not to be trusted…

  Miller waited as the girl seemed to be weighing him up, assessing the truth of his words. He stood still, knowing there was a very real risk that she would decide to just shoot him. And if she did, he acknowledged to himself, then he would deserve it. Justice, albeit too late to save her friends, for years of violence committed against them. But he’d saved her. So perhaps he wasn’t headed straight for hell, this last, desperate attempt to make amends surely worth something on the cosmic scales.

  “You killed my friends,” she said finally. “But then you saved my life. So I’m going to call that quits.” What? Was she serious? “I’m leaving now,” she added, backing away. “So you stay away from me.”

  “You’re hurt!” Miller insisted. “You just got shot. You need a doctor-”

  “I’m fine,” she said, through gritted teeth. “Fuck, what is wrong with you? You’re supposed to kill us, not care about us!”

  Miller stepped forward, hoping he could reason with her, make her see she needed help… but then he glanced back at the car, another part of this equation nagging at the back of his mind.

  Despite the impulsiveness of the whole thing, this was the perfect set up to fake his own death. The Noturatii would find the wrecked car and the dead bodies, assume the shifters had come after their captive and run the car off the road, shot Steve… and if Miller was lucky, they might believe that the shifters had taken him with them, perhaps to be interrogated, and then later killed.

  But there were a few things still to be done before he left his old life for good. “Wait a second,” he told the girl. Then he dashed back to the car, left a bloody hand print on the steering wheel where the rain wouldn’t wash it away, his palms bearing dozens of cuts from the broken glass. Then he grabbed the girl’s backpack – just in case there was something of use on the laptop after all – and left another handprint on the door as he got out again. And then the pair of handcuffs on the back seat caught his eye. He picked them up and put them in the backpack, so that no one would ask questions about how their shifter captive had escaped from them.

  There. Signs of his own injuries, which would stand up to scrutiny if the Noturatii decided to check the fingerprints or run a DNA test on the blood. Plenty of violence to implicate the shifters. His head was throbbing, and he put a hand to his forehead, finding a bloody wound where he must have hit his head in the crash. It was bleeding, but it wasn’t too serious, so he put it out of his mind for the moment. Then he pulled his phone out of his pocket and dropped it on the road. They all had GPS trackers in them, and he had no intention of allowing the Noturatii to accidently find him again; the last connection to his old life, slowly drowning in the rain.

  He looked up… and cursed as he realised the girl had vanished. “Fuck!” He dashed back to the last place he had seen her. No one on the road. On one side, the hillside sloped downwards, empty fields providing little cover. But up the hill, there was a thin forest, and he scanned the trees in the fading light… There! Movement!

  “Wait!” he shouted, taking off after the girl. The urgent need to protect her, to make sure she didn’t die after he’d taken such reckless steps to try and help her, was clawing at him. She glanced back, saw him following, and increased her speed. She was surprisingly fast for someone so small, and he had to sprint to catch up, hard work when it was uphill all the way. But just as he was closing on her, she spun around, hair plastered to her face in the rain, and pointed the gun at him again.

  “Stay away from me!”

  “You’re hurt!” he said again. “There’s a storm coming, and it’s going to be dark soon. Where are you going, anyway?”

  “Putting some distance between me and that car,” she said pragmatically. “Your friends are going to be coming for it, and I don’t want to be anywhere near it when they arrive.” It was getting harder to hear her as the wind gathered strength. A shaft of lightning arced out of the sky a few miles away, then a deep, rolling wave of thunder broke over them.

  “You can’t stay outside all night,” he told her. “We need to find shelter.”

  “Well, I wouldn’t have to stay out here if you hadn’t stolen my fucking phone!” the girl yelled at him. “We’re in the middle of nowhere. Where the hell do you think we’re going to go?”

  Miller glanced around. Up the hill there was a tall outcrop of rock, large boulders, then a small cliff. “Up there,” he said, pointing. “There might be a small cave or something we can shelter in.”

  “We?” the girl spat. “I’m not going anywhere with you.”

  “I’m not going to hurt you,” Miller tried again, realising he was on the losing side of this argument. “If I wanted to do that, I wouldn’t have shot Steve. Or given you my gun.”

  That made her pause. “Maybe this is a trick,” she insisted. “You want to spy on us, so you’re trying to make it look like you’re leaving the Noturatii, when you’re really just gathering information for them.”

  Miller actually had to laugh at that. “By kidnapping you and then crashing my own car? By killing two of our own men? That’s a pretty desperate strategy, even for us.”

  The rain was falling heavily now, both of them soaked. The girl glanced up the hill to the rocks. Frowned. And sighed. “Fine,” she said reluctantly. “Let’s go.”

  Another shaft of lightning lit the sky, the black clouds blocking out the last of the evening’s light, and it was difficult to see as they both scrambled up the hill, the slope slippery and low bushes making it hard to find a path. They reached the rocks, and Miller scouted around while the girl watched him distrustfully. At first glance, there wasn’t much shelter to be had, but he climbed up on the first row of boulders and looked around… Thank God. There was a cave, low but long, and large enough for them both to squeeze inside, with an overhanging lip that kept the rain out.

  “There’s a cave,” he called down to her. “Can you climb up?”

  She tried, scrambling on the rocks, not quite tall enough to make the climb as Miller had done, and so she was forced to put the gun away, tucking it carefully into her shorts after putting the safety on. But the rain was making it hard to get a grip on anything, and he saw that the effort had reopened the cuts on her hands, leaving pink trails of blood amid the pouring rain.

  “Here…” He reached down, offering his own hand, and with a fierce glare, she reached up and took it. She was as light as she looked, and it took little effort for him to haul her up the rock face, desperate to get inside the shelter as he felt his skin tingle with static electricity-

  A bolt of lightning hit the ground not twenty metres from where they stood, the clap of thunder deafening as he felt it vibrate right through his body. The girl flinched, but otherwise didn’t react, while Miller recoiled violently and had to fight to keep his balance.

  But he didn’t let go of her hand. Cursing darkly, he dragged them both into the cave, ducking his head to fit inside, and collapsed against the back wall.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Silas pulled the car up outside the hall where he’d dropped Skip off. It was a few minutes to nine, so he waited, scanning the street for anything suspicious, then listening to a song on the radio.

  The doors of the ha
ll opened, and people started to file out. It was raining heavily, thunder rumbling in the distance, and none of them lingered, dashing over to waiting cars, or heading for the shelter of nearby shops or bus stops.

  The initial flood of bodies thinned to a trickle, and Silas switched off the radio, waiting for Skip to emerge, no doubt brimming with excited news about everything she had learned today.

  He waited… and waited some more, as the last of the people scurried away into the night.

  Where the hell was she?

  Figuring she might still be inside, maybe asking questions of their instructor, he got out of the car and ducked inside the entrance. Sure enough, there was a small group gathered at the front of the room, attention fixed on a computer screen, but a quick glance told him that none of them was Skip.

  Was she in the bathroom? He went over to the door, knocked, waited, and when there was no reply, eased it open and stuck his head inside. “Skip?”

  No reply.

  He headed outside again, checked the car – no Skip – then pulled out his phone and dialled her number. He waited while it rang… and then it switched over to voicemail. He hung up and called again, cursing when he got the same result.

  A cold weight settled in his chest, and he tried to tell himself not to panic. Skip had spent the entire afternoon in a public place, surrounded by people. There was likely a rational explanation for this…

  Fuck it. He quickly dialled Simon, back at the estate, and was grateful when he answered after the first ring. “Skip’s not outside the hall,” he explained quickly. “I need you to track her phone for me.”

  “Sure thing,” Simon replied, then there was the sound of booted feet on wooden floorboards – he was likely running up the stairs to the IT office – then the faint ‘tap tap tap’ of fingers on a keyboard.

  “I’ve got her signal,” Simon said a few minutes later, while Silas stood in the rain, continually scanning the street. “And I’ve got your location, too. She’s less than a hundred metres from you.” He gave Silas directions, down the road, around a corner, past a handful of shops…

  “She’s not here,” Silas said sharply, when he reached the place Simon said she should be. “Where the hell is she?”

  “Hold on, I’ll call her phone,” Simon said, and Silas waited… There! Faint ringing… from the rubbish bin? He grabbed food wrappers and coffee cups, tossing them aside… and there it was, Skip’s phone, in its pink case, cheerfully chiming away amid discarded newspapers and greasy burger boxes.

  Silas felt his heart all but stop, his hands shaking as he forced his throat to speak the next words – words he had hoped he would never have to say. “Get Baron,” he growled. “Skip’s been kidnapped.”

  Skip sat shivering at the back of the cave, catching her breath as she stared at this most peculiar man in front of her.

  “We should start a fire,” he said pragmatically, raindrops dripping down his face. The overhanging rocks had gathered a fair pile of debris over the years, and some of it was dry enough to burn, so after carefully setting Skip’s backpack against the wall, he set about laying a fire near the entrance of the cave. His hands were bleeding, she noted as she watched, his palms cut from the glass in the car. He pulled a lighter out of his pocket and lit the kindling, coaxing the small flame to life as the larger pieces of wood caught.

  “There,” he said, a few minutes later. “Try to get dry. It’s going to be a cold night.”

  Skip retrieved the two guns from her shorts and quickly unloaded one, storing the gun in her backpack and the bullets in her pocket. The other one she left loaded. She huddled closer to the fire. The storm was still raging outside, thunder booming against the hills with each flash of lightning, but she wasn’t the slightest bit afraid. Not of the storm, at least. Shifters had a natural affinity with lightning, and the storm was actually rather comforting.

  The man, on the other hand… “Why did you help me?” she asked, keeping the gun within easy reach as she warmed her hands.

  He wiped his face, brushing away stray drops that trickled out of his short hair, and sighed. “Like I said,” he told her, sounding tired. “I’m leaving the Noturatii.”

  “They’ll kill you,” she said pragmatically.

  “Not if they already think I’m dead.”

  She snorted at that. “So this wasn’t about helping me at all, was it? It was just some bullshit attempt to help yourself. That crash could have killed me,” she complained, knowing the accusation was a little hollow. From the stories she’d heard, death would be preferable to imprisonment at the hands of the Noturatii.

  “It was a calculated risk,” he said apologetically. “I was taught some advanced driving techniques during my training, and I tried to crash the car in a way that gave you the best chance of survival.”

  “But why?” she insisted. This was making no sense…

  The man looked at her sadly, regret heavy in his eyes. “When I joined the Noturatii, I thought I was protecting people. Stopping terrorists. Killing people who were killers themselves. But hurting little girls was never part of the job description, and I guess my conscience finally caught up with me.”

  “I’m not a little girl,” Skip protested, annoyed at the description.

  He looked at her again, seeming to re-evaluate her in the dim light of the fire. “No, you’re not,” he admitted, a hint of wry humour in his voice. “You’re fierce! Far more fierce than I imagined you would be.”

  Despite her reservations about this man, Skip found herself blushing… and then blushed harder at the realisation. She had always wanted to be fierce, ever since she’d been converted into a wolf and handed a power that ordinary men would kill to acquire. But she’d never felt she was. Silas was fierce, the seasoned warrior who protected them all with lethal force. Tank was fierce, with his awesome combat skills and propensity to hurl himself into danger. Caroline was fierce, with her black leather and fiery attitude. Skip had never measured up.

  But here she was, stuck in a cave with a Noturatii operative, a man twice her size, her sworn enemy… and he thought she was fierce! The surge of pride she felt was as ridiculous as it was heartening, and, to hide her pleasure at the description, she frowned and glared at the fire.

  “You’re really leaving the Noturatii?” she asked, a little while later, and the man nodded.

  “I really am.”

  “Sucks to be you,” she said sympathetically. If they realised he was alive, they weren’t just going to kill him. They were going to gut him slowly, and laugh while he screamed in pain.

  “What’s your name?” he asked, after another moment of silence.

  “Susan,” Skip said automatically. It was the false name she’d used to sign up for the seminar.

  “Is that your real name?” the man asked, and Skip snorted.

  “No, of course not. But it’s a step up from ‘Hey, you’, so it’ll have to do for now.”

  “I’m Jack,” the man said. “Jack Miller.”

  “I would ask if that’s your real name,” Skip said, a sardonic edge to her voice, “but I don’t really care.”

  “It’s my real name,” Miller said. “I don’t know if you’re going to believe that, but I’ve spent too long lying to people. It feels good to tell the truth once in a while.”

  They both fell silent after that, the small fire slowly turning their clothes from wet to damp, and inside this cosy nook, Skip was relieved to find it wasn’t all that cold. After a while, the rain let up, returning to its usual drizzle, while the storm moved off to the east.

  And all the while, Skip was pondering this most unusual man. Men in general were dangerous, she had learned at an early age. Men of the Noturatii more so. She contemplated a long night in an isolated location with this powerful man, thought of the shifters he had killed, the attack on the estate in Scotland, the way he had shot a man in the head in cold blood just half an hour ago. He was dangerous, that much was obvious. He had hurt people, some of them people she cared
about. But the thing playing on her mind, as she watched him through the dim light, was that he hadn’t hurt her.

  He’d had the opportunity. He’d had a gun, when the car had crashed. He was stronger than her, and could no doubt handle himself in a fist fight. But he hadn’t hurt her.

  Odd.

  He wasn’t the first man to not hurt her, Skip reminded herself. Silas had never hurt her. He’d killed people to protect her, he had fights with other people in the Den, but he’d never hurt her.

  But Miller was from the Noturatii. There was no way in the world he could be anywhere near as nice as Silas.

  Time to put the theory to the test.

  She leaned closer, peering intently at the wound on his head. It was still seeping blood, a thin trickle of it running down his face into his collar. “You hit your head,” she said, trying to sound concerned.

  “I don’t think it’s too serious,” he said, bending his head down so she could get a better look at it.

  Skip lifted her hand to wipe some of the blood away… and then jammed her fingernails into the wound.

  “Fuck!” He leapt back like she’d stuck him with a red hot poker. “What the hell did you do that for?” He put his hand to the wound, scuttling away from her, disbelief and outrage on his face.

  Skip shrugged. “I don’t like you,” she said simply. There was no remorse in her voice at all. And then she waited, curious to see how this strong, powerful man from the side of evil would react.

  “Bloody hell… you’re a crazy shit, you know that?”