Salvation: Reckless Desires (Blue Moon Saloon Book 4)

by Anna Lowe

  She yelled and dashed forward, swinging the golf club wide. Recklessly wide, exposing the front of her body. She had to in order to build the momentum needed to break that attack. She knew nothing about golf and even less about polo, but she’d seen pictures of polo players leaning way out from their ponies to whack the ball, and that’s just what she did. She swung it wide while running forward, then arced it forward and—

  Whack!

  The golf club connected, and the vibration that went through it transmitted the shattering of bone. That wolf yelped and fell while Anna stumbled forward. She fell right toward the next wolf who jumped forward, its jaws opened wide.

  Die, those jaws screamed at her. Now you will die.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Duck! came a booming voice.

  She ducked, obeying even before she actively processed the word. The voice was that powerful, that sure.

  Whoosh! A giant paw — and five killer claws — swiped the air an inch over her head, ripping along the wolf’s neck. The counterattack came with a roar that echoed through the canyon and in her ears.

  She nearly cheered, but it was too soon. Todd’s move had put him off-balance, and another wolf jumped in from the right to take advantage. She barely had the space to backhand it with the club. She spun into her strike, moving away from the bear, creating room for both of them to move.

  The bear — Todd — roared in disapproval, obviously preferring her close.

  I need space to maneuver, and you do, too. She thought the words rather than speaking them because she was still short of breath.

  Need to keep you safe, his grunt told her.

  Need to stop these bastards, she thought, gritting her teeth. They’re after Teddy. They’re after all of you.

  Todd roared to high heaven and lumbered forward for what she knew was his final attack. The wolves tripped over each other, stumbling in their haste. A few hurried to get away, while others rushed to launch their own counterattacks. A third wolf fell victim to Todd’s slashing claws, and then a fourth. Blood flew, and she squinted against the horrifying sight. But she kept up her own blows, too, because she had to.

  When there were three wolves left, Todd flew at them, ripping and slashing until one lay dead and another ran for its life. He spun to face the final wolf, who kept his back to the rocks.

  Emmett LeBlanc — in wolf form — raised his lips and snarled, but she could see the fear in his eyes.

  Todd reared high on his back feet, dwarfing his foe, then crashed forward at exactly the same moment Emmett tried to flee.

  Too late.

  Anna turned her head, but she couldn’t close her eyes to the sickening slashing sounds. The wolf screamed, snarled, and abruptly fell silent.

  Then it was quiet but for the heavy pants of the bear. Her breath was choppy too because, Jesus, it was over. Six of the seven wolves were dead. One had fled. She and Todd had survived.

  She and Todd. Todd, the bear.

  He bellowed in the direction of the wolf who’d fled, then came back down to all fours with a low chuff.

  Everything went quiet again — deathly quiet, from the harsh scrublands to the birds that had flown away and even the insects that seemed to have taken cover during the fight. Between one hammering heartbeat and the next, the full scope of what had just transpired caught up with her, and she half fell, half sat on the rocky ground. The golf club clattered off a rock, and she froze when Todd turned.

  His right paw was tucked against his body, and she could see the pain in his eyes. But there was triumph in them, too. She could see it in the straight line of his back, the sharp angle of his ears. His muzzle was splashed with blood, as was his shoulder, but he stood at attention like a general on the field of victory.

  “We did it,” she whispered, starting at him.

  His massive bear chin dipped once. Twice.

  “You did it,” she whispered, correcting herself. He’d done all the work. Jesus, without him, she’d have been long dead.

  The bear swung his head left then right in clear disagreement. We, he seemed to be saying. We did it.

  Her throat ached from where LeBlanc had crushed her windpipe, and her left ankle throbbed from a wrenching motion she only vaguely remembered. Her fingers hurt from gripping the golf club so tightly, and when she brushed her cheek, she found blood. Her blood? The enemy’s?

  She sat staring dumbly at the blood on her hand, as close to the edge of panic as she’d ever been. The fight was over, but it all replayed in her mind, all the more terrifying for the realization of how many near misses she and Todd had survived. Her hands started shaking, her knees knocking, and all she could see was blood.

  She was about to hide her face in her hands when a huge, brown muzzle crept closer. Todd moved slowly, holding his breath, and she held hers, too. It didn’t seem possible to come that close to a grizzly, just as it didn’t seem possible for a beast of that size to have suddenly grown so quiet and gentle.

  He chuffed once. It’s okay. Everything is okay.

  Her heart beat faster instead of slowing down, and she closed her eyes, because the bear was coming even closer. Its breath warmed her cheek. She froze, every muscle in her body stiff.

  Then something soft and velvety touched down on her cheek. Her heart skipped a beat.

  He licked her — the tiniest, most careful lick in bear history, she’d bet — and she giggled. One of those I’m not sure if I’m about to scream or laugh kind of giggles that could have gone either way. When Todd licked her again, she caught his muzzle in both hands and held on.

  He licked the blood from her cheek, then puffed gently in her ear. That time, she cackled out of sheer relief.

  “I’m okay,” she whispered, answering the question in his eyes. “Are you okay?”

  The top of his tongue showed pink in the T-intersection of bear nose and mouth. I’m okay.

  Which just about made her melt into the rock behind her until a thought hit her out of the blue.

  “Oh, God! We have to check on the girl!” She scrambled to her feet and made for the pathway behind the rock.

  Her steps were slow and creaky, like an old woman’s, but she plowed on despite Todd’s questioning chuffs. The second she trotted out on the other side of the boulders, the young woman cried out in relief. She’d been straining at the end of her bonds, but the moment she saw Anna, her knees gave way.

  “Did you…? Are they…?”

  Anna rushed forward. “They’re gone. Oh, you poor thing,” she cried at the blood caked around the young woman’s wrists. She worked the ropes as gently as she could, but the thick, rough strands still sawed at the woman’s skin.

  “Just do it,” the woman said through clenched teeth. “Please, just get me free.”

  Anna glanced over her shoulder. Todd hadn’t followed, and she could hear his heavy footsteps thump into the distance. Was he making sure that last wolf wasn’t coming back?

  “Quickly,” the woman begged. “We have to save them.”

  To Anna, them meant Teddy, Sarah, and the others. Who was the woman talking about?

  “Emmett forced me to help them.” Tears slipped down the stranger’s cheeks, but her voice was stubbornly even. “Please believe me.”

  “I believe you,” she assured the girl. The blood on her wrists was proof, just as the worry in her eyes was. “Do you know them? Those…those shifters?”

  The word felt foreign on her tongue. Had she really just seen men turn into wolves? Had her lover really beaten them as a bear?

  The woman nodded without asking what shifters were. Did that mean she could turn into an animal, too? “My stepfather was one of them,” she said. “In the beginning, it wasn’t so bad. He was all talk and no action. But then Emmett Whyte started—”

  “Emmett LeBlanc,” Anna corrected, still working at the ropes.

  The woman shook her head. “He used a lot of false names, but he’s a Whyte. Brother of the worst one of all. They made me stay with them. I swear I
never hurt anyone. But it got worse and worse, and I couldn’t get out.”

  “It’s okay,” Anna said, trying to calm her down. “They’re gone now.”

  “I would never have gone along with it if they hadn’t threatened to kill the others.”

  Finally, the ropes slipped free, and the woman toppled forward.

  “What others?” Anna asked, helping her to her feet.

  The woman gulped and stumbled down the path, back to the parking lot. “I have to check on them. I have to see if they’re all right.”

  “Who?” Anna asked.

  The woman broke into a stiff trot, and Anna followed. Her steps grew faster and faster as she headed for the van at the end of the lot — so fast that Anna could barely keep up. For a moment, she thought the woman had tricked her and was trying to get away. But she headed for the back of the van, not the front, racing for the open doors where she stopped in her tracks. Anna raced after her, terrified that they’d find more wolves — or worse, dead bodies of innocent victims or something equally horrifying.

  When she caught up a second later, she pulled up short and stared at what she saw.

  The last wolf that had run off lay in a pool of blood two steps away, and inside the van…

  Todd. Human Todd, thank God, sitting quietly. His sandy brown hair was disheveled, his chest covered in dust. His eyes flickered to Anna and the woman before he dipped his chin.

  “It’s okay, little guy,” he whispered, cuddling a tiny bear cub to his chest.

  Anna stared as the cub made pathetic mewing sounds and buried its face against Todd’s shoulder.

  “Shh. It will be okay.”

  “Fay,” the woman called anxiously, climbing into the van. There was a bench built into one side, while the rest was an open storage space crowded with boxes and bags. She moved past Todd and reached into a cardboard box. “Oh, my God. Fay, are you okay?”

  She pulled a tiny bundle wrapped in a tattered, rose-colored blanket from the box and held it close. Anna caught sight of a bare foot — a teensy, tiny, human foot with five toes — and gasped.

  “A baby?”

  The baby made a little choking sound then cried. And cried and cried as tears streamed down the young woman’s face.

  Anna gaped at Todd. “How did you know they were in here?”

  He shrugged. “I heard them.”

  She stared at his nonchalance. She hadn’t heard anything. “Wow.”

  Wow to everything. Todd could turn into a bear, and he wasn’t the only one. Which made her wonder. Was the cub a shifter, too? What about the baby girl?

  “Emmett and the others killed their parents. A bear and a cougar shifter,” the young woman said in answer to her unspoken question. “They were going to kill the babies, too. I tried everything I could to stop them.” She rocked back and forth, trying to soothe herself, perhaps, as much as the child. “I said we could keep them for ransom and bait some other shifters out with them. And God, I was so scared they would try it.” She clutched the baby close as it wailed on.

  “Did they?” Todd asked. His voice was hard and edgy, like the bear might jump out of him any second.

  “No. Not yet. They kept the cubs alive until now, but I think they were starting to have second thoughts. I was so scared they would kill them…”

  She sobbed and shook and looked up at Anna with desperate eyes. “Please.” She held the baby out. “Please, help me. I try everything I can, but she cries a lot. I’ve been trying to get her to eat, but Emmett wouldn’t let me get formula, just milk. She’s been losing weight and getting weaker. Please.”

  The second Anna slid into the seat beside her, the young woman handed over the baby and doubled over her knees, crying.

  Anna held the baby close with one hand and patted the young woman with the other. “It’s okay. You did your best. You saved them.”

  “But she’s getting so weak…” The woman’s voice was desperate, afraid. “And Ben.” She looked toward the cub in Todd’s arms. “I’ve never seen a shifter baby change forms that young. But he was so scared, it just happened, and I haven’t been able to get him to shift back.”

  “You can stay a bear for a while,” Todd whispered into the cub’s ear. “It’s okay. Everything is going to be okay.”

  He was talking to the cub, but Anna’s heart rate slowed down a tick at the reassurance in his voice.

  “What’s your name?” she asked the young woman.

  “Summer.”

  “I think they’re going to be okay.”

  The baby was quieting down already, staring up at Anna with yellow-green eyes. Her breath caught in her throat, and she couldn’t drag her eyes away. She looked and looked and looked, and it reminded her of the way she’d first passed Todd in the saloon doors. Something shifted inside her, and this time, she recognized the feeling.

  It was her soul announcing, This one is mine. This one belongs to me.

  The man. And now, the baby. She took a deep breath. Was this really happening?

  She held the baby closer, and the tiny eyes blinked. Are you a good wolf or a bad wolf? they seemed to ask.

  Anna shook her head and whispered, “I’m not a wolf at all.”

  “You sure fight like one,” Summer murmured.

  Anna sat a little straighter. “I’m not a bear, either.” She glanced at Todd, wondering what he would say. “I’m just me.”

  That’s all I want, his eyes said. All I need.

  She looked down at the baby. “But I’ll do everything I can to help you, sweet little thing.”

  The baby seemed content with that and gripped Anna’s pinkie in her tiny little fist.

  “Wow,” Anna breathed, looking at her.

  “I don’t know what to do,” Summer cried, tossing up her hands. “They don’t have anyone.”

  Todd made a gruff sound that sounded a lot like, They do now.

  “I don’t know anything about babies,” Summer went on, overwhelmed.

  Anna didn’t, either, but something deep inside her promised she would figure it out fast.

  “Doesn’t take much,” Todd said, petting the cub between its ears. “A little feeding, a lot of holding. A lot of love.”

  It looked like it would take ten men with a crowbar to pry that cub out of his arms. Anna smiled.

  The sun was just starting to set outside, and the light filtering through the back of the van was a soft orange-pink. It backlit Todd’s body and streamed in around the bundle in his arms. During the fight, everything had been harsh desert tones, but now, everything had calmed to a warm, comforting glow.

  “We got this,” Todd whispered to the cub. “Don’t you worry, little guy.”

  Then he looked at her, and she smiled. It seemed crazy to feel so calm in such a crazy situation, but she was. Calm and serene.

  She nodded at Todd, then looked down at the baby girl in her arms. “We got this.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Todd lost track of time. He got lost in the softness of the tiny cub’s ears and in the presence of Anna nearby. Jesus, what a woman. She’d just had the reality of shifters introduced to her in the worst possible way, and yet she hadn’t fled for the hills. When she looked at him, it wasn’t in disgust or horror. She just smiled.

  But when the engine of an approaching car sounded outside, she clutched the baby and paled. “Are they back?”

  The cub panicked, too, sinking its claws into Todd’s arm and burrowing against his chest.

  He murmured to the cub. No, the rogue wolves weren’t back, and thank God for that. Footsteps sounded, and Soren’s face appeared at the open door of the van. The second he peered in, he did a double take.

  “Holy shit.” Soren’s eyes darted between Anna, him, the young woman, and the babies. “I mean, shoot,” he added, shooting an apologetic look at the babies.

  Todd would have given a million bucks for a camera to catch the look on his cousin’s face. No, wait. He would have given a million bucks to go back in time and captu
re a time-lapse sequence of Anna’s face. The initial shock, then the wonder. The hope. The love, already pouring out toward the babies and at him.

  At him. A messed-up bear.

  At some point, she’d just grinned, and he had the feeling she’d been playing with her own mental camera, too. Aiming it his way and nodding in satisfaction until all his worries about being worthy gradually faded away.

  Mate, his bear hummed.

  No doubt about it. Anna’s scream for help had sounded in his mind miles away when he’d gone to check the scent Zack had found. No one else heard it — just him — and he’d raced for his mate with a speed and fury not even the fleetest wolf could match.

  “Yeah,” he nodded wearily. “Holy shit.”

  The cub fit in the scoop of his arm, and he flexed and straightened the fingers of his injured hand. They had worked when he needed them to. Everything had worked. Maybe he wasn’t a complete washout, after all.

  “Oh, my God,” Sarah said, appearing beside her mate. “What happened?”

  That was the million-dollar question, and he wasn’t really sure he had the answer.

  Soren, though, took one sniff of the scene of the attack and growled. “The Blue Bloods.” He all but spat the name.

  “Blue Bloods?” Anna asked in a shaky voice.

  Everyone looked at her, then at the young woman hunched in the back of the van.

  Little by little, it all came out once they were back in the saloon, where the stranger — Summer — explained what had happened. Emmett Whyte — aka Emmett LeBlanc — had been hunting down Sarah for months, while his cronies, the last of the Blue Bloods, had been on their own mission to wipe out any shifters who dared cross species lines.

  Ty, Tina, Lana, and several other Twin Moon wolves had rushed over to the saloon, too, and they all hung on the young woman’s words.

  “I knew it wasn’t Roy,” Ty growled.

  “Shh,” Lana chided. “Let her speak.”

  “I was there the day they got word of Victor Whyte’s death,” Summer explained in a shaky voice. “I thought that was it — that they’d finally give up. But instead, they decided to keep up what they called the crusade. They targeted packless couples in remote places.” She buried her face in her hands. “They started talking about going after babies.”