Wilder (The Wild Ones Book 3)

by C. M. Owens

  WILDER

  The Wild Ones #3

  by

  USA TODAY BESTSELLING AUTHOR

  C.M. Owens

  Copyright 2018 by C.M. Owens

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without express written permission of the author. This eBook is licensed for your enjoyment only. It may not be re-sold or given away to other people.

  The story in this book is the property of the author, in all media both physical and digital. No one, except the owner of this property, may reproduce, copy or publish in any medium any individual story or part of this novel without the expressed permission of the author of this work.

  Wild Ones Tip #205

  If you’re gonna be dumb, you’d better be tough.

  Chapter 1

  PIPER

  *********

  “You have no idea the hell I had to go through just to get out to this cabin. I’ve already faced death three times more than I have in my entire life,” I tell the deer as I throw the rope I found randomly lying outside my late grandmother’s cabin.

  The rope lands right beside the struggling deer, who is trying to climb out of the hole in the ice, water splashing as the deer makes pitiful sounds of distress. I whimper when I realize the deer isn’t smart enough to bite down on the rope and let me pull it out.

  “I’m only doing this because of Bambi. That damn movie broke my heart, and I’ve been pro-deer ever since,” I say on a whimper as I ease out onto the ice, already slipping and dancing around to keep my balance.

  I try to stay away from the softer patches that don’t appear as frozen, as I quickly fashion a noose. I know it’s morbid, but it’s the only rope-tying trick I know that will be of any help. Thank my medieval-obsessed father.

  This may be the one time I ever use this knowledge for…anything at all.

  It takes a few tries, but I finally manage to loop the deer’s neck, and I pull quickly. After some really panicked struggling, I manage to free the small fawn from the water.

  It’s too still, and I hurriedly—but very carefully—slide across the ice on my hands and knees to undo the noose before I accidentally kill it while trying to save the damn thing.

  It’s just limp as I make haste freeing its neck, and my breaths fog in front of my face as I bend over to listen for a heartbeat.

  Just as my hair touches its stomach, the wild thing leaps up with a battle cry that scares the shit out of me, and I yelp as I crash backwards.

  My eyes widen as the deer runs off, just as the ice beneath me cracks with one split-second warning before I’m plunged into icy water.

  Everything happens so terrifyingly fast. My life doesn’t even have time to flash before my eyes this time like it has the other three times today.

  A bloodcurdling scream is shut off when I’m suddenly sucking painfully cold water into my lungs. My body feels like it’s on fire and freezing at once, as I scramble to push myself back to the surface. Fortunately, I pop up in the same huge hole I’ve made, instead of getting stuck under the ice—a freshly realized fear of mine.

  Just as my hands grip the edge of the burning cold ice, something firm grabs my wrist. In the next instant, I’m completely yanked out of the water and dragged over the edge.

  My entire body is shaking so hard, and my vision is dimming as something loud chatters. I think it’s my teeth. I’m not really sure what’s going on—everything and nothing and something else too.

  I feel myself moving, but I’m too disoriented to take in exactly what’s happening.

  “Wake up!” someone shouts near my ear just as a motor revs to life somewhere around us.

  I’m asleep? No, that person isn’t talking to me. Who’s talking? Is someone talking?

  “What’d Dr. Harvey say that one time about icicle people?”

  “What?!” someone else snaps.

  “How do we warm her up?” I hear the other one asking.

  Two male voices are talking around me, but their words are muffled and my eyelids are too heavy to see anything. I’m not sure how this day went to hell so quickly. No good deed goes unpunished.

  I feel like I’m moving, but I’m freezing too hardcore to care about anything else. Everything burns. Everything hurts. I’m almost worried my eyelids are frozen shut, because I can’t seem to open my eyes.

  “Fucking wake up, you stupid fucking girl!” someone shouts close to my ear again.

  Three voices. It’s three voices instead of two. The appropriate fear is absent, since I’m positive I’m about to die anyway.

  I open my mouth, trying to form words, unsure what really comes out.

  “Did she just say something about Bambi?” someone asks.

  I feel jostled when we come to an abrupt stop, and my eyelids crack open just barely, seeing blurry, tall men as someone presumably carries me.

  “He said to strip her out of her wet clothes and that skin-to-skin heat would be helpful.”

  “Not it,” two guys say real damn fast, but I’m still stuck on the skin-to-skin thing.

  “You can’t strip naked and spoon with her, you morons,” a girl’s voice cuts in, and I shudder—either because I’m still literally freezing to death…or because I’m traumatized and terrified.

  “You do it. You’re a girl. She won’t freak out so bad,” the guy carrying me says as we’re suddenly inside a warm house of some sort, but everything is still too blurry to make out.

  I blink for a few seconds too long, and when I come too, a man’s face is hovering over mine as he barks at me to wake the hell up.

  My fingers touch a beard—at least I think it’s a beard—when I try to swat him away, but my hand falls to my side, too weak to really do much.

  A girl’s face pokes in right beside him, her eyes wide and her hair blonde.

  “I took off your clothes,” she tells me very loudly, annunciating each word like I’m an idiot.

  Then…panic hits, and I glance around, seeing a lit fireplace beside me. Where the hell am I?

  “Her lips are blue. Maybe someone does need to strip down.”

  “You do it,” the guy snaps at her.

  “You do it,” she argues. “You’re like a furnace—you two can be fire and ice or something else lame like that. And I don’t like to get cold.”

  He curses and stands, and I panic even more as he starts stripping. Sure, he has a nice body, but that’s really not the point right now. I don’t want his nice body so close.

  Who the hell are these people and where am I?

  I think I’m in a cabin. A cabin with a lot of antlers sticking out of plaques, guns hanging on walls, and animals stuffed. The unknown guy is stripping down as he and—I think—his sister argue about who puts off more body heat.

  My gaze flicks toward the fireplace that I’m lying in front of…on top of what appears to be a fur rug of some sort. I swallow thickly when I realize there’s also something furry draped over me.

  I came to Tomahawk without realizing it’s actually the setting for the Hills with Eyes or whatever that terrifying movie was called, minus the incestuous and radioactive deformities.

  At least so far…

  “Just so you know, I’m not going to touch you inappropriately. Take my body heat if you want to,” the guy says sourly close to my head, which admittedly puts me at ease…a little.

  Weirdly enough.

  I start scooting away from him when he climbs under the blanket with me, but when his warm foot brushes mine, it’s like my survival instinct takes over.

  I’m suddenly crazy, heat-starved, and single-minded as I lunge and start hugging hi
m, getting tangled around him quickly, because he’s sooooo warm. I think I whimper when the coldness starts to sting, my body trying to regain more heat.

  He curses and tenses all over, but puts his arms around me. “It’s like hugging a fucking popsicle,” he gripes. “I better not get stuck to anything like I did that flag pole like that one time,” he adds.

  “Just don’t stick your tongue out, and you’ll be good,” the girl assures him. “That sounded way dirtier than I meant for it to, and I’m kind of grossed out now. If I’m being honest,” she adds.

  I don’t even care about anything but stealing every ounce of warmth he has to offer right now, pressing as tightly as I can against him. It takes me a second to realize he still has on boxers, but I’m completely naked.

  My breasts are pressed flat against his chest, and as time passes, I gradually start to warm up. The warmer I get, the more awkward this entire situation becomes. It’s like my brain is thawing and finally appreciating the gravity of this entire surreal encounter.

  He keeps my head tucked under his, likely to avoid the awkward eye contact thing.

  I say nothing, since I still want more warmth right now. I’ll freak out in a minute.

  At least there’s nothing sexual about the way he’s touching me. I think this is clearly just what it looks like—a stranger grudgingly sharing body heat with a stupid girl who tried to save a stupid deer with a noose, when she knows nothing about ice or wildlife or survival in a hostile environment.

  Day one in Tomahawk, and I almost died for a fourth time. Guess I know we’re selling that cabin now.

  “What the hell is going on?” another woman’s voice snaps.

  I peer over the blanket with one eye just enough to see a woman with a wild bun on her head and an axe in her hand. I barely stop myself from fainting, because this is just getting more insane by the second.

  I currently hate every horror movie I’ve ever seen that had a wilderness/isolated setting.

  “Kai stole her from her home and is forcing her to have his babies,” the blonde girl says from the other side of me, perched by the fireplace as she eats an apple.

  I’m pretty sure my teeth just chattered for a whole new terrifying reason.

  “Fucking really, Nila?” the guy holding me growls. “Why? Why would you tell her that? Now she’s going to—”

  The bun lady is already squealing to cut off his words. “Where’s that damn emergency phone?” she asks, pulling open drawers and shutting them.

  I’m being really still and really quiet, praying for this nightmare to end abruptly.

  “Ah ha! Found it! I laughed at that Liam kid when he dropped this off, but now I want to kiss him for it,” she goes on as she squints like she’s trying to see the screen.

  They don’t usually have phones out here? If my tear ducts weren’t still frozen, I think I’d cry right now.

  “Penny, guess who’s getting babies before you,” the woman says into the phone, and I pale.

  “You’re not actually having his babies,” the girl beside me says, patting my shoulder, as the guy continues to give me warmth and no babies.

  Seriously…where the hell am I?

  “Yeah, my Kai clubbed some girl over the head and brought her home,” the other woman, who I presume is their mother or their resident mental patient, says very proudly as she nods vehemently, not glancing at us.

  “Doesn’t really matter how he got a girl. It just matters that he’s got one now, and I’m going to have babies before you. So ha!” she adds with way too much excitement.

  “Really not having babies,” the guy growls next to my ear as I start to squirm.

  “Who are you?” I finally manage to ask on a rasp croak.

  “Kai Wilder,” he says as if that needs no further explanation.

  “I’m Nila. His sister,” the girl with blonde hair tells me before pointing to the graying blonde on the phone. “That’s our mother. You’ve made her the happiest woman in the world.”

  “For fuck’s sake, Nila, fix it,” Kai snaps at her.

  “You’re the barbarian who is bringing home frozen corpses to reanimate. You fix it,” she deadpans.

  “Oh, she’s adorable. I think. I can only see her forehead from here, so she could be unsightly, I suppose. Hopefully she’s adorable. I want my babies to be prettier than your babies. If you ever get any, that is. Your Lilah is still on birth control,” the mother drones on, glancing in my direction.

  “Are you on birth control?” Nila asks me seriously.

  “Are you trying to fucking freak her out right now?” Kai growls. “Wait until my balls aren’t so close to her knees.”

  I’m not sure if it’s the day from hell, the matter of me still being a bit hypothermic, or if it’s the fact I’ve possibly been abducted by crazed wilderness people for an unsanctioned breeding experiment, but I feel a little dizzy before it all fades to black.

  Wild Ones Tip #398

  Screamers are the worst. We might have helmets, but we always forget the ear plugs.

  Chapter 2

  KAI

  *******

  “How do you know this is where she lives if you don’t even know her name?”

  “Name one other reason she’d be on our side of the lake,” I say to the gnat who’s buzzing in my damn ear, also known as my sister.

  “You could at least wait until she wakes up before we break into her house and ditch her here after she just fell into a mostly frozen lake and almost died and stuff,” she states like I’m a dick or something.

  She finally picks the lock to the front door, pushing it open far enough to let the cabin’s warmth spill out onto the porch.

  “This thing has sat empty for at least two years, and the fire has been burning all day. This has to be where she’s staying. I had to get her out of there before Ma chained the damn girl to the radiator and started slathering lotion on her belly to prepare the womb or some shit,” I gripe at Nila, who is enjoying this too much.

  “It puts the lotion on,” she says in a harsh voice while rubbing her hands together in dark glee, and then coughs from trying to put too much scratch on the words.

  “This is my unimpressed face,” I point out as I carry the thoroughly wrapped girl into the house.

  “The closest hospital is forever away, but should we try to get her there?” Nila asks.

  “Really? You want to drive her to the hospital, that would take hours to reach, the day after the first big ice? What the hell was she even doing out?” I go on, speaking a little quieter when the unconscious chick makes a small sound in the back of her throat.

  “I called Dr. Harvey from Ma’s new phone,” Nila says. “I wrote down the list of instructions he gave us, and things to watch for.”

  Please don’t wake up. Please don’t wake up. Please don’t wake up.

  I do not want to be here when she wakes up. She looks like a screamer. Her vocal chords were possibly too frozen earlier. I’ll swing by when she’s not so freaked and let her thank me for saving her life and shit.

  I’m not really sure what she normally looks like, but I’m guessing colorless with black circles around her eyes isn’t the usual. And now she’s wearing one of my shirts under that blanket, which really shouldn’t be one of the facts popping into my mind at the moment.

  Shaking my head, I stand abruptly.

  She risked her life to save a fawn that will probably end up getting dead all on its own if it’s lost its mother.

  “One of us should stay here,” Nila says, distracted as she devotes her attention to the fireplace, stoking the fire and adding logs.

  I silently back toward the door.

  “Agreed,” I tell her as I continue easing back, my gaze darting one last look at the thawed popsicle.

  “Okay, so paper-rock-scissors?” Nila asks just as I smirk.

  “Or calling ‘not it’ works just as well,” I say quickly, before shutting the door and leaping off the porch.

  I’m on the snow
mobile and cranking it, cutting the wheel and skidding the hauling sled out behind me by the time Nila jerks open the door.

  “You—”

  I’m not sure what uncreative name she calls me, because I rev the beast and drive like hell toward town to meet up with my brothers, leaving her behind to deal with the screamer.

  It takes longer, since I’m towing the big carrying sled, but I finally pull up at the diner, and park next to Hunter’s Yamaha.

  I’m blowing heat into my hands, since I never stopped to pull on my gloves, as I head inside, tugging my hat off as I go. I spot the Vincent brothers at our table, and my eyes practically roll around in my skull when they grin at me.

  “Heard you clubbed a girl over the head and impregnated her this morning,” Hale says with a straight face as I take the seat next to him.

  “Heard your dick left new blisters on your hand,” I fire back.

  “Too many Wild Ones,” Mathew shouts from behind the counter, pointing a finger at us.

  “Just two families, so we’re still good,” Shade, my younger brother, says from across from me, running a hand over his shaggy fucking hair. Then directs his attention to me. “Nila’s going to be pissed.”

  That makes me grin. No matter how old you get, there’s a certain level of pure happiness one takes from making their only sister miserable at every given opportunity.

  “We’re going up to Shadow’s Peak today. You coming?” I ask the Vincents instead of saying anything about the popsicle.

  The door chimes, and I glance back reflexively. Hale is already whistling under his breath before I even spot the chick who just walked in.

  I wonder if she knows how far off the interstate she’s gotten. Given her fancy clothes, thin gloves, and completely impractical high heel boots that she’s shaking snow off of, I’d say she’s real damn lost.

  She brushes a lot of errant hair out of her face, and then smooths it all down like it was never wrecked. From messy to polished with a few calculated moves…this girl isn’t from around here. At all.