by Odessa Lynne
Chapter 25
Cecily was at his back on the ATV and Mason couldn’t relax because of that—not after what had happened before. She’d tried to choke him once, and he kept expecting her to try again, even though she no longer believed they were on opposite sides.
He focused on the narrow track ahead of them and drove the vehicle slowly over a jarring hill of closely fallen logs.
One wrong rev of the engine and one of them was likely to go flying into the brush. Considering he’d known a guy who’d ended up half-blind because of a knock on the head, Mason wasn’t willing to risk going any faster.
“It’s a good idea,” she said. She leaned closer, her mouth almost touching his ear. He tensed, turning his head away. His gut instinct was to ignore her, because he didn’t believe for a minute he could trust a word out of her mouth.
He wasn’t sure where the distrust was coming from, but it was there like a spike in his chest every time she spoke.
“No, listen,” she said, her grip tightening on his arms and her body swaying with the rhythm of the ATV’s slow crawl over the logs.
“If you’ve got something else to say about it, just say it. You don’t have to keep breathing in my goddamn ear.”
“I will,” she said, a tightness in her tone that raised all kinds of alarms in him.
He turned his head back and felt her lips brush his earlobe before she spoke again.
“I know what I said to you back there was wrong. You got us away from the wolves and I owe you for that.”
Mason hadn’t made any effort at all to correct her when she’d woken up to find them alone with the ATV and assumed Mason had found a way to take off and leave the wolves behind.
Mason had still been reeling from the unexpected situation he’d found himself in.
Nothing made sense. Why the fuck would Five mate him and then just leave him in the woods? Alone. With no one for company but the woman Five had straight up said he didn’t trust.
“You don’t owe me anything,” he said. “But I told you I’m not leaving you anywhere that you could infect somebody if you’ve got that virus.”
“I’m not sick! How many times do I—”
“You keep saying that, but—” He cut himself off as the ATV jolted. “Goddammit!”
The front wheel slid off the edge of a hole left by a decayed stump and he couldn’t turn fast enough to stop the vehicle from slamming forward and then stopping hard.
Cecily smushed into him from behind, and her chin snapped hard into his spine.
“Ow, goddammit!”
The engine sputtered and revved and then died.
She hit him in the back with a balled up fist. “Would you stop being such a dick? It wasn’t on purpose, you asshole, and you’re not the only one that hurt.”
He broke loose from her clutching hold and climbed off the ATV.
“Something’s wrong.”
“I bet it is. You drive like a—” But she bit off whatever insult she’d intended to level at him and threw her leg over the vehicle’s seat, then hopped off the ATV. She turned and leaned over the engine. “Let’s get it out of this hole.”
He gave her a flat look, before he leaned forward and started pushing the ATV backward. It took a few attempts—he had to rock it hard and put his shoulder into it—but the vehicle finally rolled back.
She had hold of the bar at the back and had dug her feet in, and she had to jump fast when the vehicle moved.
“Shit,” she muttered, breathless, hands going to her knees. “At least you’re good muscle.”
“Thanks.”
“No offense.”
“If you have to say that, it’s already too late.”
She laughed through a couple of deep breaths then waved him off as she stood. “Get it started and let’s get going again. I want out of these woods before the wolves end up finding us just because you can’t read a map.”
“I can read a goddamn map,” Mason said. He started flicking his way through the startup screen. Then, before he could remind her that the damn maps weren’t there because there was no goddamn signal, a red box flashed around the edges of the screen and the ATV went into lockdown.
“Are you—fucking shit!” He smacked the screen.
Cecily came up behind him and looked around his shoulder. “Ah shit. Is this for real?”
Mason smashed his fist into the seat then propped himself on his arms and leaned his head down. He was tired, sweating, chilled by the cold breeze the lowering sun had brought with it, and hungry. He hadn’t eaten since Five had fed him that mush yesterday. The only reason he wasn’t thirsty was because they’d found a stream coming off a ridge a few miles back.
“The jolt under the carriage probably hit something important,” he said. “It thinks we’ve been in an accident. It won’t start unless we can hack the damn thing.”
“Nobody leaves that shit active. Why did you?”
“You think this is my doing? I’m not that stupid. This isn’t even my vehicle.”
Her frown made her look closer to the thirty years she claimed. She wiped sweat off her forehead and managed to smear dirt across her skin.
The system that had shut down the engine was meant to stop vehicles leaving the scene of an accident or people fleeing the authorities. Mason had been confident that every vehicle he had access to had that auto shutdown system deactivated. One of his distant neighbors had made a good side job out of it. It was illegal as hell, but he had never let that stop him.
“Shit.” Mason straightened away from the vehicle, balancing one foot on a root that was in his way, and rubbed his hands down his face. “I bet Marcus reactivated it so he could shut it down remotely if someone stole the damn thing.” Reactivation of the auto shutdown system was much easier than deactivation, which required special codes and knowledge of the systems involved.
“So you got us lost and now our fucking transportation is gone. Great.”
She put her hands on her hips and stared off into the distance.
Mason put his head back and stared up at the darkening sky. Night was coming again, and she was right. He had no fucking idea where they were. He didn’t know a thing about foraging for food. And he didn’t know what to do with her.
Five had said she was infected. That meant he had to keep her away from other people. No way he was dropping her into the middle of a populated area, even though that was exactly what she’d been trying to get him to do.
Of course, he had to find his way out of the woods first, and that was turning out to be harder than he’d expected.
But no wolves—which was both suspicious and a huge relief.
He lowered his head and turned, eyeing her a little more closely. “So you’re not sick, right?”
She returned his look curiously. “I told you I’m not.”
“Were you?”
“What do you mean?”
He could tell by the way her shoulders stiffened that she knew exactly what he meant.
“Were you sick? Before?”
Her expression closed down. “Of course I wasn’t sick. I told you I don’t even know what this virus is you keep talking about.”
“You’re lying,” he said. “You know exactly what I’m talking about.”
She made to shove past him in an effort to climb back onto the ATV.
He grabbed her upper arm and hauled her around. “Were you involved in that fuck up?” he asked in a cold, hard tone he couldn’t remember ever hearing come out of his mouth before when talking to a woman. “Did you have something to do with those people dying?”
Her eyes widened. “What are you talking about?”
His grip tightened.
She winced and reached up to pry his fingers off her. “Let go, you asshole.”
“You’re lying to me. If you want my help getting out of here, you’re going to tell me the goddamn truth.”
“I don’t have to tell you shit. Now let go.” Her gaze skimmed over him. “Or are you go
ing to start hitting me next? Think maybe that’ll make me talk?”
Mason let out a frustrated growl and released her arm. He watched her climb onto the seat and start flicking through the systems screens. “Do you know how to override the auto shutdown?”
“No.”
The small kernel of hope that had been building as she flicked from one screen to the next evaporated. “Goddammit.”
“No shit, cowboy.”
He eyed the rapid flash of words on the screen. “What are you doing then?”
“Most of these things have a—ah.” She slowed.
Mason watched, suspicion warring with curiosity. He didn’t trust Cecily, and he could blame Five for that. But he didn’t want to be stuck in the woods another night if he could avoid it. Especially without Five to keep him warm on the cold ground.
He flexed his hand against his thigh, unsettled by his own thoughts. Five had left. Mason didn’t know why, but last night, for the first ten minutes after he’d realized that fact, he’d just stood there in the middle of the woods under the moon and felt…
He used you, that cold, hard voice in his head sneered at him. He hated you for being involved with the renegades. Getting you to roll over for him and offer your ass when you don’t even fuck guys… Talk about a sweet revenge. Bet you feel like a fool now.
But he didn’t. That wasn’t how he felt at all. He felt…
Hurt. Confused.
Worried.
Why would Five just up and leave, sneaking off when Mason was least expecting it? It just didn’t make sense.
A yellow screen flashed up, the words blinking faster than he could read them from his position. He moved to her side and felt her knee pressing into his belly as he leaned forward. “What’s that?”
“Emergency beacon.”
He turned his head toward her. “There’s no signal here.”
“Doesn’t need one. Goes out on HF radio.”
“HF.” He was pretty sure he knew what that was. “Like old phone signals?”
She gave him a look that made him wince. “No. Something else. Older. It’s a backup in case the sats transmitter gets broken in an accident. Range is short but they’re made to piggy back on the nearest connection it can find until it gets to where it needs to go. Now I’m going to record a message for it, so shut up, okay?”
He gritted his teeth but didn’t say a word as she recorded a message that would apparently repeat until someone shut it down or the power supply failed. Their biggest problem was that neither one of them knew exactly where they were and neither had a compass or phone to pinpoint their location for the sats, while the ATV’s location wasn’t coming up because of a lack of signal.
“We’ll just stay here tonight and hope for the best,” she said. “I sure don’t want to be walking off alone with the moon behind those clouds.”
“Yeah,” he said, looking up again with a rough sigh.
It was going to be a long night.
Fuck.
Chapter 26
Mason hadn’t been able to help drifting off to sleep. The very fact that it had been well over twenty-four hours since he’d slept meant his defenses were down and his thinking wasn’t clear. His hand hadn’t given him trouble since the day before but his chest had been tight with unease all day.
As soon as he stretched his legs out beside the ATV and propped his back against it, he started getting groggy. He’d intended to stay awake at least until Cecily fell asleep beside him under the blanket he’d found in the ATV’s storage compartment, but he’d let himself forget the fact that she’d been unconscious for hours the night before and was considerably more rested than him.
So he fell asleep and he slept hard, and it wasn’t until someone was kicking him in the thigh that he jolted awake, his heart thudding painfully hard inside his chest and adrenaline spiking his blood in a fiery rush.
“Wake up, you fucker.”
Mason might have played it safe—if he hadn’t been dreaming so hard only moments before. He shoved hard into the man’s legs with his shoulder, knocking him back with a muffled “oomph” and a strangled shout.
Mason rolled to the side before he even knew if he’d knocked the guy down. He went to his knees, wrestling the blanket away from him while leaves rustled furiously behind him.
He surged to his feet—and found himself only inches from the barrel end of a rifle pointed at his face.
He raised his hands, slowly.
“That’s right,” Sebastian said. “Keep them up or I’ll blow your head off.”
The rifle was a problem.
The four wolves behind Sebastian were an even bigger problem.
None of them were Five or Five’s wolves, and Mason was breathing hard, his blood rushing. Something about those wolves scared him in a way he hadn’t ever been scared around Five and his pack. Three of them looked like ordinary wolves, two with ugly claw marks on their faces and necks, but the fourth was larger and had hair longer than any Mason had ever seen on a wolf, and his eyes—lit from within like fire around a sun—were enough to set Mason’s heart thundering.
These wolves looked at him like he was actual prey, something he was realizing now that Five and the others had never really done.
Jay stepped up, dusting leaves off his green and gray pants. “That’s no way to treat an old friend.”
Mason lowered his hands. “We were never friends. We shared a cause. That’s all.”
“You’re right about that. But I’m going to give you a pass, this time, because you were almost one of us.” Jay unholstered his gun, his eyes as cold as ever despite the casual sound of his voice. “I wasn’t expecting to meet you out here. Figured one of those wolves we kept hearing would get you.”
“Thanks for that, by the way.”
A grunt came from behind him and a soft thud of sound. He glanced over his shoulder.
A man had Cecily in a tight grip, and he had his hand over her mouth keeping her quiet while she struggled to get free.
The man wasn’t a stranger, although Mason hadn’t known him well. Lamar something or other. He’d been another of Brendan’s guys, obviously someone who’d decided there was as much to be gained working with the wolves as against them.
Mason had almost been that guy, bought and paid for with a few hundred gold ten-dollars. Only circumstance—what Five would probably call fate—had saved him from himself.
“Found her,” the guy said, not to Jay but to one of the wolves with the slashed face. “She claims she was trying to take a piss.”
That wolf stepped away from his little pack, his mouth pinching and his nostrils flaring. “She smells of…” He took a blatant sniff of the air and then crossed the distance between them, his bare feet crunching leaves underfoot. He drew in a breath along her throat, forcing her head back.
He pulled away with a snarl. “She’s dying. What use will she be to us?”
Mason sucked in his breath, too loud, and the wolf turned his attention suddenly to Mason, his eyes flickering dark amber in the early morning light.
“But your scent…” the wolf said.
He left Cecily to her captor and approached Mason.
Cecily stared at the wolf’s back, her mouth pressed into a flat, hard line, her eyes so full of hatred it was impossible not to see.
Mason held his ground but knew he was taking a risk doing it. The wolf had no softness about him at all. His eyes blazed with the fire of a barely satisfied heat and if Mason had to bet, he’d put everything he had on the fact that this wolf wasn’t one to use repression drugs.
He’d probably burned out his heat in the ass of one of his human or wolf companions and was running on pure self-control at the moment.
Mason had always believed that the wolves were primed to combust at the slightest provocation—that was what the heat season survival training was about—and that was the danger of the human scent trigger. Five had proved that it wasn’t always as straightforward as that, but this wolf?
This was a wolf ready to let his instincts loose on any human in his path and maim and murder, all in the name of preserving his alien ways.
Mason forced his pent up breath out in a slow and careful exhale.
The wolf sniffed at Mason’s collar, then drew his nose up by Mason’s ear. He sniffed deeply at Mason’s hair and a soft growl rose in his throat. “You’ve been marked. I recognize the scent.”
The wolf’s comment brought so many questions flooding into Mason’s thoughts that he had to be ruthless in shoving them aside. Right now, right here, Five and the others, they didn’t matter.
His survival was at stake and he wasn’t going to let himself fuck this up.
“We were with some wolves yesterday. Could have been one of them. The alpha took me for a mate, for a while, but we got away.”
The wolf pulled back and stared at Mason. One look into those eyes was all it took for Mason to know the wolf knew he was lying.
Mason cracked. “They let us go. I don’t know why. Just abandoned us last night.”
He glimpsed Cecily glaring toward him.
The wolf looked to Jay.
Jay seemed to know exactly what the wolf wanted. “Mason Waters,” he said. “He was one of the renegades I tried to bring in before Greer was captured. He didn’t commit fast enough. Shit happened and by the time I got back to the group, him and his brother had gotten involved in that mess with that nuisance friend of Greer’s. The deal fell through.”
The wolf turned away.
Jay said, “Just take him and let’s—”
“Hush. Save your orders for your humans.”
Jay hushed.
The wolf returned his disturbing gaze to Mason. “You can join us—if you know your place.” His hand came up and he drew his first two fingers along Mason’s jaw. “I would much rather fuck you than kill you. Of course, as intoxicating as your scent is, I’ll probably fuck you either way so don’t base your answer on an aversion to submission. You will submit.”
Whoa. Whoa the fuck way down was all Mason could think. His body shook beneath his skin. His chest ached in a way he couldn’t explain. His back was ramrod stiff and his mouth as dry as a creek that hadn’t seen water in a year.
