by J. L. Wilder
“What?”
“She’s got a fever. Something’s wrong. We’re going to have to grab her and go.” He scooped the omega up in his arms—she was so light—and tossed her over his shoulder. “Go. Run. We have to get out of here, fast.”
Pax didn’t ask questions. He turned and ran back the way they had come. Emmett followed, trying not to jostle the girl too much. The last thing they needed was for her to wake up, confused and feverish, and start screaming.
But the exit from the bunker went as well as the infiltration had. They met no one. When they reached the outer door, the guard Pax had knocked out was still down. “Get the door,” Emmett said quietly.
Pax reached out and opened it.
“Get ‘em, boys!”
There was the sound of several motorcycles ripping to life. Emmett knew that sound like he knew the sound of his packmates’ breathing, and he didn’t have to look to understand. The kidnappers, whoever they were, had probably known Emmett and Pax were inside all this time. They had been waiting to ambush.
And they were on bikes.
“Run!” Emmett bellowed, knowing already that it wouldn’t be enough. “Shift and go! That’s an order, Pax!”
Pax tossed Emmett one agonized look before submitting, leaping for his wolf form and sprinting into the woods.
None of the bikers chased him. Emmett hadn’t thought they would. He was standing right here, after all, and he was the one with the omega in hand. She was all they really cared about, he was sure.
“Turn around,” said a voice from behind Emmett. Emmett pivoted slowly.
Three of them. Three men on bikes.
Not as bad as he’d feared. He had thought he might see dozens of them. Against three, he stood a chance.
“Put the omega down,” the one in the middle said.
Emmett shook his head. They wouldn’t get him to comply that easily. “No.”
The men glanced at each other. Then the man in the middle—he must be the alpha, Emmett thought—dropped his hand, pulled out a pistol, and aimed it squarely at the center of Emmett’s forehead. “Drop the omega,” he said.
“And what, you’ll just let me walk away?”
The man showed his teeth. “I definitely won’t let you walk away if you don’t put her down,” he said. “How about that?”
“How about we wake her up and ask her who she wants to go with,” Emmett suggested, his voice as casual as if he were proposing a bar where they might all meet up for a drink later. He hoped they couldn’t hear how fast his heart was racing.
“How about you eat lead,” the man on the left growled. He had a rat-like face and a wiry build.
“Quiet, Edgar,” said the alpha. “You’re not even armed.” He relaxed the hand holding his gun a little. “I see what’s going on here. Big boy wants to be a hero, is that it? Wants to save the little omega girl? Maybe take her back to her rich family, collect a reward? How much did they offer, hmm?”
Emmett didn’t answer. He wasn’t going to tell this man anything.
The man cocked his gun. “Put her down and back away,” he said. “Or I shoot.”
Then several things happened at once.
To Emmett’s left and right, two massive figures came streaking through the woods. He saw them in his peripheral vision and could just make out the forms of massive wolves. Mine or theirs?
The question was answered as the wolves dove at the bikes. The alpha roared in response and kicked his bike to life, spraying dust in the face of the nearest wolf. We are outnumbered, Emmett thought, but just as he did, two more wolves emerged from behind the bikes. One sank his teeth into the far-right biker’s calf. The man let out an enraged howl.
The situation was in hand, and there was only one thing to do. Emmett ran. He sprinted dead into the trees, moving as quickly as he could, desperate to put as much distance between himself and the kidnappers as was possible before they decided to come after him.
After some time, he heard the pounding of paws behind him. They pulled up on either side of him. They encircled him and forced him, finally, to slow.
One by one, they shifted.
He stood surrounded by his pack, all of them out of breath, all of them grinning with exertion after their fight. Dart had blood smeared across his face, and now he wiped it away with the back of his hand. Judah’s eyes were red and watering. Otherwise, they looked unharmed.
“You got her,” Xander said.
“Let’s get out of here, okay?” Emmett said. “They could come after us.”
“They won’t,” Pax said. “We left them unconscious.”
“Well, there might be more of them, Pax. Can we get to safety before we stop and shoot the breeze, please?”
Pax rolled his eyes, but he resumed his wolf form. So did the others. They formed a tight circle around Emmett and the omega, guarding them on all sides as they made their way back to the tent in the cornfield.
Chapter Five
HAZEL
Hazel blinked her way out of the darkness that encompassed her. The shapes moving around her were blurry and confusing, and the voices were unfamiliar. She struggled to understand what was going on.
“We don’t have to just hand her over,” someone said. “We could say we never found her. We could take her with us.”
“That’s not what we do.” Another voice now. He sounded irritated, short tempered, and Hazel fought to sit up, sensing that this was a conversation she ought to be a part of.
A hand landed on her shoulder, pressing down, easing her back into the darkness. She felt something cool on her forehead.
She drifted away.
The next time she awoke, her vision was clear. And her surroundings had changed.
The ground beneath her was soft. That was the first thing she noticed. And while it was cool, it wasn’t the horrible cold of the wet concrete in her cell. There was light here, too, enough for her to see what was going on around her. Enough for her to see that she was surrounded by unfamiliar men.
She sat bolt upright, terrified.
Someone caught her by the shoulders and braced her, helping her to sit up. “Take it easy,” he said quietly. “You’ve been out for a few days.”
She looked up. He was tall and muscular, with close cropped dark hair. He was naked from the waist up, and her breath caught in her throat at the sight of him. He was so good looking that she almost lost her newfound strength and collapsed to the ground again.
He was so good looking that it took a minute for the fear to hit.
When it did, though, it was razor sharp. “Who are you?” she asked, her voice wavering like aluminum foil.
“Emmett Burke,” he said. “I’m the alpha of the Hell’s Wolves.”
“You...you kidnapped me?”
“No,” he said. “We rescued you. We were hired by your pack. We’re going to take you home.”
“I’m telling you, they’re not going to take her back,” another voice said. Hazel looked over and saw that the speaker was a younger man, lean and wiry with black hair that fell into his eyes. “Not with that mark on her.”
“And I’m telling you, we don’t keep omegas,” Emmett Burke said. “We have to be ready to move at all times. We can’t afford to be weighed down by passengers.”
“They’ll take me back,” Hazel said, although she wasn’t sure. She looked down at her arm, where the tattoo had been inked. To her surprise, the image was red and inflamed. “Is that— ?”
“Infected,” Emmett said. “You’ve had a pretty high fever for a few days now. Dart, over there, stole you some antibiotics, and we’ve been giving you water. You should try to eat something, though. It’s been a while since you had any food.”
“I am hungry,” she realized.
He nodded. “What were they giving you? The pack that was holding you?”
“The Savage Rangers,” she remembered.
Dart snorted. Apparently, he didn’t find the name particularly threatening. Well, that was fine fo
r him. He hadn’t been there. He hadn’t had his clothing cut away, hadn’t been held down in a chair and branded with these slash marks. He could laugh at the Savage Rangers.
“Get her something to eat, Dart,” Emmett said. Hazel could tell by the tone of his voice that it was an order. Dart rolled his eyes, but he ducked through the flap of the tent, presumably off to wherever the Hell’s Wolves got their food.
“What were the Savage Rangers feeding you?” another man said. This one was the tallest man in the tent—she could tell even though they were sitting down—and the only blonde. It was a dirty sort of blonde, but he still stood out from the others.
“Bread,” she said. “There was always bread. Maybe other things too. It was hard to tell in the dark.” She shuddered a little, remembering. “I didn’t want to eat it at first. But when I thought about it, I realized they couldn’t be trying to poison me.”
“No,” the blonde man agreed, looking up at Emmett. “There’d be no point in kidnapping her to kill her.”
“Omegas are rarely killed, even by the worst of our kind,” Emmett agreed. “They’re just too valuable.”
“So, you know I’m an omega?”
“Of course, we do,” Emmett said. “When your pack hired us, they gave us all the information. They told us what you looked like, how old you were, what you were last wearing...” Here he trailed off, and Hazel realized suddenly that she was still in nothing but her bra and panties. She clutched the blanket that had been wrapped around her more tightly.
Emmett seemed to understand the gesture. “Pax, give her one of your t-shirts, will you?”
The blonde man—Pax, Hazel surmised—rummaged in a duffel bag and emerged with a forest green t-shirt.
Limbs feeling as though she hadn’t used them in weeks, Hazel clumsily pulled it over her head.
“They didn’t tell us everything,” said a fourth voice.
The new speaker was easily the youngest man in the tent, even including Dart, who had left. Hazel thought he looked about fifteen. He had the brightest blue eyes she had ever seen in her life and hair that didn’t look like it had ever been seen to by a mother. It was shoulder length and jaggedly cut, as though he’d done it himself.
“What do you mean?” Emmett asked.
“Her name,” the boy said. “They didn’t give us her name. Remember?”
“They didn’t tell you my name?” Hazel blinked.
“That’s common,” Emmett said. “Alphas who’ve lost an omega don’t usually spend a lot of time filling us in on the nuances of her personality.”
“My name isn’t a nuance, though.”
“What is it?” the boy asked.
“Hazel,” she said.
“Hazel Cavallon?”
“No. Hazel Lang.” She, like the rest of her pack, had taken the alpha’s name as her own. But now she hesitated. “How do you know that? About the Cavallon thing?”
“Your alpha told us,” the boy said. “He said you were a direct descendant of the Cavallon line.”
“That’s enough, Xander,” Emmett said.
“What’s the big deal?” the boy asked. “It’s not like we even know what the Cavallon line is.”
Maybe he didn’t. But by the silence in the tent, Hazel got the sense that the other three men—Emmett, Pax, and the one whose name she hadn’t yet learned—had at least some concept of the significance of it. How could they not? The Cavallons were famous. It was a name every shifter knew. And these men were definitely shifters. Even if they hadn’t been talking about omegas and the name of their pack, she would have known by the scent of them.
Dart reentered the tent with an oblong foil wrapped package. He handed it to Emmett who opened it. It turned out to be a warm baked potato. “Fresh out of the fire,” Dart said.
“Eat it all,” Emmett said to Hazel. “You need your strength.”
“Are you really going to take me back to my family?” she asked.
The others exchanged looks, but Emmett ignored them. “Yes,” he said firmly. “We’ll take you back in the morning. The sun’s about to go down, and I don’t want to move you in the dark.”
“They’ll take me back,” Hazel said. As if on cue, the tattoo on her arm twinged painfully. “I know they will. They love me.” They loved her not just as an omega but as a person. They wouldn’t give up on her.
Would they?
Emmett nodded, but said nothing.
Hazel broke off bits of potato between her fingers and ate gingerly but steadily. After the terrible food the Savage Rangers had given her, it tasted better than her birthday feast.
“Judah, can you take the first watch?” Emmett asked.
Judah was a thickset man with a full beard. He looked as though his movements should be slow or clumsy, and Hazel was surprised to see him rise fluidly to his feet and head out through the flap of the tent. “Where is he going?” she asked.
“He’ll walk the perimeter while we get some sleep,” Emmett said. “Make sure things are safe.”
“Do you think the Savage Rangers are still out there?”
“It’s possible they tracked us here,” Emmett said. “But you don’t have to worry. My pack are all good fighters, and we’ll protect you. We’re not going to let them take you again.”
“Why are you doing this?” she asked. “What’s in it for you?”
Emmett didn’t answer.
But Dart wasn’t shy. “Pay,” he said. “Your pack is paying us to bring you back safe. We’re not going to let anyone hurt you because if we do, they won’t give us the promised price.”
“Oh.” She should have known. Of course, Matthew would use money to solve any problem that came his way. And could she blame him? He had the resources. Why shouldn’t he use his money to get her back. She was glad he had.
Still, it was almost as hard to get to sleep surrounded by this strange and wild pack as it had been in her prison cell.
THE NEXT TIME SHE WOKE, there was a hand pressed over her mouth.
Terror flamed within her. She tried to scream, but the noise was stifled. “Hush!” a low voice said, right in her ear.
Emmett. She stilled, forced herself to breathe.
“I’m going to take my hand away,” he said. “Don’t scream.”
She nodded.
Slowly, he eased his hand away.
For a moment, she nearly did scream. Just as he let her go, a gunshot sounded from outside, followed by the frantic whimper of a dog—or a wolf. She darted a frantic glance at Emmett, and he pressed a finger firmly to his lips.
Savage Rangers? she mouthed.
He nodded.
She made a gun shape with her hand. Who?
He shook his head. He didn’t know.
This must be killing him, she thought. That was his pack out there. Nobody but the two of them remained in the tent. Yet he’d stayed with her, stood guard the way he’d promised to.
Now, he pointed at the back wall of the tent with one hand and beckoned with the other.
She shook her head frantically. She couldn’t move. She could barely think.
Just as urgently, he nodded and beckoned harder.
Hazel squeezed her eyes shut, steeled herself, and moved.
She slipped beneath the tent wall and was immediately running, crouched low, rows of corn giving way before her. The gunshots she’d heard from the tent seemed even louder now that she was outside, and for a horrible moment, she thought she’d started running in the wrong direction and that she’d break into a clearing and see the shootout at any moment.
Emmett darted past her. He was astonishingly fast for his size. He caught her hand in his and pulled her along so quickly that she thought she might fall in his wake. Somehow, she managed to keep her feet.
Somehow, she kept running.
Eventually, the gunshots faded into the distance.
Hazel didn’t know whether they’d stopped shooting or if she and Emmett had simply run so far that they couldn’t hear the shots anymore
. The latter explanation seemed unlikely. A gunshot could be heard for miles around, couldn’t it?
Hazel had no idea.
“This way,” Emmett said, still speaking under his breath. He turned left and led her in a path perpendicular to the one along which they’d been running.
“Where are we going?” she asked.
“I don’t know.”
“You’re going to leave the others?”
“I’m getting you away. That was the agreement. We all talked about it. If anything happened, whoever was closest to you would be responsible for getting you out.”
“But how can you just leave them?”
“Do you want me to leave you here and go back?” His voice rose a little.
“N-no.”
“Do you think I like this? Those are my brothers. But if one of them had been in my place, I would have expected them to stick to the plan. I can’t ask one thing of them and do something different myself.” He sighed. “Besides, we need the money.”
“Someone got shot,” Hazel said.
He nodded. “They’re together. They’re good fighters. They’ll help each other. And the fight should end quickly when the Savage Rangers realize you aren’t there.”
“What’ll happen then?” Hazel asked.
“Then they’ll come after us,” Emmett said. “So, it would be a good idea if we got ourselves away from here before that happens.”
“But where will we go?” she asked. “Back to my pack?”
“No, that won’t be safe right now,” Emmett said. “They know where your house is.”
“Then my family’s in danger! We have to go!”
Emmett shook his head. “I don’t think they are,” he said. “I think they’ll send someone to watch the place and see if you try to go back there, but they won’t pick a fight if they don’t have to. The only way your family will be in danger is if you’re with them.”
“And the only way your family will be in danger is if I’m with them.”
Emmett nodded. “That’s about the size of it.”
“So, we have to stay away from everybody.”
“It’s all right,” he said. “I’ve got some money. I can get us a hotel room.”
