by J. L. Wilder
“We’re not going to try and figure out where the rest of your pack went?” Hazel asked.
“Nothing we can tell from this,” Emmett said.
“We can tell one thing,” Hazel countered.
“What’s that?”
“It’s not enough blood for someone to have died,” Hazel said.
“It is if they carried him off to die somewhere else.” Speaking the words made Emmett feel like vomiting.
But Hazel shook her head. “If they carried him off, there would be a trail of blood. Whoever left this stayed still long enough to patch up his wound and then left. I bet it was one of yours. The Savage Raiders wouldn’t have stopped to clean themselves up. They took off the moment they realized I wasn’t here.”
She was right. Emmett had to admit, he was impressed. “That’s true,” he said.
“See?” she said. “I could be a tracker.”
“All right, maybe you could. With a lot of training.” Training she wouldn’t get, once she was returned to her own pack. No one would train an omega for tracking. She had much more important work to do.
He tipped his head toward the place he’d left his bike while they’d camped here, and Hazel followed him into the corn.
When they reached the place where the bikes had been parked, Emmett got another piece of good news. All four of his packmates’ bikes were gone.
He rested a hand on the seat of his own bike, thinking hard. “They could have taken them, though,” he murmured.
Hazel came up behind him. “Who could have taken what?”
He looked back at her. “My packmates’ bikes are missing. I was thinking that the Savage Rangers might have stolen them.”
“Oh.” Hazel hesitated, then shook her head. “No.”
“No?”
“Doesn’t make any sense. Why would they steal four motorcycles and leave one behind? And even if they had done that, it would be a pretty wild coincidence for the one they left back to just happen to be yours.”
“I guess that’s true.” He was impressed all over again. Pampered omega she might have been, but Hazel Lang had a real instinct for survival. If she’d been a young man, he probably would have invited her to join the Hell’s Wolves.
A rush of pleasure filled him at that idea, taking him by surprise. Stop it, he told himself firmly. We’re not having her in the pack. An omega’s the worst thing that could happen to us. Imagine a pregnancy— a litter! —on the road. No. And besides, she was a job. He had committed to returning her to her family.
“Get on,” he said, swinging a leg over his bike.
She eyed it with some trepidation. “Is it safe?”
“Hell of a lot safer than staying here and waiting for the Savage Rangers to catch up to us. Get on.”
She nodded, apparently seeing the sense in that, and clambered awkwardly onto the back of the bike. It couldn’t have been more obvious that she’d never ridden before in her life.
“Hang on,” he said.
“To what?”
“To me.”
Hesitantly, she put her arms around his waist.
Emmett thought about how long it had been since he’d touched a woman.
He pushed the idea aside, engaged his bike’s engine, and drove them carefully out of the corn.
Chapter Seven
HAZEL
The roar of the motorcycle scared Hazel, and so did the feel of the wind rushing past her fast enough to sting her skin. But there was something oddly exhilarating about it too. Never in her life had she moved so fast!
Her entire world shrank down to Emmett’s torso, which she clung to for dear life. It was as if they were in a hurricane and his body was a tree trunk. He was her only chance at not being swept away.
She didn’t know where he was going. She hadn’t thought to ask. She only knew that her life and her safety were in this stranger’s hands.
He was wild. A wild alpha. Leader of a wild pack. Her own family would be horrified if they could see who she was with.
No, they wouldn’t, she thought suddenly. They hired him, didn’t they? They wanted him to find me. Wild or not, they put their trust in Emmett. If they trusted him, I should do the same. After all, Matthew was her alpha. He had always known what was best for her.
So, she would put her faith in the wild man to whose waist she now clung. It was what her alpha wanted. Even though no direct order had been given, Hazel would obey. It was the best way to ensure that she got home safely.
She just hoped Emmett would find some real food before their next meal. That beef jerky had tasted like it had been found in a dumpster. She knew she was on the run and couldn’t afford to be picky, but...wow. Was that really the kind of thing wild packs ate? Why would anybody choose to be wild if that was what was on the menu?
She rested her cheek against Emmett’s back and closed her eyes. Somewhere behind her, the Savage Rangers had probably turned around. They were probably working their way back, trying to pick up her scent again. She wondered if they would be smart enough to realize that she and Emmett were on a bike now.
She hoped not. Maybe they would be able to lose their pursuers. But how long would she have to stay with him before it would be safe for her to return home.
To her surprise, the thought of being stuck with Emmett didn’t bother her as much as she would have expected it to. She wanted to get back home, but at the same time, there was something sort of exciting about all this. In the ordinary course of events, she would never have gotten to ride a motorcycle. She would never have gotten to examine the scene of a fight, looking for clues. Hell, even tasting the jerky had been fun, in a daring sort of way. When she got home, she would be mated with a member of the Coywolves, mated for life, and immediately put to work breeding. It was nice to have one big adventure first.
As long as the Savage Rangers didn’t catch up with them. She thought she’d rather die than go back to them.
They rode throughout the night and on into the early dawn. At one point, the highway they were on met an interchange with a different road, and Emmett took the exit and began traveling west instead of south. Again, Hazel wondered whether this was part of a deliberate plan or simply a mindless flight. Had Emmett taken that exit because he thought it was a good idea to change directions? Or were they actually headed somewhere?
Just after dawn, they pulled in at another motel. This one was a little less seedy looking than the last, for which Hazel was grateful. She slid off the motorcycle and found that her legs were shaking.
Emmett caught her. “It’s normal to feel a little wobbly after a long ride, if you’re not used to it,” he said, and swept her up into his arms.
She scowled. “You don’t have to carry me.” But the truth was that she didn’t mind. He was incredibly strong, and there was something charming about it. Besides, her legs really did feel like noodles.
Emmett sat her on a chair inside the lobby while he went to rent a room. Hazel used the time to look around. The lobby in particular was classy looking, with a floor that she was almost sure was fake marble but looked real, and that was better than nothing. There was a stack of magazines on a low wooden coffee table and a coffee pot with carry-out paper cups stacked beside it. Hazel got up, wobbled over, and poured herself a cup of coffee.
The warmth of it! It had been so long since she’d tasted anything familiar or comforting. This wasn’t very good coffee—it was weak and kind of burned—but it was still coffee, and after days of warm, rusty tasting water, it was the best thing Hazel could imagine.
Emmett turned around, key in hand, and walked over to her. “Got your sea legs?”
She nodded.
“We’ve got room 201. Let’s go.”
Room 201 was on the second floor of the motel, which according to Emmett, was good because it would be cleaner and more secure. “We’ll try to get a few hours’ sleep,” he said. “Then we’ll have to get up and keep moving.”
“Can’t we have some dinner?” Hazel asked
.
“We’ll have breakfast when we wake up,” he said. “I don’t have any food right now.”
“I’m not going to be able to sleep if I can’t eat something,” Hazel protested. Her stomach was rumbling loudly, and it felt like forever since the beef jerky.
“Just try,” Emmett said testily.
She opened her mouth to argue, but Emmett had dropped into the bed nearest the door and now rolled away from her, effectively shutting her out. She could see that he wasn’t going to be swayed. And sure enough, within moments, he was snoring. It must be a skill that wild shifters had, she thought. She could see how it would be beneficial for someone like him to be able to fall asleep in any situation, no matter how uncomfortable or difficult.
But for Hazel, sleep felt miles away. Every time she closed her eyes, fear crept in. Being in the dark made her feel as if she were back in her cell, back with the Savage Rangers, waiting to see what they would do to her next. She ran her fingers absently over her still healing tattoo and wondered what Matthew would say when he saw it. She was willing to bet she would be forced to wear long sleeves for the rest of her life to cover that mark up.
Maybe I can get a different tattoo. Maybe they’ll be able to turn this design into something else.
She tossed and turned, trying to disengage her brain and get some rest, but the prediction she’d made to Emmett turned out to be correct. She was too hungry to sleep. She would never be able to shut out the world with her stomach gnawing the way it was.
“Emmett,” she whispered.
No response.
“Emmett,” she said aloud.
Nothing. He was out cold.
She got up and quietly made her way to the pile of things on his bedside table. He had dropped his worn looking wallet here, and she picked it up and opened it. She didn’t want to take much from him. Would ten dollars be enough? She carefully slid a bill out and pocketed it. Then she picked up the key to the room and slid that into her other pocket.
She hesitated at the door. The last time she’d gone outside when she wasn’t supposed to, it had led directly to her being kidnapped.
But that wouldn’t happen now. The Savage Rangers weren’t here. And besides, Hazel was smarter now than she’d been then. She was more aware of her surroundings. She would be careful.
She just wanted to see if there was some food in the lobby. That was all. And then she’d come right back.
From the balcony outside the room, Hazel was able to look out over the parking lot and to ascertain that the coast was clear. Emmett’s motorcycle was still the only vehicle in the parking lot—this motel was clearly having a very slow day. She could see the lobby from here, only a few yards away. She jogged down the stairs and across the lot and pulled open the door.
The woman at the reception desk looked up as she entered. “Is the room all right?” she asked.
“The room is great,” Hazel said. “Thank you.”
“What can I help you with?”
“I was wondering if...by chance, do you sell food? Or have a vending machine?”
“I’m sorry,” the receptionist said. “Machine’s broken down. There’s a fast food joint about a mile up the highway, if you’re hungry.”
But that was farther than Hazel dared go by herself. “You haven’t got anything?” she asked, feeling a bit desperate. “I have ten dollars.”
The woman frowned doubtfully. “I have a couple of granola bars in my backpack.”
“I’ll give you ten dollars for them,” Hazel begged.
“Ma’am, are you all right?” the receptionist asked. “Do you want me to call someone?”
“I’m fine,” Hazel said. “Just hungry.”
“That man you’re with...he’s not...he doesn’t have you here against your will or anything?”
“Emmett? No, no. He’s...” What? What was Emmett to her? “He’s my friend,” she said finally. “We’re on a road trip together.” She supposed you could call it a road trip, at any rate. “It’s just been a while since our last meal, and I don’t know how to drive the motorcycle, so I can’t really go get anything.” She was surprised at how easily the story came to her. It was as if she’d been lying all her life.
Which, in a way, she supposed she had. Hadn’t her whole life, so far, been a kind of performance? Hadn’t she spent years pretending to the Coywolves that she was fine with the idea of being mated to one of them?
And that isn’t really what I want.
It was the first time she’d articulated the thought to herself. It was sort of liberating. It was also sort of like falling. The life she was destined for was a life she didn’t quite want for herself. That was a frightening thing to admit to, even in the privacy of her own mind.
And besides, what else was there for an omega like her?
The receptionist seemed to buy what Hazel was saying. “Well, you can have my granola bars, if you’re that hungry,” she said. “I’m probably not going to eat them anyway. But, fair warning, they’ve been in my backpack for a few days.”
“I don’t care,” Hazel said sincerely. She put the ten-dollar bill down on the counter.
“No, hey, keep your money,” the receptionist said. “I’m not going to take ten bucks for a couple of old granola bars. You can have them.”
“Are you sure?”
“Sure, I’m sure.” The woman bent down below the desk for a moment and came up holding two wrapped bars. “Here. Hope you enjoy ‘em.”
Hazel pocketed her money and accepted the bars. “Thank you,” she said fervently, and headed out of the lobby and into the open parking lot.
And stopped.
Emmett was sprinting across the lot toward her, half manic, moving so quickly that she barely had time for a thought before he reached her side. They found us, was the thought.
The Savage Rangers.
Then he had her by the shoulders and was shaking her so hard that she dropped her granola bars into the gravel of the parking lot. “What the hell is the matter with you?” he shouted. “I woke up and you were gone! I thought they’d come and taken you while I was asleep! What are you doing out here?”
Hazel was shocked into silence. This was an Emmett she had never seen before. He was so angry that he looked as if he might actually explode. The Emmett she knew was a steadying presence on a motorcycle, a cool hand on her forehead when she burned with fever, a guide through the night when she was being pursued by kidnappers. But now, for the first time, she felt an immediate, visceral fear of him. For the first time, she thought he might lose control and hurt her.
He closed his eyes, released her shoulders, and took several deep breaths.
“Back inside,” he said shortly. By the clip in his voice, she knew that he was still angry. “Now!”
She walked past him and back to the room. He followed close behind her.
Only when they were upstairs with the door shut and locked did he relax. He dropped to a seat on the bed and buried his face in his hands, still breathing heavily for several minutes.
Hazel didn’t know what to say or how to respond. She took a seat in the center of her own bed. Now that her heart rate was starting to return to normal, questions were beginning to seep in. It had been strange to see Emmett panic like that. Okay, she knew she was worth something to him—he was being paid for her safe return, and she imagined Matthew would probably have offered a substantial reward, given how much money she knew he had. But why would losing a bounty upset Emmett so much? She would have expected ire and frustration, but he had completely lost control.
Finally, after a long time, he looked up. “What the hell did you think you were doing?” he asked hoarsely.
“I was hungry,” she said, and found that her own voice came out just barely above a whisper.
“You were hungry.”
“I’ve barely eaten anything, Emmett. In ages. You gave me that food I didn’t even like last night, and there was the potato—that was good—but before that I was with the Sa
vage Rangers for days.”
“I told you I’d get you breakfast in the morning,” he said.
“For days, Emmett.”
“You said they were feeding you.”
“Well, they weren’t feeding me much.”
“You still can’t leave the hotel room alone. What if they’d been out there?”
“They weren’t. I checked.”
“You checked.” He closed his eyes. “Do you think you’re better at checking than they are at hiding?”
“You said I might be a good tracker.”
“With training,” I said. “Training that I guarantee you every single one of those Savage Rangers already has. They could easily have bagged you, Hazel. You got lucky. That’s all.”
“I just wanted to go to the vending machine,” she whispered.
“It’s out of order. We saw that on the way in. You didn’t notice?”
She shook her head mutely.
“A tracker would have noticed that,” he said, some of the bite going out of his voice.
“I wasn’t paying attention then—”
“A tracker is always paying attention.”
She bowed her head.
A moment later, there was a soft sound as something landed beside her on the bed. She turned to look and her eyes went wide. “You got the granola bars.”
“I saw you drop them,” he said. “Where did you get them?”
“The receptionist gave them to me.”
Emmett inhaled sharply. “You shouldn’t have talked to her.”
“Why not?”
“Because she’ll remember you now,” he said. “If the Savage Rangers come looking, if they start asking questions...before, she would have reported a couple who rented a room for a few hours, and that would maybe seem suspicious. But now, she’ll be able to tell them about a girl who seemed really hungry. And that’s definitely suspicious.”
“Are we in trouble?” she asked.
“We were already in trouble,” Emmett said, which didn’t really answer her question.
“Emmett?”
