by J. L. Wilder
Mark shook his head. “We can’t do that,” he said. “They’ll go after Maddy and the others.”
“So, then what?” Amy asked. She slid down to sit in the dirt and looked up at him, and he was aware, for the first time since they’d made their escape, of just how young she really was. She was only a kid. It was wrong that she was caught up in all of this. And yet, she hadn’t complained once, had even gone out of her way to make preparations that would keep their family safe. He was ashamed for ever having thought that Amy might leave them. She was a Hell’s Wolf through and through.
“What we have to do,” he said, “is go on the offensive.”
“You mean attack them?”
“That’s what I mean. They’re probably going back to the house. It’s what I would do. Whoever’s in charge will have wanted a contingent there in case we decided to come back. We go back there, and we run them out.
She clearly thought he was crazy. “They have guns, Mark. We have...well, nothing.”
He nodded. “You should stay here,” he said.
“Like hell. I’m not letting you go off and fight them alone.”
“You know I can order you.”
“You’re such an asshole.”
“I’m the asshole who’s not going to let you get killed,” he said. “I can handle them, Amy.”
“No,” she said. “You can’t. “You’re a good fighter, Mark, but you can’t take on multiple men with guns. It’s impossible.”
He sighed. She had a point. In all likelihood, he was going to get himself killed. “I have to try,” he said. “I have to take out as many of them as I can. I can’t let them get their hands on anyone else in our pack. I can’t let them find you. I can’t let them find Maddy. The babies...”
“Don’t do it,” she said. “Don’t go in by yourself.”
“What would you do if you were me?” he asked.
“Wait,” she said. “Something could still change. Wait for better circumstances. Wait for more information. Just wait.”
And because Mark didn’t have any better ideas, he nodded and slid down to sit beside her.
HARLEY BOLTED INWARD toward the grove where his family had settled in to sleep at the sound of the scream. Maddy—Maddy—Maddy—If they were hurting her, if they were hurting the babies, he was going to peel their skin off and break their bones one by one.
But it wasn’t Maddy.
It was Reese.
When Harley burst onto the scene, he saw the red-haired man, Rocco, who’d passed below them while they were in the trees, holding Reese in a headlock, one arm twisted violently behind his back. “Is that her?” the man asked. “Is that the omega?”
His eyes were fixed on a patch of darkness. Harley couldn’t see what was there, but he could guess. It had to be Piper.
“No,” Reese gasped. His voice rasped, as though he was having trouble breathing. Harley wanted to jump on the Death Fang and sink his teeth into the man’s flesh, but he didn’t think he’d been spotted yet. Better to hang back as long as he could, as painful as that might be.
“Who is it then?” the man demanded.
“Just my sister...we’re camping...”
“We know you’re not fucking camping,” said another voice. It was the big man, the one Maddy had told him was the alpha. “You’re shifters, both of you. We aren’t stupid. You’re with that pack, the one that stole from us.”
“No—”
“Look, son,” the alpha said in a grandfatherly tone that made Harley’s hackles raise. “I already know who you are. I already know why you’re here, and who you’re with. This will go better for you if you just tell me what you know. If that’s not our omega, then where is she?”
“I don’t know anything about an omega.” Reese spoke through gritted teeth. Harley felt a surge of pride in his young protege.
The alpha obviously felt something different. “Rocco, break his arm.”
Harley’s fragile control snapped. Snarling and snapping, he hurled himself into the clearing and landed squarely on Rocco’s chest, driving him away from Reese and into the dirt.
Rocco screamed as Harley tore into the meat of his arm. In periphery, he could see that Piper and Reese—who must have shifted as soon as the fight had started—had jumped on the big alpha. Someone had sunk their teeth into his neck. The man was roaring and beating whoever it was on the head with his fists, but he hadn’t shifted, probably couldn’t shift, as long as Harley’s packmates had a grip on him.
Rocco shoved Harley away. Harley felt blood on his muzzle, tasted the acidic tang of it, didn’t care. Fuck this man. Fuck his whole pack. How dare they think they could buy and sell women? How dare they do what they had done to Maddy?
Where is Maddy?
He couldn’t think too hard about it. As long as the Death Fangs were focused on him—and on Piper and Reese, which he couldn’t allow to continue for long—it meant they didn’t have Maddy. She must have managed to hide.
Rocco pulled out a gun and cocked it. Harley, who had been about to jump on him again, froze. He drew back on his haunches, a growl rippling out from his throat, hackles high, ears back.
“Shouldn’t have brought fangs to a gun fight,” Rocco said, grinning maliciously. “Give us the omega now and no one gets hurt.”
Harley looked pointedly over at the other fight. Piper and Reese still had the Death Fangs’ alpha tangled up. The man was bleeding copiously from the neck, although it looked like he had broken the grip of whoever had bitten him there. One of the kids—it was Piper, Harley could see now that he was standing down—had gotten her jaws around the man’s ankle and was holding him still. The alpha made as if to whack her in the head, but Reese snapped his teeth shut on the palm of the man’s hand.
The implication was clear. Unless you stand down, my pack will keep hurting your alpha. And he’s losing.
Then, another voice spoke up. “Okay, let’s all just calm down.”
Mark’s heart sank. He knew immediately who the speaker was, knew immediately what had happened to them and how. He’d allowed himself to be one-upped. He’d been stupid not to anticipate this.
The man with the ratlike face—Max—appeared from behind a tree. He also had a gun in his hand, and his face bore a wide smile that would have made Harley want to punch his teeth in even if his blood wasn’t already up. It was a loathsome face, a loathsome expression. Max gave a tug behind him, pulled Maddy into the clearing, and pressed his gun to her temple.
Tears streamed down Maddy’s face. Her hand was on her belly. Harley knew she was thinking of her children. If Max pulled the trigger, they would be killed.
“Everyone stand down,” Max said, “or the omega gets it in the head.”
SOMETIME IN HIS SLEEP, Jamie must have rolled away from Maddy, because when he woke, she was gone.
He heard the screams from a little way off, heard the snarls and the yells, the sounds of fighting. Silently, he stripped off his clothes—what little he still wore after his frolic with Maddy—and shifted, hunkering low to the ground, creeping behind bushes and through patches of tall grass, working his way closer to the sounds of the fight.
Along his way, he was vigilant, trying to pick up any trace of Maddy. She wasn’t where he’d left her last night, which made him think she must be involved in the fight. He picked up speed. He couldn’t move too quickly—he had to get the lay of the land before thrusting himself into the fray, so he very badly wanted to see what was going on before anyone saw him. But if he waited too long, he might be too late.
Finally, he found them. Two small wolves—Piper and Reese—harrying the alpha who had passed this way last night. He must have come back. And another man, the red haired one, had a gun on Harley. Jamie could have killed him where he stood for that. You don’t pull a gun on a Driscoll brother. It took everything in him to hold still and wait. Maddy was still out of sight. He couldn’t move until he knew where she was and whether she was all right.
And then, the th
ird Death Fang stepped into the clearing with Maddy and held a gun to her face. His voice rang out. “Everyone stand down or the omega gets it in the head.”
Harley froze. Piper and Reese abandoned their attack and scampered to flank him, and the burly alpha Death Fang got to his feet. He was bleeding badly from several wounds and cursing loudly, and through his fear and horror, Jamie felt a fierce stab of pride. The kids had done remarkably well.
The man with Maddy—Jamie thought he remembered this one being called Max—lowered his gun. Jamie breathed again.
“All right,” the alpha said. “Rocco, you take her. I can’t deal with a passenger right now, fucking kids.”
“What about these?” Max gestured at Piper, Reese, and Harley with his gun.
The alpha glanced at them. “Shoot them,” he said carelessly. “I want to get home.”
Jamie charged.
Someone howled as he plowed into Max, and the gun went off. The sound of the shot rang in his ears. He couldn’t stop to see what had happened. Max shifted beneath him as Jamie took him down, and suddenly, it was not skin beneath his claws but fur. Not a human face, fragile and easy to damage, but a snapping, snarling wolf.
Jamie couldn’t back down.
He slashed at Max with his claws, raking him across the chest, just as Max scored his face with a slash of his own. He closed his jaws around the other wolf’s foreleg and wrenched hard, and Max’s growl ended in a whine. The leg was broken. Jamie jumped back, looking around frantically, taking stock of the rest of the field. There were two more of them, and his omega was here, pregnant and defenseless...
Only not defenseless, as it turned out. Reese must have shifted while Jamie was fighting Max, because now, he stood several feet away, holding Max’s gun on the Death Fangs’ alpha. The man had his hands up. Jamie allowed himself to shift too, seeing how the tables had turned, and moved closer to the rest of his pack.
“Jesus fucking Christ,” Rocco whispered.
Max shifted back and huddled at the base of a tree, cradling his injured arm.
Harley stepped forward, fangs bared, snarling. Jamie grabbed Maddy and pulled her close, wrapping his arms around her. She was shivering.
“Get out,” Reese said. “Leave us alone. Forever. Or we’ll kill you. Don’t think I won’t do it.”
Harley punctuated these words with a snarl so vicious it felt, to Jamie, as though he had literally ripped the air.
And still, the Death Fangs hesitated.
Jamie understood. It was a matter of pride for them. They couldn’t admit that they had lost. That they had been beaten. They couldn’t accept that Maddy, who they still saw as property, had been stolen from under their noses, and that they hadn’t been able to take her back.
There was only one way to get them to leave her alone.
“She’s been spoiled,” he said.
Everyone in the clearing looked at him. Maddy’s eyes were wide.
He wrapped his arms more tightly around her, hoping against hope that she would understand what he was doing, and that his words wouldn’t wound her. “She’s damaged goods,” he said. “Worthless. Nobody would pay for her now.” And he lifted Maddy’s hair from her neck and displayed three prominent scars—the bite he’d given her last night and the other two, older, from Mark and Harley.
“No one wants a used omega,” he said quietly.
It didn’t change anything. He knew that, and if the Death Fangs wanted to, they could see it that way too. Maddy had still been one of theirs, and she had still been taken from them. The fact that she was now used... well, they’d known that all along, hadn’t they? They’d known she was pregnant. They would have never thought the Hell’s Wolves had taken her to mop the floors.
But seeing those marks...
It gave them the room to surrender without losing face. It gave them the ability to walk away and to say they had done so by choice, because they didn’t want Maddy anymore. They wouldn’t have to admit they’d been beaten. They could tell a different story.
If they wanted to.
Everyone could walk away unscathed.
It was Jamie’s greatest skill—his ability to reason, to understand, to think. To be human. It was the thing he brought to his pack in greater amounts than either of his wild, animal brothers.
Now, he held his breath and pulled Maddy into him and prayed it would be enough.
Chapter Eighteen
The wind howled like a wild thing, and the air was cold enough to bite. But inside the cabin the Hell’s Wolves shared, it was warm and cozy. A fire crackled in the fireplace, and enough logs had been stacked up out on the porch to carry them through the winter. Food was stockpiled too. For the first time in as long as any of the pack members could remember, the freezer was full of wrapped meat. Hunting in the weeks before the cold set in had been a massive success.
Madison Wood, nine months pregnant and in her fourth hour of labor, laid in the dim light of the nursery. Her forehead glistened with sweat. Beside her, Jamie knelt on the floor with a bottle of water in his hand. Harley and Mark paced in circles around the bed.
“You two should really get some sleep,” Maddy said. “We don’t know how long this is going to take.”
Jamie nodded. “I’ll wake you up if anything happens. Or if I need a break.”
“We’re not going to sleep,” Mark said. “Don’t be an idiot.”
“It’s the middle of the damn night, Mark.”
“Yes, and our babies are being born.”
“We should get our rest. We should make sure someone’s always with her and in good mental condition.”
“You rest, then,” Harley said. “You go to sleep, if it’s so easy, and we’ll get you if there are any problems. How about that?”
Jamie subsided.
“We scared off the Death Fangs, didn’t we?” Mark said. “I guess we can handle staying up late to watch our children be born.”
“You didn’t scare off any Death Fangs,” Harley scoffed. “You hid in a hole until they were gone.”
They all laughed. Even Mark joined in, somewhat ruefully. In truth, the pack all felt he’d made the right decision to stay hidden in Amy’s shelter until the threat had passed. Although it would have suited his nature to charge into the house and attack the Death Fangs, most likely getting himself killed in the process, he had showed restraint.
Maddy knew how hard that must have been for him. Mark was born to act, to defend his family and their home. To know that the Death Fangs had been in the house, all the while not having any idea where his omega was, must have been torture. But he had known that Maddy was still with Harley and Jamie, and he had put his trust in them.
It was so good to see her pack fully trust each other. Maddy would never forget those hellish weeks when the bonds between the brothers had seemed to be broken. She was fervently glad that, now, when her babies were coming into the world, they were on better terms than ever.
A contraction gripped her, and she squeezed Jamie’s hand and screwed up her face against the pain. Harley and Mark stepped closer to her. “Are you all right?” Harley asked anxiously.
“Fine,” she grunted through gritted teeth. If her pack could face down the Death Fangs the way they had, she knew she could handle this.
“They say births are easier on omegas,” Jamie said, anxiety bleeding through his scholarly tone.
She wanted to smack him. Easy, was it? Did he realize she’d be giving birth to multiple babies soon? But she held back. Resorting to facts and knowledge was how Jamie kept calm. He was just trying to deal with his anxiety.
The contraction eased. Jamie glanced at his watch and made a note in the notebook on the bedside table. Mark rolled his eyes. “I don’t know why you’re timing it,” he said.
“It said to do that in the pregnancy book,” Jamie said. “That’s how you know when the babies are going to come.”
“That was about human pregnancies, though,” Mark said. “You can’t really think it’s
going to be the same.”
“It might be,” Harley said. “There’s no harm in timing the contractions. Maddy, do you want your ice cup?”
She nodded, and Harley passed it over. Maddy shook a few chips of ice into her mouth and crunched down. She’d only been at this for a few hours, but she hadn’t eaten anything since dinner last night, and labor was taking a lot out of her. She wished she could have something to eat, but she knew enough to know that wasn’t a good idea. Still, chewing on ice made her feel like she was eating something. It helped a little.
“More TV?” Mark asked her.
Maddy shook her head. “I don’t want to wake the kids up.”
“Oh, they’re awake,” Harley said. “I think they’re almost as excited as we are. They’re having a little party in the kitchen while they wait to meet the babies.”
“What kind of party?” Jamie’s expression was stern. “We don’t really need them getting drunk tonight.”
“Relax,” Harley said. “I think they’re making cupcakes or something.”
“Will it be hard on them?” Maddy asked. “Not being the kids anymore, once the babies come?”
“They’re looking forward to it,” Harley assured her. “Piper can’t wait to babysit, and Reese says he’s going to make them all into a soccer team in a few years. I think Amy’s just ready to stop being thought of as young.”
Maddy hissed as another contraction gripped her. Jamie looked down at his watch, his face showing concern. “They’re getting pretty close together,” he said. “I think it might be almost time.”
She felt suddenly afraid. “I don’t know what to do.”
Harley knelt at her other side. “We can do it,” he said. “All three of us, together. We can handle this, I promise you.”
The next half hour was a haze. Maddy felt adrift in fear and pain, her body completely overwhelmed. By the time she heard the first baby cry, she was already exhausted and felt she couldn’t keep going. But her alphas were there, kneeling around her, speaking encouraging words. You’re so beautiful, they told her, their hands on her face, on her stomach. You’re so strong.
