by Elle Thorne
He glanced at him sideways. “Why?”
“It’s part of being a pack. You join them when they need, don’t you?”
“Of course, yeah, but—”
“No buts. It’s part of being a pack. If you cut them out of helping you, they won’t come to you next time they need something. That’s the pack mentality of wolf shifters.” Gabe turned to face him abruptly. Metal jangled. Weaponry? “You weren’t raised by a proper wolf shifter, clearly.”
Judd couldn’t argue that. Might as well not have been raised at all. “So, there’s seven of them, and five of us. Not bad odds, I guess. Better than seven on two.”
“True. So, the last part of our agreement is something I may not have already mentioned.” Gabe started walking again.
“What’s that?” Judd had wondered when strings would be mentioned. Nothing was done for free, after all.
“MacIntosh is mine. I get the honor.”
“What?” He did a doubletake. That wasn’t the kind of strings he’d been expecting. He’d planned on taking MacIntosh down himself. A matter of pride. The shifter wanted Maisie dead, after all.
“Listen, Walker. She’s got enough of a problem dealing with the idea of shifters. You don’t need blood on your hands. Not this blood. It won’t leave her mind that you killed her son’s grandfather. Even if he’s a piece of shit.”
Judd reflected on this. His hatred for Paul MacIntosh hadn’t always existed. Sure, he knew the bastard was ruthless; he’d seen that side when he’d worked for him. But this thing about wanting Maisie dead so he could take Cash. That just flat-out put him on the side of evil, and Judd wanted to erase that evil. To take out that threat. Then again, did he want to live a life, with Maisie possibly a part of it, and her thinking he committed that act? And what about Cash? Would the little boy grow up to be a man who hated Judd for killing his blood? He chewed over these thoughts swiftly. They ran through his mind like those mustangs Luke was so fond of.
“One more thing,” Gabe interrupted his reverie. “This thing I have with MacIntosh. It’s personal. Real personal.” His tone had taken on a raw quality, one that spoke of the kind of pain a man didn’t come out of easily.
If Judd felt so passionately about something that his voice sounded as tormented as Gabe’s, he’d sure not want to have to argue with someone about it. “He’s all yours.”
Gabe nodded his thanks.
Judd wasn’t done. “But expect him to come after me. In the end, I’m the one who betrayed him and got him to this place. And I am holding his grandson for ransom as far as he’s concerned.”
“Initially, he might. Until he sees me. Then he’ll know who had a hand in this.” Gabe’s smile was bittersweet.
They’d reached a row of cars, set off to the right of the entrance. “That’s where we’ll wait.”
Judd reconned the area, seeking heartbeats, scents, anything. There was no sign of Luke, Score, or Jared. He wasn’t so much worried about this as he was worried about them being caught off-guard somewhere. “Where are the Crooked Arrow guys you mentioned were coming?”
“Right here,” said a voice from the pile of cars.
He knew that voice. “Jared, how is it that I don’t hear your heartbeat? Pick up any of y’all’s scents?”
Jared, Score, and Luke stepped out from behind the vehicle pile. “Bonegate.”
Judd looked over at Gabe. “You did something to mask them?”
“Might have.” Gabe glanced at his phone. “Well, damn.”
“What is it?” Judd asked. At the same moment, his phone vibrated a text. He pulled it out. “Shit.” He held it out for Gabe and the others to see. It was a text from Paul MacIntosh. A photo actually. A dead shifter. One round in his forehead. “Is that your inside guy?”
“Yup. The game’s changed.” He scratched at his jawline. “Last he reported, they were coming to the front entrance. I’d say they might do the opposite now.”
“Or they could let us think they might, and still come this way.”
“I’ll know either way,” Gabe said. “I’ll know the second they step foot over the perimeter of my property.”
“Security system?” Luke asked.
“Something like that.” Then, looking at his phone, Gabe said, “Back of the house. Forty yards out.”
“Wolves?” Score asked.
“Wolves,” Judd agreed. His wolf was shredding his insides to get out and fight the aggressors who were there to hurt Maisie.
With that decision determined, Judd, Luke, Score, and Jared all shifted into their wolves in a cacophony of excruciating noises that ranged from the sounds of muscles shredding, sinew reforming, bones crunching to flesh yielding.
After their wolves had ripped out of their humans, they trotted toward the back of the property where the mountain ranges of cars, SUVs, trailers, and boats made their final resting place.
They didn’t slow their rate, taking a speed much more than a casual lope, yet it was a pace that would enable them to engage when they reached their quarry.
They traveled around the assortment of mobile homes comprising the deceptively grand house Gabe called home. Judd realized Gabe wasn’t with them. He took a chance to glance about but didn’t see the duster-clad man or any other animal he would have turned into. He dismissed the thought. He had an objective, with or without Gabriel Bonegate, to neutralize Paul MacIntosh.
They’d just reached the first mountainous stack of piled, crushed cars when Judd heard a low thrum. Maybe he didn’t hear it. He felt it, though.
The next thing he felt was a collision as a furry beast knocked the wind out of him and sending him careening into the unyielding car pile. Twisting to right himself, Judd snarled and sought to sink his teeth into any body part he could on the creature, which was now tangled with him.
There! Judd sank his jaws into the beast’s—a wolf—shoulder. He ripped with his teeth, shaking his head while he clawed at his foe’s soft underbelly. He was holding his own until another wolf managed to seize Judd’s hind leg in his jaw, nearly severing tendons. Judd tried to ignore the pain the new attacker had inflicted, but he couldn’t move. And the first wolf—he recognized as Paul MacIntosh—was exposing sharp canines and whirling around to grab Judd by the throat.
From his peripheral vision, Judd saw Jared, Score, and Luke fighting four other wolf shifters in a bursting and ever-moving ball of fur and growls. The air was filled with the sounds of their battle, eleven wolves, all much larger than an average wolf would be, twisted in a battle to the death.
Judd released his hold on MacIntosh and scrabbled to get free, raking his claws into the dirt to escape the hold of the one that had his hind leg, while trying to avoid MacIntosh’s gnashing jaws.
Too late! MacIntosh buried his fangs deep into Judd’s shoulder, dangerously close to his throat.
He struggled against the inevitable. MacIntosh shifted his grip, this time nicking a major blood vessel. Judd felt the warmth of his life essence flowing through his fur and down his chest. This was not how he was going down. Nope. No. Hell, no. Yet, no matter how much his mind fought the brave fight, his vision became blurry.
Seconds later, everything changed.
He was loose. The grip on his throat and the one on his leg were gone. He shook his head to recover, trying to see how he was liberated.
Not fully in focus, he studied the sight before him.
The wolf that had his leg was headless, body twitching while the head was still laying on his leg.
Still in his wolf form, Judd kicked it off then shook his head to regain his faculties, looking for MacIntosh. Where was that bastard?
Jared’s wolf was shaking a dead foe, another one at his feet. Score and Luke were still each battling it out with wolves. Judd pushed his wolf to his feet and sprang toward the nearest enemy wolf, the one taking Luke on. Landing on its back, he twisted and dropped under the wolf, sinking his fangs into the tender flesh at the top of its hind leg, where it met the belly. In short o
rder, the wolf was down, Jared giving it the killing bite.
Luke, Judd, and Jared turned around to help Score, but he was snarling at the wolf’s body. The one he’d just taken down.
Judd shifted into his human form. The other three followed suit. He studied the dead bodies. “All but MacIntosh. Where’s he? Where’s Bonegate?” Then he took stock of the one the wolf that had been completely decapitated. He studied the wound. This was made by a blade, a very sharp blade. “You guys didn’t do this.”
“Nope,” Score said.
“Bonegate did it,” Jared said, then added, “Right before they were set to kill you. He took that wolf—MacIntosh?—back there.” He indicated the pile of cars with his chin.
“Yeah, that was MacIntosh.” One minute, the wolf had been ready to kill him. The next, he was lifted off. “Was…?” He felt guilty for asking this, but curiosity reignited. “Was Bonegate human when he did that?”
“Yup,” Jared affirmed.
Gabe emerged from behind the crushed cars, dragging a body that wasn’t a wolf. It was Paul MacIntosh, in his human form and very dead. “Bitter Hollow needs a new alpha. I’m sure my chances of having my sentence reduced just went down.”
What the hell did that even mean? He never got a chance to ask, as Gabe moved onto the next topic, one far more important.
“You should reach out to Maisie. Let her know she can come out.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Maisie couldn’t tear her eyes from the phone. She monitored the time, picked it up every so often to check for a message they had the all-clear, but nothing. And she knew very well she’d know immediately. The gosh-darned phone would signal a text. It would. Her frustration was such that she’d have pitched the phone into the wall if it didn’t mean losing contact with Judd.
She hadn’t heard from him in hours, since he’d told her good night, and now, here it was almost six in the morning. According to the app on the phone, sunrise was due in the next thirty minutes.
“Come on,” she whispered to keep from waking Cash. “Come on.” She studied his angel face. He was worth all of this and more. And she owed Judd and Gabe bigtime.
The phone buzzed, and she nearly jumped out of her skin. She picked it up.
Cash stirred.
A text from Judd. Coast is clear.
Tears formed in her eyes, and she didn’t respond. That wasn’t the password. That meant MacIntosh had gotten him. Or gotten to him. She tensed. She put an arm above Cash’s head and ran her fingers through his hair to calm him. That usually helped him get to sleep. But in her heart, darkness prevailed. Something had gone wrong.
She would need to get the weapon Gabe had shown her. A shotgun. She didn’t want to have to shoot it. That would scare Cash.
The phone buzzed again. She glanced at the screen. Another text. Also from Judd.
Sorry. Fly fishing.
She yelped a happy squeal. Fly fishing was the password for all is well! Yay!
Cash woke up crying, and she had to settle him before she could get to the door and open it, then take the stairs up as fast as she could.
A beautiful pink sky greeted her, right before the most gorgeous man she’d ever met, the most welcome sight ever, gave her a smile and took Cash from her hands.
He had changed clothing, but that didn’t hide the wounds inflicted on him. His neck, his arm, his face. She stared at him. Disbelief that he was okay, what with those injuries.
“It’s over?”
“Completely,” he said, switching Cash to his side, he held an arm out for her.
She sank into his chest, tears she hadn’t realized she was shedding soaked up by his shirt.
“Hey now.” He made a clicking sound behind his teeth. “Look at me.”
She raised her head. “I was worried.”
He leaned down and kissed her lips then raised his head. “You have a promise to fulfill.”
Oh, and she would. Boy, would she ever.
A throat cleared from behind him, and she startled, moving out of his arms to see who was there.
Gabe and three other men she didn’t know.
Thank you, she mouthed to Gabe. She had a feeling, without him, much of this would have been far more difficult.
His arm still around her, Judd pulled her forward. “These are Crooked Arrow guys, Maisie Malone. Meet Luke, Score, and Jared.”
The men—shifters, she could tell, as she’d begun to put that together, the silver swirling in their eyes was an indicator—nodded, touched their foreheads, smiled in greeting, respectively.
“They stepped in to help,” Judd explained. “To even out the numbers.”
“Paul MacIntosh?” He was the only number that really worried her.
“I handled him,” Gabe said, chucking Cash under the chin. “You’re fine. Cash is fine.”
“About that promise,” Judd said. “Let’s get you to Crooked Arrow.” He turned to Jared. “Everyone’s cool with this?”
“You’re good,” Jared assured him.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Maisie stretched in her comfortable bed, which was a few steps up from the one she had in the trailer. Judd hadn’t let her go back to get her stuff. He’d told her that was her old life, and she’d be better off not seen there again, especially with what happened to Angie and her family. Of course, that had brought about a whole new bout of crying he’d had to comfort her with.
Seven days ago, Judd brought Maisie to Crooked Arrow Ranch. He’d told her to give it a look-see, and she promised she would. The look-see clearly wasn’t short-lived. She’d met Luke Everhart’s mate—that was what they called their women or men, actually. He’d told her how they mated for life, found that one special person. There’d been a look in his eye when he said it, and she knew what it meant. She felt it, too, but he wasn’t quick to rush her, and she appreciated that.
Luke Everhart’s sister, Mellie, had a baby just a few months older than Cash, so it had been cute to watch the two children interacting. Luckily, Cash hadn’t shifted into his little wolf again, and the others thought he probably wouldn’t, now that he didn’t have anything traumatic happening. The worse that happened these days was an occasional diaper rash.
In his crib, an old hand-carved one that had nicks and marks from other young shifters over the years, Cash was babbling and making spit bubbles and cooing.
She crawled across the bed and reached between the crib’s slats for his hand. He squeezed her fingers.
“You like it here, don’t you?”
Of course, he didn’t answer. He was still at one single word. Mommy. Mellie said that wasn’t an issue because her baby had only said two words so far. And neither of them was Mommy, Mellie had confessed, also admitting she was envious.
“Momma’s got a big day today,” she told him. “She’s going out for a ride with Judd. You’re going to stay and play with Auntie Mellie’s baby. You like Troy, don’t you?”
He giggled.
“Sure you do.” She got out of bed and reached in for him.
He’d gotten plump and was much happier than he’d been during that other life. Speaking of plump, she’d added to her curves over the last week.
“Come on, mister. Let’s get you and me both a quick bath, and then I’ve got a date, and you’ve got a playdate.”
“Judd,” he said, loud and proud.
She stared at him. “Oh, no, you didn’t.” She started to tickle his tummy. Judd was not going to believe it when she told him he’d said his name.
He giggled, then he raised his head and howled.
Was he going to—
He chortled, spitting bubbles.
“Oh, you little tease. Bath time.” She thanked her lucky stars they were in a place where it wouldn’t attract undue attention if he shifted into his wolf.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Judd had waited, ever so patiently. Seven whole days they’d been here. He’d given her lots of space. Lots of time to get to know Luke Everhart’s
human mate, Rachel. To bond with Luke’s shifter sister and her shifter baby. And to see life in a shifter community wasn’t something to fear. And last night, when they’d all gathered for dinner, he’d noticed she’d worn a smile the entire meal. That was the first night she’d done that. It was like her worries had finally subsided.
Two days ago, Keith Dorsett, the alpha, who was also Mellie’s mate, had told her she was welcome here without strings. This could be her home, and Cash could be part of the Crooked Arrow pack. They’d be family. Judd had been there when he’d said this, and tears had sprung to her eyes, but she’d been smiling, so he knew they were happy tears. Perhaps tears of relief.
Rachel had taken her aside. Told her how she fell in love with a shifter. And they had risked a lot because human-shifter mating was frowned upon. But she stayed on the ranch with the man she loved. Rachel had told Judd that Maisie seemed at ease with it.
So last night, after dinner, when he’d walked her back to her rooms, he’d asked her for a date today. She’d accepted and even leaned into him and kissed his jaw, telling him how much she appreciated what he’d done for her.
Now, here he was, ready to pick her up and take her to his cabin by the river. The very cabin he was fishing next to when Paul MacIntosh reached out to him. He’d been staying in his cabin every night for the last seven days instead of at the main ranch house. Gabe had come to check on him twice. The first time to tell him MacIntosh’s and all the other shifters’ remains had been taken care of, and there was no remaining indicator they’d even made it.
“Nothing?”
“Nope. Not their scent. Not their phone GPS’s locators, nothing.”
“And what about—” Judd started.
“Handled.”
“But you don’t even know what I was going to say.” Judd flipped a stone into the river, watching it skip.
“You were going to say what if they’d told anyone they’d arrived, probably. Or something like that.”
Judd picked up another prime skipping rock. “Something like that.”
