“There have to be times where you can bend the rules. I’m not exactly sure who she is yet, but she’s not your average girl,” he added.
His father shook his head. “There have been no exceptions made in the history of the VonBrandt family. Because of this strict observation of the original laws, we are strong and safe. No one in Somewhere or the surrounding areas suspects us to be anything but human. Our family has thrived and our assets have grown to support the pack well beyond anything we ever dreamed possible. The future generations of our pack have a safe place to run. To live, if they choose, unafraid of being shot or hunted by those who would seek to exterminate all of us.”
Noah’s chest tightened. He looked to his mother’s now weepy eyes and then to Uncle Allan’s downcast gaze. Neither would make eye contact with him. It wasn’t fair. This girl didn’t deserve to lose her identity because he’d needed to take a middle-of-the-night run on all fours.
Damn it.
She’d stunned him twice and nearly knocked him out with a frying pan. Still, he couldn’t think of anyone he’d rather be spending his time with. There was something about her. The sheer veracity to live and fight. She wasn’t a werewolf, but she had the heart of one. He wanted her. His magick reacted to her as if it were a compass needle and she was due north.
“What if I offered her the bond?” The words slipped out before he could consider them. He didn’t want to take them back, though. In fact he felt an even stronger pull toward that solution.
“No,” his mother hissed from across the room. “That is not something to be offered to a woman you do not intend to spend your whole life with.”
“Luke bonded to Kara before making that choice.”
“Luke had known and been in love with Kara for years, Noah. This is different. You didn’t grow up with this girl. She could be a criminal for all you know. You said there were armed men hunting her. What if she ends up dead at the end of this and your one chance to bond is lost for nothing?”
Noah swallowed, his mother’s words digesting painfully in his gut. He didn’t know Emma at all, but he wanted to. And he didn’t think for a moment that she was a criminal, just a girl stuck in the middle of a bad situation. Although, she’d certainly known how to defend herself when attacked. That spoke to some excellent training or growing up around some very bad people.
Still, the bond would prevent his family from hurting Emma without his express consent. It would also make him one hundred percent responsible for her.
He ground his teeth. Bonding with a stranger was probably the stupidest thing he could do, but letting her lose her life and memories wasn’t a price he could pay either. He should’ve been more careful. He should have scouted the area better. It was his fault she’d seen him shift, not hers.
“Noah.” His mother’s voice was filled with warning and a slight tremble of fearfulness. “You can’t do this. I know you think you should shoulder the blame, but you can’t. Bonding with her won’t save her. The bond is meant for couples. It deepens a relationship that’s already there. It’s not meant as a band aid for mistakes. It’s meant for marriage. A joining of two souls. It would tear you apart if she left.”
A whispered volley of curses came from the other side of the doorway. She was in the hallway, not five feet from the door. The girl didn’t know how to follow directions.
He waited to see if Allan or his father had heard her. But both of them were too focused on each other and discussing who would go pick up Siobhan Banfield and her sister Katherine. The two Banfield witches ran the little teashop in town called Books’N’Things. Though they sold a bit more than any of the locals realized —nearly every product in that place was laced with magick.
“Noah, did you hear what I said?” his mother asked, sinking into a red leather captain’s chair.
He sighed and nodded his head. He’d heard everything. “I can’t let it happen, Mom.”
“What if she’s married? What if she has a boyfriend already?”
“What if she does, Mom? The family is willing to strip all of that away from her in the blink of an eye. What if it was me in her position? Would you want that for your child?”
“I would if the only other alternative was—”
“Mom.” Noah’s hands clenched and he resisted the urge to growl. Being disrespectful wasn’t going to get him what he wanted. “That’s not going to happen,” he said, confident that his family wouldn’t resort to taking the law into their own hands. Wiping a memory with magick was one thing, but making someone completely disappear was another entirely.
“Noah’s right, Tonya,” his father interjected. “The pack has never had to resort to that and we won’t this time either because the Banfields are going to make sure she doesn’t remember a single thing that happened to her since she entered Somewhere this evening.”
Emma skulked down the long hallway away from the closed door of the study. Witches? Spells? Amnesia? Who the hell did they think they were?
It’s not like she’d ridden some crazy train to an alternate dimension where wizards and witches and werewolves were real. She was in a small honky- tonk Texas town hiding from very real and very crazy assholes with guns who wanted her family’s money and arms connections.
And what the hell was this bond Noah and his mother were arguing about? The last thing she needed was to be forced into marrying some crazy wolf-man. That would never work. On that she wholeheartedly agreed with Momma VonBrandt.
Voices carried from down the hallway and Emma ducked inside an open doorway, holding her breath as an unfamiliar man and woman passed by. She counted to sixty before poking her head out. The hallway was clear and the other people were nowhere to be seen.
She continued down the hall and turned through a large dining room, ducking behind a big china cabinet when another woman appeared in the doorway at the opposite end of the room. How many people were in this place and awake before the butt crack of dawn? Were they all wolf people? She banished the terrifying thought from her mind; she couldn’t deal with that right now. Right now, she needed to find a damned door out of this mansion and attempt to disappear into the night.
If she could get into town, surely these people would be forced to leave her alone. She knew how it worked. Here she had no leverage. No one knew she was here and no one knew her. If she could get into town, people would see her. She would be missed if these VonBrandts tried to make her disappear.
She waited another minute or two before slipping along the wall of the dining room and into what had to be the kitchen for the place. It was beautiful. She had to credit the VonBrandts for having good taste.
Natural stone covered the floors and parts of the walls. What wasn’t stone was beautifully stained wood cabinetry and granite countertops. A massive circular plank table sat to her left with at least ten chairs spaced around it. Wrought iron chandeliers hung from the ceiling in several different places, the lights in the faux candles gave a soft glow to the entire room.
Voices echoed through the kitchen from somewhere, but she couldn’t tell where. She knew they would see her in moments if she didn’t get her ass out of there. A door lay ahead and to her right behind the table. She made it through and closed it gently behind her as several teenagers filed into the kitchen and surrounded the huge stainless steel refrigerator on the left side of the room.
Emma ducked down and crawled across the small coatroom she’d hidden in. The smell of grass, soil, manure, and sweaty feet filled her nostrils. No wonder they had a room just for their boots.
The outside lay beyond the door on the other side of the room. She threw up a small prayer and pulled the doorknob. The door swung open and she tensed, waiting for the scream of an alarm to sound.
Nothing happened.
She slipped through the opening and shut the door behind her. The growing light of dawn made it easy to see the back of the barn from where she stood. The road out of this place started there. She’d seen several vehicles parked on the other
side of the barn’s breezeway. If she could hot wire one, maybe she’d have a half-way decent chance of making it into town to the hospital. She had to get to Lucy before Hollis and Grimes did.
Chapter 11
The terrain between the stoop and the barn was flat. Short clipped grass and the occasional fence wasn’t going to afford much cover. Emma glanced over her shoulder through the two half-French doors and into the kitchen. The group of teens still hovered around the fridge and none of them were facing her direction.
She jumped from the porch step and took off across the yard. The first gate opened with a simple latch, but when she reached the second on the other side of the small corral, it was opened with a push- button keypad. She put a foot up on the middle rail and hoisted herself over and down on the other side. Almost there. The barn would give her cover from anyone looking out the windows of the house.
Making a beeline for the breezeway, she ducked inside a few moments later. The scent of hay and horses filled her lungs and she sighed a small breath of relief.
There had been a truck parked here only a little while ago when she’d been out here with Noah. She hurried down the main aisle and peered out the door at the end —no truck.
Shit.
She couldn’t take a horse. Even if it would get her to town faster, the roads weren’t a place for them and she wouldn’t have anywhere to put the horse once she made it into town. Walking was the only choice.
Hurrying along the main aisle of the barn, Emma exited through the breezeway facing the long driveway. The gravel drive looked like it stretched for miles. It probably did.
She started walking, praying that Noah would keep them talking long enough to give her time to get the hell off his family’s ranch. She thought for sure she’d been done for when she let out that litany of curses behind the study door. But the door had stayed shut and the voices plotting the end of life as she knew it had kept on talking. Wolfy bastards.
Noah had one thing right. She certainly wouldn’t go down without a fight and they didn’t know how accomplished she was at getting her way. They didn’t know anything about her yet, but it wouldn’t stay that way for long. Someone was bound to turn on the television sooner or later.
The sunrise on her right melted through the shadows across the landscape, making it easy to stay out of the potholes in the road. The fences on either side didn’t make her feel closed in until the fields turned to forest. Then, not being able to see around the bends in the road made her nervous. At least with the open fields she could see people coming, but now she was vulnerable. Weak.
She hated feeling weak. Lucy had taught her to always stay on the offensive. Keep your enemies running from you, not the other way around. Right now she was running and it made her sick.
Her hand absently patted the oversized fringed bag and metal clicked against itself. She had a dozen clips for the gun Momma VonBrandt had confiscated, but at least she still had the stun gun. That was something. Plus she knew it worked on werewolf people—at least knocked them on their ass for a few seconds.
The rumble of an approaching engine made her heart leap in her chest. No. No. No. She was still on the VonBrandt property. She hadn’t even made it out to Route 16 yet.
Rushing to the fence on her left, she grabbed the top rail and swung one leg over the metal pole. Her other leg followed suit and she slipped to the ground side, backing as carefully as she could into the trees.
Headlights flooded the road where she’d been standing. A black pickup rolled by, moving slower than she’d expected. Both windows were down and she could clearly see a man and woman about her age in the front seats. They were both staring at the tree line.
Emma covered her mouth, sure that the woman in the truck was staring straight at her. The fence, the trees—It was like they didn’t matter. How had she known to look for her? She’d been out of the road before they turned the corner.
The woman looked toward the driver and the truck pulled to a stop.
How the hell?
They spoke to each other briefly before the man got out and walked to stand in front of the truck.
“I know you’re out there?”
Emma rolled her eyes and cursed under her breath. He was totally bluffing.
“I can smell you and I can smell Noah’s scent on you. You might as well come out. You can’t run faster than me.” He took a step closer.
“I thought you were wolves, not bloodhounds,” Emma hissed under her breath, her heart pounding so hard it was all she could hear in her head. He knew where she was. He was coming closer and closer.
“Luke you’re scaring her,” the girl in the passenger seat called out, climbing out of the truck.
“Kara, get back in the truck.”
“Not a chance,” she shot back at him then turned to face Emma once more. “Look, I know you’ve got to be pretty freaked right now. I was too when I found out. But the VonBrandts are good people. And if Noah is fighting for you, he’ll find a way to win.”
The male next to her chuckled. “He called me to find you. Come on.”
Nope. They were both saying nice things, but Emma knew a trap when she saw one. She took a step backward and a twig snapped under her foot. She cursed and turned to run.
Everything happened so fast. She heard them both yell. Branches whipped her face as she picked her way through the pine trees and brush. Large hands slipped around her waist and yanked her from the ground.
“Let me go!” She fumbled with her bag, trying to get a hand inside it to grab the stun gun. But the clips were in the way and she couldn’t find it. “Let me go.” She wrenched in his grasp again, but barely twisted a half an inch to one side. “They’re going to kill me. Or erase my mind or something horrible. Let me go!”
“No one is going to kill you,” he growled in her ear, pulling her hand out of the purse. “But we can’t let you wander around town either.”
She twisted again and kicked hard.
He grunted and cursed several time, but his grip around her waist never faltered. It was like being locked in a vice. If Noah was as strong as this guy, he’d been holding back earlier.
“I heard them, wolf-boy!”
“Shut up,” he snarled. His grip tightened, if that were even possible. “Noah called for help and until he says otherwise, you are coming back to the house.
A ragged groan slipped from Emma’s lungs and she sagged, letting her body become dead weight. Fine. If he wanted to lug her to her death, she wasn’t going to make it easier on him...or on Noah. Emma let her body fold nearly in half over his arm. Her hair brushed the ground and the tips of his cowboy boots.
He cursed under his breath and hauled her around to the side of his truck as if she weighed no more than a down pillow.
“Stand up,” he ordered, his voice irritated and impatient. He lifted and tried to shove her into the back seat, but kept bumping her head on the side of the bench.
Emma didn’t respond.
The woman in the front seat snickered softly, and Emma couldn’t help the smile tugging at the corner of her mouth as well. If someone had been watching the scene from the woods, they would’ve split their sides by now from laughing.
This wolf-man kept trying to push her up into the back seat of the truck and she kept maneuvering enough to make it nearly impossible, unless he caused her an enormous amount of pain.
A soft female voice spoke from the front. “I promise no one wants to kill you. Luke and Noah won’t let anything happen.”
“Kara, you can’t promise that. The pack has rules.”
“Killing a girl for seeing one of you turn isn’t one of them,” she shot back, turning her chair to face them.
Emma straightened in her captor’s arms and caught the female’s gaze. “Are you a wolf, too?”
The woman he’d called Kara shook her head. “No.”
“But you know about them.”
“I’m bonded to this one,” Kara inclined her head to the man holding Emma.
“Are you going to let her go yet, Luke?”
He growled. A scary rumbling animalistic sound came from deep in his chest.
Kara didn’t seem scared and that reinforced Emma’s confidence that they really didn’t mean her bodily harm.
He loosened his left arm from her waist and yanked the purse from her shoulder, handing it to Kara in the front seat.
“I have to get to the hospital. Noah said Lucy is there,” Emma said.
“Right now we have to get my brother. Then we can chat about the hospital.”
Brother? This was Noah’s brother? “Fine.” Emma grabbed the plastic handle inside the truck door and pulled herself up onto the bench. When she looked at the man who’d been fighting to get her into the seat, his mouth was hanging open for flies.
He snapped it shut when she smiled. At least she’d gotten into the truck of her own accord and he hadn’t been able to shove her in like a sack of potatoes. Dignity wasn’t everything, but it was important. These people didn’t have the right to push her around just because she’d stumbled onto their secret. She’d kept her fair share of secrets, though this one was a bit different than the average.
“Fine,” he growled, slamming the door to shut her in.
“Luke,” Kara said, her voice thick with irritation.
Emma could tell they were involved by the way he looked at her with adoration, even though he was peeved. Kara was the same, irritated with her guy’s behavior, but still completely devoted to him.
What Emma wouldn’t give to have someone like that in her life. But nobody lasted long in the Carrington household. Even the employees came and went like they were on a merry-go-round. The idea that a decent man would put up with everything she had to deal with on a daily basis was laughable.
Chapter 12
They pulled to a stop in the driveway in front of the house. Emma started to give Luke a piece of her mind when Noah came barreling out the front door. He yanked open the back door and slid onto the bench next to her.
To Love A Mate: Somewhere, TX (VonBrandt Pack Book 2) Page 6
