The sensation of eyes on him rankled him, rousing his cougar side into a frenzy as a need to fight flooded him, and he tossed a black look in Storm’s direction as his brother stepped out from the cover of the trees to his left, leaving the path to his cabin and the others on that side of the woods behind.
His brother drew his hand across his mouth, pretending to zip it shut.
Rath wasn’t about to believe that promise. Sooner or later, Storm would bring up what had happened with Ivy yesterday, and her presence here at the creek, and his behaviour.
Still, he appreciated the reprieve as he breathed through the need to fight, quelling it again, because he needed time to get his head on straight where Ivy was concerned.
His gaze drifted back to her.
She tucked against a lodgepole pine, camera still trained on the bear where he drank from the river on the other side of it to her. He could feel her happiness, her excitement, and he ached at that, because he knew it stemmed from more than the fact she was doing what she loved.
He had a feeling she was coming to love it at the creek too, and maybe she was coming to love him.
He set his mug down on the small table and stepped off the deck.
He had to talk to her and it was going to be one hell of a tough conversation, but he had made up his mind.
His ears twitched, and he lifted his head and scanned the sky in all directions for the source of the sound.
A helicopter.
The bear spooked.
Alarm rang through him.
Rath signalled to his brother to go into hiding and had reached Ivy before she had even started to lower her camera. He swept her up into his arms and pulled her into the woods, pinning her to the trunk of a tree a few metres from the clearing.
He pressed his body against hers, covered her mouth with his right hand and looked down into her wide startled eyes as he whispered, “Keep still, and keep quiet.”
He tilted his head back, tracking the helicopter as it drew closer, his heart pounding and adrenaline surging in his veins, rousing a powerful need to shift. Beneath his fleece, golden fur swept over his arms, and he struggled to stop the urge before his eyes changed and fangs lengthened, and Ivy saw what he was.
He wanted to break it to her gently, not scare the ever-living fuck out of her.
The chopper passed to his right, above the forest on the other side of the river, and drifted into the distance.
He loosed the breath he had been holding and eased his weight off Ivy as he leaned back to peer around the thick trunk of the tree. Across the clearing, Storm crouched near the riverside cabin, tucked against the tallest lodgepole pine.
Rath released Ivy’s mouth.
“Why are you so tense?” she whispered, a trickle of fear flowing through her, and leaned to her right so she could look around the tree. “It was just a helicopter.”
Rath snarled as his ears twitched again.
A chopper that was doubling back.
Fuck.
Wind whipped through the trees, shaking the branches and making them sway, kicking up leaf litter. The grass in the clearing was blasted flat as the helicopter hovered above it, and Storm crept back, sneaking further into the woods, his eyes on the sky.
Rath’s heart thundered as the chopper eased down into the clearing, bumped as it landed and the blades wound down, whining as the pilot cut the engine.
His claws lengthened, canines elongating as a need to fight and protect his territory swept through him, and he kept his eyes off Ivy, afraid she would see the shift in his irises as they began to blaze gold.
Two men dressed in black fatigues exited the front of the chopper. Not hunters.
Or at least not the sort who were looking to shoot animals.
The need to fight grew stronger, pounding in his veins, stoked by the memories that assaulted him—a night that had taken almost everything from him.
One of the men opened the back right door of the pale gold chopper, and a handsome brunet male stepped out, his fine grey suit and polished black leather shoes out of place in the wilderness.
His dark eyes swung around the clearing.
Ivy stiffened.
Rath dropped his gaze to her.
“I know him,” she whispered and glanced up at him. “It’s Alexander… the man I sent the pictures to… but why is he here? How is he here?”
Questions Rath wanted answers to himself.
Ivy had only sent the photographs last night, not enough time for this bastard to use the landscape to identify the location of Cougar Creek.
“Get the guns,” Alexander drawled, his English accent thick and regal, an arrogant tilt to his chin that had Rath wanting to punch it.
“He’s after the bears!” Ivy lunged around the tree trunk.
Rath caught her arm, yanked her back to him and growled as he shoved her against the tree. “Don’t move.”
Because he would lose his shit if this male saw her and targeted her.
“I have to stop him.” She struggled against him. “I don’t know how he found this place. He was meant to be in England. How the hell is he here?”
“I intend to ask him about that,” Rath snarled.
She paled, her hazel eyes enormous as her fine dark eyebrows furrowed. “Oh, Rath… I didn’t tell him, I swear. I’m so sorry. I’m so—”
He cut her off with a brief kiss, smoothed his palms over her cheeks and held her face as he lingered, wanting to reassure her, and needing the contact to calm himself and to give him the strength to do what he needed to do.
Hunters had almost succeeded in taking everything from him once and it wasn’t going to happen again. He wasn’t going to lose Ivy, or his brother. It wasn’t going to happen. He would keep them both safe. He would.
“I know, Sweetheart,” he murmured against her lips and stole another kiss. “Stay here.”
He reluctantly released her, sucked down a deep steadying breath and strode out into the clearing.
He had to protect his kin.
He had to protect her.
No matter the cost.
Chapter 12
Ivy couldn’t breathe as Rath walked out from beneath the trees and towards the helicopter and Alexander. The instant the men in black combat gear noticed him, they lifted their assault rifles and took aim. Her heart skipped a beat and lodged in her throat.
She clung to the rough bark of the tree, shaking so hard she feared letting go, sure she would collapse into a heap.
Rath.
Beneath his green fleece, his shoulders tensed, and cold swept through her when she realised it wasn’t fear that had him coiling tight.
He meant to fight.
He didn’t stand a chance against two armed men.
A need shot through her, lit her up and drove her to break cover.
A need to protect him.
She set her camera down on the roots of the tree and stormed out of the woods on weak legs that only seemed to grow weaker as she broke cover. Her eyes locked on Alexander, her eyebrows knitted hard above them as she clenched her fists at her sides. As she glared at him, anger rose to overwhelm her fear and put strength in her step, fury that he had dared to use her twice now.
Well she was damned if she was going to let him hurt the bears.
She was damned if she would let him hurt Rath.
Rath tilted his head to his right and frowned at her as she reached him, his golden eyes dark. He could shout at her later for disobeying him, right now she was more concerned with saving his ass.
“You can’t shoot the bears, Alexander,” she snapped and stopped a step in front of Rath, placing herself in the firing line.
Rath seized her arm and pulled her back, his grip fierce and unyielding as he moved to shield her with his big body.
Ivy tried to get free, but he refused to release her, kept her hidden behind him no matter what she did. The urge to snap at him too faded when she felt him trembling. He was afraid now.
Because she
had placed herself in danger?
Alexander wouldn’t let the men hurt her. He was a bastard, but not that much of one.
She touched Rath’s hand. “Let me talk with him.”
Rath looked over his right shoulder at her, his rugged face filled with fury, but his eyes flooded with concern, worry for her. She stroked his hand and smiled softly, wanting to reassure him. Some of the tension eased from his body and he drew her up beside him, but didn’t release her.
Because he feared she would go to Alexander?
No damn way.
She had been angry with him when he had hurt her, but now she hated him. The thought that he had used her, and was likely using the other photographers he funded, to find a location to go hunting sickened her, and she was going to let him have both barrels.
“You can’t shoot the bears here, Alexander,” she snapped, her pulse pounding again as her anger rose back to the fore, the thought of the mother bear or the male she had photographed today being targeted and killed pouring fury through her veins. “It’s illegal.”
He arched a dark eyebrow at that and moved a step closer, coming to stand between his two lackies.
Rath’s hand tensed against her wrist.
She glanced at him, but he hadn’t taken his eyes off Alexander, was staring him down in a way that made it clear he wanted to fight him, and he would if it came to it.
Hell, she didn’t want it to come to it. The thought of Rath fighting these men terrified her. Even if his brother helped, they would still be at a huge disadvantage. She hadn’t spotted any rifles in Rath’s cabin. There was no way they could win against the guns the men had without weapons of their own.
She had to defuse the situation before it got that far.
“I don’t know how you found me,” she bit out, “but I won’t let you do this. If I had known you wanted to hunt bears, I never would have taken your money.”
Alexander merely glanced at her, his dark eyes devoid of emotion, and held his right hand out to the man beside him. A man who moved to the chopper and came back with another black assault rifle.
He placed it into Alexander’s hand, and the bastard casually checked it was loaded, looked pleased when it was to his satisfaction, and had the audacity to smile at her.
“It was easy to find you. I have a tracker sewn into the lining of your backpack. I’ve been following your movements for months now.”
She felt sick at that. “You’ve been tracking me all this time? Why?”
He lowered the weapon to his side. “Because I am hunting. I have several people like you out here, desperate little photographers who will take pictures and send them back to me, covering a far wider area than I could by myself.”
Son of a bitch.
She lunged towards him. “I won’t let you hurt the bears!”
Rath pulled her on her wrist, and she banged into him, her back to his chest. She huffed and yanked her arm free, her anger getting the better of her, the thought of anyone controlling her pushing her to lash out, and she didn’t want to lash out at Rath.
She wanted to pummel Alexander’s smug face into a bloody pulp.
Rath’s eyes tracked her, intense and focused, sending a warm shiver through her. She held herself together and refused to give in to the urge to attack Alexander, because Rath would try to protect her, and would end up caught in the crossfire, and she didn’t want to see him hurt.
She didn’t want him to fight.
“I am not here to hunt bears,” Alexander said, his casual tone grating on her last nerve.
“Why are you here then? What’s with the guns if you’re not hunting?” She folded her arms across her chest and stared him down, waiting for him to explain himself and hoping he got the message that she was on to him and wasn’t going to let him get away with whatever he had planned.
“Oh, I am hunting.” He smiled slowly as his eyes shifted to Rath. “I am here to hunt cougar.”
Ivy didn’t understand. She hadn’t sent him any pictures that revealed there were cougars in this location. Rath had mentioned they lived in these parts, but then they lived across the entire region. Her pictures of the bears shouldn’t have alerted Alexander to the fact the big cats lived in this valley in particular. She definitely hadn’t spotted any signs of them along the river, which meant she hadn’t accidentally photographed something that revealed they were here.
“You need to leave,” Rath snarled and spread his feet shoulder-width apart, his entire body coiling like a spring as she looked at him. “Before things get ugly for you.”
They were going to get ugly for Rath if she didn’t do something.
She had to protect him.
Ivy pushed past him, placing herself between Rath and Alexander, closer to the bastard she was going to make leave. “I’ll call the authorities if you don’t leave now, Alexander. There are no cougars here, and it’s illegal to hunt them outside of the season anyway.”
He kept his dark eyes pinned on Rath.
“There are cougars here, Ivy.” He lowered his gaze to her, and she shivered as hers met it and the coldness in it hit her hard together with his words. “You just haven’t realised it yet.”
Realised what?
“One has been right in front of you all this time,” he drawled.
She looked over her shoulder at Rath.
Shrieked as Alexander grabbed her and twisted her in his arms, banding his left one across her chest and pinning her arms to her breasts. She kicked at him, pushed and scrabbled, trying to break free as a vicious snarl echoed around her, a sound that sent a chill skating down her spine and had her wild eyes searching for the cougar who had made it.
But there was only Rath before her.
The cold touch of metal against her temple had her freezing, her heart lodging in her throat and lungs squeezing tight.
“Ivy,” Rath rasped, a pained expression crossing his face before it twisted into a savage sneer. “Let her go.”
When he signalled with his left hand, her eyes widened. His brother. Storm had to be watching events unfold. Judging by the way Rath kept his eyes off the spot behind Alexander, where the riverside cabin was, his brother was there, protecting Ember and her mother.
“I’ve spent a long time trying to find this place.” Alexander pressed the gun harder against her temple, forcing her to tilt her head, and she refused to let the tears that burned the backs of her eyes line her lashes.
Rath glanced at her, pain and fear flashing in his golden eyes, and then only darkness as they landed back on Alexander. “I said, let her go.”
Alexander ignored him. “All I had to go on were the reports I found in my grandfather’s study after he died… faded photographs taken during reconnaissance missions before the main mission launched. I found that place, and you weren’t there.”
Missions?
What the hell was Alexander talking about?
“Just let me go.” She struggled against him and managed to push his arm away from her chest an inch.
He tightened it around her, lowered his head and breathed against her neck. “Don’t make me hurt you, Ivy. I do hate having to hurt beautiful women.”
That growl came again, fiercer this time, and Alexander chuckled low in his throat.
“You want her, don’t you?” Alexander pressed a kiss to her neck and she squirmed, wriggling away from his touch.
This time, the growl was more of a snarl, a low feral sound that held a note of warning in it and had her tensing, ready for the beast to attack her.
She looked for the source of it.
Her eyes locked with Rath’s bright golden ones.
His lips twisted in a sneer that flashed unusually sharp canines. “I thought you looked familiar. You’re as ugly as the bastard who led the attack on us that night. It’s a shame the fucker fled when shit went bad… didn’t have the balls to stick around and finish the job.”
Alexander tensed behind her and she could feel him shaking, trembling with anger.
Rath smiled slowly. “Left in a chopper… ditching the survivors… after I left my mark on him.”
“It took him months and countless surgeries to recover from that wound,” Alexander barked.
Rath growled, “It took my kin decades to recover from the scars Archangel left on us, and we’re still recovering from it now. Your family took everything from me… they took my parents… they took my wife and my unborn kid.”
A cold shiver swept down Ivy’s spine and her breath seized in her lungs.
Before she could gather her wits and ask what the hell they were all talking about, speaking of decades and Archangel, and what sounded like a battle to her, Alexander spoke.
“You killed my father.”
Rath snorted at that. “He only got what he deserved for killing so many of my kind and stealing others to take back to your sick fucking laboratories in England to ‘study’ and ‘document’ as if they were animals.”
“You are animals!” Alexander’s grip on her tightened further, squeezing her ribs and making it hard to breathe.
“We’re not animals,” Rath barked and advanced a step, didn’t back down when the two men tensed and moved their fingers to rest over the triggers on the assault rifles they had aimed at him. “We’re not like you either. We were peaceful… and you came to our home and attacked us. We defended ourselves.”
His stormy golden eyes fell to her and narrowed, sending another wave of cold through her.
Together with his words.
“Were you aware your sponsor is a sick son of a bitch who hunts people like me?”
Her ears rang.
Numbness crashed over her.
She whispered, “He hunts people?”
The cold press of the gun against her temple had that hitting her hard, and her knees turned to rubber, threatening to buckle. She locked them as anger swept through her, so hot and fierce it burned away the chill of shock. She wrestled against Alexander.
Froze when he moved his hand to her throat and squeezed it hard, his fingertips digging into her skin.
“I hunt creatures who mean to harm us,” he snarled and tugged her closer to him, pressed his cheek to hers and tilted her head up, forcing her to look at Rath. “That isn’t a man standing in front of you… it isn’t a man you obviously invited between your legs and feel something for.”
Shifters Gone Wild: A Shifter Romance Collection Page 23