Howl for It

by Shelly Laurenston

  Only she wasn’t any other hunter. She was . . . Kayla. Mine.

  As he patted her down, her eyes widened, then she gave a slow, negative shake of her head. “Stop the frisking routine, okay? I don’t have a tracker.” Her words rushed out quickly.

  But would she even know if she’d been tagged? Or would her boss want to keep his secret watch on her and all his other hunters? “You chose the wrong side for this fight.”

  She swallowed. Her lips trembled a bit but she said, “I chose the only side I could.”

  Those cars were coming closer. He could hear the crunch of gravel beneath the tires. Either she was tagged for tracking. . . or the dark suspicion that he’d had for weeks was true.

  If Kayla didn’t have a tracker on her, then he could have a traitor in the pack. Because he had not been followed from Vegas. He’d made sure of that fact.

  “When your team comes, what will you do?” His claws were pushing through his fingertips. “Go running back to them?”

  Her gaze stayed locked on his. “I’m not going back.”

  Well, well . . . Exactly what he wanted to hear, but Gage didn’t let his expression alter. “Good.” Then, since she deserved to know, he added, “Because I wasn’t giving you up.” Just so they were clear.

  Her lips parted in surprise.

  Time was running out. Those vehicles would be braking any minute. Before the hunters came storming in, he wanted his taste to be on her, wanted her taste on his lips. So Gage stepped forward and pulled her close. His head dipped toward her, and he kissed her with the wild need that pounded through him.

  What they had, it wasn’t about hunter and prey. It was man and woman. Lust. Need. A desire that couldn’t be satisfied, not with just one night.

  Maybe not even with a thousand nights.

  “We’re just getting started,” he promised against her lips. His. His wife, his for-fucking-ever.

  Just let the hunters try to take her. He was more than ready to rip them apart.

  And they were coming. So big. So tough. So stupidly sure of themselves.

  Pity. This time, he’d used the bait—and they were the ones running into a trap.

  Another kiss. Another slow lick of his lips over hers. Then Gage pushed her back. Away from the cabin’s door and windows. “Scream for me,” he said.

  She didn’t speak.

  She liked to make things hard. That was his Kayla.

  “Scream,” he said again and lifted his claws. He had to transform before the hunters entered the cabin. During those few moments that it took to shift, he was vulnerable. Open for their attack. He wouldn’t be vulnerable before them.

  But once he was in his full wolf form . . .

  Ready for hell, hunters?

  He smiled and knew that his growing fangs would show. “Your scream will distract them when they rush inside. They’ll want to help you.” While he had the chance to attack them. “Time to pick your side, wife.”

  Then the fire of the change swept through him. A white-hot explosion of pain as his bones broke, reshaped, as his muscles stretched and his body contorted. Fur burst along his flesh. His hands became paws. His body hit the floor, and when he opened his mouth again, the growl of a beast broke from his lips.

  His gaze found Kayla’s. She stood where he’d left her, against the wall. Her eyes were on his. Wide. Deep. Afraid?

  Another growl came from him as he took a step toward her. He could smell her fear. A hunter, afraid of the prey she’d deliberately sought out. What the hell?

  She could handle him as a man, but his beast made her shake.

  A normal reaction for most humans, but Kayla was far from normal. He’d find out the rest of her secrets. He had to.

  But right then he leapt for the shadows on the other side of the room. The hunters were closing in now. Three, two—

  The cabin’s door burst open. The men rushed inside. Still wearing their dark clothes and with ski masks over their heads. The muzzles of their guns swept the room—and froze on Kayla.

  Bait.

  “I told you she didn’t go willingly,” one of the men said. The leader. The leader always talked first and stormed onto the scene like he was some big deal. Gage had learned that lesson long ago. He watched, still and silent, as the guy pushed past the others and hurried to Kayla’s side. “Where the hell is he?” The masked guy demanded as he reached for Kayla’s arm. “Where—”

  Gage’s snarl seemed to echo in the small cabin.

  Three men. One wolf. Perfect odds.

  Gage leapt forward. Clawed the weapon from the first dumbass. Used his teeth on the second. They screamed and yelled, and their blood flowed.

  Too easy.

  The wounded men tried to slip back out the door. Fleeing. He guessed the humans couldn’t handle a little pain. Hunters weren’t big on courage.

  Except for Kayla.

  His head swung back toward her. That jerk with her was aiming his gun. The muzzle pointed right at Gage. Was that supposed to scare him? His hind legs shoved down, and he leapt into the air. He wasn’t faster than a bullet, so he’d take the hit, but then he’d take out the fool who—

  “No!” Kayla shoved the guy’s weapon away.

  Choose your side. It looked like she just had.

  “Kayla, what the hell—” The human began, but that was all he had the chance to say. Gage’s paws drove onto his chest as he took the hunter down. They hit the floor and the human tried to jerk away.

  Gage wasn’t letting him go. The leader was the one he wanted. The one that he’d use to break the group targeting his pack.

  Gage brought his mouth to the guy’s throat. He could rip the man wide open in less time than it took to breathe.

  “Don’t!” But, suddenly, Kayla was there. Coming right up next to the beast. “Don’t hurt him. Please.” A ragged breath slipped from her. “He’s my brother.”

  Gage felt an ice-cold pain in his chest. So cold. But . . . since when did the cold burn?

  As the cold spread through him, the wolf slumped away from the hunter on the ground, and he knew he’d made a fatal mistake. He’d been distracted. He’d heard Kayla’s cry and his attention had slipped away from the hunter.

  Second weapon. He should have known the guy would have one. All damn hunters did.

  The asshole in the ski mask still had his gun up. When he’d fired, the weapon hadn’t made a sound, but its bullet had torn straight into Gage’s chest.

  Kayla’s presence should have distracted her team.

  Not me.

  Gage’s form convulsed, and he shuddered as pain lanced through him. The pain—that was coming from the shift. His body was transforming rapidly—too rapidly—back into the body of a man. Gage stared down at his chest. That wasn’t a normal bullet.

  Something was hanging out of the back of that bullet. Like a—feather?

  Then he knew. Fuck me.

  Tranq.

  “Bastard . . .” He managed to wheeze the word. Speech was near damn impossible.

  He couldn’t control his body. Couldn’t stop the shift. Couldn’t do anything but hit the floor as the tranquilizer poured through his veins.

  “What have you done?” Kayla’s voice came from a distance. She sounded afraid. Angry. Then she was there, touching him, holding him. “Gage?”

  He couldn’t speak.

  The hunter could. “So it’s true . . .” Disgust flowed through the man’s words. “The others told me . . . they said you were getting too close to him.”

  Why couldn’t he feel Kayla’s fingers against his flesh?

  “I didn’t want to believe it.” The floor creaked as the hunter came closer to her. “Not you. You couldn’t be working with a dirty animal like him.”

  Things were starting to dim. Just how much of a dose had the guy emptied into him?

  “Help us, Jonah,” Kayla said. She was pleading with the guy. “Help me get him out of here before the others—”

  Too late.

  More foot
steps raced from outside. More humans coming in, when the wolves should have been there to have his back.

  Understanding hit him even as he fought to hold on to consciousness. Kayla had been telling him the truth.

  No tracker. Even through the daze, he realized the significance of what was happening. Kayla hadn’t led anyone to them but—

  Betrayed.

  The wolves who should have been there to protect him . . . one or both of those assholes had turned on him.

  “I can’t help you,” Jonah said. “I’m sorry.”

  There was a whoosh of sound. A gasp. Gage managed to turn his head—it took his last bit of strength but he turned his head—and he saw the feather sticking from Kayla’s chest.

  The tranq worked faster on her. She fell immediately, slumping back on the floor.

  The hunter’s feet padded closer. The guy bent down. Put his fingers to Kayla’s throat.

  He still had on his ski mask, but Gage didn’t need to see the man’s face. He had the bastard’s scent now, and he’d be able to track him any place. Brother or not . . . “Y-you’re . . . dead . . .”

  Through the ski mask, the one she’d called Jonah stared back at him with golden eyes an exact shade to match Kayla’s. “No, wolf, you are.”

  The darkness swept over Gage, but he still smiled as the drugs pumped through him. Smiled because he knew the hunter was wrong. And when Gage woke again . . .

  He’d make sure the hunter got just what he deserved.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  She was in a cage.

  Kayla’s head hurt, pounded like a freaking bitch, and she was caged.

  The cage was the first thing she noticed when she opened her eyes. Rather hard to miss it since the bars were over her head where a ceiling should be.

  Holding prison. Yeah, dammit, she knew this place. She’d seen a unit like this plenty of times before.

  A cage to hold shifters.

  I’m not a shifter.

  “Hello, sweetheart.”

  She was just married to one.

  Her head turned slowly to the left as she followed the sound of that deep voice, and that was when she noticed the second big important fact of the moment. She wasn’t alone in that cage. Gage. A big, half-naked, pissed Gage was beside her. And . . . and he was chained to her.

  A silver handcuff circled his right wrist. A chain extended from that cuff . . . extended about five feet . . . then ended in the matching silver cuff that locked around her left wrist.

  “What the hell?” She jerked off the small bed. More of a cot than anything else. The bars of their cage were silver, she knew that. The better to keep the wolves in place. Because every time they touched silver . . .

  They could burn.

  She grabbed Gage’s wrist. The flesh was an angry red. Blistered.

  “Don’t worry,” he told her, with a flash of that crooked, half-smile, “you can kiss it later and make it all better.”

  She dropped his hand.

  He grabbed hers right back as the smile vanished from his face. “I’m killing him.”

  The cold knot in her stomach told her exactly who he was taking about. “Don’t.” How had things gotten so screwed to hell and back? “He’s all I have left.”

  “Then he shouldn’t have fucking shot you.”

  She had nothing to say to that. The chain hung between them. With her free hand, she reached up and rubbed her chest. It hurt, ached, and she knew there’d be one shiner of a bruise on her flesh where she’d taken the tranq.

  How could she explain this? Right then, she was more than ready to tear off Jonah’s head, but . . . he really was all that she had left. “He’s had a hard time with wolves.”

  “Yeah, cry me a bleeding river.” Gage’s eyes blazed at her. “The dick shot his own sister, so I don’t care what kind of sob story you spin. He’s a dead man.”

  She glanced over her shoulder because she didn’t want to look in his eyes anymore. She wasn’t going to let him go after her brother, but she wasn’t about to argue right then, not with cameras on them.

  And she was sure they were being watched. Her gaze went to the left. The right. Ah . . . there. Nestled in the far corner of the room. The slowly rotating camera had to be recording their every move.

  Rats in a cage. No, wolves in a cage.

  But . . . just why were they still alive? Her, okay, sure, she was human, so they wouldn’t just bury a silver bullet in her heart and dump her body. But Gage? He was at the top of Lyle’s most wanted list.

  So why was he caged and not killed?

  “Is this the MO?” He wanted to know and he tugged on her wrist to pull her attention back to him. “You catch the wolves, then you lock them up here?”

  She licked her lips. “Sometimes.”

  “And sometimes you just kill them.”

  Her gaze snapped back to his. “The only shifters we hunt are those who’ve been preying on humans. Killing humans. What are we supposed to do? Let human cops go after them?” Her laugh was bitter. She’d learned the brutal truth about the way that worked when she’d been sixteen. “Human cops wouldn’t be able to handle the monsters.” That was why her team was called in.

  “But you can,” he said flatly.

  “I can.” Whispered. Her team could. Lyle’s group was contracted by Uncle Sam. The government knew all about supernaturals, and they paid a good penny to make sure that the right people—the right hunters—went after their vicious prey.

  They weren’t just randomly picking up supernaturals. Not all the supernaturals out there were even dangerous. But some . . . some were real-life nightmares that couldn’t be stopped by normal means. Lyle’s team was hunting the cases that no one else could manage.

  Stopping the killers. Taking out the nightmares.

  Gage’s brows lifted as he glanced around the cage. “You’re doing a real top job of handling things now.”

  “Screw you, wolf.” She spun away. Paced as far as the chain would let her. Kayla was in this whole messed up situation because she’d lusted after the wolf. She should’ve known better. Actually, she had known better.

  “I don’t prey on humans,” Gage said, his voice quiet. “I never have.”

  Her fingers wrapped around the bars. The cage was built to keep supernaturals in. Would a human be able to find a way out? “Tell that to Slater Hawk.” Hawk’s case had been the one to pull her in on the hunt for Gage Riley. Slater Hawk had been sliced apart and then dumped in the desert.

  “Since he’s burning with the devil, I won’t tell Hawk anything.” How could a man’s voice sound so careless when he was talking about death? “But believe me, that torturing SOB got exactly what he deserved.”

  Her heart raced faster. This was what she’d suspected, the reason she hadn’t driven her knife into Gage’s chest. “Why? Why’d you kill him?”

  “Because he was a twisted bastard who carved up four showgirls in the city. I don’t like it when women get hurt.”

  She’d heard about the attacks on those ladies only . . . Lyle had told her that the wolves had been behind them. And he’d had proof, not just some BS story. She glanced back at Gage. “Why kill a human . . . when your own pack was really slaughtering those women?” Had Hawk just found out the truth? “I saw the pictures,” she told him. The poor women. Brutalized. Tortured. “I know the difference between claw marks and stab wounds.” This wasn’t amateur hour. She knew the difference, far better than most.

  She’d carry claw marks on her body until the day she died. The chain clinked against the floor as Gage moved toward her. “If you cut off a shifter’s hand while he’s in animal form, that limb never shifts back. Certain hunters take shifter body parts like that . . . as trophies.” His hands closed over her shoulders and he leaned in close to her. “But you knew that, sweetheart.” His breath feathered over her ear. “Didn’t you?”

  Her eyes closed. He was too close to her. And she was too weak where he was concerned. “You-you’re saying . . . Hawk killed
a shifter and used—”

  “No.” Snapped out. “I’m saying someone gave Hawk that claw, someone set the pit bull out, and got him to carve up those girls so that my pack would look guilty.”

  Her eyes opened as she faced him. Dread was a cold knot in her stomach. “Why?”

  Metal screeched behind her. She didn’t look back. She knew that sound. The heavy metal entrance door was being shoved across the stone floor . . . screeching and groaning like an old man in pain.

  Gage smiled at her, and the sight was grim. “Ask your boss.”

  Slowly, Kayla glanced back over her shoulder. Sure enough, her boss, Lyle McKennis, was stalking toward them. As usual, he was perfectly styled. His dark hair was slicked back. His suit was wrinkle free. And his handsome face even sported a wide grin.

  Her heart beat faster. Whenever Lyle smiled like that, it was a bad sign.

  Very, very bad.

  The door slammed closed behind him.

  Jonah stared down at the small video monitor. The wolf was touching Kayla again. That jerk was always touching her—and she didn’t seem to mind at all.

  What the hell was wrong with her? After all they’d been through together. Why? Why would she side with a beast now?

  She had to hate the shifters as much as he did. They were all monsters. They destroyed everyone and everything they touched.

  And she’d married one of those freaks?

  He’d thought it was just cover. Just her following orders. Until he’d seen the way she touched the guy back at that cabin. When the wolf had fallen, she’d rushed to his side. Her fingers had trembled. There’d been fear in her voice.

  Then when she’d looked at Jonah, he’d seen the anger in her eyes. His big sis had been furious at him for taking down her wolf.

  “Great job,” one of the other hunters said, as he slapped Jonah on his back. “Another pelt for you.”

  Jonah didn’t respond. Did the guy even realize that Jonah’s sister was in that cage on the screen? Lyle was walking toward her now. The boss had better get her out of there. Sure, Kayla had made the wrong choice, but Jonah wasn’t gonna let her be caged.

  I shouldn’t have shot her.

  His stomach twisted and bile rose in his throat as he remembered that desperate moment. The others on his team had all been convinced that Kayla had turned traitor. He hadn’t believed it—not until he’d seen the truth with his own eyes.