by J. L. Wilder
Not that it mattered. The job was the job, and they’d get it done. They would find the kidnapped omega and return her to the Coywolves. However the Coywolves treated her, it had to be better than being in the hands of kidnappers, right?
He collected the t-shirt and photograph from the others. “Any last questions?”
“What’s her name?” Dart asked.
“Her name?”
“If I find her, I’m going to have to tell her I’m there to rescue her,” Dart said. “Why would she believe me if I don’t even know her name?”
Emmett had no response. Dart was exactly right. He should have thought of that.
Pax groaned. “You idiot. You didn’t get her name?”
“Watch your mouth,” Emmett snapped. “All right, I made a mistake. Doesn’t give you the right to forget who’s alpha around here.”
“Okay, okay.”
“Fan out,” Emmett said. “Quadrants.” He sketched a grid in the air with his hand. “Pax, you take one. Judah, two. I’ll take three. Dart and Xander, take four. Meet back here in two hours, with or without the omega.”
“What if we find her and she’s too well guarded?” Judah asked.
“Then you scout the area, come back, and report. We’ll go in together if we need to.” He looked at Dart. “Nothing rash, understood? You don’t go in unless you’ve got a clear path.”
“Understood.”
“All right, let’s move.”
The pack scattered. Emmett trotted off into the forest a few yards, stopped, and undressed.
He tied the laces of his shoes together and hung them over the branch of a tree, socks stuffed in the toes. He hung his t-shirt over the same branch. Then he carefully folded up his jeans, keeping them neat and even, and placed them on the ground.
He closed his eyes.
Everyone shifted differently. He had watched his packmates do it enough times to understand that. Pax liked to get a running start, diving into his animal body as if he were jumping into a pool. Judah’s preferred method was to sit back on his haunches, forcing his body into an awkward and uncomfortable position for a human. A position that would be much easier on a wolf body.
Emmett, though, shifted nose-first.
He inhaled deeply, taking in the scent of the woods around him. The pine and sap of the trees, the wet earth, the living, growing things all around him. He belonged to these things. He was part of this world. This was home just as much as the road, just as much as his bike underneath him when he and his pack were on a run together.
He stretched out, reaching for his own ability to smell more. To perceive more. And his body complied.
When he opened his eyes again, he was lower to the ground. He flexed his paws and felt the way they dug into the dirt, felt the strength in his limbs. He pushed back on his forelegs, stretching his shoulders, then flexed to stretch his hips. It felt good to be back in wolf form, to feel the power of his lupine body. He was capable of more in this form than he was as a human. He was stronger. Surer. More confident.
He inhaled again, filling his lungs with fresh forest air.
Then he lowered his head, picked up his folded jeans carefully, and set off at a brisk trot. If he kept up a good pace, he thought he could get about ten miles out before he had to turn around and head back to meet up with the others. Hopefully, that would be far enough to pick up the omega’s scent and give them a new lead to start from.
But as it turned out, he caught her scent after only three miles. And it was strong.
Fear, he thought. Adrenaline, at the very least. She had been near here, and she had been worked up about it. Well, that made sense if she’d been kidnapped. How long had it been? Should he go back, meet up with the others, and tell them what he’d found? They could follow the scent from this point together.
No. His two hours weren’t up yet. He could keep going. Maybe he would be able to find her. If he could get her and bring her back with him, he could keep the others out of danger. As alpha, that was his primary concern.
He slowed his pace, tracking the scent carefully, not wanting to lose it, but luckily, he had nothing to worry about. The kidnappers, whoever they were, hadn’t done a good job of covering their tracks. After just a few miles, he found himself outside a large concrete bunker of a building. A white van stood outside, and the place was ripe with the scent of unfamiliar wolves. Christ, Emmett thought, even the Coywolves could have found this.
Which meant that finding it wasn’t the primary concern.
It meant that whoever was inside wasn’t afraid of a fight.
“What do you say?” came a voice from behind him. “Should we go in?”
Emmett spun around. Pax was standing there, clad only in his jeans. Emmett spat his own jeans on the ground and shifted back to his human form, keeping his back to his packmate so he could tug his pants on. “Jesus, Pax,” he said. “What are you doing here? Why aren’t you searching your quadrant?”
“She’s not in my quadrant,” Pax said.
“But you were told to search—”
“I picked up the scent,” Pax said. “Haven’t I always told you my nose is better than yours?” He jerked his head toward the bunker. “She’s in there, isn’t she?”
“Seems like it.”
“So? Are we going to get her out?”
He knew Emmett too well. If it was any of the others out here, Emmett would have told them to return to the pack. But because he’d found the bunker himself, Pax knew he’d try to rescue the omega himself. To keep the others out of harm’s way. What else could an alpha do?
“If you go in, I’m going in with you,” Pax said. “So, don’t even think about ordering me to stay out here.”
For a moment, Emmett considered giving that very order. It wasn’t as if there was anything Pax could do about it if he did. He would have to obey. And he would feel much better knowing that his packmate was safe.
But if he went in alone, the odds would be stacked so monumentally against him that he’d be unlikely to survive. And the pack didn’t just need their alpha today. They would need him tomorrow, and the next day, and next week, and next year. “All right,” Emmett said. “You cover my flank, then. Let’s go. And be quiet.”
The two men crept closer to the building. The outer door wasn’t guarded, and that was worrying to Emmett. If this had been his bunker, he would have posted a guard there. The fact that they hadn’t meant that there was probably a guard inside.
He pointed this out to Pax. “When we get inside,” he said softly, “we’re going to have to move quickly to take out anyone who’s in there before they raise an alarm.”
Pax nodded. “You open the door,” he said. “I’ll get the drop on the guard.”
“What if there’s more than one?”
“Then you’d better get inside before they get the drop on me, right?”
Emmett worried his lip between his teeth and nodded.
“Hey,” Pax said, flashing a grin at him. “This is small potatoes. It’s just an omega pull. We’ve done it a dozen times, and we’ve never lost anybody.”
“I know,” Emmett agreed.
“So, what do you look so nervous about?”
“I don’t know. I’ve got a weird feeling about this one, that’s all. Like something’s going to go sideways.”
“What’s that you always tell us?” Pax said. “Don’t over plan, because you won’t be able to go with the flow when things go off the rails?”
Emmett took a deep breath. “You’re right. Okay. Just another omega pull.” He just wished his racing heart would settle down and that he could relax and build up his confidence. If only he could go in in wolf form—
But he knew that was a bad idea. He needed his wits about him. They both did.
He gave Pax a wave forward, and the two men sprinted across the clearing and to the bunker door.
“Ready?” Emmett whispered.
Pax nodded.
Emmett grabbed the doorknob and tug
ged it open. Pax darted inside, and almost immediately Emmett heard a thud.
He eased himself around the door frame. Pax was squatting over the prone form of another man, his wrist an inch from the man’s face. “Alive,” he whispered.” He snapped his fingers a couple of times, then lifted the man’s eyelid and nodded. “Out cold, though.”
“Do you still have the scent?”
“Don’t you?”
Emmett inhaled and found, to his surprise, that he did. Usually, scents were much harder to follow in human form, but this one was as rich as it had ever been. He pressed his back to the wall and crept down the corridor, aware of Pax’s presence behind him.
The scent was almost too easy to follow. They came to a T junction, and Emmett pointed down the hall, glancing back at Pax to confirm what he thought. Pax nodded. She was definitely down there.
Emmett made his way down the hall. Pax followed, back to back with him, keeping an eye out for anyone who might come this way and see them. But, to Emmett’s surprise, they reached the door at the end of the hall without incident.
This is too easy, he thought warily.
He opened the door.
The girl in the room was hardly recognizable as the omega in the photo Matthew Lang had shown Emmett. She had lost weight, even though her kidnapping was barely a week old. Her hair was tangled and matted, instead of shiny and styled. Her skin was dirty, instead of lustrous. Her eyes were closed.
Emmett crossed to her side and rested a hand on her shoulder. Immediately, he pulled back. “Shit,” he hissed. “Pax, she’s burning up.”
“What?”
“She’s got a fever. Something’s wrong. We’re going to have to grab her and go.” He scooped the omega up in his arms—she was so light—and tossed her over his shoulder. “Go. Run. We have to get out of here, fast.”
Pax didn’t ask questions. He turned and ran back the way they had come. Emmett followed, trying not to jostle the girl too much. The last thing they needed was for her to wake up, confused and feverish, and start screaming.
But the exit from the bunker went as well as the infiltration had. They met no one. When they reached the outer door, the guard Pax had knocked out was still down. “Get the door,” Emmett said quietly.
Pax reached out and opened it.
“Get ‘em, boys!”
There was the sound of several motorcycles ripping to life. Emmett knew that sound like he knew the sound of his packmates’ breathing, and he didn’t have to look to understand. The kidnappers, whoever they were, had probably known Emmett and Pax were inside all this time. They had been waiting to ambush.
And they were on bikes.
“Run!” Emmett bellowed, knowing already that it wouldn’t be enough. “Shift and go! That’s an order, Pax!”
Pax tossed Emmett one agonized look before submitting, leaping for his wolf form and sprinting into the woods.
None of the bikers chased him. Emmett hadn’t thought they would. He was standing right here, after all, and he was the one with the omega in hand. She was all they really cared about, he was sure.
“Turn around,” said a voice from behind Emmett. Emmett pivoted slowly.
Three of them. Three men on bikes.
Not as bad as he’d feared. He had thought he might see dozens of them. Against three, he stood a chance.
“Put the omega down,” the one in the middle said.
Emmett shook his head. They wouldn’t get him to comply that easily. “No.”
The men glanced at each other. Then the man in the middle—he must be the alpha, Emmett thought—dropped his hand, pulled out a pistol, and aimed it squarely at the center of Emmett’s forehead. “Drop the omega,” he said.
“And what, you’ll just let me walk away?”
The man showed his teeth. “I definitely won’t let you walk away if you don’t put her down,” he said. “How about that?”
“How about we wake her up and ask her who she wants to go with,” Emmett suggested, his voice as casual as if he were proposing a bar where they might all meet up for a drink later. He hoped they couldn’t hear how fast his heart was racing.
“How about you eat lead,” the man on the left growled. He had a rat-like face and a wiry build.
“Quiet, Edgar,” said the alpha. “You’re not even armed.” He relaxed the hand holding his gun a little. “I see what’s going on here. Big boy wants to be a hero, is that it? Wants to save the little omega girl? Maybe take her back to her rich family, collect a reward? How much did they offer, hmm?”
Emmett didn’t answer. He wasn’t going to tell this man anything.
The man cocked his gun. “Put her down and back away,” he said. “Or I shoot.”
Then several things happened at once.
To Emmett’s left and right, two massive figures came streaking through the woods. He saw them in his peripheral vision and could just make out the forms of massive wolves. Mine or theirs?
The question was answered as the wolves dove at the bikes. The alpha roared in response and kicked his bike to life, spraying dust in the face of the nearest wolf. We are outnumbered, Emmett thought, but just as he did, two more wolves emerged from behind the bikes. One sank his teeth into the far-right biker’s calf. The man let out an enraged howl.
The situation was in hand, and there was only one thing to do. Emmett ran. He sprinted dead into the trees, moving as quickly as he could, desperate to put as much distance between himself and the kidnappers as was possible before they decided to come after him.
After some time, he heard the pounding of paws behind him. They pulled up on either side of him. They encircled him and forced him, finally, to slow.
One by one, they shifted.
He stood surrounded by his pack, all of them out of breath, all of them grinning with exertion after their fight. Dart had blood smeared across his face, and now he wiped it away with the back of his hand. Judah’s eyes were red and watering. Otherwise, they looked unharmed.
“You got her,” Xander said.
“Let’s get out of here, okay?” Emmett said. “They could come after us.”
“They won’t,” Pax said. “We left them unconscious.”
“Well, there might be more of them, Pax. Can we get to safety before we stop and shoot the breeze, please?”
Pax rolled his eyes, but he resumed his wolf form. So did the others. They formed a tight circle around Emmett and the omega, guarding them on all sides as they made their way back to the tent in the cornfield.
Chapter Five
HAZEL
Hazel blinked her way out of the darkness that encompassed her. The shapes moving around her were blurry and confusing, and the voices were unfamiliar. She struggled to understand what was going on.
“We don’t have to just hand her over,” someone said. “We could say we never found her. We could take her with us.”
“That’s not what we do.” Another voice now. He sounded irritated, short tempered, and Hazel fought to sit up, sensing that this was a conversation she ought to be a part of.
A hand landed on her shoulder, pressing down, easing her back into the darkness. She felt something cool on her forehead.
She drifted away.
The next time she awoke, her vision was clear. And her surroundings had changed.
The ground beneath her was soft. That was the first thing she noticed. And while it was cool, it wasn’t the horrible cold of the wet concrete in her cell. There was light here, too, enough for her to see what was going on around her. Enough for her to see that she was surrounded by unfamiliar men.
She sat bolt upright, terrified.
Someone caught her by the shoulders and braced her, helping her to sit up. “Take it easy,” he said quietly. “You’ve been out for a few days.”
She looked up. He was tall and muscular, with close cropped dark hair. He was naked from the waist up, and her breath caught in her throat at the sight of him. He was so good looking that she almost lost her newfound str
ength and collapsed to the ground again.
He was so good looking that it took a minute for the fear to hit.
When it did, though, it was razor sharp. “Who are you?” she asked, her voice wavering like aluminum foil.
“Emmett Burke,” he said. “I’m the alpha of the Hell’s Wolves.”
“You...you kidnapped me?”
“No,” he said. “We rescued you. We were hired by your pack. We’re going to take you home.”
“I’m telling you, they’re not going to take her back,” another voice said. Hazel looked over and saw that the speaker was a younger man, lean and wiry with black hair that fell into his eyes. “Not with that mark on her.”
“And I’m telling you, we don’t keep omegas,” Emmett Burke said. “We have to be ready to move at all times. We can’t afford to be weighed down by passengers.”
“They’ll take me back,” Hazel said, although she wasn’t sure. She looked down at her arm, where the tattoo had been inked. To her surprise, the image was red and inflamed. “Is that— ?”
“Infected,” Emmett said. “You’ve had a pretty high fever for a few days now. Dart, over there, stole you some antibiotics, and we’ve been giving you water. You should try to eat something, though. It’s been a while since you had any food.”
“I am hungry,” she realized.
He nodded. “What were they giving you? The pack that was holding you?”
“The Savage Rangers,” she remembered.
Dart snorted. Apparently, he didn’t find the name particularly threatening. Well, that was fine for him. He hadn’t been there. He hadn’t had his clothing cut away, hadn’t been held down in a chair and branded with these slash marks. He could laugh at the Savage Rangers.
“Get her something to eat, Dart,” Emmett said. Hazel could tell by the tone of his voice that it was an order. Dart rolled his eyes, but he ducked through the flap of the tent, presumably off to wherever the Hell’s Wolves got their food.
“What were the Savage Rangers feeding you?” another man said. This one was the tallest man in the tent—she could tell even though they were sitting down—and the only blonde. It was a dirty sort of blonde, but he still stood out from the others.