The Omega Purebred (Hell's Wolves MC Book 2)

by J. L. Wilder

  Of course, it wouldn’t be anything like what she was used to. He shook his head again as he thought of her protests about the quality of their room. Why couldn’t she take a bath in that bathtub? He hadn’t seen anything wrong with it. It certainly didn’t look like anything had died there, for God’s sake. What a drama queen.

  Being on the run with this girl was definitely going to be a challenge. First, the whole toothbrush shopping debacle, and now this. He had a feeling that nothing he did would ever be good enough to make her happy. She was used to a pampered lifestyle. She had probably been treated like a princess by the Coywolves.

  Well, she’d better not start expecting that kind of thing from me, that’s all.

  He gathered up the food and drinks and made his way back to the motel room, hoping that he wouldn’t have to deal with more complaints from Hazel when he got there.

  But when he was across the parking lot from their room, he froze in his tracks.

  The door stood open wide.

  He hadn’t left it open. He knew he hadn’t. He’d even stood and listened as she bolted it behind him, just to be on the safe side. And he had the only key. No one could have gotten in, could they? What had happened?

  She hadn’t left? She couldn’t possibly be that stupid, could she?

  Sticking to the shadows, he crept across the parking lot and toward the open door. If the Savage Rangers had taken her back, he would abandon this job, he told himself. There was only so much he was willing to put on the line for this girl. He would go back and find the rest of his pack and they would get the hell out of Rhode Island. The Savage Rangers had already proven to be bigger fish than the Hell’s Wolves liked to fry, and Emmett was seriously regretting ever getting involved.

  A man appeared in the motel room doorway. He had the same three slashes tattooed on his bicep as Emmett had seen on Hazel’s arm. “Nobody here,” he yelled.

  Two more men appeared out of the darkness, both astride motorcycles that idled their way across the lot. “They must have moved on already,” one of them said in a carrying voice.

  “The trail went cold here, though,” the other protested. “They’re still around here, I’m sure of it.”

  “Do you want to check the room?” the first man growled. “I’m telling you, it’s some kind of trick. They checked in so that their scent would lead us here, and then they found some way of covering their tracks. They’re long gone by now.”

  “At least we know it’s just the two of them,” one of the men said. “Do you think it’s the alpha with her?”

  “We don’t know it’s just the two of them,” the man in the doorway objected. “The guy at the front desk only saw two of them. That doesn’t mean more of them didn’t meet up here later.”

  “They can’t have been here more than half an hour.”

  “That’s long enough.” The man strode out of the room. He grabbed a bike from its parking space and threw his leg over. “We can’t let them get too far ahead of us,” he said. “Fall in.”

  Emmett stayed frozen where he stood until the Savage Rangers had disappeared onto the highway, afraid that any movement from him would draw their attention back his way and cause them to turn around. Then he sprinted across the parking lot toward the motel room, dreading what he would find inside.

  He needn’t have worried. He threw open the door, half crazed with fear, to see Hazel sitting on the edge of the bed. She was pale and her hands were clutched together in her lap, but she was alive.

  All he could do was stare.

  It was Hazel who spoke first. “They were here,” she said faintly. “The Savage Raiders. They were here, looking for me.”

  “I know,” he said. “I saw them. Hazel, how did you—?”

  “I hid,” she said. “I heard them coming, so I hid in the dresser.”

  “How the hell did you do that?”

  “I took out the drawers,” she said. “I threw them out the window. That left room for me in the cabinet. If they’d opened the door, they would have seen me, but—”

  “But they didn’t.” And of course, this place must have been so ripe with her scent that it wouldn’t have occurred to them to notice that it was more concentrated in such an unlikely place. “That...that was really well done. Really clever. Good going.”

  She nodded slowly. “We should get out of here,” she said. “Right?”

  “Definitely.” He tossed her a package of jerky. “Eat this and we’ll go.”

  She caught it deftly, surprising him yet again, and looked down at it uncertainly. “What is it?”

  “Beef jerky. It’s good.”

  “It looks like shoe leather.”

  “Just eat your food, will you?” Just when he’d begun to think of her as tough and capable, she said something to remind him that she was really just a little princess.

  She tore open the bag and pulled out a strip of jerky. “Where will we go?” she asked.

  “Back the way we came,” he said.

  “Back the way we—what?”

  “Did you hear them talking?” he asked. “While you were hiding?”

  “I heard them. I was too scared to really listen to them.”

  “Well, they’re going forward. They’re going on the way we were going before, trying to pick up our scent again. Eventually, they’re going to realize that there’s no more sign of us, that way, and they’re going to turn around and come back here to try to track us again. And we don’t want to be between them and the motel when that happens.”

  “But when they can’t find any trace of us leaving from the motel,” Hazel said,” won’t it occur to them that we went back? Won’t they follow us that way?”

  “I’m hoping,” Emmett said, “that we can get to my motorcycle before then.”

  EMMETT HADN’T REALIZED how short a distance they had actually come from the cornfield and the tent that was still hidden there. It had taken the Savage Rangers a surprisingly long time to track him and Hazel. He supposed that was encouraging. Maybe they sucked at tracking.

  He suspected that probably wasn’t true, though. More likely, they had been dealing with fighting off his brothers. Emmett felt sick inside at the thought. If anything had happened to one of them, he would never forgive himself.

  Why had he run? In the ordinary course of things, he never would have run from a fight. And now, as he analyzed his thoughts and responses, he knew that that characterization was unfair. He hadn’t been fleeing. He hadn’t been afraid.

  At least, I wasn’t afraid for myself.

  He had been protecting Hazel.

  And yes, that was okay, that was fine as far as it went, because she was worth a huge payout to him and his pack, and because they’d agreed to protect her. But it surprised him that he hadn’t violated that agreement when it came right down to it. There had been nothing compelling him. He could have helped in the fight. Why hadn’t he?

  The answer came to him almost without thought. Because I wanted her to be safe.

  Because he hadn’t wanted her to be retaken by the Savage Rangers. He had wanted her safe and protected.

  Why did he care so much?

  That was harder to answer. She was just a job, after all. Money was great, as far as it went, but it definitely wasn’t more important than the lives of his packmates. So, how could he justify putting her safety first?

  They could defend themselves. She couldn’t. That’s all it was.

  Maybe.

  “Wait here,” he said when they reached the tent. “I’m going to look around before we move on.”

  “Why do I have to stay here?” she asked.

  The true answer was that he was going to look for blood and bodies, signs of injury and death, but he didn’t want to scare her. “I’m just going to see if I can get an idea of which way my pack went,” he said. “After the fight, I mean.”

  “Well, I’ll help you,” she said.

  “You’re not a tracker.”

  Her eyes blazed. “You don�
�t know what I am. You just met me.”

  “Okay, are you a tracker?”

  “Well, I don’t know either! I’ve never tried to track anything. But I know two sets of eyes are better than one.” And before he could stop her, she had stomped off through the corn to the place where the fight had occurred.

  There was a sort of clearing in the field. Cornstalks had been bent and trampled. There didn’t seem to be any other sign, though. Emmett sniffed the wind, trying to pick up a familiar scent.

  “Here,” Hazel said.

  He turned. She was kneeling beside the perimeter of the flattened area, bent low to the ground, and she pointed. He squatted beside her. “What?”

  “Blood,” she said. “It’s soaked into the dirt, but you can see it’s a little discolored here, can’t you?”

  He could, now that she’d pointed it out. He pressed his fingers to the dirt. It was damp. When he picked up his hand, the pads of his fingers were red. The blood was still wet.

  But who had it belonged to? Was it the blood of one of his packmates? He sniffed, but there was no way to be sure.

  He stood. “Come on,” he said. “We need to go find my bike. Assuming they didn’t take it, or trash it, or anything like that.” If they had, he and Hazel were going to have to continue on foot, a prospect he didn’t like. On a bike he was fast, and he’d have a chance at staying ahead of the Savage Rangers. The gasoline odor would help to obscure their scent, too.

  “We’re not going to try and figure out where the rest of your pack went?” Hazel asked.

  “Nothing we can tell from this,” Emmett said.

  “We can tell one thing,” Hazel countered.

  “What’s that?”

  “It’s not enough blood for someone to have died,” Hazel said.

  “It is if they carried him off to die somewhere else.” Speaking the words made Emmett feel like vomiting.

  But Hazel shook her head. “If they carried him off, there would be a trail of blood. Whoever left this stayed still long enough to patch up his wound and then left. I bet it was one of yours. The Savage Raiders wouldn’t have stopped to clean themselves up. They took off the moment they realized I wasn’t here.”

  She was right. Emmett had to admit, he was impressed. “That’s true,” he said.

  “See?” she said. “I could be a tracker.”

  “All right, maybe you could. With a lot of training.” Training she wouldn’t get, once she was returned to her own pack. No one would train an omega for tracking. She had much more important work to do.

  He tipped his head toward the place he’d left his bike while they’d camped here, and Hazel followed him into the corn.

  When they reached the place where the bikes had been parked, Emmett got another piece of good news. All four of his packmates’ bikes were gone.

  He rested a hand on the seat of his own bike, thinking hard. “They could have taken them, though,” he murmured.

  Hazel came up behind him. “Who could have taken what?”

  He looked back at her. “My packmates’ bikes are missing. I was thinking that the Savage Rangers might have stolen them.”

  “Oh.” Hazel hesitated, then shook her head. “No.”

  “No?”

  “Doesn’t make any sense. Why would they steal four motorcycles and leave one behind? And even if they had done that, it would be a pretty wild coincidence for the one they left back to just happen to be yours.”

  “I guess that’s true.” He was impressed all over again. Pampered omega she might have been, but Hazel Lang had a real instinct for survival. If she’d been a young man, he probably would have invited her to join the Hell’s Wolves.

  A rush of pleasure filled him at that idea, taking him by surprise. Stop it, he told himself firmly. We’re not having her in the pack. An omega’s the worst thing that could happen to us. Imagine a pregnancy— a litter! —on the road. No. And besides, she was a job. He had committed to returning her to her family.

  “Get on,” he said, swinging a leg over his bike.

  She eyed it with some trepidation. “Is it safe?”

  “Hell of a lot safer than staying here and waiting for the Savage Rangers to catch up to us. Get on.”

  She nodded, apparently seeing the sense in that, and clambered awkwardly onto the back of the bike. It couldn’t have been more obvious that she’d never ridden before in her life.

  “Hang on,” he said.

  “To what?”

  “To me.”

  Hesitantly, she put her arms around his waist.

  Emmett thought about how long it had been since he’d touched a woman.

  He pushed the idea aside, engaged his bike’s engine, and drove them carefully out of the corn.

  Chapter Seven

  HAZEL

  The roar of the motorcycle scared Hazel, and so did the feel of the wind rushing past her fast enough to sting her skin. But there was something oddly exhilarating about it too. Never in her life had she moved so fast!

  Her entire world shrank down to Emmett’s torso, which she clung to for dear life. It was as if they were in a hurricane and his body was a tree trunk. He was her only chance at not being swept away.

  She didn’t know where he was going. She hadn’t thought to ask. She only knew that her life and her safety were in this stranger’s hands.

  He was wild. A wild alpha. Leader of a wild pack. Her own family would be horrified if they could see who she was with.

  No, they wouldn’t, she thought suddenly. They hired him, didn’t they? They wanted him to find me. Wild or not, they put their trust in Emmett. If they trusted him, I should do the same. After all, Matthew was her alpha. He had always known what was best for her.

  So, she would put her faith in the wild man to whose waist she now clung. It was what her alpha wanted. Even though no direct order had been given, Hazel would obey. It was the best way to ensure that she got home safely.

  She just hoped Emmett would find some real food before their next meal. That beef jerky had tasted like it had been found in a dumpster. She knew she was on the run and couldn’t afford to be picky, but...wow. Was that really the kind of thing wild packs ate? Why would anybody choose to be wild if that was what was on the menu?

  She rested her cheek against Emmett’s back and closed her eyes. Somewhere behind her, the Savage Rangers had probably turned around. They were probably working their way back, trying to pick up her scent again. She wondered if they would be smart enough to realize that she and Emmett were on a bike now.

  She hoped not. Maybe they would be able to lose their pursuers. But how long would she have to stay with him before it would be safe for her to return home.

  To her surprise, the thought of being stuck with Emmett didn’t bother her as much as she would have expected it to. She wanted to get back home, but at the same time, there was something sort of exciting about all this. In the ordinary course of events, she would never have gotten to ride a motorcycle. She would never have gotten to examine the scene of a fight, looking for clues. Hell, even tasting the jerky had been fun, in a daring sort of way. When she got home, she would be mated with a member of the Coywolves, mated for life, and immediately put to work breeding. It was nice to have one big adventure first.

  As long as the Savage Rangers didn’t catch up with them. She thought she’d rather die than go back to them.

  They rode throughout the night and on into the early dawn. At one point, the highway they were on met an interchange with a different road, and Emmett took the exit and began traveling west instead of south. Again, Hazel wondered whether this was part of a deliberate plan or simply a mindless flight. Had Emmett taken that exit because he thought it was a good idea to change directions? Or were they actually headed somewhere?

  Just after dawn, they pulled in at another motel. This one was a little less seedy looking than the last, for which Hazel was grateful. She slid off the motorcycle and found that her legs were shaking.

  Emmett caught
her. “It’s normal to feel a little wobbly after a long ride, if you’re not used to it,” he said, and swept her up into his arms.

  She scowled. “You don’t have to carry me.” But the truth was that she didn’t mind. He was incredibly strong, and there was something charming about it. Besides, her legs really did feel like noodles.

  Emmett sat her on a chair inside the lobby while he went to rent a room. Hazel used the time to look around. The lobby in particular was classy looking, with a floor that she was almost sure was fake marble but looked real, and that was better than nothing. There was a stack of magazines on a low wooden coffee table and a coffee pot with carry-out paper cups stacked beside it. Hazel got up, wobbled over, and poured herself a cup of coffee.

  The warmth of it! It had been so long since she’d tasted anything familiar or comforting. This wasn’t very good coffee—it was weak and kind of burned—but it was still coffee, and after days of warm, rusty tasting water, it was the best thing Hazel could imagine.

  Emmett turned around, key in hand, and walked over to her. “Got your sea legs?”

  She nodded.

  “We’ve got room 201. Let’s go.”

  Room 201 was on the second floor of the motel, which according to Emmett, was good because it would be cleaner and more secure. “We’ll try to get a few hours’ sleep,” he said. “Then we’ll have to get up and keep moving.”

  “Can’t we have some dinner?” Hazel asked.

  “We’ll have breakfast when we wake up,” he said. “I don’t have any food right now.”

  “I’m not going to be able to sleep if I can’t eat something,” Hazel protested. Her stomach was rumbling loudly, and it felt like forever since the beef jerky.

  “Just try,” Emmett said testily.

  She opened her mouth to argue, but Emmett had dropped into the bed nearest the door and now rolled away from her, effectively shutting her out. She could see that he wasn’t going to be swayed. And sure enough, within moments, he was snoring. It must be a skill that wild shifters had, she thought. She could see how it would be beneficial for someone like him to be able to fall asleep in any situation, no matter how uncomfortable or difficult.