Cowboy in Wolf's Clothing

by Kait Ballenger

  “No, I’m certain they haven’t,” he said.

  Judging from her frown, she hadn’t caught the appreciation in that statement.

  She nodded toward Silver. “What if I don’t get on the horse?”

  His cock gave another eager pulse. Maybe he did like the defiance—at least from her. Judging by the growing ache in his jeans, his lower head had different opinions than his ego.

  Colt was about to tell her that if she didn’t get on the horse, he would take one of each of her ample ass cheeks in his hands, bend her over, and give her a proper spanking for disobedience as any good cowboy would—a spanking that would leave her thinking of him with every bounce of the ride back to the camp—but as he opened his mouth, a familiar scent on the edge of the breeze alerted him, and Silver let out a warning whinny.

  Instead, he only managed to breathe out one word to her before the vampire came crashing into the clearing.

  “Run.”

  * * *

  Three things occurred to Belle as she watched the vampire charge the alpha wolf as if in slow motion. The first was that, based on those bloodstained fangs diving toward them, vampires were far more lethal than stories had led her to believe. As a Rogue who’d grown up in the countryside of the Sunshine State, she hadn’t had occasion to encounter many. Aside from being in New Orleans, they were more common in the northern parts of the country, and they tended to keep to big cities with high human population density—the sort of places where she’d never spent a day in her life.

  The second revelation she had was that not only was she without an ounce of fighting ability to fend off this creature, but she wasn’t athletic. She was soft and feminine, and running without a proper sports bra was unworkable. That was certainly an annoyance, but it had never occurred to her as a survival problem. Until now that she stood frozen in place.

  The third and final conclusion she came to was that this arrogant commander was likely her only chance at survival. Though he had told her that her ass was large, and she felt certain that was enough for any man to deserve death. But at the moment, she needed him in full fighting capability, so he’d have to live for now.

  He was yelling at her. She saw his mouth moving, but someone seemed to have turned off the sound. Instead, there was a harsh ringing in her ears.

  Run, she finally deciphered.

  Unfortunately, it was too late for that.

  The slow motion stopped as the commander shoved her square in the shoulders, sending her stumbling backward several feet and out of the way as the vampire collided with him. Sharp pain shot up her spine.

  At least her ass cushioned her fall.

  Scrambling to her feet, she bolted away from the melee. Belle only made it several yards before a second terrifying hiss stopped her in her tracks. Another vampire.

  Glowing red eyes glared at her from the darkness. Adrenaline quickened her pulse. She didn’t think about the fact that she had no idea how to battle a vampire. Instinct took over. It was her or this red-eyed bloodsucker, and hell would freeze over before she went down without trying.

  She shifted into her wolf as the vampire lunged. Fangs and canines clashed. Belle snarled and bit indiscriminately, her canines locking down and sinking in. The taste was awful. Like putting something dead in your mouth, which she supposed she was, but still she held her grip, shaking her head back and forth to cause further damage.

  But the vampire wasn’t having it.

  It leveraged her hold, throwing her onto her back. She yelped and released it. Poised above her, the vampire reared to strike. No. She couldn’t let it damage an artery. She blocked her neck with her front paw. The vampire’s fangs sank into the furred flesh of her foreleg and a high-pitched keen tore from her throat. Pain, the likes of which she’d never known, seared throughout the limb.

  Suddenly, the vampire’s weight lifted. The commander stood over her, having thrown the vampire off her. His eyes blazed the golden of his wolf’s, and even in human form, his teeth were bared in a feral snarl. He clutched a bloodied stake in his hand.

  He was lethal and glorious, and she couldn’t bring herself to look away.

  The commander charged the bloodsucker head-on, meeting its attacks blow for blow in a calculated battle that was every bit as mesmerizing as it was terrifying. Belle shifted back into human form. He had a knife at his belt, but the fury of his fists and the stake in his hand seemed enough. She’d never seen someone so skilled at combat.

  A thread of hope for their safety grew in her. Until she spotted movement in the trees. The glowing red eyes of another vampire watched the commander with malicious intent, but this one was less animal-like than the other, almost human in appearance.

  “No!” Belle shouted a warning.

  The commander’s attention snapped toward her as the vampire looming in the trees retreated with a terrible, sadistic grin. The other bloodsucking beast he’d been fighting seized the moment of distraction and dove in for the kill. Belle screamed, covering her eyes. She couldn’t look. She couldn’t.

  And then everything went quiet.

  Keeping pressure on her bleeding arm, she slowly lifted her gaze. Relief flooded her as she stared up at the face of the commander. He stood over the vampire, who was now truly dead, the stake sticking from its chest. Colt looked lethal, panting with exertion.

  “You saved me.” Her words came on an exhale. “Thank you,” she whispered.

  He didn’t acknowledge her gratitude, as if he often saved people’s lives with random acts of bravery. He glanced toward her without fully facing her. Something dark flashed in his eyes as he noticed her wound. “You’re hurt.”

  As he watched her, the hard planes of his face softened, and the open concern in his steely eyes caught her off guard. It was as if the mask he wore had fallen away. This was a man who shielded his true self under layers of jagged battle scars, hiding away behind lock and key. He faced the world as a hardened warrior, but he was far more complex than that. She realized that now with total certainty, because for a brief second, she had seen him as he truly was.

  This was a man who carried the weight of the world on his shoulders, who saved others pain by making it his own. The hurt in his gaze at the sight of her injury tore her to shreds. She was a stranger to him, but that failed to matter. It was as if he held himself personally responsible for her injuries, her protection, and her safety. In that moment, her pain was his pain.

  The intensity of that stopped her breath short.

  In an instant, he broke the contact between them, his face hardening again as he glanced away. But her heart had been warmed by that intense gaze, brief as it had been. There’d been so few times in her life when someone had looked at her that way—as if they cared for her, as if she mattered, as if she meant something to them.

  As if she were someone worth fighting for…

  But for a moment, this man who was supposed to be her enemy had given her just that, and now that she’d seen it, she’d give anything to see just a glimpse of his tenderness again.

  “Are you all right?” he asked, further breaking the tension between them.

  With careful movements, she probed the tender flesh to test the depth of the lacerations. An inch or so deep, but it would heal within a night. She cradled her arm against her chest, applying pressure to slow the bleeding. The pain was sharp, but it was far from the worst that could have happened.

  “It will heal. Trust me. I’m a doctor. A few stitches will take care of it.”

  She may have been a miserable fighter, but she knew medicine. She’d been tending animal wounds on the ranch since she was a small child, long before she’d gone to medical school. Animal, human, a werewolf cross between the two: it didn’t matter. As an orthopedic surgeon for the rodeo, she’d had a fair amount of experience handling organs and protruding bones.

  She could handle the aftermath
of fighting. It was the violence she couldn’t handle. Not after Wyatt. She’d experienced violence every day for the past several years at the hands of the Wild Eight.

  The commander sounded breathless from the fight, though she didn’t blame him. What he’d done had taken amazing strength. “There’s antiseptic and medical thread back at the ranch,” he said.

  On the Missoula Grey Wolf ranch. The very prison from which she’d escaped.

  She shook her head. “I can’t go back there.”

  His brow crinkled. It made him look far older than she guessed he was. Those golden wolf eyes blazed with unchecked frustration. “You’re going back there whether you like it or not. For your own s-s-safety.” He slurred his s.

  Belle raised a brow. She was about to tell him that saved life or not, he was no boss of hers. But that was when he turned fully toward her, and she noticed the blood, pooling beneath him in the snow. Her gaze followed to the bloodied blade in his hand, which he’d clearly removed from his own abdomen. She blanched.

  With slow, unsteady movements, he followed her gaze, weaving slightly as he did so. “Shit,” he muttered as his eyes rolled back into his head. He collapsed, dropping like a stone.

  Belle scrambled toward him, allowing her medical training to take over. She checked his pulse, measuring the beats and feeling them quickly dropping. The rise and fall of his chest seemed weak. His lips were slightly bluish around the edges. Placing her ear to his chest cavity, she listened to the sound of his labored breathing.

  From the looks of it, the knife had pierced the pleural space of his chest cavity, causing a steady stream of air and blood to flood in. The gravity and pressure had created a tension pneumothorax—a collapsed lung. With only one functioning lung, the air supply in his blood was dropping, causing his pulse to slow, and he was going into shock.

  If the blood continued to pool in his lungs, his prognosis was grave. He could die within minutes if the condition continued to deteriorate. Faster than even the most powerful of wolves could heal. She used both hands to hoist him onto his left side.

  Blood drenched the snow beneath them. She held him like this, checking his pulse and noting a slight increase. The drained blood would relieve enough of the pressure for now. Not enough for a human, but for a werewolf, it would suffice. He’d need to be transported back to the Missoula ranch to receive further care. He needed a tube inserted to fully relieve the pressure and prevent further collapse.

  Leaving him on his side, she tried her best to mimic an owl’s hoot like she’d heard him do before. A moment later, his horse bounded back into the clearing, having retreated during the melee. The horse must have seen its fair share of war and injured riders, because it knew exactly what to do. Coming to stand beside them, it nudged Colt a few times with its nose, then lay down next to him with a sad look in its eyes so Belle could hoist the commander into the saddle. The commander was all muscle and far outweighed her, but after several attempts, she managed to lay him across the old leather.

  As she released him, the horse’s ears perked up in alert and Belle froze. It was distant, but she heard it, too. Hushed voices. The hairs on the back of her neck rose on end. Maybe the commander’s fellow soldiers. If she could draw them to where he lay, they would take him back to the Missoula ranch and he would get the urgent medical care he needed. If she was careful, she could do so without alerting them to her presence, then make her escape.

  She shifted into wolf form and eased into the underbrush. With steady, silent movements, she followed the source of the noise until she came to a clearing. Instead of the woodsy scent of werewolf, the sickly dead scent of vampire filled her nose. Belle didn’t dare approach further, but she heard the conversation of the two bloodsuckers loud and clear.

  “Did you find him?” one asked.

  “No yet, sire. But we’ve followed Lucas’s directions, so we must be close,” a second answered.

  “Well, keep looking. You heard Lucas. One of the half-turned may have injured him, and it will be our heads if we don’t return to the coven with the commander—alive—by night’s end.”

  Belle stiffened. Her thoughts turned to the vampire who’d retreated during the battle. That must have been Lucas.

  “I don’t see why we need the commander anyway. Why can’t we take one of their other warriors and be done with it?”

  “Lucas said it has to be him. You heard what happened with the other shifters, the bobcat and the cougar. Too weak. The wolves have been the best result, and the purer the blood, the better. If we capture the commander, then Lucas can synthesize his blood and we’ll be able to control those mongrels once and for all.”

  The second voice grumbled. “They smell awful. Do you think it will taste okay? Werewolf blood instead of human?”

  Belle stiffened. Vampires normally fed only on humans, but if they were capable of feeding off werewolves and other shifters…

  Forget the war; it would change the fate of her entire species forever.

  “It doesn’t matter how they taste. Once we rule, we won’t need to feed off them. We’ll have all the humans we need without them or those pesky Execution Underground hunters patrolling our every move.” The first vamp cleared his throat. “Position our men outside the wolves’ ranch. We have to strike when he’s weak, and if we don’t find him in the woods, then he’ll be ours when he returns tonight.”

  Belle had heard enough. Taking care that she wasn’t followed, she retreated. When she found the injured high commander where she’d left him, she hesitated. She couldn’t take him back to the Missoula ranch, not if the vampires were lying in wait for him there.

  And she couldn’t abandon him either. He desperately needed medical care, and she’d sworn an oath.

  No, she’d take him with her. They were about equidistant between the Missoula ranch and the Rogue house. With her tail, Belle beckoned his horse to follow her. The beast stood, balancing the commander’s weight.

  As she and the horse carried their patient through the woods, Belle didn’t think even once about her own safety or what the repercussion of saving an arrogant Grey Wolf commander might bring her. As she and the horse transported the man who’d saved her life to the Rogue house, the only thought that echoed through her head was a purely selfless plea.

  Please, don’t let him die.

  Chapter 3

  At five years old, Colt learned that lies shaped reality. It was the first night his father, or the man he would one day call his father, had brought him to Wolf Pack Run, the main Grey Wolf ranch, days after his mother’s death. That evening, around a campfire with the whole of the pack in attendance, James Cavanaugh, then high commander of the Grey Wolf armies, had stood in the flickering orange glow of the flames and announced he had a son that he hadn’t known existed.

  That son was Colt.

  As Colt had stood with James by his side, the massive man’s hand wrapped around his tiny shoulders as if James were his father, as if he were proud of him, Colt had looked out at the faces of the Grey Wolf pack. Their expressions had been filled with affection, as if they’d found a long-lost family member in him. Every one of the pack members believed in him, wanted him, loved him. And in that moment, Colt had wanted James’s words to be true so badly, even he almost believed it.

  Despite every word being a complete and total lie.

  No one searched for the body of his supposedly Grey Wolf dead mother. No one verified she’d been killed at the hands of vampires, rather than the monster who’d really caused her death, and no one double-checked that he really was James Cavanaugh’s son. Everyone had simply accepted the lie as reality. And from that point forward, it became so.

  That same night, Colt had sworn to James that he would never speak the truth to any packmember. Colt had repeated the oath with eager gratitude. For saving him. For making him his son. For giving him a life he never could have had otherwise.
r />   And it was the lie Colt had lived every day since.

  Because Colt Cavanaugh, now high commander of the Grey Wolf armies, was not and never had been a Grey Wolf. In many ways, he’d become the lie. But as Colt floated through his unconscious mind, he felt this hidden truth inside him, and a pair of bright, glowing red eyes, terrifying eyes, screamed at him.

  Liar.

  Colt lurched forward, but a small firm hand pushed him back down.

  “Don’t move. You’ll dislodge the tube,” a feminine voice reprimanded.

  Colt wasn’t used to following orders, yet the urgency in those words held him in place. Slowly, his vision came into focus. He was lying in a bed inside what appeared to be a rustic one-room log cabin. A fire burned at an old wood-burning stove, and another blazed in the hearth. Sun streamed through a nearby window. Silver was outside near the snow-dusted pines, and his Stetson hung on a hook beside the door.

  Yet he didn’t know where he was.

  He didn’t know the name of the woman beside him either, but he recognized her. Dark curls, wild and untamed, framed her face. Her hair was damp, as if she’d recently bathed. Her skin was so pale, she looked like she’d been carved of alabaster, and her lips were rosy pink. And those eyes. Emerald with hazel starbursts around the iris.

  He hadn’t spent the night with her. He knew that much. When he did bed a woman, he never stayed the night. No exceptions. Too often that led to expectations of a relationship, and that was something he couldn’t offer. He always made that clear.

  Whoever she was, he couldn’t recall her name, and even he wasn’t that much of an asshole.

  “Where am I?” he rasped.

  “Not far from Missoula Grey Wolf territory.”

  The Missoula territory. It all came flooding back now. The vampires. The attack. The search and then her standing naked about to steal his horse—after watching him strip.

  He tried to sit up, but she guided him down again.

  “It took a lot of work to get that tube into place with the few makeshift tools I could find,” she warned.