Off the Beaten Path

by Cari Z

  He didn’t speak, just roared and lunged at me, semishifted. Rage had sharpened his abilities, but I restrained my impulse to change and put him down fast. Once I shifted, once I was in my wolf form, it would be harder to ignore my impulse to hurt my opponent, possibly even kill him. I didn’t want to deal with that fallout.

  I dodged to the left, caught Gerald by the back of his neck, and tugged him forward and down as he overextended himself, tossing him face-first into the snow. He was on all fours a moment later, kicking out with a back foot as he twisted to face me again. One of his hind claws scraped across my arm, leaving a thin, bleeding welt. He grinned, almost impossible to see as his face went more and more lupine, and attacked again, snapping viciously at me. I clamped one hand around an ear and twisted it, hard, bending him low enough to put into a headlock. I wrestled him down to the ground, shifting my feet just enough to give me the purchase to dig into the ice beneath us. I put Gerald on his side and leaned all my weight into him, squeezing hard enough around his neck that his harsh growls became a choked gurgle.

  “Forget using my fangs,” I hissed into his good ear. “I could break your neck right now. You’d never last as alpha, and then who would protect your precious, lying son?”

  “Forgive him.”

  I lifted my gaze to Peggy, and whatever she saw there was enough to make her blanch. She held her ground, though. “Please, forgive him. He won’t challenge you again.”

  “He hasn’t respected your opinion in the past. Why will he honor your promise on his behalf now?”

  “Because otherwise, he’ll lose me,” she said simply. “And our son. I’ll take us back to my original pack before I sacrifice Roman to my husband’s ambition.”

  Gerald suddenly whimpered, and I knew it wasn’t for me. I looked from him to his wife, blood thundering in my ears, the urge to rend surging hard in me. I heard Liam’s heartbeat, fast and afraid, and the wariness of all my pack. I had to do right by them. I let Gerald go, and he heaved a gasping breath as he collapsed in the snow.

  I slowly got to my feet, looked at my packmates, opened my mouth—then started as the sharp retort of a single gunshot echoed over the mountainside. The shot had come from the direction of John’s house.

  I didn’t wait, just shifted and took off running.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Ward

  AS SOON as Henry closed the door, Sam was in motion. “We have to go. Now.”

  I barely had time to shove my feet into my boots before she grabbed my arm and tugged me toward the back of the house, where we’d started parking the 4Runner lately. Neither Liam nor Henry made a fuss as we went, so I figured it was okay with them, but I didn’t want to leave, not when things looked so bad. I got the uncomfortable feeling that Henry was surrounded, and even though not everyone was on Gerald’s side—how could they be—you didn’t have to be a wolf to know that folks were feeling nervous.

  “Go where?” I asked.

  “The guardian’s house.” Sam opened up the car and started it immediately. “If we get there fast, we may be able to keep Roman and Genna from doing something really fucking stupid.” She pulled away with a roar, sending us bouncing across the snow toward the front gate. She pressed the remote on the dash, and the gate trundled open, barely wide enough for us to get through it at our breakneck speed. I would have complained, if I wasn’t so dumbfounded by what she’d just said.

  “You think he went to her house? To John’s house?” There was stupid, and then there was suicidal. “After Henry told him what John would do if he caught him there?”

  “I think he’s desperate enough to try anything right now.” Sam’s jaw was tense, her hands tight on the wheel. “His parents aren’t going to help him. They’re so deep in denial about his potential. He was already caught lying to his alpha, and he didn’t like Henry’s advice. So he’s going with the rash option and hoping for the best.” She shook her head. “Jesus Christ. Teenagers should just be locked up until they’re over the worst of the hormones. It would make life so much easier.”

  “Sounds kind of illegal.” I could see the guardian’s house coming up fast on the left side of the road.

  “Wait until you get to deal with a hormonal teenage werewolf,” Sam warned me. “Hopefully Ava’ll have better sense than Roman.” She pulled to a stop in front of the house, which was completely dark. We got out, and I glanced at her.

  “It doesn’t look like anyone’s home.”

  “John’s taken his snowmobile out for a test run, to tinker with it. He always does it before a hunt,” Sam said distractedly. “He probably has the boys with him. I’ll bet anything that Genna found a reason to stay behind, though.”

  “The Jeep is still here.”

  “Good. Then we don’t have to track them down.” Sam marched up to the front door and pounded on it. “Roman! I know you’re here. You have to come back with us. Your dad’s about to get into a fight he can’t win. Henry will do his best not to hurt him, but nothing’s certain if your dad provokes a shift.” We waited. Nothing but silence. “Roman! Genna! You can’t run away from this! It won’t solve anything.”

  “Stop.” I touched her arm. “Listen.” There it was, the faint creak of… a tree moving in the wind, maybe? Only it was perfectly still today. More likely it was a window opening. “Around the back.”

  Sam scowled. “You go right. I’ll go left.” We darted off the porch, and I ran to the right side, feeling the effects of the cold morning air in my lungs. I had on my gear, scarf wrapped haphazardly around my neck, and my hat on crooked, but it was still bitterly cold. I wondered if I’d ever get used to it.

  The far side of the house was in shadow and noticeably frostier than the porch. I shivered as I rounded the second corner, and then—

  A hand clamped across my mouth as strong arms tugged me in close to an unfamiliar body. No, not entirely unfamiliar, just… not one that should be holding on to me. I stared into Roman’s wide, scared eyes as he held me still.

  “Don’t say anything,” he whispered. “Just give me the keys, and Genna and I will go.”

  I shook my head.

  “Just—just give them to me, Ward!”

  I don’t have them, I tried to say, but his hand was too tight. I could barely draw a breath. Roman understood anyway.

  “Sam has them?”

  I nodded.

  “Shit.”

  Genna appeared beside him, her expression frantic. “Sam’s coming—we have to move.”

  “She’s got the keys! We have to get them from her.”

  Genna paled.

  Why couldn’t they take the Jeep? What had happened between Genna and her dad?

  Roman growled, then shoved me at Genna. “I’ll handle it. Try to keep him quiet.”

  I would have laughed if she hadn’t nodded and pulled a knife—a big fucking knife, holy shit—out of her pocket. She looked at me guiltily but with determination.

  “Please don’t make me use this.”

  “This isn’t smart,” I murmured. “You have to know that. How far do you think the two of you will get before your father picks you up? Or worse, a government agent does? You could go to prison, Genna.”

  “No.” She shook her head jerkily. “We have a plan. We’ll be fine as long as we can get a car.”

  “Why can’t you use the Jeep?”

  “My dad took the keys with him, and I don’t know how to hotwire it.” She glanced anxiously past me toward where Roman had disappeared. There was no sound from the other side of the house. Not Roman and not Sam. Had he found her? God, had he hurt her? I didn’t think he would, not Sam, not the woman who’d been teaching him since he was a little kid, but then I also wouldn’t have thought Genna Parnell would hold me captive at knifepoint either.

  I needed to keep her talking. Sam was tough and so much better prepared than me—I needed to give her time to work. “Where can you go that the government can’t follow you? Roman is monitored. The whole pack is monitored. Hell, even you
r family is—”

  “Not my mother.” She bit her lip. “She got away. I can too. We’ve got a plan.”

  “Your mother didn’t leave with a werewolf.”

  “She’s in Canada. They won’t extract her. She’s safe there. She said we could live with her, we could—” A low groan broke the silence from the other side of the house, and Genna grabbed my arm. “Go!” She and I were about the same height, but she held the knife like she knew what she was doing. I wasn’t about to fight her for it, not when my best bet was still stalling. I moved, slowly, making sure to stumble in the crusty ice. Not that I needed to try, really—it was genuinely hard to take a step without checking my balance. We rounded the far corner of the house, the prick of the knife’s tip uncomfortably sharp even through my clothing, and then Genna jerked me to an abrupt halt. “Roman!”

  Roman lay on his front in the snow just to the side of the front porch, the prongs from Sam’s Taser still stuck in the side of his neck. Even as I watched, she ejected the cartridge and inserted a new one.

  “This is calibrated to take down a werewolf,” she said, and I shivered. I’d never seen Sam so cold before. She was more like her brother than ever right now, and I understood why they led the pack together. “It might stop your heart if I use it on you, Genna. That’s a risk I’m willing to take if you don’t let Ward go right now.”

  Roman managed to press up onto his forearms and shake his head. “No…,” he forced out. “Don’t… do it. She’s….”

  “You think I’m lying? You thought I wouldn’t use it against you either, Roman, and look where that got you.” The look Sam gave him wasn’t without compassion, but there was steel in it too. “I have to protect my pack, and right now Ward’s more like real pack than you are. Let him go, Genna.”

  “Let Roman come to me, and I will!”

  “You’re not in a good position to negotiate, hon.” Sam cocked her head. “I hear snowmobiles. Your dad is coming back.”

  Genna’s breath came in pants, her grip on my arm tighter than ever. “Let him come to me and we’ll run, then, but you have to give us a chance!”

  Sam’s eyes narrowed. “I don’t have to give you anything.”

  Play for time, play for time… I couldn’t imagine the guardian would be happy to find us all here, but he’d be even less happy if it looked like the aftermath of the O.K. Corral. “Sam, it’s okay. Let’s do it.”

  She raised an eyebrow at me. “Her father will be furious.”

  “He’s going to be furious either way at this point.” Now I could hear the distant engine of the snowmobile. Roman staggered to his feet, his expression unsure. “Let’s trade places. We can talk to John, try to settle him down.” I was so full of bullshit my eyes were probably brown, but I really didn’t want to be stabbed, and Genna was starting to shake.

  “Fine.” Sam lifted the Taser slightly. “You come to me and Roman goes to Genna. Now.”

  Genna’s hand tightened briefly, and then she released my arm. I took a deep breath as the press of the knife suddenly vanished from my side. I walked forward, slowly, and Roman matched my pace.

  We met in the middle, briefly, and when he looked at me, his face was so full of misery I couldn’t help trying to reach out. “Look, you can—”

  The world suddenly shattered into a thousand painful shards, echoing off the trees and through my body. I stumbled and fell forward onto my knees, and I heard Genna scream, Roman and Sam shouting and the sound of the engine growing louder, but it was all muted beneath the overwhelming rush of agony that radiated from my shoulder. I clutched at the wound—a bullet wound—as I curled over into a crouch. Holy shit. I’d been shot. Roman went down next to me, his hand pressed hard over the top of mine, his eyes wide.

  Sam and John were in the middle of a heated argument from the bits and pieces I could hear.

  “—put it down, John!”

  “I said I’d shoot him if he came back here!”

  “You didn’t shoot Roman, you shot Ward! A human! I had everything under control before you came in here, guns blazing—”

  “I’m within my rights to defend myself and my family on my own property!”

  “We weren’t in your house! You weren’t defending anyone, much less Genna, who was holding a knife on Ward right before you started firing!”

  Things went quiet for a moment. “Is that true, girl?” John finally said.

  Genna whimpered. It was the sound I wanted to make, but I bit my tongue instead and squeezed my eyes shut, focusing on keeping my blood in my body.

  “Daddy….”

  “Is that true?”

  “Daddy, I was—we were—”

  John made a noise somewhere between a groan and a curse. I heard a scuffle, and Sam yelled, but instead of the shooting starting up again, the growling suddenly became a lot closer, and a lot more guttural.

  I opened my eyes and saw an enormous red wolf standing between me and John, its posture more upright than a real wolf’s would be. With its hackles up, it looked bigger than ever, and its growl was straight out of a horror movie. It was Henry, and I felt relieved in that instant that I almost lost my careful equilibrium and fell onto my face.

  “I didn’t mean to hit him,” John said, sounding nothing like the gruff, capable guardian he was. He sounded… broken. “I swear, Henry.”

  “I’m calling Tennyson,” Sam said.

  “We need to get him to a hospital—”

  “Look at how much blood he’s lost already. We don’t have time!”

  How much blood had I lost? I glanced down at where our hands were still resolutely pressed against me. My fingers were bright with blood, and the shoulder of my pale blue jacket was so soaked it had turned purple.

  “Oh wow,” I whispered. “That’s not good.”

  The werewolf above me turned golden eyes my direction. I blinked owlishly as he shifted partially so that his front legs returned to being arms and his head retracted into something more human than wolf. He pushed Roman away from me and took his place, pulling me into his arms and pressing so hard on the hole in my shoulder that I yelled.

  “I’m sorry.”

  It was barely recognizable as speech, but I could feel the rumble of his apology reverberate through his chest.

  “S’okay.” I tried to take a deep, calming breath, but my lungs weren’t cooperating anymore. A breath became a gasp became a cough, and if I hadn’t already been bent double with the pain, the coughing would definitely have done it for me. I couldn’t get a full breath, couldn’t relax enough to work through the pain. Stars floated across my darkening vision, and I realized that I was going to pass out. I hoped I was just going to pass out.

  “Henry….” I gripped him as hard as I could with the hand on my injured arm, which was barely enough pressure for him to notice. “Ava.” How else could I express to him how important she was? How desperately I needed him to take care of her, to promise me that he would?

  “She’ll be fine. I’ll stay with her.”

  Good enough for me. The darkness caught up with me, and a second later it was all I knew.

  Chapter Twenty

  Henry

  IF I thought handing Wilson over to Tennyson had been hard, it was nothing compared to the almost-overwhelming urge to keep my hands on Ward. I couldn’t fix him. I knew that—I knew it in my head. My heart had no grasp on logic, though, and insisted that the only way I could save him was to keep him safe with me. That I got over it faster this time was entirely testament to the way I could hear Ward’s blood flow more sluggishly through his veins, too much of it gone to waste. I let Tennyson take him, watched him leave in Liam’s car just as fast as he’d come, and finally my mind came back online. Almost all of the pack had joined us here: everyone who had come to watch my dominance match with Gerald, and John, his sons, and pale-faced daughter. And Roman, who knelt at my feet and couldn’t meet my eyes.

  Be Alpha. I needed to be the alpha, needed to resolve this situation as fast as possi
ble so that I could get back to Ward. I turned to face the people splayed across the landscape like a bad Renaissance painting. I didn’t bother shifting completely back to my human form. I could talk like this, and there was no denying the dark satisfaction I felt as their heartbeats quickened with fear. Everyone but Sam’s.

  “Talk.”

  Sam took the lead. “Roman and Genna were going to leave together, but they couldn’t get her Jeep started. They wanted our car. I refused. We ended up at an impasse. We were trying to resolve it when John saw us and started shooting.”

  “It’s my right—” He stopped talking as I turned my stare on him.

  “Ward was hit by accident,” Sam continued. “Roman did first aid until you arrived.” That was a generous description of it, but I couldn’t blame her for wanting to cast something in a good light for him. Nothing else he’d done here was likely to.

  I looked around at everyone else. “Anything to add?”

  “We didn’t mean for anyone to get hurt.” Genna’s voice was full of tears. “We just want to be together!” She started crying, and John sighed and holstered his gun.

  “C’mere.” He opened his arms, and she went to him, and he wrapped her up and stroked the back of her head. He didn’t say anything else. Neither did Roman, so still against the snow he almost seemed lifeless.

  I turned to Peggy, the only one of Roman’s parents who’d made it here. “Get him home. Don’t let him out of your sight. This isn’t over.” Peggy exhaled heavily and nodded. I turned my attention back to John.

  “Don’t go anywhere.” I had to force myself to say the next part; it was so unthinkable. “If Ward dies, you’ll have to answer for it.” The only alternative was laying the blame at his daughter’s feet, since she was just as guilty of bringing this about as Roman was. I knew John wouldn’t do that.