James knocked Rourke’s fist away from his neck like it was nothing more than a mild irritant. “Wrong answer, cat,” James snarled. “There’s no jump. Jessica’s in danger, but you bloody well knew that already, didn’t you? Coming here and announcing yourself was well noted, but now we’ll see if you can be as trusted as you once were all those years ago. I have no other choice left.” His face held a hint of a grimace. “I need you to get her the hell out of here,” he said, his amber eyes blazing, “and I’ll take care of this lot.” He gestured at the approaching five wolves. “As of four minutes ago our Pack went to war. We need every wolf to fight, there are none left to protect Jessica. Whoever sent you here used you to get to us, and they used you well. They knew right where to find us. Now get her out of here, and if you harm her in any way I swear I will kill you myself. Slowly.”
James didn’t wait for an answer. He shot around us, lunging into the five, scattering them like bowling pins. At that, the bar erupted into chaos. The humans hadn’t noticed the threat before, but they did now. They would all assume it was a bar fight, not a supernatural showdown.
I turned and took a step after James, eager to join the battle. I didn’t care what he’d just said, there was no way I was leaving with Rourke. This was my fight and I was staying. Before I could go more than a foot, my wrist snapped backward and once again I was pressed against Rourke’s jacket. The leather was tinged with the scent of oil, along with sweat and delicious cloves. And it pissed me off.
I jerked my hands up, breaking his hold on me. With everything I had, I shoved him back. He moved less than two inches, but it was enough. “I’m not going anywhere with you. This is my fight, dammit! I caused this, and I will not abandon my Pack to wage a war without me. Got it? So don’t even think about getting in my way.”
I dismissed him completely, wrenching myself from his grasp entirely, turning back to the fight.
He let me go.
As I spun around, I met a powerful, piercingly blue stare.
It stopped me in my tracks.
The gaze held me across the sea of pandemonium. My father strode through the bar like he was strolling through the woods, like nothing was amiss and a war hadn’t broken out all around him, humans shrieking and things breaking.
His eyes held one word.
Go.
Rourke stilled behind me, reading the message clearly too.
I opened my mouth to protest, but nothing came out. This order wasn’t from my Alpha. It was from my father.
Go.
His command swirled through me, pushing me, urging me. I realized with a start that sharing my father’s blood during the oath had somehow connected us, bonded us in a new way. His emotions raced through me, and I felt compelled to follow his directives. My wolf cried in my mind. She felt it too. I tried to resist, but I was frozen in place.
Go.
“Sorry, sweetheart, what you want doesn’t look like it’s in the cards tonight,” Rourke muttered from behind me.
I took a step forward, trying my hardest to break the command, pushing as much power into it as I could. I didn’t want to leave, dammit, I wanted to fight.
Before I could get away, Rourke lunged, bending and twisting, snatching me up by my waist and tossing me effortlessly over his shoulder. His arm clamped around my middle like a vise.
Then he turned, ignoring my howls of rage, and raced out of the bar.
17
In the back alley behind the bar, Rourke set me down roughly but kept a tight grip on my forearm. Then he started ushering us forward at a quick clip, his nose scenting the air as we moved, his posture guarded.
“You’ve got to be kidding me!” I tried to wrench my arm from his grasp, with no luck. His hands were like stone. “You can’t just pick me up like a fucking caveman and make my choices for me. How dare you!”
Rourke stopped, spinning around. “Keep your voice down,” he snarled, “and listen up.” His irises blazed an ethereal green. “In case you haven’t noticed, none of this was my idea. But here are the facts. You’re a one-of-a-kind werewolf. The only one of its kind. That means you’re now in a position of extreme interest to all parties involved. And I mean all parties. There’s not one Sect on this planet who won’t be interested in getting a piece of you now. Do you hear me? All of them—wolves, shifters, vamps, witches, everyone. If you die now, whatever you are dies with you. Understood?” He shook me a little to emphasize his point. “Now stop whining like a pansy-assed little girl, because we need to get clear of this area right now.”
My anger bubbled over and I had to tamp the rage back in order to speak. I had no intention of backing down. My Pack was fighting. I wasn’t going to leave them behind just because this guy told me to. “What do you mean, what I am? Just because I have breasts doesn’t mean that’s not my Pack in there. Those wolves happen to be in the middle of fighting a war because of me. Now let go of me! I’m going back to join them.” My words sunk in. I was the catalyst for this war.
“Wrong answer.” Rourke started down the alley, yanking me behind him.
It was full dark. I tried to anchor my feet into the ground as he toted me down the alleyway like a three-year-old. I couldn’t get away unless I shifted, and even a partial shift now would be extremely risky out in the open. Not to mention I had no real idea how I’d done it before. I could use a little outrage here, I told my wolf. Rourke continued to haul us along, and I could feel her on the edge of anger, but not nearly as pissed off as I was. I thought we weren’t supposed to leave the bar with the scary predator. He’s a no-no. And he’s tugging us along like a petulant toddler. He’s kidnapping us! Get mad. Her ears perked and my muscles tensed for a quick second. I got excited.
But she wasn’t focused on me at all, her eyes were directed ahead of us, scanning for the next threat.
Some help you are.
As Rourke continued to drag me farther down the alley, I tried to reason with him. “Let’s start this again, Rourke. I think we’ve made a mistake here. I need to get back to my Pack—”
He turned on me in a flash, snarling, his face inches from mine. I flinched, my back pressed against the brick wall of a building. “I already told you I’m not playing around here. If your Pack is at war, who do you think they’re fighting against right now?”
I hadn’t been expecting a question.
“Um … I’m not exactly sure, but most likely the Southern Territories …” I finished lamely.
“Right on the nose, sweetheart. So at this very moment your city is flooded with more werewolves than you can fight on your own, and more than I can fight while I babysit you. So our only real option is to get the hell out of here, and we’re wasting precious time talking about it.” His breath was laced with cinnamon.
I bristled. “Babysitting me was your choice, not mine, and it’s not a mandatory position, by any means. You can let me go anytime you’d like. Then you’d be free to go back to whatever place it is you came from and we can forget this whole thing ever happened.”
His eyes glittered with emotion. “No.”
“Rourke,” I breathed. “Just let me go.”
He studied me for a long moment, his face so close to mine I started to squirm. He opened his mouth to say something, and then, just like that, we were back down the alley again, him pulling me along like a child.
He led us across a few streets, ducking and dodging through parked cars as we went, finally slipping between another pair of buildings. There were no streetlights here. It appeared to be a delivery space with a narrow path leading out to the other side. There wasn’t more than a sidewalk space between the two structures. Rourke was too big for us to walk side by side, but he had no problem tugging me behind him.
“Rourke, where are we going?” I whispered.
“To my bike.”
I knew he wasn’t talking about his bicycle.
He meticulously scanned every building around us as we went, scenting the air continually. I was scenting too. Eve
ry once in a while I caught a whiff of werewolf in the air, but it was never too close. They should be swarming us. “Rourke, why aren’t they out here?” I asked. “We should be covered in angry Southern wolves. They should’ve been all over the building when we came out.”
Rourke glanced over his shoulder at me, his eyes completely green. They glowed like two emerald pools in the dark. “Either your wolves were keeping them occupied, or something else is going on here.” He sniffed the air and his brows creased. “I don’t like it either. It’s too easy. Something is off. It doesn’t feel like a full war, they’re looking for something.”
I tested his grip on my arm again, and earned a low growl in response. “Keep it up and I’ll put you back over my shoulder.”
We emerged from between the last two buildings onto a frontage road and slid quietly along the deserted storefronts, making our way down the street. This place was familiar. It was the last block before the neighborhood dead-ended into the train tracks across the street, which were down in the culvert, and it was exactly how you’d expect it to look. A long line of old, run-down buildings, most of them vacant, and had been for years. On the other side of the tracks the highway overpasses looped off into the distance. No more neighborhood.
Down the street in front of us, I spotted a lone motorcycle parked on the sidewalk pushed tightly into an alcove against a shuttered storefront.
“How’d you get from here to the bar without being seen tonight?” I asked curiously.
“I’ve been here since yesterday. Slept on the roof of the bar and came down through the fire escape.”
“That’s one way to do it.” Tricky cat.
He shrugged. “It wasn’t hard. Once I gave you my name, I knew your Pack would stake out all the strategic locations, but this isn’t one of them.” He pointed. “Up ahead is a dead end, nowhere to go but back the way we came.”
“If we’re trapped, how are we getting out?”
He nodded toward the giant culvert. A rusty chain-link fence separated the tracks from the neighborhood, not doing much to keep people out. Grass and dirt ran until about halfway down and then the ground changed to old, broken concrete.
“The old tracks? And how exactly are we getting down there?” There weren’t any real crossing points for about a mile and a half in either direction.
“We drive, sweetheart.”
“Huh?”
Shouts broke out behind us. Rourke tightened his grip on my arm and started jogging us forward faster. We were almost to a vintage Harley-Davidson when I wrenched my head behind me right as a runner flew around the corner, shouting a curse over his shoulder.
Ohmygod. “Tyler!” I screamed.
He slid to a stop, his eyes blazing full gold. His shirt was ripped and stained dark.
“Is that blood all over you? Are you hurt?” I yelled, struggling to get loose, but Rourke held me fast. “Tyler, answer me!” Then I turned back. “Rourke, let me go!”
Tyler started racing toward us. “Let her the fuck go, cat!”
Rourke tensed for a fight, his muscles tightening under his jacket, but he didn’t yield his grip on me.
Before Tyler could get to us, a U-Haul truck swerved around the corner behind him. His attackers, it seemed, had hitched a ride. The truck slammed on its brakes with a tire-squealing screech, sliding the whole van sideways, cutting off the road completely.
Dead end in front of us, U-Haul full of Southern wolves in back.
“It’s a goddamn trap!” Rourke roared. “Get on the back of the bike.” He yanked me against my will the last few paces to his bike and tossed me at it while he jumped on from the other side, flipping the kickstand up and starting it with a roar. “Get on the bike. Now!” he yelled over the noise of the engine.
I didn’t move and Tyler closed the gap between us in two strides, grabbing on to my arms. “What the hell’s going on? Why did you leave with him?” I could see him processing what Rourke had just said.
“James decided to trust him,” I told him quickly. “And Dad backed him up. Rourke took me out of the bar fight and brought me here.” I left out against my will, because Tyler could see the scenario as it stood. My father was likely still occupied with his own battle or the wolves would be updated on my whereabouts, or at least who I was with, by now.
“Jess, you have to get out of here,” Tyler pleaded. “We’re in the middle of a war—and you’re their prize. You have to go right now, even if your only option is to go with the … goddamn cat.” His face held revulsion, but I knew if his Alpha had already sanctioned it, he would go along with the program.
Dammit. “Tyler, I don’t want to go, I want to stay and fight. My place is here fighting alongside my Pack, not being protected like some breakable object.”
The U-Haul doors sprang open and a half dozen unfamiliar wolves in human form touched the ground running. No time to think about formulating a plan, they would be on us in two seconds.
Tyler whipped me behind him, pushing me inadvertently toward Rourke as he went, yelling, “Go! Just get out of here while you still can.”
“No, I want to fight. Let me help you,” I cried. “I can fight!”
“No!” No. He flipped to my mind. Jessica, please, you can’t do this. I can’t protect you and fight at the same time. You’re not trained for combat yet. You’re putting us both in danger by staying here.
“I can’t leave you. I’m not going to leave you here alone.” I’m not going to fucking leave, do you hear me?
Tyler ignored me as his gaze shot to Rourke. “Get her out of here, cat. There’s no one left but you. But if you lay one hand on her, I swear I will rip you apart with my bare hands. Do you hear me? I vow it on my life.” Tyler looked back at me. “That’s an order, Jess. Now go!”
The motorcycle revved in response, tires screeching behind me. But before Rourke could make a move, I tore out of Tyler’s grasp, pulling both throwing knives from my sleeves at the same moment.
My body bent forward, and without any hesitation I launched them straight into the two wolves in the lead barreling down on us. One landed with a thunk in the fleshy part of the trachea, hitting home, and the wolf went down with satisfaction. The other missed its mark entirely, embedding itself without harm in his shoulder. It didn’t do anything close to dropping him; it only pissed him off more. He stopped and yanked it out, snarling at me as he did it.
It’s on now. My wolf howled.
Tyler sprang forward with no other choice to tackle the next two. I crouched in a fighting stance, muscles rippling under my skin—finally—pulling, shifting, readying me for the fight. The angry wolf I’d hit in the shoulder was almost to me, and when his filthy hands reached for my throat, he was going down. My eyes were trained on him like lasers. He thought I was weak.
He thought wrong.
But before he could reach me my body flew backward.
My attacker bellowed his rage.
What the hell? The road was moving beneath me, Rourke’s arm locked firmly around my middle, my ass barely on the edge of the seat.
“Get on the goddamn bike!” Rourke yelled.
I didn’t have time to protest. In the next moment we hit the curb, the bike flying upward toward the sky. On the way down, I shot my leg over the seat and grabbed on to Rourke’s jacket with everything I had. We cleared the embankment at the top, crashing through the rusty fence like it wasn’t even there. The bike plunged nose first down the grassy slope leading to the tracks at top speed, each bump on the ground like a giant mountain crashing up to greet us.
Rourke maneuvered the bike from side to side like a slalom course, pulling us parallel at the last minute before we hit the concrete at the bottom. Coming onto the ground at the right angle lessened the blow, but it left us reeling nonetheless. The shocks groaned and crunched, but they held, keeping us upright for the most part.
As we bounded onto the concrete of the culvert floor, I pried my eyes open and screamed, “Sonofabitch, Rourke. If I wanted to die, I
could’ve just stayed and fought!”
He wrenched the bike hard to the right, all his muscles contracting at once underneath his jacket. Power emanated from him as his boot came off the pedal, stabilizing us, sending sparks up from his skid pads. When we were finally fully upright he called over his shoulder, “We’re not dead yet, sweetheart.”
“Smartass,” I yelled back. Over my shoulder, two wolves, still in human form, were scrambling onto the tracks. A third made his way down the embankment behind them. Relief flooded through me, because if they were after me, that meant they’d abandoned Tyler. “Rourke, they’re coming after us. I hope you have a plan.”
I reached out to my brother. Ty, are you okay? Can you hear me?
There was a familiar brush. Jess … fighting … can’t hear you. Be safe … The connection died.
We must not be able to hold a conversation and fight at the same time. It made sense, because fighting used a lot of brain-power. My father hadn’t reached out to me either, which meant he must be equally engaged. Maybe that was the reason I’d been able to cut them off when I was fighting. I couldn’t manage both at the same time.
The wolves behind us dropped to the ground to shift. Once they were finished they’d be crazy fast. And they’d have our fresh scent.
“They’re changing on the tracks,” I yelled to Rourke. “This place is going to be full of wolves in about three minutes.”
“Then it’s a good thing we’re getting off here,” Rourke shouted back as he turned the handlebars hard, tearing up a small grassy hill. The sides of the culvert had tapered off along the way, making it possible to escape. The bike bounded over the top, crashing through another fence, and then we were back on the road, the tires squealing as Rourke twisted us in front of a highway underpass. One more quick turn and we were wheeling up a ramp.
Three wolves in their true form, two in the front and one trailing, ran behind us full tilt, but they’d have to abandon the chase at the highway. Wolves on the road wouldn’t work. But it didn’t matter. They had our scents. Their buddies in the U-Haul would pick them up in a few minutes.
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