The Hyena's Hope

by Emilia Hartley

  Lily yanked the kennel over the wolf’s head just as Brock’s Father grabbed her.

  Where were Rodrigo and Van? She needed help.

  The shifter she’d freed darted around Lily’s legs and leapt on the man. All three of them crashed to the floor. Lily shouted. This was a mess. She didn’t know what she was thinking. She never should have come.

  The old man shoved her and the wolf off. The wolf rose on wobbly legs. She couldn’t protect them for much longer. The wolf was in no shape and Lily was only a single human.

  Outside, howls filled the air. Roars shook the walls. The wolf paused, her growl dying, and looked around. Her eyes were wide, and, after a moment of shock, she threw her own head back with a howl. Lily had to cover her ears, it was so loud.

  The old man paused. Mary stopped shouting. Then, he looked down at Lily with a snarl on his lips. He grabbed her by what was left of her hair and dragged her toward the door. He kicked it open and pulled her out into the night. The wolf tried to stop him, but he kicked her away.

  The whole pack had gathered outside, but Lily was now a hostage. She wanted to kick herself. She would have if her chin wasn’t already throbbing. If she lived through this, she’d learned her lesson.

  Please, she thought, let me live through this.

  “Get off my property,” the man shouted.

  She flinched, his voice booming in her ear. She looked out over the crowd of shifters, trying to find Rodrigo. She wanted to apologize to him. This was supposed to help. All she wanted to do was help.

  Brock’s father pulled her forward. She fumbled down the steps. The crowd of shifters parted. The man sucked in a breath. He glanced back at his wife in the doorway. Lily thought he might summon her to his side.

  But in his next breath, he sacrificed his wife. “This was all my wife’s idea! I was only a victim in her plans. Take her and have your revenge. Let me through and nothing will happen to your little hero here.”

  Lily tried to turn and give him a glare, but she could barely move her head. “You’re no better than your son,” she muttered.

  Still, he dragged her along. Lily caught a tiger looking to the side. She followed the gaze and found Rodrigo. His eyes were on her and the man’s hand in her hair. She sucked in a deep breath and tried to steady herself.

  Brock’s father didn’t have a weapon. All he was doing was holding her. She no longer had the scissors. When did she drop them? Her panic and fear had gotten he best of her. She should have held onto them. If only she could get his grip out of her hair.

  But she couldn’t, so Brock’s father dragged her further into the woods around the cottage. He thought he was going to get away, but Rodrigo’s eyes never left her. She gave him a reassuring smile. She was trying to keep calm. Was he freaking out? She couldn’t tell in the dark.

  Maybe, next time she would listen to him and stay away when he told her to. She hoped her antics had given him time to call for help, for the pack to follow. She hoped the cottage was surrounded because of her.

  Brock’s father yanked her along. She lost her footing over a patch of loose ground. In the dim light emanating from the cottage, she saw she was walking over a row of mounded ovals of dirt that looked eerily like bodies. The earth had been overturned, quite recently, and nothing grew around them like a curse had sunk into the ground. Lily tried to tell herself that it was only a garden plot, but when her heel slipped through the loose dirt, it fell away and a human hand appeared.

  The contents of her stomach rose and burned her throat. When she looked up and met Rodrigo’s gaze, she knew he saw them, too.

  Brock’s father made it past the pack. Rodrigo broke away from the others. He stalked toward them, head low and a growl emanating from him. She stumbled up the hill backwards. The sound of rushing water tried to drown the sound of Rodrigo’s growl. She glanced to the side and found craggy rocks leading into a waterfall.

  “You’re not getting out of this unscathed,” Lily warned Brock’s father.

  The pack was closing in on him. They weren’t going to let him leave.

  He came to the realization and shoved her. She spun, her vision blurring in the dark. For a moment, all she could see was Brock’s father scrambling to run. Then one of her feet skidded on an algae-covered rock, and her body became weightless.

  The shape of a Hyena leapt after her, but he couldn’t catch her. Lily knew it wasn’t his fault. She didn’t blame him. It was her fault for following, for entering the cottage. She only hoped she could tell him.

  That it wasn’t his fault.

  That she loved him.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Walking on crutches sucked. She couldn’t hold Bullfrog’s leash. Rodrigo had to walk him, but that meant Rodrigo visited most nights. They weren’t officially living together. She wanted to take it slow after getting out of a six-year relationship with the son of two murderers, but she was secretly happy when Rodrigo slept over most nights of the week.

  Lily walked slowly, hopping on her crutches. At least her hair was shorter now, and not getting caught in the crutches. Bullfrog would pull Rodrigo a bit ahead, and then they would both stop and look back, waiting for her to catch up. She laughed each time. And each time, she would try to hobble a little faster. Rodrigo scowled at her and held his arms out, like she would shatter if she fell.

  To be fair, her leg had shattered when she fell.

  She hadn’t been bitten. She wasn’t a shifter, so her healing process took a lot longer than anyone else’s. Everyone else involved had healed and were back to their normal selves.

  Rodrigo paused at the fence gate. The house was so small and suburban; it was hard to imagine that the pack alpha lived here. She’d seen Dante, from afar every time, but he didn’t look like the kind of guy who enjoyed mowing lawns and cooking organic hot dogs on a little gas grill. He looked rough and tough and unapproachable.

  Yet, when they rounded the back of the house, Dante was standing before a charcoal grill with an apron that said, Don’t Piss Off the Cook, He May Spit in Your Food. Lily stifled a laugh, but Rodrigo laughed out loud. Dante slid a glare in Rodrigo’s direction, and Lily felt her stomach turn.

  Then, Dante shook his head and threw his arms wide. The two men bumped their knuckles together. When Dante turned to Lily, she hesitated. She glanced to Rodrigo. Her mate was trying to keep a neutral face, but she saw the corner of his mouth quirk and knew he was messing with her.

  “You just want to watch me squirm,” she said before sticking her tongue out at Rodrigo.

  “It’s official,” Dante announced. “She can see through your shit. We have to keep her now.”

  “Like you could get rid of her,” Rodrigo said with a wide grin.

  “I mean, you could all outrun me, even if I wasn’t on crutches.”

  The back door opened, and a thick-waisted woman breezed out. A small boy zoomed out from the other side of her legs. He ran into the open yard with a roar. A blonde shifter scooped the boy off the ground and spun him around.

  “None of them are going anywhere,” the thick-waisted woman said before approaching Dante. She laid a kiss on his cheek.

  The man’s demeanor completely changed. His hard glare melted, and the corners of his mouth rose into a proud smile. He stepped closer to her, as if to say he would hurt anyone who stepped too close.

  When the door opened again, an auburn-haired teenager appeared. “Hey! I know you! You gave me a cupcake the other day.”

  Lily remembered handing out a number of cupcakes on her way home. She’d had no idea at the time that the girl was the stepdaughter of the pack alpha. The small gesture seemed to bond them, because the girl ran up and hugged Lily without another word.

  “I told you to get a girlfriend and you did.” The girl was proud of herself as she leaned on Lily’s shoulder.

  Rodrigo shooed her away, gesturing to the crutches, as if to say can’t you see she’s hurt?

  With so much going on, Lily hadn’t had much of a chance to t
hink about her leg. As long as she didn’t put any pressure on it, it seemed fine. Maybe that was the pain killers talking. She feared how she might feel once they wore off.

  The sun beat down over head, peeking out from the cloud cover it’d been hiding behind. Rodrigo led her to a set of chairs near the house, tucked away in the shade. Grateful, she dropped into the canvas seat. He reached over and took her hand. She squeezed it to reassure him.

  She would get through the day. It wasn’t too much. She wanted to meet everyone in his pack. They were kind of her family now, too. He had explained what it meant to be mated, shortly after she had confessed her love. Nothing would tear them apart.

  Not even his guilt over her injuries.

  Lily could tell that he still blamed himself. But she felt like a hero. Her wounds had been worth it. She would heal slowly, but Carol was free, and the pack had caught the kidnappers. Brock had fled. She wondered if he’d gone back to college or if his parents’ disappearance meant he no longer had his tuition paid for him.

  Two people who had been in her life for six years were dead and in the ground. The pack had hunted them through the woods, Rodrigo had told her. Brock informed everyone in town that his parents had moved out of the country. But she knew the truth. They were dead.

  She found that she didn’t care.

  All she cared about was this moment, surrounded by her mate and his pack. Everyone was laughing and smiling. The small boy had shifted into a bear cub. It had taken her by surprise at first, but Sadie just laughed, and everyone acted like it was normal. Bullfrog sniffed the bear cub and decided he was just another dog.

  Later, after they had Dante’s burnt burgers and Sadie’s amazing potato salad, Rodrigo walked her home.

  “Are you going to stay with me tonight?” Lily asked.

  “I’d stay with you every night if you would let me.”

  She rolled her eyes. “You only say that because you’re afraid I’ll fall off another waterfall.”

  He looked at her, aghast. It was like he expected her never to talk about what happened. Joking about it certainly wasn’t what he expected.

  “I’m not going to fall apart if you aren’t there.”

  “Yeah, but you might wander off into traffic with your nose in a book.”

  “Okay, that was just one time! I never even got to finish that one.”

  He grinned and stepped closer to her. He pulled her close to his chest. She leaned into him, grateful for his warmth as the sun set and his stability as her armpits were starting to ache.

  “How do you think it ended?” he asked, gently tilting her chin up.

  She purred at his touch. This was what it was supposed to feel like when a lover touched her. Electric thrills raced down her spine. He leaned in close so that his breath touched her lips. She reached up as far as she could, hungry for the kiss he was dangling before her.

  “Did it end with a kiss?” His lips grazed hers.

  She growled when he pulled back before she could claim more. Her hands fisted in his shirt. He let out a soft laugh.

  “Or did it end with a promise?”

  She shuddered but looked up at him. “What kind of promise?”

  She thought he would get down on one knee, but he didn’t. Instead, he cupped her cheek and looked down at her with such a softness in his eyes that her breath caught.

  “I promise to be whoever you need me to be. I promise to be there when you need me. I promise to give you everything you’ve ever wanted.”

  Lily always thought she wouldn’t know what to say to something like that, that this only happened in the books. But she knew exactly what she wanted to say.

  “You promise to get me a baby goat after we move into a farmhouse outside of town?”

  He looked taken aback at first. Then, a slow grin spread over his lips. He nodded and leaned in close. “Yes. That sounds perfect,” he whispered over her lips before claiming them as his own.

  Thank you!

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