I snort, not even seeing where I’m going or letting myself feel the cold when my bare feet touches the snow-covered ground. I keep going, fuelled by my animal’s instinct, whatever power is up there giving me this strength to carry on when I know deep down inside, I shouldn’t even be conscious anymore.
Nick is going to despise me for helping the enemy, Hannah. Nothing I say can defend what I have done.
Then don’t defend it! Don’t defend a thing. Just come home and help us, Barbie. Tell us what and who this is.
Her voice is so desperate I have the fleeting thought that little Hannah Seers must have gone and got herself a heart to put in that empty chest of hers.
Not nice! Not nice at all. I’ll have you know I am awesome and kind and—okay, so I’m starting slow and being kind on Tuesdays only, but still, you gotta start somewhere.
Yeah right!
It’s true. I didn’t once tell Ros that the purple rag she was wearing this morning was hideous, and I refrained from telling Mika that she had baby drool and sour milk in her hair—even though she reeked of it and it looks like she hasn’t slept in years!
Oh bravo!
Hey, this is monumental stuff here, Barbie, a break-through event that has taken me months in the making. I can’t change myself overnight, you know. Not that I want to, I mean…I am awesome.
Now I do laugh because that sounds more like it.
How did you get Logan to mate you?
All me and my golden—
Do not want that to be the last thing I think about before I die!
Hannah snorts and giggles, the sound making me choke on my desperation. I’ve run a long way already, but not far enough. I can’t go fast enough in skin. I would be so much closer if I was in wolf form, letting the animals’ power take the lead and using their superior speed and life force to get me so much further.
Shift.
I can’t. They’ll scent me.
You’re already done, Barbie. For fuck’s sake—shift!
The yell is loud in my head, making my already fractured mind scream out with echoes of her desperation. I don’t get to think or feel any which way but unsteady before my wolf bursts free of her restraints and shoves out, shifting so fast my mouth opens in a silent, breathless scream.
And then I’m running, fast, paws digging into snow and sending me flying through trees and foliage. The sky is cloaked from view by the trees, but my wolf feels the moon and revels in the freedom, her fur pelt blocking out the cold as effortlessly as she navigates the ground and snow, taking me deeper, faster than I could have in skin.
It doesn’t last long though. That fast burst, the energy required for the shift starts running off just as I hear another howl split the night, the sound sending fear down my spine.
Wolf. I hear a wolf.
Don’t be afraid, Barbie. He’s coming for you.
Who? God, Hannah, I can’t go anymore.
That’s okay, sweetie. Shh, let your mind go and be calm. You’re gonna be alright.
Her soothing tone acts as a balm, even as my wolf slows to a halting stumble and then stops, falling to the soft cold ground with a whine. I’m done, shifting back to skin, naked and colder than ever before.
He’s coming, Barbie, just hold on.
Chapter Two
Brig
I follow Hannah’s directions to the letter, veering east when I would instinctively go west, letting my wolf have its head with a freedom I haven’t felt in years.
Coming from a family of shifters who are called the elite because they don’t believe in mixing breed with breed or shifter with human, it’s not an easy thing to just be as wild as our animals want us to be.
For years, my father has used his power and the fear he instilled to punish us without shifts. If I’ve been allowed to shift seven times in the last year—besides those times when my job as an enforcer asked for it—that is a lot.
But now that it’s just me, now that I left my family behind and decided to do the right thing for once in my miserable life, I am just as free as my wolf, and I fucking love it.
You need to hurry.
I am hurrying, Hannah! Christ, even in shifter form I can only go so fast.
I hear my sister sigh in my mind, her special abilities to hear others’ thoughts and invade their head space giving me a direct link to her and those eerie abilities that have been growing by leaps and bounds ever since she mated her Fated male—Logan Kilter.
For years I believed that she was better off having my father refuse for her to mate him because Hannah and Logan shared a very unlikely, unpleasant relationship for two people whom nature put together.
In short, they despised each other. I think Logan despised her because he couldn’t reconcile the beauty on the outside with the person he thought she was, and for Hannah it was hurt because she wanted him to love her and she knew he wouldn’t.
My Hannah didn’t bend though, even when she was heartbroken, no, not Hannah. Instead of hurting silently, she became worse, spitting in everyone’s eye because—to my little sister—if you have to do the time, you gotta at least do the crime.
At least that’s what she always quipped when I asked her why she went out of her way to piss off Logan and his family.
Not that I think it was all her. Hell, a large part of it was my father’s insistence that Hannah mate the Alpha’s son, reject her Fated, and push his own agenda.
It’s no easy excuse, but I get why Hannah followed his orders. Being with Bear, the Alpha’s only son was easy for her because they were always friends and he treated her well—even if she was a horror.
Once his Fated came into the picture though, well, let’s just say it was always going to be Hannah who got ditched and it was always going to be Hannah who would bear the punishment for failing in odds that my father would not agree were impossible.
Hell, I even killed two elite, who will never be found, because my father ordered a kill on Mika Silverton, Bear’s mate. Not because I particularly like Mika mind you, but rather because I refuse to see another person hurt because my father has goals to become the next Alpha.
He doesn’t care that Alpha is blood, that the pack won’t accept him. All his crazed mind can see is power and domination, just like he has dominated the family for years.
Now that Hannah is free of him though, I can move on—and move on I will. Just as soon as I find Barbie Kendall and paddle that female’s ass for fucking up all my plans.
Panting, I run hard, ignoring the burn of energy as I sniff the air again and whine my frustration.
She’s not our here! I don’t scent her.
Wait. Just wait.
I snort at Hannah’s snarling order and keep going, knowing that if I came in this direction and she’s wrong about where Barbie is then we’re screwed. Well, she’s screwed to be exact.
I’ll just keep going North over the border and get lost in a place that is still wild enough to keep me hidden. Not Canada! Jesus, I’m still civilized. No, I intend to go all the way to Alaska, where solitude is plenty and humans aren’t many.
After I find that female and paddle her ass of course.
I’m just about to snarl at Hannah again when I scent her. My wolf snarls his rage, running faster, and I almost lose my damn mind myself when I smell fear, pain, and blood.
Not much blood, I tell myself, trying to keep calm. But it’s enough that I know the female is hurt. Christ, she’s in skin too, I think, picking up the scent even stronger before I burst into trees and then through again, into a small clearing that is heavy with fresh snowfall.
Right there, in the middle, is a blonde bundle of female, who is completely naked and half frozen from the cold. She’s so tiny as she lays there curled into herself, her ass on full display and blue as a Smurf.
I’d snort and find this funny, maybe even gloat some because this is just fucking rich, Barbie Kendall, the perfect little mixed-breed princess is half dead and needing my help, something that I find particula
rly amusing since the female has snubbed me more times than I can count, pulling her little nose up at my elite ass with disdain.
Would serve her right if I just left the little shit here to freeze to death, I think.
Brigger! Don’t you dare.
I hear Hannah’s gasp of outrage, smattered with heavy amusement she can’t hide, and I grin, walking forward on my paws with my tongue lolling out.
Calm down, I didn’t run all this way just to leave her spiteful ass here. I was just amusing myself with sweet what-ifs.
The assurance earns me a snort of derision that I ignore, as I get closer to Barbie—Jesus Christ, what a stupid fucking name—and nudge her with my muzzle.
She doesn’t move but flops over at my coaxing and just lays there unconscious, her usually golden skin white enough to pass for the snow beneath her. Nudging her again, I snarl and get more forceful, wanting her to wake the hell up and get going before whatever is running at us reaches us.
They—yes, I hear a group—are still quite a ways out, but with the conditions and Barbie’s ass all but popsicled, it’s not going to be long before they reach us.
Growling, I lick at her face, my wolf whining pitifully when she doesn’t flinch a muscle.
Do something, Brigger!
Like what? Jesus Hannah, I’m not a fucking miracle worker. She’s half frozen.
Do something. Oh God, please, Brig, don’t let her just die there.
What do you want me to do?! I have at least three huge males coming at us, no place to go, and an unconscious little brat to deal with. I’m not fucking superman, you know. I can’t just deal with one thing and then move on to others. I ran over twenty miles just to get here.
Twenty wasted miles if you’re not male enough to save one measly, little brat.
I snort at Hannah’s retort and roll my eyes when my wolf growls at me, refusing to understand my almost-conscious plans to leave the bitch and split for safety.
I’m no hero, and I don’t want to be. I only came out here because I owed Hannah a favor, and now that I found Barbie, I am debt free.
“You know I didn’t mean that! You know—
You said find her. I found her.
Dammit Brigger, you fucking bastard. Don’t you dare leave her out there to freeze to death or for those assholes to find. They’ll drag her back to wherever they had her or kill her.
And that is my problem because…?
It’s your problem because it’s your Goddamn plans that got her in this mess in the first place, and don’t you tell me that you and Blain aren’t high up in that stupid resistance organization.
Her words give me pause because it’s true. Only now instead of staying the course, as Blain wants to do, I am out. I don’t have anything left to give to the resistance. I don’t give a shit what they want to do, if it’s good, bad, or just messed up.
I want freedom. I need to be free to live as I want and not have to think about anyone but me, and I will attain that freedom.
Fine! But just save Barbie first. Brigger, you owe me this.
Sighing heavily, I dip my head and lick at Barbie again, the taste of her skin making my wolf whine with want that I shove down and severely admonish him for.
I am not getting a fucking hard on while I’m in fur, and most definitely not for this female. For one, I don’t like her. Two, she’s in skin, and while some shifters will mate in fur when they’re out in the wild—quite an experience…but not something I want to go into in detail about—we don’t mate fur to skin.
Thirdly, I do not like her.
I do however find this female beyond fucking sexy, and I always have. She’s short, with blonde hair that is white as snow one moment and a golden-blonde the next. She’s got the bluest eyes I have ever seen with little flecks of green and gold that swirl when she’s upset…and her body…
Taking a second to look at her, naked, for the first time, I take in her round, large breasts crowned with small, pink nipples, the slight curve of her belly—something shifter females don’t usually have since our metabolisms are so fast and burns fat quickly—and the bare triangle of smooth skin between her thighs.
Another nudge has her legs falling open, and I swear to God my wolf almost slobbers when I catch a peek of her slit where her folds peek through slightly, as if God gave her a little more fold to offer my mouth.
Shit!
Stop being a pig! Sex later. Hell, she’ll probably let you do whatever you want to her if you save her life. Move!
Sighing, I shift back into skin and lean down to slide my arms beneath Barbie, hissing when my heated skin makes contact with pure ice. She must be really bad off if her shifter temperature is failing in the cold. We usually run hot as hell compared to humans. Once again, the metabolic rate of shifters is fast.
Pulling her closer to my chest, I start running, this time north without one care as to the fact that I should take her home. For reasons I can’t fathom, I don’t want her going home to her parents and her pack—our pack—with what she’s done.
She deserves all the consequences of getting her stupid ass caught working for the resistance—I mean, come on, even I was a better agent—but I can’t do that to her, not in her condition.
No, I’ll take her with me to hide out in the little cabin I have in Canada. For a bit. Just until she can function properly and regain her strength. Then I’ll put her stupid ass on a plane straight back to Greyriver, where she’ll face the music.
Run, Brig! They’re coming fast.
Can’t go any faster unless I drop the doll.
Dammit. I’ll try to buy you some time. And Brigger?
What?
I love you.
Snorting, I shove Hannah out of my head and take off, pushing myself past the limits of endurance for hour upon hour until I sneak across the border and stop at a place that I had prepared weeks ago. Here, I have clothes, a backpack filled with supplies, and the resources to make my way to the cabin that is only meant to be a pit stop.
Once I’m dressed and ready, I reach into the pack to pull out a fleece and sweatpants that drown the little female after I dress her. Her feet are blocks of ice when I slide socks onto them, chuckling when I have to pull them up to fit and they reach over her knees.
She really is a little doll.
She doesn’t make a peep, not a flicker of her lashes, and I sigh as I lift her again and start walking towards the little dirt road, where I have a beat-up, piece-of-shit Civic parked and waiting.
Once I reach it, I lower Barbie into the passenger seat, stow the pack and other supplies, and cram my six five frame into the driver’s seat, snarling when I have to hunch over like a gargoyle to see out the windscreen.
The car sounds like a screaming harpy when I turn the key, but it works just fine when I pull out onto the road and drive towards the highway, smiling when the bumps cause Barbie to hop around in her seat and bang her head into the window.
Gonna have a lump, I think, recalling the one time I allowed her temper to get to me and got a lump on the temple when she socked me. What does it say about me that I got hard as hell and had to spend half the night screwing Manda Borver to slake my lust for Barbie and her violent temper?
Ah, well, it seems I’m heading towards that lust again, I think, when my cock punches into my zipper, the hard length throbbing with need because the scent of her is all over the car, making even the air I breathe taste like her.
Fuuuck! I need this right now like I need to have Hannah in my head pinpointing where I am, unless I somehow manage to block the thought, which is not easy, trust me.
Driving for a few miles, just enough to let the road lead to a dead end for those scenting assholes, I pull onto a little dirt road that leads up into the mountains and to a cabin that is secluded and difficult as hell to get to on foot.
The gate I replaced weeks ago is closed, so I open it, pull the car in, and get back out to close it, engaging the electric fencing I installed over the course of the last f
ive months while I laid my escape plans.
No one can get through this gate without getting a hard as hell jolt that will fry the hair off their balls, and that goes for the light fencing I set up around the perimeter, the incongruous protection was for my own little amusement—because as harmless and human as it looks—the minute they lay hands on it, it’ll fry their balls right off, fuck the hair.
Chuckling, I drive up until I reach the small drive I levelled and reverse the car into the carport beside the cabin. It’s cold as hell, even my own heat not enough to stave off the temperatures that have continued to drop steadily.
Leaving the car, I grab the bags I stashed in the car weeks ago and make it into the cabin, taking the time to lay a fire and set things up before going back out to get the damsel in distress, my mouth quirking when she shivers against the cold.
Oh good, seems like she’ll be coming around soon.
I carry her into the cabin and dump her on the bed, my mouth compressing at the thought of giving up my comfort for little Miss Princess.
Narrowing my eyes on the thought, I change my mind, pick her up and dump her on the couch, grinning when a whoosh of air leaves her and she rolls right off, hitting the floor with thud.
Comfy!
Look, it’s not that I like females hurting because I don’t. Christ, I had to watch my demented father hurt my sister and mother for decades. It’s just that I do not like Barbie Kendall, and no amount of chivalry will make me go out of my way for her.
She’s made it clear over the years exactly how she feels about me, and trust me, it wasn’t great. So yeah, she can pick her own ass up off the floor when she regains consciousness, and then she can sleep on the couch where a spring has decided to take up residence right in the middle.
When she doesn’t move, I feel like shit and give in, lifting her to the couch and laying her down gently. It’s then that I take a look at her, a real look that isn’t clouded by tits and other parts that call to me.
She’s so small that it’s unfathomable to me how anyone could harm this female. Her face is bruised at the left temple stretching all the way down to her jaw and her neck holds prints that make me snarl because they look like fingerprints as if some asshole got his hand around her slender throat and squeezed. I can’t see much else from there with the fleece and sweats covering her body, but I see her hands and that makes me almost rabid with fury.
Greyriver Shifters Page 49