by J. E. Taylor
She stepped into view, her gaze glued to the now empty bottle. Instead of drowning in the last half glass himself, he offered it to her.
She stared at it before shaking her head.
“Suit yourself.” He hammered the last of the vodka back and slammed the glass on the table.
“What are you doing?”
“Getting shitfaced.” He licked his numb lips. “Duh.” Her incredulous look crawled under his inebriated skin. “Don’t look so disappointed.”
“I just...” She waved at him.
“You just what? You just thought I’d stick my tail between my legs and follow you around like I have for the last ten years?” Sarcasm rang in his voice. “Just be a good boy and not make any waves?” Anger flared at the rise in her eyebrows. “Fuck you.”
She huffed, and instead of glaring at her, he returned his gaze to the world outside.
“I’ve wasted ten years, hoping you’d come around, and when I finally tell you what’s in my head, the thought of being with me makes you throw up.” he growled and stood. The ground seemed to shift, and he reached for the couch to steady himself. “I damned myself for you. What a fucking idiot.”
He stumbled to the sliders and opened the door to an arctic blast of air. He shivered and turned in her direction.
“So, just keep your opinion to yourself right now, because I don’t need a lecture or some bullshit excuse. I needed a drink, so I had one.”
“Do you know what they did to me?” she asked, her voice holding controlled anger.
“I don’t care.” Hunter went to step outside.
“You understand what a gang bang is, right?”
He paused, fighting his own memories of their stench saturating every cell, making her reek. The demons were back and his stomach lurched. He reached the railing and leaned over, using the cold wood to catch his breath and calm the violent spasm in his belly.
“They made me swallow their dicks until I choked. They fucked me until I bled from both my vagina and my ass, but that didn’t stop them, they continued to rotate until they were too tired to get it up anymore.”
Hunter spun towards her. “I know,” he bellowed, as his fists clenched.
“Then how the hell can you possibly think I would willingly let another man touch me ever again?” she yelled back, her voice echoing off the thick pines.
Hunter blinked, and his hands uncurled as the depths of her pain squeezed his heart to the breaking point. He didn’t know how to answer her, or how to erase the horrors. He only knew he had to try.
With a speed that belied his drunkenness, he closed the distance and pulled her into his arms, crushing her lips under his. She gasped and went rigid in his arms. He took advantage of the situation, dipping his tongue into her open mouth, tasting a hint of the mint toothpaste she had used.
The snarl that came from her, along with a shove that sent him across the porch, stopped his heart cold. She shifted in a blink and darted towards him with her teeth bared. Instead of cowering like he should have, he jumped to his feet and charged at her, still in human form.
Anger pulsed in his temples and he ducked under her snap and turned, throwing himself on her back, wrapping his arm around her neck in the process and dragged her to the ground with him. He held her spine to his chest and clamped his hand around her snout.
“Don’t you dare bite me,” he growled in her ear. “You may have been the alpha queen of the pack, but you aren’t running a pack anymore.”
She tried to dislodge her snout by shaking her head.
“It’s just you and me, but I’ll gladly leave you the hell alone if you keep this shit up.”
She stopped moving, even relaxed against him. He loosened his grip. She twisted and stood over him with her teeth bared, the feral growl shocking him as much as her limberness had.
Hunter stared into her fiery eyes. “Go ahead.” He leaned his head back, exposing his throat.
Her growl subsided, and she licked her chops before letting out a huff. She settled on top of him, nuzzling her nose under his chin. He took a deep breath and sighed, wrapping his arms around her.
He stroked her silky fur while staring at the stars above them. After a few minutes, he lifted her muzzle, making her meet his gaze. “I’m not subservient to you. If you want me to stay, we are equals,” he said. “If you don’t want me, then you have to cut me loose.”
Her soft whine shot his nerves, leaving them raw and exposed.
“I can’t stay if there is no future here.” He rolled her off and headed inside. The alcohol hadn’t numbed the pain piercing his heart.
“Hunter?”
He turned, taking in her tearstained face.
She stumbled, and then the sound of the gunshot echoed. Red spread across her shoulder and his breath locked in his throat. He moved, tackling her before a second shot shattered the glass door.
She panted in his ear as he rolled her out of the sightline of the woods. His chest constricted and he could hardly pull air into his lungs. His gaze shot to the opposite side of the cottage where the car keys sat on the counter, and the door to the garage where their jeep had sat for the last couple of months. He didn’t know if it would even start, but if they didn’t high tail it out of here, they would be dead.
“Looks like our little reprieve is up,” he said, and met her gaze. “Time to run.” He pulled her to her feet and she winced. With her hand clasped in his, he darted across the opening, using the furniture as barriers. He didn’t slow down as he passed the counter, swiping the keys and catapulting both of them through the garage door.
Darkness flooded his vision and he cursed the alcohol he’d just drunk. Without it, he was truly human, truly without the extra wolf senses that kept him alive and out of danger. The buzz evaporated the moment Alessandra had launched at him, and now his heart pumped with a frantic need to purge the drug from his system, but he ignored the burn of it and swung the door open.
Alessandra climbed in and he bolted to the driver’s side, fumbling with the keys. He slid them in the ignition and closed his eyes, saying a little prayer before he turned the key. The jeep jumped to life and Hunter didn’t wait for the garage doors to open, instead, he floored the gas pedal, hitting the center of the barn-style doors, knocking them wide and scraping the sides of the jeep in the process.
He flipped on his bright lights, hoping to blind anyone wearing night vision goggles. He tore down the road, almost standing on the gas pedal. His knowledge of the roads and all the possible escape routes proved essential, and they didn’t encounter anyone, which meant they had attacked from the woods, not the road.
“You okay?” he asked when they were a fair distance away and his heart rate had finally come back to normal.
Her wheezing pulled his attention from the road. He nearly ran off the blacktop at the sight of her struggling to breathe. Hunter pulled off at the next turn-around and slammed the brakes, shifting the vehicle into park before he gave her his full attention.
“Silver.” Alessandra barely whispered, and Hunter reached into the back seat, pulling out the first aid kit he had stowed away.
His hands shook as he ripped through the package, looking for the scalpel. That bullet would kill her as surely as the belladonna would have if he didn’t get it the hell out of her. Metal glinted, and he grabbed the scalpel, his heart slamming back home now that he had a means to dig it out.
He glanced at her, but from the look in her eyes, she already knew this was going to hurt, so instead of wasting words, he ripped her shirt and inspected the wound. The blood on the front of her shirt was not an exit wound. It was from splintered fragments of her shoulder and collar bone.
“Shit,” he muttered and met her gaze. “You have to stay in this form, no matter how much this hurts. Okay?” He waited for the nod and then went to work. She cried out, but to her credit, she did not squirm under the pressure.
Sweat speckled her forehead and the tightness of her jaw was enough to rip another patch
of his heart, but he finally pulled the silver out with his fingers, ignoring the fiery burn against his skin. He looked at the cause of her agony and let out a snarl as he pitched it out the window.
“Drive,” she whispered.
“I need to patch you up first.”
“No. Drive. Trust me; they are close enough for me to catch a scent on the wind.” Her weak voice tore his resolve and he slid back into the seat, doing exactly as she asked until they were another fifteen minutes down the road. He turned off on a barely visible side road, parking under an overgrown pine thicket. The dull green of the jeep blended in, and he prayed they were hidden enough for him to stitch her up.
He turned on the overhead light, hating the fact he needed it. Alessandra’s face was bathed in sweat and her eyes had that dull quality of shock.
“I don’t have anything to give you,” he said, and pulled a needle and thread from the medical kit. With a deep breath, he leaned in and began the painstaking work of closing her wounds.
“I’m glad you’re a doctor,” she whispered, as he pulled the last stitch.
He gave her a small chuckle and met her gaze. “I never actually finished my residency.”
Her eyebrows arched and he gave her a shrug.
“I only had a couple of weeks left and my final medical exam had already been scheduled...” He placed a bandage over the stitches before packing up the medical kit and stowing it away in the back seat. “But then everything went to hell... And here we are.”
Hunter flipped the overhead light off and slid back into the driver’s seat.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t know,” Alessandra whispered.
He huffed and put the car in drive. He had no idea where to go next. This was the only safe house he had bought after his father went missing, and while he had an exit strategy in place, he had hoped they wouldn’t need it, because he was all out of ideas.
“Just get some rest,” he said, trying to keep the annoyance churning in his stomach alongside the vodka from creeping into his voice, but he failed.
“What is your issue?” she asked.
“I can’t fucking see. I can’t catch a scent, either. Not with the damned alcohol in my system, and I have no idea where the hell to go.”
“What about—”
“—There’s nowhere left for us to go.” He sent her a glare that matched his tone. With the edge of the vodka fading, anger replaced it with a relentless burn.
“No need to get bitchy. After all, I was the one who got shot,” she snapped.
He swerved off the main road, barely staying on the blacktop of a nearly hidden road. The jeep jumped with every pothole and frost heave, jostling them both in the seats. The hiss from between her teeth pulled his glance her way and he eased up on the gas pedal.
“Sorry,” he muttered.
“It’s okay,” she said, her voice soft and full of the pain he was sure was pummeling her shoulder.
“Motel or side of the road?” he asked.
She remained silent for longer than he expected. When he looked her way, she sighed.
She bit her lip and met his gaze. “What is safer?”
“Damned if I know.”
Alessandra scanned the wooded landscape. “Think we could break into one of these cabins?”
“I don’t want to leave fresh tracks in the snow.” He glanced at her and then focused on the road. “But if I come across something that already has tracks, maybe that’s an option.”
“Is that really wise?”
He huffed a laugh. “None of the options are wise, but we might be able to get away with holding up in a cabin with people. It could mask our scents and it’s something they wouldn’t look for. Besides, we can say we are almost out of gas and saw the tracks. Instead of freezing out in the car...”
She kept chewing on her lip. “How do you explain this?” Ally nodded at her shoulder.
“You need to change and we need to bury the clothes in the snow.”
“You’ve got blood on you, too.”
“Then we both change.” He pulled the jeep to the side and got out, going to the back where the emergency bag sat. It held clothes for at least a couple of days. He shuffled through the clothing, pulling out jeans and a sweater for Alessandra and a clean sweater for himself. He stripped his blood-splattered shirt and tossed it on the ground behind the jeep, before going to the passenger door. “Do you need some help?” he asked, as he handed her the spare clothes.
Alessandra shook her head and shimmied on her pants under the nightshirt she wore. Hunter turned away, but her sharp intake of breath pulled him back around. She had the shirt partially off and was struggling to get her injured arm and head out of the cloth. He reached in and gently pulled it over her head, exposing her bare chest.
Hunter focused on getting the fabric off her shoulder, but the awareness that her perky breasts were inches away from his hands sent a tremor of heat through him. He dropped the bloody shirt on the ground outside and picked up the sweater from her lap, helping her to thread her injured arm into the sleeve before slipping the shirt over her head.
In that moment, he took the opportunity to glance at her sweet chest. Desire boiled in his blood and he forced himself to step back. If he stayed that close, he would do something he would regret. Instead, he picked up her nightshirt and closed the passenger door.
With every step away from the door, the burn inside him cooled. Hunter collected his shirt and jogged the way they’d come until he found what he was looking for. A snow bank big enough to hide their scent.
He squatted and started digging at the frozen snow until he had a sufficient tunnel for the two shirts. With numb fingers, he shoved the clothing as deep as it would go before filling in the hole. By the time he got back to the jeep, his hands were numb enough to sting from the warm air of the car.
Squeezing and opening his fists, he got the blood pumping until his hands tingled. Finally, he glanced at Alessandra. “Feeling better?”
She shook her head. “That really hurt.”
“Just hang in there. I’ll find us a safe place to get some rest. Okay?” Alessandra needed sleep to heal and being in this car wasn’t going to give her the opportunity to rest. All she needed was eight hours of deep sleep and that gunshot wound would be gone. By that time, he would be back to himself as well, and no longer vulnerable like he was without his wolf senses.
Wolf Moon Chapter 3
It took Hunter another hour and a half to find a place that was occupied and had a driveway only big enough for one set of tire tracks. He carefully traced over the same tracks until he got to the garage, and instead of pulling up behind the garage, he pulled into a space next to it that would keep their vehicle hidden from the road.
“How many?”
Alessandra glanced at him and sniffed the air. “Four. One adult and three kids.”
“Damn. A family is less likely to help.”
She closed her eyes and concentrated, focusing on her good hand. Feeling the transformation start, she swung, catching his forearm, leaving four deep slices.
“Jesus,” he gasped and grabbed his bleeding limb as she reined the beast back, pushing it down inside her. “What the hell did you do that for?”
“Take your shoes off,” she demanded, and he did as she asked. “Now they’ll help.” She climbed out of the car before he could comment and waited for him to step by her side. He stared at her, holding onto his bleeding arm and they continued to the front door. With a deep breath and a glance at Hunter, she knocked and waited.
She knocked again, this time getting herself set to pour out a fictional story about camping and a run in with a bear. It would also give her an excuse for why she was barefoot in the snow. A hasty retreat from a tent... and voilà.
Lights came on and she braced herself. “Just follow my lead,” she said to Hunter before the door opened.
A man with a shotgun and sleep-tousled hair stood on the other side of the door.
“Oh, than
k god!” Alessandra said, her voice full of panic along with a hint of relief. “My boyfriend got attacked by a bear while we were camping and I’ve been driving forever looking for someone to be home. I was praying that the tracks to this cottage were people coming in and not going out. Can you help us?” She kept shifting her feet and he finally looked down.
His eyebrows rose and his gaze jumped to Hunter.
Hunter held his arm close to his chest and shrugged. “We kind of left everything in the tent, and then she proceeded to get very lost.”
The shotgun was lowered a fraction and the man glanced over his shoulder before looking back at the two of them.
“Maybe we should keep on trying to find a gas station?” Hunter said, looking at her and shifting his feet.
Alessandra looked from Hunter to the man inside. “Can you point us in the right direction?” she asked, knowing that the closest one had to be a fair distance away. Far enough for her not to pick up any gasoline scent on the light wind shuffling their clothing.
The gun was lowered a little more. “The nearest one is about thirty miles to the north. You just take a right out of the driveway and keep going.”
Alessandra turned to Hunter. “I think we have enough gas to get there,” she said. “Thank you,” she said to the man, sending her warmest disarming smile in his direction before she turned to head back to the car.
“Wait a second,” the man said, lowering the gun all the way. “What’s your gas gauge on?”
Alessandra chewed her bottom lip and glanced between Hunter and the man in the doorway. “It’s on E, but the light hasn’t gone on yet.”
The man ran his hand down his face and then sighed. “Look, I’m not comfortable with strangers in my house, but I can’t, in good conscience, send you off when I know an empty gas tank in anything worth a damn on these roads won’t make it thirty miles on empty.” He stepped aside and nodded for us to come in. “Why don’t you come in and we can take a look at your friend’s arm, and then we can figure out what to do about your car situation.”
Alessandra gave him a grateful smile and entered the house, glad to be out of the cold. She turned when the door closed. Hunter stood on the entry tile, giving her a raised eyebrow. She glanced down at her wet bare feet leaving an imprint in the plush fibers and nearly jumped back onto the tile.