by Christa Wick
Wild with fear, I batted at it with both hands. It slammed into the beta that alpha bitch had been healing. One second the hyena was trying to pick itself up, the next second it was on the ground, eye sockets burned out and smoking and its tongue lolling out of its mouth.
Fuck, did I really do that?
My wolf snapped at me, reminding me I still had a gun and two bound legs. With the 9mm in my right hand, I shot both chains.
Free, a victory smile started to shape my lips. A fresh wave of nausea wiped away the expression as alpha bitch moved, her hand wrapping around the weapon her attacker had dropped. She was still alive, malice dripping from her gaze. Like a deer trapped in a predator’s gaze, I froze, my body incapable of doing anything other than watching what remained of her face as she swung the gun forward, took aim at my chest and pulled the trigger.
Dead meat, that’s what I was. It was Mallory’s big ass gun that had blown her jaw off and Mallory’s big ass gun that she had just fired.
The stench of death itself slammed into me, wrapped its arms around my torso and threw me to the ground. I heard the bullet hit, heard my name called again, if only in my head.
My senses reeled. It wasn’t death I smelled, but livestock and excrement. It wasn’t death that held me. It was the intruder, the alpha male that my terror-filled mind had so far refused to recognize.
Mud thing.
Bark man.
The bullet meant for me had hit him square in the back, up high where everything was heart and fat veins that would bleed out in fractions of minutes.
I rolled out from under his mass and turned him over. I pawed at the mud covering his face, cries choking my attempt at words. Blue eyes stared at me for a single agonizing heartbeat then dropped shut. A few feet away, alpha bitch collapsed to the ground. The two remaining hyena males howled in fury.
I had my back to all of them. They no longer mattered. I didn’t matter. Neither did the old wolf still staked to the ground.
Joshua was dying, more dead than not, his alpha energy barely detectible, his body too hurt to heal itself.
“No,” I begged, wrapping my arms around Joshua. “Please, you have—”
Heat incinerated the rest of my plea as Asuri launched every ounce of hate his dark soul possessed. The blast hit me center of my shoulders and shot outward, tendrils snaking upwards to fry my brain as others reached down to squeeze my heart. I pushed, smoothed, beat at the pain, twisting it as I forced it back to my shoulders then down my arms, into my hands that pressed against Joshua’s chest.
There was too much energy. It had to go somewhere, into something. It was too big for me to hold in.
Asuri’s energy seeped out my fingers, dripped from my eyes, poured from my mouth.
“I love you,” I whispered, my feelings plucking out all the dark hate from the hyena’s blast so that only good flowed into Joshua’s body.
I felt a flicker of life against my palms.
Snarling and gnashing, Asuri hit me again. I felt it leave the hyena. I didn’t try to dodge or deflect. I welcomed the energy, sifted and shaped it then poured it into Joshua.
His eyes sprung open, met mine for an instant and then he rolled. He snatched up the 9mm I had dropped, his clawed hand fumbling at the grip. Following the length of his outstretched arm, I screamed as my gaze landed on the alpha female. My mind rejected what my eyes saw. She should be dead, not wrapping her hand around Mallory’s gun once more.
Joshua fired, the 9mm jerking in his injured hand. The female’s head whipped to the side from the force of the bullet as it hit dead center on her temple. The body collapsed to the ground. Joshua put two more bullets in her skull before the last surviving beta sprang forward and knocked the gun from his hand.
Wrapping his hands around my ankles, Asuri jerked me toward his dead mother. Joshua tackled him, the two of them falling toward the ground, their bodies knocked in different directions. Asuri sent out a pulse meant for Joshua. I snatched at the energy, felt its burn then tossed it at the beta circling behind me.
He toppled to the dirt, every joint in his body bending at unnatural angles as he folded.
Asuri was alone, but he had lost none of his edge. Throughout the fight, he had let the beta males take most of the blows. Joshua’s body still struggled to heal. But he didn’t stop fighting. Wrapping his arms around Asuri, he sank his fangs into the hyena’s neck.
Giggling, Asuri ignored the bite as an immense power balled inside his chest. I could feel the energy growing, could see its force fracturing the hyena’s rib cage.
I pictured my hands reaching into Asuri’s chest, imagined my fingers curling around the black mass. As I touched it, the energy began to burn with a familiar golden glow. In my mind, I lifted the ball out of Asuri and placed it around Joshua’s heart—protecting him, healing him. All that Asuri had to give, I took from him, altering it before it entered Joshua.
The hyena sank to his knees. Joshua followed him down, his claws extended and beginning to push into Asuri’s chest.
“Not yet!” I screamed.
There was more to take—more to give. Asuri started shrinking, his alpha form receding. He kept shrinking, the skin shriveling on bones and organs that had resumed their human shape. Feeble hands clawed at the hard shell of Joshua’s matted fur. The big cat looked at me and shook his head.
Enough.
Ramming his hand through Asuri’s chest, he ripped out the hyena’s heart and threw it on the ground.
Chapter 23
Clover
Still in his alpha form, Joshua rushed to Mallory. He put his palms on the old wolf’s chest, transferring some of the healing energy I had stolen from Asuri. I watched for a few seconds then picked up Mallory’s gun and put an extra bullet in all of the betas just to be safe.
Returning to Joshua, I watched. He nodded at Mallory’s hands. I got on my knees and pulled the stakes out. I moved around the body, taking the bolts out of my own restraints as I waited for Joshua to signal that he was ready for the next stake to be removed.
When the last one was out, Joshua kept pushing his alpha energy into Mallory for a few more minutes. He only stopped because he collapsed to the side. I moved to cradle him, but he brushed me away and pointed at the collar still on the old wolf.
I worked the bolt loose and carefully removed the collar. The device wasn’t a duplicate of the one I had worn. I had been forced to sit up with mine, the spikes all the way around. Mallory’s collar was more like a D ring, a flat metal band behind his neck, with spikes along the sides and front.
“Clover!”
Hearing Braeden scream my name, I whipped around.
“Here!” I screamed back. “Hurry!”
I rushed over to Joshua. Blacked out, he couldn’t protest my cradling him. I held him in my arms as Braeden and half a dozen other shifters crashed through the perimeter of vehicles. None of the males were in their animal state. Other than Braeden, there was only one other alpha, Mojo. Except for Garland, they all had experience in the rougher aspects of keeping the pack safe. Most were mated, as well, with Garland and Axel, a widower, the only single shifters.
Even though he had expected me to be out of town by the time they rolled in, Braeden had wisely picked a response team that would be unaffected by my heat.
I looked at my brother, tears streaming down my face.
“Help Joshua,” I begged around the fist-sized lump lodged in my throat. “He put everything into Mallory.”
Braeden dropped to my side as Mojo knelt over the old wolf. Taking Joshua from me, he barked out orders.
“Secure the perimeter. Check the structures. You know what to do so get your asses moving!”
“I’m sorry,” I whispered as I watched the flow of energy from Braeden to Joshua.
From behind me, I could feel the same outpouring from Mojo into Mallory. It was weird. Before the kidnapping, I had never been able to see the energy alphas wielded and could only feel when it was directed at me. Watching my
brother, I knew that I could siphon off that energy, even when he wasn’t trying to release it, and redirect it however I wanted.
Around me, the bodies of the dead shifters were being dragged into a pile. The entire area would need cleaned. I only hoped we had enough time before the cops showed up. The trees and the surrounding hills would muffle the sound of gunfire, but there had to be other residences close enough to hear. The active firing had probably lasted at least ten minutes no matter how slow or fast things felt at different times. If the cops couldn’t figure out where the shooting was coming from, they were idiots.
“Clover,” Braeden started, his tone firm but non-judgmental. “Help them.”
Numb, I got up and followed Garland to the door of the smallest trailer. Except for a gun, he was empty handed.
“Were there electronics in the first trailer?” I asked. “Phones, tablets, computers?”
We needed to know who the hyenas associates were, so we knew how many more enemies we might have out there. If we were lucky, they would be as insular as their inbreeding suggested.
Garland’s cheeks turned pink. Reaching out, I gave his shoulder a squeeze. “We’ll clear it again after this one, grab a pillowcase off that bed.”
I ransacked drawers and cupboards while he lifted the mattress and sifted through the pockets in the clothes the trailer’s occupants had left in the middle of the floor. We came away with two cell phones, one tablet and a laptop. Returning to the first trailer, Garland scooped up the electronics he had already noticed then we searched for more.
Finished looking in all the nooks and crannies, I grabbed a second pillowcase and headed for the largest of the trailers, the one covered with the blue tarp that Asuri and alpha bitch had bumped uglies in before he had claimed me with a foul spray of urine and worse that I could still smell on my clothes.
Opening the door, I went in first—and froze.
The waitress was on the mattress, dead, her flesh naked and covered in claw marks and bite wounds. Against the back wall, a dark haired woman was strung up in chains.
She was dead, too, both of the women no more than a few hours gone.
I pedaled backwards, out the door, tripping, falling. Two mud covered hands grabbed me and pulled me back onto my feet. Blue eyes stared at me. I couldn’t look back.
It was all my fault.
“That’s the hiker went missing a month back,” Garland said, rushing out of the trailer he had followed me into. He made it maybe four steps past where Joshua and I stood before dropping to his hands and knees and spewing out a stream of vomit with all the force of a fire hose.
He had just turned eighteen. This was the worst thing he had ever seen in his short life. I hoped it was the worst he would ever see.
Cupping my chin, Joshua forced my gaze up.
“This is on those sick bastards, not you.”
My lips quivered as I shook my head. They were never going to let the dark haired girl go, but the timing of her death had been triggered by my stupid run through the woods. The waitress might never have been taken.
“It’s not on you,” he repeated, his voice achingly soft as he pulled me into his arms.
Axel, a wolf shifter from Night Falls, ghost walked out of the main structure.
“Fucking meth lab in there,” he said, each word shaking as it left him. “Don’t none of you bastards light a match.”
Limping, with Mojo close on his heels, Mallory came up and rested a hand on my shoulder. He gave a little squeeze as I looked him in the eye.
“What the hell did you do, baby girl?”
Braeden rounded on him with a growl. Joshua put a calming hand on my brother’s chest.
“He’s talking about something else…I think.”
“You threw that old bitch…ehr—”
“Oh, she was a level eighty-two bitch,” I agreed with a smile.
“Yeah, maybe higher.” Mallory gave me another squeeze, his grip weak but solid. “I opened my eyes long enough to see you lob a blast right back at her.”
“More than that,” Joshua murmured. “Catnip can steal the energy right out of an alpha.”
My gaze whipped back in his direction, a hopeful look plastered on my face because of what he had just called me. He didn’t hate me even after all the shit I had dragged the entire pack through, him and Mallory most of all.
“Stop thinking those thoughts,” he said, pulling me back into his arms.
“She must really like you,” Braeden laughed. “Because you literally smell like you rolled around in the pens with the goats and pigs I can hear.”
“I literally did,” Joshua laughed. “Not so bad all dried, you should have smelled me earlier.”
“None of us want to smell you now,” Garland piped up.
“Get back to work, pup,” Braeden growled, then pointed at me, Mallory and Joshua. “The three of you can debrief me later. Right now, we need to hide all these bodies and make this hell-on-earth look as normal as possible. Another hour and we should have a dozen more pack members here. I’ll have them set up surveillance so we know when it’s safe to do a thorough cleansing.”
“I don’t understand,” I said. “Why are we waiting to finish cleaning?”
“I’d set it all on fire right now,” he answered. “But that would draw attention. I have a feeling we don’t want the cops out here with cadaver dogs until we know just how bad the problem is.”
A shudder ran through me at the thought of how many women might be buried in the woods beyond.
Mallory peeled away to dismantle the meth lab Axel had mentioned. Protesting that I shouldn’t go inside, Joshua followed me into the trailer with the tarp over it—the one with the bodies inside.
Stopping just inside the doorway, he called my name then pointed at a pair of mechanic’s overalls. The logo above the right breast pocket was the same as the used car lot across from the Ford dealership.
“One of them was right across the street when the Buckley Woodsmen showed up,” he said. “We never stood a chance of slipping away.”
I nodded and walked to the back of the trailer where the hiker’s body waited. Looking at Joshua, I wrapped my arms around her waist and lifted.
“Help me get her down.”
Four hours later, we were back in Night Falls. For reasons I couldn’t fathom but didn’t protest, Joshua left me with my brother and Paisley after depositing a light kiss on my forehead.
I showered and, after a dozen tight hugs from my brother and my best friend, I crawled into bed. In the search for electronics, I had recovered my phone and I pulled it out. I opened up the message app and texted the same words to Joshua that I had every night of Braeden and Paisley’s honeymoon.
Home, Loser Stalker Boy.
Half a minute later, he replied.
I love you, too, catnip.
Smiling, I closed my eyes and fell into an exhausted sleep.
When I woke up the next morning, I was no longer in heat.
Chapter 24
Clover
The butterflies fluttering in my stomach kept me home the first half of the day. From ten o’clock on, I checked my phone every few minutes, looking for a message that wasn’t there and debating whether to send my own.
“What the hell are you hanging around here for?” Paisley teased with a big grin as she chopped potatoes into small squares. “I saw the way you two were looking at each other before Joshua left last night. And you read the texts.”
My cheeks flushed. I hadn’t asked to see the texts Joshua had sent while she was away at college. But, when she offered, I sure as heck didn’t refuse. I could see why she thought they meant he had liked me for at least the last five years. He had a pattern of texting a few casual messages to Paisley, then he would hit her with a sideways question about what her “partner in crime” was up to.
“Seriously,” she repeated. “Why are you still here?”
“Clo is back to normal,” Braeden said, giving me a peck on the cheek as he ent
ered the kitchen.
Paisley rolled her eyes, her hand coming up to shield her mouth as she choked on laughter. “Your sister is never normal.”
“He means I’m not in heat anymore,” I answered as Braeden wrapped his arms around his wife’s waist and nibbled at her neck in an annoying display of affection.
Paisley’s jaw dropped, her eyes getting bigger and bigger as she stared first at my face then at my stomach. “Does that mean—”
I shook my head so hard it should have fallen off my shoulders. She thought I was pregnant. That was one of two ways a female shifter went out of heat. The second way was the mere passage of time, but I hadn’t been in heat long enough for it to fizzle out already—if it had been anything like a normal heat.
“I don’t understand,” Paisley said, pushing Braeden away. “You’re not pregnant, you’re not in heat, sounds like the perfect time to go bang his brains out.”
“She’s afraid he won’t want her now,” Braeden said. “I swear, they all think that from everything I’ve ever heard. Like she can’t just accept the fact she’s beautiful, brilliant and kind hearted.”
Big brother had pretty much hit the nail on the head on why I was holding back. I mean—I didn’t really think Joshua would turn cold or even a little chilly in the space of a day. But I couldn’t ignore that he had left me with my family and gone home, and the morning had passed with no attempt to contact me. Now I had to factor in the absence of estrus.
Grabbing me by the shoulders, Paisley shook me. “Get your ass over there, now.”
Sighing, I kissed her then walked to the side door. My black hoodie was hanging on the peg, so were my house keys. The Jeep key was gone. The vehicle was probably already crumpled into a metal square at the junkyard Mallory ran.