by Michelle Fox
“Gretchen get home all right?”
Talon lifted a shoulder in a half shrug. “I guess.”
Keira raised her eyebrows. “Call me crazy, but I thought you would’ve checked.”
“Keira,” he growled, warning her off.
“Sorry, sheriff. I don’t mean to pry but your scent was all over her. We all smelled it. It had a certain,” she waved her hand in the air and sniffed, “eau de fate to it.”
“That’s enough, deputy. Unless you want to spend the day doing paperwork for the Pack Council.” He knew that would get her to back down. Everyone hated the paperwork. It was endless, and thus, always at the bottom of the to-do list. Twice a year he had to bribe his crew with wings and pizza to pull an all-nighter to clean out the backlog.
She backed away, hands up in a placating gesture. “No, I’m good. It’s for the best anyway.”
“Oh?” He raised an eyebrow at her.
“Mates can be more trouble than they’re worth.” She ran a hand through her hair. “I thought I was set for life when I met my mate. Now look at me.” She gestured to the bar.
“You know what I believe, deputy?”
“What?”
“Anything worth having is always trouble.”
She frowned. “So where does that leave me? You’re not saying my mate was worth it, are you? Because that’s bullshit.”
“No, but you still got something out of that relationship. Two beautiful kids if I recall.”
“It was worth killing him to protect my babies.” She sniffed and her eyes glittered with unshed tears.
“I know the odds aren’t great for you, but you’ll definitely never be able to go back with that attitude.”
“Who said I wanted to? That pack isn’t my home anymore, sheriff.” She thumped her chest with her fist. “I’m a stray for life. As soon as my kids are old enough, they’re going to be strays too. My pack isn’t a place any shifter should call home.”
Talon conceded her point with a nod. “Understood.”
“And stop poking my sore spots to distract from yours.” She wagged a finger at him. “That’s not fair.”
“I—” Talon started, wanting to defend himself, but Keira was done listening. She spun on her heel and stalked out of his office. He blinked at his coffee, feeling like he’d just made an ass of himself thanks to the alcohol residue clouding his brain.
He liked Keira, dammit. She had more integrity than any stray he’d ever met. The kind of moral center that would take a big fall no matter the cost, just because it was the right thing to do. Maybe that’s why he kept picturing her back with her pack. She deserved a happy ending.
“I’m sorry,” he said. Maybe she would hear him. Either way, he would talk to her later and clear up any hard feelings.
With a sigh, he crammed the donuts in his mouth, chugged the coffee and then headed out to the parking lot, keys to his Dodge jingling in his hand. The bar was empty, his crew had probably scattered the second Keira told them they had a day off.
His head cleared once he rolled down the windows and floored the accelerator on the winding road to Huntsville. The wind carried the scent of pine and the dry dustiness of the pavement. He inhaled deeply, grimacing at the note of asphalt. Usually he kept the windows up until he was well out of town, but just then he wanted the breeze, hoping it would blow away the one thought filling his head.
Or rather, the one person.
Gretchen.
Her name echoed in his mind like a bell. He’d drunk too much the night before trying to cope with the fact she’d walked away and woken up to find it hadn’t helped him adjust at all. He wanted Gretchen, needed her, but all she did was say no. It tore him up inside, a sensation he’d never experienced before.
Sure, he’d dated and even thought it might be serious once or twice, but he’d always backed off. Because no woman had ever filled his senses like Gretchen had. She was the one. There would never be anyone else.
He yanked the wheel to the right as the road curved, relishing the tension that created. He pushed and the car pulled until it all balanced out. That hadn’t happened with Gretchen and he couldn’t figure out why.
So she didn’t believe in fated mates. Fine. What about lust? But even that had failed to interest her. Where had he gone wrong?
He came round the bend and slammed on the brakes, his heart thudding in his chest. Gretchen’s small Civic sat on the side of the road as if he’d conjured it with his thoughts alone. Swerving to the berm, he parked and went to take a closer look. The vehicle was empty and the rear bumper was crumpled. Gretchen’s scent didn’t linger in the air, telling him she wasn’t in the area, at least not anymore.
Talon walked to the driver’s side and frowned as he caught the acidic scent of vomit. He looked down, concern causing his heart to thump in his chest as he saw she’d been sick. He also noticed the door hadn’t been shut all the way. Pulling the door open, he looked inside. The interior did carry a faint whiff of Gretchen, but it was stale and hours old. Her purse sat on the passenger side, which gave him pause. Through everything she’d always kept her purse with her. Why would she ditch it now? Even more puzzling, her cell phone sat in one of the cup holders.
“So someone rear-ends her, she pulls over to the side of the road, abandons the car and everything else and goes where?” Talon asked himself.
Leaving the car, he walked around the vehicle, studying the ground for clues, his nostrils flared as he sucked in the air, testing it for any scents that would tell him where Gretchen was. Finding nothing, he ventured into the trees and undergrowth lining the road, his senses alert for any clues she might have left behind. A metallic tang hit his nose in the grass running alongside the berm. Squatting down, he sniffed out the source: Blood. Dry now but still fairly fresh. Worse, it was shifter blood, he could smell the fang and fur in it mixed with the sweat of humanity.
More alarming, the blood carried Gretchen’s scent; that blend of honeysuckle, fresh grass and sugar he’d found so intoxicating from the very first whiff.
He stood, knees cracking as he did so. “Shit.” Fumbling with his pocket he pulled out his cell phone and called Keira.
She didn’t answer so he called the next shifter in the chain-of-command, Dixon. No answer there either. He tried the rest of the crew, but no one picked up. It was like they’d disappeared. For a second he wondered if whatever had happened to Gretchen had gotten to his crew, but then he shook his head. No, he’d given them the day off, told them there was no work. Being part of the sheriff’s team was a privilege with few perks. Free time was scarce. More than likely, they’d shifted and gone hunting.
“Hell, that’s what I would’ve done,” he said to the empty stillness around him. A bird startled by the sound of his voice flew off in a rustle of wings and underbrush. Something deeper in the brush thrashed, shaking a large bush and the sapling next to it. Thinking it might be Gretchen, Talon strode toward the sound, and parting the thin branches he came face-to-face with a squirrel. The small animal glared at Talon with its beady eyes and gnashed its teeth.
“Well, excuse me.” Talon stepped back, giving the squirrel some space. In a fight, he would win without a doubt, but squirrels had a nasty set of chompers on them and would take their pound of flesh in the process. He would prefer to avoid that kind of drama.
With a sigh, he turned and started to head back toward the road, but stopped short when the rusty tang of more blood filled his nose. Frowning, he sniffed again to determine the direction and went after it. Three steps to his right he found a smear on a tree trunk. Gretchen’s again.
“Damn.” He scraped the blood off the bark, wanting it under his nails to keep the scent with him. Not that he would ever forget the way Gretchen smelled, but it wasn’t unheard of for shifters to get sidetracked by similar scents. Sure, they had super noses but nothing was foolproof. Talon himself had once mixed up a game trail with someone else’s kill.
Pulling out his cell phone again, he called Xa
nder, knowing the vamp would be up despite the daylight. Sure enough, he answered on the first ring, his voice a silken purr. “Sheriff Garde, this is a pleasant surprise.”
“Is Axel with you?” Talon asked not wanting to waste time on vampire pleasantries.
“My new pussy? Yes, he’s right here.”
Talon grimaced at the derogatory nickname, which had not improved with time, and pushed on. “Ask him if he did anything to Gretchen Halbmond.” It was a long shot, but Axel may have set something up before Talon took him out of the game.
“Just a moment.” Xander’s voice became distant as he spoke to Axel and there was a low, growly mumble from the tethered stray in response. “He says no,” Xander said.
“He can’t lie, right?” Talon marched in a circle around the last blood spot he’d found, searching for more. Finding nothing, he expanded his search, spiraling further and further out from the tree trunk.
“I own him, Sheriff.” Xander sniffed. “That’s how you want it, no? His mind is no longer his. He will lie only if I demand it of him.”
“Okay. Thanks.” Talon hung up, shoving his phone into his back pocket and contemplated his next move. This wasn’t Axel. While Talon may not like Xander, he didn’t doubt the vampire’s words. Xander enjoyed his ‘toys’ too much to risk damaging his relationship with shifters.
Frowning, Talon stopped moving and just thought for a moment, weighing his options. The smart thing would be to get some back-up, but that would take too long. First, he’d have to figure out where his team went running and then track them before he could even begin to look for Gretchen who might not have that much time. But he didn’t want to go off half-cocked either. He needed a plan.
Talon ran back to his car, heart racing more from concern for Gretchen than from the exercise. Crouching down by the passenger door, he quickly stripped off his clothes and threw them into his Charger. Before he shifted he put his gun into a shoulder holster. In human form, he liked to tuck his piece at the small of his back, but that wouldn’t work once he had four legs and a fur coat instead of clothes.
Setting the holster on the ground, he then quickly called Keira again and left a detailed message about what he’d found, what he was doing and how he would mark his trail so his crew could follow him if that became necessary. Just to be safe, he called Gretchen’s alpha and left him the same voicemail. With any luck, they would come running to back him up once they checked their phones. It was just a question of how long that took.
Once that was done, he shifted. Then he thrust his nose through the shoulder holster and shoved it up on his back with a quick toss of his head until the gun’s weight settled between his shoulder blades. The scent of Gretchen’s blood hit him square on the nose now, much more intense in his wolf form than when he’d just been on two legs. Good. That meant he wouldn’t have a problem tracking her and the intensity of the smell reassured him that he wasn’t far behind whatever trouble Gretchen was in. He took off at a trot, breaking into a run once he realized the blood moved in a straight line deep into the woods.
I’m coming, baby. Just hang on.
Chapter Sixteen
~Gretchen~
Gretchen groaned as sunlight hit her face, making the backs of her eyelids bright red. Opening her eyes, she blinked at the world, wondering if the night before had all been a bad dream. But no, she was still in the woods, still tied to a tree and wrapped in silver that made her wolf a blurry dark blob in her mind.
“Damn it,” she said. Flexing, she tested the silver again, trying to break the chain, but the metal held. At least the knife wound had closed. It ached and throbbed, but otherwise she was whole.
“Morning.” Jeb emerged from a thick copse of bushes. He gave her a smile full of teeth and stretched his arms overhead, arching his back as he did so. “I slept great. How about you?”
“I would be better if you put your gun in your mouth and pulled the trigger,” Gretchen said, acid lacing her voice.
“Well, you certainly woke up on the wrong side of the…tree.” He laughed, finding himself amusing. “Don’t worry. I’m having a cage made for you and your friends. It should be here in a few days. You’ll be able to lie down then.”
“You’ll have to kill me first,” she said, fighting to keep the growl rumbling in her chest from growing loud enough for Jeb to hear.
The human shrugged, unconcerned. “That can be arranged. I do need someone to dissect, might as well be you.” He stepped closer, crowding her against the tree trunk. “What does it take to kill a werewolf? Silver bullets just like the myths say? Decapitation?” Pulling his knife from his belt, he ran the tip across her forehead and down her cheek in a sharp caress. Then he used the blade to flick her hair off her face, his wrist brushing against her cheek. “I could do it live. See how many organs I have to remove before you die.”
Hot rage boiled up inside Gretchen. How dare this man treat her like this? Unable to contain her anger any longer, she snarled, her lips thinning until her teeth were exposed. Before Jeb could react, she turned her head and sank her fangs into his forearm with a deep growl.
Jeb squealed and smacked her with his free hand. She shook her head, hoping to tear the flesh off his bones. Instead, her body went slack as electricity arced through it. The taser. He’d zapped her again.
She slumped against the tree, grateful for its support as Jeb stumbled back, his expression dazed. He looked at his injured arm, watching as his blood dripped to the ground. “You hurt me. You fucking hurt me, you stupid bitch.” He charged her and thrust the taser into her chest over and over again.
Gretchen screamed as agony tore through her body. She gnashed her teeth, snapping them at Jeb between bursts of electricity that took her ability to control her movements away from her. When she almost got her teeth around his arm again, he finally backed off.
“Oh, fuck no. You’re not biting me again.” He staggered off to his truck and came back with duct tape. With liberal use of the taser, he slapped the tape over her mouth and then secured it in place by wrapping it completely around her head.
Then, grabbing her by the neck and slamming her head into the tree behind her, he said, “You need to learn your place, bitch. I’m the master here, you’re just the dog.” His hand left her neck and cupped a breast, squeezing it until she felt the tips of his fingernails through her shirt and bra. “You belong to me and I will do anything I want to you. Fillet you. Maybe even fuck you.” His hand went to her crotch, fingers slipping into her jeans and pushing her underwear aside.
Gretchen whimpered as he invaded her. She strained to move, to find some space in which she could fight back, but the chains had been wrapped too tight. Like Talon, Jeb touched her body without permission, but with Jeb it was a sick, dirty thing. Talon, for all that he was high-handed and possessive, made her want him. She’d been telling Talon all along that she felt nothing, but as Jeb’s hands travelled over her, she realized she’d been lying to herself.
“You like that, don’t you?” He chuckled when she thrashed against his hand, taking her bid for freedom as an endorsement. “I don’t think anyone has fucked a monster before. I could be the first. I bet people would pay good money to see that.” He removed his hand, his expression thoughtful. “Although I don’t know if I really want to make a sex tape. I’m not into that kind of career path.” His fingers went under her shirt, grazing her stomach on the way up to her breast. Finding her nipple, he flicked his thumb across the sensitive tip. “Maybe it could be something just between you and me. A memory I keep of the day a monster like you served my cock.”
Tears trickled down Gretchen’s face. She might never get the chance to tell Talon she had felt something, too. With the way Jeb was assaulting her body, she might not want to feel anything ever again. She was losing everything before she even knew she wanted it.
“Ah, don’t worry, bitch.” His hand left her breast and he patted her cheek. “I’ll make sure you come. I want to see if it’s different from humans.
”
All she could do was glare at him. She had nothing else.
“Anyway, it’ll have to wait. There’s too much to do before your friends get here.”
Hope sprang in Gretchen’s chest. Someone would find her car. Her father and even her alpha would realize she’d gone missing. Talon might even come, too. They would look for her and Jeb was no match for the concentrated fury of a pack protecting one of its own.
They would kill him the second they realized he was a threat. No jury or human sense of justice. No time to explain, just *boom* dead. She would take great satisfaction in that moment, maybe even ask to be the one to do the honors. She’d never killed a human (or even another shifter for that matter), but Jeb had lost his humanity somewhere along the way. He accused her of being a monster, completely blind to the fact that he was really describing himself.
And once Jeb was dead? She would find Talon and take back every single head butt and kick to the groin.
The human held up his injured arm. “The first order of business is taking care of this mess.” As he retrieved a first aid kit from his truck, he kept up a running commentary. “After this, I’m going to tuck myself away in a hunting blind I built and wait for who comes looking for you. After I saw the first shifter, I put together a pretty cool monster trap, if I do say so myself. Once I figured out who you guys were, I was able to grab all my supplies and go.”
He swabbed his wound with alcohol wipes, hissing as it hit his skin. “The trap is based on a design from a Bigfoot hunt. The only difference being, I know my monsters will show up. Your kind look after their own, don’t they?” He glanced up and met her eyes. “You’re a pack animal after all, aren’t you?” He finished bandaging his arm and put the first aid kit back together before returning it to his truck.
“And now we wait, you and I, and see how many monsters fall into my trap.” With a high, nasal laugh he disappeared into the surrounding trees.