by Dianna Love
Eli’s eyes reflected her disappointment, but only for a moment, then she was back to her solemn face.
Justin showed no reaction, waiting to see what the wolf would do now.
“I’m guessing you killed my partner,” Cazador said, more thinking out loud than talking to Justin. Shaking his head, he said, “I had an excellent plan working. Now I have to rethink it. Didn’t you pay attention when I said I’d put a bullet in her to get what I wanted? Looks like that’s back on the table.”
Justin didn’t want to allow Cazador time to sort through his options.
He and Herc needed a minute to come up with an option as well. To buy time, Justin took a dig at the wolf’s ego, as Eli had proved to be a good tactic. “Sure, you’re a big man with a gun and woman on a chain. Is that how you earned the name El Cazador? The Hunter? You didn’t track us. Talk about luck. You’re lucky we happened to hike past your trap.”
“Think again, bear,” Cazador spit out. “That helicopter pilot didn’t find her by accident. He was up there looking to make the news with an ursid hybrid sighting, thanks to my tip. The minute I caught his radio transmission, I figured you’d go for the fastest way to get her out of here before the woods were flooded with people hunting a rare bear.”
Justin had suspected that helo. “You can be smug all you want, but my people are searching for me right now. I haven’t checked in on time. You have no idea what you’re up against with my organization. Tell you what, I’ll give you a head start if you release her now.”
That soured the wolf’s smile. He swung his gun at Justin.
“Do not shoot him ...” Eli started.
“I heard you the first time,” the wolf snapped at her. “But I’m done dealing with having to get both of you off this mountain.”
Justin wanted to tell Eli to stay calm and it would all be okay, but her bear surfaced and her eyes glowed bright blue before he had a chance to warn her to not interfere.
With fast reflexes, she reached up and grabbed her chain, yanking it hard as she ran and threw her weight backward down an incline.
Sure she would go rolling off the steep cliffs so close to that path, Justin yelled, “No!”
He jumped toward her.
The thunk of a suppressed gunshot sounded.
Heat ripped across Justin’s head again, but he kept going.
Eli’s yelling trailed off as she rolled backward out of sight.
The second bullet struck Justin’s thigh. The same one still wounded. He hit the ground and the landscape around him blurred into a moving swirl. He struggled and blacked out from a double load of titanium.
CHAPTER 30
Elianna rolled over rocks and sticks that stabbed her. Her body would look like a black-and-blue human canvas if she survived.
She kept expecting to roll off the mountain and plunge thousands of feet to her death.
She had to stop now.
Cazador had shot twice. Justin was hurt. He needed her.
Without thought to the risk of breaking a bone, she shoved a leg out to use as an anchor. A tree whacked the back of her calf, bringing tears to her eyes, but that slowed her momentum a little and sent her rolling away to the side.
She hit a bush and flopped around it, but bent her knee to catch her lower leg in the branches. That worked.
Struggling for air, she jerked her foot free and scrambled over on all fours.
The chain snatched tight around her neck.
She looked up to find that the miserable wolf had her again.
Was Justin dead?
No, her bear grumbled. Bear hurt.
Her bear said Herc was hurt? That would mean Justin had lived.
Cazador’s hand holding the weapon shook. Anger wiped away his cocky calm. “Your mate’s dead, but let’s be honest. We both know that bear isn’t your mate.”
How could this man know that? “He is mate.” In her heart, she would never have another.
“Bullshit. Your mate, or the one who was supposed to get stuck with you, is the one flipping a bundle to keep you out of his hair. It’s now clear why spending that much money is worth every penny.”
Clan Boudreaux wanted her dead? No, worse than dead. They sold her to a criminal pack of wolves.
“So it’s just me and you.” He swung the end of the chain back and forth. The side of his face bled where the chain had caught him when she’d jerked away. “Once I lock you in my transport van, you owe me some one-on-one time before I hand you off. Never fucked a princess before. Maybe I’ll get my dick gold plated after that,” he said, regaining his confidence. “Turn around and walk, princess. Every time you slow down, you will feel the burn of this titanium chain slashing your back.”
“You die screaming.”
He laughed. “Oh, big talk.”
Kill wolf. Find mate. Kill wolf now, her bear demanded.
Elianna had never heard her bear in such a state of upset, but she could do nothing yet. Patience, she told her bear, needing to watch for a way to escape and get back to Justin.
No. No. No.
Now she could appreciate how that word rubbed on Justin. Elianna said, I have collar. Can. Not. Shift.
Her bear roared. It shocked Elianna.
“Get up,” the wolf ordered.
She struggled to her feet and tried to push the hair out of her eyes, which was not easy with her hands cuffed.
He whipped the chain up, letting it pop her in the jaw.
She flinched and tears burned the corners of her eyes, but she would not make a sound.
“You are one tough bitch. Turn your collar around.”
When she had the collar in place, the chain dangled from the back where she couldn’t grasp it again.
Cazador said, “Lead the way.”
She kept waiting for Justin to come running through the woods to reach her. Every minute that he didn’t show up weighed heavily in favor of her bear being wrong.
Her mate could be dying back there.
Elianna took careful steps as they angled away from the mountain face and into a pocket of woods. If she did fall, she’d take the wolf with her.
That would be the only positive to dying.
Over the next twenty yards, she wove up and down through gullies where downed trees made passing more difficult. She was close to admitting defeat when she spied a dark gap in a shady area of the trees.
Was that one of those holes Justin had warned her about when they hiked up yesterday?
After giving it more thought, she believed she was correct. Maybe some deep area created when a hollow place in the mountain had caved in at some point. Small trees lay across one side of the fifteen-foot-wide gap.
How deep would it be?
Stepping more left each time, she shoved branches and limbs aside, determined to walk right past the hole. To keep the wolf from seeing it too soon or discovering why she was getting off track, she had to distract him.
She turned her head slightly then quickly faced forward again just as fast.
Her chain went taut on her next step, which meant the wolf had stopped to look at whatever she’d pretended to notice.
“What are you looking at, princess?”
“Nothing.”
“Don’t lie to me, bitch.”
She turned a furious face to him and hoped he saw his death in her eyes. “I hear noise. That is all. You want look?”
“Not wasting time on stupid crap.”
She started walking slowly again, allowing him enough slack to look around.
Every time the chain went tight, she knew he was not paying attention to where she was headed.
That was because he would never expect her to attempt suicide.
When she was three feet from the hole, she used her shifter speed.
First she leaned back.
Then she grabbed the bolt at the back of her collar where the chain was attached and lunged forward into the hole.
Her body weight caught four feet down and jerked her arm
s hard.
If she hadn’t pulled him off his feet, she would choke to death once her arms gave out.
He growled and yelled.
Rocks and dirt sprayed over the edge, hitting her in the face.
In the next second, the chain dropped her fast as the wolf fell over the side. She had no idea what waited below her, but relaxed her legs for hitting bottom.
Unless this hole went on for a kilometer.
Her bear roared at her.
The fall seemed to take forever, but Elianna had made herself limp as a ragdoll and hit the ground thirty feet below the edge. Her next breath felt as if someone stabbed her lung. Her ribs? She rolled immediately to the side before the chain slapped the spot she’d left as gravity yanked it to the ground.
The wolf hadn’t been as well prepared.
He smacked the ground next to her on his side.
His chest hit then his head bounced against a rock, cracking his jaw. It distorted out of shape.
Elianna taunted, “Use filthy mouth to threaten now, wolf.”
She’d managed to free herself, but she had to figure out how to climb out with a cracked or broken rib.
Change, her bear told her. I heal. Now. Change now.
Elianna spoke out loud to her bear. “Can not change. Still have collar.” She could feel her agitated bear ready to go on a rampage. Even if she could shift, she wasn’t entirely sure she could control her bear with the wolf lying close enough to shred or to convince her stubborn bear to change back to human form when Elianna needed it.
Justin was right. She had to join better with her bear. Maybe they could start now. Elianna kept her voice soft when she told her bear, “Please, need calm. I try climb.”
She got an angry bear silence for that, but it was an improvement over her bear’s sulking in the past.
Small steps.
Reaching up, she found a handhold and picked around with her foot until she found a place to step. She had never been interested in rock climbing, but as she reached for the next handhold, she mused that it must not be so difficult after all.
She’d made it halfway up when the jutted out rock she’d been holding for support pulled loose from the wall, sending her and loose dirt tumbling to the floor.
Her back hit and her head bounced.
She feared a broken neck.
Testing, she moved her arms and hands, then her legs and feet. Felt like she’d been hit with a sledgehammer many times, but her body could still function.
The climb proved to not be as easy as it had looked five minutes ago.
Forcing herself back to her feet, she whimpered at pain fingering through her now and searched the walls for a better place to climb.
Nothing. The other walls were steeper, where this one had offered a slight angle.
CHAPTER 31
Justin came awake to a pounding headache, leg on fire and the sound of Herc roaring inside his mind.
Mate hurt! Herc snarled, Get up!
Shaking off a disoriented feeling from too much titanium inside him, Justin wiped blood from his eyes and felt his head.
The bullet that struck above his ear had grazed him.
He was two for two in not having a titanium head piercing. He doubted he could avoid it a third time if Cazador got another chance.
Justin pushed up to his feet and took a step.
His leg gave out beneath his weight.
Ah hell! That bastard had broken his thighbone this time. He couldn’t heal while titanium toxins attacked his blood-depleted body.
Justin shouted telepathically, Herc, come forward!
His bear rose to the surface faster than if Justin had called up the change. His body vibrated with unleashed fury.
Herc growled and snarled, wanting out.
No, Justin told him telepathically. I need all of our power. Now. What he intended to do was a dangerous idea, even for a Gallize. If a shifter called up his animal but stopped at over halfway and held his body there, the animal and human could end up stuck, unable to go in any direction.
Justin had faith in his bear.
Herc had faith in Justin.
He hoped that would be enough to prevent losing each other.
Without hesitation, Herc followed Justin’s direction. Power raced along Justin’s arms. His body shook as if hit with a jolt of electricity. Teeth moved in his mouth. His face and hands began to change. Claws on his feet tore through his boots. He reached down and used the sharp claws now sticking from partially paw-shaped hands to rip his boots off.
His body pulled and twisted, trying to change shape.
He told Herc, Hold up!
His bear growled an ungodly sound.
Justin had to look like a monster from a bad B movie about now, but that was the least of his worries.
The real problem would be if Herc lost his mind and Justin couldn’t maintain his control. This was a wild gamble that could cost both of their lives, because he needed both his bear strength and to stay human enough to function as one.
Lifting his arms that were now ripping out of his shirtsleeves, Justin shoved energy toward healing his thigh.
The bone began mending.
It wouldn’t fully heal until the titanium was removed.
Testing some weight on his leg, he clenched his jaws at the pain shooting up from the still-fractured bone, but started forward in a hurry. Hairline fractures ruptured the bone still fighting to mend. He could hear it crack every few steps.
Pain blended with adrenaline.
Herc made more horrible noises Justin had never heard.
But one sound scared him above all that.
Eli’s silence.
CHAPTER 32
Elianna’s bear raged to be freed. Even if she could shift with the collar still on, her bear could not climb the slick rock to get out of this hole any better than she could in human form.
Her bear did not want to climb. She wanted wolf blood.
Cazador had not moved since hitting the ground. Maybe he was dying. She would not touch him to find out.
Keeping an eye on him, Elianna searched for another way to use her chain to climb out.
“Ewri,” growled from above.
She stepped back to look up at what she thought sounded like Justin, but his head, arms and legs were distorted into half human and half bear.
“You ’kay?” he called out through jaws too big for his face.
“Yes. But you ...” She had no words.
“I good.” Then he stopped talking.
The next thing Elianna heard was her bear saying, Collar off.
What did that mean?
“Ewri!”
She looked up to see Justin holding something in his paws. He dropped it to her. She followed the tiny thing to the ground or she wouldn’t have found where it landed in a crevice between two rocks. It was a key.
Her bear chanted in a roar, Collar off. Collar off. Collar off.
Elianna hurried with trembling hands and missed hitting the hole. She drew a deep breath and calmed herself, then unlocked her cuffs. Pulling the collar around, she jabbed the key until it went into a slot. The collar popped free.
Shoving the key in her pocket, she looked up at Justin.
But her bear told her, Up, up, up. Throw.
Elianna asked her bear, Throw chain?
Yes.
Are you talking to Herc?
Yes. Throw.
That’s exactly what Elianna did. She looped the chain to make it more aerodynamic, swung it around two times and let go, slinging the chain up as hard as she could.
She jumped back in case it fell down again.
Justin used his two big paw-hands to catch enough to drag the chain backward out of sight. When he came back into view, he had the collar locked and looped over one arm.
The extra chain only reached halfway, but she’d made it that far last time.
“Weddy?” Justin called out. He waved a hand signal in the motion for up then grabbed the chain ne
ar the collar with both hands and set his feet wide.
Smiling, she said, “Yes.” She started climbing again, but with a renewed sense of hope.
She grappled for any handhold and foothold, inching up little by little, never taking her eyes off Justin.
His eyes did not stray from hers either. Determination burned in that wild grizzly gaze. What happened to his face and body? It looked as if ... he’d stopped shifting halfway.
That was dangerous.
It could kill the human and the animal. He was injured badly and full of titanium. He must have done it intentionally to be strong enough to reach her. She pushed harder, closing the distance between her and the dangling end of chain.
As she grabbed the chain a foot up from the last link, a hand latched around her ankle and snatched her down.
She lost her grip and fell.
Justin roared, “No!”
CHAPTER 33
Justin had bent over to get a new handhold on the chain to pull Eli up as soon as she had a grip.
That’s when he saw the wolf leap up and latch onto her ankle, dragging her down.
The damn wolf lifted his weapon, too.
Without any thought to how it would turn out, Justin jumped over the edge, aiming his body at the wolf. He hit Cazador’s shoulder, sending the gunshot wide. The wolf had clearly decided to kill both of them and walk away from this job.
Justin’s bad leg folded as soon as he hit the ground.
A flash of energy buzzed the air. The fucking wolf was either shifting or using magic.
Shoving up on his arms and shaking his head, Justin dragged his supersized self around to deal with Cazador. That wolf had to die first so Justin could get to Eli.
But Eli’s clothes had been shredded and Mishka stood in her place. The grolar shook off the remnants of shifting.
Then Mishka ripped into Cazador, who screamed. His fingers clawed for the gun, but it had landed against the wall, out of reach.
Mishka severed his head then finished him off using her claws and enormous fangs.
Heaving deep breaths by the time she finished, Mishka turned her blue-eyed gaze on Justin and moved over to rub her head all over his face and shoulders.