by Alisa Woods
Julia scowled at Stefan. “Explain yourself. Right now.”
Stefan nodded to Casey. “Do you have the signal?”
Casey swiped through something on his phone, then turned it to show them. “Yeah, it looks good, but we should get moving.”
Julia peered at it. Understanding finally pushed through her panic and fear about losing Marco. “You’re tracking him,” she said in awe.
Casey nodded. “It’s just a prototype, but Marco has it in his pocket.” He looked to Stefan. “The range is only five miles, maybe a little more. We need to get on it.” He peered at the phone again, and then a scowl settled on his face.
“What is it?” Julia asked.
“They’re going through Cruz’s territory.” Casey looked up at Stefan, who was running a hand across his face.
Julia scowled at them both. “Well, call Cruz and clear it so we can follow.”
“Without Marco…” Stefan shook his head, and Casey had an even larger frown on his face. Like this was an impossible thing—Julia’s anger rocketed back up.
“I’ll call him,” Ethan said bravely.
“See?” Julia asked, gesturing to the kid who apparently had more guts than two of Marco’s top men. Why were they even hesitating? “Ethan has the right idea. Besides, what’s Cruz going to do? Say no?” Julia flung her hand out in the direction of the disappeared van. “The Wolf Hunter just kidnapped an entire school full of children! And we have our first chance to track this guy down. Cruz can’t say no to that.”
Stefan gritted his teeth. “Okay, okay, you’re right. Let’s go.”
Casey tapped something else on his phone and held it up to his ear. “Yeah, we’re all clear. I’ve got a signal. We’re set to track them. Everyone meet back at the shelter.”
A half dozen shifters melted out of the shadows of the alleyways and doorways surrounding the schoolhouse. They’d been there all along, waiting to see, apparently, if Marco’s plan would work. As a group—Ethan, Julia, Stefan and Casey, and the half dozen other shifters—all hustled back to the shelter a few blocks away. One of them stayed behind to tend to the downed shifters—Luke and Jason.
Casey was watching the tracker the entire time. “They’re hauling ass,” he said tightly. “We need to move.”
Stefan hurried Julia and Casey toward a car in the back lot behind the shelter—it was nothing great, just a rusted out Toyota, but it turned over as soon as they piled in. Stefan took the driver’s seat, and Casey settled in the passenger seat—Julia sat back.
“They’re going parallel to Main Street, down Rochester,” Casey said, his eyes glued to the phone.
Stefan tossed another phone back to Julia and then gunned the car, screeching around the corner and heading toward what had to be Cruz’s territory.
“Start dialing,” Stefan said. “I need you to get us through Cruz’s territory without getting shot.”
Julia’s stomach flipped, but she jabbed at the number Stefan had brought up and held the phone to her ear.
On the first ring, it picked up. “What the fuck do you want?” Cruz growled into the phone.
Julia bit her lip, then tried to sound tough, but she was genuinely scared to death about losing Marco and the kids. “This is Julia from Marco’s pack.” Even she could hear the weakness in her voice.
There was laughter on the other end of the line. “Is that right? The hot little thing that Marco wanted so bad? What, did you get rid of the old man and decide you want a real man in your bed now, sweet thing?”
Julia’s stomach heaved. “No,” she said, her voice gaining some growl. “I’m Marco’s mate now.”
Stefan’s head whipped back, and he gave her a wide-eyed look. That got even Casey’s attention. It didn’t matter if it was a lie—she’d say whatever she had to say to get Cruz’s help.
“Well, that’s too bad,” Cruz said a sneer in his voice. “You’re not much good to me now.”
“I need your help. The Wolf Hunter has taken Marco and a teacher and a bunch of kids. They’re traveling through your territory—”
More laughter. “You’ve got to be kidding.”
“No, I’m not kidding.” Her voice was rising. “We’ve got a tracker on them and we’re following them—”
She cut off because Casey was making frantic motions, drawing a line in the air and indicating that they were about to cross it. They must be in Cruz’s territory now.
“And we’re coming through your territory to track them,” Julia said into the phone.
“You’re in my territory?” Cruz asked, slowly.
Julia didn’t like the calculating tone of his voice. “We’re just passing through.” She waved at Stefan to go faster, but he didn’t see her—his head was whipping back and forth, looking for anything that might pop out of the dilapidated, boarded-up storefronts they were passing.
“So…” Cruz’s voice purred maliciously in her ear. “You’re telling me that Marco’s mate and some unidentified members of his pack are now in my territory. Without Marco. All alone.” His sneer sent a shiver racing through her. But this guy was just like every other asshole she’d ever encountered in her life. He had this sense of his own power as being unlimited, untouchable. But she knew better. It was like Marco said—a lone wolf was just that. Alone. The power of Marco’s pack was in its members. And in his absence, they would need something or someone to pull them together to bring him back.
She could do that. “Yes, we’re in your territory. We’re going to pass through so we can find out where the Wolf Hunter is taking Marco and the kids. And you’re going to let us. Because if you don’t, if you not only prevent us from saving Marco and all those kids, but you also detain us or do anything to us, let me tell you how that’s going to go.”
“I don’t take orders from little girls.” There was a lot of snarl in his voice.
“You do today.” She was getting looks of amazement from the front seat, which she ignored. “Marco has over a hundred members in his pack.” Her voice was gaining steam. “Every single one of them would give their lives to save him. If you are responsible for his death at the hands of the Wolf Hunter, you will have a pack war on your hands like none you have ever seen. But it won’t just be Marco’s pack—I will personally make sure that it’s known far and wide that you are an enemy of shifters everywhere. That you, when you had a chance to save shifters from the hands of the Wolf Hunter—the maniac who is hunting all of us, everywhere—that you chose the coward’s way and decided to do nothing to help your fellow wolves. If I were in your pack, I would want nothing to do with you anymore. To say nothing of what people outside your pack will want to do with you.”
Stefan’s and Casey’s mouths had dropped open. They were still speeding through Cruz’s territory, and no one had shot at them yet. But that wasn’t what stunned them. It was apparently the fact that she was standing up to one of the biggest and baddest shifter gang lords in downtown.
She didn’t care. This was just too damn important—she would do whatever necessary to save Marco and the kids. And besides, every word she said was true.
There was silence on the phone, as well. Although she could hear a low growling in the background.
Eventually, Cruz said, “You have your passage through. My people tell me that you’re already almost through our territory, anyway.”
“Good,” Julia said.
Casey backed that up by making a line and a pass-through motion with his hand again.
“Now, you have a choice to make,” Julia said into the phone. This might be pushing things too far, but at this point, she didn’t have anything to lose and lot to gain. She knew Marco’s pack had a lot of resources at their disposal, but she was sure the two packs together would be even stronger. And she had no idea what they were facing in trying to rescue Marco and the kids. In short, she could use all the help she could get.
“Oh?” Cruz asked with amusement, but there was a growl under it. “What choice is that?”
�
�As soon as we track Marco to the Wolf Hunter’s lair, we’re going to need all the resources we can get to take him down. We’ll do everything we can—your choice is whether you want a part of that. Do you want to tell your people that, when the chance came, you helped take out one of the most hated enemies of shifters? Or do you want them to know you chose to sit on the sidelines?”
Julia let that hang in the air. Stefan was shaking his head, but keeping his eyes on the road. Casey was giving her a flat-out look of disbelief mixed with admiration mixed with some kind of vague horror at what she was doing.
It took Cruz a long time to answer. Eventually, he said, “We’ve got munitions and people. You tell me the time and the place, and we’ll be there.”
Julia realized she was taking a risk with this—maybe Cruz would decide to take out his longtime rival, Marco, instead of rescuing him. But that would leave him in the same position as before—namely, with an epic pack war on his hands.
So she decided to take it at face value. “Good. Stand by. We’ll be in touch soon.”
She swiped off the phone and handed it back to Stefan.
“Da-yum,” Casey said, his mouth still hanging open. “Are you sure you’re actually mated to Marco? Because if you’re not—”
He was cut off by Stefan backhanding him across the face.
“What?” Casey leaned out of range of another smack. “I’m just saying—”
“Shut up.” But Stefan was laughing underneath it. Then he simply let go and laughed out loud. He glanced over his shoulder at Julia. “If you’re not already mated to Marco, when he hears about this, I guarantee you, he’s not letting you out of his bedroom for a week.” Then he looked forward again, still laughing.
Julia's cheeks heated, but she let them think what they wanted. She had been stalling for a week in answering that question—was this a life she could embrace? Was becoming Marco’s mate something she could actually do without regrets? Could she turn her back on her life as she’d always known it?
She knew the answer now—she meant every word she had said to Cruz. If she got Marco back alive, she was never letting him go.
Marco felt like he had the mother of all hangovers.
His tongue was thick in his mouth, and his body was so heavy that he could barely move. His lolled his head from one side to the other as he worked on unsticking his eyelids from each other. When he finally managed to open them, he almost wished he hadn’t.
He was lying on some kind of gurney up in the air, and he couldn’t move because he was strapped down five ways to Sunday. The metal of the gurney was cool under him—the chill was seeping through his thin t-shirt. On one side of him was a medical bay complete with stainless cabinets, white countertops, some kind of electronic instrumentation, and what looked like a rack of steel-bladed torture implements. A man in a blue gown with a surgical mask strapped around his ears was lining them up precisely with his back turned to Marco.
Fuck.
But when Marco looked to his other side, it was even worse—rows of cages held the kids and the teacher stuffed inside. A surgical light over Marco’s head shone in his eyes and made it hard to see the extent of the building, but it seemed like some kind of warehouse. Gray concrete floors and tall ceilings that disappeared into the rafters and shadows.
Marco looked back to the man scrubs—his back was still turned. Marco’s hands were strapped down at his sides, and he could hardly move, but he surreptitiously pressed one hand against his pants leg—the tracker was still there.
The plan had worked. The Wolf Hunter had taken the bait. Marco just had to hold this guy off until Casey and Stefan could track him and the kids down with the GPS. Marco moved his hand away from the tracker. At this point, keeping that undiscovered was key to everything.
The man in scrubs finally turned to face him. “I see the stimulant has finally brought you around,” he said with what looked like a smirk behind his mask. “I thought that maybe my men had managed to actually kill you with the tranquilizers.”
His men? Was this the guy? Marco had listened to enough of the videos to recognize the voice—it definitely sounded like the Wolf Hunter.
“You were pumped full of enough tranq darts to take down a small herd of elephants,” the man continued. “So I guess that means you’re a particularly strong shifter, Marco Wilding.”
Marco couldn’t help wincing—he hadn’t expected this guy to know his name, not his family name, in any event. But that pretty much confirmed he was the real deal.
“Apparently, I’m not strong enough to stay out of your grasp,” Marco said with a fake simpering. “It takes a big man to kidnap kids off the street and put them in cages.”
The man snorted and twisted back to pick up one of the steel implements. It was a syringe, but it was empty. He took two steps to reach Marco’s side at the gurney.
“Big talk for a man who is strapped down and facing the final hours of his life.” The man shoved up Marco’s sleeve with one hand and slid the syringe under his skin. Marco gritted his teeth, not from the pain, but from not really understanding what this man was doing to him. Marco could barely twist enough to see the red liquid—his blood—filling the syringe.
“Just taking a small sample to aid in my little project.” The Wolf Hunter yanked the syringe out of Marco’s arm and held it up to look at the red liquid inside. “As much as you like to pretend you’re not part of the Wilding family, hiding in the downtown slums, pretending to be just another lowlife shifter participating in the illicit trades of the city… I know the truth.” He grabbed a small vial from the counter and slowly injected the blood into it. “I’m interested in your DNA and your connection to your white wolf ancestor.” He set the syringe down and walked the vial over to the machine on the counter. He lifted the lid and set the vial inside, closing it and pushing a button to get it started. Then he turned back to Marco. “In spite of your, shall we say, unique lineage, you’re just like every other wolf who hides in the shadows of our city and preys on our citizens. You’re the perfect emblem of that, actually—gang leader, shifter with a secret. You’re everything that I despise.”
“You’re breaking my heart,” Marco said, batting his eyes. “But I guess if we can’t be BFF’s, then I’ll just have to rip out your throat.”
The Wolf Hunter chuckled. “Oh, I’m sure you’ll want to by the time I’m done with you. But that’s not how this is going down.” He went back to the counter and came away with another steel implement from the pile. This time, it was a scalpel.
It glinted in the overhead lights.
“I don’t know,” Marco said, eyeing the knife. “You kind of suck at making plans. I mean, most of your attempts to wipe out my family have pretty much been completely fucked over.”
The Wolf Hunter’s blue eyes turned cold over his mask. “Well, I’ll just have to make sure that your death sticks.” He swiped the scalpel quickly across Marco’s chest, but there was only the slightest sting to go along with it.
Marco looked down—the Wolf Hunter had cut his shirt, shredding it but not actually digging into his chest. He looked up and tilted his head. “I think you missed.”
The Wolf Hunter snarled. With both hands, he ripped open Marco’s shirt, exposing his bare chest. “Simply setting the stage. Don’t worry, I’m just getting started.” Then he turned away and stepped up to a screen on the counter and started typing away at the keyboard. There was a camera mounted on top.
The red light came on.
Fuck. This asshole was going to make a video of Marco’s torture. And the last thing he wanted was to be seen screaming on one of the Wolf Hunter’s videos, so that shit wasn’t going to happen. But more importantly, no matter how this whole thing worked out, he knew Julia would see this eventually. Not to mention every other wolf in the greater Seattle area. After all, that was the Wolf Hunter’s intent with these fucked up videos of his.
Which meant Marco had an audience—an audience that hopefully also had the video of the
kidnapping. Casey should have made that happen by now. Marco just needed to stay on track with the plan, and this was all going to work out just fine.
The Wolf Hunter was done fussing with the computer. He came back to Marco’s side, still wielding the slightly bloody scalpel, only this time, he went around to the far side of Marco’s gurney. No doubt so the camera could get a good view of him and Marco’s body while he sliced it open.
But as long as he was torturing Marco, that meant he was staying away from the kids—hopefully, Marco could keep the Wolf Hunter entertained until the rescue party arrived.
“Hey, before we get started,” Marco said, lightly, “what was that whole little dance you did with my blood sample? Are you starting some kind of trophy collection of wolves you’ve tortured to death?”
The Wolf Hunter twirled the scalpel between his fingers and smiled. “Well, I’m just doing my civic duty with that. I’m sure you’ve been involved in criminal activity, rapes and murders that have gone unsolved. Now that I have your human DNA, it will be a simple task to get you to shift to your wolf form and take your DNA. With that match, the good people of the Seattle Police Department will be able to solve the crimes you’ve committed. Of course, you’ll have already paid for your crimes with your life, but I’m doing my part to bring some resolution to your innocent victims.”
Marco didn’t believe a word of that. He knew from his cousin Terra that the Wolf Hunter was obsessed with the Wilding family because of the white wolf connection in their past—the man had just alluded to it a moment ago. But that was their family secret and not something Marco wanted on camera.
“Yeah, you’re such a standup guy,” he said, sarcastically. “Most model citizens I know spend their weekends kidnapping little kids and shoving them into cages.”
The Wolf Hunter flinched a little then took his scalpel and stabbed it straight into Marco’s chest. Marco’s whole body convulsed with the pain, and he had to grit his teeth against the scream to keep it from coming out. He breathed hard through his teeth as he wrenched his head forward, trying to see what the hell the Wolf Hunter had just done to him—the blade was sunk deep into Marco’s chest. It felt like he was suddenly underwater, barely able to breathe, but it looked like the blade had slipped between his ribs—probably into one of his lungs, but his heart was still beating, so that hadn’t been hit.