by Alisa Woods
Normally, she would be intimidated. By all rights, she should still be intimidated, even though she was a wolf—Cruz was an alpha with all the strength of Marco, but none of the gentleness. None of the heart. She held her chin high and drew her strength from that very fact. She was here to save the man she loved, not be intimidated by a thug who would never be even half the man that Marco Wilding was.
“I hear they’re giving your alpha bad time in there,” Cruz said with a small growl in his voice. Surprisingly, he didn’t seem to take much joy in that.
“We’re about ready to blow the door and go in,” Julia said. “There is at least a dozen very well armed men inside, probably a lot more. They may be human, but they look like they have some kind of military background. This isn’t going to be easy.”
Cruz smirked. “If it was easy, it wouldn’t be any fun.”
Fun? Whatever. Julia tipped her head to him. “I’m assuming your pack will want to hold back and let my pack lead the way,” she offered. Her pack. She was definitely thinking of them that way now.
Cruz arched an eyebrow. “Hell no. I want a piece of this Wolf Hunter as much as you. Whoever gets to him first, gets first bite.”
Julia dared a tiny bit of smile. “That’s a deal.”
She turned to Stefan, who was at her right elbow, paying close attention. “Are we ready?”
“Hell yeah.” He glanced to Casey, but he was stabbing at his phone again.
Oh no. “What now?” Julia asked.
Casey looked up, his expression tight. “Remember how I told you the video went viral? Well, it’s not just people on the internet who are paying attention. The police are on to it.”
Julia frowned and glanced at Cruz. He looked as uncomfortable with this news as she felt. “What do you mean the police are on to it?”
“I mean, when the video went viral, the kidnapping made the news, and somehow the police are finally deciding for once in their goddamn lives to investigate.” Casey looked disgusted. “There’s something on the news channels about how the police have identified the white van that snatched the shifter kids and…” He glanced at the phone again and paged through a few things. “Fuck. They’re on their way here.”
“Here? But how can they—”
Casey cut her off. “Something about tracking the van with traffic cams or some damn thing. I don’t know.” He was madly paging through the information, trying to find more. But it didn’t really matter.
Julia turned to Cruz. “We need to do this now.”
He gave a sharp nod and barked commands to his people.
Julia gave a nod to Stefan, and he did the same, pulling Marco’s pack together.
The police were coming. Which meant, they might actually catch the Wolf Hunter this time… and the police would definitely catch her. But that was okay—this just might turn the tide of the PR war for shifters, and she knew how important that was to Marco. And to her. People should know what was going down here—and what had been happening all along to shifters.
The public shouldn’t be able to turn a blind eye to everything they had suffered. If Julia had to personally go down—even go to jail—to help make that happen, then so be it.
As long as she could rescue Marco first.
When Marco awoke, he was in a world of pain.
His chest felt like it had been carved open, and he was almost afraid to look. But he forced himself to wrench his head up even though it stabbed fresh pain. The scalpels were gone, no longer sticking out of his chest, but he was still strapped down. The Wolf Hunter was also gone, and the red light had been turned off on the video camera.
Marco’s mouth was dry—he couldn’t tell how long he’d been passed out, but whatever shock the Wolf Hunter had delivered to his system hadn’t actually killed him. And, apparently, Marco wasn’t as much fun to torture when he was unconscious.
His chest and his clothes were a bloody mess, and his body felt weak from the loss of blood, but he could feel his strength coming back. With the Wolf Hunter not looming above him, the best way out of this was to shift into his wolf form. Even if it were just a momentary shift to get out of his restraints, it would be worth the risk. But when he tried to summon his wolf… there was nothing… as if his wolf had gone to sleep and sunk somewhere deep inside his mind. That just added to Marco’s disorientation. He wrenched his head around to get a look at the kids—maybe one of them could clue him in as to how much time had passed.
What he saw chilled his heart to the core.
The Wolf Hunter was stalking over to one of the cages that held the kids. He had a key card that he swiped along the lock to open it. There was a little girl inside, Elizabeth, and she was cowering in the far back corner of her cage, which wasn’t nearly large enough to get away from the Wolf Hunter by any stretch. The girl was only about seven or eight, and they were at least thirty or forty feet away, but Marco could still hear her high-pitched whimpering cry.
Everything inside him raged against the bindings that held him in place. The girl’s fear reached him through her submission bond. If he weren't already driven to get out and save her, that would’ve pushed him straight over the edge.
But he couldn’t go anywhere.
Not only was he strapped down, but the Wolf Hunter’s armed men were everywhere, mostly milling around and looking bored.
The Wolf Hunter reached into Elizabeth’s cage and clasped his hand around the girl’s arm, hauling her out. She struggled valiantly against him, but she was a tiny thing. The Wolf Hunter might not be extremely muscular, but he was a full grown man. More than strong enough to force a child to his will.
Marco could taste the need to rip out the man’s throat.
The Wolf Hunter hauled the girl toward Marco’s gurney, and it was then that Marco realized another gurney had been set up next to his.
Fuck, what was wrong with this man? Marco already knew the Wolf Hunter was evil, but the depths of this? Torturing little girls? There was a special place in hell for this kind of person, and Marco could not wait to send him there. He just had to figure out how. If only his wolf would come back, just for one minute.
Marco closed his eyes and focused on finding his beast. He thought about all the horrors the Wolf Hunter had perpetrated against his kind—against wolf kind—and he summoned a deep well of righteous hatred for this evil upon the earth. Through sheer willpower alone—along with the combined magic of the hundred wolves who were depending on him to save this one little girl—Marco was able to shift single finger into a razor sharp claw.
He curled that claw back on the bindings that held his wrist and started to saw away at it. As he did so, he kept his eyes closed so the Wolf Hunter wouldn’t see he had awoken. Marco sawed away in his restraints while he listened to the horrifying sounds of the Wolf Hunter dragging the girl up onto the gurney next to him and wrestling with her as he fought to strap her down.
She called out to him. “Marco! Marco, save me!”
A full-body shudder went through him, and every fiber of his being screamed for him to leap up and help her, but he had to stay focused. He didn’t move a muscle, didn’t respond in any way, except for the slow, relentless sawing of his claw against his bindings. It was hidden from the Wolf Hunter’s view on the far side of his body.
“Shut up!” the Wolf Hunter’s voice roared. The sound of straps ripping open and folding closed ran roughshod over Elizabeth’s quiet, whimpering sounds of fear. “Your alpha is useless. No one’s coming to save you.”
Elizabeth sobbed, but her crying quieted down a little, resigned even as she was terrified.
Don’t give up, Marco thought. I’m coming for you. He had to stop sawing through his bindings for a moment, as the Wolf Hunter moved around Marco’s gurney. He eased one eye slightly open—the man had scooped up a syringe and was carrying it back to the girl.
Her whimpering gained a little volume as he took her blood sample. Marco still didn’t understand what that was about—something about the white
wolf that the Wolf Hunter was obsessed with. Marco’s cousin Terra had told him the Wolf Hunter was really a bastard shifter, and he had it out for the white wolf he thought was his father, but Marco didn’t give a shit about any of that. He only knew it wouldn’t be long before the torture began.
He was running out of time.
The Wolf Hunter cruised over to his screen and tapped at the keys for a bit. That sound was enough cover for Marco to start sawing at his restraints again. He was almost through, but when the Wolf Hunter turned back, satisfied with whatever tinkering he had done with the camera, and Marco had to stop and wait again.
The camera light was back on.
The Wolf Hunter strode over to Elizabeth with a scalpel in his hands.
Fuck—that was it.
Marco sawed faster and faster against his restraints.
The Wolf Hunter droned on for his audience. “Sorry for that brief interruption, but I have something new for you now, my fellow humans. You might think this is a little girl I have on the gurney, but you would be wrong. She is a monster. We’ll see just how much of a monster can lurk under the most innocent of faces of our city.”
Elizabeth’s whimpering started to rise and fall with her gasps of air. Marco couldn’t even imagine how much fear was running through her.
The Wolf Hunter continued, “Now I know that most of you will understand that these are not human beings, but this next part might be a little more difficult to watch, at least until the illusion is—”
Marco ripped through the last shreds of his binding. With his hand free, he whipped it up to his chest and sliced through the bindings holding him to the gurney. His claw carved straight through, sinking into his already battered flesh, but that pain had no weight against the red boiling fury he had at the thought of the Wolf Hunter touching Elizabeth. Once he was free enough to move, he grabbed hold of her gurney and shoved it straight into the Wolf Hunter’s gut.
Elizabeth shrieked. The Wolf Hunter was knocked off balance and back on his ass. That was all the time Marco needed. He pulled the gurney close again, keeping Elizabeth out of the Wolf Hunter’s reach for the moment, then he quickly used his one claw to slice through all the remaining bindings that held him down. There was a shout that went up around the room. Someone must’ve noticed his escape—or at least the fact that the Wolf Hunter had gone down. Marco rolled off the gurney and crouched behind it to gain cover.
He scurried around the side, looking for the Wolf Hunter on the ground—getting his hands around the throat of that man was everything. Just as he rounded the corner of Elizabeth’s gurney, he saw the Wolf Hunter crawling on all fours around the other end. Marco lunged after him, caught hold of his scrubs, and yanked him back. The Wolf Hunter flailed behind him, trying to stab Marco with the scalpel that was still in his hand, but Marco slid into a quick chokehold with one arm and caught the scalpel-wielding hand with the other.
The Wolf Hunter struggled for a moment. Marco bashed his hand in rapid fire on the concrete floor, and he quickly dropped the scalpel, which went clattering away. Then Marco squeezed tighter on his throat.
“Tell your men to stand down,” he said hoarsely into the Wolf Hunter’s ear. Marco cleared his throat and tried again, managing to make it louder this time. “Stand down!” he yelled directly at the armed men charging toward them. “I will rip out his throat if you come one step closer.” The men stumbled to a stop, their dart guns raised and pointed at Marco. They were hesitating, looking at each other and at the Wolf Hunter struggling to breathe—Marco had cut off all of the man’s air supply. He couldn’t even speak.
Marco loosened up his hold a little.
“Stay back!” the Wolf Hunter choked out when he could get some air. “You’re not going to get out of this,” he hissed to Marco.
“Big talk for a man whose throat is two seconds away from being crushed,” Marco said calmly. Then louder, to the thugs who were still looking to one another for direction, “Unstrap the kid! Let the rest out of their cages. I’m taking them all out with me. Do as I say, and I’ll let this asshole live.” He had no intention of letting the Wolf Hunter live, but he was counting on the fact that these guys looked like mercenaries, just in it for whatever the Wolf Hunter was paying them. Which wouldn’t happen if he was dead. Even if they were true believers and the Wolf Hunter was their high priest of hatred, Marco didn’t think they’d gamble with his life. Not to mention, they had removed their masks and kept flicking looks to the computer—they were well aware the camera was still on, and they were judging how close they could get without having their faces broadcast to the internet.
One of the men lifted his chin to another. That one pulled his facemask out of his pocket and slipped it over his head, then trotted over to where Elizabeth lay on the gurney. She was quiet. The sound of the straps being loosened and undone reassured him.
But it freaked out the Wolf Hunter. He suddenly came to life under Marco’s grip. “Where do you think you’ll go?” he hissed. “I know where you live. I know where your people live. You can’t escape me. You’re just delaying the inevitable.”
Marco tightened his hold on the man’s throat. “If I were you, I’d shut my fucking mouth. Because otherwise, I just might have to kill you in spite of my promises.”
Just then, all hell broke loose.
An explosion at one end of the cavernous metal hangar started it off, but then dozens of people charged through the smoking door. They had to be Stefan and his pack. Marco could only see a small bit of the mayhem that was unfolding, but his hold on the Wolf Hunter’s throat tightened because, all of a sudden, everything was moving. Some of the thugs by the cages whipped out their weapons and started firing. A melee by the cages suddenly formed as dozens of people overran the thugs, turning the area into a hand-to-hand combat fight zone. The men closer to him were scrambling to get on their masks. The one by Elizabeth’s gurney lurched toward him.
“Stay back!” Marco yelled, tightening his hold on the Wolf Hunter and struggling to haul him to his feet.
Then half a dozen of the Wolf Hunter’s men charged the medical bay area, one of them shooting out the computer on his way. The one by Elizabeth’s gurney went back for her, ripping off her restraints and yanking her off the gurney. Two others rushed at Marco. Just as he was about to break the Wolf Hunter’s neck… the man shifted. In wolf form, he slipped out of Marco’s grasp, getting free just as his two thugs reached Marco and started pounding on him—their fists plowed straight into his chest like jackhammers, knocking the wind out of his still-recovering lungs. He growled and grabbed them both, wrestling them to the ground and determined to take them out, but then Elizabeth screamed as she got carried off. He realized the men were fighting him to give the Wolf Hunter a chance to escape.
“Fuck!” Marco shoved the two thugs away, then roundhouse kicked one and punched the other hard enough to send them both to the floor. He ran for Elizabeth and the retreating man carrying her off toward the warehouse door, only to realize the Wolf Hunter and his small group of men were hustling in the opposite direction, toward the far corner of the warehouse. Marco didn’t see a door in that direction, but he didn’t have a choice—he didn’t know what this mercenary was planning to do with Elizabeth, but the rest of the pack was fully engaged with fighting the Wolf Hunter’s men and freeing the kids from their cages… no one had their eyes on her.
He caught up to the man carrying Elizabeth just as they reached the door. He slammed his fist into the man’s face and caught Elizabeth as he dropped like a stone.
He held her tight for a second, then set her on the ground and knelt to speak to her. “Are you all right?”
She nodded her head, shakily, then jabbed a small finger toward the opposite side of the hangar. “He’s getting away!”
Griffin had separated from the melee to come help him at the door—Marco waved him over to Elizabeth. “Watch her!” he ordered.
Griffin gave a short nod and held his hand out for Elizabeth. She took
it. Marco spun and ran in the direction of the escaping Wolf Hunter. But he was confused—where did the man go? This corner of the hangar was dark and dusty, filled with crates and boxes stacked haphazardly as if this was the trash end of the whole operation, but there sure as hell wasn’t a door. Where had the Wolf Hunter and his thugs disappeared to? Then Marco saw a scuffle through the dust, the stampede of their footprints into the area, and he spotted a pattern to the disruption of the boxes. He followed the footprints until they ended next to a wall… and a square etched in the floor. It was so dark, he had to feel his way around the edge, but he found a handle and pulled it up—a secret door in the floor.
Shit. The door led straight down into some kind of underground, man-sized tunnel a dozen feet below. A ladder clung to the edge, and at the bottom, all he could see was concrete flooring and flickers of flashlights. He hustled down the ladder and dropped the last five feet. The tunnel was broad, lined with concrete, and stretched a hundred yards ahead—and at the end was a Jeep with the Wolf Hunter and his men already piled into it. The tunnel looked like it branched off several directions. Marco started running, but his heart was already sinking—the Jeep roared to life and spun down one of the other tunnels, rapidly escaping.
“Goddamnit!” Marco shouted. He kept running until he reached the end of the main tunnel. The Jeep was already out of sight. He rested for a moment, his hands on his knees as he caught his breath and tried to think through the stabbing pains in his chest. These tunnels had to empty out somewhere. If he couldn’t catch them this way, maybe he could still intercept them when they came out of their hole.
He hauled ass back to the ladder and climbed it fast to rejoin the fight upstairs.
Only the fight was over. His pack had the Wolf Hunter’s men subdued—on their knees, hands on their head, and clustered into a group near the cages, which were now empty of their former prisoners. There were more wolves than he could count—and he slowly realized there had to be more than just his pack involved in the rescue.