“Change,” he roared at the top of his lungs, and blasted every single one of them so hard that they changed in less than a minute, howling and screaming without words.
He held them there, frozen in place. That was harder to do then just forcing them to change, and it set up a dull ache in his temples, but he was really pissed. He didn’t like men who hit women.
They writhed, they whimpered, they squealed.
The whole crowd stared, fascinated. He held them, and he held them, and Algernon and his men whined in pain, their eyes huge with panic.
Finally he released them.
“Change back,” he shouted, and the sound of snapping bones and screams of agony filled the air. He could have just let them change back naturally, on their own, and spared them the pain, but where was the fun in that?
Within a minute, he was faced with a crowd of naked, panting, groaning men, who all looked as if they were about to vomit. Algernon, Lord of All Fuck-turds, was sweating like a pig, and his gelled hair was a mess, sticking up in random spikes.
They stumbled in place, gasping for breath.
The crowd attending the barbecue started clapping and cheering. Austin made a mock bow to the crowd, and they cheered even louder.
Algernon and his men glared at him with utter hatred, and started to bend down and reach for their clothes.
“Nope,” Austin yelled. “You forfeited your clothing when you hit innocent females, you little bitches. Now you’re going to leave, or I swear to God I will stand here and make you change back and forth until you pass out, and then I’ll keep doing it until your hearts burst. You aren’t going to set paw on this property again unless you get to claim it. And if you have a problem with that, they’re now under the protection of the Pebble Creek Pack. And me.”
Unless every last one of us gets murdered.
They turned and hurried off, muttering under their breath, and scrambled into their cars, naked. They screeched out of the parking lot, howling threats out of the windows as they sped away.
There was a long moment of stunned silence.
“Thank you,” Laurel said to him, looking shaken. “He has no right to treat people the way he does. Thanks for putting him in his place. Someone had to.”
Then she turned to the assembled crowd. The music had stopped. “What are you waiting for? Let’s party!” she cried.
Niall hurried to turn the music back on. Within a couple of minutes, people were back to dancing and drinking.
“Dance with me?” Austin asked Savannah.
“Oh, I’m terrible at it,” Savannah protested, looking truly alarmed.
“Me too. It’s just an excuse for me to put my arms around you and move slowly around while swaying in time to the music.”
She managed a little smile. “That doesn’t sound too awful.”
Austin circled his arms around her and pulled her close to him. They began moving, ever so slowly, swaying back and forth. She moved in perfect rhythm with him, resting her head on his shoulder, and he slowly stroked her lower back.
The entire world fell away. It was just the two of them, in their own, perfect little universe. She was his, and he was hers, and he could pretend it would be like that forever.
Waking up in bed next to her… Carrying their cubs in his arms…
She smelled heavenly and felt as soft as clouds. He kept playing the memory of their lovemaking back through his head, smiling to himself. She was so relaxed, she was melting into him.
And then she tensed up and stepped back.
He looked around.
Nobody else was dancing anymore. Everybody was staring at them. The wolf and the fox. He’d all but staked a claim on Savannah right there. Practically announced that she was his mate.
As soon as he looked up, though, everybody looked away quickly and became very interested in anything else but him.
He knew how small towns were – gossip was their meat and drink. And he’d already told Savannah that he would be gone for good after tonight, so he was leaving her to deal with this on her own. Here he’d made this big show of publicly courting her right in front of her family, and then he was going to pull a disappearing act.
“Oh God,” Savannah groaned. “Oh crud. I will never, never, never live this down. After I’m dead, they’ll still be talking about it.”
“Welp, maybe I should run along home now,” he said uncomfortably. He desperately didn’t want to leave her, but he also didn’t want to cause any more trouble for her.
“Maybe you should.”
Disappointment stung him at her muttered words. Even though he knew this magical night had to end sometime, he wished it hadn’t had to happen so abruptly.
Savannah flashed a last, wincing look at the crowd, ducked her head, and scampered off into the woods. His last glimpse was of her shifting into fox form and disappearing. The place was riddled with fox holes. Handy, when you wanted to literally disappear into a hole in the ground. He wished he had that ability.
His mood deflated like a balloon leaking helium as he headed towards his truck.
“Wait up!” Laurel hurried up to him as he was about to open the door.
“Yes, ma’am,” he said, uneasily.
She had a bright smile pasted on her face. He didn’t trust that smile. “Thanks again for helping out with Algernon earlier.”
He nodded politely. “My pleasure.”
She didn’t move. “Going somewhere?” She arched her eyebrows.
He managed a polite smile. “Yep. Long day ahead of me. I have a big bounty I’m going after tomorrow morning.”
She leaned against his truck door, blocking his escape. “My daughter is very precious to me. And she likes you very much. If you take advantage of her, if you hurt her, you will be on my bad side. You will find out how much of a fucking crazy bitch I can be.”
He stared at her in shock.
“Miss Laurel?” he choked out.
Her smile tightened a notch. “And if you ever tell anyone I used those particular words, I will of course deny it, and people will think you’re insane.”
She moved away from the car door. “And it’s not just me you’d be up against. Every single fox shifter in the continental United States would be gunning for you. We may seem like little, cute, cuddly things, but when you push us too far, we’re not. We’re really, really not.”
He stared down at the short, chubby woman wearing the frilly apron. He was staring way, way down, because her head barely came up to his chest.
“Yes, ma’am,” Austin said.
And she turned and walked away.
He climbed into his truck, shaking his head in bemusement.
If it weren’t for the fact that he was already a dead wolf walking, he’d be genuinely rattled by her threat. He’d learned something new about foxes tonight.
You don’t mess with a mama fox’s kits and walk away unscathed.
Chapter Seven
Austin yawned as he downed another cup of coffee. He’d been driving all night. It was bright and early, and he was almost in Montana.
He was taking the main roads, the same ones that humans used, to get into Montana, because they were much faster. Unfortunately, when he went back, he would have a shifter prisoner in his truck. That meant he would have to take the shifter-only Rural Route 7, which was narrow and rutted and would take at least twice as long for the return journey.
He probably should have left yesterday morning as soon as Jason gave him his marching orders, and skipped the barbecue, but he’d wanted that time with Savannah. It had been worth it, every minute of it. And he still had nine days left – even if he got stuck travelling during the full moon in a couple of days – and he should have plenty of time. He hoped.
He’d checked his truck before he left in the morning, and found a GPS tracker stuck to the under-carriage. It had smelled like Niall.
It had been far too easy to find, so he’d assumed it was put there deliberately to make him stop searching.
But he’d kept searching, and found the second, hidden inside the brake light. He’d removed that too.
And then he’d scented around and found the one hidden behind the front bumper. Damn, she was good.
He wondered if Savannah had only lured him into the woods to distract him. He hoped not. He would like to think that there had been something between them, that he had finally, if only ever so briefly, truly connected with a woman.
He’d known that she would have heard about the million-dollar mark, and he suspected that she’d want to go after it herself.
He couldn’t let her do that.
It was way too dangerous, for one thing. And he had made the agreement with Jason. He had to be the one to deliver Roy. Alone.
If he survived, he’d help her out with the payment, of course. But that was a very big if. As it was, all he’d been able to do for her was call up Tully and leave a message asking them to protect Savannah’s family from Algernon if they needed it.
Just in case Savannah was somehow on his tail, he’d glanced repeatedly in his rearview mirror, constantly monitoring to make sure that neither she nor anyone else was following him.
He had a pretty good idea of where Roy was hiding. Roy wasn’t making it a particularly big secret. He seemed to be just waiting for someone to come kill him.
Austin knew the feeling.
As he drove, he had a nagging feeling of worry. As if he’d left things undone.
His visions weren’t real, right?
For some reason, he couldn’t stop thinking about Barry, back at the Watering Hole. He’d seen Barry a couple of days ago. Nobody had shot Barry in the head.
But just in case…
He grabbed his cell phone and dialed. It was way too early to be calling Barry, he knew, but he did it anyway.
Barry answered with a whole lot of swearing and mumbling.
“Barry, you still keep a shotgun behind the counter, the one with the silver bullets, right?”
More cursing, and colorful suggestions of where Barry was going to shove the shotgun next time Austin dared show his ugly face in Barry’s bar, then something about five fucking a.m., then some more swearing.
“I’m serious, man.”
Barry groaned. “Damn it, you moron! Why? It’s back at my house. Needed cleaning.”
“Just…trust me on this. Bring it back to the bar. And maybe beef up your security. Just a feeling I have. I can’t explain it, but I’m a Dominus – sometimes we’re a little bit psychic.”
He hung up.
He knew that he was being ridiculous, that his visions were madness. They made no sense; they were all jumbled up and couldn’t possibly be predicting anything. Still, just on the one-in-a-million chance that there had been even a grain of truth to his vision, he’d had to warn him.
He settled back in his seat. Weariness was fogging his brain, and he needed to get a decent amount of sleep on this trip. When he went after Roy, he needed to be absolutely on top of his game. Fortunately, he only needed a few hours of sleep to wake up refreshed. He could just pull into a truck stop somewhere and park for a few hours.
Yawning, he shifted in his seat again, shaking his head heard to stay awake.
He wished that he could call Savannah. He’d gotten Harris to give her number to him a couple of months ago, but every time he’d thought about calling her, he’d forced himself to ignore the urge. What could he say?
“Hey, babe, once you go feral, you’ll never go back?” “I’m crazy about you, Savannah…also just flat-out crazy. Can I invite you out for a fun night of dinner, movie, and watching me have a complete mental breakdown?”
No, he had decided months ago that it would be best to keep it casual with her. Flirting. Stealing her marks so she’d have to come give him a hard time about it. Watching her shopping or just strolling around downtown with her family and friends, like some kind of creep stalker.
The farther he drove, though, the more he felt the dull ache of her absence. He remembered her last night, the way she’d looked at him, the way she’d felt when she’d melted up against him, as if turning to him for help and comfort when her family was driving her crazy. As if he were her rock, her protector. She was tough as nails, that one, but she could be soft for him, just him, if only…
He shook his head furiously and punched the car door so hard he dented it.
That line of thinking would get him exactly nowhere.
He needed to do one thing. He needed to concentrate on one thing. Take a giant, psychotic feral killer back to Jason’s property. Without dying.
His phone rang. It was from a number that he didn’t recognize.
He answered it, and was disappointed to hear Tully’s voice instead of Savannah’s. That was crazy, of course. Savannah probably didn’t even have his number, and she had no reason to call him.
“Hey, fur-face. Here’s what I’ve been able to find out about Roy,” Tully said. Tully was calling from a burner phone. Yes, he had been forbidden to help Austin in any way, but Tully was never one for following rules.
“Roy’s pack was small, and they used to be pretty low key. They had a construction business and stayed out of everyone’s hair. Then Roy’s wife died of cancer, and he went into a major depression, and his pack fell apart, about a year ago. He was living off the grid, chasing off anyone who tried to talk to him. Then a couple of months ago, he killed some poachers. Total assholes – they apparently got their rocks off on torturing animals before they killed them. He ripped their throats out. Three men. The bad thing there is that he let himself be seen by humans when he was still in his shifted form. He was apparently the biggest wolf they’d ever seen, and it started up the rumors of werewolves again. The one with the hikers was more troubling. Family of three, including a teenage boy. Totally harmless, no threat to him at all. The Washborn pack sent in a tracker to investigate the killings, and they picked up Roy’s scent at the scene.”
Austin felt a surge of anger rush through him. The poachers, he was fine with. But killing an innocent family? For that, he’d have volunteered to take Roy out for free.
“Anything about his specific abilities?”
“No, just that he’s the strongest shifter that anyone’s ever seen or heard of, and he’s fought two Dominus Alphas at once, when they tried to take over his pack, back when he was sane. Killed them both.”
Well, that was bad news. Like humans, shifters were gifted with varying levels of strength and abilities. There was a lot of variation even among Dominus wolves. And apparently Roy had not only been gifted with the absolute maximum level of Dominus strength, but he’d chosen to waste that gift by using it for mayhem and murder.
Austin was even happier that he’d taken the GPS trackers off his truck. Jason had texted him the GPS coordinates of the cave where Roy had last been seen. Savannah wouldn’t have the inside info that he did, so she wasn’t likely to be able to find Roy.
He knew that Savannah and her family used a special kind of super-strong tranquilizer; it was the talk of the shifter community. She probably thought that would give her enough of an advantage, but she was wrong. She’d never gone up against a Dominus before, and she’d certainly never encountered a freak of nature like Roy. It was a good thing Austin had thrown her off the scent.
“Thanks for doing that for me.” Austin sighed. “I don’t want you to run any more risks, though. Don’t call me again, okay?”
He hung up without waiting for an answer. There was a truck stop just up ahead; time to catch a little shut-eye before he headed off on his doomed quest.
* * *
Savannah’s head was swimming. She felt like she had a spectacularly bad hangover. Either that, or there was a construction crew inside her head, trying to drill their way out of her skull.
She lay there with her eyes closed, swallowing her nausea, trying to figure out where she was and what had happened to her and if she was going to die in the next few minutes.
She was lying on a lumpy mattress i
n a room that smelled of cigarette smoke and sweat. The same hotel room she’d checked in to…when? How long had she been here?
She searched through her mind, replaying everything she could remember.
She had snuck out of her house after the barbecue, leaving a note for her mother…who was going to murder her when she got home. In the note, she’d said that she just needed a week to herself, to work through some personal issues. She was aware that she wouldn’t be fooling her mother in the slightest, but she couldn’t just vanish without leaving some kind of word behind.
She’d left her cell phone behind so she couldn’t be tracked, bringing a burner phone with her. Then she’d driven all night, and she’d finally gotten close to the area where the local fox shifters had directed her.
She’d known she was going to have to hike in to the area where Roy was hiding, and she’d wanted to be rested up for that. She had checked in to a hotel mid-morning, when she’d been so tired she was swerving on the road. She’d only meant to take a short nap. She had to get to Roy before Austin did.
Her head was still fuzzy. She tried to move her arms…but only one of them moved. Her right arm was free. Her left wrist had been chained to the headboard.
Panic welled up inside her, and she went stiff with anger. Would she be raped? Murdered?
If someone even tried, she’d chew through their throat.
As she lay there, an odd tingling, a familiar sensation, crept over her slowly, sweeping her from head to toe . Arousal. That made no sense at all. Why did she feel like that?
Then, as the fog cleared a little from her head, it hit her. She could smell him. Austin.
Her fear receded to be replaced by hot, burning fury.
She tried to call up her inner fox, to shrink down and get out of the cuffs. And nothing happened. Her fox was buried somewhere deep inside her. She tried again. There was a thick wall between her and her animal.
Her eyes flew open in panic, and she struggled into a sitting position.
Austin was sitting in a chair, staring at her and shaking his head. He wore a leather jacket, jeans and a t-shirt, and he had a look of polite amusement on his face.
The Billion-Were's Foxy Forever (The Billion-Weres Book 3) Page 8