by Mandy Rosko
“Goddamnit! Someone get me the smelling salts!” Michael barked.
Of course.
Shelley launched to her feet and ran to Michael just as the others started to make for the twisted metal that remained of the two trucks.
Michael’s eyes widened when she got close, Jake’s claws still swiping out like he wanted to cut her in half. Knowing how those things worked, it would be hot-knife-through-butter easy if he got a decent shot at her.
“Shelley!”
“It’s okay, I’ve got it,” she said, pulling the little bottle out of her pocket and stopping out of Jake’s range.
Shit. How was she supposed to give the bottle to Michael? He couldn’t exactly hold out his hand for it.
“Miss?”
Shelley looked up. The bald werewolf from before was in front of her now, his green eyes flicking down to the little brown bottle in her fingers before he held out his hand. “May I?”
Most definitely. She gave him the bottle without a word and watched as he got up close and personal with Jake.
Jake snarled his defiance and swiped at nothing but air molecules as Baldy avoided the attacking claws with the grace of a dancer.
Or, in this case, a supernatural werewolf.
“Thanks, Logan,” said Michael as Logan got to his knees to be perfectly level with both the flailing wolf and the man who struggled to hold him.
Shelley would’ve gotten bitten or scratched for sure if she’d been the one to try this, but Logan stayed at Michael’s side, out of the way of the teeth and claws now. The venom in them that caused humans to become werewolves wasn’t so much the problem for Logan as the carnage they would cause him if he was caught in their warpath, as had been proven by poor Chris.
Logan uncapped the bottle, and even though neither his nor Michael’s noses were anywhere near the tiny lip of the bottle, they both still twisted their faces, repulsed by the scent that their super noses picked up on.
It didn’t matter as Logan reached around and stuck the open bottle directly under Jake’s flaring schnoz. Jake’s whole body reacted, his head twisting and yanking around, claws sliding over the pavement, trying to avoid the horrible scent that made it up his nose and tickled his lungs and brain. The wolf coughed, but Logan was relentless, not taking the bottle away until Jake’s fur began to twitch and shift, as though a hundred thousand tiny ants were crawling beneath his skin, causing that ripple effect that made the hairs all over his body stand on edge and wave about.
Michael released Jake and stepped back, as did Logan, leaving Jake to collapse onto the road and do the bacon dance as his body broke, cracked, lengthened, and shed fur.
“No! No!” Pearl screamed as her loyal wolf was replaced by a naked, panting man.
Jake, the human Jake, coughed with the strength to pop the veins in his neck, dry heaving and chest spasming. He batted at his nose, sniffing and snorting, still attempting to drive away the scent that had caused him to transform. His body continued to tremble, but that was likely due to the sheen of sweat that glistened over his taut muscles and the cold night air that touched down on him.
Everyone was silent now, even Pearl.
Jake put his palms flat against the pavement and lifted his upper body enough to look at all the faces that stared silently back at him. He said nothing, but then, he rarely did. He just observed with animal curiosity. Shelley could almost hear the whir of his brain, working to piece together what was happening.
Then his eyes caught sight of the covered body laying not ten feet from where he was. He must have put together who was underneath it without the help of his nose because Deena was still sitting next to her husband, his lifeless hand now held in hers.
“Chris,” he said, allowing the name to escape his lips, a harsh whisper through a throat that had rarely bothered with human words.
Jake scrambled up to his knees and then to his bare feet, drunkenly stumbling toward the man he’d killed, as though the insides of his legs had turned into Jell-O.
Shelley expected one of the alphas to stop him from coming any closer. They didn’t get the chance to move before Deena flew at Jake’s face with a scream flying from her mouth that sounded like a flock of seriously pissed-off crows.
She must have shocked him, because her weight coupled with his inability to keep his feet steady knocked him on his back.
The only difference was that Deena wasn’t fighting for escape. She had her target, and she wasn’t about to let him go.
Not that Jake was putting up much of a fight. Or any fight at all, for that matter.
Deena’s manicured fingernails targeted his eyes, his cheeks, anywhere she could dig them in and cause damage. Blood spattered everywhere so quickly Shelley thought for sure Deena would transform into a wolf herself.
She didn’t. The carnage she caused to Jake’s face was all her own rage. There was nothing animal about it. Or maybe it was just the opposite and entirely animal after all.
“You killed him! You fucking killed him!” she shrieked, eyes squinting shut as her tears fell down her cheeks like a faucet had been left on. Jake’s face was bloody from the abuse, but he kept himself perfectly still, even when Deena dug her nails into an untouched part of his cheek and began ripping—
Shelley had to look away before she got sick. The wet sounds went straight to her gut and mixed around in there in a puke-inducing way.
The sounds of scuffling feet and calming voices added to Deena’s shrieks of rage told Shelley that the other wolves had finally deemed that enough punishment had been smacked down on Jake, and they were pulling her off.
Deena struggled and wiggled in the arms of the man who held her as though her life depended on it, as though she could somehow bring Chris back to life if she put just one more hole in Jake’s face. The wolf who held her remained strong despite her struggles, deftly avoiding her bloody nails. Soon, the coarse screams turned into raw exhales of air as she lost her voice. Only then did she collapse against the chest of the wolf holding her. Her near-voiceless weeping reminded Shelley of a dying animal.
Michael went to his friend and got down to his knees. Jake still did not move, even when his head alpha put his hand on his shoulder, some of the blood from his face having spattered there during Deena’s rampage. It put blotches of red over Michael’s palm.
Too weird. Shelley used to see fake blood all the time while working on set, and now that she’d seen the real thing she could vouch for how damn good the stuff looked that her make-up team used. The gigantic difference here was that no matter how dark red and for-real the fake stuff looked, it did not make her guts do the one-two inside her belly.
Of all the carnage she’d seen, her body picked now to respond to it. Fan-fucking-tastic.
One noticeable difference, aside from the smell, between the fake stuff and what was leaking from Jake’s…everywhere was that the blood on his face was broken up by thinner tracks of red that were less dark, as though—
Oh. Jake was crying.
“Did I kill him?” he asked. His voice seemed so small compared to the backdrop of Deena’s weeping, Pearl’s struggles and the grunts of the men and wolves who held her, and the howl of the nighttime air.
Michael smoothed back some of Jake’s hair, wet with blood and sweat. “Yeah.”
Jake’s face scrunched, and he put his fists to his bloody eyes to hide the show that followed, but Shelley got a nice earful of the long moan that yanked its way out of him, the sound a mix between tortured and enraged.
“You didn’t mean to,” Shelley said, having tentatively stepped closer until she was on Jake’s other side. Michael’s head jerked up at the sound of her voice, as though he were too preoccupied to notice her approach. That was mega-rare.
Shelley kneeled the way Michael did, but she couldn’t bring herself to touch Jake. She didn’t think Michael would want her to right now, all things considered. “It’s not your fault.”
“It is.”
“Pearl made you do it.”
&nbs
p; The sudden silence from everyone, everything really, was hint enough that maybe Shelley should’ve kept her mouth closed on that little tidbit. Michael’s eyes slid painfully shut at her words.
Jake dragged his fists away from his pockmarked face, smearing the watered-down blood until it dripped down the sides of his cheeks and chin.
“What—?”
Michael’s hand was on his shoulder, gripping him hard. “It’s okay. We’re going to take care of you. It doesn’t matter. Jake!”
Jake flew up so fast there could’ve been dynamite planted beneath him. Shelley launched to her feet and backed up several steps, but despite her deliverance of the bad news, she wasn’t the target.
“What’s wrong? I don’t get it.”
“Stay there, Shelley.” Michael held out his hand to her as he made the command, and this was definitely one of those times when he meant it as just that. She was not to move a muscle.
No problem. As of that second, her body was as still as the Washington Monument, only not quite as tall.
Jake was on his feet now, but they were hardly steady as he spun around, head twisting, searching, until he finally found her beneath the mountain of her captors’ bodies.
He was no longer a wolf, but Shelley could’ve sworn she saw the hairs on his head stand up just a little higher. “You—”
Pearl’s face went from enraged to wide eyed and terrified. Her struggles renewed as Jake marched toward her, his fingers becoming claws as his transformation came onto him.
“Stay away from me, monster! Stay away!”
She looked kind of like a bug, wiggling around, but the wolves on top of her held her steady. They wanted her dead, and if Jake was going to do it for them, so much the better it seemed.
Michael launched forward, his body making contact at Jake’s midsection as he tackled him and pulled him back down onto the pavement, the rough surface only creating more bloody track marks against their flesh as they skidded and rolled.
Shelley screamed and several surprised barks sounded, but nobody went to break them up.
Michael was still the head alpha, and all anyone could do was watch as he brought the man under him back in line.
Michael kept the whole of his body weight spread out on top of Jake’s back, pressing his elbow firmly into the back of Jake’s neck, the human version of a bite against the one place that would get the most attention.
From her place, Shelley could see as Jake’s hands and eyes became normal once again, but he continued to struggle, his legs kicking, hips bucking, arms flailing, anything to throw Michael off, but he would not be budged.
“Set me loose! I need to kill her!”
“Jake—”
The wail that left Jake nearly broke Shelley’s heart. “I want to kill her!”
“Listen to me! Jake, listen!” Michael grabbed a fistful of Jake’s hair and shook him so hard Shelley feared his neck would snap like a dry spaghetti stick. It didn’t, and it got Jake’s attention.
“She’s your mate, Jake,” Michael said between clenched teeth into his ear.
“No…” Jake moaned.
“Yes, I’m sorry, Jake, but she is, and if you go wolf on me, she’ll turn you against us again. Focus. You need to stay in this form.”
Jake’s breathing remained labored, but his struggles for escape ceased all too quickly under his alpha’s logic. He took two gulping breaths, then allowed his body to relax, the tensed up muscles no longer riddled with bulging veins.
Shelley released a breath. She wanted to come closer again, but then caught Alex’s eyes from where he still held on to Pearl. He shook his head, and she stayed put. Whatever else was going to happen was something that she, as a non-wolf, would not understand right off the bat. Hell, she was only now beginning to see that not only did the werewolves not choose their mates but they could also find themselves mated to the absolute worst possible choice for them.
All this, and one of his close friends had been killed by his own, well, paws. Jake must be dying on the inside.
Michael waited another beat before lifting himself off his friend. Jake remained still at first, before he planted those enormous palms of his on the asphalt and lifted himself up. He got to his feet and stood before his alpha, head down and occasionally tilting toward where Chris lay and where Deena was being held. His face had aged ten years and become as chalky pale as any vampire’s.
“If you can kill her, she’s right there waiting for you.”
Jake looked up at him sharply, and Michael only motioned with his head toward Pearl.
“He was defending me! It’s not my fault!” she yelled, desperation sneaking into her voice now. She didn’t bother struggling any longer. Perhaps she recognized that there was no point. Either way, Alex, Cal, and the others didn’t so much as loosen their grips or let their guards down on the chance she was waiting for them to do just that.
“Did you, or did you not, command him to attack Chris?” Michael barked.
“Of course I did! He was going to kill me, you stupid mongrel!”
Several low, wolfish grumbles sounded at Pearl’s poor choice of words.
The strange thing about all of this was that, on some backward level that was totally not right, Shelley understood.
She understood, but that didn’t mean she liked it or agreed with it.
Pearl was a vampire sent on a mission from her king-father. When she found herself in enemy territory taking her prisoners only to find one of the wolves was mysteriously loyal to her, she took him as well, and while she was at it, hey, why not take Alex too? Because they would probably make great guard dogs.
“You deserve everything you get,” Shelley snarled
“And I am not mated to that wild dog!” Pearl shrieked, ignoring Shelley.
Yep. She definitely didn’t get it.
Jake growled low in his throat and approached her. Pearl’s eyes became the size of baseballs as he walked toward her, her mouth opening and closing like a dumbstruck fish.
Shelley could only keep her eyes on the scene with the same morbid fascination that prompted drivers to turn and look whenever there was a car accident. She didn’t really want to see anybody without a head and gushing waterfall amounts of blood, but her brain wouldn’t make the commands for her to avert her eyes.
“Put her on her back,” Jake said, and the command was obeyed instantly.
Pearl yelped as she was yanked up, flipped, and then pressed back down, her body spread out as more naked men came to hold her, since at this point, Cal could be nothing more than a guard dog.
Not that she’d ever say that to him. He’d bite her head off.
Alex and the female alpha held Pearl’s arms out and away from her, and the two other men pinned down her ankles. She was helpless.
“You can’t do this. You’re loyal to me,” she said, shaking her head as Jake straddled her waist. “He said I am your mate. You cannot—”
Her words were cut off with a choke when Jake’s hands closed around her slim neck. Immediately her face became red, her body becoming tight as a bowstring beneath the hands of her captors, but their combined effort left her totally under their control. The only sounds escaping her were the gurgled chokes as her throat tried like the little engine that couldn’t, desperate to put some air into her lungs.
Shelley couldn’t look. This was the part where her brain started to function and she had to turn away. She hated the woman, but watching that…
Jake released a long roar, then a crack sounded. Shelley cringed. She should’ve plugged her ears too.
Alex cried out, and there was more barking and outraged yelling.
“Jake,” Michael said.
She couldn’t help it. The car-wreck thing again. Shelley had to see.
Pearl was alive. He hadn’t killed her. Jake held the cuff of Pearl’s dark shirt in his fists. Her neck was limp and blood trickled from her mouth and there was the beginning of discoloration under her eye already. Alex, Logan, and the ot
her werewolves didn’t bother holding her anymore. They didn’t need to, considering she was out like trout.
He’d punched her. A couple of times, it looked like.
Jake’s shoulders continued to shake, the tears mixing with the drying red over his cheeks as he turned to Michael. “Alpha, I—I cannot.”
Michael blew out a breath from between his teeth, shoulders sagging limply.
“I want to go home,” Deena said, her face still buried in the chest of the man holding her. Her next words came out choked and desperate. “P-please, I want to go home.”
One of the female alphas came forth and took Deena from the arms of the male. “I’ll take her,” she said. Deena was all too eager to go into her arms, but then she turned back.
“Someone needs to take care of Chris. Bring him home with us. I want him to come home with us.”
Deena didn’t need to say it as someone had already volunteered and was silently lifting Chris into his arms as though he weighed about as much as a toddler, careful to keep the blanket covering him.
“Wait, shouldn’t we—” Shelley stopped herself from saying anything more. Shouldn’t we call the cops had been on the tip of her tongue, the kind of thing someone in a normal situation would have said.
Right. That wouldn’t have worked here.
The female alpha who comforted Deena wasn’t paying attention to Shelley’s protest. She was already out of the range of the yellow streetlight, walking into the dark night and back to the safety of the house.
And the dead and injured who still needed tending there.
The male who held Chris, however, had stopped and turned at her words. “Should we wait?” he asked.
What was there to say? Maybe the reason all of this looked so wrong to her was because it wasn’t the way her world dealt with these kinds of things. The police would have been called about a thousand years ago, and several ambulances too, by the looks of things. You couldn’t have those sorts of people sniffing around a property filled with supernatural beings who shouldn’t exist.
“Nothing. I’m sorry.”
“Would you like to come with us?”
Her eyes went to Michael, who was still looking down at Jake. “I’ll stay here.”