“You shouldn’t have shown her the lab coat, LeAnn. She was very angry about the lab coat.” Annnnd he was back to pacing.
“I’ll bet she was.”
“It seemed like I needed one more scent, and I was there. But I should have asked her, told her. But I knew they wouldn’t suspect her.” He frowned. “She was mad.”
“Oh, she’s mad all right.” It was a weak comeback, but her head was still working on clearing, and it was hard to think in a room with someone ranting. And pacing. She took a few deep breaths and then coughed again. This place was nasty. She was going to get like black lung or something. You’d think a doctor would take better care of her place, and this nasty room smelled too much like Alanna to belong to anyone else.
Then she could smell something beyond the basement, Ross, Alanna, and her. Metal. A key. She still had Travis’s spare key in her pocket. She shifted back and forth while leaning back. It dropped to the floor with a muffled ting before she flattened it with her tied hands.
“What was that?” Ross whirled around.
“What was what?” She shifted sideways slightly and grabbed the key, angling it up toward her wrist. Hah! She was so going to get her not-quite alpha ass out of here.
“Nothing.” He sighed. “So, we’ll wait here until it’s dark, and then we’ll leave. If Alanna comes back, she can help us plan. She was the one who told me this morning I needed to get you out of here…but I’d still need to kill Travis. She’s good at planning. She can help us.”
Yeah, Alanna would help him dig her grave. Plan? Sure. Right. That’s what she’d do. She could picture it now. Oh, sorry, Ross, this gun went off, and I accidentally shot your sister in the head, but it’s cool because I’m your Alpha, and I’ll take care of you. Find a shovel.
“You know, Alanna stole both our clothes and has been making it look like we’re both guilty as hell,” LeAnn said. She wasn’t sure why she was still bothering. Ross was thoroughly brainwashed, but her talking would cover up the key sawing at the plastic.
He shook his head. “You don’t know what you’re saying.”
“And we’re not going to be able to sneak out of here. Travis was already out looking for you. The entire pack is probably looking for you now, because I don’t know how long I was out, but I bet they’ve figured out I’m missing.” Though Travis might assume she’d taken off. Or the pack might think she was in on all of this with her brother.
She’d finally gotten the key in the right place, and she began scraping it against the zip ties. Every time Ross turned toward the single, poorly-boarded-up window, she saw the flash of her gun on his hip. She’d get free. Get the gun. And somehow manage to subdue Ross. Her planning sort of fell apart there because Ross could shift and take off, but she’d deal with the details when she got there. If anyone heard some of the stuff that Ross was saying, it’d implicate the hell out of Alanna, and maybe Ross would get a less brutal killing. It was worth a shot.
Besides, on the off chance Travis was coming, she didn’t want Ross shooting him. So she needed that gun at the very least.
“No. It’s all going to be fine,” he said. Then he stared at her. “They were looking for me?”
“Yep. Wherever we are, I’m sure they’ll find us soon.”
He spun and grabbed something from a nearby table. A rip of duct tape later, she was wishing she’d kept her mouth shut.
“It’s only until tonight. Then we’ll leave.”
Like hell they would. She was going to get free and prove she could be Alpha by making a stand. It was time to stop running away and to fight for what she wanted. She kept sawing at her zip ties.
…
Travis stopped by Terri’s car and shifted. One rock later, he’d grabbed the phone from her passenger seat.
“Tell me something,” he said, after he called Grant.
“Your hacker called, and we’re looking it up now. It looks like your phone is… Damn…we need a faster internet connection here.”
He leaned against the car, taking deep breaths. He’d never run this all out before. He was in the right area—he was sure. He could track LeAnn’s scent much better than anyone else’s. Even the constant rain wasn’t enough to dampen his ability to find his mate. “Tell Terri that I owe her a new car window.”
“You’re over near Terri’s?”
“Yes.”
“It’s coming from a quarter mile southeast.”
“Okay, start calling it, and I’ll look for it. Did you find Alanna?”
“Yeah. She’s supposed to stay here?”
“Yes, she doesn’t leave.” He heard swearing in the background. Alanna wasn’t too pleased about that. “Send anyone available to help me search this area.”
“I’ll have Liam go grab whoever is nearby—he just came back.”
He hung up and dropped the phone back on the seat. He could come back here if he needed to check in. Shifting, he ran toward the southeast where he could hear the buzzing of his phone. He nearly ran over it before he realized this wasn’t the end of the hunt. This was where his phone had dropped out of LeAnn’s pocket.
“Hey,” he said, shifting and answering. “My phone is here and I think I’ve caught their scent again. I’m heading east toward what looks like a half dozen empty cabins, but there might be more.”
“He carried her that far?” Liam asked in the background.
“He had a car,” Travis said, trying to catch his breath. He definitely wasn’t leaving anything for the return trip. “I can smell gasoline, too. Okay, I’ll focus on anything with a garage or a car nearby.”
“Heading that way,” Liam said.
He hung up, shifted, and ran. Mate. Mine. Mate.
The Jeep was parked behind a set of cabins that smelled faintly of Alanna. She’d lived in the area prior to the pack arriving, so it was possible she owned property they didn’t know about. It was also possible that Ross had found these cabins empty and decided to use them, but he was taking a pragmatic outlook on this. Alanna was somehow involved.
He shifted and circled quietly.
LeAnn was in one of those cabins, and he had to believe she was fine. She had to be. He still felt the pull of her scent, so he knew she was alive.
Then he heard Ross’s voice.
“What you don’t understand is that pack is more important than anything,” he said. “It takes over your head, and it’s all you can think about. So it’ll be hard to kill Travis, but it’s right.”
It was going to be damn hard to kill Travis. He wanted LeAnn, and she’d agreed to the scent-match last night. He might have to convince her again today—and every day, but he lived for a challenge. He wasn’t about to die now.
There was a stomping sound and mumbling.
“Well, you wouldn’t keep quiet, and I need to think. Maybe if you promise to keep quiet, I’ll take off the duct tape. Do you promise to be quiet?”
Travis grinned. That was undoubtedly the sound of a lot of profanity. He followed the muffled swearing to one of the cabins that appeared to have a den underneath. They’d all had to make do with not having basement dens because the area’s houses weren’t built with Lycans in mind. This one seemed to have been—which would make sense if it’d belonged to Alanna’s family. While there was an entrance inside the cabin, dens had a swinging door entry usually, but it was often hidden and gave with force. It was Lycan-sized, so he’d probably taken her in through the cabin, but no matter how quiet Travis intended to be, it’d be impossible to be quiet enough to enter from inside the cabin. He had to use the den entrance.
If he waited for the others…
No, Ross was insane. He didn’t want LeAnn in there with her psycho sibling any longer, and the presence of a lot of the pack might make Ross panic and become violent. He wasn’t betting LeAnn’s life on Ross’s sanity.
This was reckless. This was impetuous and crazy as hell, but he loved LeAnn and he had to go in. Some things were worth getting killed over.
He had on
e chance to get this right before he gave away his game by slamming into the side of the cabin.
Shifting, he kept clear of the window as he sniffed the wooden slats surrounding the cabin’s den.
Someone had passed through here. Not his mate, but another Lycan. He stared at the wooden slats.
“Did you hear something?” a male voice said inside the den. Ross. Family to his mate and enemy. Threat to his mate.
Mate.
Mine.
He slammed through the slats and skidded into the basement.
Ross turned and grabbed a gun from his belt, but Travis lunged, knocking it from his hand. Ross shifted and snarled, going for Travis’s throat. Travis threw him off and turned to attack. Ross moved erratically, diving in again. Travis dived out of the way, but scrambled to stand between Ross and his mate, growling.
Plastic snapped, and his mate bounded to her feet before running to grab the gun. Yanking the tape off her mouth as she turned, she yelled, “Son of a…holy hell…that hurts.”
Ross used the distraction to jump on him, sinking his teeth into Travis’s neck.
“Ross! Stop! Ross, I don’t want to shoot you!” she screamed, following their movement with the gun.
He bucked Ross off, but the other wolf recovered and dived back at Travis with a snarl. They rolled across the floor, snapping their teeth and missing.
“Stop! Ross! Stop!” She fired up into the ceiling, but neither of them stopped.
His blood was pounding, and he couldn’t stop, not until his mate was safe. She was his. She belonged to him. And he was going to rip the throat out of this threat. He caught a hold of the other wolf’s shoulder and bit in, tearing through flesh as blood spurted into his mouth. Ross slammed him into a nearby wall, knocking him off.
“Stay back! Travis! Stay back!”
He couldn’t tell who she was aiming at. The blood in his mouth was her family’s. He turned to look at her right as the other wolf leaped at him. The gun went off, and Travis was slammed hard against the floor.
“No!” his mate screamed.
He lay there disoriented, staring at his mate, as blood dripped down and around him. So much blood. Blood that smelled wrong.
She fell to the ground, dropping the gun, and crawled toward him.
“I’m so sorry…I had to. I’m so sorry. You wouldn’t stop.”
There was a sharp pinprick in his shoulder, and it was hard to breathe, and he still couldn’t make sense of things.
His mate reached him and pushed the weight off him, and the sharp pain of teeth pressed against him stopped, and he could breathe.
Her eyes darted between him and the other wolf, and the scent of her pain hit the air as she curled up around her legs, whimpering. Ducking her head down into her arms, she cried.
Travis shifted back and tried to adjust to his human mind-set and the things that had occurred, but his brain couldn’t get past the sound of LeAnn crying and the smell of death that was all over him. He wiped his mouth on his arm. Blood. A lot of blood. And Ross and LeAnn smelled enough alike that the scent disgusted him more than normal.
“I killed him,” she whispered. “I shot him. I did. I shot him.” She scrambled to her feet and ran toward the den’s Lycan entrance. It didn’t give to her weight, and she fell to the ground in front of it.
“LeAnn,” he said.
She growled at the side panel and then slammed both her feet against it, knocking it off its hinges. Then she was out in the fresh air, where he heard her gagging and dragging in deep breaths before she stumbled farther away and fell down crying.
Blinking, he turned to Ross and checked for a pulse that he knew he wouldn’t find. She’d gone for the kill shot and stopped his heart.
Searching the cabin, he saw a duffel bag with Ross’s clothes. Wiping his face and body on a shirt, he cleared off as much of the blood as he could before, despite the repellent feel of it, he dragged on a pair of Ross’s pants. If he looked less like the wolf that’d forced her to kill her brother, this might go better.
He followed her out the entrance she’d broken and approached her slowly.
Her sobbing was hoarse, and she was sitting with her arms wrapped around her knees and her head ducked down.
He knelt down beside his mate. “LeAnn,” he whispered. Swallowing, he put his arms around her and then sighed in relief when she turned into his body and wrapped her arms around him. Her sticky face pressed against his chest as she kept crying.
Others began arriving, moving silently. Liam got there first and went inside, following the scent of death. After checking the den, he pointed in the direction of the lodge, and Travis nodded in return while still holding LeAnn.
Shifting, Liam ran back the way he’d come and the others followed.
Her crying got softer and lighter, and he kept holding her. He loved this woman, and she’d killed her brother to save his life. Hopefully, she’d be able to get through that, and he’d be here to help her.
“Honey, it’s okay.” He kissed her temple. “I love you. I’m sorry.”
She whimpered again and rubbed her cheek against his chest.
“I’m sorry you had to do that, but you’re not alone. I’m here. And I’m going to help you.”
She might have nodded.
“You’re my pack. And you can’t leave me. Not for that reason. Leave me because I forced you to shoot your brother, but not because you don’t belong. You belong with me.” He was rambling, but he didn’t know how to make this better. She’d shot her brother because of him. She’d already been planning on leaving him.
She sniffed and tightened her arms.
“You’re my Alpha. Jordan was right. I need you. You make my life crazy and out of control, but I think I need that, too. I feel things now. I’m not just pushing through a routine.”
He rubbed his hands down along her back, wishing he could take some of her grief on. He could prove to LeAnn she had a place in his life and in his pack. He had to believe that. Without Ross between them, they could make this work.
LeAnn pulled back suddenly, banging his chin with her head and making his teeth snap together.
“Where’s Alanna?” she asked. Her voice was scratchy and deep from crying for so long.
“She’s at the lodge. I told them to keep her there.”
She jumped to her feet and started north before spinning around and squinting. “Where the hell are we?”
“Five miles southeast of the lodge.” He got to his feet, too. “My phone is nearby. We can call for a ride.”
She’d been looking around, but spotted the Jeep parked behind the cabin. She strode toward it.
“Do you want me to get keys?” he asked, following her. It was difficult to read her mood—especially since it seemed to have changed rapidly.
She didn’t answer, but slid behind the wheel and reached under the steering column, yanking out wires. A minute later, the Jeep started up, and he climbed into the passenger seat.
She could hot-wire cars. That was good to know. Also very sexy. In a non-law-abiding way that he couldn’t ever outwardly support.
They’d gone a mile on the bumpy almost-a-road that connected the cabins to the rest of civilization before he asked, “Are you okay?”
“No.”
That really had been too much to hope for. And she hadn’t started off all that mentally well—which he was fine with, but it probably didn’t help for coping in emergencies. He cleared his throat. “I’m sorry about Ross.” She’d stopped crying at least, but it looked now like fury was fueling her quick demeanor change.
She shrugged and scowled. “I warned him, and I’d told him before that I wasn’t letting him kill you. He just wouldn’t listen.” She slammed a fist against the steering wheel. “Why wouldn’t he listen? Because dammit he wouldn’t! And it all happened so fast!”
“I’m still sorry.”
The scowl dropped off, and she glanced at him. “Are you okay?”
He shrugged. He had a f
ew nasty gouges to add to the collection, but he hadn’t really noticed them until right now because he was more worried about LeAnn than anything.
“When we get to the lodge…this might get ugly,” she said, biting her lower lip.
“I figured.”
“Are you going to stop me?”
“Hell no. I’ll keep everyone else out of the way and jump in if she shifts and you don’t.”
She threw him another look. “I can’t shift.”
“That’s what you keep saying.”
“Do you believe me?”
He could lie, but this was LeAnn, and his mate, and it didn’t seem right. “Nope. I think you’re a full-blooded Lycan.”
She kept her eyes on the road as she tilted her head. “That would make me really insane.”
“That’s what I love about you.”
She slammed on the brakes, throwing them both forward. “What?”
He turned to face her. “I’m okay with you being crazy. And hell, that probably means I am, too, but it works.”
She shook her head. “Not that part…the love part.”
“I love you. Everything about you. And I don’t want you to leave.”
“Because of the scent-match.”
He wanted to shake her and hug her at the same time. “No, not because of the scent-match. Because I love you. The scent-match might have gotten us together, but there’s a helluva lot more that’ll keep us together.”
She swallowed and frowned. “You said I was the last person…”
“I was an ass. You’re the first person I thought of this morning. You’re the first person I want to see every morning. You’re the only person I want. Ever. I want to be with you. I want to get married…even if you accepting the scent-match basically says that. And I definitely want you to accept the scent-match.”
She blinked and stared at him, but then nodded. Then she squinted. “Did you say you loved me earlier?”
“Yup.”
She narrowed her eyes.
“I mean…yes, I did.”
Crazy Over You Page 24