Wolf Hunt

by Paige Tyler

  It had taken her all night and most of the day to come to that conclusion, but underneath the claws and fangs, he was still the guy she’d crushed on all through high school, the guy she was in love with now.

  He grinned, letting out a sigh of relief. “You wouldn’t believe how good it is to hear you say those words. Even though I’m terrified of putting you in danger by loving you, I can’t stop the way I feel. I love you, Triana. I think I have since freshman year of high school.”

  Cupping her face in his hand, he bent his head and kissed her. Triana glided her hands up the front of his shirt, one gripping his shoulder while the other found its way into his hair. Remy wrapped his free arm around her, pulling her tightly against him and making her wish they’d gone somewhere more private to have this conversation than a very public park. Then she remembered his hotel was only a short walk from the park.

  She was about to remind Remy of that when he stumbled against her, almost making her fall. He lifted his head with a growl, his eyes flashing yellow as the tips of his upper canines extended.

  “What the hell?” he muttered.

  The sight of his fangs almost made her pull away, but she resisted the urge. She wasn’t doing that to Remy ever again.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked.

  He didn’t answer but instead twisted around, reaching behind him with one hand as he looked over his shoulder. She gasped at the sight of the two darts the size of jumbo Magic Markers sticking out of his back. Her blood ran cold. Oh God. Those were tranquilizer darts, just like the ones used on her father. As she watched, another heavy dart slammed into Remy’s back, shoving him forward and almost sending him to his knees.

  “Pull them out,” he growled when he couldn’t reach them himself.

  Cursing herself for standing there like an idiot, Triana grabbed one and tugged, but it was stuck. “It’s too deep,” she said. “If I yank any harder, I’m going to hurt you.”

  The growl he let out this time was closer to a roar, and she stared wide-eyed as his fangs extended farther. “It hurts already. Rip them out!”

  Heart pounding, Triana wrapped her hand around the one closest to his shoulder and pulled hard. The end of the needle was barbed like a harpoon, ripping his skin and leaving a bloody, gaping wound in its wake. The sight of it was enough to make her feel sick.

  “Do the same to the others,” he ground out, his face contorted in pain.

  She yanked the other two darts out as fast as she could, tossing them on the ground. Her stomach plummeted as she realized they were empty. She remembered Quinn telling her the hunters had used tranquilizer drugs to slow down her father for the kill shot. They had to get out of here—now. She opened her mouth to warn Remy, but he’d already grabbed her hand and was running toward the parking lot near Café du Monde.

  They didn’t get more than ten feet before two more darts slammed into Remy, one in his lower back, the other in the thick muscles of his upper left thigh. Crap. Without being prompted, Triana immediately pulled the one out of his back while he did the same to the dart in his leg. It didn’t matter though, because both were already empty.

  Remy took her hand again and dragged her across the train tracks toward the parking lot. On the far side of the street, she could see a few patrons and waitstaff moving around inside the café. Once she and Remy reached it, they would be safe.

  They were almost there when Remy suddenly slowed, then stumbled, the yellow glow dimming from his eyes. Whatever drugs had been in those darts was taking effect.

  “Come on!” she urged. “We just have to make it across the street.”

  Remy growled and nodded, shambling forward.

  Triana tugged on his hand, fearing another dart—or worse—would come at him any second. But they were moving too slowly. They weren’t going to make it across the parking lot, much less all the way across the street to the café.

  “Help me!” she shouted, waving her free arm wildly in the air, hoping someone would see them.

  She was so focused on the people across the street she didn’t see the van careering through the parking lot until it screeched to a stop in front of them. For half a second she thought whoever was inside was there to help, but then the side door slid open and she saw men with guns.

  Remy lunged at them with a savage growl, but the guns popped a few times and he immediately went down.

  “Remy!”

  Triana tried to keep him from falling, but he was too heavy for her, and she couldn’t keep him from tumbling all the way to the pavement. Then she saw a dark stain spread across the front of his shirt. She’d thought the men had dart guns, but they’d been pistols with silencers.

  Three men jumped out of the van, rushing at her and Remy. She tried to shove them away, but one of the men got his arms around her from behind and tossed her in the van. A moment later, the other two flung Remy in beside her. With the amount of blood he’d already lost, there was no way he could still be alive. The thought that he might already be dead tore her heart in two. All she could do was pray the werewolf who’d refused to let Remy die so many times before would allow him to survive now.

  The side door slammed and the vehicle took off with a squeal of tires, throwing Triana toward the back of the van. Rough hands caught her and jerked her to her knees. She turned, ready to take a swing at whomever it was. Her eyes went wide when she saw Quinn.

  He blocked her fist with his hand. “Well, shit, girl. Long time no see.”

  Triana screamed and launched herself at him. She’d rip him to pieces with her fingernails if she had to. But he only grinned and caught her by the throat like she was a toy, slamming her head against the inside wall of the van. Stars exploded in her vision and her body went limp as she collapsed to the floor beside Remy.

  Oh God, not again.

  The last thing Triana heard before losing consciousness was Quinn’s arrogant laugh.

  Chapter 19

  Remy knew he was still alive because his head was pounding like a drum. He stifled a groan, grimacing at the pain. Shit, his mouth tasted like he’d been eating dirt. He took a breath—or tried to, anyway. Damn, he could barely breathe. Or move. What the hell was wrapped around him?

  As he fought to open his eyes, memories rushed back—being in the park with Triana, kissing her, getting shot with frigging tranquilizer darts, and running. Then a van screeching to a stop…and men with guns. They’d shot him and grabbed Triana.

  The image of Quinn knocking her unconscious snapped Remy out of the haze he’d been trapped in. Lifting his head, he lunged forward.

  He didn’t make it very far. Actually, he didn’t make it anywhere.

  With a growl, he looked down and saw a heavy chain wrapped around his bare chest and arms, not only binding him, but also holding him off the floor so he was barely touching the metal decking beneath him. He glanced up to see the chain disappearing into the darkness above him, when he heard someone laugh.

  “Looks like someone just figured out how fucked he really is.”

  Quinn’s amused voice echoed in the ship’s cargo hold. Based on the familiar scent, it was the same vessel Remy and his pack mates had searched on that raid earlier in the week.

  Remy looked over to see Quinn standing to one side in the near darkness of the ship’s hold. Aaron Lee was beside him, his arms crossed, a curious expression on his face. Behind him were two more of his goons that Remy vaguely remembered from the shoot-out at the front gate of Lee’s home.

  He paid little attention to the men. The only person he cared about was Triana. She was sitting on a pallet of bags filled with grain half a dozen feet away. Remy’s heart almost stopped when he saw that she was alive. Then he smelled the blood, saw it streaked through her hair and staining the left shoulder of her rain jacket. He growled long and low. He was going to enjoy killing every single one of these men.

  Remy searche
d her face, looking for any other signs of further injury, but all he saw was a mix of relief and concern in her beautiful blue-gray eyes.

  “Amazing,” Lee said, moving closer to study his chest. Or more precisely, the two bullet wounds that should have been fatal but had instead closed over already. “I knew Rufus had taken a bullet in the chest before, but I never dreamed a werewolf could recover so quickly from such an injury.”

  Letting out another growl, Remy lifted his legs and kicked out at Lee’s head. The older man quickly backpedaled. Not that it mattered. The angle had been all wrong anyway. If not, the son of a bitch would have been eating through a straw for a few months—if Remy didn’t kill him first.

  Lee glared at him for a moment, then nodded at Quinn. Lee’s enforcer grabbed Triana by the arm and jerked her to her feet. Remy snarled, straining against the chains holding him, but the frigging things didn’t so much as creak.

  Smirking, Quinn pulled out a hunting knife from the sheath at his belt and pressed the blade to Triana’s neck.

  “Try something like that again, and I’ll have him slit her throat,” Lee warned.

  Remy stilled. He had no idea what Lee had planned, but he was going to have to bide his time until he could figure out how to get out of these damn chains. He didn’t know how he was going to do that, but he swore he would. And when he did, the only issue would be which one of the men died first.

  Lee stepped closer again, and this time Remy was forced to let him. The man examined the wounds on his chest before going around to do the same to the ones on his back. Remy didn’t point out that the healing wouldn’t be nearly as impressive if either of the bullets were still inside him. A werewolf’s body couldn’t heal itself properly if foreign material was still in the wound. The outer skin would still close over in an instinctive attempt to keep from bleeding out, but the soft tissue and bones would never reknit, resulting in a hell of a lot of pain.

  “You’ve lived a very violent life, I see,” Lee said as he finished a complete circuit and came to stand in front of Remy again. “You’ve been shot, what? A dozen times?”

  “Something like that,” Remy ground out, wondering once again where the hell this was going.

  Lee leveled his gaze at him. “You’re going to turn me into a werewolf, or I will do things to your woman that you couldn’t imagine in your worst nightmare.”

  Remy stared at him, stunned into silence. His heart dropped into his stomach. Lee would kill him and Triana the moment he figured out Remy couldn’t do what he wanted.

  Shit.

  He was trying to come up with something he could say to Lee to either delay what was about to happen or, better yet, turn the tables on the madman, when Triana interrupted him.

  “It’s a curse,” she said quietly. “In his blood.”

  Remy gave her a sharp look, wondering what Triana was doing. Quinn was still holding on to her, the knife dangerously close to her neck. But she didn’t look at Remy. Instead, her gaze was fixed on Lee.

  “A curse?” Lee laughed. “Now I know you’re full of shit. I don’t believe in any of that crap.”

  “You don’t believe in them, yet you’re okay with a man becoming a werewolf?” she said. “Why do you think he and my father came to the voodoo shop in the first place? They came because they wanted a way to break the curse.”

  Lee regarded Triana suspiciously for a moment before pinning Remy with a look. “Is this true?”

  Remy still wasn’t sure what Triana’s plan was, but at least she seemed to have one, so he went with it. “Yes. I didn’t know what was happening to me or even what I was. I thought Triana’s mother could help me.”

  Lee turned to Triana again. “You said it’s in his blood. If I inject myself with it, will it turn me into a werewolf?”

  “No,” she said. “The only way a werewolf can turn a person is to bite them.”

  Lee paled, and for the first time, Remy heard the man’s heart beat a little faster. He shook his head. “There has to be another way.”

  “There isn’t,” Triana insisted. “The curse has to be passed through a bite, just like in the movies.”

  Lee considered that for a moment, then jabbed a finger at her. “You’d better not be lying to me, or you’re dead.”

  Triana didn’t flinch. “You might want to rethink that, since you’ll need my help to survive the change. Especially if he has to bite you more than once.”

  Lee’s eyes narrowed. “You’re just saying that to save your neck. And his. Why the hell would he need to bite me more than once?”

  “This isn’t science, you know,” she shot back. “It’s voodoo magic. If you want to be a werewolf, you’re going to have to keep both of us around.”

  Remy finally realized what Triana was doing, and he had to admit, it was brilliant. She’d created a situation where Lee couldn’t kill either of them, not if he wanted to become a werewolf.

  As inspired as the deception was, Remy was even more impressed with how convincing Triana sounded. For a woman who’d told him several times she didn’t buy any of this magic stuff, she was doing one hell of a good job selling herself as a voodoo priestess. Even though Remy knew how werewolves worked, he liked Triana’s version better.

  Lee looked at the two other men in the hold. “Get me something to stand on.”

  When they brought over a wooden crate, Lee stepped up on it and rolled the sleeve of his dress shirt to his elbow, exposing his forearm. “Go ahead and bite me. And when I say let go, you’d better do it or Quinn will take great pleasure in scooping an eye right out of her pretty head.”

  Remy only growled in answer. He was tempted to suggest a bite to the neck would work better, but he doubted he’d get Lee to go along with that. He had no idea what was going to happen after he bit Lee, but he prayed Triana had something in that clever head of hers that would get him out of these chains.

  Lee glanced at the two men who’d brought over the crate. “Be ready to shoot him if he doesn’t let go.” He shoved his arm in front of Remy’s face. “Well, get on with it.”

  Remy eyed Lee for a long moment, then opened his mouth, letting his fangs slowly extend to their full length of an inch and a half. Lee went as pale as a ghost at the sight, but Remy didn’t give him time to change his mind. He clamped his teeth down on Lee’s forearm so hard he hit bone. He’d never bitten a person before, but then again, up until now, he’d never had a desire to. Sinking his teeth into Lee was satisfying as hell, though. The wolf inside wanted out to tear the asshole to pieces.

  Remy ignored Lee’s order to stop, immersed in the feeling of a rippling sensation spreading over his body as every muscle spasmed. He had no idea why it was happening, but he was shifting. The only other time he’d managed a full shift, it had hurt like a son of a bitch. This time…not so much.

  Little by little, the chains around his chest loosened.

  “I said, let the fuck go!” Lee shouted, punching him.

  Remy would have ignored him, but then he heard Triana whimper in pain and knew he couldn’t do anything to risk Quinn hurting her. He retracted his fangs and pulled away, resisting the urge to rip Lee’s forearm off.

  Lee stumbled off the boxes and over to Triana, holding his bloody arm out to her. “Is this deep enough? You’d better tell me it is because it hurt like hell.”

  Triana looked at the wound. “I think so. We’ll only know for sure if you change.”

  “When will that be?” he demanded, wrapping his other hand around his arm, trying to stanch the flow of blood.

  “It could be a few minutes or a few hours,” she said. “I don’t know.”

  “You’d better not be lying to me.” Lee cursed. “Someone get me something to stop the bleeding, and hurry the hell up!”

  Remy only half listened as Lee rambled on about how much his arm frigging hurt. He was too busy trying to breathe through th
e muscle spasms making his whole body shiver. Luckily, Lee’s men were so focused on bandaging his arm they didn’t notice the chains around Remy’s chest slip another inch as his torso tried to morph into its new shape. If he kept shifting, there was a good chance he’d be able to scramble his way out at some point.

  Keep distracting them a little while longer, Triana.

  He felt the bizarre sensation of fur slowly sprouting on his back, when the sound of gunfire erupted from somewhere outside the ship.

  “What the hell is that?” Lee demanded at the same time one of his men yanked out his cell phone and shoved it to his ear.

  The man listened for a moment, then his eyes widened. “It’s the cops,” he told Lee as he hung up. “There are at least a half-dozen of them. Looks like SWAT.”

  Lee cursed. “Quinn, bring her.” He turned to the other two men. “You come with us,” he said to one of them, then looked at the other. “You shoot him in the head.”

  The bastard didn’t hang around to see if everyone followed orders, but instead ran for the exit.

  Triana screamed, fighting against Quinn even as Remy struggled against the chain binding him. When it held fast, Remy struggled harder, but that only served to slow down his body’s transformation. He growled in frustration. It took every ounce of willpower to force himself to relax and let his body finish shifting while Quinn wrapped his arms around a struggling Triana and carried her up the metal stairs at the far end of the cargo hold.

  Remy hadn’t realized how far his face had shifted until the man Lee had ordered to kill him stopped dead in his tracks, his eyes widening in fear. He lifted his pistol, trying to aim, but his hands were shaking so badly he couldn’t hold the thing steady. Remy took advantage of that, lunging at the guy with a ferocious snarl.

  Scared shitless, the man backpedaled and squeezed the trigger. The bullet zipped past Remy and ricocheted around the hold a few times before thumping into something behind him.