“So don’t do it tonight.” His arms came up tight around her, holding her, no matter what. “Talk to the shamans’ circle tomorrow and get some advice. The council isn’t always right, even enforcers know that. Now get some sleep.”
His breathing evened out, and once again, he started to snore. Easy for him, he wasn’t wrestling with any demons tonight. She burrowed into his chest, knowing she’d be awake for a while. She’d wait and talk to the Circle tomorrow.
But she knew what they’d say.
Someone from one of the packs had attacked Glenna. Someone had infected her with the Bite—the sacred virus that created each and every pack member. And by doing that crime, the perpetrator had violated more than Glenna, they’d violated the pack’s most sacred spiritual beliefs and exposed their entire society to danger.
The shamans’ circle would say it was up to Serena to see if Glenna knew who that was—even if it meant violating Glenna’s trust and her sanity.
Chapter Twelve
It was dark in the room, but traces of dawn licked the edges of the curtains. Not sure what had woken him, Sam stretched out, his bare toes hitting hard on the end of the single bed. “Damn it!”
“What’s going on?” Ian inquired from the lower bunk.
“Nothing. Go back to sleep.”
“Damn right I’ll go back to sleep. I had last watch.”
Some starlet had had an affair with her bestie’s husband and without any fodder for the cameras, the media had dropped Glenna’s story. With someone gone without a trace for two weeks other crimes had bumped the case onto the back burner. Even the feds had stopped looking so intently for their secret patient, and they weren’t looking even close to the house, so Lana had canceled the high alert.
Nothing was going on. He could catch a few more minutes sleep before doing an early sweep. He rolled, trying to get comfortable, but his aching back told him he was done.
“You’re not sleeping.”
“Hell, this bed’s not big enough for a squirrel, let alone a full-grown man. I can’t wait until we’re done here and I can get back to Ram’s Haven and to a real bed.” Ram’s Haven wasn’t Windy Gap, and it would never be home, but at least there he had a decent size bed instead of trying to sleep in a room with Ian snoring in the bottom bunk. “I’m getting up.”
“Is the bed the only thing bothering you?” The smirk in Ian’s voice raised Sam’s hackles.
He dropped out of the bed, seriously considering stepping on Ian’s arm dangling out of the single bunk on his way down. The brightening smear of pre-dawn light illuminated the room enough to see the grin on his beta’s face.
“What?”
“You didn’t even call her on it.”
“Did you think I would?” He grabbed his clothes and avoided Ian’s knowing look.
“She’ll just do it again.”
Sam sighed. “And you think letting her know we know she was searching our rooms, instead of recuperating, would stop her?” He headed for the door. “She’s a determined beast. Must be the red hair.”
“Yeah, that and the tits.” Ian snorted. “Women, who put them in charge anyway?”
“I don’t know, maybe the ancients thought it was funny. But get this—she doesn’t know she’s in charge. That’s why she’s sneaking around.” Sam gave Ian his own grin and left the room.
Early pre-dawn light seeped through the curtains of the living room, lending him enough light to stumble down the quiet hall and into the john. He was under the stinging spray of the shower before he realized that it wasn’t the cramped bed that had kept him from sleeping. Something else, something out of the ordinary had woken him up. He rinsed off and got out, thinking back, trying to place what he’d heard.
Dripping water, he slung a towel around his hips and went back into the hall, listening. The only thing he could hear over Ian’s soft snores were the early-morning birds calling to each other. But something was off and it tickled his skin like a spider. He prowled the hallway, poking his nose into each room and sniffing. Nothing out of the usual. The cabin was quiet, with the exception of the old humming refrigerator in the kitchen and the ticking of the wall clock. Ellen was gone for the weekend. Lana was still out on her birthing emergency.
That left their guest.
Sam padded barefoot down the stairs, keeping quiet, even though he knew before he’d gone down two feet.
No breath sounds came from the basement.
He checked all the rooms in the cellar, every second that ticked by, a second too long. He checked, even though he knew he would have smelled her, heard her, sensed her. If she’d been there, dead or alive, he’d have sensed her.
She was gone.
Chest as tight as if it were wrapped in rubber bands, he raced back up into the kitchen, the pounding of his bare feet echoing on the wooden stairs. He ran out the back door and stopped on the deck, sniffing the damp morning air.
Nothing.
Too quickly, too easily he desired to be wolf. And it came at his call, pouring through him, rising to his need. The shift was fast and rough, and when it was over his hair rose from nose to tail, the information overflow zapping his nerves.
He howled for Ian, not waiting for his answering call before hitting the deck floor with his nose.
She’d been here, and recently. Now, with his wolf’s nose, he could smell her in detail. Smell her anxiety and fear under the citrus soap that Ellen had brought in especially for her. The trail ran down the stairs, straight to the Suburban. He knew she hadn’t found the keys, because they were still in his pocket from yesterday, and if she’d come into his room with her delicious female scent, he wouldn’t be here now. It wouldn’t have mattered how tired he was, he would have woken up. After yesterday—watching her eat his food as if she were devouring his cock—if she’d come into his room, he’d have pulled her into his bed.
Her scent led down the drive, overlaying an old trail of Ian’s, straight to the road. He growled, and his wolf pushed to take over. She should not be following the beta’s trail—it made her smell like she was his.
Adrenaline pumped him fast down the trial. They needed to catch her before she flagged down a passing car and got help. If she made it to a police station, they were screwed.
Over his wolf’s displeasure he howled to his beta, and heard the response. But he couldn’t wait, and the rising wolf inside didn’t want to—he wanted to run and catch their quarry.
The trail was easy to read. Pockets of morning dew on the grass had captured her scent in their damp clutches. A strange mélange of Lana, the clinic, and the citrus scent that he now associated with Glenna’s femininity, but all of it overlaid with Ian’s strong scent. Clinic and Lana he understood, but Ian?
His wolf growled. Why did Glenna smell of the beta wolf?
Sam suppressed the competitive surge of jealousy, reassuring himself it was the wolf’s response to an attractive female. Two fucking weeks with his brother’s mate in the same house had pushed him to the edge, an edge he’d come way too close to two years ago to ever be sure of himself again. Ever since his stint in the wild, he’d known, the wolf was barely in check.
He kept his nose down and focused on following the trail and Glenna, praying he could keep control.
In the distance, up the curve of the mountain road, he heard an engine. A car was coming this way and closing fast. He caught a flash of red in the early dawn light and poured on the speed.
His quarry turned, some sense warning her of the adult male wolf barreling down on her. She started to run. Excitement flashed through his veins, giving him a burst of speed.
Prey.
He plowed into her, knocking her hard into the bushes at the side of the road just as the car flashed behind him. Momentum carried them out into the air. Time slowed in the suspension of gravity and Glenna’s screams ripped into the air.
Gravity took over and they dropped.
Sam hit the rocks hard, pain jolting his side. He rolled to a stop and lay
there in the brush, gasping for each painful breath. A howl carried out over the early-morning air. Sam couldn’t suck in enough air to respond to his beta’s call. He panted and wheezed, trying to squeeze air back into his lungs.
Someone moaned.
Glenna.
He pushed himself to stand, then to scramble on wobbly legs up the steep slope. She lay further up the hill, in the embrace of a scrubby mountain ash. Her red jacket—Lana’s red jacket—almost disappearing in the flaming red of the tree’s fall color. He walked over to her. Two feet. One. And stopped only a few inches from her prone body, sniffing for blood.
Her eyes opened. They went wide as headlamps, the pupils in the center going dark. Her scent flooded with fear, and his wolf crouched, braced for danger.
“Nice wolf.”
His predatory instincts flared at the panic in her shaky voice, and he viciously tamped them down. She didn’t realize it was him. The dilated pupils, the short breaths, all indicated something more than panic at being caught. She was afraid of the wolf. Him.
Pack rules, pack law, pack instinct—all said that if there was no external threat, he’d done something wrong. The surge of anxiety and intense desire to soothe nearly knocked him over. His wolf wanted to drop to the ground, go belly up, and reassure her—they were not a threat.
He inched his nose forward, touching her shoe, wanting to soothe her, himself and his wolf, but instead the overwhelmingly strong scent of Ian’s feet wrinkled his nose.
He growled. Ian’s shoes. His human brain acknowledged the reason she reeked of the beta, but his wolf didn’t get it. All his wolf knew was that she should not have Ian on her scent. And in wolf form, his bestial instincts were dominant.
She shrank back. “Go away, wolf.”
The bushes shook on the slope above, and Ian’s snout appeared. Sam’s lips pulled back from his teeth. He placed himself between the beta and the woman, his low growl rumbling into full aggression.
Ian dropped flat, nose to the ground and whined, but it wasn’t enough to soothe his wolf. It wanted to tear Ian apart. And Sam couldn’t let it.
He fought to contain the wolf. Ian was his beta and Glenna was nobody. She wasn’t pack yet. She didn’t smell like pack or even wolf, and they’d have no idea unless she went through the change if she would ever join the pack. Even if she did, this woman was not his. She wasn’t going to be his. Ever.
His wolf’s response was insane. And that scared him. He’d fought so hard to come back from the wild after the Gabe and Serena mess. Fought to keep from succumbing to his wolf and never becoming human again. But here he was, fighting to keep from attacking another man over a woman—something he swore he’d never do again.
Glenna’s eyes darted back and forth. Sweat oozed from her pores, flavoring her citrus scent with fear.
The instant anxious rush of defensiveness caught him by surprise. His wolf was still searching for what the female could possibly be afraid of, because to his wolf, it definitely couldn’t be them. They were there to protect her, not attack her. The wolf’s confusion throbbed like an ache in his bones.
Why would she be afraid of them? It had to be something else. And the wolf inside of Sam, the one that was never far from the surface these days, found the source of danger conveniently in the source of his own aggression. Ian.
The urge to attack Ian pulsed higher, pushing Sam’s humanity down deeper into his soul. He struggled against the urge to attack his beta, drive him away forever, all for the female cowering at his feet. Somewhere in the depths of his urge to fight he knew—his wolf wouldn’t relax until Glenna had lost her fear. And if this continued he would kill his own beta.
Chapter Thirteen
Glenna’s pulse hammered in her ears. She’d never seen a wolf, didn’t know they even lived in Colorado, let alone that they would hunt humans like this. The brown one had flattened to his belly above her. The big grey’s fur stood on end, his body dropped low, his teeth bared. She scrambled to her feet and braced for the attack.
The big grey’s muscles quivered, then the skin rolled and cracked, pulled away from the flesh and rippled into a shimmering mist. Blood and bone contorted. Fur disappeared and became smooth tan skin as the wolf morphed into a naked man. Tall and deeply muscled with black ink running over his skin, and a wild mane of rock star hair and blue eyes that burned fury.
Sam.
His body seemed bigger naked. Tattoos that had been hidden under his t-shirt swirled down his shoulders and over three deep scars slashing across his chest. Her gaze slid down between his thighs and rebounded fast back up from the evidence of his maleness amid the nest of dark hair.
He was panting, his hands hardened into fists. His body was tense and she braced for whatever was coming. But then she realized his focus was all on the brown wolf. Not her.
The prostrate wolf at the top of the hill whined, and the aggression in Sam’s eyes eased. His fists opened and he flexed his fingers. Sam blew out a breath and nodded at the wolf. “It’s okay, Ian.”
Ian. Sam. These were the men she’d met yesterday. And they were wolves.
The adrenaline in her body coursed higher. She started to shake, almost uncontrollably, her teeth clacking together with shivers she couldn’t control.
“What the hell is going on?” she chattered out.
The brown wolf’s body contorted. Fur roiled and Glenna turned away. She couldn’t watch the bones and skin morph again. When she looked back, Ian stood there, just as naked as Sam.
Glenna didn’t know her mouth had dropped open until Sam’s long, gentle fingers pushed her jaw closed.
“Flies will get in that way, you know,” he said. “Are you ready to climb up to the road?”
She took a panicked step back and slipped on the steep surface. His hand shot out grabbing a firm hold of her upper arm.
“Get away from me!” She pushed at him with both hands, furiously lashing out with her sneakered feet, but his fingers held on bruisingly tight and he avoided her kicking feet with ease.
“Come on. Up top first, then we talk.” He pulled her up to a flatter space. She leaned all her body weight away from his, pulling and pulling away until finally he let go and she nearly fell to the ground with the rebound. “Okay, but it’s pretty steep.” He proffered a helping hand.
She brushed past. “Screw you.” She worked her way up the steep slope, slick with pine needles, on her own, despite her need to stop and sink to the ground. She’d pushed her worn-out body too far, but she’d be damned if she’d let him touch her. Something was freaking wrong. Wolves didn’t just shake off their skins and become men. Either they were playing some hellish trick on her, or it was the lycanthroism after all, and she was hallucinating, but instead of thinking she was a wolf, she was seeing wolves.
Or she was crazy. Her brain shied away from that one, skittering away like water on a hot skillet.
She stuck her chin out and kept moving. Any way it turned out, she only had herself to depend on. But she was used to that.
Sam snorted. Followed her too close behind, all six foot plus of naked muscle making the skin on her neck tingle.
There was nowhere to run. Nowhere to go, except towards Ian waiting at the top of the hill. A grim smile flitted across her lips. She was surrounded in the woods by two naked, tattooed thugs. Her grandmother would be having kittens.
She reached the top of the slope and bent over her shaking legs, trying to wheeze air back into her lungs.
“Can you make it?” Sam wasn’t breathing hard at all and she wanted to smack the condescending look right off his face. Something about him raised her hackles, even when she suspected he might be trying to be nice.
“Smug, aren’t you? You try climbing at altitude when you’ve done nothing but lay in a bed for weeks.” She was damned if she were going to give in, but her legs had a different agenda and if she didn’t sit down soon, they’d give out and give her away.
“Why don’t you sit on this rock, and Ian can go for t
he car.” He didn’t wait for her response, just tilted his head at the other man. Ian nodded and took off at a fast lope, leaving her alone with Sam.
One less kidnapper to deal with, but somehow her nerves stretched tighter. She tried like hell to keep her eyes off him, looking everywhere but his scarred skin and tattoos and over-large cock. Were the twisty green and black lines on his hip Celtic knot work? She sat on a rock and kept her ears peeled for cars, looking anywhere but at Sam and his over-the-top masculinity.
Sam stood, looking up and down the road, his head tilted, as if listening. His long back tapered down to slimmer hips and long legs, and he stood there with utter confidence, totally ignoring his lack of clothes. It was as if he were Tarzan, utterly masculine, utterly unaware that being naked on the side of a Colorado road in the morning light were anything other than normal. She expected him to catch a dragging vine, scoop her up, and swing through the aspen and pine forest.
Her mouth dried up.
She couldn’t picture Roger or any of the guys at her accounting firm, standing stark naked by the side of the road with such utter confidence. It was positively scary the way he simply didn’t care. And attractive.
Damn, it shouldn’t be attractive, it made no sense. She shook off the reaction. She was engaged to safe, sane Roger, for all the right reasons. And Sam? Sam was a criminal. She had a life she needed to get back to. So why was her body giving her the go-ahead when her brain said whoa?
The first rays of the sun peeked over the next mountain, starting their job of warming up the day. Glenna took off the too-small jacket, wincing as it pulled her shoulders back.
“You’re hurt.” Sam kneeled down next to her.
She flinched away. “No, I’m fine.”
“Liar.” He pulled the sleeve of her t-shirt up high on her shoulder. “You’re turning purple already. Man, Lana will have my tail.” He slid the sleeve back down, his fingers burning a trail on her skin.
She turned her head away, up into the clear blue sky and a hawk wheeling on the morning breeze. “Let me go.” Her voice was husky.
Blood Enforcer (Wolf Enforcers Book 2) Page 7