by Vivian Arend
It meant it was more than an hour later before he could step out and shift into his wolf skin.
Everything around him changed colour. Changed scent. Richer and stronger, and now it was even more apparent that Dani had not gone willingly. As Cole followed their tracks, skimming over the snow-covered ground at high speed, her scent changed. She wasn’t in danger, but she was pissed. Her anger made the air acidic.
The first time it spiked, he stopped, a growl of frustration escaping before he pulled his control back. Staying silent to not alert anyone to his presence. He glanced down and noticed another of those strange patterns in the snow. A circular scuff—a direction and a guide.
It was the same symbol Dani had scratched on the porch, only instead of being the size of a paw print, it went for the distance of a dozen strides, as if she’d covertly placed it even as she ran.
Smart woman. Smart, beautiful woman, keeping her head and leaving him a message.
Cole slowed his forward rush, no longer frantic even as he steadily followed the trail. Chances were he was gaining on them, even if it was slowly. And he’d be far better off to take his time and come across them unaware, and not stumble into them around some corner.
He was going to catch them.
Every time her scent spiked he looked for another clue, the trail steadily growing. Always heading north. The far north—the place of his prophesied future.
He had never dreamed it would be like this. Chasing his mate, holding his wolf in check, because the beast wanted to race ahead and shred whoever had dared take Dani from them.
Soon, he promised his wolf. Soon we’ll find her and then we’re never letting her go.
His wolf agreed completely, putting his head down to focus on the target.
Cole tried to send out a message as best he could to his mate. Hang in there, Dani. I’m going to find you, and together we’re going to kick some ass.
8
The secret compound they arrived at just after sunrise looked like any one of a dozen old, abandoned trader’s claims. A little log cabin sat tucked up against the mountainside, a ragtag shelter with a two-pitch roof that leaned precariously toward the ground.
The only thing remotely intact was the fence around the perimeter of the property. It was still old-fashioned—split rail fences usually looked ready to fall down mere days after first assembled, but as Dani followed Michele through the gate she noticed there was wiring tangled around the vertical posts.
Sensors? Or something that could be electrified?
The sweet, innocent cabin only looked as if it was all alone in the middle of the wilderness. Dani examined the towering cliffs above the structure. The rock walls were too uniform, with darker sections that at a second glance seemed a lot more like man-made windows and access points than a wilderness embankment.
So she wasn’t surprised when Michele ushered her in the door, and the cabin was bigger on the inside than the outside.
Dani was guided through a rock tunnel that led deep into the mountain. Their footsteps echoed, but in the distance a low murmur of voices carried to her ears, along with the scent of food and coffee. She tried to guess how many people were in the fortress, but it was too many for her to be able to distinguish individuals.
Then she was being guided up three levels of stairs to what she estimated had to be nearly the top of the escarpment. They rushed past a surveillance station, dozens of camera angles from around the complex visible on the monitoring system. The young woman behind the desk snapped to attention. “Can I help you?”
Her voice was so familiar, Dani paused. “Erika?”
“Dani!” The arctic fox shifter leapt to her feet with a squeal, abandoning the bank of TV screens she’d been watching to race around the desk and envelop Dani in a hug. “I can’t believe we finally get to meet—”
Erika’s excited greeting cut off as Dani was jerked backward.
Michele let out an exasperated exhale. “Catch up later,” she ordered. “Charlene is waiting, and I haven’t delivered you yet.”
Boy oh boy did someone ever need lessons in chilling out. “I’ll be back,” Dani promised Erika.
“I can’t wait. In the meantime, I’ll keep an eye out for you, like usual.” Erika tilted her head toward the monitors before sticking out her tongue at Michele’s back.
Dani winked before stomping after Michele. “Rush, rush, rush. You’re going to have a nervous breakdown at this rate,” she warned the other woman.
“Get the job done all the way, or it’s not done,” Michele quoted back as she opened the door at the end of the hallway and gestured Dani ahead. “Now my job is done, see? Good luck.”
It was time to face her future. Dani squared her shoulders and stepped through, coming face-to-face with Charlene for the first time.
It was easy to know that’s who it was, the elderly wolverine turning slowly to face her, hands clasped behind her back. The woman moved with military precision, not wasting a single bit of energy as she examined Dani.
Her white hair hung in a long braid over one shoulder, her deep brown skin wrinkled with age and sun, but her eyes sparkled and snapped.
“It’s good to finally meet you,” Charlene offered. “Welcome to your new home.”
Dani fought to be polite. Maybe there’d been some sort of misunderstanding. “Thank you, but I had planned on joining you two days from now, as you requested.”
The old woman shrugged, the decorated robe around her shoulders barely moving as she paced slowly across the floor. “Two days later, two days earlier. Does it matter?”
“Yes,” Dani responded instantly, refusing to look away.
Charlene cocked a brow. “How long have you been training for me?”
“Four years.” Dani considered and realized. “Five years, because I started after I turned sixteen.”
And she’d just had her birthday. Yup. Some party.
Overhead, the lights flickered.
The wolverine sighed, pacing toward the wall to push away the wall hanging that concealed a window. Dani let a moment of pride slip through—she called it right regarding the windows.
“So young,” Charlene murmured. Then she clapped her hands and turned toward her with a smile. “Well, you’re here now. It’s time you get to work. We’ll be sending you on your first assignment tomorrow.”
Dani choked back a protest.
Charlene raised a brow again. “Something to say?”
“There’s someone I never got a chance to say goodbye to.” The words came out in a rush, but they weren’t nearly enough. Dani kept her stance as professional as possible, but she knew there was an edge of pleading in her tone, and it was impossible to make that vanish. “I think he’s someone who could be very important to me.”
The older woman remained silent, just looked her over steadily before her lips twisted. “Will that make it difficult for you to concentrate on whatever I need you to do? Sounds as if he’s a bit of a distraction.”
Cole a distraction? That was putting it mildly. “I don’t know. It’s all so new, and we haven’t had a chance to—”
Absolute mortification hit as Dani’s cheeks flushed.
Charlene lifted a brow. “I don’t know that you need to explain that any further.”
The lights flickered again, both of them glancing toward the ceiling.
Off. On. Off. On. Off. On.
An echo of a conversation echoed in Dani’s brain, and she tried to catch the thought even as she kept her attention fully on Charlene.
The woman turned her gaze out the window again, focusing on something near the ground. “Well, I would never want to stand in the way of someone’s destiny, but before you do anything rash, let me ask you—do you think this wolf is important enough for you to change all your plans for? Do you think the five years of training you put in should be discarded without knowing for certain that you and he have a future?”
Dani’s heart stuttered for a second before the beat restarted, pur
e and strong and absolutely without a doubt.
Off. On. Off. On. Off. On. The lights again.
Cole had promised. And while there was a whole lot they needed to talk about, there had been nothing untrue in his words. He’d offered her absolute and complete commitment, as crazy as it seemed.
Which made it possible for her to straighten her shoulders. “I don’t think anything I’ve done in my past will be discarded, but I need to walk into the future with him, if that’s possible. The rest we’ll figure out as we go along.”
Off. On. Off. On. Off. On.
A question suddenly struck—how had Charlene known Dani was talking about a wolf?
Before she could ask, though, the old wolverine lifted a hand and pointed out the window. “In that case, you might want to go and collect that before someone hurts it. I think he’s yours.”
Off. On. Off. On. Off. On.
Confused, Dani moved to Charlene’s side. She followed the line of the woman’s pointing hand to discover—
Shit. Three if by sky. Erika’s teasing comment from days earlier was the reason the lights were flickering. She’d been trying to warn Dani she’d spotted something on her surveillance monitors.
The someone was Cole. He was climbing the rocky wall with no harness and no safety net. Free climbing at a rapid pace as a group of black-clad shifters marched past on the ground below him. So far no one was looking up.
So far.
“Excuse me,” Dani offered as she backed rapidly toward the door.
“Come see me when you’re done,” Charlene ordered. “We’ll finish talking about this then.”
Dani was out the door and into the hallway, racing blindly down passages in an attempt to find a route that would intercept Cole’s climb.
She unlocked the nearest door without even thinking, rushing to a window to get her bearings. There he was, a little way off. She raced out and down another hall, down another set of stairs, through two more sets of locked doors until she reached a room that actually had a balcony.
Dani shoved the door open and took a deep breath, prepared to do whatever it took to keep Cole from ending up a wolf-shaped splat on the ground.
Cole had decided whoever had built this place had a wicked sense of humour. Below him, sentries moved slowly along set trails in the forest, oblivious to the fact there was a wolf clinging to their hideout like a spider.
He should’ve been completely exhausted by this point, but the closer he’d got to here, whatever here was, the stronger Dani’s scent had become and the more that gave him the ability to keep pushing.
And now, somewhere inside this crazy fortress, he was going to finish the job. Track down his mate and inform her, with no uncertainty, that the two of them were going to be together from here on in.
Then they’d somehow escape so they could go meet their prophetic destiny. Minor details.
He placed a foot on another outcropping, and forced his burning thigh muscles to cooperate. Another step, another rock.
His fingers slipped and he clutched for safety, dangling by one hand as the rock that had worked loose clinked against an outcropping and made its way to the ground.
Clink. Clink. Clink.
The final bounce sailed into the woods at the base of the escarpment, a branch cracking. Both sentries nearby pivoted their gazes toward the trees and moved slowly toward them, hands at the ready.
Cole rolled his eyes and moved upward another foot. Sentries, but not that well trained. He could recommend a few things to them—
But for now their lack of skill was to his advantage.
A waft of air brushed past him, warmer than the frigid outdoor temperatures, but more importantly, full of his mate’s scent.
“Hey, good looking. I’d recite some poetry at you, but I’d prefer if you just got your ass in here.”
He glanced up and to his right to discover Dani grinning at him, seemingly out of the solid rock wall. “That’s a neat trick.”
She moved forward, and he noticed a railing pressing against her stomach as she leaned to offer a hand.
Cole didn’t hesitate. He pressed up with his left hand and reached for hers with his right, clasping wrists and trusting she knew what she was doing. His weight pulled her forward slightly, but she held on as he swung toward her, catching hold of the railing and pulling himself to stand beside her on the teeny rock outcropping that was moonlighting as a balcony.
First things first. He cupped her by the chin and examined her face quickly. “You’re safe?”
She smiled. “For now, although I don’t know the odds of that continuing. Come on, we need to get out of here.”
Nope. Not without a kiss. Cole caught her against him and kissed her deeply. It wasn’t long, not much more than a five-second interruption, but it had the impact of a comet striking the earth.
She kissed him back just as hard, and as they separated, their fingers instinctively linked as she tugged him forward. “This way,” she whispered.
Half a dozen hallways and a set of stairwells later, Cole was utterly lost. “What is this place?”
“Headquarters for— No. I’ll tell you later. Right now, we need to keep moving.”
Footsteps echoed ahead of them, and behind them. Drat, it’d been too simple to expect things to continue to go so well. As the volume of the searchers grew, Dani hesitated.
Cole pointed at the door behind her. “Open that.”
She tried the knob. “It’s locked.”
He held back his amusement. “That’s why I told you to open it, Miss Lockpick Queen.”
She grinned, reaching into her wristband and pulling out a thin rod. A second later they were in the darkness, the door firmly closed behind them.
And then she was in his arms, and whatever else had happened, this made everything worth it.
“I am so mad at you,” he whispered, barely above a whisper.
“I didn’t want to leave the cabin,” she protested. “And I was mad at you first, so there.”
He reached down and lifted her, taking her lips and swallowing her protests as he pinned her to the back of the door. Footsteps raced back and forth outside, but they mustn’t have had a single wolf in the group who could scent worth a darn because after someone tried the door handle once and found it locked, everyone just kept running past.
And Cole kept kissing his mate like he had nothing else to do. Nothing he wanted more than to soak into her so hard that the two of them etched into one flesh. Speaking of which…
He reached down and caught hold of her hips, lifting her higher. His excuse was it made it easier to kiss her, her hands driving into his hair as she bit and nipped and kissed him just as possessively, but the real reason was that let him move her against his body. Her breasts full and firm against him even with a layer of fabric covering her body.
The heat of her sex teased him, making him crave.
Dani pulled back and whispered oh-so-softly. “Put me down for a minute.”
Unwillingly he forced himself to obey, “Dani, I need to tell you something.”
Shitty timing, but his wolf was growing absolutely frantic. Whatever was going on, the beast was not willing to wait any longer.
She was back in instant later, but her clothes didn’t make the return journey. “Pick me up again,” she ordered.
Hell, no. There was only one way that particular trip was going to end.
Yes, his wolf encouraged.
Okay, Cole totally agreed with his wolf, but he wasn’t such a bastard to plunder his virgin mate without getting her off first. He turned on the spot and pressed her back to the door so he could drop to the floor between her legs.
Finding his target was easy because he was a wolf, and she was his mate, and she was crazily ready for him. He pressed his mouth against her and ate greedily, hands coming into play as he warmed her up and then took her past molten.
She reached down and caught fistfuls of his hair, and he didn’t even care that he was going to be
bald in five years’ time if she kept this up because, God damn, it felt good to know he was stoking her fires this hot.
He licked and sucked and licked some more. When he pushed his fingers inside her sex, her legs trembled. Cole wrapped his lips around her clit and sucked hard.
She choked off a cry. Hips pulsing against him frantically. Pussy squeezing his fingers, and there was no more holding back.
Cole rose to his feet, lifting her with him. He draped her legs over his hips as he lined them up, easing the head of his cock between her folds. She caught his face and pulled their lips together.
He speared his cock into her body, jamming their hips together and locking them in place. Swallowing her gasp.
She quivered in his arms, breasts rubbing against his chest. She pulled their lips apart and took a shaky breath. “Oh, wow.”
“You good?” He whispered the words past her ear. His arms shook as he held back until she gave him the all clear.
And then damn if she didn’t squeeze all her internal muscles, clenching his cock in a vise. He groaned.
She giggled—God, he adored her laugh—
Oh, damn, he was hooked. Lock, stock and barrel, he was head over heels with this ninja warrior woman, which is exactly what being mates was about. “Seriously? You know it’s really hard on a guy’s ego to have a woman—”
“His woman,” she corrected him.
“It’s hard on a guy’s ego when his perfect woman laughs at him during sex.”
She turned his face toward her and kissed him, sweet and lingering. His body throbbed, and his cock that had her skewered to the wall like she was a party favour was close to exploding, but overall, he was pretty damn happy.
Especially when she squeezed again, this time moaning into his mouth with pleasure.
“Like how it feels? My cock inside you?”
She nodded. “It’s a little strange, and I think I need you to do something.”
He waited for instructions.
Dani tugged on his ears. “Do something. I don’t know what. I’m the inexperienced one, remember?”