Taking another deep breath, he could pick out possibly seven of them in all, the way their scent was getting stronger telling him they were closing in. It was still only late afternoon, which meant the moon was nowhere near high enough for him to fully shift into his Lycan form, but he could at least make a partial change. With his fingers shedding their human shape, transforming into lethal, razor-sharp weapons and his thick fangs bursting from his gums, Elliot faced off against the assholes as they reached him. At well over six foot, he was bigger than every male in the group, save for two. Not that it mattered. He was fighting to protect his mate. That alone would ensure he went at these guys ten times harder than they could come at him.
In almost perfect synchronization, they underwent changes of their own, releasing sinister-looking claws that were longer than his, but shorter fangs, their eyes turning completely black, like a shark’s. The tallest of the group attacked first, and Elliot exchanged a flurry of blows with the asshole, their claws scraping together with a screeching sound that echoed through the forest. Drawing from the primal rage burning through his veins, he spun on his left foot, kicking out at the male’s chest with so much force it cracked bones, the bastard’s body slamming into a nearby tree so hard it nearly broke the trunk in two. The guy hit the ground face-first, and stayed down, which left at least six more.
As the next two came at him, Elliot struck with his claws again and again, tearing at flesh, the spray of their blood soaking him. They got in a few lucky shots, but nothing that his accelerated healing abilities wouldn’t handle by morning. Flipping one of the heavy sons of bitches over his head, he sent him soaring through the air, then swiveled to miss the strike the other one was aiming at his throat, before countering with a blow that ripped into the guy’s side until he hit bone.
Despite the brutal cold and biting wind, sweat dripped down the sides of Elliot’s face as he fought the next one to engage. It took him no more than fifteen seconds to get his hands around the bastard’s head from behind, and he twisted until he heard the satisfying snap of the guy’s spinal column, then let his body drop to the ground. Pivoting, he flexed his blood-soaked claws at his sides, ready to face off against the remaining assailants, only to find them sliding worried looks toward the sky and drawing back into the trees.
“What the hell?” he muttered. Was something out there helping him? Something they were too scared of to stay and fight? Lifting his nose, he sniffed at the air, but couldn’t scent anything beyond the musky odor of the males he’d been battling against.
Catching that familiar flash of blue from the corner of his eye, he went after the asshole, intent on getting some answers while he still could. The guy was fast, even in the snow, but Elliot was determined not to lose him. Allowing his right hand to retake its human shape, he reached back and pulled the gun from his waistband, aimed for one of the thug’s legs and took him down with a perfect shot.
Falling to the ground, the idiot clutched at his thigh, the crimson blood gushing from between his fingers telling Elliot that he’d hit the femoral artery. “Raze, you bastard!” the male screamed, speaking the first words Elliot had heard from one of them since the fight began. “Help me!”
But no one came to his rescue as Elliot ripped the guy’s belt off, used it to bind his claw-tipped hands and grabbed him by the foot of his injured leg, pulling him closer to the cabin, since he wanted to stay as near as possible to Skye. Crouching down beside the jackass in the snow, he retracted his fangs and glanced around. The forest was eerily quiet, and he looked back down at him, saying, “Looks like your Raze buddy has better things to do.”
“Fuck you!” he spat, but Elliot could see the glaze of fear coating the pitch black of the male’s eyes.
“Did you follow us here?” he asked, prepared to do whatever it took to get the answers he needed.
The idiot sneered up at him. “Didn’t need to. This place was already on our radar.”
Well shit, he thought. Mason wasn’t going to be at all happy about that.
“How long have you been watching us?”
“Uh-uh,” the guy said, shaking his head. “I’m not saying anything else. If I talk, Raze’ll kill me, because if he doesn’t, Chiswick will kill him.”
“I’ll ask again,” Elliot said, pressing the barrel of the gun against the bastard’s other thigh and pulling the trigger. “How long have you been watching us?”
Panting and looking ill from the pain, the guy snarled, “All right, all right. A group of us were here all night, waiting for the dark-haired Runner to arrive with the other woman. But then we had to move up our schedule.”
“Why?” he grunted. “Who was shooting at you? Why did the others run?”
“Because they’re covering their own asses! Fuck, why do you think?”
He didn’t believe the asshole, but there were more important answers he needed. “Who are you working for?”
“I’ve already told you enough,” the guy forced through his gritted teeth, shaking from the draining combination of blood loss and pain.
Slipping the gun back into his waistband, Elliot let his claws slip free again, then reached down, digging his sharp-tipped thumb into the fresh bullet wound. As the male screamed, Elliot said, “You’re going to fucking talk, or you’re going to bleed out right here. It’s as simple as that.”
“Jesus, you just don’t get it, do you?” he panted, his black eyes wide, wild with fear. “You have no idea what he’s capable of. If he eats the bitches that displease him while they’re still kicking and screaming, what the hell do you think he’ll do to me if I betray him?”
“Nothing worse than what I’ll do to you,” Elliot promised, digging his thumb in a little deeper.
“Screw you!”
“Yeah?” he asked with a harsh laugh, leaning closer, letting the idiot see just how serious he was. “That’s my mate that you’re trying to get your hands on. You think I won’t make you wish you’d never been born if you don’t tell me what the hell is going on?” he seethed in a low, deadly voice.
The guy paled even more at Elliot’s admission, which wasn’t surprising. In their world, if there was one thing people knew, it was that you did not screw with a Lycan and his life-mate. Not if you wanted to live to tell about it.
“Look, m-man,” he stammered, “you probably know about as much as I do.”
“Where’s he keeping the other women?”
“I don’t know.”
“Bullshit!”
“Seriously, I don’t know! I’ve just heard stories about what he does to them!”
Gripping the front of the guy’s bloodstained jacket, Elliot yanked him closer. “If you don’t know, then how are the deliveries made?”
Shaking the sweat from his eyes, he said, “Chiswick specifies a location with coordinates. Usually some kind of forest or parkland. We leave the women tied to a tree, bound and gagged. Then we get the hell out.”
Christ, Elliot thought, more than ready to make this bastard pay for his part in this evil. “And how does this Chiswick contact you with the details?” he asked, dropping the guy back to the ground before checking his pockets for identification.
“Burner phones,” he wheezed. “New ones are always left at the drops.”
“And Chiswick?” Elliot grunted, finding nothing on the asshole. “What is he? Lycan?”
A hollow laugh burst from the guy’s chest. “Who the hell knows? No one I know has ever even seen him in person.”
“And what exactly are you?”
This time, the asshole gave him a strained smile. “Why don’t you ask those mercenaries I’ve heard the Silvercrest Runners are so friendly with? They’d be able to tell you.”
What the...? The mercenaries were a group of four men that Eli Drake, one of Elliot’s packmates, had worked with during his banishment from the pack. For the past eight years they’d had their own cabins at the far end of Bloodrunner Alley, the picturesque glade where Elliot and the others lived. And though th
e Runners and the mercs were close, there were still too many secrets that the mercs kept from their neighbors—the most important ones being where the hell they came from...and what exactly they were. Because even though they could take Lycan forms similar to the rest of them, it was clear that they were something a little bit more.
Needing to wrap this up so that he could get back to Skye, he asked his last question. “How many of you are there?”
The jackass smirked up at him. “More than you’d believe, Runner.”
Pressing his claws to the male’s throat, he said, “Try me.”
“Look, man. You can kill me, but it won’t make any difference. It won’t stop them from finding her. For every one of us you take out, Chiswick will send five more. He has our kind by the balls.” A slow, taunting smile curved the asshole’s mouth, his black eyes narrowed with hatred. “No matter what you do, you can’t save your little bitch—you can’t save any of them—because he’ll always win.”
“Not this time,” he said with soft menace, before sinking his claws deep into the guy’s throat, and then ripping them to the side, damn near decapitating him.
With the bastard’s blood dripping from his hand, Elliot had just moved back to his feet, stretching to his full height, when a strange, choked sound came from the direction of the cabin. As his stomach jolted up into his chest with an excruciating blast of fear, he turned his head...and found a pale-faced, wide-eyed Skye standing on the back porch, staring straight at him.
Oh...fuck. Just...fuck!
“Skye,” he groaned, panic nearly bringing him to his knees on the blood-covered ground.
Jesus, she wasn’t meant to learn like this! He’d planned on finding a way to ease her into it. To somehow make her feel safe when he turned her entire world on its head, and her perception of what was real and what was fiction became irrevocably altered. And now...now that chance was lost. She looked completely shattered. And terrified out of her goddamn mind.
“Elliot?” Her husky voice trembled, and she swayed on her feet as she rapidly blinked. “I was so worried about you, so I...I came outside. But I...I don’t understand. What’s happening?”
Feeling like someone had just reached into his chest and ripped out his heart, he quickly retracted his claws—but there wasn’t anything he could do about the blood that covered almost every inch of him. Keeping his movements careful and slow, so that he didn’t spook her, Elliot started toward her. “Just take a deep breath and try to stay calm. Everything’s going to be okay. I promise you.”
She didn’t scream as he reached the top of the porch. She didn’t have the chance—because she’d already fainted before another sound could leave her mouth.
“Shit,” he grunted, lurching forward and catching her just before she would have cracked her head on the wooden planks. Clutching her close to his chest, Elliot carried her inside and laid her down on the bed so that he could quickly change his clothes, text both Max and Mason, and gather their things. With their bags slung over his shoulder, he picked her up again, and carried her out front, to her car. As gently as possible, he placed her in the passenger-side seat and reached for the seat belt, securing it across her chest.
Cupping the side of her face in his shaking hand, he pressed a terrified kiss to her cold cheek, and quickly made his way around the front of the car, tossing the bags in the backseat before climbing in behind the wheel.
Then Elliot executed the only plan he had at the moment...
And got them the hell out of there.
Chapter 9
By the time Elliot reached the busy motel on the outskirts of a little town called Darner, nearly two hours had passed since he’d loaded Skye into her car and sped away from the safe house.
He’d spent every second of that time trying to stay calm, but it wasn’t easy. He’d known the instant she came out of her faint—but she didn’t try to talk to him. Hell, she didn’t even look at him. So he’d held back everything he needed to say, waiting for the time when he could look her right in the eye and give her the explanations she deserved. God only knew what the poor girl had to be thinking. After everything she’d been through in the past twenty-four hours, she no doubt needed a time-out, so he’d done the mature thing and let her be, even though his friggin’ nerves were twitching.
Amazingly, he no longer scented any fear on her, and for that he was so damn grateful. It’d have killed him if she’d been terrified when she’d woken up and found herself alone in the car with him. He knew better than to think that meant their next conversation was going to be an easy one—but at least she wasn’t going to be cowering in a corner of the room, waiting for him to take a goddamn bite out of her.
So, yeah, staying calm wasn’t exactly a walk in the park at the moment. He was worried about Skye...and about what he would say to Skye. And then there was the issue of her safety, which had just gone from precarious to downright deadly. If the assholes working for this Chiswick guy knew about the safe house, then the only real safety he could give her was going to come from numbers. Which meant he needed to get her sweet ass up to the Alley as soon as possible—and to do that, he was going to need help.
He’d parked near the back of the crowded parking lot, so that the car wouldn’t be easily spotted by anyone who might drive past looking for them. Not wanting Skye to get cold, he kept the engine running so that the heat would stay on. The temperature had dropped with the fall of darkness, and there’d been talk on the radio of a fresh snowstorm coming in. But he could see through the windows that the sky was still clear and dotted with stars, the moon hanging near the horizon like a glowing shard of silver.
Aware that Skye was listening to his every word, he pulled his phone out and called Max. Though he’d sent a brief text letting his partner know that the safe house had been compromised, he left a more detailed voice mail this time, explaining how things had gone down. Then he called Lev Slivkoff. He knew the mercs were wrapping up a job in western New York, not far from his and Skye’s current location, which meant they could get to them quickly.
The conversation with Slivkoff was brief and to the point, and for once the merc didn’t rib him about needing to get laid—a fact that Elliot appreciated, given the circumstances, and the woman huddled in the seat beside him, staring out the passenger-side window.
“Who were you talking to?” she asked, finally turning her head to look at him when he ended the call.
“A guy named Lev,” he rasped, pressing the hands he’d done his best to clean back in the bathroom at the cabin against his thighs, so he wouldn’t reach out and touch her. “He, uh, works with me and Max sometimes.”
Her brows slowly lifted with a mixture of curiosity and confusion. “Is he...like you?”
Reaching for the handle on his door, he gave her a pleading look as he said, “I know we need to talk, Skye. But not out here. Will you come inside with me, after I get us a room?”
She pulled her lower lip through her teeth, studying his face for a moment, before she let out a slow breath of air and nodded. With relief piercing through him so sharply it hurt, Elliot hurried into the motel’s office and secured them a room. Key in hand, he collected Skye from the car, along with their bags, and sent up a silent little prayer that the room wouldn’t be a total disaster as they climbed the rickety metal stairs to the second floor.
“I know it isn’t much,” he murmured, flicking the light on as they walked in, “but we needed to get off the road for the night.”
“It’s fine,” she said, glancing around the sparsely furnished, clearly dated, but surprisingly clean room.
Elliot shut the door, locked it and dropped their bags down on top of the dresser, before walking over to one of the bedside tables, where he took the gun from his waistband and set it down beside the lamp. When he turned to face Skye, she’d taken a seat in one of the chairs at the small table that was pushed up against the far wall, so he went and sat down across from her.
Rubbing his hand over his mout
h as he leaned back against the spindly chair, he struggled to put the most important words he would ever say in his entire life into some kind of order that would make sense, and not just sound like a bunch of panicked rambling. “So, yeah,” he murmured, keeping his worried gaze locked tight on hers. “I need to explain things to you, and the best way to do that, I think, is to just come out and say it. I’m a Lycan.”
Her brows knitted with confusion. “Lycan?”
“A werewolf, Skye. A shape-shifter.”
“Oh.” She blinked, then slowly licked her lips, and he could tell she was thinking about a million different things at once. He held his breath, damn near sick with fear over what she might say. And then she shocked the hell out of him by leaning back in her chair as a soft, husky laugh fell from her lips. “I’m sitting here and I know I should be freaking out,” she told him with a little shake of her head, “but after what I saw, I knew... I knew it had to be something like that.” Green gaze warming with an unexpected flash of humor, she added, “It’s actually kinda funny.”
“Funny?” he croaked, and this time he was the one who must have looked confused.
“I’ve somehow missed the Lycan term before, but I’ve read a lot about werewolves,” she explained, a pretty blush spreading across her face. “I actually have this thing about shifter romances.”
“No shit?” he breathed, so shocked he couldn’t do anything but sit there and gape at her like an idiot.
“Yeah.” She caught her lower lip in her teeth for a moment, and when she let it go her mouth twitched with a wry grin. “I just never thought there was a chance they were really...you know. Real.”
He frowned. “We’re not exactly portrayed in a very good light by Hollywood.”
“Yeah, well, those are horror movies. Romance books are completely different.”
He heaved out a stunned, giant breath of relief, unable to take his eyes off her as he rubbed the heel of his hand over the middle of his chest. “Christ, Skye. I don’t know what to say. I never in a million years thought you wouldn’t be freaking out right now. My heart almost stopped when you passed out on me.”
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