Prowl (Winter Pass Wolves Book 3)

by Vivian Wood

  “Hey,” he said, snagging her wrist when she started to get up. “I need you to promise me something.”

  Avery gave him a guilty look, making his stomach sink further.

  “Okay,” she whispered.

  “Please, please be careful. Stick to the plan, okay?”

  “Sure,” she said, blinking a few times.

  “I mean it, A. I just found you again. I don’t know that I can stand to lose you now. It would end me,” Chase said, brushing a stray hair back from her cheek and watching her closely.

  “Okay,” Avery said again.

  “Promise?” he asked, scanning her face. Her expression was shuttered, unreadable.

  “Of course,” Avery said, kissing his cheek. She scrambled out of bed and started to dress, leaving Chase more worried than ever.

  Avery was going to do something heroic and stupid, he was dead certain of it. Blowing out a breath, Chase climbed out of bed. He’d just have to watch her every moment he could, try to protect her.

  She was his mate. What else could he do?

  Chapter Seven

  When the explosion lit the sky, shaking the ground under her feet as it leveled the armory building at the far corner of the Compound, Avery’s hands began to shake. She was standing a few hundred yards from the Compound’s rear entrance, positioned to access the back gate and begin taking down the black site.

  Though this moment should feel like nothing but freedom, the culmination of several years’ planning and hoping, a small part of her flinched at watching the place she’d called home break into complete chaos.

  Chase tapped her arm, giving her a questioning glance. Avery took a deep breath and nodded, lifting her tranquilizer gun in one hand and her firearm in the other. Thank god she’d spent so much time on the firing range during her Hunter training, or this would all be very difficult.

  Part of her wished it wasn’t quite so easy.

  Chase led her over to the back entrance, where she used her fingerprint and retinal scan to open the gate. It slid open with a mechanical clank, and they were in.

  She beckoned to Chase to let her take point, making a beeline for the back of the black site and slinking around the corner to watch the bunker’s only entrance. Sure enough, right on time the door opened to produce half a dozen Hunters, all focused on the explosion across the Compound.

  Chase and Avery mowed them down in quick succession, hitting each with a heavy tranquilizer dart that dropped them where they stood. Avery checked her watch, licking her lips as she moved toward the door.

  She waited for a few seconds, trying to get the timing just right. Then she used her fingerprint on the door lock, punching in a long numeric access code when prompted. Again, too easy. The door slid open just as all the lights on the Compound went down, sparks and smoke rising from the generators at the far right of Avery’s field of vision.

  “Two inside,” she whispered to Chase, who nodded. “Be careful.”

  He gave her a tight smile and headed inside, leaving Avery to move to the Hunter command center. She swapped her weapons as she moved stealthily toward the War Room, knowing that the more elite soldiers would be guarding her uncle. No room for mistakes now, so the tranquilizer gun was just a backup.

  None of the locks were engaged when she breached the command center. She tranqued three secretaries and shot two guards, and then her path to the War Room was mercifully clear. She tossed the now-empty tranq gun aside as she braced herself to open the final door, knowing who she’d face inside.

  She swung the door open and entered with her gun leveled straight ahead. Her uncle sat before a bank of darkened computer screens, two advisers standing guard behind him. Avery’s entrance drew his attention, and he swiveled in his chair. A manic grin lit his face, chilling her to the bone.

  “Avery! How delightful. Kind of you to join us,” her uncle said, raising a hand to still his two guard dogs when they started to raise their weapons. “I can’t say that I’m surprised, you little traitor.”

  Avery sneered at him, something dark and ugly rising within her.

  “You brought us here, uncle. You made me the thing I was raised to hate, after all.”

  “From what I understand, you were sleeping with the beasts before you were ever turned,” he said, laughing at Avery’s look of shock. “Yes, we know all about your little boyfriend, Avery. I thought you’d left him behind, come back to the fold, but today’s events show your true colors.”

  “You son of a bitch!” she hissed.

  Her uncle raised his hands, questioning.

  “What are you going to do, shoot your own uncle?”

  Avery took the safety off the gun and pointed it straight at his heart.

  “That’s exactly what I’m going to do,” she told him. “This is for my parents.”

  Before she could pull the trigger, a guard stepped in the other door, holding a gun to Chase’s neck.

  “I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” her uncle sighed. “Speaking of the dog you fucked…”

  Chase looked calm, which told Avery that he’d freed the captives in the black site. He made eye contact, and seemed to be trying to tell her something, maybe that he was going to cause a distraction, but it wasn’t meant to be.

  Avery gave a little shake of her head, then felt a blot of pain in her ribs as one of her uncle’s guards shot her with a tranquilizer gun. She saw Chase get the same treatment, causing her to drop her gun and try to move toward him.

  Too late… she sunk into black nothingness.

  Chapter Eight

  Chase’s ribs ached. He swum up out of unconsciousness, a headache pulsing behind his eyes, countless twinges of pain firing in his body. Without opening his eyes, he knew he’d been beaten very badly while he was knocked out.

  He yanked at his hands, then realized he was strung up by the wrists from the ceiling, the line taut enough to keep him up on his feet. It was an unpleasant sensation, and one he’d felt before back in the Marines, caught by and held by hostile forces in Syria.

  Shaking that thought off, Chase looked around. His heart lurched when he saw Avery right next to him, suspended by her own chain. She was unconscious and slumped over, her long hair streaming down to cover her face. A single glance at her arms showed that one of her shoulders was out of joint, something that was going to be incredibly painful any moment now when she woke up.

  As if on cue, she moaned, then muttered a curse and straightened, looking up at her chains just as Chase had done a moment before.

  “Hey,” Chase said quietly, drawing her gaze.

  “Fuck,” Avery said when she tried to move her shoulder. “My arm… oh, my ribs, too.”

  “Someone kicked the shit out of both of us before they strung us up,” Chase said, wincing when he noticed a black eye blooming on the right side of Avery’s face. Rage swelled in his heart, his wolf clawing and pacing, desperate for release so that he could tend to their mate.

  Soon, he promised his wolf.

  “Are you okay?” Avery asked, biting her lip. Chase could tell that she was holding back tears, trying to be strong. Not only was she hurt, but what he assumed must be her nightmare scenario was playing out now, confirming all her worst fears.

  After he’d promised her this wouldn’t happen…

  “I’m going to kill him,” Chase said, not wasting any words. “I want to see the light leave his eyes.”

  Avery gave him a grim nod.

  “I wish I wasn’t here, obviously, but this is what I expected. We’re just four people going up against the Hunters… Werewolves or no, this is how I saw myself… ending.”

  Chase went quiet for a beat.

  “Were you going to say goodbye?” he asked.

  “What?”

  “When you realized that walking in to confront your uncle alone was a suicide mission, did you plan to tell me goodbye? Knowing what you are to me, what I am to you… I want to know if you were going to say the words to me.”

  Avery’s bro
w knitted.

  “Chase…” she sighed. “I didn’t just pop back up in your life because you called me. I’ve followed you from a distance, even after I ran you off. I knew you’d settled in Winter Pass, I knew your friends were here and that they were wolves. I waited until you went into town and snuck around, trying to watch you without getting caught. You’ve been with me for longer than you know…” A tear ran down her cheek. “How could I say that to you, when I just got what I’ve always wanted?”

  “Why didn’t you approach me?” Chase asked, floored.

  “I was broken, Chase. I pushed you away because you were a wolf, then I became one. Not even that, a wolf who can’t shift, who spends the whole full moon in terrible pain and misery. Seeing you soothed me, but… I didn’t want you to know how low I’d fallen.”

  Chase’s heart thrummed in his chest, the words spilling from his lips, unbidden but not regretted.

  “No matter what happens, Avery, I need you to know that I fucking love you. Against my better judgment, against my wishes, against even my self-interest… I’ve loved you since the first kiss.”

  Avery was genuinely crying now, her emotional pain as evident as her physical pain.

  “If they hadn’t turned me… I was going to run away with you, Chase. Even before my wolf found yours, I think I knew… I knew I loved you.”

  Chase tugged at his chains again, a growl ripping from his throat.

  “Fuck, I wish I could hold you right now,” he said, staring Avery down until she shivered.

  Chase pulled his gaze from her and looked upward, examining his bindings. The chains were thick and heavy, but the rafter above didn’t look that sturdy. Maybe…

  Footsteps sounded in the hallway, and Chase knew the moment of reckoning was drawing near. There was no way in hell that they were going to touch his mate, his love.

  The cell door creaked open, three men stepping inside. From his posh garments and the way Avery glared at him, Chase identified the oldest of the three as her uncle.

  “You’re awake!” her uncle said, grinning. “Unchain her.”

  One of the guards trained a gun at Chase while the other unchained Avery. When she was released, she cried out, her left arm slumping to her side uselessly. He saw her fingers move, knew she’d recover, but the pain on her face made him see red.

  “On your knees,” her uncle commanded.

  “Don’t touch her,” Chase snarled at the guard who reached out to push Avery down. “I’ll rip you to pieces, and I’ll enjoy it.”

  “Shut up, dog,” Avery’s uncle said, unholstering his revolver and pointing it straight at Chase’s chest. “Avery, it’s really too bad you chose this for yourself. The breeding program would have been a much kinder life if you hadn’t rebelled and tried to take us down.”

  Chase’s mind flitted outward for a moment as he wondered at the man’s words, wondered if somehow the Hunters had won, the Compound was still standing, Pax and Harlan and Penny and Brooke in danger or worse…

  The cocking of the revolver brought him back to the present.

  “Any last words?” the Hunter asked, a cruel grin on his lips.

  “Yeah,” Chase said. “You should have built these bunkers a little better.”

  With a mighty pull, Chase yanked his bindings clear through the rafter, bringing heavy pieces of wood crashing down around them all. One of the guards went down, Avery sprawled to the side, and her uncle started backing away…

  But it was much too late now. The man fired and clipped the top of Chase’s shoulder, but Chase barely noticed the pain, the feeling of blood flowing. He was shifting, ripping his hands from the chains, giving over to his wolf.

  Protect.

  This time when his mind went dark, Chase didn’t have the slightest ounce of fear. There would be bloodshed all right, but the wolf would protect the only thing that mattered in their life.

  Avery would live.

  Chapter Nine

  Chase peeled his eyes open, licking his dry lips. It took him a moment to focus his vision, but his sister’s delighted squeal rang in his ears as he sat up in his bed. Brooke flung her arms around him, making him grit his teeth at the pain in his left arm and ribs, a thousand daggers arcing through his whole body.

  “Don’t you ever, ever scare me like that again, asshole,” Brooke whispered into his ear. “Or I’ll kill you myself.”

  “Avery?” he croaked in response, hugging her back with his good arm.

  Brooke snorted and pulled back.

  “It’s the first time she’s even dared to take a shower in a couple of days,” Brooke said. “I’m sure she’ll be back shortly—”

  Chase wasn’t listening to a single word, because Avery had appeared in the doorway of his bedroom. Her hair fell in damp waves, her cheeks flushed from the warmth of the shower. She wore simple cotton pajamas, probably Penny’s by the look of them, but Chase had never welcomed a sight more in all his days.

  Brooke turned to see Avery standing there, and rose with a hefty sigh.

  “Fiiiiiine,” Brooke said. “I’m sure Pax will be more interested in my company anyway.”

  Chase snagged Brooke’s hand and tugged her down, kissing her cheek.

  “Later,” he promised, but already his eyes were back on Avery.

  “Are Pax and I this gross?” Brooke asked Avery on her way out.

  Avery just shrugged, making a beeline for Chase. She let out a stifled sob as she collapsed on the bed next to him. Chase gathered her in his arms, burying his nose in her clean, damp hair. He held her silently for several long moments, just dragging in her delicate feminine scent and trying to believe that it was real, that they’d taken down the Hunters and lived.

  That they could be together now, nothing between them and the rest of their lives.

  “I thought—” Avery said, her voice breaking.

  “I know,” Chase said, kissing the tender spot at the corner of her jaw. “Me too, honey. Me too.”

  She wound up her hand and smacked his chest, pulling back and scrunching up her face.

  “That hurt,” Chase groused.

  “Good! You did not follow the plan! You almost got killed!”

  “Speak for yourself. If I recall correctly, you were supposed to wait until Harlan tear gassed the War Room to take down your uncle. But noooooo, you had to almost get us both killed.”

  “You weren’t supposed to get captured!” Avery spat back. “Aren’t Marines like basically ninjas or something?”

  “I got caught on purpose,” Chase said with a grin that he knew would only frustrate her further. “How else was I supposed to swoop in and save your ass?”

  “You— I—” Avery stuttered, looking furious.

  “You’re welcome,” Chase said, wincing when she slapped his chest again. “Easy on the broken ribs, honey.”

  Avery’s instantly apologetic expression made him chuckle. Avery mellowed after that, her anger abated.

  “God, I really thought you were dead,” she sighed, leaning her head on his shoulder.

  “Me too, kind of. It hurt bad enough,” he said, glancing over at his other shoulder. It was bandaged up now, but the spot where the bullet grazed him hurt like nothing else he could remember.

  “I want the same promise as Brooke,” Avery said, taking his hand and squeezing his fingers. “Promise me that you’ll never, ever do something like that again.”

  “You first,” Chase challenged, arching a brow.

  “Gladly!” Avery said. “I hope we are boring for the rest of our lives! Nothing but jogs in the woods and Netflix and bran muffins for us from here on out.”

  Chase had to laugh at that, despite his busted ribs.

  “Fine by me,” he said. “I’m not having any more adventures for a while.”

  “I know what you mean,” Avery mused. “I don’t even know where to start, or how to feel… the fact that it’s all done with is overwhelming.”

  “I guess you better get used to it, because I’m not le
tting you go anytime soon. We’re in it for the long haul now, A.”

  Avery glanced up at him with a grin.

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. You and me forever. That’s a promise.”

  Chase held Avery close, kissing the top of her head and sighing with contentment. This feeling right here, this must be what happened when you got everything you’d ever wanted.

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