The Wolf's Mate Book 2: Linus & The Angel

by R. E. Butler

  The second loop caught on something and her heart threatened to burst in her chest and she cast a side glance down to her wrist and saw that it was simply twisted so it wouldn’t pull free without an opposite twist. Keeping her eyes dead ahead of her and watching as he grabbed Brenda by the hair on the top of her head and pulled her screeching in pain to her feet, Karly freed the last part of the knot. Her wrist moved freely now and she dropped her hand back to her stomach and watched in horror as he dragged Brenda bodily to the bed.

  He threw her next to Karly and held her immobile with his hand on her throat while he rummaged around on the floor for something. Metal rattled and clinked and he pulled out handcuffs and secured her wrists together, anchoring them high at the top of the headboard. Her eyes bulged and her face turned purple and Karly said, “Phoenix, please, she can’t breathe!”

  With an annoyed grunt, he released her neck and secured her ankles to the opposite corners of the bed so she was spread wide open. Karly had to pull her legs up to make room for her. She looked away the instant she saw dried blood on her thighs and fought crying. She steeled herself against the fear and sorrow and painful finality that came to her, and looked at the front door. The only way out of the cabin. Phoenix had made the mistake of not locking the door, clearly trusting that she would be unable to free herself.

  “Do you want to use the bathroom before we get started?” Phoenix asked her. She panicked for an instant, knowing he’d see that she had undone the knot.

  She spoke without thinking, glad that some part of her brain was on autopilot. “I’m good, sw-sweetie. A full bladder during sex makes the orgasms much better.”

  His eyes widened and he grinned, “So my sweet Lynnie has learned some new tricks?”

  “It sounds like you have, too.” She smiled, forcing the shakiness from her voice.

  “Okay, brand first and then the human and then we’ll see where the night takes us.” He leaned over Brenda and patted her cheek, “You’ll be dead by dawn, bitch. No one plays my woman for a fool or uses me like you tried to.”

  Brenda whimpered, tears staining her dirty face and her wild look was both apologetic and frantic. Phoenix smiled at her and then turned and walked to the fireplace. The rope slipped free with a twist of her hand. The moment he was as far away from the door as possible and distracted, she raced towards the front door. Twisting the doorknob, she wrenched the door open and burst through to the porch. She heard Phoenix’s surprised shout but was already off the porch and running. Phoenix yelled at her, just a few steps behind her as she raced out into the dark woods.

  Fear like something alive bit at the back of her neck like rabid dogs as she ran for her life, blindly, not sure where she was going or how long she could run without shoes. The woods were dark; the moon a bare sliver. Branches slapped at her as she ran. Phoenix yelled for her, calling her name amongst threats of killing her if she didn’t come back to him immediately and promises of not punishing her for running away.

  “Lynnie, Lynnie. Don’t be like this.” He said with a sweet, loud voice.

  Her pulse thundered in her ears and she pushed herself faster. If she stopped running, she was as good as dead.

  “You’ll be sorry you ran, little girl.” His voice was a growl now, angry and demanding.

  Linus, Linus! I need you, please!

  Darting through trees she could barely see, Phoenix taunted, “I like a good chase, Lynnie, but we’ve got work to do. Come back to me now and I’ll forget you tried to leave me again.”

  She stumbled through a clearing and her foot caught on an above ground root and she tumbled, smashing shoulder first into a thick tree. She cried out at the sharp, separate pains as she fell forward. Tears spilled from her eyes as she caught herself with her good hand on the ground and rolled to her butt. She backed against a large tree and pressed herself into the shadows even though she knew it wouldn’t matter. Phoenix would find her and kill her now. Her ankle throbbed and her shoulder hurt. Even in the midst of the pain, she wasn’t sorry for herself but for Linus.

  She wished she could leave a note for her sweet mate, to tell him how much he meant to her, how much she loved him and how sorry she was that she had let him down. She sobbed loudly, unable to stop herself, as dead branches crackled around her and a low, deep growl rumbled in the night air.

  This was how her life was going to end.

  Chapter 14

  He felt her fear like a tangible thing, a creature twisting and writhing in his belly as he drove. Their engines cut the quiet night like chainsaws, like birds of prey with growls of rage, poised to attack. He was running on pure instinct, talking directly to the beast part of himself so they could find their mate and bring her home safe. His wolf was so in tune with his mate that he could feel her on the air, like a compass needle pointing to north.

  The road ended abruptly into woods and he turned off the bike and got off, running his hands through his hair and closing his eyes. He let his beast loose further, scenting the air for her uniquely sweet scent, but couldn’t smell her. He could feel her though. She was just too far for scent.

  “Which way?” Jason asked, coming to stand next to him. Linus glanced at his alpha and friend. His grandfather had been wrong. When Linus called Jason in a panic, he was on his way within minutes, the pack at his back. The pack had met up with them as they’d headed southwest. Michael had ridden Linus’ bike up so Linus could use the air to try to scent for her. They were near the border of Kentucky, south of Cincinnati.

  Without opening his eyes, he started walking, taking a step to the left and entering the woods. “This way.”

  He walked slowly at first, going with his wolf, listening to the sounds of the forest and hoping for a sound or sign that someone had brought his mate through here. With his heightened senses, he could see almost as clear as if it were daytime. Jason instructed several wolves to shift and scout ahead. Bo said, “Hey, I’m looking at an aerial map of the area here, and there’s a cabin about a mile this direction.”

  Bo was pointing as he looked down at his smart phone. When he looked up at Linus, there was a raw seriousness to his friend’s face that he hadn’t ever seen before. Linus had bare seconds to appreciate his friends and pack mates. They’d come through for him in ways that he’d never expected but would be eternally grateful for.

  “Linus?” Jason asked, pulling him to a stop.

  “This is the way I feel her, so maybe he took her there, or maybe they passed by. It’s worth a try.”

  Knowing there was at least something in the middle of the damn woods, he started at a jog and kept his wolf to the forefront of his brain. A half mile later, he felt a sudden shiver of fear lodge in his gut. Karly!

  With a growl, he started to run at the exact moment that the scouts started to howl that they were on the trail of something. His friends, his pack, ran with him, Jason barking orders and preparing them for anything. He didn’t want to think what Karly had suffered these hours she’d been gone. He was desperate to hold her. To see that she was okay.

  They all stopped short in a clearing as they came upon the most shocking thing he’d ever seen. A man with white-blonde hair stood just outside a circle of wolves where Karly leaned against a tree holding her shoulder at an odd angle. These were no werewolves, they were real wolves. And from the looks of them, they were defending her!

  An entire pack of over two dozen wolves circled her tightly, their faces towards the man that Linus knew was Phoenix. Growls seeped from their bared fangs that glistened like daggers in the bare moonlight. Jaws snapped with short, warning barks. More wolves came into the clearing, spilling out of the woods like they were being called to this place, the anger from the natural wolves as heavy on the air as Karly’s fear.

  Linus looked at Karly. “Baby?”

  She slowly turned her gaze to him and her face was wet with tears and her eyes were glossy with pain. She breathed his name and it hitched in the middle, “Li-nus”.

  Phoenix spoke, “
She’s mine. I’ll come back for her and eventually I’ll get her and disappear forever where you will never find us. You can’t protect her forever.” He took a step back and something in his posture told Linus he was going to shift.

  “She is my mate,” Linus stepped forward through the ring of natural wolves towards Phoenix. “She is mine and I will not let you have her. This ends tonight.”

  While they talked, the natural wolves had split into two groups and were now surrounding Phoenix and corralling him. They snapped at him like rabid beasts. His heart was racing so fast that his fear was a tangible thing on the air. His bravado slipped and fear shone through his features.

  Behind the natural wolves, his pack mates who had shifted were watching, ready to stop him from leaving, and the rest of his pack in their human forms were standing by to help. Pride and courage flittered through him as he took another step forward. This was just one man. One pathetic excuse for a wolf that kidnapped an innocent woman over a childhood crush.

  Linus’ beast simmered under the surface. His human side wanted to go to Karly immediately, but his wolf wanted justice for its mate. He felt his eyes bleed to wolf amber as he let the beast loose further. Phoenix’s eyes flashed as Linus lunged at him. He swiveled to bolt, but Linus’ hands had gone to claws and they wrapped around his throat and slammed him to the ground before he could move or shift. Thick, black claws sprouted from Linus’ fingertips and dug into the sides of Phoenix’s neck. Blood welled around his claws as his human and wolf sides grew together in strength and rage. His fangs burst through his gums and his spine tickled in the way it would before he shifted but it hovered there, beast and man combined.

  “She. Is. Mine!” He howled, picking Phoenix up by the throat and slamming him back to the ground. Phoenix’s hands clawed at his arms as his face turned from red to purple and his claws dug further into his neck. His body thrashed underneath Linus’, but merged with his beast as he was, Linus was too strong for Phoenix to overpower.

  His human side wanted to break every bone in his body, one by one. His wolf wanted to spill his blood in the most violent way. This was not about revenge but about justice. And pack justice was swift and without suffering at the end. He would make Karly safe with Phoenix gone from their lives forever.

  He let his beast take over further and with a forceful twist, he snapped Phoenix’s neck and ended the shadow he’d cast on his mate.

  He stood up slowly and raised his head to the sky and howled for the kill. His packmates – human and wolf – howled and the natural wolves joined in. Their chorus of a life taken for justice echoed through the woods. Stepping over the dead man’s body, Linus met Karly’s eyes. There was no fear there, no reproach for the violence she’d just seen, just love that shone brightly through her tears. He stumbled through the ring of wolves protecting her.

  His claws and fangs receded with his beast and the knowledge that she was safe now. He knelt beside her, smoothing her hair from her face. He scented over her and didn’t smell blood, but from the way she was holding her shoulder, he could tell it was dislocated. “We need to get you to a hospital, baby. Do you think you can walk?”

  She shook her head and made a gesture with her free hand towards her foot. Lifting the edge of her dirty jeans, he could see her ankle was swollen. “Okay, baby, I’m going to pick you up as carefully as I can.”

  He heard the sound of a truck coming near and knew that one of the wolves had gone back to get a vehicle so he didn’t have to carry her far. She nodded and squeezed her eyes tightly shut when he slid his arms around her. As he stood, she whimpered through clenched teeth.

  “We can burn him, like we did for the male that hurt Cades.” Jason offered, as he turned around. They never said the name of that bastard that had kidnapped their alpha female. Phoenix’s name would soon be remembered in the same way. A male that had hurt Linus' mate and died for it.

  Michael walked over to them and made a gesture towards the body. “I don’t think that will be necessary,”

  The natural wolves gathered around the body and with a coordinated snarl, began to rip him apart. His beast rumbled a growl of approval. That’s what you do with crazy wolves who kidnap women. “Don’t look, baby,” he whispered, and walked past the sight.

  Bo was waiting with his pick up. Jason and Michael walked on either side of him. He’d never felt more blessed in his life then at that moment. His sweetheart was safe and his pack had supported him to the very end.

  Michael said, “I’ll drive your bike back to your house and pick up your truck and drive it to the hospital so you can use it if you need it.”

  “Thanks, Michael.”

  “I’ll call your mom and grandparents, too. And let the rest of the pack know.” Michael turned and jogged away. Jason opened the truck door for him.

  “Brenda.” Karly said with a rough voice, barely above a whisper.

  “What about her?” Linus asked in surprise as he sat down in the truck and carefully positioned his mate on his lap.

  “She’s…she’s in the cabin.”

  “What?” Jason asked in shock. “Brenda. You’re ex-wife Brenda?”

  Karly only nodded and took in a quiet slow breath and seemed to hover at the edge of unconsciousness.

  “I’ll handle it. You get your mate to the hospital and I’ll check in with you later.”

  “Jason.” Linus said. He turned back. “Thank you.”

  Jason nodded. “She’s your mate, Linus. That means she’s part of the pack and under the protection of all of us. I told you that one day I’d thank you for standing by me with Cades. It was my honor to help you bring her home.”

  Linus pulled the door carefully shut and Jason slapped the hood and walked towards the cabin, barking orders for a few others to join him. Bo used his GPS to find the nearest hospital which was in Newport, twenty-five minutes away and texted the address to the pack so they could let his family know where they were going.

  Karly was conscious but quiet, making little gasps of pain she tried to hide every time Bo pressed on the brakes or turned a corner or a bump appeared in the road. He wanted to ask her a thousand questions but he kept them to himself and simply held her and whispered comforting things. That he loved her and was so sorry he had let her down.

  It was nearly midnight when they got to the hospital. Karly had been away from him for over twelve hours. Frantic to know what had happened to her but afraid to push her too fast, he put her on a gurney in the emergency room that was set between other beds in a long line. No one was on either side of her, but the large emergency room was not empty by any stretch.

  A handful of doctors and nurses came to check Karly over. She hadn’t said a word since she mentioned Brenda so Linus answered what questions he could. He told the story to the best of his ability while emitting a few truths. She’d been kidnapped by her deranged ex who had also kidnapped Brenda. Karly managed to escape and got injured. And the largest nod to the lie to keep them all safe was that when they found her, wolves had attacked her ex and killed him. The doctors asked why wolves would attack and his suggestion was that it was some kind of protective instinct for them or that her ex had done something threatening to them.

  With a rip of the curtain to cover the small area around the bed, Linus watched from the side as two nurses cut off her clothes and put her good arm through a gown to cover her, placing a light blanket across her legs. Her ankle was purple and swollen. She was taken to x-ray and he took the opportunity to go out to make a call and found Jason in the waiting room.

  When Jason told him that they had found Brenda severely beaten and chained up to a bed, Linus couldn’t have been more shocked. Nearly hysterical with relief, she had babbled the entire trip to the hospital about how sorry she was and what had happened.

  “She’s the one that contacted Phoenix. She apparently told him how to find Karly so that she could, you know, get her out of the way and get back with you.” Jason said.

  His jaw dropped to the floo
r. “Are you fucking kidding me?”

  Shaking his head, Jason pulled him out of the hospital and to the side of the building. “Michael asked her what she meant, and she told him that she wanted to get back together with you and so she used her friend at the police department to look Karly up. She saw her license plate on her little sports car. She knew there was a restraining order on Phoenix but she sent him a letter anyway, saying that Karly was about to get married to a werewolf and wouldn’t he like to come to town and put a stop to it. However the letter got to him from his last known address I don’t know, but she told him where my house was and that Karly would be there on the full moon without much protection.”

  “Fuck.”

  “Yeah.”

  They stood in silence for several minutes. “I should, ah, go see if Karly’s back from x-ray yet.”

  “She going to be okay?”

  “Yeah. Her shoulder is dislocated and something is wrong with her ankle. Nothing permanent.”

  “Good. I’ll give your mom a call. They’re on the way up here and your bags are still in your truck, too. Do you have her parents’ number? I can call them, too and give them an update.”

  “Thanks, man. For everything.” He read off the number from his cell for her mother’s phone, glad Jason was so on top of things.

  Walking back to the where her bed had been, Linus waited in the empty area and thought over the shocking news. What had possessed Brenda to do something so dangerous and foolish? Had she so little concern for the life of another that she would willingly send an innocent woman back into the arms of her attacker? Even as he was glad that she hadn’t gotten off scot-free, he was sorry that she’d been hurt.

  The rhythmic creak of wheels echoed just before they brought her back into the room. The curtain was closed and one doctor and one intern examined her shoulder. Linus was going to say her name and try to get a reaction out of her because she looked so lost and broken, but the doctor said, “This is going to hurt,” and with the intern holding her, the doctor jerked her arm back into joint. She screamed in pain and passed out, and the young intern laid her gently back on the bed. Linus had to bite his cheek to keep from flashing his fangs and slaughtering the two men. It was hard to tell his beast that she’d needed to be hurt to be healed. He didn’t much care for it himself.