Uh oh. Good thing my wolf was still absent and my human brain wasn’t required to obey that second command.
I dodged behind a broad pine trunk as the first bullet ricocheted toward me. The next missile clipped the end of my tail as my human reflexes didn’t quite manage to dodge in time.
But then I was diving into the midst of a patch of greenbriers, slithering down a ravine, and darting deeper into the forest.
The outpack males’ voices dimmed behind me. I’d eluded pursuit.
Now, to see if I could keep Quill and his compatriots from giving up the hunt and turning their attention to the other prisoners for eight long, grueling hours.
AS SOON AS I MUSTERED a little breathing room, those dratted Tuesday panties were the first thing to go. I rubbed up against a rough-barked chestnut oak until the underwear slid down off my lupine hips and fell with a damp splat onto the ground at my feet.
Wrinkling my upper lip, I wished I could afford to simply dig a little hole and bury the offending garment right there. But, instead, I picked the fabric up in my mouth and trotted off. I had a plan.
As I’d hoped, my supposed alpha powers turned me into me a prize worth hunting despite the pouring rain. Nearly immediately, in fact, Quill had called in the third SSS member to join him and his partner in their search of the dripping woods, leaving Lia and Savannah alone in the momentary safety of their locked room. In other words, my plan had thus far been successful.
The goal now was to keep all three outpack males so busy searching that they didn’t have any leisure in which to molest the girls. To that end, I’d dodged into sight several times, leaving a paw print or purposefully broken twig here and there to signal my progress. It was a difficult game—always staying ahead of my potential captors without letting them lose hope that they’d eventually be able to find me.
But I needed a break. My stomach was rumbling and my brain was getting a little mushy from lack of calories. Plus, despite hours spent comatose within my prison cell, my eyelids were now heavy and begging a dose of REM sleep.
Let me lead, my wolf whispered. Rather than soothing her with platitudes the way I would have in the past, I nodded our shared head. Yes, that was the perfect solution—for my human brain to nap within our shared body while the wolf took command for half an hour or so.
But the wolf didn’t boast the same complicated human logic that I found easy to harness. So I wanted to set her up with a good situation before I took a break.
Soon, I promised, speeding up from a walk into a trot. One of my paws was cracked and already becoming infected after being dragged through miles of mud, but I ignored the pain and instead ran forward until I caught sight of a handy snag.
Riiip. The inch-wide shred of pantie that remained behind on the protruding branch stub was just large enough to be noticeable without using up too much of my stash of fabric. And, to my delight, I saw that raindrops were already dragging dirt particles out of the cloth, leaving a whitish color behind.
Perfect. Even Quill’s brain-dead sidekick can’t miss that, I noted. Then I turned right, wriggling under a deadfall to make the trail more difficult to follow before trotting straight up the nearest hillside.
Another snag, another pantie scrap, another elusive twist in my trail to keep the SSS members scratching their heads while thinking they were edging ever closer to their prey. Then, finally, when the last scrap of underwear was tossed atop a nearby bush, I gave my wolf the reins.
Wake me if you need me, I requested. And, finally, I fell sound asleep.
THE CRUNCH OF BREAKING bones roused me from what turned out to be a surprisingly effective nap. The sound was obviously not caused by big, worrisome wolf or human bones. Instead, tasty, little rodent bones splintered beneath our sharp lupine teeth.
My animal half had hunted down a snack.
Resourceful wolf, I praised her. But then my human brain rose to look out of our shared eyes, and I had the impulse to take back every word of commendation...plus the hours of slumber that had preceded them. Once again, I’d trusted the wrong partner and let down my pack in the process.
While I’d been sleeping, the rainy day had dimmed into a clear but damp evening. And my wolf had hidden our shared body beneath a rhododendron bush at the edge of a clearing, so I didn’t have to worry about being noticed. No, the issue wasn’t inability to take in the scene or worry over my own safety...it was the gut-wrenching sight slowly coming into focus before us.
Altars. I remembered one of the barflies mentioning that word on Tuesday evening and wondered now how I hadn’t realized that yesterday’s farm field was the wrong place entirely for an SSS ritual. Because there had been no sacrificial paraphernalia present there...unlike in our current location, where two huge stones caught the glow of the rising moon on their polished surfaces.
Surfaces that gleamed dark with previous rounds of spilled blood. Surfaces on which two small female figures were even now being bound into place.
Why didn’t you wake me earlier? I demanded of the wolf. It was almost too late already. The SSS members must have given up on their hunt and returned to plan A some time ago, figuring two halfies in the hand were better than one in the bush.
I should’ve been present to dog their footsteps from prison cell to altar.
Maybe there would have been an opportunity to break the girls free. Maybe we could have all escaped already if my animal half hadn’t been more interested in rodent snacks than in the safety of our clan.
No chance to free them, my wolf replied simply. Images flashed through our shared mind. Guns, an alert Quill, two other males watching his back. Then, she finished: You needed rest and food. Now you can save our friends.
The animal brain wasn’t the best at expressing herself, but I could feel her emotions flowing through our shared body. She trusted me to come through with a clever plot to save the day. She figured that after a nap and a field mouse, I’d be capable of springing Lia and Savannah from their sacrificial altars, no sweat.
The wolf had so much faith in me. But I didn’t see how I could live up to her expectations. Not when I was naked and defenseless and faced with three armed men.
Speak of the devil. While I’d wavered, Quill decided to get the ball rolling by calling into the half-light: “I know you’re out there, Fen. And I’m willing to offer you a deal. Surrender yourself and we’ll let these kids go.”
He paused, his honey-smooth voice turning ominous as he pulled a knife out of a sheath that hung from his belt. The blade was long and wicked, with a hook at one end perfect for gutting a deer...or a girl.
Savannah moaned in despair, but Lia kept her lips pressed close together as Quill’s knife rose seemingly of its own volition to settle in the soft spot at the base of her neck. “So what will it be, Fen?” my once-pack-mate demanded. “Them...or you?”
Chapter 27
I had no plan. Just a hope and a promise—a hope that I’d think of something on the fly and a promise to Lia that I wouldn’t let the SSS harm another hair on her head. The combination would have to be enough.
Are we able to shift? I asked my wolf. I wasn’t sure how much time had passed in wolf body since our last transformation, but I was optimistic that my longer-than-intended nap plus the wolf’s snack might have been enough to recharge the relevant muscles. I guess my wolf was smart to let me rest after all, I decided.
Rather than remarking upon my change of heart, the animal obediently relaxed her control over our furry body. And I responded by pushing against the inside of her skin, trying to force my way out.
Slowly, ever so slowly, we lost fur and regained thumbs. The transformation was neither fast nor elegant, and I wound up kneeling on the wet leaves of the forest floor rather than standing on two feet. But it had worked.
“Fen.” Quill’s tone was filled with warning now as he called out a second time into the slowly darkening forest. “I’m losing patience.”
I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. It wasn’t as i
f I was dilly-dallying around out here. I was simply trying to ensure that when I walked into the cowboy shifter’s trap—because of course his proposed exchange was actually a trap—that I had every possible factor lined up in my favor.
To that end, I spun in a frantic circle, eyes peeled in hopes a weapon might miraculously appear. What I wouldn’t give for the sword I’d left behind in the clan vehicle the day before and that I’d used in virtual form only hours earlier. Or for a gun like the one I’d noticed bulging beneath the cowboy shifter’s clean, dry shirt when I’d peered out between rhododendron leaves with lupine eyes.
Heck, I’d even take a plastic spoon at this point, I thought, quirking up one side of my mouth as I laughed at my own helplessness. Hunter had been worried I wouldn’t be able to go in for the killing blow when the time was right. But neither one of us had envisioned this scenario—me walking up to three enemy shifters naked and entirely unarmed.
Well, not quite entirely unarmed. The pine tree a few paces behind me had cut off all nutrient flow to its lower limbs when the plant grew so tall that new branches shaded out the first attempts. Some of the resulting dead wood was too spindly to do much good. Other possibilities were too high above my head to reach. But one tantalizing branchlet was about two inches thick and looked both tough and sturdy. I suspected the limb would break to create a sharp, jagged point if I grabbed the far end and yanked.
Of course, the sound of breaking wood would also alert my enemies that I was nearby. But I didn’t think I currently had the element of surprise on my side anyway. Quill knew me well enough to assume that I wouldn’t save my own skin at the expense of my pack.
So I went for it. Edging out from beneath my bush, I leapt up to capture the targeted branch with both hands. And for a moment I dangled a foot above the ground, feet swaying in the air. Just my luck—the limb I’d chosen was stronger than it had initially appeared.
“This is your final warning.” I twitched at the sound of Quill’s voice, then winced as his sentence was followed by a short shriek of pain. The recipient of the cowboy shifter’s wrath had to be Savannah since I knew for a fact Lia would bite through her tongue before she’d emit a sound that she thought would draw me into danger.
Craaaaccck.
I stumbled as I fell, stabbing the sharp end of my new weapon into the tender flesh of my own wrist when stick and arms ended up tangled beneath me in an effort to break my fall. The wound stung and I smiled. This wasn’t a sword, but it would do.
I spared only a single moment for one final thought of my absent mate. Now would be a good time to show up, Hunter, I called down the invisible and probably absent pack bond. Then I paced forward to meet my destiny.
One of the SSS males had grunted out a surprised query seconds earlier in response to the sound of cracking wood followed by the thud of bare feet falling onto the forest floor. And now I was the one listening to heavy footfalls as they started toward my place of concealment. My wolf pulled my human lips upward into a lupine sneer. Perhaps this would be easier than I’d thought after all.
Just a little closer, I begged the outpack male. If a single SSS member set foot within the seclusion of the forest all on his lonesome, I’d soon have two enemies rather than three to deal with. Between the element of surprise, my pointy stick, and the anger that kept my animal half rampant behind my eyes, I didn’t doubt for a moment that I’d be able to make short work of any shifter one-on-one.
But Quill was too smart to allow his party to be split up. “No,” he commanded, wasting an alpha compulsion on a compatriot who I suspected would have obeyed a human command just as easily. “Fen will come out on her own. And quickly if she doesn’t want me to start carving fingers and toes off little girls.”
His words seemed to turn the air ten degrees colder in an instant and I shivered. The cowboy shifter wasn’t bluffing—instead, I heard gleeful anticipation in his voice.
So I held the branch as loosely as I could, hoping it would look like a walking stick rather than a weapon.
Then I stepped out from amid my leafy cover.
WHILE I’D BEEN HARVESTING a half-assed weapon, the sun had fully set. But the rising moon was already bright enough that I could easily make out the expression on Quill’s face as I emerged from my woodland lair.
He was gloating. His eyes danced with the knowledge that he’d soon capture a halfie pack leader without having to relinquish either young girl from his clutches. And while I’d like to say that pride goeth before a fall...even though I was armed with a pointy stick, the odds were still definitively stacked in the SSS’s favor.
Not that I planned to let my enemy realize I felt that way. “I’m here,” I said firmly, pacing forward slowly in order to give myself time to think. Bluffing came as naturally as breathing, so I continued to keep my shoulders high and my chin raised as I emulated an unbeatable alpha. The playacting probably wouldn’t do any good, but it also couldn’t hurt. “Release the girls and you can do whatever you want with me,” I finished.
Unfortunately, my adversary wasn’t so easily swayed. Ignoring my posturing, he ground out a truncated order. “Drop the...”
But rather than finishing the sentence, Quill paused and took a closer look at the weapon I held loosely in one hand. “Well, I was going to say sword,” he finished, laughter now evident in his voice. “But it appears that you’ve come to a gunfight with a stick.” Then his voice hardened. “Still, you can put it down. Now.”
The knife that had drifted groundward as his attention focused on me now rose once more to settle against the smooth skin of Lia’s neck. One erratic movement and our aggressor could easily slice through the halfie’s jugular, ending her life before I could so much as scream in disbelief.
He needs to harvest Lia’s heart while it’s still beating, I reminded myself. But, despite my best efforts at mustering confidence, my fingers loosened involuntarily from around my hard-earned branch. I couldn’t risk a pack mate’s life based only on my judgment of Quill’s character...or lack thereof.
Still, I gave the weapon a little forward momentum as it fell so the stick landed only a few feet away from my enemies’ feet. If I was able to edge just a little closer, then the branch would be there waiting for me to snatch it back up....
Although that first hope was a little far-fetched, my unruly toss had another unintended consequence. Quill lowered his guard in response to what must have appeared a feeble attempt to strike out at him. “Not even close, girl,” he taunted with a short laugh. “Now hold your hands out to your sides and walk over here slowly so Mick can bind them.”
The now-named shifter was the same outpack male who had snapped my granny panties, and he was even more interested in my unclad human form than he had been in lupine lingerie. Mick’s eyes burned into the bare skin of my breasts and crotch, and I had to force myself not to shield my exposed flesh with arms and hands. Or perhaps to lunge forward and smack the guy across his greedy face. Still, the time wasn’t yet ripe for me to strike, so I simply paced obediently toward my future captor.
Except Mick might not earn that label after all. Because I noticed Lia and Savannah sharing a quick glance behind our enemies’ backs, proving that I’d underestimated both girls. Far from the cowed captives they’d at first appeared, they seemed to have cooked up some sort of plan between them.
Savannah, especially, had initially appeared so beaten down that I’d assumed she’d lie back and accept her fate. But that persona had only been an act. Now that the enemies’ eyes were all trained on me, the bound halfie struggled erect. Then, doing her best to keep herself out of her captors’ line of sight, she wriggled toward the edge of her altar stone.
Unfortunately, I had a feeling Quill was too alert to be taken by surprise. Time for a little evasive action.
“I’ve been wracking my brain all afternoon,” I lied loudly, halting all forward momentum as I snared the enemy males’ attention more fully once again. “The name Faye sounded so familiar to me, and I c
ouldn’t quite figure out why. Then I realized. Wasn’t she that bitch who was caught sleeping around a few All-Packs ago?”
Quill jolted backwards as if he’d been physically struck. Whether the B word or the implications of my lie had done the trick was irrelevant. Regardless, the cowboy shifter was thoroughly knocked off his game by my on-the-fly fairy tale. “She would never...” he spluttered.
I knew my adversary would figure out pretty quickly that I’d neither seen nor heard of Faye before he spoke her name in that VW bus. After all, I couldn’t so much as weave her last name or her hair color into my story—I’d honestly never known the woman existed before Quill dropped his star-crossed history on me.
The question was—would the cowboy shifter see through my bluff before the girls’ plan bore fruit?
Ah, here we go. A pencil was fumbled out of a waistband...just not by the girl I’d assumed would possess the small weapon. Instead, Savannah was the one who shrieked out an attack cry, Savannah was the one who lunged forward, and Savannah was the one who fell into the unnamed captor’s outstretched arms.
“What the...” he began. The outpack male had reached for the girl, I realized, out of some nearly forgotten sense of chivalry rather than in an effort to recapture a prisoner who was already restrained hand and foot. But when those bound hands raised and stabbed a pointy graphite tip into the male’s open eye, his scream was gut-wrenching.
The SSS member fell to the ground, writhing as he cradled his injured face with both arms. And without free hands and legs to halt her descent, Savannah plummeted earthward right along with him. But the spunky halfie shuffled to one side as soon as she landed, bracing her back against the altar even as Lia completed her shift atop the other standing stone.
My youngest pack mate must have begun calling on her wolf the moment I stepped into the clearing in order to have so quickly gained fur. And, even so, her transformation was far from smooth. She was excited and scared, I knew, Quill’s knife only inches away from her jugular and who knows what fate on the horizon if she failed. But with her captor’s attention trained on me and then on his injured compatriot, the teenager was able to not only don fur but also to wriggle her way out of the now-loose ropes that had previously bound her wrists and ankles together.
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