by Danica Avet
He waited a couple of minutes and pounded on the door again, this time hard enough to rattle it on its hinges. “Colette, open the fucking door!”
“What the hell you doin’?” a familiar voice asked from the foot of the stairs.
Zach ignored Willis and continued to hammer on the door, but still no one came. His tiger clawed at him, an unnamed panic filling him. Something was wrong, something he couldn’t put his finger on, yet knew in his gut was bad. Without looking back at her dad, he braced himself and planted his foot right below the doorknob. Wood splintered and he was inside.
His head swung left, then right, but she was nowhere in sight. He followed his nose to a t-shirt she must’ve worn today since it carried her scent. But why was it on the floor? She wasn’t a messy person. Pounding footsteps told him Colette’s relatives were coming up the stairs, but he paid them no attention, following his sense of smell to the strongest concentration of bleach. On the floor.
“Colette!” her father shouted, storming into the house. “What’d you do to her, chat?”
Zach ignored the question, trying to sort out the scents his nose captured. Bleach, a lot of bleach. A lot more than a normal person would use to clean because of the damage it would do to the floor, but beneath that he caught a faint trace of an unmistakable metallic scent that made his hair stand straight on end and a subvocal growl rumble his chest.
It was the scent of blood, sharp and metallic mixed with Colette’s unique signature of vanilla musk. But was it old or new? Was it from a cut toe or something more sinister? He pressed his nose to the ground, blocking out the sounds of Willis Robicheaux stomping toward him, threatening him with bodily harm. There. He caught the scent of a shifter that wasn’t Zach. It was someone he’d scented before, someone… He closed his eyes.
“The game warden,” he growled just as Willis reached him.
“What?”
Zach looked up at the older man, meeting his sharp purple eyes. “The game warden was here. He’s a wolf shifter,” he added as he climbed to his feet and started down Colette’s hall to her gun room. “Colette and I met up with him on the bayou a couple of days ago. I recognize his scent.”
“That don’t make no sense,” Willis muttered darkly as he followed. “Unless she’s finally in her right mind about you and seein’ someone else.”
“Yeah, but a game warden?” Alcide piped up behind his dad. “And that guy’s creepy. We seen him watching the bayou a couple of weeks ago, out by Colette’s camp.”
That halted Zach in his tracks, his hand on the doorknob to the gun room. He looked back at Alcide and Daniel. “What? When?” The questions punched through the air like bullets.
Colette’s younger brothers looked at each other and shrugged. “I dunno, it was that day she took you on the tour, I think.”
The wolf had been watching them, following them from a distance. And now he’d been in Colette’s house. Fear turned Zach’s stomach sour and made his hands sweat. His tiger roared, demanding to be freed so it could find its mate. Zach opened the door to the gun room and saw the message on the wall.
I hope you’re as good at tracking as you are at baking, cat. Your mate’s gonna need it. Beneath it was a streak of blood that was definitely Colette’s.
Willis and his sons stepped back when Zach roared in rage, but when they read the message, the humans and shifter were finally united under a single cause. To find Colette and to kill the bastards who had her.
* * * * *
Cold water hit Colette’s face, going up her nose until it nearly drowned her. Automatically rolling to her side, she coughed to clear her lungs, her eyes blinking open in shock and pain because her head felt as though someone had taken a sledgehammer to it.
“Rise and shine, hunter,” a singsong voice called out from somewhere nearby.
Her head shot up, eyes tearing from the throbbing and hammering going on in her skull. At first she saw what looked like a crowd of people, but the more her eyes adjusted and her focus returned, the better she was able to see four men looking down at her through a set of bars. Her vision snapped to the bars for a moment and followed them to the top of the cage she’d been placed inside. Her heart, which was already slamming from her abrupt wake-up call, threatened to leap out of her chest as fear hit her hard. She was in a cage. Her gaze dropped to the floor, but she forgot about that the minute she realized she was naked as a jaybird.
Colette curled into a ball, shielding as much of her body as she could, while squinting through the bars at the men watching her. The Schumacher brothers leered at her, the glitter in their eyes a combination of hatred and lust that made her shudder with repulsion. Next to the Schumachers stood a man who looked familiar, except she couldn’t put a name to him. He didn’t look like the kind of man who’d be seen with scum like the Schumachers. His salt-and-pepper hair was brushed back from a noble face with heavy-lidded brown eyes. He wasn’t overly tall or burly, but he carried himself like a commander and leader. Next to the familiar stranger was the game warden. Unlike the other three men, his face was blank, his frigid gaze steady and calm as he looked at her.
“Well, hello, Miz Robicheaux,” the stranger said in the same singsong voice that made her stomach twist. It sounded evil and cold despite the pleasant tone he used. And why was he so fucking familiar to her? “Ah, I see you nearly recognize me.” He smiled, displaying pearly-white teeth and long fangs. Colette felt her eyes widen and he laughed with a suave bow. “Senator Dustin Duet at your service, my dear. I hope you voted in the last election,” he said with a laugh. “Oh, this is going to be fun.” He leaned forward and whispered, “It isn’t often I get to play with people from my jurisdiction, too much chance of being caught. But I prefer my prey to know who’s hunting them. It makes their death more…personal, don’t you think?”
Horror and terror battled for dominance. She definitely knew who he was now. Everyone in Louisiana knew who he was. One of the most powerful shifters in the state, Dustin Duet was hailed as a politician for the common man. A tiger shifter like Zach, Duet was a stout supporter of equal rights of all. His name had been linked to the most powerful humans in the country and it was being said he’d run for the presidency soon. Yet here he was planning to hunt her. Her stomach turned sour and every instinct she had urged her to drop her eyes from his, especially when his eyes began to glow a bright yellow. But she didn’t.
“You’re gonna regret this,” she told him with as much confidence as she could muster.
He laughed, the sound bouncing off the warehouse walls, not stopping until he had to wipe tears away from his eyes. “Oh that’s rich. I adore the stubbornness of my Cajun constituents. Hardheaded and loyal to a fault.” He crouched in front of her, his head cocked to the side. “You think the tiger you fucked is gonna save you, Miz Robicheaux?” He inhaled, his lip curling. “I should find him and put an end to his perverted ways, dallying with humans, but even kings have been known to dirty themselves with peasants now and then.”
He rocked on his heels, his tailored suit barely wrinkled from his position. “No matter, but I can promise you, you’re not even a blip on his radar. Women like you, human women like you, are about as much enticement as an ice-cream cone to an Eskimo. You’re good for getting off, sort of like one of those inflatable sex dolls, and just as easily forgotten. Unimportant and nothing more than a convenience.”
Colette tightened her jaw. It wasn’t true, she knew it as surely as she knew she was going to die tonight.
“You don’t believe me.” He threw his head back with another laugh, the heartiness of it sounding so warm even as it made her skin pebble with frissons. “You’re a smart woman, Miz Robicheaux. Think about it this way. If he cared about you, he would’ve marked you like a mate, not used you like a condom. Because isn’t that what he did? Rubbed his scent into your skin? He probably even told you it was so no other man would go near you, but it’s really his way of saying how little you mean to him. You would’ve been better off we
aring a scarlet letter, my girl, because we can all tell you’re nothing but his cum whore.”
Colette recoiled at that, forgetting to cover herself for a moment.
Duet winked and tapped his nose. “In my younger days, I did the same thing, but that’s our little secret, eh? And those girls sure won’t be talkin’ any time soon.”
He laughed, the others joining him, the sounds of their sick merriment bouncing around the room, but Colette was too numb to comprehend what Duet was telling her, her mind a maze of pain and disbelief.
She’d known shifters could smell Zach on her skin, but she’d stupidly thought it was a warning to them not to go near her. A sign of possession that came before a full marking. If Duet could be believed—and why would he bother lying to her since he obviously planned to kill her—Zach never intended to mate her. If she hadn’t been terrified of what these men were going to do to her, she would’ve fallen apart at the seams, her heart torn to shreds.
“Besides, I’ve heard Mr. Trahan isn’t fond of humans either,” Duet continued, tapping his chin thoughtfully. His face lit up and he snapped his fingers at Agent Roscoe. “Find out if Trahan is a possible candidate for initiation. When you’re promoted to full membership, we’ll need a new recruiter. If he was able to get this female to trust him that quickly, he might be useful for the future of the group.”
The game warden nodded without taking his eyes off Colette. She glared back at him, the fucker who’d apparently stalked her for a hunt. He gave a subtle shake of his head as though warning her, but Duet drew her attention again as he turned to her. His mouth opened, the sick glee on his face suggesting he couldn’t wait to continue his monologue. But Vernon shuffled his feet with a sigh as though bored. Something dangerous flitted across Duet’s face.
“As much as I enjoy chatting with you, there’s some unfinished business I have to attend to. I do look forward to hunting you, my dear. I believe you’ll provide Fang and Claw with our best game to date. Don’t go anywhere,” he joked as he stood.
He smiled and Colette shrank away, terrified by the quiet insanity gleaming in his eyes. Duet wasn’t the kind of crazy that was apparent unless he let you see it, the way he was revealing it to her now. He reminded her of those man-eating tigers that popped up in the news, ones who’d been raised and trained by humans who suddenly went apeshit and bit their trainers’ heads off. Duet couldn’t wait to sink his claws and fangs in her and it showed.
He turned away from her and addressed the Schumacher brothers, who were eyeing Colette as if they were starving men at a buffet. She cringed back to the far corner of the cage until the bars dug into her back. If they came after her… Her stomach cramped. There wasn’t a goddamn thing she could do. There were four of them and one of her. On top of that, they were shifters. She’d never felt so helpless in her entire life.
No one knew where she was. Zach was the only one who expected her tonight. And if Duet was right about Zach’s intentions toward her? Would lust be enough motivation for him to go looking for her? She really didn’t think so. Remembering his insistence that she dress up for dinner, her heart broke again. He’d probably wanted to let her down gently, or maybe he wanted to shame her more. Suddenly, all the things they’d done together, the previously taboo pleasures he’d helped her explore seemed tawdry and dirty, as though she’d whored herself to him.
But something, probably the same stubbornness that made her work harder than her cousins in order to become the best marksman, or the undeniably hardheadedness that wouldn’t let her quit working even when her body ached down to the bone, rose to the fore. Whatever it was, her heart told her to have faith in Zach. Yes, he was emotionally scarred, had no real foundation of affection the way she did with her family, but he cared. God, please let him care enough to look for me or to call the cops.
“You’ve done a good job, boys,” Duet was saying in his hearty, politician tone. The Schumacher brothers puffed up with pride, but they kept stealing looks at her. “Ah, yes, she is sort of attractive for prey, isn’t she?”
Icy-blue eyes appeared between Colette and the three shifters talking about her as though she were a horse at auction. It was the warden and his face was still blank, but his gaze burned with urgency.
She curled her lip at him, feeling about as effective as a kitten against a pack of pit bulls. “Bon rien,” she spat at him, because he was a good for nothing. He’d brought her here, handed her over to this crazy bastard. “Le Bon Dieu descend pas pour. You’ll get yours, fils de putain.”
His eyes blazed and he leaned forward. “You’re not so brave without your gun, are you?” he whispered harshly, his drawl dramatically reduced. The other three men didn’t even look over. “You might want to watch where you step when they let you run. There might be something waiting for you on the ground.”
Colette cocked her head to the side, not sure what the hell that meant. She already knew she was going to be hunted, why was he warning her?
“Look for the gun in the moss,” he mouthed, his eyes intense and not nearly as cold as they were before.
Puzzled and wary, she shook her head. He was playing some kind of game with her. Maybe he got some kind of sick enjoyment from tormenting her with the possibility of freedom, but she wasn’t playing along. “Fuck you.”
He snapped his teeth at her, his fangs suddenly longer, his eyes gleaming bright blue and reached up to run his hand through his hair. He used the move to dart a look over his shoulder at Duet and the Schumachers. There was something weird going on with them, the tension palpable, but then Roscoe looked back at her and pressed his face to the bars.
“Listen to me, you crazy coonass, I’m an FBI agent,” he hissed between clenched teeth. “Run to your left when they release you. There’s a .40 caliber hidden in the moss next to the tree. Use it only if you’re attacked. Some of my guys are out there.”
Her jaw dropped, astonishment, but he reached into the cage as though to grab her. She squeaked, an embarrassing sound that made the other three men laugh derisively. Roscoe nodded and mouthed, “Act scared and weak. Then run.”
“Now, Roscoe, my boy, I know it’s your first hunt, but don’t go scaring the prey until she’s too scared to run,” Duet said with a laugh, chest puffed out. The warden, or FBI agent, or whatever the fuck he was, turned and stood with the others as Duet turned his attention back to Vernon. “It takes time to earn your way into the group, Mr. Schumacher. Roscoe’s been with us for several months now, worked his way up from the very bottom as a transporter, then as a handler of our prey. It’s taken a lot of time and patience, but he’ll finally be inducted into the group tonight.” He glanced at Colette, who watched the men with wide eyes. She really didn’t need instructions to act scared because she was terrified. “He’ll be the one who gets your heart tonight, Miz Robicheaux.”
Vernon pushed forward with a scowl. “The deal was, we got to play with her first,” he snarled. “That little bitch has been raining hell on our heads for years. Y’all ain’t doing anything with her until we get to have a little fun with her.”
“Of course, of course,” Duet said in a soothing voice. “I would never begrudge two shifters the right for revenge.” He looked over at Roscoe. “Let ’em at her.”
The game warden turned back to her, his lips white with rage, but he still walked to her cage, the jackal shifters on his heels. She didn’t know why she felt so betrayed by Roscoe. If he was a federal agent, how could he do this to her? Let these men inside with her? When he reached back to his belt and the keys attached to it, Colette thought she was going to be sick. Adrenaline surged through her system, her fight-or-flight instinct kicking into overdrive, but there was nowhere for her to go and she had nothing to fight with.
The lock clicked open and Vernon stepped into the cage, Antoine right behind him. There was no mistaking what they planned to do to her. Colette tensed, ready to throw herself at them, maybe with the thought that she could make them kill her before the rape started, but b
efore she did more than take a deep breath, Duet appeared behind them.
Vernon’s and Antoine’s eyes widened at the same time Colette heard a sick, wet sound, their bodies jerking. They fell to the ground like puppets with their strings cut, revealing Duet standing behind them with their hearts in his hands. Tiger claws, several inches long, dripped with blood and gore, but he seemed as calm and relaxed as though he’d just plucked a couple of oranges off a tree.
He dropped the organs on the now-dead shifters and accepted the towel Roscoe handed him. “I don’t like rape,” he said primly. “Especially when two men who claim to be pro-shifter turn their perverted attentions to a human.” He sniffed and left the cage, locking it behind him. “You won’t be in there with them for long, Miz Robicheaux. Moonrise is in a few minutes and you’ll have served your purpose here tonight.”
Chapter Sixteen
Zach followed that fucking wolf’s scent as far as he could, the Robicheaux men behind him, trusting that he would lead them in the right direction. It’d taken a lot of yelling and chest thumping before the men could convince Colette’s mother and female relatives that they couldn’t come with them. It hadn’t been easy looking into Laurette-Marie’s eyes, seeing the same fear reflected in Zach’s heart, but she’d finally nodded and promised to call Sheriff Picou.
“You sure this is the way they went?” Willis asked in a barely audible voice.
He stood next to Zach, decked out in camo, grease paint and dripping with enough ammo to make a person wonder if Willis Robicheaux was planning for a zombie apocalypse. Yet he found he couldn’t fault the man for going all Rambo. Not when Colette’s life might very well depend on it.
He wasn’t even insulted that Willis questioned the direction they were taking. There was a hint of uncertainty and disbelief in his future mate-in-law’s voice that told Zach there was something deeper here, something that would probably explain a lot.