by Penny Alley
“Puppy,” she whispered, wishing more than anything that her eyes were lying to her.
For the first time, Colton dragged his lupine stare from Dan to her. He tipped his head, an animalistic shiver rippling through naked flesh. “Karly,” he growled, struggling to get the words out of a still too-wolfish throat. “Sweetheart, please stop calling me that.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
“We can’t cover this up,” Gabe said as Colton glanced back across the room to where Karly sat swaddled in a patchwork quilt on the couch. Mama Margo was watching over her, trying to feed a little coffee mixed with a lot of moonshine into her.
“It’ll help,” Mama Margo kept saying, but Karly wasn’t responding. She was doing what she’d done pretty much from the moment he had transformed in front of her. She was staring at him. Just staring. Her face was a blank canvas, absolutely void of any discernable expression. That in and of itself was very telling, but not in any way that made Colton happy.
Tied hand to foot and gagged, Dan was in the kitchen, tucked back behind the half wall so Karly wouldn’t have to see him. Currently, Marcus was keeping him company. The lanky Omega was hunkered down directly in front of him, forearms braced across his knees, his eyes bright yellow. He didn’t move. His teeth all but bared, he didn’t speak either, but every few breaths if Dan so much as twitched, Marcus growled. So far, that had kept Dan incredibly still and absolutely silent.
Every bit as silent as Karly was being. Colton looked at her again. He wished she’d say something, do something. But from the moment he’d tied Dan in the kitchen, dug his clothes back out of the bushes where they’d been stashed and called this whole clusterfuck in to Gabe, she’d only spoken once: “Were you in my bed last night?”
Had Colton known that was the opening shot of a completely different battle rather than just a plea for clarification, he’d have chosen a completely different answer. “Do you know I’m real now?”
When she’d said that to him last night, it had stung every bit as badly as the physical cuts he bore now. He had poured his whole being into loving her. He had held her in his arms and in his eyes, and she had held him back, gifting him with the most beautiful surrender any woman could give a man. And she thought she was dreaming? He should have made his reality clear right then.
Who was he kidding? He never should have transformed in her bed in the first place, but the desire to see her with his human eyes, to touch her with his hand instead of his paw, had been just too overpowering.
Not that any of that mattered now. There were now two non-volka people in this room who now knew the secret behind Hollow Hills. That Karly was one, Colton didn’t mind so much. He wished she’d found out a different way, but he felt sure she’d keep their secret. Dan, however, was a completely different matter.
“Cole.” Lowering his voice, Gabe moved to block Karly from his sight and perhaps reclaim Colton’s attention. Which left Colton staring at Dan—Marcus was enjoying himself; the big, tough wife-beating cop wasn’t making a whole lot of noise right now. Colton couldn’t look at him too long before the urge to rip his throat out began to well up all over again. “Cole!” Gabe snapped. Finally succeeding in catching Colton’s gaze, he lowered his voice. “We can’t cover this up.”
“I heard you the first time,” Colton said. “It couldn’t be helped.”
“I know that.” His expression said he wouldn’t mind arguing that point, but Gabe held up surrendering hands, preferring instead to tackle the most pressing issue first. “I know it, I do. And he—” Dan shrank from Gabe’s accusing finger as far as his bonds and the kitchen wall would allow. “—he knows it too, but his cop buddies out in Redemption…they don’t know, and probably wouldn’t even believe it if you got the whole damn thing on video! He’s going to go home, spin this story to his best possible advantage, and then they are going to come back here.”
“They won’t believe him,” Colton scoffed, sounding far more certain than he actually felt. “What’s he going to say: I see werewolves? They’ll laugh him off the force. If he’s not very careful, he’ll end up with a psych-evaluation and be stripped of his gun. What he ought to be more worried about right now, is my arresting him and how the hell he’s going to spin the attempted murder of his wife to his friends back home!”
Dan looked at him now, and for the first time, some of that nervous fear disappeared behind a thin veil of dark calculation.
Marcus growled again, but Dan continued to stare at Colton until Marcus reached out a slow hand to take him by the throat. He leaned into Dan, coming in so close that the two men had to be breathing the same air. Marcus tipped his head, filling up the tied man’s entire field of vision. By the way Dan’s face began to redden, he was probably squeezing, cutting off his air.
“Don’t look at him,” Marcus murmured, soft as any lover. “I’m right here. You look at me, chelovak.”
The urge to give the order to snap Dan’s neck was every bit as overwhelming as his desire for Karly had been last night.
Gabe snapped his fingers in Colton’s face, twice. “You’re going to arrest him?” he said incredulously once Colton’s eyes had locked on him again. “Are you insane?”
“I’m not letting him go.” Colton let his eyes drift back to Karly. She hadn’t moved. She was still staring right at him, her face drawn, still ignoring Mama Margo and her moonshine strength elixir. He wanted to comfort her, but he had a feeling if he went to her now, comfort would be the last thing she took from him. “He’s going to pay for what he’s done.”
He looked at Dan again, swallowing back another surge of savage fury. Why the hell did he have to show up now—show up at all, even—and ruin what fragile progress he and Karly had made? He couldn’t remember the last time he’d wanted to hurt a human the way he wanted to hurt this man now. His muscles kept flexing, the wolf in him pressuring its way up through his guts until the pulse to shift was all he could feel pounding at the back of his head. If he looked in a mirror right now, he knew all that he would see would be the wolf, bright in his yellow eyes. It was already heavy in his tone, turning his voice raspy and gruff. “I swear it, he’s going to pay.”
“He’s going to pay?” Gabe stared at him, disbelief abruptly giving way to hard laughter. “What exactly are you suggesting we do?” He lowered his voice now too, the wolf shining yellow in his own eyes as he shifted to block Karly once more out of Colton’s sight. “I know it’s hard, but think about what you’re doing. Give the order and I’ll follow it, but the days when we could disappear little problems like this out in the backwoods are long and truly gone. If he goes missing, people will come looking for him. And if he turns up dead…well then, welcome to the twenty-first century: the great age of forensic achievement. No one can find Bigfoot, but in the hunt for a dead cop’s killer, I guarantee they’re gonna find a werewolf!”
He was right, and Colton knew it. But he was just pissed off enough to make thinking through the problem difficult. He kept glancing at Karly and his warring want of her, plus his need to make sure she never had reason to fear a return visit from this sonofabitch, made clear and rational thought impossible.
“We’re in the middle of a Hunt,” Gabe said, helping to keep him focused on the problem and the fury of the wolf tamped down. “We can’t have a bunch of outsiders from two different states poking around, looking for evidence and interfering in the breeding affairs of people who don’t care for humans or cops, and especially not for human cops. All it will take is one wrong word to the wrong volka, and the next thing you know, someone on our side is going to get irritated, someone on their side is going to grab their gun, and then someone’s going to get killed. God help us if a volka draws first blood, but God help everyone if a human does! It’ll be the Dark Ages all over again with huntings and burnings, entire packs wiped out of existence, and before you can say ‘piss in a bucket’, we’ll be at war! And this time we’ll be annihilated, Cole, because unlike before, nobody’s going to hold back in the hop
es of finding a peaceful solution. Hollow Hills was that solution. If they come after us here…” Gabe shook his head.
Stabbing fingers from both hands through his short, dark hair, Colton tried to think beyond the anger. “I’ll talk to people. I’ll stress the need for patience—”
“How patient are you feeling right now?” Gabe asked bluntly. “And no offense, buddy, because you’ve always been Alpha to me, but you haven’t taken a mate, you’ve barely participated in the Hunt, and right now, McQueen is a stronger leader in the eyes of this county than you are. Nobody is going to listen to you, and the last thing McQueen will be when the chelovak start invading is patient.”
“Drink, damn it,” Mama Margo said gruffly, drawing everyone’s attention back to where Karly was stubbornly ignoring the drink in favor of shrugging out of her quilt.
“I’m fine,” she whispered, but her hands were shaking and so was her voice. Every inch of Colton came into sharp focus when Karly crossed the room, coming to within feet of him. She didn’t look at Dan. She just stared at Colton, at his eyes in particular. At his mouth.
He looked at her mouth too, the almost desperate need to kiss her sinking into his gut like claws. He tried to take it as a good sign that at least she didn’t seem afraid of him, but she was still wearing that expressionless mask and heaven only knew what her thoughts were like underneath.
“What are you?” she finally asked.
It wasn’t screaming or shouting, or crying; Colton hoped that might be a good sign too. “They called us volka.”
“You’re not gypsies,” she guessed.
It was a struggle to keep the wolfish gruffness out of his voice. “No.”
She hesitated, all but flinching as she said, “A-are you a werewolf?” For the first time, her mask cracked, giving him a glimpse of the confusion writhing within her. “Is…is everyone a…?”
She didn’t say the word again, but then, she didn’t have to. He knew what she meant.
“Yes.” He tried to reach for her, but she withdrew even further, already shaking her head.
“The w-whole town?”
“No,” Colton tried to assure, before Gabe added, “We have maybe fifteen, twenty humans in Hollow Hills. Most are half-breeds, though.”
“So, I’m not the only…” ‘Normal’ was right there on the tip of her lips. He watched her stumble over trying not to say it before the one phrase she’d heard here suddenly made sense. “…chelovak here?”
“Good save,” Gabe muttered.
“No, you’re not,” Colton said, frowning at him.
Karly glanced to her husband. “What happens now? What are you going to do with him?”
“I’m going to make sure he never hurts you again.”
“How?”
Colton knew better than to answer that. He’d sooner dig his own heart out with a spoon, than to make her share any part of what he intended for Dan. It was the hardest thing he’d yet done today, but he made himself turn away from her. “You’re not staying here anymore. Go with Gabe—”
Karly shook her head.
“He’ll take you someplace safe.”
“Where?” she countered. “Your house?”
He looked at her, but did not bother feigning either surprise or offense by her suggestion. His house was, frankly, the safest place in all of Hollow Hills. Both from outsiders and from its less understanding residents. And with her living under his roof, that would give him all the time and ready opportunities that he’d need to bring her back to where they’d been last night. Except the next time, there would be no doubt in her mind as to whether or not he was really there, lying with her, pouring himself into her.
“Go with Gabe,” he gruffly repeated.
“No.”
He reached for her arm, but Karly flinched, shrugging away from him, her hands held up as if she fully intended to shove or slap at him if he tried to touch her again. Colton frowned, not at all liking it that she was looking everywhere but at him now. Her eyes were strange—wide, angry, confused…hurt. Her gaze kept jumping from one fixed point in the kitchen to another, though none of those points were people, volka or otherwise. Dan grunted, his first pleading mew not to be left behind, but that mew was abruptly cut off when Marcus’s hand on his throat clamped down hard.
Karly moved then, but it wasn’t toward Dan. She retreated back out of the kitchen, crunching broken shards of glass into the carpet with every shallow backwards step that took her closer to the front door.
She tripped every one of Colton’s ‘rabbit’ sensors. She was going to run.
“Karly.” He stalked after her, catching her arm to stay her and refusing to let go even when she tried, just once, to shake him off. “Look at me.”
She did, but that more confirmed, rather than eased his fears. She was definitely going to run. He could see the decision as bold as the blue of her eyes; she was going to wait until his back was turned, and then she was fleeing.
“Don’t be afraid,” he tried to say, but it came out sounding like begging. ‘I will take care of you, I swear it.’ Those words were perched right there at the tip of his tongue, followed by an even more emasculating plea for her to ‘Stay.’ Just stay. That was all he wanted. His need for her burned inside him like living coals, and they barely even knew one another. ‘Don’t make me have to hunt you down’, would have sounded too aggressive and only served to scare her more. “Please,” he whispered instead.
He couldn’t remember the last time he’d begged anything from anyone. It had probably been his father, and it had probably been to get him to stop beating his mother. It left a bad taste in his mouth this time too, and Karly still didn’t listen. She pulled, gradually increasing the amount of strength it took until Colton had no choice but to hold her arm so tightly he would hurt her or let her go. He chose the latter. He wanted her to stay, but not if he had to do it through force alone.
Karly retreated, but those two small steps may as well have been miles for the all the distance they represented. “You can’t keep me here. I haven’t done anything wrong, and I don’t want to stay.”
“Oh, piss on all this puppy love nonsense!” Mama Margo suddenly spat, startling everyone. “There’s more at stake here than either of your wants or wishes!” Giving everyone an equally hard glare, she stalked past everyone to dump the moonshine down the kitchen sink. Slamming the glass down on the counter so abruptly that it was a wonder it didn’t shatter, she gripped the edge of the sink. Frowning, she glared at the drain for the longest time before her eyes narrowed. “Disappearing him will only delay the inevitable, but a delay is better than having an army of chelovak lawmen tromping through our Hunt.” Twisting her head, she gave Dan a dispassionate once over before fixing equally hard eyes on Colton. “Get rid of him.”
Having only just been allowed to breathe unobstructed, Dan began to struggle, his gag poorly muffling a long string of alternating curses and pleas that escalated into shouts when Marcus grabbed the front of his shirt and hauled him roughly upright. Lanky he might be, but there was real strength there as well. He tossed Dan up over his shoulder as if the tall and burly cop were nothing more than cumbersome baggage.
“Piss on me,” he warned as he carried Dan, kicking and flailing, right out the back kitchen door, “and I’ll fucking neuter you.”
“I don’t care how you do it,” Mama Margo said, once they were gone. “Just make sure it doesn’t come back to nip at our tails before the Hunt is over. And you—” She turned hard eyes on Gabe. “Clean up this mess. Get rid of his car, the guns, any trace you can find that he ever came here, and fix my damn house. There’s bullet holes and glass everywhere. As for you—” She turned on Karly last. “—your husband never came here, you’ve not seen the sonofabitch since you left him, and you’ve no idea where he’s gone. Now, go pack an overnight bag. You’re coming home with me.”
“No.” Karly tried again to refuse, but the thing about Mama Margo that eventually everyone came to know very well,
was she never took ‘no’ for an answer. Not once she’d made up her mind.
“Pack,” the old woman said again, her honeyed eyes flashing and brightening. She also was not in the habit of repeating herself.
Looking from Colton to Gabe, and then back to Mama Margo again, Karly gave in. A few minutes later, with all her worldly belongings packed into her single suitcase, she followed Mama Margo out the front door and down the three porch steps. She never even tried to look around the side of the house for one last glimpse at Dan. Colton took comfort from that. Whatever else she might be feeling for her soon-to-be ex-husband, obviously Karly was not nursing a broken heart.
Of course, she didn’t look back at him either. Drawing the same conclusion for himself cut Colton all the way to his core.
“Shit,” Gabe said, once they’d gone. He scuffed the heel of his boot at the ruined carpet. “I’m going to have to go all the way to Lowe’s for flooring.”
“And a new window,” Colton said distractedly, watching from the open doorway until he couldn’t see even the dust cloud kicked up by Karly’s retreating car. “And a saw.”
Gabe arched non-committal eyebrows. “You want to use it first?”
Turning, Colton went to the back door. Marcus had carried Dan out to the old woodshed, dumping him in the leaves and dirt next to the old chopping block. The little rental cabin didn’t even have a wood-burning stove anymore, but the lean-to was still standing there, partially reclaimed by twining ivy and blanketing moss, and even had a good cord of well-seasoned wood stacked inside. Where he’d found the axe, Colton didn’t know, but Marcus stood over Dan, idly swinging the old tool, stretching and limbering up while he waited for the command. The axe was more rust than metal now, and dull as hell. This wasn’t going to be quick or pretty. It was, in fact, just the sort of death a man like Dan deserved.