Past My Defenses (Taming the Pack series) (Entangled Ignite)

by Wendy Sparrow

  “Well, I’m going to go tell them to call off the search,” the sheriff said, still shaking his head at Dane.

  The moment he left, Dane said, “I shot whoever it was in the bushes—to the south.”

  “Did you miss?” Jordan asked.

  Dane’s eyes narrowed. “No. I just didn’t kill them. She doesn’t give me much notice. All of a sudden, something with teeth is charging out of my bushes straight for me. My life has become a video game—only instead of zombies, it’s werewolves.”

  “I’ll go check it out,” Jordan said, seeming unimpressed. “You have a basement?”

  Dane nodded.

  Jordan looked at Vanessa. “With a den entrance?”

  “Pet door, and it’s in view of the driveway.”

  He slanted a look at Dane. “You’ll need to fix that.” Then he stepped out the back door and was gone.

  The sheriff walked back in the front door and glanced around. “Where did Jordan go?”

  “Bathroom,” she said quickly. Dane was still staring at his back door, looking annoyed.

  “So, what happened with the car? Your horn tipped off Travis so he went down to investigate.”

  “Someone rammed me from behind and then forced me off the road.” She still felt so out of breath. She should have left some spare meds and inhalers here. At the time, she’d wondered if Dane would ever even want her back. But he’d been happy to see her—not mad.

  And she was home.

  “Your purse is in the cruiser—I grabbed it from your car. You want it?” Travis asked.

  She nodded. At least she kept backups of everything in there. She could get by until she got some of her stuff back from Jordan’s place. If she was going to… She cast a look at Dane, who was staring at the floor, biting his lower lip. Maybe he didn’t want her back. She’d arrived at his door running again. He mentioned that bit about going somewhere without sirens once this was all over, but maybe that was just something you said when you kept getting interrupted. He hadn’t called her in a week, and he’d sent her away.

  But he had been happy to see her—at first. Maybe now that the adrenaline had worn off, she was just another problem he had to deal with—one that came with weird baggage like people trying to murder her.

  “So, someone tried to run you off the road?” the sheriff asked slowly. “Are you sure they didn’t just slip on the slick roads too?”

  “Twice? They hit me once and then sped up and hit me again.”

  The sheriff shook his head. “Well, maybe we should take you into the hospital. You should have gone there directly. And why did we find your clothes next to the car?”

  She took a few deep puffs from the inhaler in her purse. “I think I was in shock so I just wandered off without them.”

  Sheriff Terry was looking at her like she was a mutant. Well, she could shift into a wolf so, technically, maybe she was, but he couldn’t know that. Maybe he thought she was mental. This night was never going to make sense to their sheriff.

  He dropped his pen, and the other three looked at one another as he bent to retrieve it. Dane held Travis’s gaze for an extra second, and Travis nodded.

  “Can you think of anyone who might want to harm you?” the sheriff asked after the deepest, most put-upon sigh she’d ever heard.

  Anyone who might want to harm her? Cheri had hated her, and she’d never suspected. And now she had some rogue Lycan and possibly a poacher after her. She kept arriving at Dane’s running for her life. Apparently, there was a crowd of them. You’d have to stand in line. She had no idea who they were, and the sheriff wouldn’t believe a word of it anyway.

  “Not really, but I’m not feeling so well…and I should call the car insurance and everything. Can I answer questions tomorrow?”

  The sheriff nodded. “I guess that’ll work. It’s unlikely you’re in any danger here.”

  “You know, I think I’ll wait and give Jordan a ride when he comes out,” Travis said.

  The sheriff nodded. “Sure…sure…I’m going to go back and see if anyone saw this other car.”

  He was gone a moment later, his siren blaring on the way out too.

  “He does like that siren,” Dane murmured.

  Travis sighed. “He does.” He looked between them, laughing. “Anyone else find it funny that he was the only one saying anything that made any sense, and we all knew he was crazy?”

  Vanessa smiled, but Dane’s focus barely shifted. “So, if someone followed her here, and you didn’t find another car abandoned near hers…” Dane looked at her.

  She nodded with a grimace. “There was someone else in the truck that pulled away as the Lycan shifted in the headlights. Someone rammed me—I think the truck was big—like a semi, but they had their high beams on to blind me from the second they pulled behind me. The lights were high, though. It must have been a semi. When they stopped, the Lycan got out to take me to ground, and the truck or whatever turned away.”

  “Our poacher is still around,” Travis said. “Did you get a good look at either of them?”

  “The headlights were too bright.” She’d been running blind for a few minutes. That and the injury had let the other Lycan keep up. She should have outdistanced it by a mile in that amount of time, but it’d yet to be a fair race between them. It stung her pride. She wasn’t great at staying and fighting, but she was fantastic at running. She should have arrived a good ten minutes ahead of the other Lycan—and she and Dane could have sat on the porch, catching up, while they waited for it to arrive.

  It pissed her off.

  Jordan slid back in the front door, buttoning his shirt. “If there’s two of them still, and they seem set on Vanessa, I don’t think she is safe here.”

  “No?” Dane crossed his arms and stared at Jordan. “But she’s safe with you? She was going home to you tonight and you want to use her as bait anyway!”

  “Bait?” she and Travis asked at the same time.

  “It makes me wonder if she’s ever been safe with you,” Dane ground out, glaring at Jordan.

  Jordan sighed and shot Dane a repressive look—which Dane would ignore. “It’s something that’s been considered.” He turned to Travis. “This is something the three of us need to discuss; I’ll confirm my decisions later.”

  The deputy nodded and left the house with his head bowed in deference…which seemed to piss off Dane, if his stance and his set jaw were anything to go by.

  Dane started to speak, but Jordan lifted a hand and nodded toward the driveway, indicating Travis still hadn’t left. Dane’s jaw tightened even more.

  This wasn’t going well.

  The second the car started, Dane hissed, “Don’t think, for even a second, that you have any authority in my house. You are nothing to me.”

  She swallowed. If Dane pulled this crap with other Lycans around, it’d be viewed as a challenge for Alpha or an act of insubordination. He was seriously going to be the death of her.

  Jordan snorted and shook his head. “Quit being a damn fool.”

  “Me? She’s been with you a week, and the only progress you’ve made is to come up with a plan to kill her and then you actually put her in a position where she could get killed by letting her drive home alone at night, but I’m the damn fool?”

  “We weren’t actually going to use her as bait. I said that so you’d get off your ass and fight for her. But that was before we knew there was still a poacher around.”

  Her head ping-ponged between them. Soon they were going to start shoving each other like boys on a playground.

  “Oh, right—like I can believe anything you say.” Dane shook his head.

  “At least I wouldn’t have missed hitting the thing chasing her.”

  “I didn’t miss! I hit the damn thing…or could you not find the blood? Because if you didn’t, I can draw you a map and let you borrow my flashlight.”

  It’s a good thing looks weren’t actually able to kill. Both men would be dead on the floor. The shoving and wrestling w
as seconds away, and she couldn’t be here for that. She pushed off the couch, walked between them, and went out on the front porch, slamming the door behind her.

  …

  His mouth dropped open. She was leaving—after just running here? No. No way, and he sure as hell would be chasing her down this time. At least she was still winded. She might be slower.

  “She’s just sitting out there,” Jordan said, sighing.

  “What if the Lycan has a gun?” The moment the words left his mouth, he wished they were back.

  Jordan carefully, oh so carefully, kept a straight face as he asked, “And we’d put it…where?” He was such an ass.

  And that’s what he’d realized right when he’d said it. Dane pinched the bridge of his nose where the pressure of a headache was threatening. If only Vanessa and this particular Lycan weren’t turning out to be a package deal. “Do you have any idea how little sleep I’ve gotten in the last week?”

  “Another reason why she should come home with me. You both look dead on your feet.” He winced. “Okay, I should have worded that differently. But my point still stands: I haven’t been going without sleep for a week and a half.”

  “Exactly. Because you don’t care what happens to her.”

  The snarl from Jordan’s mouth was too deep to be human and briefly he saw the shimmer of sharp teeth and bright eyes before the Alpha shook it off. “The hell I don’t. I just have a little perspective of the bigger picture, and I know that needs my A game…not Q or whatever you call this.” He gestured at Dane.

  “I wounded it, which is more than your A game has gotten us.”

  “I would have killed it.”

  “Oh, yeah, I thought you were this great tracker—why haven’t you brought back its head or something?”

  Another not-quite-human snarl. “Your cat marked everything from here to her place, and I lost the trail.”

  “I got rid of my cat a week ago! For Vanessa!”

  This took Jordan aback. Narrowing his eyes, he asked, “You killed your cat?”

  Dane rolled his eyes. “No! I gave it to my sister. Unlike you, I don’t kill everything that doesn’t fit in my plan!”

  “No, you just nick it or miss!”

  “Oh for the love of…!” Vanessa slammed her way back into the room. “Why don’t you both pee on me and get it over with?”

  Well, Jordan had marked his Jeep, and he could tell from that bastard’s smirk he was thinking the same thing.

  He didn’t think he could hate the man more than he already did, but then Vanessa turned to Jordan and ducked her head as she asked, “Did you recognize the scent?” No matter what, she’d still recognize her damn Alpha as the final say in everything. Even with him here. Even in his house. It pissed him off.

  “No. Like you said—it’s familiar, but they’re masking it somehow.” He frowned. “Something about it…unnerves me. I couldn’t…I couldn’t seem to…” Shaking his head, he glanced back toward the front of the house. “So strange. Anyway, I couldn’t peg who it was.”

  “I guess that rules out members of the packs near Portland.” A smile passed her lips, and she sneaked a glance at Dane. “And Reno.”

  He swallowed some of his anger. She had come here, instead of going to Jordan’s place—which was much closer.

  “Damn cat,” Jordan muttered. “I could have tracked it down if not for that cat.”

  It burned Jordan that he’d lost the trail. It should. It burned Dane that he’d nicked it instead of killing it—even if the shots had been blind. The thing had never breached the edge of the woods.

  “I’m tired,” Vanessa said on a sigh. The exhaustion seemed to be dragging her down as fast as that first dose of allergy pills had.

  “She’s staying here.” There was no way he was letting her go now that he had her here again. She was his, and she wasn’t leaving. It felt caveman and possibly chauvinistic, but she was his to protect, and he was going to keep her safe if it killed him.

  Jordan groaned. “You’re exhausted, and I’d sent her home from work because she was so tired.”

  “Yeah—you sent her home, and she came here.”

  There was a flash of something that looked like admiration in Jordan’s eyes, but then it was gone. Jordan turned to Vanessa, who still had her chin dropped in submission—it made his fist itch to punch the other man. “You pick, Nessa. Him or me?”

  Vanessa’s eyes widened, and she blinked rapidly.

  Jordan cleared his throat. “I meant stay here or come with me, not an ultimatum. You’re a member of our pack, and we’ll protect you either way. I don’t mean to keep you apart—clearly you need to see each other or you’ll both need to be institutionalized soon, but I want to keep you safe.”

  Dane couldn’t resist muttering, “Unless you use her as bait,” under his breath.

  Her eyebrows drew together as her nose wrinkled. She was taking a long time to consider this—and his hope dropped with each second. If she left with Jordan, it was a blow he didn’t think he wanted to recover from. If she left with him, it’d always be this way. Her Alpha would always come first. Despite the hierarchy she’d listed off, he’d always be down near the bottom.

  “I’m staying with Dane, but all of my purifiers are at your house, and he already complains about my snoring.”

  Dane laughed in relief.

  “Her snoring is nothing to laugh about,” Jordan said with a grimace that Dane suspected had nothing to do with her impressive snoring. He was losing out to Dane again. That shouldn’t make him feel good, but it did.

  Vanessa yawned and stretched, the motion dragging his shirt up to expose the edge of the boxers she was wearing. The movement was unintentionally sensual—and more so because of that.

  Mine—the word whispered through his brain again, awakening the primitive desire to throw her over his shoulder and take her to bed.

  Jordan had been watching Vanessa, but he glanced away at this. “I’ll do a few more patrols around here. See if I can find the trail again. I might have been anxious.” He strode out the back door without another word.

  She frowned after him.

  “Don’t worry. He’s probably trying to one-up me because I actually drew blood and he can’t follow a scent more than a few yards.”

  “He heard that,” she said.

  “I know. He’s probably pissing all over my Jeep again.”

  She nodded and shrugged. “I’m tired.”

  “Let’s go to bed.” He grabbed her hand and pulled her along behind him to lock the doors.

  “It’s like seven o’clock,” she said, mid-yawn.

  “I won’t tell anyone if you won’t.” He turned off his lights, knowing that there were things out there that would see in regardless. It disconcerted him to know there was something out there wanting to kill Vanessa, even as he felt relieved that Jordan was out there. The man might be an ass, but he’d probably deter the Lycan from finishing the job tonight. “Unless you’re hungry…I can probably find something that won’t send you into anaphylaxis.”

  She was so tired that she bumped against him as they walked down the hall. So he put his arm around her and tucked her into his side. It felt…right. She felt right—by his side and in this house. “No, I’m too tired to be hungry. I saw that my list made your fridge.”

  “I figured I should have some food for you when you came back.”

  She stopped in the doorway and turned to him. “When I came back?”

  A sour ache started blooming in his chest. “Are you saying you weren’t going to?”

  He couldn’t see her expression in the darkness, but he heard the smile in her voice as she said, “I never wanted to leave.”

  Reaching out, his fingers skimmed her collarbone and up her neck. He slid them across the soft skin of her jaw to the nape of her neck and pulled her toward him while leaning down. “Then stop doing it,” he whispered against her mouth…which lifted in a smile he could feel. He pressed into her body and licked along tha
t smile. She opened her mouth with a moan that he felt clear throughout him.

  Even though she wrapped her arms around his neck, she pulled back with a soft sigh that brushed across his wet lips. “Jordan is outside.”

  “So.” He kissed her again, paying close attention to that delectable lower lip of hers, drawing it into his mouth. It’d been too long. Good intentions be damned. He wanted her. She wanted him. She was back.

  “Mmm.” He thought he had her. Her leg slid along the outside of his, and then she tipped her head back. “I’m not going to be a trophy between you two.”

  He scowled. “It’s not like that.” If he was completely honest, the idea of proving to that ass that Jordan might be Alpha, but he was the one she went home to, held some appeal, but Dane never intended to be that honest.

  She laughed, low and deep. “Oh, yeah? Show me.”

  He sighed. “Okay. Fine.” Leaning down, he grabbed her legs and pulled them around his waist as he carried her to bed. “How did you get out of the handcuffs?”

  She snorted a laugh as he dumped her on her back on the bed. “Really?”

  “Yes, really. There was nothing around to use. Unless you had something in your hair.” It’d been bugging him all week.

  “You know what’s thinner than human hands? Wolf paws.”

  He smiled as he unbuttoned his shirt in the blue light from the night-light in his bathroom. “So you admit…you are a wolf?”

  She sighed.

  Busted. She’d admitted it in a dozen other ways, but this was the first time she’d used the word “wolf.”

  “Is it too late to plead the fifth?”

  “Tonight was pretty obvious. A wolf ran by me and then you slammed into the side of my house naked. Either that was the oddest magic trick ever…”

  “Ta-da!”

  He laughed. “But I haven’t seen you change. I saw Jordan. He was having a hard time keeping his wolf inside tonight.”

  She didn’t respond. I guess that was his answer. She didn’t intend for him to see her change. It felt like she wanted to keep that part of her separate—as much as she could. His hand went to his belt. Crap, Jordan wasn’t the only one struggling to keep things leashed. After another close call with her life, he didn’t want to sleep on the couch, but he would. This wasn’t just about one-upping Jordan. It never had been, even if that was a bit of a bonus.