As much as he wanted to reach out to touch her, he sternly reminded himself he wasn’t part of her life anymore. He wasn’t a member of her pack. They’d severed ties long ago. Even if he faced Liam right now, that wouldn’t change the circumstances that had pushed them apart.
She caught him staring again and hid her arm under the table.
“We need to get that cleaned,” he said.
“I did that already. Won’t make a difference.”
Her eyes flitted to the door, and her lips trembled then parted slightly as if she wanted to say something else. He’d seen that expression before. The same one she’d worn when she’d told him she planned to stay behind instead of going with him a year before.
“What we need to do is leave. I’m not comfortable here anymore.” She checked the door again. The strong scent of her anxiety became overwhelming.
“This’ll be over soon enough.” He rose. “Sit tight and eat something. I have to talk to the cook for a sec.”
She didn’t protest as Kyle walked through the diner to the swinging door of the kitchen in the back. Milly’s husband Pete stood in front of the grill flipping burgers. The stocky man continued to add fresh fries and buns to plates as he grunted in his direction. “What’s up, Kyle?”
“I need weapons. A few of the Winchester Magnums to start. Whatever you can spare.” Why not get to the point?
The balding man’s head cocked to side. He laughed briefly. “You can borrow a hunting rifle or two.”
“Trouble’s coming soon. The kind that requires a lot more than a rifle or two.”
Pete eyed him for a bit. He’d told the older man a few months ago what he was. Even with a few beers in his system, Pete had sobered up real quick when he learned through a demonstration that Kyle wasn’t kidding.
Pete fished in his back pocket and tossed him a key. Then the cook saved a sizzling burger before it burned. “Do I need to get Milly to a safe place?” His voice was low and serious now.
“Yeah. Don’t stick around here too long. Just trust me on this.”
Pete was a good guy. He and Milly didn’t deserve to get caught in the middle of a werewolf war, and Kyle couldn’t help but feel a little sick at the way Pete stiffened up. Not to mention the way he felt Pete’s eyes warily boring into his back as he headed back into the dining area.
Emma still hadn’t eaten and stared at her plate. Her lips moved as if she whispered something. Under most circumstances, he would’ve heard what she’d said, but no sounds emerged at all. What the hell was going on?
Then her head darted up, and her eyes locked on something behind him. Slowly, she rose, and her mouth formed a single word. “No.”
Kyle whipped around and spotted them. Three men approached the diner. Purple-black spots were spread along the neck of one, while another, dressed in a black overcoat, mumbled to himself again and again.
The third werewolf opened the door and walked through to scan the room. They didn’t smell right. Almost sickly, like a festering wound. When Kyle caught the werewolf’s eye, a wicked grin spread across his pale face revealing his long canines. All around them, the diners quieted, and Kyle knew he had to make his move before a massacre began. He reached to the back of his pants where there used to be a gun. After carrying a firearm for years as a cop, he expected to find something. He yelled, “Everybody out.”
But he was too late. The pale werewolf leapt on the nearest diner and wrestled him to the ground. The man tried to fight his attacker off, but succumbed after he was viciously bitten on the neck. Chaos erupted in the restaurant as the customers knocked over their tables to scatter toward the other entrance at the far end of the room. Thankfully, Milly had disappeared in the back, and Pete yelled for customers to head to the kitchen.
The murmuring werewolf continued to stalk closer, whispering, “Kill her. Kill her.”
Armed with an upended metal chair, Kyle hoisted it in the air and swung the seat into the crazed wolf’s gut. He sensed Emma behind him. With a snarl and a steak knife, she jumped from table-to-table. She buried her blade in the second werewolf. Two of the adversaries fell with ease. One to go. The final one hovered over the now-unconscious diner he’d chosen for his prey. He rested his clawed hand on his victim’s shoulder.
“Joey, no,” Emma whispered to the man.
Joey didn’t respond. He only gazed at Emma and Kyle with a strange glee—until his face molded into a growl. Abruptly, Joey sprang forward, but Kyle was ready. Using his attacker’s momentum, he twisted and tossed Joey through the window. The man’s body shattered the glass and pitched outside where his limp frame rolled across the parking lot. When he didn’t move, everything around Kyle finally became still.
Kyle took a deep breath and let it out in a rush.
This was happening way too fast. And he expected it would only get worse from this point. He checked on Emma at his side where she silently took in the carnage.
“You okay?” he asked.
“This looks too much like home.” She stepped toward the door. “If the scouts are here, our time is running out.”
Pete had hid a few customers in the walk-in fridge. He emerged through the swinging doors, holding a .45 Glock, eyes wide. “I called the police. You need to head out and clean this up, son. Before other folks come across…your friends.”
Damn it. Kyle knew at once Pete must’ve seen the bodies and had an idea of what was coming. Emma didn’t immediately respond when he tugged her out the door to her car.
“When you said you only had so much time, I thought you really meant you at least had some time.” After less than an hour of having her back in his life, he hadn’t expected to have her show up with death slithering behind her. Not only would she bring Liam back to him for a final confrontation, but she had upended this safe place for him. Even with the friendships he’d made, he couldn’t stay here after what all these people had seen.
And then there was Emma. From the way her hand trembled in his, he knew she didn’t have much time before her bite would affect her. A faint stench of death hovered near the wound, the same smell as the men who’d attacked the diner. She’d been quiet before, but there was an edge to her now, like a viper ready to strike.
“We need to get going,” he murmured. “This town doesn’t have a pack to fend them off. Just a few rogues here and there.”
“So what do we do?”
Yes, what would they do after he got Pete’s weapons? With every fiber of his being, Kyle wanted to confront Liam again. To make the son-of-a-bitch pay for forcing him from the pack. But time had passed, and this was different now. This wasn’t like last year when he’d fought Liam with a busted knee, surrounded by a jubilant pack hungry for a fight. Tonight, he’d have to fight crazed beasts under another man’s control. First though, he had to figure out what to do with Em. Her breaths had quickened. The rise and fall of her chest drew his eyes. He focused on the road instead. This wasn’t the time or the place to think of such things.
“I should’ve armed myself sooner,” he muttered. “I don’t have anything nearly powerful enough at the shop.”
“But you have something, don’t you?” Emma asked, eyes pleading.
His silence was her answer.
They reached the Barnes’ trailer on the outskirts of Stone Ridge. The property didn’t have much—just a long, white trailer and a large tool shed. He pulled up next to the trailer and stepped out. From the corner of his eye, he noticed Emma continued to stare out the window. He didn’t know what she saw beyond the brush, cacti, and rolling hills in the distance. He cocked his head to the side and flared his nostrils. Nothing in the air indicated trouble. What bothered her?
The heated wind swept through the car, catching a few strands of her black hair. Her natural scent reached him, a sweet vanilla, and he tried to ignore the surge of desire it brought. It had been far too long since he’d been with her.
“Emma, let’s go.” When she didn’t move, he snapped, “Out of the car now!”
He hadn’t meant to sound like a pack leader—it had never been his position—but her glazed eyes bothered him.
As they headed up to the beaten-up trailer, she grumbled, “You don’t have to talk to me that way. I heard you.”
“Then act like it.” He grabbed her arm and twisted her around to face him. He tried to read her face but couldn’t sense much. Only the sound of her heart racing indicated her fear. She bit her upper lip. “What did he do to you?”
“It wasn’t just him. A black witch did something to him. Now his bite is enchanted. I don’t know what’s happening to me specifically. But I have a feeling it’s not good.”
He nodded. “Get in the trailer and rest. You have ten minutes to relax. I have to get some things from the shed.”
“We don’t have that much time.”
“I’m well aware of that fact, but compared to you, I’ve been waiting a year for a moment like this. And I plan to show Liam what happens when he comes into my territory.”
After he watched her reluctantly head into the trailer, he stalked over to the rusty tool shed and used Pete’s key to unlock the door. The confines of the tool shed didn’t provide shelter from the heat. It only created an oven which baked him as he assessed the gear inside. Beyond the tools lay row after row of weapons. If Liam wanted to unleash the demons from hell on his doorstep, he’d be happy to greet them with this kind of shit.
Suddenly, his knee throbbed from the memory of their last encounter, the blasts of white-hot pain that shot up his leg when he’d taken a shot at Liam’s head. Not long before his fight with Liam, everyone assumed he’d be the clear winner. But he’d had it taken away when Liam and his posse of pissants held him down and crushed his knee the night before.
Kyle pulled a shotgun from a rack and stuffed a box of cartridges into a canvas satchel. Before he tucked the gun into a holster, he loaded it.
Let them fucking come. He had plenty of bullets to put rabid dogs to rest.
A shadow passed the front of the tool shed.
Kyle whipped around and listened. The only noise was the faint sound of the door squeaking from the wind pushing it. He crept toward the entrance, ready to expect anything. Had their time run out?
A smile curved the side of his mouth. Strangely, he couldn’t smell the man waiting beyond the door, but he sensed him, curled and waiting to attack. It had been much too long since he’d released the wolf to fight and hunt. He perched right outside the door and then reached around to grasp the intruder by the neck. They fell to the ground in a heap, scrambling and stirring up the desert dirt.
The man’s breath smelled of rot and death. Kyle’s attacker hissed, leaning in close to open his mouth to bite. It was almost too much to take in. The incessant growls. The blank, yet wide eyes. The wet lips stained red from whatever the man had killed previously.
Kyle locked his hands around the bastard’s neck, trying to gather the best position to bring him down—but the guy kept moving around with no rhyme or reason. Almost as if both the man and wolf part of him was gone and nothing but madness remained.
Was this guy even running plays on the field?
The man managed to use his claws to slice through Kyle’s shirt and kick up, but with a twist of his wrist, Kyle broke the poor man’s neck. Hopefully, he’d find peace now. When the dirt settled and the desert grew quiet again, Kyle stepped back and waited to see if anyone else lingered nearby. The property was still. Too still.
His breath caught.
He’d left Emma alone in the trailer.
Kyle sprinted to the trailer and stormed through the door. The only sound was very faint. Like running water in some other room. Nothing was amiss in the living room. Milly and Pete kept a clean home. The tattered couch was empty. To the right, nothing lurked in the kitchen. Where the hell’s Emma? His nostrils flared. The scent of a stranger lingered in the air—like the foul stench of rotting meat. Someone else had been here. But were they still in the trailer?
He was about to call for her when the faint scraping of a scuffle in the bathroom caught his ear. He leapt over the couch and raced down the hallway. The bathroom door didn’t budge, but it wasn’t locked. More hard thumps. Growls and hisses. The clatter of small objects falling from cabinet. Someone leaned against the door as Emma fought with whoever was inside.
“Emma!” Using his shoulder, he rammed the door. Anger stirred in him, and the need to shift into his wolf skin spiraled through him.
He shouldn’t have left her alone.
He rushed at the door again. This time, the cheap wood busted apart. The movement pushed a heap of bodies towards the shower. Arms reached all around him. A swath of black hair fell in his face. As quickly as he’d fallen on Emma and her attacker, they rolled off him and continued to fight. Em twisted her body to slam the balding man into the sink. In the narrow space of the bathroom, he lunged toward them, but stopped cold. The crazed werewolf turned her toward him and clenched his arm around her neck. His forearm rose sharply, closing her windpipe off in a deadly vise.
Damn it.
The bald man stared down Kyle. He’d been bitten on the jaw. The torn, purpled skin made his wicked grin all the more shocking. “If it isn’t the good officer…Here to rescue the pretty bitch.”
Kyle flinched, but the man moved to further tighten his grip. There was something about him that was painfully familiar, but now wasn’t the time. Em’s eyes fluttered as her clawed fingers dug into the man’s flesh. The need to act grew painful with each passing second. He could fight. He could shoot. But Em was too close to the target.
“Thought I smelled…a coward…outside,” the man hissed. His wet and broken voice stirred memories and brought a name to mind: Taylor. But this couldn’t be the same man who’d joined the pack in Hadley a few years ago.
“Yeah, your friend outside reeked of it.” The moment to make his move was brief. A sliver of time. Kyle’s hands snaked out to wrestle Emma away. She fell toward him, and they switched places, almost like dancers changing partners. Now that Kyle was up close and personal with Taylor, he remembered how much he had hated the greasy bastard. Another one of Liam’s flunkies.
Kyle slapped viciously at Taylor’s arm with one hand, while his other one grabbed Taylor’s throat. He shoved the older werewolf backward out of the room until Taylor rammed the far wall outside the bathroom.
Even with Kyle’s hand slowly closing around Taylor’s throat, the man chuckled. His eyes blinked too rapidly. “I’m coming,” Taylor said, his voice resembling Liam’s all-too familiar timbre. “For her. You’re both gonna die.”
The fury prickling Kyle’s skin bubbled forth, and he surged forward for the kill. Before he pierced Taylor’s skin with his fangs, he stopped himself. Oh, no, he wouldn’t fall for that trick. There were a million reasons not to bite the infected prey on his plate.
The man was done for anyway. Kyle realized that no matter what he did for Taylor, the infection from the bite would only lead to insanity—like the other man he’d killed outside. In one swift movement, he pulled the .45 from the back of his pants and ended Taylor’s suffering for good. No matter how badly Taylor had treated him in the past, the man didn’t deserve to live like that. Behind him, Em’s soft breaths assured him of her safety. But for how long? How long until Liam’s bite eventually did her in? The water continued to run in the sink, but he didn’t move to turn it off.
Instead, he mumbled, “I’ll be waiting for you, Liam.”
Kyle’s warm hands grabbed Emma under the shoulders and pulled her to standing.
“We need to get out of here.”
Emma nodded numbly. Her throat burned. Every painful swallow made her wince. Those infected werewolves had grown strong. Too strong for her comfort.
They left the house and walked to the car. Nothing stirred among the shadows along the cacti. They were alone for now. She took a seat in the car while Kyle finished packing up the weapons. She leaned against the head rest, wishing she could close her eyes and zone out
for a bit in peace. Beside her, she heard Kyle slide into his seat and shut the door. The car should’ve started up, but all she heard was low breathing. The sound of a hand rubbing rough skin. It had to be Kyle massaging his brow again. When things stressed him, he used to rub his forehead as his headache came on. Based on everything they’d been through, he probably had a migraine by now.
She sensed a pair of eyes on her profile but refused to look at him.
His heated body warmed her side. There wasn’t much distance between them. Just one foot at the most.
When he suddenly took her face in his hands, she gasped.
“You okay, Em?”
Somehow, she managed to nod. The injured werewolf living under her skin leaned toward him. She wanted to stop herself. Tried to stop herself. Hadn’t he told her earlier he didn’t want to get wrapped up in all this?
He leaned closer, brushing his nose against her cheek. How she missed this. Heat pooled under her skin as her core vibrated with urgency. His mouth drifted near hers, then stopped. So close. He’d never hesitated before. When Kyle Benton wanted something, he took it. And she’d always been eager to give.
Her breath quickened and her nostrils flared. Maybe if she held her breath, she’d smell the same raw need from him to touch her, a need so strong it shook her.
His hand drifted down to snake around her waist. Before she could turn her head to kiss him, he made the first move, placing a featherlight kiss at the corner of her mouth. The sweet kiss became fiery as he nibbled along her lips. He lingered there with his nose brushing against hers. The anticipation of what was to come made her fists clench.
More.
Locked in a tight embrace, Kyle kissed her as if they’d never been apart, as if she’d never turned away from him. Hot pleasure coursed through her body as their kiss deepened. One of his hands drifted up her back. Her breath fled as he pulled back the thick strands of her hair in order to reveal her neck. The other hand gripped her hip. She wanted him to continue. She didn’t want the rain of kisses along the sensitive part of her collarbone to end.
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