by Gigi Moore
Remy knew they hadn’t told her about themselves yet and decided to use that against them.
He took another couple of steps, bringing him just a few steps away from the trio. He watched as Carson balled his hands at his sides, imagined the claws scratching at the younger man’s skin, just below the surface, ready to burst free as soon as they had the chance.
Carson bared his teeth now, matching Remy’s stance.
Hmm, that is interesting.
Would he really try to fight Remy in his human form? He might have had a fighting chance against Remy in his wolf form, might have, but Remy didn’t give either brother good odds in human form—scrappy spirit or not.
“What do we do now?” Desiree asked, tone low, trying to hide her fear.
It didn’t work. Remy could hear the slight tremor in her voice, the underlying scent of alarm wafting off her skin beneath the vanilla musk.
“We don’t do anything, but you’re going to turn around and make it back to the house.”
“I’m not leaving you two here by yourselves.”
Ah, how sweet. Like she would help them fight him?
Was that bravery, love, or just foolhardiness talking? Nevertheless, Remy admired Desiree’s spirit, recognized the same spirit in his Helena.
He’d often imagined her out hunting prey by his side, fearless and wild. She’d be the same way in bed, too, he’d bet. He’d had a lot of time to imagine that, too, how they would mate, how he would sink his fangs into her shoulder, marking her and shaking her until she knew that she was his and no one else’s. He’d wipe away every memory of Ben she ever had.
He already knew how fearless and wild Desiree proved, had witnessed it just a short while ago and liked her natural sensuality as much as he remained sure that Carson and Sam did.
Carson took a moment to turn to her, rubbing her arm in a comforting motion. “We’ll be all right, cher. We know how to handle ourselves.”
“He’s not exactly a rabid raccoon, and you’re unarmed.”
True enough he wasn’t a raccoon, but the boys weren’t exactly unarmed, not if they decided to shift.
Remy still didn’t give them good odds against him, even two against one. He had, after all, years of experience of fighting and as alpha, and several years of pent-up anger and frustration fueling him, while the boys had that old-fashioned protective instinct going for them.
He could see the wheels turning in both young men’s heads, how they kicked themselves for bringing Desiree out here without a gun or other weapon to protect her. Alone, they didn’t worry about being attacked, knowing they could shift and fight to defend themselves against almost any threat—human or animal. Shifting, however, was not an option open to them, at least not until they got Desiree out of the vicinity.
Desiree wasn’t cooperating, though, and Carson gritted his teeth at her stubbornness.
Remy saw her wince when Carson evidently put enough pressure on her arm to cause a little pain before easing up when he must have realized he hurt her. Nevertheless, Carson firmly pushed her back and steered her in the direction of the ranch. “Please, Desi. Just listen to me and leave.”
She swallowed, and Remy heard her heart pounding in her chest, knew the adrenaline spiked through her veins signaling fight or flight. “Okay,” she rasped.
“Thank you,” Carson and Sam chorused as she slowly turned her back.
“I’ll be back with help.”
“Don’t worry about us. Just go,” Carson said.
She turned back to both men, tears welling in her eyes. “I love you both. Please don’t get killed before I get back.”
Remy sat back on his haunches as Desiree turned and ran through the woods, back toward The Double R, before either man could respond.
How very touching.
He sneered at her sentiment right before he shifted. He did it quickly, didn’t have time to waste.
In less than a minute of popping and realigning bones and muscles, Remy stood before the two young men as naked as they were. “I don’t know about you gentlemen, but I thought she’d never leave.”
* * * *
Carson didn’t even have time to properly digest Desiree’s declaration. He didn’t have time to analyze whether she’d sincerely meant it or had just said it out of desperation before running off.
Did she think she’d never see them again? Had she thought it was her last chance to tell them how she felt?
Why didn’t you tell her you loved her, too, while you had the chance?
None of his questions mattered now, because the man who killed his father and changed his family’s existence forever stood before him and Sam.
Remy looked unbreakable and strong, and Carson wanted to make the smug smile on his face disappear with a swipe of his claws. He wanted to leave a gaping hole where Remy Bastien’s face was now.
“You can either come back with me now or suffer the consequences.”
“If I go along peacefully, you’ll leave Mama and Sam out of our quarrel?”
“Carson, do—”
He shushed his brother, putting an arm across his chest to hold him back as Sam tried to step forward. This was his fight, always had been.
“You call what is between us a quarrel?” Remy spat on the ground at Carson’s feet. “You are in no position to bargain, Carson Guidry.”
“Why should I go peacefully? I’m going to suffer the consequences regardless.”
“True. But if you don’t give me any trouble, I might be persuaded to go a little easier on you. I say might. Of course, I make no promises. You did kill my son, after all.”
Carson grimaced, knowing that Duane Bastien’s death hadn’t touched Remy as much as he pretended it did. He had used his son’s death as the opportunity he had been waiting for to get Mama under his thumb. Carson, knight in shining armor, had walked right into the trap, handing his mother over on a silver platter…almost.
“Carson, Carson, Carson, my boy, you have no choice. Pack law. You killed one of your own kind.” Remy tsked and shook his head with false remorse, and Carson hated him more than he ever had in that moment. “And to do it over a full human, no less. The worst kind of treachery against pack.”
“Duane was no angel.”
“Are you saying my boy, my flesh and blood, heir to be alpha, didn’t deserve to live?”
An outsider might take Remy’s words and actions as legitimate grief and outrage, but Carson knew better, knew there had been no love lost between father and son. No one in the pack had resented Remy, or looked forward to his downfall, more than Duane.
Carson shook his head. “I would never say that. I’m saying your son was a psychopathic tyrant who needed to be put down before he hurt someone beyond repair.” He realized as he said the words that he may very well have been describing Remy.
“And who died and made you that girl’s savior?”
Who’d died, indeed? “Why don’t you just do what you will, right here and now.” Carson raised his head, jutting his chin out defiantly, tired of Remy’s games.
“Carson.”
He listened to the urgent plea in Sam’s voice and wanted to reassure his brother, sorry that Sam had to be here to witness whatever was going to transpire, but there was no help for it. This moment remained inevitable, always had.
Remy, however, wasn’t playing by Carson’s rules, either.
“Hmm, I could kill you both here and now, but I don’t think Helena would take too kindly to seeing her bebes’ blood spilled all over the forest floor.”
“I won’t go peacefully without guarantees.”
Remy raised a hand, making it obvious he had bared his claws as he examined them beneath the moonlight, showing off his superior control to shift minute portions of his body at will rather than completely shifting. “As I said, I make no promises.”
“Then I won’t go. You’re going to kill us all anyway.”
“You are challenging me?”
“I have that right.”
<
br /> “You forfeited all pack rights the minute you killed Duane, regardless of the reason.”
He wasted time trying to negotiate with Remy, and he knew it. Even now he could hear the sound of at least two off-road vehicles in the distance but quickly making their way through the forest and toward them.
True to her word, Desiree was coming back with help.
Maybe I’ll still get the chance to tell her I love her.
Remy proffered his hand as if for a shake. “Come along, boy. I might go easy on the torture before I imprison you.”
Carson stepped back. “No.” He wasn’t a coward. He just refused to make things easy for Remy. Not to mention he had something worth staying and fighting for. “Why should I trust anything you say? You killed my father.”
There. It was finally out in the open, and Carson felt a thousand times better for saying out loud what lived and breathed between them all.
Sam, on the other hand, had turned as white as a sheet of paper, and that was saying something for someone with as deep a natural tan as his brother.
Remy dropped his hand, the smirk on his face disappearing to be replaced with a scowl.
Carson couldn’t tell if it was because he’d had the nerve to voice his suspicions or because Remy was genuinely surprised that Carson knew what he had done. “If I have no rights, then neither do you.”
“You also have no proof of what you say. Several reliable people, on the other hand, witnessed you murder my son.”
“It wasn’t murder!” Sam blurted.
Carson put a hand on his brother’s shoulder and squeezed. He wouldn’t have worded what he had done so harshly, but neither could he deny the end results. The truth remained. Duane Bastien had died at his hands. Whether he’d killed Duane in defense of that girl or not didn’t matter. Hell, even if his actions had been self-defense he’d still have had to answer to the pack for killing someone outside of a sanctioned challenge fight.
However, he could make the argument that he was as reliable as those “witnesses” to whom Remy had referred.
He knew what he had seen the night of his father’s death—Remy lurking around his parents’ restaurant after closing hours, leaving the site right before the explosion and fire that killed his father.
Carson had been on his way to pick up Dad at Mama’s behest. She’d jokingly instructed him to “drag the workaholic home if need be.” At the end of the evening, there’d been no more room for jokes or laughing. Dad was dead. And pack powers that be deemed the explosion caused by a faulty gas connection.
Carson wouldn’t have put it past Remy to have paid off the authorities. He certainly had the resources and connections and couldn’t have planned things better.
There had been no physical evidence linking Remy to the explosion or the scene, just Carson’s word. Just the word of a grief-stricken teen who had seen someone that could have been anyone in the dark of night.
Back then he hadn’t had the guts to voice his thoughts to anyone outside the family circle, and once his mother knew what he thought, she’d put a stop to any of his accusations, telling him never again to speak of what he’d seen.
“I will not lose my son, too.”
Carson had been willing to fight but not willing to hurt his mama by getting her caught in the crossfire of his blood feud with Remy. She’d been through enough, although in the end it hadn’t mattered, not after he’d killed Duane. She’d made rescuing Carson her number-one priority, and there had been nothing he or anyone else could say to stop her.
“You know I have every right to take your life right here where you stand.”
Carson poked out his chest like an offering. “Why don’t you?” He knew the answer, though, knew it before Remy opened his mouth to respond.
“If I didn’t have feelings for your mother, I would have ended this silly cat-and-mouse game a long time ago.”
The only feelings Remy Bastien had for Mama were lust and possession. Carson had seen them in the man’s eyes even while his father had still been alive. He had seen how much Remy wanted to make Mama his no matter what it took, even if it took killing Carson and Sam’s father.
“However, I have but so much patience, and if you push me too far, Carson, my feelings for your mother be damned, I will exact my pound of flesh without any due process.”
All this talk of due process, rights, and pack law depressed Carson, bringing to light how very isolated he and his family had become in the last several years. The only people they could turn to for protection and backup remained each other and it was because of Carson’s impulsive act that they were all being isolated and punished.
“I’ll give you time to put on your clothes and accompany me back to my vehicle.”
“Don’t trust him, Carson.”
“I don’t have a choice.”
“What’s to stop him from killing you en route to Louisiana? If he had legitimate intentions, why didn’t he just send pack officials to bring you in?”
“Because I chose not to, you mouthy whelp.”
Carson hesitated for the first time since Remy’s arrival, unsure of what he needed to do.
His brother had a point, but then so too did Remy. He had every right to bring in Carson himself as Carson had wronged him, deprived him of his flesh and blood. Remy had been the one who’d suffered the loss. It wasn’t like in the human world, where Remy’s personally handling the incarceration of a prisoner could be construed as a conflict of interest.
“I’m not letting him go with you without a fight.”
“So now you are going to challenge me?” Remy sighed. “Might I remind you that you are on my personal shit list as well? Don’t make me take you in, too.”
Without warning, Sam shifted, growling and barking at Remy as he stood a couple of steps in front of Carson.
He’d changed so quickly, Carson barely had any time to react. As it was, he knelt at his brother’s side and wrapped his arms around Sam’s neck to hold him back. He felt his brother’s shudders through his entire body as if they were his own and knew how angry Sam was.
“That was unwise.”
Remy’s tone was ominous, and Carson knew exactly what it meant.
He released his brother and began to shift just as Remy did, knowing that in only a matter of minutes the first vehicle would burst through the copse and into the clearing yards away.
Chapter 16
Desiree couldn’t believe what she saw through the vehicle’s windshield.
There were three wolves now—snarling and full-on fighting—and no sign of Carson or Sam anywhere.
“Holy crap!” Maia stopped the Jeep she’d borrowed, unbuckled her seatbelt, and leaped out of the vehicle before Desiree knew what was happening.
Jesse and Jax had already gotten out of Jesse’s truck, Jesse with a rifle in hand but standing frozen next to his brother as if he didn’t know what to do with it.
Desiree followed her sister to where Jesse and Jax stood, still quite a lot of yards away from the wolves.
“I thought you said there was a wolf threatening you and Carson and Sam. Where’d the other two come from?” Jesse looked at her as if she could give him an answer.
She thought that she could but knew that voicing her suspicions could get her put in a straitjacket and sent to the funny farm in a blink
“Where are Carson and Sam?” Jax asked, circling what was left of Desiree and the boys’ earlier picnic.
Desiree knew the exact moment when Jax noticed the clothes strewn on the two bedrolls. He lifted his eyes to her face and arched an eyebrow.
“Interesting time to decide to go skinny-dipping,” Jax said and looked out at the stream as if in hopes of seeing the missing brothers frolicking in the water.
“Maybe it was the only way they could get away from the wolf,” Maia put in.
“That doesn’t explain the other two wolves,” Jesse said. “Unless they were hiding in the woods and you didn’t see them?”
Desiree sh
rugged, at a loss, still trying to wrap her mind around the three wolves fighting as if to the death. Someone needed to stop them before they killed each other.
“We’re going to have to put a stop to this before those critters rip each other apart,” Jesse stated.
“What do you suggest? We go in and break them up?” Jax asked.
“Ha, ha.” Jesse manipulated the rifle lever to chamber a round.
“What are you going to do?” Desiree asked, panicked.
“What needs to be done.”
Desiree watched as he raised the rifle, heart pounding so hard in her ears she could barely hear Maia scream beside her. She acted without thinking, throwing out an arm to hit against the barrel of the gun and deflect Jesse’s aim.
The rifle fired, bullet kicking up dirt and grass not two feet in front of the wolves, who momentarily stopped fighting before going back at each other, teeth and claws biting and slashing, fur flying, worse than before.
“Tarnation, woman! Are you out of your mind?”
“You were going to kill them.”
“Not if I didn’t have to. I was going to fire into the air, hopefully scare them off. But these critters don’t look scared of anything.”
“That’s dangerous,” Jax muttered.
“Yep.” Jesse nodded. “An injured wolf, an injured animal is a dangerous animal.”
“But they’re not a threat.”
“Not yet. What do you think is going to happen when they lose interest in each other and get a load of us?” Jesse asked.
“But they haven’t lost interest in each other.” Desiree wished that they had, that they would just stop fighting and run off so that Jesse and Jax weren’t forced to do something drastic. “Can’t we just go back to the house and call Division of Wildlife to handle them like Carson did for the raccoon?”
“We could…” Jesse’s voice trailed off as he stared at the wolves.
Desiree followed his look to see what he watched and saw the larger wolf running off into the woods at a good clip. He looked injured, but obviously not enough to hamper his mobility.