by Kari Cole
She nodded and tried to hide her tears by rubbing her forehead against his hand.
“Izzy, look at me.” She did. His denim-blue eyes were clear and intent. “The day you and Bess came to live with us was one of the best days of our lives.” He looked at Freddie. “All of our lives. We needed to love you just as much as you girls needed someone to love and take care of you.”
She couldn’t help it. Tears poured from her eyes and she sank to the floor again, laying her head on the bed. Hank stroked her hair with a strong, callused hand.
“From the moment we met you, we knew there was more than just heartbreak and abuse tying you up in knots,” he said. He huffed a laugh. “Though not even your brother’s imagination was good enough to conjure up the truth.”
Freddie chuckled and sat down next to her, rubbing her back as Izzy cried.
“Is this what you are?” Hank asked. “A werewolf like Sarah and the boys?”
Inside, her stomach churned and the wolf buzzed loudly. She shook from head to toe, but Hank’s steady voice and soft touch on her hair made her look at him. When she did, his eyes widened and she knew hers glowed wolf-gold.
She whispered, “Yes.”
Hank stroked a finger over her cheek. “Pretty girl. You and Bess did your darnedest to distance yourselves, didn’t you?” He didn’t really expect an answer, but she nodded anyway. He tugged her hair. “Did you think we couldn’t handle it?”
“We...we didn’t want to hurt you.”
He rolled his eyes. “As if you ever could.” He scowled. “That’s your grandmother talking, isn’t it? Horrible woman. I should have let Abby snatch her head bald like she wanted.”
Izzy felt like she was floating in a dream. She had no words. Only love.
And fear.
Finally, she managed, “Hank, they have Abby. I have to go.”
“Those bastards said you were dead,” he said. “You and Freddie. If we lost you—” His face twisted and he looked over her shoulder at Rissa, who was wearing too-large sweats and was plastered to Freddie’s side. “I’m sorry, honey, but that sister of yours is a mean little snot.”
“I know, sir,” Rissa said in a small voice.
“Not your fault, sweetheart. Not your fault.” He fixed Izzy with one of his patented I-mean-business glares. “I know I can’t stop you from going. But you do it smart. You take help. And”—he held up a finger—“it’s not ‘Hank.’ And not ‘Abby’ either. You are our daughter. You hear me?”
Fresh tears rolled down her cheeks. “Yes, sir. Dad.”
He nodded. “Good. Now go find your mother. She has some things to say to you, too.”
Somehow, Izzy found her feet. Freddie hugged her tight. “Izzy—” He hugged her again, his voice hoarse. “Love you.”
“You, too,” she choked out.
Rissa stopped her just outside the door. “We’ll get Abby back. And then”—her voice descended into a vibrating growl—“we’re going to kill my sister.”
Chapter Fifty-Two
As Luke, Dean, and Davy neared the house, the scent of the pack grew. For the first time in Luke’s life, it offered no comfort.
With the ease of experience, his wolf picked out individuals from the whole. There were strangers among them—including the rogue werecougar. But that wasn’t what made his stomach roil.
He breathed in again, unable to believe what his nose was telling him.
Some of the pack weren’t the least bit upset or afraid. No, in fact, they were happy.
Elated.
His wolf bared his fangs in a silent snarl as a yawning pit of despair opened inside Luke and threatened to swallow him whole.
The dense woods ended abruptly, giving way to the backyard...and a standoff.
On one side, a strange male held Isabelle’s mother with a clawed hand wrapped around her throat. He was flanked by eight other males Luke didn’t know.
On the other side of the yard, Mom faced them with bared teeth. With her, Liz Crandall and Marianne wore expressions of utter horror.
Luke knew exactly how they felt. Because between the two groups, their backs to the rogues, stood five of his packmates. Rick, Terry, Tanya, Daphne, and...
“You, Stefan?” he asked. “You’re behind this?”
Stefan’s smug smile was answer enough.
Across the yard, the French doors on the deck opened. Rissa stepped out, followed by Isabelle. His mate ran to the railing. New bruises ringed her throat. “Mom!” she shouted.
The quick snap of a shotgun being racked echoed in the yard.
“Uh-uh,” the male holding Abby said. He flashed a parody of a smile at Isabelle and shook Abby, eliciting a squeak from her. “Wouldn’t want to hurt Mommy.”
Isabelle paled and lowered her weapon. She turned terrified, pleading eyes to Luke.
This morning he’d woken with her in his arms, warm and sleepy, their new bond glowing like a candle in his heart. It had been the best moment of his life. Now their bond was silent and cold.
He couldn’t meet her eyes. He’d been so confident he’d prove her fear of lycanthropes wrong. Turned out he was the mistaken one. His pack was no better than the one who’d murdered her family. And he’d dragged her right into the middle of their civil war.
He should have let her run.
He turned his bitter gaze on Stefan. “I have no problem believing that Terry and Rick would betray their own pack. They always were grasping, lazy little bastards,” he said, ignoring their snarls. “But you, Stefan? You were one of my dad’s closest friends.”
Stefan’s smile grew, and Luke’s wolf clawed at his shields. The effort to remain human nearly blinded him with pain, because the depth of his stupidity became suddenly, and appallingly, clear.
The trouble with Branson and the mine.
The disappearances.
The deaths.
His voice, when he could finally speak, thundered with his beast. “You killed them.” He struggled to draw in his next breath. “You killed my father.”
Mom cried out incoherently as Liz fought to hold her back.
Marianne screamed, “No! Daphne would never help the people who killed her sister!”
“Tara was a means to an end,” Daphne said with a shrug. “That’s all.”
“Marianne,” Terry said. “We tried to keep you out of this. I’m sorry, darling. We never wanted to hurt Tara.”
In a quiet, guttural voice Luke barely recognized, Marianne said, “I’m going to enjoy ripping your smarmy face off, Terry.”
Stefan sighed like the whole situation bored him. “Your father was always happy with the status quo, Luke. So concerned with the humans. He couldn’t—no, he wouldn’t see that there’s so much more for us. We’re predators. We should be kings. Not hiding among the sheep.”
Next to Luke, Dean shook with rage. “You killed my sister because you want to come out of the closet? You think the humans will just accept that fairy-tale creatures live among them?”
“They will once they realize how much stronger we are. How much we already control them.”
Luke snorted. “Humans outnumber us a thousand to one. You’re delusional.”
“You’re Branson’s money man,” Rissa said. “You’re behind Apex.”
Stefan flinched as if she’d slapped him, and he glanced into the woods behind him. “You’re not as clever as you think you are,” he said, his lip twisted in a sneer.
“You killed your Alpha, Stefan,” Mom said, inching forward despite Liz’s hold. Her words slurred around elongated fangs. “You didn’t even try to do it in a challenge, like a real male. You damn coward.”
Gold flared in Stefan’s eyes, and he growled.
The wind whipped around the yard, carrying the metallic scents of grief and rage. All around them the trees quivered as if in response.
A branch cracked and fell to the ground beneath the trees where Luke had kissed his mate last night.
Rick darted a glance toward it, then eased closer. No doubt the little shit would try to use the stout limb as a weapon instead of fighting with tooth and claw like a wolf.
They heard a truck racing down the driveway on the other side of the house. The newcomers were pack. Luke could feel them through the bonds, but not enough to determine who they were or whose side they were on.
And that had been his problem all along, hadn’t it?
Unlike his father, he hadn’t felt the true connection an Alpha was supposed to have with his pack. When Sam died, it’d barely registered. If Luke were a true leader, he’d have known when the young deputy was in trouble. And he definitely would have felt the male’s death.
What else had he missed?
“What about Vaughn?” he asked, his voice barely human anymore. Was the sheriff a traitor, too? “Where is he?”
Rick huffed a laugh. “He was noble and shortsighted as you are, so I killed him.” With a flash of movement, he drew a gun and pointed it at Luke. So much for the branch theory.
Before the traitor could pull the trigger, a screaming blur of mud-and-blood-streaked vengeance fell out of the trees onto Rick’s head.
Luke’s wolf sniffed in disdain. Rick should have remembered he wasn’t the only one who knew how to stalk upwind.
* * *
Vaughn’s war cry as he leapt out of the trees and landed on Rick obliterated the tenuous restraints holding everyone at bay. Izzy jumped off the deck and ran for Abby. Luke and Stefan crashed together, fists flying. Then, with a great roar, the bearded man who’d attacked her and Rissa inside blasted through a change. Scraps of cloth flew in all directions, leaving a nine-foot-tall grizzly bear charging at Dean.
More weres in human and animal form emerged from all around the house, but Izzy only had eyes for her mother. Every beat of her heart brought the knowledge that she’d never make it in time, that Markes would crush Abby’s throat with a flex of his fingers.
But when he glanced away to avoid the surge of bodies from behind, Abby leaned into him as if to kiss his cheek.
Markes screamed as Abby bit his jaw.
He punched her, sending her sprawling to the ground, just as Izzy raised the shotgun. She pulled the trigger, but Markes was quicker, moving faster than she could track, grabbing her wrist so the shot fired harmlessly into the air.
“I don’t think so, bitch,” he snarled into her face.
She smashed into the ground, thumping her head and elbow on the ice. Pins and needles rushed through her forearm, and the gun skittered out of reach.
Blood dripping from a ragged wound on his face, Markes heaved her to her feet and gave her a brain-rattling shake. “Stupid bitch.” He flung her against a deck post, and the impact hit her like a two-by-four down the spine.
Weaving like a boxer on the ropes, she struggled to keep her feet and not let the pain show on her face. She had to buy Abby time to get away.
“Bitch, bitch, bitch,” Izzy taunted. “You need a new insult, you scrawny motherfucker. You know, something like that.” Come on, Abby. Get up. Get up.
Her right hand still numb, she reached for her knife with her left...and came up empty.
An ugly laugh made her skin crawl as Markes stalked toward her. “Looking for this, bitch?” The werecougar waggled her silver knife. “Come here, let me give it to you.”
Izzy dove for the ground, narrowly missing the swipe of the lethal blade, but not the steel toe of Markes’s boot. He nailed her in the ribs and she rolled into another deck post.
Air. Can’t breathe.
Her mother’s voice cut through the chaos. “Isabelle Elise Meyers,” Abby snapped. “What do you think you’re doing? Stop playing with that foul little man.”
If she weren’t already gasping on the ground, Izzy would have cringed at the use of her full name, the sign of ticked-off moms everywhere. Instead it was all she could do to keep Markes off her. She kicked and rolled, trying to knock his legs out from under him. She was unarmed and—
Her ears rang not only with the pounding of her pulse, but the buzz of her wolf. It wanted out. It wanted a piece of the bastard who’d dare hurt their mother.
A tingling pressure grew under her skin, and Izzy called herself all kinds of stupid. She wasn’t helpless, or unarmed.
Markes sliced Bess’s blade across the back of Izzy’s already-injured forearm. It burned like fire, but she didn’t cry out. She used the searing pain. Rolled with it. Welcomed it like a good stretch after a hard workout.
The first time Izzy changed into the wolf, it had taken forever and felt like she was dying as her tendons ruptured, bones snapped, and skin split. But now the heat of the shift washed over her in an instant. Strength like she’d never known before was suddenly there for the taking.
She took, and was reborn.
And when she lunged again, it was with the power of four legs, not two.
Hot blood rushed into their mouth as they sank their jaws into Markes’s throat. Pain blazed over their shoulder from a glancing blow of the knife, but they shook their head, snarling. The male went limp and they dropped their prey in the snow, watching in satisfaction as his shocked eyes glazed over in death.
Unworthy, the wolf said.
Piece of trash, Izzy agreed.
They wiggled out of the remains of her jeans and surveyed the battleground. Abby crouched nearby, the shotgun in her hands. She looked at them, her eyes wide, and an amazed smile on her face. They dipped their head to her.
The pack was bloody and faltering, and their mate was on the ground beneath the blond traitor.
Ours, her wolf said, their teeth bared in a rolling snarl.
They threw back their head and howled.
Even through the fear for their mate, the freedom of the call sang through their veins and danced in Izzy’s consciousness like champagne.
As one, they called the pack.
Chapter Fifty-Three
As Luke charged Stefan, he put aside his thirst for vengeance. Survival was all that mattered, because he and his allies were all that stood between Stefan and the rest of the pack. There were too many who were vulnerable: the children, the elderly, the human mates, and the hapless innocents—like Eric Conroy and the Spokane mechanic—who had unwittingly wandered into the rogues’ hunting area.
Luke couldn’t believe that he’d ever thought he should’ve let Stefan and Terry take over. If they made it out of this alive, maybe he’d have Isabelle punch him again.
Stefan tried to evade him, but Luke was faster. He crashed into the traitor, struggling to grab hold of something vital, but a deafening roar rent the air, shocking him. Luke slipped, and Stefan slithered out of his grasp.
Cold terror froze Luke as an enormous grizzly swung a platter-sized paw at Dean’s head. Dean ducked under the swipe that could have killed a full-grown bull moose and slashed the bear with a quick strike to the side.
The distraction almost cost Luke his own life when Stefan took advantage and tried to disembowel him. Luke bent backward, narrowly avoiding a second attempt. Snapping out a kick, he caught Stefan in the hip, making him stumble back. Panting, they circled one another.
Shouts and snarls and the thwacks of bodies hitting bodies rang all around. A shotgun blasted near the house. Was that Isabelle’s?
Focus, his wolf said. Can’t help Mate if we’re dead.
Right. Besides, his mate was a warrior. She could handle that piece-of-shit cat. Right?
She had to. They needed her.
“You can’t win. You don’t even understand the power that’s right here under our feet,” Stefan said, sneering. “Money is power, and this territory is sitting on billions in copper and silver. Billions, pup. And your stupid father refused to touch it.”
Like a damned green kid, he let his anger get the best of him. He lunged and Stefan kicked him in the thigh hard enough to shock the muscle. His leg gave out. Falling to one knee, he barely deflected the bastard’s foot as it sailed toward his head.
Before Stefan could regain his balance, Luke slashed him across the thigh. The scent of blood brought a feral smile to his lips.
Stefan growled. “The pack doesn’t know what’s good for it. The fact that they chose you as Alpha is proof. And I’m tired of pretending you’re in charge.”
Luke hopped back up only to be bulldozed by a tawny wolf he didn’t know. Stars burst behind his eyes as his head slammed into the ground. For a harrowing second, he thought he would pass out.
Then things got worse.
The wolf leapt on top of him. Claws raked his thighs and chest. Jaws snapped at his face, and Luke just managed to keep the beast away from his throat.
As quickly as the wolf had attacked him, it was gone. Luke gasped for breath, trying to get up, but someone kicked him in the side. He rolled away, and caught a quick glimpse of the action near the lake’s edge, where Dean and Vaughn fought the grizzly together. One of Vaughn’s legs didn’t seem to be working right, and Dean’s face was a mask of blood.
Another kick landed on Luke’s side, and something cracked. As he tried to get his hands and knees underneath him, he saw Terry punch Marianne in the face.
Rough hands pushed Luke onto his back. “Told you you couldn’t win,” Stefan said with a twisted smile. He leaned down and pressed his forearm against Luke’s throat. Black ate at the edge of his vision.
I’m sorry, sugar. Goddess, he loved her, his brave Valkyrie. He should have told her how proud he was to be her mate. Even for a short while. He sent a quick prayer to whoever was listening that they keep Isabelle safe. She’d be okay. She had the pack now; he’d given her that much. And he was even happy she’d cut off their mate bond. Maybe with it blocked, she wouldn’t feel his death.