Mac (Mammoth Forest Wolves Book 2)

by Kimber White

  April’s face went dark. Jasmine let out an emotional sigh. My back went up.

  “What do you know?” I couldn’t keep the dark threat from my tone. With everything that had happened between Eve and me, I was damn near feral. Eve put a hand flat on my chest and held a finger up to April, cautioning her to keep her distance.

  April was defiant though. She crossed her arms and swung the hair away from her face. “If she’s in a cell, then I know where that is. I can take you to her.” She directed her words to Eve.

  “No!” I said. “It’s too dangerous. I’m getting Eve the hell out of here. Now. She’s been targeted.”

  “We all have,” Jasmine nearly shouted it. “Every one of us. That’s why we’re here. What makes her so special?”

  The answer erupted from my throat in a snarl and I knew my wolf eyes glinted silver. “She’s mine. That makes her everything.”

  “You can’t run with her,” April said. “Not now. They’ll come after you. The Pack will know the second Eve steps outside the boundaries of Birch Haven. They’ll track you. And now...you’ve made it so they’ll probably scent you on her in two seconds flat. So basically, Eve, you’re fucked. You’ve got no choice but to trust me.”

  No sooner had April made her threat when the air changed again. My vision clouded and a fog drifted through my brain. It was the pull of the Pack. They were getting close again. I dropped to my knees, my growl ripping through the air. Kat and Jasmine looked terrified. April stood her ground. A choked sound came from Eve as she put her hand on my back.

  “Don’t,” she said. “If you shift now, we’re all done for.” She turned to April. “Do you have a plan? Is there somewhere I can go?”

  Jasmine threw up her hands and started to pace. If she were a shifter, she’d be having as much of a time keeping her beast at bay as I was.

  “Yes,” April said. “I know a place. It’ll be temporary. You and your boys are going to have to come up with a plan and quick. I can keep Eve hidden for a day or two, at most. I can take you to Lena. I know where they’re keeping her.”

  “How do you know all of this?” I asked. With Eve’s gentle hand on my back, I was able to come fully back into myself. “Why the hell should I trust you?” I grew bold. I grabbed April by the arm and turned her. As I suspected, I saw the faded outline of the mark she bore at the back of her neck. She jerked away and glared at me.

  “He’s dead,” she answered the question I hadn’t asked yet. “The monster who marked me is dead. No one has a claim on me now. Not yet, anyway. I’ll die before I’ll let it happen again. All of us will. Have you ever asked yourself why the Pack doesn’t keep stronger wolves here to patrol the grounds? There are no generals here. Mostly underlings and betas.”

  “Why?” I hissed. She was right though. It was the one thing that didn’t add up about Birch Haven.

  “Because the temptation to just take one of us without permission would be too strong. And, the chances one of the generals or Alphas might find a fated mate here is too great. So he staffs this place with lesser wolves. But, don’t get me wrong. They’re plenty strong and plenty bad. That’s what happened with Lena. The wolf who marked her against her will was an Alpha. Shelby Cole. She fought back. When the Chief Alpha caught wind of it, he killed him. But, Lena was already pretty messed up from it. And the Alpha suspects she’s connected to one of you.”

  Her words twisted in my guts like a knife. The Alpha was keeping Lena as a hostage because of me.

  “It’s not too late,” April said. “If you have the numbers and can be quick about it, I think we can make a run for it. Can you get us out?”

  “I can hide you.”

  “No,” April said. “I’m not going from one shifter to another. But if you can just get us out…”

  “Stop it!” Jasmine yelled. “This is insane. I told you. Even talking to him could get us killed or worse. You’re willing to put your trust in this guy? He’s a shifter. A shifter!”

  “He’s not like the ones in there,” Eve said. “He’s not under the control of the Pack.”

  “For now,” Jasmine said. “The minute they figure out who he is, they’ll bring him back in line. Why the hell would you want to risk that? You just want what they want. You want breeding stock.”

  I clenched my jaw so hard I nearly ground my teeth into powder. This girl was scared. Terrified. As much as I resented the comparison, I could understand her fear. I couldn’t claim to know what she’d done to keep her wits about her in there. She’d lost friends. So had I.

  “Lena Morris is my sister,” I said. That knowledge gave her power over me. It was an act of faith. Jasmine’s eyes searched mine and she recognized it. “Eve is my mate. My fated mate. And I am nothing like the shifters of the Pack. You want a way out? I’m it. If you can do what you say, if you can keep Eve and Lena safe until I get back, I’ll bring reinforcements. I know a place where the Pack won’t be able to find you. There are more of us than you realize. I’ve helped other people before.”

  Tears fell from Jasmine’s eyes. “Someone already promised me that. They broke that promise. I lost my sister too. I wasn’t lured to Birch Haven. I came to find my sister. She was one of the Twelve.”

  She said the last part with reverence as if I should know what it meant. My head spun. There was movement on the east side of the wall. Shifters were on the move.

  “Who the hell are the Twelve?” I asked it at the same time Eve did.

  April threw up her hands. “We don’t have time for this now.”

  “So talk fast,” I said.

  April rolled her eyes. “It’s an urban myth, anyway. But, fine. Real quick. There’s a rumor there were a dozen girls who made a break for it from Birch Haven a few years ago. Nobody knows what happened to them. Some say they got away. Some say they were caught and killed. Some say it never happened at all and it’s just a ghost story the yahoos behind these walls tell to scare girls like us. Jasmine, I’m sorry, but you know it too. I’m sorry about Jade. Chances are if she was here, she got herself marked and she’s off having puppies with some asshole shifter in southern Kentucky.”

  Jasmine looked ready to murder April. She was right though, we didn’t have time for this. My wolf clamored to get out. The shifters on the other side of the wall were way too close. The need to grab Eve and run tore at me. We wouldn’t get far fast enough for me to keep her safe.

  “It’s okay,” Eve said, turning to me and sensing my mood. “Come back with help. I can stay out of trouble long enough to figure out what’s happening with Lena.”

  My nostrils flared as my wolf tried to rip his way out. Again, Eve’s calming hand on my arm kept me in control. How had I ever lived without her? How could I leave her now? Her eyes searched mine and gave me the hard answers neither of us wanted. We had no choice. The safest thing to do was regroup and come back.

  “Keep her safe,” I snarled at April.

  “You do your part, we’ll do ours. Come on! Clock’s ticking.”

  Voice roses on the other side of the wall. Eve grabbed me and drew me into a kiss. It made her knees weak and I held her up. The taste of her intoxicated me.

  April’s hand on her arm drew her away. “Come on!” she said. “You get your stink all over her and I’m never going to be able to hide her. Now, shoo. We meet here. Tomorrow night. Be ready.”

  I pressed my lips to Eve’s ear and spoke in a voice too low for anyone but her to hear. “Stay alive. I love you.”

  Then, I tore myself away.

  Fifteen

  Eve

  I’ve never run so fast in my life. I’ve never felt both exhilaration and terror in equal parts the way I did that night. Pulling away from Mac gutted me. At the same time, the promise of seeing him again and finally leaving with him drove me.

  We stayed to the shadows on the other side of the wall. There were still fifteen minutes before curfew. The campus patrols were close, but four girls giggling and walking briskly across the quad weren’t enough to
draw suspicion right now. If it had been Chris or Joel or even Trey, things might have gone to hell. But, I’d never seen the men on patrol that night.

  April headed toward Covey Hall. Before she got there, she looked over her shoulder and made a sharp turn to the right. Signaling Jasmine, she and Kat broke off. They headed up the dorm steps while April grabbed my arm and pulled me off the sidewalk down a steep embankment.

  “Where the hell are we going?”

  “Better you don’t know,” she said through gritted teeth. “But, you can’t go back to your dorm. Maybe not ever. Chris Woods isn’t an idiot. He may not have marked you yet, but he’s got your scent ingrained in him now. You get anywhere near him, he’s going to smell your man all over you.”

  Terror froze my heart. She was right. As much as my body craved Mac’s, it might be the very thing that got him killed. I couldn’t live with myself if that happened. Not now. Not when I’d gotten a taste of what he was supposed to be to me. Even now, my neck burned where I’d wanted him to bite me. In Nikki and even April, that mark was an abomination. For Mac and me, I knew it was destiny.

  We doubled back twice. April made wild gestures with her hands. There were security cameras hanging from the street lamps in certain parts of campus. She made a big show about passing under them. Then, we went back to the shadows. We circled the edge of campus three times. Finally, she darted across Clover Lane and headed for a one room schoolhouse just outside the campus boundary. The building was allegedly one of the oldest schoolhouses in the state. The campus had been built around it.

  April took me around to the back of the building. There, in the darkest shadows behind thick shrubbery, she knelt in front of a small, rectangular basement window. The metal frame was rusted out.

  “Be quick,” she whispered.

  “You want me to crawl through there?”

  April arched a brow and nodded. “Better hurry. It’s going to be dark and damp down there. But, you’ll find a pallet under the stairs and a box with some food and water. Don’t come out or even go to the upper floors for any reason. I’ll come back for you tomorrow. You’ll know if it’s me ‘cause I’ll knock on this window. There’s a bench under it you can climb on.”

  “What if I have to…”

  “There’s a sump pump in the corner.”

  “Gross.”

  “Glamorous life we rebels live, eh?”

  I put a hand on April’s shoulder. “Thank you. Why are you doing this?”

  “It’s not like I’m a hero, Eve. I just know what it was like to be taken against my will by one of those...assholes. I’m not planning on letting it happen again.”

  I wanted to hug her. This girl had steel in her back, and I hoped it was enough for what we had planned. She sat back on her heels, regarding me.

  “You sure that one’s different? Your man?”

  The question took me aback. April’s eyes gleamed under the stars. It didn’t take a mind reader to understand she was thinking about whatever past horror she’d endured under a different shifter. How had she resisted? How had she come out whole?

  “He is,” I said.

  “I hope you’re right. For all our sakes.”

  “What about Lena Morris?”

  April smoothed a hair away from her face and pointed across the street facing away from campus. “You see that yellow house? Two down from the intersection.”

  I did. It was an unassuming bungalow with red shutters and a white picket fence. There were dozens of them on every street in Birch Haven. Again, the spooky nature of ghost town at night made my skin crawl. I’d spent almost a year and a half in Birch Haven, and only now that truth was evident. I think I’d been willfully blind until Mac made me see.

  “She’s in there?”

  April nodded. “I’m pretty sure. That’s where they took one of my friends after she...fought. Plus, two nights ago, Jasmine thought she saw Lena in the backyard. They let her out sometimes. Fresh air, I guess.”

  “Is she under guard?” As much as I wanted to hide, the little yellow house was so close, less than two blocks away.

  “Oh, there’s a shifter who lives there. One or two, actually. But, they’re not there all the time. When you saw her, was she bound?”

  I closed my eyes and envisioned Lena as she was the other night, curled up on the bed. I didn’t remember seeing chains or bindings on her wrists. But, it had been so brief a glimpse, I might have missed something. “I don’t think so. But, someone was in the room with her. And of course there were the cameras.”

  “Right,” April said her voice trailing off. “And, she might have chains on her you can’t even see. We can try to get a message to her tomorrow if you’re willing. Jasmine says she goes out in the yard at two o’clock every Wednesday for a few minutes. The house next door is vacant. But, if I sense even a hint of trouble, Lena’s going to be on her own. She’s damaged goods, Eve. I didn’t want to say that in front of your man, he looked so sexy and desperate. But, who knows what’s going on in Lena Morris’s brain? They’ve got her locked in there, so somebody still thinks she’s a threat. That’s good for us. She just might not be too stable.”

  Ice ran up my spine. God. What had Lena endured? I just prayed she shared the strongest part of Mac’s DNA. I was banking on the hope that there was enough fight left in her to make all the difference.

  Then, it was time for April to leave. She had just a few more minutes to race back to Covey and make it in before curfew. We’d pressed our luck enough for one night. As it was, I had put my trust in Jasmine. She’d promised to swipe my ID when she went back into Camden. Unless Nikki came back and raised some alarm, no one would know I was gone.

  “Be back before two,” April said. “Then we’ll see if there’s anything left of Lena Morris to save.”

  Sixteen

  Eve

  The schoolhouse basement was just as dank and damp as April promised. Still, this was the freest I’d felt in weeks next to the brief stolen moments I’d shared with Mac out in the woods. My heart and my sex still thrummed from the memory of his touch. The patch of skin at the nape of my neck throbbed, aching for his mark.

  For so long, that mark had represented something sinister. Now, I understood the perversion the Chief Pack had made of it. I’d been lucky. It wouldn’t last. No matter what, I knew in my heart that I would leave with Mac the next time I saw him. If it meant I spent the rest of my life as a fugitive, I didn’t care. I belonged with him.

  I sat on the pallet, leaning against the basement wall. From there, I could see the stars as they came out one by one. Wherever Mac was, he was staring at the same stars. I was sure of it. He was safe, but he hadn’t gone far. Even now, if I closed my eyes and listened to my heart, I could hear his beating right along with it. He didn’t have to tell me how that feeling would intensify the moment he marked me.

  Did I want that? Truly? Not so long ago, the thought of it would have terrified me. Now, living without him was the scariest thing of all.

  Then, there was Birch Haven. So many girls were trapped there. If we were lucky, maybe I and a handful more could escape. But, what would happen to the rest of them? How was I going to be able to live knowing what happened...what was still happening behind these walls? What about Nikki? Was there any way to save her too?

  My thoughts churned over and over. There would be no sleep for me tonight or any night until I was with Mac again.

  April came the next afternoon, just like she said she would. Her soft knock on the window sent my heart racing. I climbed up the tool bench at the bottom of the window as she held it open. I wriggled out, catching my jeans on a rusty nail. They tore at the knee, but it didn’t break the skin. I dusted myself off and stretched my back.

  “Come on,” April whispered. “We’ve got to be ten times as careful in the daylight. There are two shifters walking down the street near the yellow house, but Lena’s in the yard by herself. We’re going to go around the back. There’s a gap in the fence. Kat’s at on
e end of the street, Jaz’s at the other. You’ll have maybe five minutes, tops. Then we’ve got to get back to campus.”

  “Campus?” The idea of going back to Camden Hall or anywhere Chris Woods might be churned my stomach.

  “Jaz can cover for you one night. Not two. Nobody’s seen Nikki for two days. So she won’t be sounding any alarms. It’s just one more day. You trust your boyfriend?”

  “What? Yes. Of course.”

  “Good. ‘Cause we all plan on being far the fuck away from here by tomorrow night.”

  I plastered on a smile as April and I crossed the street. For this late in October, the sky was clear, and a harsh sun made my shirt stick to my back. “And what if we can’t get Lena away? Or what if she won’t come?”

  “Well, you better talk a good talk in the next five minutes.”

  “Gee, thanks. No pressure.” Still, excitement thrummed through me. For the first time in weeks, I felt like I was finally taking control of my life again.

  We ducked into the yard next to the little yellow house. Just as April said, there was a high, white picket privacy fence. Near one corner, there was a knot in the wood. April nodded toward it and took a position on the other side of the house. She’d whistle once when we needed to bail.

  My heart practically in my throat, I walked to the end of the fence and peered through the two-inch hole. She was there. Lena sat on a stone bench in a small vegetable garden with her back to me. Her long hair hung past her waist. I could tell it must have shone with luster once. Now, it was dingy and dirty, with knotted clumps. When she turned toward me a little, I noticed a streak of gray running from her temple. My lungs felt tight as I imagined what might have put it there.

  “Lena?” I whispered. “I’m a friend. Are you all right?”

  Her back stiffened and she turned slightly, but didn’t answer. She knew I was there though. Her hand fluttered as she brought it to her throat. She looked down, tilting her head toward the sound of my voice.