It was quick. Painful. And messy.
When he stepped back from the strewn body parts, even in his Wolf form, who reveled in this kind of deed, he winced at the scene.
A scene his mate was witnessing.
She was shaken, that he saw. She didn’t stink of fear as she’d done earlier though. She was just wide-eyed. Watching everything. Her gaze glued to the body parts that were on the ground.
“How well do you know this area?” he asked her after he shifted.
Her body tensed in response to his question, telling him she hadn’t known he was back in his human skin. Her head tilted to the side and he caught a glimpse of her smoky dark eyes—Gods, she was beautiful.
After the kill, after the triumph of seeing Elena, his woman, safe, and combined with her beauty, his cock was harder than a pike.
He couldn’t do anything about it. Didn’t even feel ashamed as her gaze glued itself to his shaft and seemed fixated, as though she’d doused her glance in superglue.
He licked his lips, wanting nothing more than to stride over to her, take her in his arms, and show her the kind of joy that could only be found in a mate bond.
But he couldn’t do that.
Not when he was covered in blood spatter.
The magic of the shift didn’t act like bleach. More’s the pity. Some was cleansed away but he knew, point blank, his mouth would be ruby red from where the blood had pooled when he’d torn into Devaney’s throat.
Regret filled him, but this was important.
The area was busy in the evening, especially this close to the club. They needed to get out of here before someone found three naked men, covered in blood, and a dead animal torn to shreds on the road.
At least it was a Wolf and not a human. Although, the former would probably still see them serving jail time if they were regular people. Which they weren’t.
They’d been born irregular, and Luca was more than okay with that.
“Elena? Do you know the area?” he repeated, his tone sterner now, authoritative. He needed her to answer.
She licked her lips and nodded, but it was a little wild, the bobbing of her head seeming like she was on a spring. “Y-Yes, I know it well. Miguela and I come here often.”
Luca didn’t even want to think about how often, and what the two women were doing in a place like this. He had to remind himself that it wasn’t the early nineteen hundreds anymore. Women didn’t need chaperones, didn’t need to account for themselves, their dress, or the men they slept with.
They were free in a way they’d never been before.
Luca, having witnessed the sexual revolution firsthand, wished he could tell them that freedom came with a price, but who was he to judge?
After being raised in a world where seeing a woman’s ankle was considered risqué, he sure as hell preferred that his mate wore a slinky black pencil skirt that showed off her fine ass and hips, and a sweetheart-neckline blouse that displayed the lush curves of her tits.
His nostrils flared as his cock hardened even more. “Do you know where there’s a payphone around here?”
She blinked but nodded. “I-I think there’s one around that corner.”
Damien and Adam, having shifted back now, were also bareass naked—their clothes having been destroyed in the shift. Not even a sliver of clothing remained, which was a testament to the power of the magic that fueled them.
Most Lyken who shifted in clothes would revert dressed in rags.
Luca had no idea why that wasn’t the case for them, but it never had been.
Grimacing at walking through Barcelona’s grimy Gothic Quarter with bare feet and buck naked, he motioned for her to come to him.
She swallowed but took a small step forward. He eyed her as she carefully watched where she put her feet, stepping here and there, where no part of the slain Wolf could be found.
It seemed to take her an age to reach him, and when she did, he was relieved. He hadn’t wanted to hurry her up, but he’d have done so if she’d taken much longer.
Damien and Adam herded her from the back, and the four of them walked at a swift pace down the street, following Elena’s directions when she motioned with her hand.
Just as they reached the payphone, scrawled with graffiti and stinking of piss, they heard the scream, and the three of them spat, “Shit,” simultaneously.
Elena jolted. “What do we do?”
He couldn’t begin to describe the satisfaction that filled him at hearing her use the word ‘we,’ but now wasn’t the time to reminisce.
He shot his brothers a look as he reached for the phone. To Elena, he asked, “Do you have some money for the call?”
She blinked at him, then her gaze drifted over their naked forms—they’d lost thousands of wallets over the years to impromptu shifts. “Yeah, sure. Of course,” she mumbled, and digging into her purse, sought out some change. She handed it to him and he fed them into the payphone.
As the line started to connect, he peered around, found the name of the street, and murmured into the receiver, “Meet us at Carrer de Hospital. We’re there waiting. There’s a Wolf corpse around the corner. You might want to get some uniforms to herd the sheep.”
Before there was a reply, Luca put the phone down and, grabbing Elena’s hand, tugged her down another alleyway where they hid themselves in the dark.
The minute they were tucked in the shadows, he, like his brothers, breathed a sigh of relief.
All in all, that had been a relatively anticlimactic hunt. Considering the chase Devaney had given them, the end had been too swift for the bastard’s own good.
Adrenaline pumped through his veins like water down the drains. He felt alive and his Wolf was chomping at the damn bit to get close to the female who was standing so near yet too far away.
“Who did you just call?” she asked after a handful of seconds of standing hidden in the shadows.
“A liaison of the European Pack.”
She tilted her head to the side. “The European Pack?”
“Dammit it to hell, did your mother teach you nothing?” Adam snapped, even as he pressed his hand to the small of Elena’s back and huddled closer to her. He wasn’t surprised when his brother pressed his chin to their mate’s shoulder and nuzzled his forehead against the side of her face.
She seemed to sense that he wasn’t judging or trying to get into her personal space but was actually trying to comfort her—apparently, her instincts weren’t too bad.
Even if she did think shooting rabid Wolves with peashooter guns made sense. Which, incidentally, had ended the stalemate they’d found themselves in, but didn’t exactly say much about her damn judgment.
“No. She wanted to live like a human,” Elena murmured. “Miguela and I know very little about our people.”
Luca shook his head, disgusted by that. He pressed his back to the cold stone wall and felt the chill sink into his bones. Though Fall was long since underway, and while it was Halloween night, it was hot out, and their close proximity was making him warmer still. He wanted to be back in their hotel room with their woman in their bed. Instead, he was covered in blood, dirty and matted with it, and naked while they waited on a cleanup team.
“Why are you Hunters?”
That had him frowning. “Why wouldn’t we be?” Did she know what identical triplets represented?
“I don’t know. It’s just… You don’t look like soldiers.”
Damien snorted. “The tours of duty we’ve served say otherwise.”
She tensed. “Oh?”
“Yeah.” Adam’s lips twitched. “We’ve been involved with both World Wars.”
“The first as servicemen, but the Second World War we were more administrative.”
He didn’t tell her they’d been a General. And when he said singly, he meant it. The three of them had played the role.
It had been a fantastic way to save time and to work around the clock at all hours.
“You really fought in la Prim
era Guerra Mundial?” He wasn’t sure if her gasp was from surprise, fear, or wonder.
He grimaced. “If that’s WWI, then yeah. We might have been stationed around the world, but our Spanish is rusty as hell.”
She snorted. “You can’t be good at everything, I guess.” Hearing the teasing, he relaxed some, and that enabled him to open his senses to hear what was happening outside this alley.
The screams didn’t die down as more people, damnit, stumbled onto the mauled Wolf. Sirens wailed loud and clear though, and that told him help was on its way.
They needed out of there. ASAP.
“So, why did you go from being soldiers to Hunters?” she asked, and the conversational tone struck him as so bizarre at that point, he had to withhold a laugh.
“Because there are no wars, honey,” Damien said drily.
“There’s the Cold War,” she argued.
“Sure, but that’s fought with spies and we were never able to play that kind of role.” The TriAlpha heirs had to prove their strength, had to do their duty by the nation, but that didn’t mean they were shoved in outright danger.
Them being spies, undertaking and engaging in one-to-one wet work, was never going to happen in this day and age. Not when bombs, nuclear weapons, and nerve gas was de rigueur in that line of work. They could have handled it, but they represented the future. The TriAlpha begat only a single set of triplets. No more would be born if the heirs were killed playing at being James Bond. That meant… well, the end of the North American Pack, and that was never going to happen.
“Isn’t being a Hunter dangerous, though?”
“Sure,” Adam murmured, but his tone was dismissive, and Luca realized he was doing the same as him—scanning the area. “But it’s different. Humans are like vipers. You can’t trust them. Lykens are basically good, it’s the beast in us. It keeps us grounded. We put down those who are too far gone to save. In that sense, it’s not dangerous. They won’t come at us with guns but with claw and fang.”
“What made that Wolf back there that way?” she asked, her voice soft, and from out of nowhere, Luca heard the faintest hint of fatigue.
Shit, she was coming down from the adrenaline high.
“He was shell-shocked,” Damien said gently, sadly.
“Shell-shocked?”
“Yes. It’s when you fight in wars and the combat trauma affects you so deeply, it changes you,” Adam explained, but his attention was elsewhere. “A car’s approaching the street.” Until now, it had been quiet, but Luca heard it too.
“You put him down because he was shell-shocked?” Elena squeaked.
“No, of course not. He was a very bad man. Some people go inside themselves when they suffer like that, others don’t. It turned him. His Wolf was powerful and to protect the human half, it took control. But it was twisted too. It needed the fight, the adrenaline of battle, but like we said, there are no wars going on at the moment.” Damien sighed. “He killed a lot of innocent people. That’s why he had to be put down.”
“Oh.” The word was small and sorrowful. “That’s sad.” She seemed to surprise herself then by yawning. “Oh,” she repeated. “I don’t know why…”
Luca slipped his arms around her waist and tugged her close. When she made no protest, and she could have done so considering his chest had blood spattered on it, he had to control the swift surge of triumph that coursed through him.
He held her against him as she managed to finish, “I don’t know why I’m tired.”
“You’re not used to this—” Adam told her.
“And you won’t have to get used to it either,” Luca quickly corrected his brother, glowering at his stupidity. “It’s just a buzz. You were high on adrenaline and now you’re crashing, but you’re safe. Go to sleep.”
“We’re in an alley,” she whispered, even drowsier now. “I can’t sleep here.”
“I know, but soon we’ll be in a car, and you’ll be safer still.” He pressed a kiss to her forehead, wondering how it had to come to pass that he’d met his mate on the same night as he’d killed the target they’d been seeking for far too long.
The Fates really knew how to mess with their play toys.
At his gentle touch, she nuzzled into him again and hummed as she pressed her hand to his chest. Her nails dug gently into his pecs as she mumbled, “You smell good.” The words were long and drawn out, and by the time she’d finished, she was a heavy weight in his arms.
“She’s out,” he told his brothers.
“Probably for the best,” Damien replied, but he didn’t sound pleased. “She won’t be happy when she wakes up on the jet.”
Luca, in complete agreement with his brother, nodded. “You’re right.”
“Wait, we need to debrief the European Pack liaison!” Adam argued.
“And we’ll do that on the drive over to the airfield.”
The sound of brakes squealing to a halt had him wincing at the high-pitched sound, but he swung Elena up into his arms, carefully cushioning her as he began to step toward the black sedan with blacked-out windows.
“We can’t just kidnap her,” Adam argued, for once, the voice of reason.
“No? You just try and stop me,” Luca answered, and with that, he swept into the vehicle the second the door opened.
That, Luca thought defiantly, was his final word on the matter.
CHAPTER FOUR
Elena
Elena mumbled as she felt arms wrapping around her.
It was such an intimate touch, and such an alien one too that she jerked awake the instant she felt it.
She did not grow intimate with the men she considered her marks, and yet, this touch invited her to curl up and snuggle.
Snuggle!
The very idea was enough to make her jerk to awareness.
Eyes blurry from sleep, she sat up. Then, rubbing her eyes, she peered down at herself, looked around the quarters she found herself in, and saw the three, very naked, very asleep males at her side.
In a bed.
A bed.
When had that happened?
And why, when they were inside and obviously safe, were they wearing no clothes?
She glanced down at herself, saw that she was wearing the same outfit from earlier and was a tiny bit relieved at not being nude, even if there had to be patches of dried blood stained into the dark fabric. Then, she felt guilty because she knew, deep down, that whoever these men were, they were no danger to her.
She rubbed her eyes, trying to dispel the sleepiness that clung to her. As she moved, she felt the tension in the male to her right.
It was Luca.
His eyes were open, but they were dazed; she’d awoken him and didn’t that make her feel guilty too?
And then, she thought she had no reason to feel guilt. Wherever she was, it wasn’t her apartment—not that they knew where she lived, she guessed—and this certainly wasn’t where she’d expected to wake up.
Because, if the oddly shaped roof of the bedroom she was in was anything to go by, she was on a plane.
A fucking plane.
Crazy thing was, she didn’t even have it in her to be that angry.
Okay, that was a lie.
She was angry.
Very, very angry.
“Didn’t think to ask me first, gilipolla?”
Luca narrowed his eyes, seeming to sense the curse even if he didn’t understand it. “You were asleep and we had to get out of the country.”
“Yeah? We? How did that come to include me?” she spat, but something inside her softened at the inclusion which was sheer fucking proof that she’d lost it. “Gah!” she exploded. “Me vuelves loca!”
“You complete us. We are not a unit without you. Not anymore.” The somber words came from, surprisingly, Adam, as he ignored her outburst.
She’d expected such romantic remarks to be Damien’s game, but no, it was Adam who surprised her. God, how she hated that the words did work on her.
She tu
rned away from them, her head swiping to the side in irritation as she faced forward once more.
“This is kidnapping.”
“Depends on the laws you’re talking about.”
That had her scowling and spinning back around to make sure they were at the center of that glower. “What do you mean? Kidnapping is against the law wherever you are in the world.”
Luca grinned, and it felt like she was coming face to face with a shark. “Not in Pack law, not when it comes to a mate. And we only follow Pack guidance. We have no need to submit to any other kind.”
Her nostrils flared with her irritation. “Miguela will be concerned about me.”
“You will inform us of your address, and we will have your things collected and shipped over to our home. She will find out soon enough what has happened, and she will have no reason to fear.”
That had her snorting. “Want to bet? Miguela and I were born suspicious. Where we grew up was not one of the best places for young women.”
That had Luca sitting upright, tension making every single muscle in his torso taut. And, God help her, her mouth watered.
“Someone hurt you?”
She cocked a brow at him. “What do you think? I learned to defend myself after that.”
“That’s why you had the gun,” Damien murmured, but in his eyes, there was a deep sadness. “I would have spared you that if I could.”
Because the words were genuine, not trite in anyway, she felt them to her bones. It was probably that, more than anything, that stripped some of the rigidity from her form and allowed her to suck in a deep breath.
“I’m over it,” she said, tone bland.
“Are you ever over something like that?” Adam asked quietly. “Remember, we are combat veterans so we know the harsh realities of this world. We know how hard it can be to overcome such…” He swallowed then, with effort, and murmured, “If you ever need to speak about it, we are here for you.”
She believed him. They all spoke with such sincerity there was no way she couldn’t believe them.
She tugged at the neckline of her blouse and marveled at the fact she was in bed with three very naked males and yet, was not even remotely scared.
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