Alpha's Captive 03 - Flight (3 page)

Wherever Levi was, he wasn’t going to go far without the SD card.
So Harper grabbed it, then grabbed her phone, too, and set the alarm for five A.M. She tapped through to her favorite contacts, her finger hovering over her sister Christina’s name. It was only ten-thirty now—she’d definitely still be up. After a moment’s hesitation, she tapped it and listened to the phone ring. One, two, three rings—then voicemail.

“Hi!
If you get this, I’m either on the phone or ignoring you!”

At least she was honest.
Chances were pretty good that Christina was passed out drunk, given her state the last time Harper had seen her. At the tone, Harper cleared her throat and spoke.

“Hey, Tina.
Just wanted to call. Hope you’re not too sick. Sorry I yelled at you at Nana’s birthday party. I guess I’ve never taken getting punched too well, even if it is by accident. Anyway, tell Mom and Joe I love them the next time you see them, okay? And you, and Braden and Cory and Austin. ’Kay? Bye.”

She hung up quickly before she couldn’t talk around the lump in her throat.
Well, whatever happened, that was done. It wasn’t exactly a goodbye, but at least it was an “I love you.” She texted her housemate Madisyn to let her know she might not be home for a few days, then called in sick at the diner—which went about as well as she’d expected, given that the manager who hated her was on duty.

She finally
hung up the phone with a shake of her head. If she didn’t make it out of this, at least she wouldn’t have to worry about finding another job.

Harper
headed into the biggest bedroom and set the phone on the bedside table. If Levi was back at five, she’d leave with him. And if he wasn’t—well, she didn’t want to think about that. She was only worried about the men chasing her. That was it. As soon as she was safe, she’d be out of there. Go home. Forget any of this ever happened. Until then, though, she needed him.

And that was the only reason she was afraid that
Levi might not be coming back, she told herself. The only reason to care.

Harper
shoved the card into a pillowcase, lay down on it, and closed her eyes. There didn’t seem to be anything else to do, even though she was certain that she’d never sleep.

Absolutely…certain.

L
evi ran through the woods, his paws finding easy purchase in the soft earth. In this form, it always amazed him how clumsy humans were, bumbling and crashing through the trees. They always fought the forest, as they fought the night and the deepest, truest desires of their hearts. To his wolf-form, the world was a simple place, full of sharp edges, clear lines, and a thousand nuanced scents that lined up in their orderly categories: friend, foe, mate, food. Everything else was background. And nothing outside the moment mattered.

Levi had backtracked to where they had left the water.
Even with his werewolf’s sight and hearing, there was no sign of Mortensen’s men on either bank. They must have retired for the night, waiting for morning to track them again.

When they realized the he and Harper weren’t floating down the river with bullet holes through them, the search would be back on, and almost certainly, Mortensen would bring in the big dogs—literally.
A vampire wouldn’t be much use in the woods, not compared to the nose and the brain of a werewolf. And Mortensen had lap dogs aplenty. So Levi spent a solid half hour laying false trails through the woods, taking an obscene joy in leaving a particularly noxious pile of crap at the end of his best one.

Werewolf humor.
But it was a slap in the face that even a vampire would understand.

There was a stirring in the undergrowth, and his
wolf senses pricked as the smell reached him. Rabbit. How long had it been since he’d let himself hunt in this form? The wolf wasn’t good with days and weeks, so only one answer came back—too long. And that was enough to send him bounding into the bush.

The rabbit never had a chance.
Levi’s strong jaws collapsed its windpipe, smothering it in seconds. Greedily, he ripped the belly open, eating the offal that so offended human tastes and delighted those of the wolf, gulping them down in a few, quick bites. Then he lifted the rabbit’s limp body by the scruff of the neck and carried it back to the den where Harper waited.

His wolf’s brain thought,
Mate.
And his human mind said,
Shut the hell up you freaking dog.

And then he arrived at the trailer door, dropped the
rabbit, and shifted hastily before he could think anything even more stupid.

“Hey,” he said as he opened the door.
But the living area was empty and the trailer was silent, almost unnaturally so. He could hear the dryer running through the closed door, but other than that, even his werewolf senses could detect nothing at all. Flipping the rabbit into the sink, he stepped inside with growing alarm, and then—

A sigh.
Levi heard the faintest sigh coming from the back. He followed the sound to a room, pushing the door open. Harper was sprawled on a queen-sized bed that took up almost the entire floor space. She’d fallen asleep on top of the duck-patterned bedspread, hugging a pillow against her body with a towel still half wrapped around her.

Harper
looked far smaller than she seemed when she was awake. Sure, all those luscious curves were still very much in evidence—and a lascivious part of his brain expressed regret that she was holding the pillow so tightly—but when she was awake, with her eyes flashing and her ready answer to every challenge, it was far too easy to forget how fragile she really was. How human.

She’d already faced down men with guns, a vampire, and two cars, when
really, she had no business challenging any of them. It was his fight, not hers, a fight of one werewolf for his whole clan. She was only human, and it had been a mistake to ever let her get involved. When she got hurt, she stayed hurt. And if she stayed hurt, he’d never forgive himself….

Well, there was no avoiding it now.
He’d dragged her into it, and she’d have to see it out until the end—or at least until he had a safe place to stash her. Which definitely wasn’t here. Until then, though, he should stay away from her—or at least out of her pants. The cut on her arm should have sobered him up when it happened, should have been more than enough evidence of just how vulnerable she was and just how impossible anything more than a casual tumble could be. He blamed his distraction and stupidity and susceptibility to those curves and, God, that smile and the gleam in her eyes….

He cut off that thought as he stepped out of the room, closing the door to and retreating back into the kitchen.
He grabbed a kitchen knife from a drawer and started to skin the rabbit with more force than was necessary. He was stupid. An idiot. What did he really know about Harper, anyway, except that she was smart and sassy and was cool under pressure and, of course, a solid ten on any scale—

On
e of the cabinets yielded a fat cast iron Dutch oven. There wasn’t any fresh food, but there was some oil, with which he quickly browned the butchered rabbit, and some boxed chicken stock and some crushed tomatoes that he threw in with some salt and pepper, onion powder, and a couple of tablespoons from a big shaker labeled “Italian seasonings.” He put it on to simmer, covering it over, and lined up the cans of vegetables—corn, carrots, and peas. Not his first choice, but they’d do.

There was a buzz from behind the back door
. The dryer. Stepping through, Levi found himself in kind of a makeshift shed added to the back of the trailer. His pants and jacket were draped on the open edge of the washing machine, still damp. He flipped the dryer door down and pulled out the rest in a great armful, hauling it inside and dumping it on the faded blue couch in the living room. He made an inventory of the clothes—his underwear, t-shirt, and socks and Harper’s panties, bra, new socks, jeans, shirt, and hoodie. It looked like it was all there.

He went to the jumble of objects from Harper’s
purse that were set out on the counter. Still damp. He wanted to head out early, but the guns and ammo should at least be dry first. He looked at the SD card—and for a moment his heart stopped, because the card wasn’t there. The hair rose instantly on the back of his neck, but his nose told him that he and Harper were the only ones to be in the trailer for a very long time, and there was no fooling his nose.

Which meant that she’d taken it—taken it and hidden it, because she didn’t trust him not to leave without her.

The burst of irritation faded quickly as he realized that leaving without her would have been the smart thing, if she weren’t in such danger still. It was, in fact, exactly what he was planning. Just not yet.

There was nothing more to do for now except wait.
And wolves were very good at waiting. Levi shifted into his wolf form, ignoring the label that his brain wanted to give Harper’s smell, and curled up in front of her door. And he slept.

***

Harper staggered out of the bedroom just as he added the can of carrots to the stew, her hair a wild red cloud around her head and the towel clutched haphazardly around her body.

“Oh, my God,” she said blearily, rubbing her eyes.
“You’re hot and you cook. Will you marry me?”

Her carelessly tossed out words sent a stab of something
into his gut—panic, he decided, it had to be panic, because it certainly wasn’t poignancy or regret or wistfulness or anything that sentimental or foolish. “Depends. Are you planning on giving me the SD card back?”

She blinked at him.
“Yeah, sure.”

“Then I’m all yours.”
He gave the pot a final stir and ladled the stew into to two bowls, shoving a spoon into Harper’s before handing it to her.

She took it, the towel sliding to expose even more of the curve of her breast.
Levi considered telling her that her clothes were dry.

Yeah, right.
Either she’d figure out that he was in his t-shirt and underwear or she wouldn’t. He certainly wasn’t going to encourage her to put clothes on.

“I’m so hungry,” she said,
sitting at the table and loading a huge bite of stew onto her spoon. “All I had yesterday was a few French fries and half a hamburger.” She blew across the steaming surface once, then ate it too quickly, causing her to wave and blow frantically as the scalding liquid hit her mouth.

“It’s hot,” Levi said
helpfully, leaning against the corner of the counter as he took up his own bowl and ate a much more careful bite.

She rolled her eyes as she swallowed.
“It’s so good!”

Levi snorted.
“Is it the canned veggies or the stale herbs that you like so much? I think you’re just really hungry.”

She held up a chun
k of rabbit, frowning at it. “Where did you get the meat? What is it? Some kind of game? Uncle J.T. usually cleans out the freezer by the end of the season.”

He just smirked at her.
“Around.”

“Oh?” she said, the crease between her eyebrows deepening.
Then she said, “Oh! Really? Don’t werewolves have to, you know, follow hunting season and all that?”

“Never met one who did,” Levi said, amused by the idea.
He didn’t tell her that hunting was a part of the drive of the wolf-form, and the need to hunt was one of the things that forced werewolves to shift—sometimes at inconvenient moments, such as on a day when there was an important client meeting or a stakeout.

“I thought you might’ve left,” she said between bites.
“You know, the way you headed out of the bathroom and all.”

“Yeah,” he said.
Levi didn’t like this conversation, and the fact that she was naked certainly didn’t make it any easier. “About that. There’s a lot on the line right now, and stuff like that, well, it makes things more complicated.”

“You mean that you don’t want to fuck anymore,” Harper said, her eyes going flat.

God, how he hated to see her like that, her vivacity replaced with something brittle and hard. But it was for the best—really for the best, because if he pursued this thing with her, only worse would come.

“No, I get it,” she said.
“You’ve had your fun. You’ve played your game and gotten what you wanted. I’ve had this dance before, and I know how it ends. There’s only one problem. If you walk out that door right now, well, there are some pretty bad guys after us right now, and I don’t know what they’ll do to me. So call me clingy if you want, but you can’t ditch me yet.”

“
I’m not ditching you, Harper,” Levi said. “And it’s not like that. It’s because there are guys after us that I think this whole thing is a bad idea.”

“It’s a bit late for that.”
Her words were hard and ugly.

All Levi wanted to do was to wrap her in his arms and tell her just what he really thought—how amazing, beautiful, clever and far too brave she was.
But that would just make matters worse. It wasn’t fair to her how much danger he’d put her in, and it definitely wasn’t fair to lead her on anymore when he knew in his heart of hearts that nothing could ever come of this.

Not if he was smart.

But when he looked at her, with her angry, closed face, the hurt in her eyes that she was trying to hide, he wanted to be a fool.

He took a deep breath.
“Look, I just want to keep you alive, okay? This whole mess is my fault. Including your car, which is totaled now, remember? You should be mad about that, not mad that I think that getting more involved is a bad idea.”

“And who says I’m not?” she snapped.
Her bowl was empty. She stalked over to the sink and washed it with short, angry motions, shutting the cabinet a little too hard after she put it on top of the others.

“Harper—” Levi said,
then he stopped himself. It was better this way. “I rinsed your boots as best I could, so they don’t have any grit in them, but they’re still wet. The rest of your stuff is dry, though. We’d better get going. It’ll be dawn in a few hours, and they’ll figure out that we’re not dead soon enough.”

“Sure thing,” Harper said, going over to the pile of laundry on the couch and jerking on her clothes.
Levi tried not to feel regret as those luscious curves were covered up. “What’s your brilliant plan? To make for the highway and hitchhike in your socks? Or as a wolf?”

“I found the
jon boat when I was out last night,” he said.

Harper
stopped in the middle of one angry movement, her sock halfway on her foot. “That’s my Uncle J. T.’s. We can’t just take his boat without asking.”

Levi shook his head at her.
“As I see it, we can either take his boat or we can throw ourselves on the tender mercies of that vampire.”

“Isn’t he dead?” she asked.

“I wouldn’t count on it. In fact, with a nine mil, I’d bet hard money that the only permanent effect was to jog a few memories loose.”

She seemed to think about it for a while—actually think about whether it was preferable to borrow her family’s boat without permission or get chased down by the people who wanted her dead.

He would have been more exasperated if that kind of loyalty wasn’t peculiarly touching.

“
All right. Fine. But I’m leaving a note. And you cleaned up, right? I mean, this is my cousins’ place, and we shouldn’t leave a mess—”