Desperately Seeking Shapeshifter (3 page)

Chapter Three

M
y sister cast me worried looks on the entire drive to the meeting grounds, her hands clutching mine. I kept my expression serene, knowing that she was looking for any sign of fear, which would let her insist on not doing this.

And then Savannah would still be hostage and I’d be responsible, and the wolves would keep hunting me for the rest of my life. I’d have to keep hiding the monster I’d become. Keep bathing in perfume to disguise my scent with other shifters. After six years of hiding, I was so very, very tired of living in fear, of waiting to turn the corner and have the world come crashing down, of making the wrong move and ruining everything once again.

We drove out into the country and pulled up at an abandoned tract of land. Tall weeds overgrew the property, and the barbed-wire fence was falling down in several places. When I got out of the car, I smelled something dead—likely roadkill—in the distance. The wind shifted and then I smelled something else—the faint scent of wolves. The skin
on the back of my neck prickled, and my mouth began to water with fear, two signs that I was close to changing to wolf. I clamped the thought down and bit the inside of my cheek hard, struggling to maintain control. Now was not the time.

My sister scanned the woods, her brow wrinkling, and I knew she didn’t realize they were here. Every shifter in the area was very aware, though—Beau’s posture had changed from easy to alert. Joshua and Austin Russell closed ranks around me, and a massive shadow loomed over my shoulder. I didn’t have to glance backward to know that it was Ramsey.

Fort Sara. Like it would do any good.

Then Beau stepped forward and my shadow was gone. He stood in front of all of us, waiting for the wolves to emerge. I bit my cheek harder.

After a few minutes, they appeared. The scrubby grass led to taller bushes in the distance, then to a thick stand of trees. I had guessed that was where they’d been hiding, and I was correct. I hadn’t anticipated them appearing in wolf-form, though. The smell of them laced my nostrils, overpowering all other scents and bringing with them a wealth of memories.

I crouched low in the kitchen, raising my arms over my head. “No, please, Roy. I’ll be good.”

“It’s because I love you that I have to teach you a lesson,” Roy said, snapping the belt over my head and lashing it over my arms and shoulders.

I just whimpered, knowing he would hit me harder if I screamed and called the neighbors. Screaming
showed I was weak. He wanted me to be strong. The beatings, he told me, were to condition me to pain.

I just huddled smaller and waited for him to be done. But then the belt caught me across the mouth and my mouth filled with blood. I spat it on the ground and looked up to see that Roy was changing, his nose lengthening to a canine snout, his arms covered with hair. . . .

I shivered, my mouth filling with saliva. I pushed the horrible memories aside and waited, my entire body tense. Wolves pushed out of the woods, two . . . three . . . six . . . seven. Beau had told me that the Anderson wolf pack had eight male wolves and one female, so two were missing. I craned my neck, looking for them until I heard my sister’s soft gasp. Her gaze was on the wolves, and I glanced back to them. They had stopped and now were crouched, changing back to human form. One naked man stood, stretching as if he hadn’t a care in the world. He looked over at me and winked.

My sister averted her eyes.

I didn’t. I stared back at the man, looking for signs of a quickly done shift. His brow wasn’t wrinkled, his skin was smooth of wolf hair. How the hell had he shifted so very fast? My own shift was painful and drawn out, always leaving me aching and heaving. This man acted like he’d woken up from a very pleasant nap.

As the others quickly changed, they lined up behind the first man. So he was the pack leader—Levi Anderson. He stepped forward and turned toward
Beau, his gaze still on me out of the corner of his eye. “You brought the wolf girl?”

They saw me here; why the pretense? I tensed. Was I going to be just a nameless creature to abuse again? Roy had always called me “girl,” too—just before he’d beaten me. The skin on the back of my neck rippled, and I bit down on my cheek again, willing my body under control.

“We brought Sara with us, yes,” Beau said. “Where’s Savannah?”

The lead werewolf glanced back at me. I remained where I was. I wasn’t moving forward until I had a nod from Beau or Ramsey. My stomach churned hard, and I had to force myself to relax my sweaty hand so I didn’t squeeze the hell out of Bath’s fingers.

The lead wolf raised a hand in the air and motioned someone forward. I heard the rustle in the woods before I saw the two emerge: a man about my age and a young, dark-haired woman. Her clothes looked borrowed, and I could smell the faint scent of cougar.

“That’s Savannah,” someone murmured for my sister’s benefit. As the only human at the parlay, she missed all the subtle signals that put the shifters a page ahead of her.

As Savannah moved forward slowly, one of the Russells breathed out hard, and I wondered at the angry sound. Savannah glanced at the wolf shifter at her side, gave him a long look, then rushed toward us.

The Russells enveloped her in warm hugs, patting her on the back and clapping her shoulder, but their expressions remained grim. A short distance away, Beau looked furious. Savannah’s smile was wide and she wiped relieved tears from her eyes. Her scent was heavy with wolf, and judging by her calm demeanor, I realized why the Russells were mad.

Savannah was no longer in heat. Which meant . . .

“She’s all yours again,” the Anderson wolf leader drawled. “Give us Sara.”

Bath drew in a sharp breath.

I fought the sick feeling in my gut and gave my sister’s hand a squeeze, then released it. I stepped forward past the Russells, past Beau and Ramsey, and approached the naked pack of wolves. All of them were tall and muscled. The leader had a beard and a rather stern face. The others were younger, but I was still the youngest—and smallest—one. None of them looked like Roy, for which I was thankful. The leader’s gaze was assessing as I approached, studying my body, my face, testing my scent on the air. I knew what he was looking for.

He was judging me as a potential mate.

The skin on my back bunched and rippled, and I inhaled sharply. The scent of wolf was almost overwhelming, and my legs were seizing up, cramping. Shit. I bit my cheek so hard that blood filled my mouth, and I forced my expression to remain serene. I would
never
take another wolf as my mate. I’d die first.

“Hello, baby doll. We’re gonna treat you real
nice,” he said in a low, mild drawl, clearly sensing my nervousness. His gaze was oddly hypnotic, and I avoided making eye contact. An alpha could control the wolves in his pack. I felt that strange thread of compulsion even though I wasn’t even officially in his pack, and it frightened me.

Not daring to look backward at the Russell clan, I took a step toward my new “family.” I tried not to shudder. “I’m going with you of my own free will,” I announced, using the phrases we’d decided on to bring the plan into action. “A trade is a trade.”

The werewolf alpha nodded at me.

I turned back to Beau. “A trade is a trade, right?”

He nodded at me, his body tense. Behind him I could see my sister’s hands pressed against her mouth, fear in her wide eyes. Beau didn’t take his eyes off me. “Agreed.”

“All right, then,” I said, and hated how small my voice was. “I’m now part of the wolf pack.”

The alpha smiled, a possessive, smug look. My entire body tensed, and I waited for the plan to kick into motion. Waited for rescue. Waited for Ramsey, for Beau . . .

A colossal hand clasped my shoulder and yanked me backward against a massive, firm body. Then Ramsey spoke the longest sentence I’d ever heard from him. “In accordance with the law of the Bjorn and the were-bear clans, I claim this one as my mate.”

The wolf leader’s face flicked with confusion, then contorted with rage. “What the fuck is this?”

I flinched backward at the alpha’s rage; the wolf in me was terrified. Normal anger scared me, but the alpha’s rage made my entire being quiver. It affected the other wolves as well; I watched them shift anxiously on their feet.

A strong arm looped over my chest, drawing me closer against Ramsey’s large frame.

He was protecting me.

The wolves frowned and muttered, exchanging glances. The bearded alpha gritted his teeth and glared at me and Ramsey. A low growl sounded from his throat. “This is a trick.”

Ramsey’s arm tightened across my chest, and I squeaked when I realized his hand had accidentally cupped one of my small breasts. I didn’t think he realized it either, until I made that small noise, then it shifted lower.

“Not a trick,” he growled back, the rumbling in his throat much deeper than the alpha’s dangerous growl.

My mouth filled with saliva again and I bit my cheek harder. God, not
now
. I couldn’t go wolf now.

The alpha’s eyes flashed with anger, anger that he focused on me. “She don’t look excited to be your mate, Bjorn. She looks scared.”

Uh-oh. I put on a smile and gave Ramsey’s hand a little pat. “I’m just surprised that my Huggy Bear declared our love openly. He’s kinda private.”

Someone snickered. Ramsey’s arm tightened on me, and he leaned down and kissed my temple. The oddly tender motion threw me for a loop.

The wolf leader didn’t look convinced. “You two aren’t a couple,” he declared. “This is bullshit.”

“We are, too,” I blurted, desperate. I turned in Ramsey’s arms, though my skin crawled at the thought of turning my back on the wolves. I looked up at Ramsey, who stood at least a foot and a half taller than me and weighed at least twice as much. And I grabbed the collar of his shirt and tugged him downward. Surprised, he bent down, and I planted my mouth on his.

I felt a tremor of surprise rip through him, but I ignored it, kissing his hard mouth. I had to make this look as real as possible, so I slid my tongue against the unforgiving seam of his lips, coaxing them apart, then sucked on his lower lip. Ramsey hesitated a moment, and then I felt his big hands cup my ass, pulling me closer against him, and his tongue flicked against mine. I made the kiss deeper, wetter, wrapping my legs around his big body like I wanted to ride him, making small little noises of pleasure in the back of my throat for the audience’s benefit. Ramsey inhaled sharply, then his tongue stroked deep against mine. Startled, I broke off the kiss and stared up into his eyes. His brown gaze met mine and he leaned in and gave me another light kiss on my wet mouth, as if reluctant to let the contact end. The way he was looking at my mouth sent a shiver all the way through me.

I heard my sister’s gasp. Jeez louise, she was going to give everything away. I twisted around in Ramsey’s arms, unwilling to unlock my legs from his torso, and looked over at the wolf pack.

All of the naked men were staring very pointedly at me. Several of them had erections.

Oh, God. Had I just made things worse? What if they didn’t believe us and I had to go with the wolves? What if I left with them and they all held me down and raped me? Would they even have to hold me down? Would the alpha bark a command and I’d just drop to all fours?

Fear quickened my breath, and I felt the tight band of a headache surge through my scalp. Oh, no. Another sign of an imminent shift.

The wolf leader put his hands on his hips and stared at Ramsey, then at me, then at the Russells. His body was tense, his posture wary. “If she’s your mate,” he said, the growl still in his voice, “then why’s she so fucking scared?”

Ramsey’s hand on my ass tightened. “You,” he snarled back.

The leader looked surprised. “Me?”

“She doesn’t like wolves,” Ramsey’s bass voice rumbled. I glanced back at the Russells, who stood in front of Savannah and my sister, the phalanx of tall, lean were-cougars closing ranks around the two females. No one spoke—it was up to me and Ramsey.

“She must have liked wolves enough at some point,” the Anderson leader said crudely. “She let one between her legs.”

“I didn’t know what he was—” I began.

“Likely story. You were probably begging for it.” He gave me an assessing up-and-down look that made my blood run cold.

“I was not!”

“Bullshit,” Levi retorted. “That’s a bullshit story, just like all of this”—he gestured widely at everyone—“is bullshit. You’re acting like fools, trying to convince us that this isn’t some dumb game designed to fool a bunch of redneck wolves.”

Silence. It
was
what we were doing. So much for my plan.

Levi snorted. “Thought so. Well, you know what? Fuck that, and fuck all of you. We’re taking her.”

Ramsey’s response was a low growl.

I heard a chorus of responding growls from the throats of the wolf pack. This was getting worse, not better.

I needed to do something. I unhooked my legs from Ramsey’s body and slid down him. He seemed reluctant to let me go, but he let me drop back to the ground.

“Let’s be reasonable about this,” I said in my most reasonable voice. “There’s no reason to fight—”

The wolf alpha leveled his gaze at me. “Get over here, girl.”

Caught by that compelling stare, I shrank my shoulders and pulled away from Ramsey, dropping to my knees. I couldn’t stand tall in front of the alpha, had to show my submission. . . .

Ramsey roared, a feral sound, and I heard the Russells surge forward, though I wasn’t sure if they were going to stop Ramsey or stop the wolves. The Andersons rushed forward as well, and I was suddenly
surrounded by a pack of naked men, their backs to me as the leader tried to pull me away from the furious Ramsey.

“A wolf belongs with her alpha,” the Anderson leader snarled.

“No,” I gasped, but I was unable to rise from the ground. My legs tightened and rippled. One of the Andersons reached for me, taking my arm in his hand. To my horror, the skin rippled in his grasp. The Anderson wolf gave me a look of surprise and let go of my arm just in time for a convulsive wave to crash over me.