Her Wanted Wolf (39 page)

“Might? Bardo is practically breathing down our necks.”

“Tsk. He can’t hold his pack and you expect
me
to be intimidated
by him. You are the better leader. You will triumph,” she said with conviction;
a balm after his self-flagellation.

Drew would hate to shatter her faith in him and prove her wrong. He’d
better hustle and get her out of the area as fast as he could. “Come on, let’s
get a move on.”

She skipped to keep up with his long strides. “Cut right, they’re coming
from the left.”

They rounded a corner and he all but frog-marched her along the pavement.

“We need to find a place to hide.”

“If you were alone would you have concealed yourself?” The irritation in
her voice took him by surprise.

“Nope.” Drew pulled her across the street, and without exchanging a word
they picked up their pace. He could almost feel Bardo’s teeth on his neck.

A new hunt was on and he and his mate were the prey. The primal rhythm in
the air shifted, from a hunt of retribution for a mutinous pack mate, to one
that would define the status of the Redmaven pack, by subduing a sworn enemy.

Bardo might just be desperate enough to come at him here regardless of
the crowded streets. If these people going about their business had any inkling
of what was about to go down, they’d scatter like chickens with a fox in their
coop.

“Then what you’re saying is, I’m preventing you from doing what you would
have done to evade the Redmavens?”

Drew ignored the softly worded question. They had bigger problems than
Sabine’s bruised pride. Christ, the street seemed to have too many people all
of a sudden. Too many eyes and ears.

“No, I’m not taking any chances with you.” He took a quick survey of the
area, chose the store with the fewest customers, ducked into it, and pulled
Sabine in behind him. Drew found a spot behind a bank of shelves in the corner
nearest to the window. It concealed them, but gave him a clear view of both
sides the roadway.

“Exactly what would your plan have been?” She stood on her toes to peer
over the display.

“Take a few of those fuckers out, to mess with Bardo.” The truck he’d
seen Bardo leap out of earlier rolled past, stopped to let out several weres on
the corner farther down on the street. He recognized and knew a few of the men.
They’d kicked his ass before he grew into his paws. They dispersed, leaving
behind two pups he didn’t know.

“Fuck it to hell, Bardo’s setting up a grid.” He looked for the back
door, spotted the exit and restroom signs over the opening of a hallway at the
back of the room. “Come on, let’s go this way, there’s the back door. We’ll
have to grab some sort of transportation for concealment and speed. We are
going to have to be quick and lucky. If we could put a hole in the dragnet,
it’d make our escape easier.”

“We’ll follow your plan. What do you say we lessen his fore-fighter by a
few weres?” She marched over to the doorway and poked her head through the front
door.

His knees turned to Jell-O. Fury and disbelief at her audacity raced
through him like a wild fire.

“Sabine, get back here!” His harsh demand had the men in the store
turning their heads in his direction.

Through the plate glass fronting the store, Drew saw her flash a smile at
the weres. His nose twitched, and his body reacted to the thin, focused stream
of pheromones she aimed at the two weres.

His cock hardened to a painful rigidity. A primitive wave of
possessiveness flushed through his system. Her mating lure shouldn’t be shared.
He considered it his and his alone.

What the hell was she doing? The idea was not to dangle irresistible bait
in front of their pursuers. He was going to tan her behind the first chance he
got.

Sabine stepped back into the store and sauntered past him as the two
weres bolted into the shop. They lifted their head, sniffed, and located Sabine
by her scent as she meandered through the aisles. Fixated on securing the
she-wolf, they moved past the aisle where he stood, without sparing him a
glance.

Sabine looked over her shoulder, her eyes widened and her mouth dropped
open as if she were surprised and apprehensive. With self-satisfied smirks, the
weres separated, obviously thinking they’d move on Sabine from two directions.

Good luck with that, Drew couldn’t believe they fell for it. She skipped
deeper into the maze of shelves and Drew lost sight of her, but not for one
moment was he not aware of exactly where she was.

Well hell, they left their backs unprotected, how stupid was that. He
smelled their youth, the need to prove themselves, and their foolish belief
that Sabine would be easy to take. It made them reckless. Poor saps, they were
so screwed.

Drew located the non-weres in the room and marked their positions. On
silent feet, he stalked the preoccupied Redmavens.

Sabine looked back and their eyes met, she gave him a slight nod. His
mate danced to the mouth of the hallway below the red exit sign and slipped
into it. It was empty of any human emissions.

As expected, the weres followed Sabine like fish with hooks in their
mouths. Pity he couldn’t put them down permanently. Still, he’d have the
satisfaction of incapacitating them for a couple of hours.

Drew sidled into the corridor and lost his scent of smell. Affected by Sabine’s
drawing off the fragrances in the area, the weres shook their heads to clear
them. Using their momentary disorientation, Drew rammed the sharp point of his
elbow into the carotid of the were nearest to him. The low grunt he let out as
he fell unconscious alerted his partner. The other Redmaven spun around. Sabine
leapt on his back. He tried to shake her off, but she wrapped her legs around
his torso and wrenched his head back, cutting off his air supply. He slumped to
the floor, taking Sabine down with him.

Drew glanced over his shoulder. Their good fortune held. Nobody strolled
past the door-less passageway. He pushed open the washroom door and it banged
against the wall. A hollow echo reverberated through the room, a sound
particular to public restrooms. Sliding his arms under the unconscious were’s
armpits, Drew hauled him backward into one of the stalls. He perched him on the
commode and wedged the pliant body into the corner to ensure he’d remain
upright. He exited the stall and shut the door to see Sabine struggling to drag
the second wolf into the bathroom by his feet.

“He would be easier to move if you lifted him by his upper body.”

She wrinkled her nose with disdain. “I’m not putting my forearms under
his pits. He reeks, and I don’t want to carry the spoor of a Redmaven on me.”

Hoisting the second were into another cubicle, Drew allowed the door to swing
shut. He took Sabine by the upper arms, hustled her out of the bathroom, down
the short passage leading to the exit, and pushed her up against the wall by
the back door.

With his face inches from hers he snarled, “Don’t you ever pull some shit
like that again. I aged ten years.”

Not in the least bit intimidated by him, she leaned in until their noses
almost touched. “We reduced Bardo’s men by two. I did what needed to be done.”

Ignoring her attempt to distract him, he continued, “Didn’t we settle the
matter concerning chain of command?”

“It’s not my way to stand by and do nothing.” She tried to shrug off his
hands, but he tightened his grip on her arms.

“If it’s the last thing I ever do, I’m going to break you of this
penchant to use yourself as bait.”

She pursed her lips and lifted a silvery brow. “Are we going to stand
here arguing until we get caught?”

Drew emitted a frustrated growl and let her go. He needed to get a grip.
He was torn between wanting to shake her or tuck her into his pocket for
safekeeping. Then there was the residual lust riding him. Nothing like a
cock-stand to make a man surly.

Turning away from Sabine, he pushed down the lever of the lock securing
the rear door and eased it open. He listened, inhaling a lungful of air ripe
with the scents of the city. The service road was empty of Redmavens, but they
were close. It was all he needed.

He pulled Sabine through the door, and it slammed shut with a soft thud,
locking them out. Never more aware of how vulnerable they were, he paused and
waited for any sudden rush of movement.

Satisfied they were safe for now, he did a quick survey of the vehicles
parked in the alley. He looked lustfully over at a sweet Suzuki Hayabusa custom
job that he’d use in a heartbeat if he were on his own, but he wouldn’t mention
that fact. Sabine would probably give him grief both for hesitating to use it
because she was with him, and also if he took it, for putting her on a ride
that could go from zero to a hundred miles in a couple of seconds. His mate
didn’t appreciate speed.

He dismissed several cars. When his gaze settled on a big black monster
of a tricked out Ford F-150, Drew grinned. It had, “this is a Badass truck”
written all over it. Whoever owned it had issues, but then he had a few
himself, and he wasn’t in the mood for subtle.

“That one.”

He stalked over to the sweet ride and cupped his hands on the window to
see what kind of additional security it had wired to the horn. And Bingo, he
saw the familiar logo of the same security system he had on his truck. The good
news was he could reconfigure the alarm and the GPS. The down side to this was
he’d have to be swift and accurate. He had under a minute to disengage the
alarm and locks or they were screwed. He slid under the truck, took a dime out
of his pocket and unscrewed the junction box that held the wires he’d need to
reroute.

“Hurry, there’s a couple of Redmavens headed our way,” Sabine hissed. She
crouched down to see what he was doing.

“Stay down. If they look down the alley, they won’t see us.” Sweat
dripped down Drew’s face as he undid couplings and worked as fast as he could
to identify the correct leads. The seconds ticked by in his head with the
resonance of Big Ben. His fingers and mind flew.

“Did you have to choose the most conspicuous vehicle in the bunch?”

“If by some stroke of bad luck we are spotted, the horse power in this
baby will give us a fighting chance.”

“I hope you know what the heck you’re doing. The time we have bought
might be running out. The Redmavens are almost upon us.”

“Jeeze, woman, don’t rush me. One wrong connection and this thing will
start bleating like a goat.” He connected the wires for the door locks to the
battery and the soft
thunk
signaled they’d disengaged.

He scrambled out from under the truck and hustled Sabine into cab made
dim by the darkly tinted windows.

Hot-wiring a car was a skill he acquired when Gustav denied him access to
their cars, fearing his Evel Knievel stunts would get him killed. The engine
let out a husky growl when he connected the two wires to bypass the ignition
switch.

Drew reversed, drove with a studied nonchalance down the short back alley,
and stopped until he could ease out into traffic. Rush hour. Good. They’d use
it to blend in with the people heading to the suburbs. He spotted a gap in the
line of cars coming up and he swung out to join the swarm of vehicles.

Sabine let out a long, relived sigh. The sound forced him to look over at
her. He hadn’t gotten a hint of worry when they took down the Redmavens. She
held it together admirably.

“Started to doubt I’d get us out of there?”

“Pfft, I knew you would, but I didn’t want your inevitable confrontation
with Bardo to happen when we are outnumbered. He would have cheated. The scent
of his desperation is almost manic.” She relaxed against the cushions.

Taking short swift glances at her between keeping an eye on the flow of
cars, he watched her expression change from weary to ferociously feral.

She shot him a toothy wereish smile. “He is going to be even more
frenzied when he realized we’ve slipped through his fingers. We’re going to
have to come back to put him down. I can’t live with the constant fear of him
hunting us.”

He retrieved his phone from his pocket, flicked it open, activated it,
and auto-dialed his primo’s number. He hoped Rafe was well away from the area.

Rafe’s yeah was rife with the same annoyance he felt.

“Where are you?” Drew asked when Rafe finally acknowledged his call.

“On my way out of the city. Should I do a U-turn to pick you and Sabine
up?”

“No, I have transpo. Things have gotten a little sticky. Did you find the
den?”

“Yep, Aimee’s spoor is heavy in the air. She was there until recently. Or
so I’ve been informed. The place was deserted so we didn’t linger. On the way
back to the car, I recognized a couple of Bardo’s personal guards scouting the
area. He can’t be far behind. And what the hell do you mean things have gotten
sticky. Ishbel’s been yammering about coming back for her sister.”

“Bardo IDed me, and now we’re his targets.”

“Shit, I’m coming to get you.”

“No, I’m going to call Royal and let him know what’s going on. Our focus
has shifted. We need to locate the were we tracked, it looks like he’s a
Redmaven beta who has revolted, Bardo is hunting him too. He’d be our best bet
to find Aimee.”

Drew recognized the sound of a scuffle.

“I don’t…Give that back,” Rafe ordered a second before Ishbel’s voice
filled his ear.

“Are you all right? Sabine’s anxiety for you is rife on the wind. I told
this mule-headed man we’d come back for you, but does he listen to me? No! He
had to follow your orders.”

“Yes, she’s fine.” He twisted to the side as Sabine reached for the phone
on hearing Ishbel’s voice.

“I know she’s fine. Are
you
hurt? Does she need my assistance?”

“I’m fine.”

“Oh good, I caught her concern for you.” Ishbel sighed. “Now put her on.”

Sabine worried about him? Well, that was a new one to him. The little imp
used his distraction to snatch the cell from his hand. Sabine put the device to
her ear. “Ishbel?”