Marked by the Alpha (13 page)

She could hear hunters shouting in the clearing now, dozens of them, and worse still she could hear more of them in the direction from which she had come. There was nowhere to go. With no other option, she pushed through the brambles into a dense thicket and set Portia on the ground as gently as possible.
Mason, please be alive and please find me,
she begged silently.

As the hunters came closer, she gripped Portia’s hand and stroked her hair. “I’m so sorry, Portia, I’m sorry,” she told her unconscious friend. Then, with tears running down her face, she shifted and crouched down, waiting for the first hunter to approach the thicket. If she was going to die tonight, she was damn well going to take some of these bastards with her.

* * *

Having sniffed out a trap, Mason led his pack carefully in a wide circle around the clearing. As they made their way through the woods near the edge of the trees, he heard a shot, then two more a moment later.
Dani
!

Breaking into a run,
he threw caution to the wind and charged into the open straight for the nearest group of hunters. He saw Phil break off, leading another group of wolves toward a different truckload of hunters, and a third group followed Tyler.

The hunters were foolishly concentrating all their attention on the wolves they had been shooting at moments ago, and with all of the yelling back and forth between them they didn’t even hear the pack
approaching
. By the time the first hunter turned and saw Mason coming, he didn’t even have time to fire a shot before he died.
Through all the other smells that assaulted his keen nose, Mason had caught
Dani’s
scent—the scent of his mate, who was in
danger—and it
drove him wild. All the rage and fear that had built throughout the day was let loose, and he killed with insane fury. Gunshots echoed through the clearing and several wolves went down, but the pack’s vicious attack had caught the hunters
off guard
, and the combination of the darkness
and
their sheer terror ruined the aim of most of them.

He
caught sight of
Phil out of the corner of his eye, as his second-in-command leapt into the bed of a moving truck and made short work of the hunters trying to fire
at the wolves
from what they had thought was a
safe place.

He made his way toward
Dani’s
scent, killing everything in his path, until finally there was nothing left in his way and he saw his beautiful red wolf crouched over the fallen body of a hunter who had gotten too close to her. Behind him, he could hear the sound of screeching tires as the last of the hunters beat a hasty retreat, leaving their dead behind.

He shifted as soon as he reached her side, and she did the same. Without a word, he pulled her body clo
se to his and kissed her deeply
.
He wanted more, and he wanted it now, but she broke away from the kiss and pointed deeper into the thicket.

“Portia… she’s hurt badly…”
Dani
whispered.

When he reached Portia’s side a moment later, Mason’s joy at finding
Dani
was replaced just as quickly by fear and sorrow. Portia was alive, but just barely, and the entire area around her right shoulder was black. The wolf from the other pack had been right, he thought. Those hunters had been using silver-cored bullets. How many of his pack had been shot in the fight? Would they survive?

Putting those questions aside, he lifted Portia into his arms and then set out for the house at a run.
As he ran past Phil—now back in human form as well
—
he yelled out orders for all the wounded wolves to be brought back to the house as soon as possible. Cal had his work cut out for him tonight, and Mason prayed that he would be up to the task.

* * *

Mason had been going from room to room, helping Cal in any way he could with the treatment of Portia and the six males of the pack who had been wounded in the battle with the hunters. It was a testament to Cal’s skill and dedication that not a single wolf had died that night, despite the fact that every one of their wounds came from a silver-cored bullet.

Finally, after nearly five hours, Cal had removed the last shard of silver from the final wounded wolf, and it was now just a matter of waiting for their natural healing abilities to take over and repair the damage. Many of the wounds would have easily been fatal for a human, and even with the silver out of their bodies it would still take time for them to heal.

Dani
, meanwhile, had been sitting in Portia’s room for well over three hours, watching her friend and crying. For the first hour after they arrived at the house, she had hovered over Portia, stroking her hair and face and speaking to Portia softly through her tears. Cal had managed to pull out the largest pieces of the bullet right away in order to stop the spread of the poison, but then he had needed to leave to attend to a couple of the males whose wounds were even
more
grievous than Portia’s.

When he had returned, he had ordered Phil to get
Dani
out of the way, and Phil and Alisha had escorted her to her room. Alisha had run a bath for her and, reluctantly,
Dani
had gotten in the tub and washed the dirt and dried blood from the already healed scratches and cuts she had suffered on her trek through the forest in human form. Alisha had even insisted that she stay soaking in the tub for another twenty minutes after she was clean, to allow her to calm down and stop crying.

After that, though,
Dani
had returned to Portia’s room—by that point Cal had left again to assist the other wolves—and her tears had returned right away, although she had done her best to keep calm and stay strong for her friend, who was now conscious although she often drifted briefly into sleep and when she was awake she was hazy.

Dani
looked up as Mason and Cal entered the room, and she overheard them talking quietly.

“Mason, there is nothing else you can do for me now,” Cal said, as firmly as he could when speaking to his pack leader. “All of t
he wounded are going to make it;
they just need time to heal… lots of time, for some of them. You need to go and get yourself cleaned up, and then deal with
Dani
.”

“The pack needs me right now. They need to know that I appreciate what they did tonight, and how bravely they fought,” Mason argued.

“What they need is
a pack leader who is in his right mind. They have that at the moment, but if you don’t do what needs to be done they might not have it for much longer.”

“You’re right,” Mason conceded, and left the room, presumably to go and wash the blood and dirt from his body.

Dani’s
tears increased, and she even sniffled a little, but Cal paid no attention to her as he focused on Portia.

“She is recovering really well,” he muttered to himself. “
This one's a
tough little wolf
;
she is healing faster than some of the males in fact.” The second statement was louder and probably intended to cheer up
Dani
, but she barely heard him.

Deal with
Dani
…
the words echoed in her head over and over. She knew exactly what Cal meant. They couldn’t have a foolish girl like her in
a the
pack, someone who would put them all in danger because of her silly resistance to being claimed by a man she knew she wanted.
Dani
had resolved earlier to flee the pack once Portia was safe, but hearing that Cal want
ed her gone made it even worse.

She recalled what Cal had said just a moment ago: Portia was recovering and she was going to be fine.
Dani
had wanted to speak to Portia once she was fully awake and attentive, and tell her how sorry she was for getting her injured, but now knowing that even Cal wanted her gone from the pack, she realized that Portia was never going to forgive her either. She didn’t think she could face Portia’s condemnation when she awoke, and she decided that i
t would be better to leave now.

She hated the idea of leaving without even saying goodbye to Alisha, but she had seen the looks
which passed between her and
Phil, and she knew that Alisha would be in good hands.
Dani
would write her a letter later, once she had found a new place to live and started over somewhere far away.

All she had to do now was grab some of her things from her room and then slip out of the house.

* * *

Mason washed himself quickly, but then lingered in the shower for a
few moments to compose his thoughts. He knew what he had to do now. He had to do what he should have done that very first night at
Dani’s
house. He thought sadly about what a fool he had been, and what a terrible cost his pack had paid for it. It amazed him that they had remained loyal to him in spite of everything, and he swore that they would not regret it. Phil, especially, needed to be told how much Mason owed him. He needed to thank that little human girl, too. When it came down to it, he thought, she might have been the bravest of them all.

First things first, though. He had to deal with
Dani
right away, before his mind started to cloud again or she did something silly or both. Now that his mind was made up, in fact, he had to admit that he was looking forward to claiming her—he certainly couldn’t deny that he had wanted to take her long and hard and thoroughly since he first set eyes upon her.

He dressed quickly, and headed for Portia’s room. Not finding her there, he began to worry a little, but figured she had just gone back to her room to sleep at last, and he went quickly to her door.

He considered knocking, but decided that
doing so
would not properly set the tone, since what was about to happen was going to happen whether
Dani
liked it or not
—it
was
for her own good as well as his. He didn’t want to startle her though, so he opened the door quietly… and then stopped in his tracks.

“Just what do you think you’re doing?” he demanded, as
Dani
stood frozen in place with a look of shame, fear, and sadness on her face. She had the window open already, and had obviously been about to climb out with a small satchel, presumably filled with some of her personal things.

She did not answer for a moment, and he went on, fury building inside him. “I cannot believe you would think of leaving this pack after all they did for you tonight, after all they sacrificed. Portia barely survived, and six other wolves are badly wounded. Any one of them could have easily died tonight—died to save you!”

She burst into sobs.

“I’m so sorry
,
Mason. I know this is
all my
fault, and I understand why you
don’t want me anymore. I wanted to wait until Portia was awake so that I could tell her goodbye and that I’m sorry, but after I heard you and Cal talking I couldn’t bear to wait any longer. I know Alisha will hate me for leaving without saying goodbye,”
Dani
said, sobbing even harder, “but I’m going to write to her once I get to… wherever I end up going.”

Mason’s anger melted into confusion. “After you heard me and Cal talking
,
you wanted to leave?” he asked, trying to think what Cal had said that could have possibly triggered that reaction. “Does the idea of me claiming you repulse you so much that you would leave even after tonight?”

“No, it isn’t that.
I sincerely regret not telling you how I felt the night that we met.”
Dani
looked down. “I wanted you to claim me that night because
I wanted to be yours, but
I
couldn’t come to terms with that enough
to ask you myself
.”
Dani’s
eyes glistened with fresh tears.
“I understand why you don’t want me now, though, and I understand why Cal wanted you to
get rid of
me
, since I have brought the pack nothing but trouble
. The sooner
I’m gone, the better it will be for everyone.”

Mason’s heart almost broke hearing her, but then only a moment later he was filled with elation.
She wanted him to claim her!
She had wanted it all along.
What a damn fool I’ve been
, he cursed himself yet again, but he didn’t waste time with regrets.
He had come to her room tonight to claim her whether she wanted it or not, but to find that she did want it was the best news he’d had in a while.

* * *

Without another word, Mason crossed the room quickly and took hold of her. He
pulled her to him and bit down at the base of her neck on the opposite side
of his original mark and tugged.