Pack Challenge (21 page)

“It’s Miki,” was the reply. And she knew just by the sound of her best friend’s voice something was seriously wrong. “You better get to the shop.

The cops are here and I saw an ambulance pulling away.” Sara hung up the phone and moved.

The slamming door woke him up for the second time that day. But the banging on the window an hour later actually made him move.

Zach literally dragged himself up and out of bed. He sleepwalked to the window and pulled the shades open. Conall stood on the other side.

-176-

Pack Challenge

Leave it to his best friend to wake him from one of those great sleeps. The kind of sleep you only get after fucking the woman you love throughout her entire house.

Zach opened the window. “What?”

“We’ve got a problem. They went after Marrec this morning.” Conall shoved Zach’s saddlebags from his bike through the window. “Get dressed. And thanks for letting us know you weren’t dead.” Zach stared at his friend, seriously confused. Then it all returned to him—that bastard touching his female, the fight, and the falling. The last thing he remembered was Conall calling his name, but not much else…except gunshots.

“I’m sorry.” Zach pulled his jeans out of the bag. His friend didn’t answer and he knew Conall must be seriously pissed. “But if it makes you feel any better, she put a muzzle on me last night.” Conall started laughing and didn’t stop until they got to the hospital.

Sara was already there when the two men arrived. She glanced at Zach when he and Conall walked into the room, but quickly turned back to Marrec.

The look on her face said it all. She blamed herself for what happened. Blamed herself for bringing the Pride to Marrec’s territory.

Blamed herself for putting him and his Pack at risk.

Marrec, though, seemed to be seriously enjoying the attention of three beautiful women. Miki fluffed his pillows, Angelina read his medical chart, and Sara held a water cup to his lips so he could drink. Zach and Conall exchanged glances. They both knew this was ridiculous. Marrec had clearly been attacked. Zach wouldn’t—couldn’t—deny that. Half his face and throat covered in bandages that needed changing, his hands bruised and torn. Put plainly, the man was a mess. But he was also Pack. In two days he’d be fine. At the moment, as bad as he looked, he probably only felt a dull ache.

-177-

Shelly Laurenston

Zach turned and tested the air. Marrec’s Pack lurked around somewhere, probably the cafeteria. And Zach’s Pack had just arrived.

Unfortunately, Casey was with them. “Shit,” he muttered to Conall.

Yates came in first, stopping in the doorway to observe Marrec.

“Comfortable?” he asked with obvious amusement.

“A lot of pain,” Marrec forced out.

“Oh, come on,” Yates sneered in return.

Zach would have laughed too, except Sara was pushing the red and grey hair off Marrec’s face. Balling his hands into fists, Zach wondered what it would feel like to beat the shit out of an old man.

Casey entered the room then, her females following behind. Sara didn’t even look up. Zach smiled—she’d smelled Casey coming.

Moving across the room, Casey’s attitude was one of complete dominance. Her females didn’t follow. They stood back and waited. He knew Casey well enough to know she was about to show Sara exactly who was Alpha Female of the Magnus Pack and although Zach could step in, he wouldn’t. He needed Sara to start fighting these battles on her own. Even the ones she would lose.

“Excuse me, honey.” Casey grabbed Sara by her jacket and hauled her up and off the bed. Sara spilled water on the floor as she stumbled out of the way. Casey sat on the bed beside Marrec. “Oh, you poor, baby.

Are you okay?”

The room grew quiet. Even Angelina and Miki weren’t speaking, clearly too stunned. But they did take several steps back, the whole thing feeling a lot more dangerous than it probably was. Sara wasn’t ready to take on Casey and, from what Zach could tell, Sara knew it.

Zach watched his woman take a deep breath and place the empty water cup down on a nearby table. She turned away from Casey and stared down at her sneaker-covered feet.

He saw the struggle on her face. Knew what she wanted to do. And knew what she could handle. He expected her to walk away, and she

-178-

Pack Challenge

didn’t let him down. She walked away…for about five feet. Then, with a snarl, she spun back around and grabbed Casey from behind. One hand in the woman’s hair, the other grabbing the denim jacket she wore. Sara snatched her off the bed and slammed Casey, face first, into the wall.

She yanked her back, leaving a splash of blood on the white paint, and slammed her again. Then Sara threw her. Across the room and out the door, an arc of blood slashing across Marrec’s bed. Zach heard Casey hit the wall with a sickening thud.

Sara, growling low, started to go after her when Miki and Angelina, not Pack and not knowing better, jumped in front of her.

“Hey! Hey!” Miki pushed her friend back. “Sara,
no
!” Sara halted in her tracks, staring at her friends as if debating whether to tear their throats out or not. Instead she took a deep breath and looked over their heads at Zach. He glanced at the rest of the Pack females and, to his growing pride, Sara picked up on it immediately. Her head snapped around and she nailed the four other women with one brutal scowl. “What are you bitches looking at?” she snarled.

Immediately they all look at the floor, the door, the ceiling—

everything and anything
but
Sara. Zach bit back a smile and thought about mounting her right there in front of everybody.

That’s when Miki grabbed Sara’s jacket and dragged his woman from the room, Angelina following after them.

Once gone, Yates went over to see the damage to his female. They all knew his time as Alpha Male was now over. And the man seemed relieved.

Conall shook his head and grinned. “Your woman is a major bitch.” Zach grinned back. “Isn’t she, though?”

-179-

Shelly Laurenston

Sara let Miki drag her out the hospital and around the back; eventually stopping in the doctors’ parking lot, the forest behind them.

She
let her do it
. Sara couldn’t quite believe how strong she’d gotten in only a few days.

Miki finally released her. “
What is going on with you
?” Sara looked at her friends. Tired and worn from worry over Marrec, they wouldn’t be up to hearing the truth. Hell, even Angelina wore sneakers and sweats. Matching Versace sneakers and sweats, but still.

So what exactly should Sara say here?
Apparently I’m Pack now and I
was exerting my dominance. You wouldn’t understand
. That would play well. These pushy, tiresome, sometimes psychotic women were her best friends. They had been there when no one else had. She didn’t want to lose them, and she knew if she told them the truth she’d lose them forever. Wouldn’t she?

“Nothing. I’m fine.” Boy
that
was lame.

Angelina and Miki exchanged glances. Sara had a feeling whatever they were about to say to her had already been discussed between the two of them. Angelina leaned back against an expensive car with MD

plates and smiled.

“Miki and I were reminiscing on the phone last night. I forgot how much my grandmother hated when I went over to your house. At the time, I couldn’t understand why because she liked you so much. So I asked her. And she said it was because your grandmother was
lobo del
diablo
. Roughly translated, ‘devil wolf’. I figured it was my grandmother’s way of calling Lynette a bitch because of the Church Bake Sale Incident of 1984. But it wasn’t that, was it?”

Sara, staring down at her feet, shook her head. She couldn’t face her friends. So, instead she studied her feet and marveled at how big they were. She wondered what they would look like furry.

-180-

Pack Challenge

“You’ve gotten really strong,” Miki noted. “You threw that blonde chick around the hospital room like a rag doll. Which, by the way, was so many levels of cool.”

“And that growling thing you’ve been doing lately,” from Angelina.

“And the snarling,” Miki added.

“Bottom line is,” Angelina finished, “maybe they’re not werewolves.

But they’re not quite human, are they?” The women locked eyes. “And neither are you?”

Scratching the back of her neck, Sara looked down at her feet again.

“I…uh…”

“Why don’t you tell her? Tell her what you are.” The friends spun around at the sound of a strange voice. She knew him—the man she’d shot at the night before. As before, his three friends were with him. All golden and beautiful and so cold Sara felt her stomach drop. Why, oh, why hadn’t she killed them?

“Hello, pretty. Now, why don’t you be a good little puppy and come with us.”

“She’s not going anywhere with you.” Miki stepped in front of Sara, but one of the men backhanded her. She flew across the hood of a car, landing on the other side.

A brief moment of silence followed as Sara and Angelina looked over at their fallen friend. Together, they slowly turned back to face the four men standing in front of them.

“Angelina?”

“Yes, Sara?”

Sara stared straight at the leader. “Go,” she bit out as her fist slammed into the groin of the man closest to her.

Angelina didn’t hesitate. She turned and ran, sliding over the hood of a car and charging flat out back to the hospital.

Sara tore off into the woods. Hoping—praying—they would be more obsessed with getting her then going after Angelina.

-181-

Shelly Laurenston

She couldn’t hear them, but she could smell them. If they shifted she probably didn’t stand a chance. She was pretty sure she moved slower as human. And she had no idea how to change to anything. So she ran, and she prayed. Prayed her Pack would come for her before it was too late.

-182-

Pack Challenge

Zach smelled them before he even hit the parking lot. He, Marrec, and both their Packs already out the door of the hospital when Angelina ran into them. Silently, panic and fear for her friend coming off her in waves, she grabbed Zach by the hand and dragged him to where she last saw Sara.

He caught his female’s scent immediately and within seconds shifted, taking off into the woods, shaking his clothes off as he went. His Pack right behind him.

At first, the bastard cats didn’t shift. He could still smell the human.

Besides, they couldn’t taunt and terrify her as cats. Only men could do that. But they must have realized she was a lot faster and stronger than they’d expected. About two miles from the hospital, they changed. And Zach knew it wouldn’t be long before they caught up with her. Before they killed her.

He quickly figured out where she was heading. Home. She was going home. To where she felt safe. To where she had guns.

Good girl.
Anything she could do at this point to buy him time.

Sara knew as soon as they shifted, but she kept moving. If she had a moment to think, she would be marveling at the fact she hadn’t run since her attack when she was eight. And now she’d run almost five miles and felt—no, she
knew—
she could go another twenty. But they

-183-

Shelly Laurenston

were gaining on her. She’d been right—they were much faster once they shifted.

Sara cleared the woods and made a mad dash for her house. She slid over the hood of a car parked in front of her porch, which bought her precious seconds, flew up the stairs, and through her front door. She turned and slammed the door as the cats made it up the stairs. They threw themselves against the wood and she wondered how long before they forced the heavy oak off its hinges. She wondered where Zach and the rest of the Pack were.

She wondered how long before the bitches behind her actually said anything.

Sara looked over her shoulder at the four women standing behind her, one holding her shotgun.

They were beautiful females. Tall. Powerful. Blonde. Really blonde.

Impeccably dressed, sporting four-hundred-dollar gold-colored shoes and gold jewelry she could never afford.

“They were right. You do look like your mother.” Talk about having a bad day. Sara sighed and stepped forward to face the leader. She wasn’t the tallest, but clearly she ran these females.

“She killed my sister. Now I’m going to kill you,” the woman stated simply. “I’d hoped to do it long ago, but that bitch grandmother of yours moved like lightning.”

“Then let’s end it.” Sara was so tired of the bullshit. “Here. Now.

Anything to get you to shut the fuck up.” The woman hissed her displeasure and Sara snarled in return, her lips pulling back over her growing canines.

Then the bitch’s hand wrapped around Sara’s throat, dragging her close. Sara grabbed at the hand cutting off her oxygen as panic swept through her. Panic, fear and anger. Definitely anger. The female leaned in and sniffed her. “How sweet. Just turned. Just marked.” A tongue that should not have been able to fit in the woman’s mouth lashed out and

-184-

Pack Challenge

swiped up the entire side of Sara’s scarred face. It wasn’t really wet, but dry and painful where it touched. “I bet he’ll miss you when you’re gone.” Then she lifted Sara off the floor and tossed her across the room and through the closed glass window.

Zach skid to a halt in front of Sara’s porch, Conall practically slamming into the back of him. He watched her body flying toward the window and his mind howled in anger and pain. He was going to lose her. Lose the only woman he liked much less loved. But as Sara’s body cleared the glass, he watched her change. Her limbs smoothly shifted to hind and front legs, her hands and feet into paws, black hair spreading over her body. To finish, her beautiful face elongated into a muzzle and snapping jaws.

Then she hit the porch, bounced and flipped off it, sliding across the grass in front of her house and coming to a halt when she slid right into Zach’s long front legs.