Seeking Pack Redemption (10 page)

The first
attacking wave consisted of only a pair. While his pack brothers took care of
them, Darren kept going and
Jaxon
dropped back to
cover his rear. It bothered him to run from a fight, however this was one of
those times where the safety of an innocent—
my mate
—mattered more than his bloodlust.

A shape
came leaping from the side, the sound of their own flight having masked its
approach. He spun and the fur of the attacking wolf brushed his side. With a
snarl,
Jaxon
engaged the beast and Darren managed
about thirty more paces before a sixth sense had him dumping
Thea
on the ground and whirling to meet an opponent. The
creature shifted as it came, a scream of pain and rage echoing through the
woods.

“Fucking
bastards. Give her back!” The sandy haired man in his late thirties or forties
screamed at him with wild eyes.

“You want
her, come and get her,” he taunted with crooked fingers.

“You don’t
know what you’ve done. He’ll kill you for this if you’re lucky. Make you one of
us if you’re not.”

“I’m not
scared of some undead creature. If he even exists. Maybe you and your buddies
are just fucked in the head. Sick with rabies or some other
Lycan
disease.”

An almost-sad
smile crossed the unshaven man’s face. “I wish.
Because then
I would have hope.
You should have walked away.”
His quiet
warning spoken, the male’s eyes changed, with the lucid light being overtaken
by a red hue.
His lips opened wide in a feral smile, and he charged.

Darren met
him, punch for punch. The other man moved fast, but Darren didn’t play nicely.
When he saw his chance, his foot came up and nailed the guy in the sac. As the
other man recoiled, Darren reached and grabbed his head before dropping to the
ground in his favorite modified wrestling move. The snap let him know the fight
was done.

After he
let go of the limp body, he stood and looked around.
Thea
hadn’t remained where he’d dropped her, but he quickly found her, her blood and
scent trail too easy to follow. He heard her breathing from behind a large tree
and said, “It’s me. Don’t be frightened. He’s gone.”

“You—you
killed him?”

The truth
seemed best. “Yes. Does it frighten you?”

“No. He
wasn’t a nice man.”

“Then I’m
glad he’s dead. Anyone else you’d like me to take care of?”

She peered
around the trunk, her brown eyes curious. “Why would you do that for me? You
heard him.
Roderick’s going to come for you.
All of you.
He’s not going to let me go.”

“Then
he’ll have to go through me because I’m not giving you back. I will protect
you,
Thea
.”

“No one
can protect me from him.”

“We’ll
find a way. Will you let me try?”

He held
out his hand. Logic and his wolf howled he needed to grab her and continue to
run. But the man—whose heart stopped as he waited for her answer—wanted
to earn this first step in her trust. To his relief, she emerged from behind
the tree and clasped his hand.

Dirty,
bedraggled, her hair standing on end, her eyes wide and still frightened, he’d
still never seen a more beautiful sight.
Ours.

*
* * *

As she was
clasped in the man’s arms and held on to his neck as he ran once again,
Thea
wondered if she’d gone mad. When he’d said, “I will
protect you,
Thea
,” a part of her actually believed
him. Trusted him when he said he’d find a way. Did it have to do with the spark
she felt when he first touched her, a spark she’d felt to a smaller extent with
David, then more shockingly, his brother,
Trent.
Did she
want to believe because he spoke with such conviction and honesty in his eyes?
Or was it the odd voice in her head, a voice she’d only heard recently that
said he would protect them. That he belonged to them.
He is ours
, the voice whispered.
Trust him and the light-furred one. They are . . .
Thea
didn’t understand the next word because it was more of
an image, a group of wolves, really, running, together like
a big, furry family.
 

Madness.
Her captivity and pregnancy hormones obviously overtook common sense. One,
normal people didn’t hear voices. And two, she didn’t know these guys. Although
they seemed hell-bent on helping her escape, that didn’t mean she could
automatically trust them no matter what the little voice in her head said. Who
was to say they didn’t want her for nefarious reasons?

Somehow I think their intentions are honorable.
Her gut just knew from
the way they seemed determined to protect her against horrible odds to the way
the one named Darren carried her so gently. Only time would truly tell.

She didn’t
know how long they ran, but she could certainly admire his stamina as his pace
never let up despite the way his heart pounded in his chest. From time to time,
his wolf friends would join them, only to veer off when the approaching sound
of snarls and crackling bushes alerted them to an imminent attack.

It seemed
like they would run forever, chased and fighting. But suddenly they spilled onto
a riverbank or creek—she wasn’t sure, given it wasn’t superbly wide,
maybe twenty, thirty feet, but flowed rapidly over rocks downhill.

The russet
wolf joined them and shifted. She averted her eyes from his nudity, but still
got a glimpse of pale skin covered in freckles.

“Hand her
over,” said the stranger who’d shadowed their mad flight.

Panicked,
she clung to Darren.

“I’ve got
her,” Darren replied as he gave her a reassuring squeeze.

“You’re
slowing down. Give yourself a break and let me carry her for a bit. We can
switch back again when we reach the cache at the forked tree.”

She could
feel the reluctance in Darren’s body. He didn’t want to let her go, and she
didn’t want to leave the haven of his arms. But she also knew how tired he had
to be after their flight.

“I’ll
walk,” she announced. As if to mock her, a howl rose from behind them from the
shadowy copse of trees.

“Be
careful with her, Marc,” Darren said gruffly. “She’s pregnant.”

The
redhead rolled his eyes. “I won’t let her bun in the oven come to any harm. Now
hand her over so we can get going again. The water will only stall them for so
long. I can’t believe we haven’t lost them yet considering the eau de pee-pee
we’re wearing.”

“They’re
following her scent. Or were. I think the blood she was dripping has stopped
now that her wound’s clotted.”

“I hope so
because there’s still way too many of them.” Marc held out his arms and waited.

Darren
sighed. “I’m sorry, honey, but Marc’s right. I need to recuperate a little.
Don’t be scared. I know he’s not as good-looking as me, and smells like a
pregnant doe right now, but he’s harmless. And I’ll be right beside you.”

“Next time
I get to wear the raccoon piss while you wear the aroma of pregnant prey.”

“He who sprays
gets first choice,” Darren taunted. To her surprise, he pressed a chaste kiss
on her forehead before he handed her over.

“See you
at the tree,
Thea
. And don’t worry, I’ll be right by
your side the entire way.” Darren backed away a few steps and changed into the
dark wolf of before. Marc, holding her cradled in his arms, stepped into the
stream, wading further and further until the water tickled her backside,
shockingly cold. With Darren’s wolf swimming alongside them, Marc, aided by the
current, floated and walked them down the hill in the chilly current.

Not a word
was spoken. She couldn’t, with her teeth chattering from the cold. How he
endured immersed halfway, she didn’t know. Of Trent and the other wolf, there
was no sign.

Did they
still follow? Had Roderick’s pets caught them?

As
twilight gave way to night, she trembled as she wondered how long they had
until the vampire himself found them.

I don’t want to think about Roderick.
Not when escape finally
seemed a possibility. She focused instead on the man carrying her. While he
didn’t inspire the same kind of tingle Darren and Trent had, she still felt
something, a little shock more along the lines of that she’d experienced with
David. It was totally weird. In the past, her boyfriends never gave her
electric shocks when they touched. Could the odd sensation have to do with
their wolf status?
A weird kind of pheromone thing given how
attracted she found herself to the men despite their deadly situation?
Heck,
even now, butt half frozen, the cut in her leg throbbing, tense, and stressed,
she couldn’t deny a certain spurt of heat at being held against his naked
chest.
A heat that flared higher when she allowed herself to
think of Darren, or the very naked Trent.

My trauma has made me into a nympho-slut.
That or she found herself
so happy to have escaped that she welcomed any kind of interaction with another
person. Say what you would, talking was nice, but nothing compared to a hug or
the intimacy that came from touching almost skin-to-skin. It beat a “Get Well”
card any day.
I wonder if there is a card
for, “Sorry you got kidnapped by your possessed boyfriend and given over to a
psycho vampire who wanted to use your unborn child as a soldier in his army.”
Would
a card like that come with money in it or the number for the nearest insane
asylum?

Except she wasn’t crazy.
Vampires existed. Or at least one did. And
werewolves were all too real, and in some cases, chivalrous and good-looking.

To her
surprise they made it downstream without mishap. After staggering out of the
chill water, Marc set her on her feet and she wobbled for a moment as her
frozen butt thawed and her cramped legs stretched.

Darren,
still in wolf form, slogged from the water and shook, his soaking coat sending
droplets flying. She twisted her face and grimaced in his direction.

“I could
have done without the wet-dog smell.”

She could
have sworn his wolf smiled: the man certainly was when he changed shapes, his
smooth tanned flesh—so much of it, delineated with well-defined muscles—making
her avert her eyes but not before a flicker of heat warmed her belly.

Totally insane.

While Marc
scrounged, his arm up to the elbow in a hole at the bottom of a tree, Darren
approached her. He crowded her space as he caught her hands in his, warming
them with his simple touch.

“How are
you holding up?” he asked.

“I’m fine.
Shouldn’t you be more worried about your friends?”

His lips quirked.
“I think they’d be insulted if I wasted my time
worrying.”

“You guys
are weird.”

“A good
weird I hope?”

“Maybe.”
The smile that curled her lips with her answer surprised her. How could
having
this conversation, in the middle of the woods, with a
naked stranger, make her happy? She didn’t know, but when he answered with a
wide grin of his own, her heart pattered faster.
Mine.
Where that possessive thought kept springing from, she didn’t
know, but it also didn’t frighten her like it should have. Not when it seemed
more and more right.

“Aha. Are
you ready to smell like
roadkill
?” Marc asked as he
held aloft a couple of bottles filled with cloudy fluids.

He wasn’t
kidding about the smell. They spritzed her with the vile scent,
then
did themselves. She wondered if it worked by grossing
their pursuers out because the stench certainly made her want to run away from
herself.

Before she
could protest, Darren swung her into his arms.

“Not a
word,” he warned. “We need to move fast. And besides, I like holding you.” His
startling declaration stunned her. In silence, she clung to him as he ran,
wondering if he was perhaps sick. Who enjoyed carrying a pregnant woman in a
dirty gown covered in animal pee? Then again, what perverted woman, a captive
for weeks in need of a bath, wondered what it would be like to kiss the strong
jaw of the profile she couldn’t help staring at?

During an
attack by three wolves, she was set down for a moment while Darren battled
alongside his furry friend. When more howls erupted as soon as they dispatched
the trio, Marc tore back in the direction they came while Darren scooped her up
to run again.

She’d
given up on arguing with him about it. He seemed bound and determined to rescue
her, and, dammit, she was going to let him.

Night had
fully fallen by the time they spilled into a parking lot with a single vehicle.
He let her down, making sure she had her feet before he dropped to his knees
and scrounged under the wheel well. After popping back up, he smiled as he
flashed a key at her. In a moment, he’d unlocked the SUV and pulled out not
only a jacket to drape over her but a gun. He also yanked on a pair of gray
track pants but remained shirtless.