Wolf Claim (Wolves of Willow Bend Book 3) (19 page)

Gillian jerked away from the pregnant female and hurtled towards the burning Brett, even as he hit the ground and his Hunters fell in on him trying to stamp out the flames. Marco stepped forward, a gun in hand.

In slow, almost stop-motion, he switched his target from the Alpha to Gillian racing toward the downed man. Owen roared, sprung forward, and landed between his mate and the mad wolf. The explosion of sound following the gun’s report burned his ears, but didn’t compare to the sledgehammer slamming into his chest.

Agony swallowed his next breath and it came out on a gurgle. His heart seized. The world crawled around him. Panic shattered the solemnity of the vigil. Screams broke the silence. Owen fought to climb to his feet and another bullet ripped into his chest.

Skin blackened, cracked and peeling, Brett surged upward and lunged for the wolf. More explosions—one for each of his Hunters and another for Brett. The weapon kept firing and Marco looked alternately startled and determined with each one.

The Hunter who’d bumped into Owen jerked as bullets hit him. He landed in the earth next to Owen, his eyes glazed over and startled. Numbness began to spread through Owen’s chest; a cold that chased the burn so rapidly, Owen caught the scent of his impending death.

Unacceptable.
Amidst the panic and screams, the fire burned and Marco reloaded his gun and walked toward the downed Alpha.

Before he could reach him however, Owen’s world crashed because of a mind-numbing horror.

Gillian planted herself between the mad wolf and the injured.

No…
 

Madness eddied the air, mingling with charred flesh, wood smoke and blood. Violence radiated out and wolves were torn between removing the vulnerable and attacking the wolf with the gun. So many injuries had her gift flaring and she could feel the energy pull from Owen nearly as acute as when he’d opened himself to her earlier. She let the power pour through her and down their bond.

Deeper inside, the part of her tied to pack called for help and Mason answered. The energy trickled in, distance narrowing the channel. The pounding of feet and another explosion from the gun. If she’d been in wolf form, her ears would have flattened. The wounded cried out to her, but she kept her attention on the dangerous beast prowling inside of Marco.

How had she not seen it sooner?
Unforgiveable.
Yet, despite the ill odor exuding from him, his eyes were clear and predator bright. Behind her, Brett shoved his hands into the dirt and began to rise. Agony strained his low voice. “Get the fuck out of the way, Gillian.”

She ignored him, even as she ignored the sundering in her heart at the increased pull from Owen. He was bleeding. The bullet in his chest had done some serious damage. Canting her head, she maintained her study of Marco until his gaze finally locked with hers.

He growled and the gun swung in her direction. “You shouldn’t be here.”

“No, I shouldn’t.” She didn’t argue with him and walked forward three steps, stopping only when his nostrils flared. Good, he had her scent. His eyes narrowed and he edged closer to her. His energy thrust ahead of him, unfamiliar and twisted. She let it roll off of her and tilted her head. “Why are you hurting so many wolves, Marco?”

Names were important. They humanized, familiarized, and forced a bond. A reminder of knowledge and acceptance, a name could sometimes bring the lost back to themselves.

“Don’t look at me.” Marco’s gun hand trembled again and he stalked forward two steps. He was so close she could brush the hot steel in his white-knuckled grip.

Dropping to her knees, she spread her hands. Not once in her life had she felt the need to fight a dominance battle. If someone wanted to push her around, she didn’t usually feel compelled to push back unless in the defense of another—or in this case to save someone. Submission to the dominants in the pack came easily to her. She didn’t worry about their tempers or their need for control, and they in turn treasured her gift and her.

Trusting in the ingrained, inherent need to protect embedded in all dominant wolves, she showed that trust to Marco, inviting him to see reason.

“But you want us to look at you.” She relied on the answer surfacing inside of her. Whether it came from her healing gift or not, she believed the words to be true. “You have been desperate for someone to see you, to acknowledge your strength and your cleverness. How many have you removed from the path of challenge to rise among the ranks?”

A frown tightened his brows.

“You’re so very clever, no one suspected. No one knew what you had done and, look at you. Nearly to the right hand of your Alpha.” Her heart broke for Brett. He’d trusted this wolf. How had his trust been repaid? And yet…this was not a malicious mind, but a broken one.

The hot breath of the predator rolled over her again. The wolf glaring at her from Marco’s eyes carried not even a trace of humanity. Her wolf rose up within her, meeting the animal’s mad gaze, and certainty crystalized within Gillian. Old Man Carter’s wolf had glared at her that day so many years ago. It had risen within him and fixed on her, as if it sensed prey.

Marco stared at her with the same eyes, and inside she wanted to weep. Wolves fought. They struggled with dominance. They danced an elegant, ageless reel of social and pack law, but at the end of the day? They were wolves and they were together because they needed each other.

The madness in Marco didn’t want to protect or bring together, he simply wanted destruction and to feast on the chaos that followed. He stretched his arm and his finger caressed the trigger. Striking up, she drove her thumb into the soft fleshy part of his hand between his thumb and forefinger.

Not letting his yelp of surprise stop her, she rolled and swept her leg out catching him right behind the knee. He went down, releasing his gun in the scramble to catch his balance. Seizing the weapon, she flung it away and brought her arm up to shield her face even as his fist flew.

The blow never landed. A huge wolf slammed into Marco, full speed, and his yelp turned to a scream as claws and teeth tore into his flesh. A second figure hurtled into the fight and Gillian didn’t close her eyes in time to miss Marco’s head being torn from his body.

At the burst of carnage, the world sped up as though her reactions increased their velocity to catch up to reality. The enormous gray wolf rose, blood spattered and furious, to stalk toward her on trembling legs. Scrambling for Owen, she got her arms around him even as he began to collapse. His far greater weight shoved her down with him.

A rasping breath shuddered in his chest and his head slumped. Shaking, she found the bloodied hole that not even his shift had managed to fully heal, and she thrust everything she had in her toward the injury. Torn flesh, muscle, and sinew tried to knit together, but deeper still was a nicked artery.

Worse, the bullet had scraped along the surface of his heart. A hand gripped her shoulder and more energy poured into her. The unfamiliar flood sizzled with power and carried the flavor of Hudson River. Soon that current became a torrent as the pack’s bonds fed her.

Not questioning the gift, she took it and dumped it all into her mate. His life held onto hers by so many delicate threads, she feared they would snap before she could finish her repairs. Minutes bled into hours and she didn’t move, not even when supplies arrived and hands joined hers in bandaging the badly wounded wolf she tended.

Only when his heart beat steadily on its own and the last of the bleeding had stopped did she look up. Next to her, hair gone and half his face blackened and peeling, knelt Brett. His external injuries were damn near as hideous as Owen’s internal ones. Releasing Owen, though a part of her mind remained focused on him, she turned to take Brett’s face in her palms.

He shrugged her off. “My wolves first.”

The order would not be negotiated or argued. Behind him lay a half-dozen bullet injuries all in varying stages of awful. Nodding, she stumbled to her feet and glanced at Owen.

“I have him, little wolf, as does Mason and yourself. He’s not going anywhere.”

Trusting the Alpha in his voice, she headed for the worst of the victims. Dawn came, then midday. She was ready to move the injured. Owen still slept, his steady breathing and strong pulse giving her the courage to continue.

They turned Brett’s house into a hospice. By nightfall, she’d treated a dozen of the worst injuries and delivered a baby before Brett tried to order her to sleep. Ragged and still oozing blood, the Alpha’s determination was all he had left keeping him on his feet.

“Go, little wolf. We still don’t know the cost of today.” His anger was a visceral thing, seething the air around him. She didn’t let the bad temper bother her. He wasn’t angry with her.

“All I want to do is go to my mate and sleep,” she told Brett, after having stalked him to his office where he’d retreated after they’d treated the last of his wolves. He’d kept up a steady flow of energy. His pack writhed dangerously on the edge of violence. Too much had happened to let them be any other way, but they kept him fed with wave upon wave of energy that he in turn gave to her.

With her Alpha so far away, she could never have done all she’d managed today without his support. Now it was his turn. “Hush, grumpy wolf.” She took his face in her palms, exerting extreme care where his flesh was damaged and broken.

“Grumpy wolf?” One moment wolf, the next human, he blinked his eyes and stared at her.

“You keep calling me little, so I’m going to call you grumpy.” Her gift sparked and focused as she studied his injuries. The burns were significant, but fortunately not deep. “You need to shift, at least four or five times, and then you won’t scar.” The bullet had torn through his shoulder, ripping muscle that had already tried to knit and badly. “I need to reinjure your shoulder to repair it.”

Which would hurt like a bitch, but if it continued to heal as it was, he risked a crippling scar—one that could lame his wolf.

“It doesn’t matter. Go rest.” He touched her wrist, but didn’t try to pull her hand away.

“I said hush, grumpy wolf.” What she had to do would take time and it was time better spent treating him rather than arguing with him.

“Who is Alpha here, little wolf?” he growled.

Biting back a smile, she pressed her fingers into the injury on his shoulder and located the muscle. With her claws and her gift, she dug into it. His hiss of breath expelled between clenched teeth was his only reaction. When she finished, she dared a look at him. “Of course you’re Alpha, grumpy wolf. Now you will be an Alpha who doesn’t limp when he goes wolf.”

Instead of a growl, he chuckled and pressed a kiss to her forehead. “I am sorry I did not get to court you better.”

Accepting the compliment as it was intended, she snorted and rose to clean her hands. “I am quite content with my mate, more than content. I am not the wolf for you.”

“If you ever change your mind…”

“I won’t.” But she smiled. “I mean it about shifting—you should do that immediately.”

With a negligible wave of his hand, he said, “I didn’t know healers fought, little wolf. That maneuver of yours…an unusual choice for a submissive.”

“Submissive doesn’t mean roll over and play dead.”
No matter what any dominant thought
. “My submission is gift, one not every wolf deserves. Healers must wade into dangerous situations. Not all wolves are reasonable when they are hurt. I cannot help if I am hurting.”

She didn’t like fighting, she never had, but that didn’t mean she didn’t know how. Thomas insisted after Old Man Carter, and she finally understood why. She would have to thank him.

“I am going to bed.” She had to take care of the wounded and the injured, but she wanted to be with Owen—to tend to him, to make sure that what she felt in her soul continued to exhibit the same symptoms in real life. To see for herself that he breathed and lived.

Her mate had defended her and nearly died in the attempt.

“Go. I will be a good patient, so I do not worry you.” A rare show of acquiescence from an Alpha, and she appreciated it.

Pausing at his side, she kissed his cheek. “You will tell yourself all of this is your fault, that you are to blame. You will flay yourself over and over for every perceived mistake, and you will hold yourself accountable for the deaths.”

He said nothing.

“Don’t. The only thing to blame is the madness in Marco. You aren’t ready to hear that yet, still I think I shall keep telling you.”

His growl was half-hearted at best. “Go away, little wolf, before I forget my promise to Mason and find a way to make you stay here. You are invaluable.”

It was with laughter that she finally left him to his brooding and climbed the steps to the room she and Owen had claimed. Her mate continued to sleep. It had taken considerable healing and he’d given her so much beforehand, the rest was necessary for him. She rinsed off in a shower before crawling into bed and sliding her hand onto his back.

Wake up soon, my love.
Only the feeling of his heart beating so steadily in time with hers let her go to sleep.

Chapter Eleven

Exhaustion and injury kept them in Hudson River long past the point when Owen wanted to be back in Willow Bend. Gillian spent every waking minute tending to her patients. Once she’d declared the last one well enough to heal on his own, he informed Brett they were leaving. The Alpha took the news well enough, speeding through the rest of the arrangements. Though grievously injured himself, Brett worked to consolidate his pack and Owen hadn’t missed the subtle ways Brett kept inviting Gillian to extend her stay.

The outstanding issue of his three missing wolves would be turned over to the Enforcers, because as far as Brett’s people could ascertain, the wolves had packed and left. Owen already sent word to his Hunters to be on the lookout for the missing wolves. While he understood the Hudson River Alpha’s predicament and appreciated the way he valued Gillian, Owen and his mate were going home. For her part, Gillian simply gave Brett a kiss on the cheek and a hug before adding the cryptic advice, “Remember what I told you. I know you won’t, because you are stubborn. You will need reminding, so I took the liberty of speaking to your mother.”