PackRescue (26 page)

“Make two pizzas,” Fina insisted as she took his hand. He
helped her to stand. Cutler groaned when her ass slid off his deflating shaft.
She grinned ruefully. “That way maybe I’ll be able to steal a slice before you
two eat it all.”

Eastfield, Tennessee

Sim Brice slammed the front door behind him, ran a forearm
over his sweaty forehead and shook his long, dirty-blond hair back. He picked
up the thin stack of mail somebody had placed on the hall table, disturbing the
dust around it.

Flyers. Nothing but flyers. He stormed into the kitchen to
drop the flyers into the overflowing garbage. Dirt and a torn flower fell out
of his boot tread.

He hated flowers. He hated smelling like compost. He hated
the dwindling numbers of customers at the nursery because all his pack had to
sell were common plants available at any big-box home improvement store. He’d
sold off the few mature heirloom plants the nursery had and didn’t know where
that bitch had hidden the seeds everybody kept asking about.

The seedlings in the greenhouses had died.

The mail coming to the house was being redirected and he
didn’t have the right ID to get it unredirected. There was a stack of bills on
his desk at work. They’d had to pay a locksmith to open the wall safe and that
hadn’t helped. The damn thing had been cleaned out. Sim’s only consolation was
that the greenhouse hydro bill was being paid automatically from somewhere. He’d
have to track that down. Maybe it would give him a clue where some of the money
went, and where Fina was.

One of his pack members, one of the younger males, was
rooting around in the pantry. He emerged with a box of saltine crackers, a jar
of olives and a disgruntled expression. The discontent in Sim’s pack was
growing. Even though they’d spread out into the houses owned by the previous
pack, there was no money, little to eat and no females. Sim decided to take a
shower instead of cuffing the youngster for no good reason.

Something leaning against a leg of the hall table caught his
eye. It was a courier package that hadn’t been there that morning. He tore open
the packaging as he climbed the stairs two at a time and walked into the master
bedroom. Dropping down on the unmade bed, Sim ran his dirty fingers over Fina’s
yearbook. He opened it and scanned the pictures.

He found a few of Fina—for clubs, some sports, and in each
one she was standing beside the same blonde. A human if he wasn’t mistaken.
There was even one picture of them together with the caption BFF.

He headed back downstairs.

“Hey, Jake. What’s this mean?” he asked the young were
sitting at the kitchen table, desultorily munching crackers and clutching the
package protectively.

“Huh?” Jake looked up at his Alpha but not before he’d fully
disguised the suspicion on his face. He smiled woodenly, glanced at the book
then his smile widened. “Best Friends Forever. Why? You thinkin’ of tying your
hair up in pigtails and hanging out at the junior school, boss?”

Sim cuffed his insolent head then headed up to Fina’s room.
It was the only room his pack hadn’t disturbed and everything was just as she’d
left it the morning she took off. Circling the room, Sim looked at the pictures
on the walls and dresser. Why hadn’t he seen it before? Sure enough, scattered
amongst pictures of Fina’s family there were pictures of the blonde—the two of
them together. He traced the outline of Fina’s face in one. A quick search
turned up her high school yearbooks. A quick flick through the pages gave him a
name. He went looking for the local phone directory.

* * * * *

“
Urgh.
That bastard never gives up.”

Cutler’s brow furrowed as he followed the sound of Fina’s
anger to the home office. She was sitting in front of her laptop, red faced.
She glared up at him.

“The only thing good about this is trashing his emails.”

Cutler moved quickly and laid his hand over hers. “Let me
read any that come in,” he insisted quietly. “I want to keep track of what the
rogues are up to.”

She shot him a look like she wanted to argue then huffed,
scowled and marched out of the office.

Cutler sat down in the chair she’d vacated and clicked the
message open.

Fina ran back when a woman started shrieking through the
speakers. A little movie screen opened up in one corner and started to play.

“You remember Helen, don’t you?” The were speaking was tall
and wiry. He and two other weres held a struggling young blonde woman for the
camera that had recorded the images. He shook back his hair and smiled ferally.
His eyes were so dark they looked black. “Since you took off the boys have been
a little…restless.” In the background a shaggy were licked the side of Helen’s
neck. She screamed and tried to punch him. “We’re going to turn her unless you
get your tail back here,” Sim ordered hotly. “I want my bitch, my money
and
my pup. You think I didn’t know you were coming into heat when I fucked you? I
figure about now you’re puking up your breakfast and wondering what the hell is
wrong with you.” He snarled at the camera, grabbed a handful of Helen’s hair,
dragged her head to one side and licked his lips as his man dragged his tongue
over Helen’s neck.

The screen went blank.

Cutler stood, sat Fina back down in the chair and picked up
the phone. “Contact Owen. Tell him to get compassionate leave.”

Her fingers shook as they moved over the keyboard. Cutler
dialed a number and asked the woman on the other end about flights to
Tennessee.

Nath’s hand was firm and steady and she hung on tight as she
stepped out of the beefy rented SUV onto what used to be her pack’s running
grounds. A heavy vehicle door closed behind her. Owen Wells came around,
looking stern and scary-strong in his black t-shirt and jeans. Transmitted
halfway around the world via satellite, he’d looked starkly, blatantly
handsome. In person his presence was almost overpowering and he was as big as
Cutler. Owen stood close to her and touched his forehead to hers then stepped
back when Cutler moved to take her other hand.

The four of them walked out of the empty gravel parking lot
in the middle of nowhere, down a tree-lined path, and emerged into a small
clearing. Cutler and Nath walked on either side of her. Owen kept pace behind.

Behind him eight very large, prime weres kept pace with
Cutler. They scanned the area intently and sniffed the air. There had actually
been a few shouting matches and a scuffle or two to see who would get to go when
Cutler put out the word he needed some volunteer muscle to come with him and
Nath to Tennessee.

Fina ached at the thought of putting members of her new pack
in danger. Eddie Robertson, the local baker, and his wife had just found out
she was pregnant with their second cub. Officer Wally Pierce was huge and his
heart was in the right place but he was so very young. She didn’t stop to
consider that Wally was actually three years older than her. She squeezed her
mates’ hands. They squeezed back. Nath lifted her fingers to his mouth and
kissed them fleetingly.

She kept playing her last conversation with Ryan in her
head.

“Fina you
have
to take me with you. Take me home.
Please,” Ryan had wailed after they’d dropped him off at the Pikes’ on their
way to the airport. He’d cried piteously, turned red, collapsed on the floor
then jumped back up again. He’d slammed his small fists into the wall until
Dorothea’s husband wrapped his arms around him from behind and held him in a
firm but gentle embrace. Even then Ryan didn’t stop screaming.

“I want Owen,” he’d cried. “I want my father. I want my
mom
.”
His brown eyes had flashed with a wolf’s rage. A rage he was supposedly still
too young to experience. “You’re not my mom. You’re going to leave too.”

Tears had pricked her eyes but she’d refused to show them to
Ryan, refused to let him see her fear, weakness and inadequacy.

“Go. Just go,” Dorothea had said quietly and helped her
husband lead the screaming Ryan into the house.

Nath had held her and let her cry on the way to the airport.

They reached the middle of the clearing, stopped, then, as
one, turned toward the freshening scent of male were. Cutler’s men fanned out
around them.

The first rogue to step out from the thick forest cover was
tall and pale. He was thin but Fina remembered how strong this Beta was. She
refused to shudder. She lifted her upper lip, exposed her canines and growled
quietly. Six more rogues stepped into the clearing. Two of them hauled a
struggling Helen along with them. Her eyes flashed above the duct tape across
her mouth. She kicked out defiantly, catching one of her captors in the side of
the knee. He staggered, raised his fist to her then thought better of it when
his Alpha snarled.

“Now, now, Jake,” Sim Brice cooed. It was eerie how quickly
his emotions shifted. “Musn’t get off on the wrong foot.” His pale eyes moved
dismissively over the weres surrounding Fina. Being outnumbered didn’t seem to
intimidate him. He walked up to Helen, touched her disheveled hair in a sickeningly
tender gesture then ripped the tape off her mouth.

She screamed. “Run, Fina. They’re werewolves.” Helen blinked
when no one reacted. Trembling, she seemed to sink in on herself as she looked
around the clearing, taking in the number of men, their size. Her eyes
communicated everything when understanding dawned.

“Here’s the deal.” Sim’s eyes moved over Cutler and Nath,
took in their proximity to Fina then moved over them again. “Return my bitch to
me. Save a human.” He held out his hands, balancing them like weights on a
scale. “Keep my bitch and we’ll change as many females as we need. Your choice.”
He sniffed the air and scowled at Fina. “Despite the fact you’re mine, you
mated with these dogs. Don’t bother to deny it. I can smell their stench from here.”
One of his brows arched up. “I staked my claim first.”

“Rape isn’t bonding,” Fina spit out.

“A technicality.” He shrugged. “But that pup in your belly
is mine.”

“That bastard seedling you forced on me is dead.”

“What did you do?” Sim demanded hotly. He stepped toward
her. His pack followed his lead, snarling and growling.

“What did
I
do?” Fina shouted. “Other than wash the
stench off after you’d finished with me and I walked out the door? Nothing. It
was weak and puny. An inferior seedling spawned from weak stock. It died on its
own without any help from me.”

Sim took another step toward her, sniffing intently like he
was trying to measure the truth of what she’d said. Cutler and Nath roared,
took two steps forward and stopped only when Sim backed away.

Fina continued. “And now you threaten to change a human to
win me back? What? You weren’t able to poach females from other packs? Is that
it? Did they see you for what you are?” She snarled. “What are you going to do,
change every one of my female classmates?”

“Not
every
one of them,” Sim taunted. “Just fourteen.
I figure two bitches per man will keep my pack happy and…entertained.” His pale
eyes hardened. “Now hand over the money,” he snarled. “You’re useless to me if
I can’t get pups off you.”

“Has everyone heard enough?” Cutler’s voice boomed across
the clearing. No fewer than twenty men stepped out from between the trees.

“Yes. We have.” The speaker was in his early fifties and
thickly muscled. His voice was deep, authoritative and for some crazy reason
reminded Fina of her father.

Another man, maybe a bit younger than the first but exuding
the same powerful, unmistakable control of a seasoned Alpha, spoke up. “These
rogues must be destroyed. Our females are in danger and turning that many
humans is unacceptable as far as pack law is concerned. It would draw too much
attention.”

At a subtle movement of Cutler’s hand, the men of his pack
rushed the rogues. The two holding Helen let go immediately, dropped and
charged. The tearing of clothing, howls and snarls echoed throughout the
clearing. Hard wolf bodies collided in a series of sickening thuds.

Fina ran around the frenetic clutch, grabbed Helen’s wrist
and hauled her over to the tree line. She spun, changed into wolf form and faced
the combatants, putting her body between them and her friend.

“Oh shit,” Helen gasped. She sounded like she was
hyperventilating. “Um, nice doggy.” Fina whacked her with her tail and snapped
at a rogue who got too close. “You couldn’t have told me about this earlier?”

Fina kept her focus on the fighting. Nath dived at Sim Brice’s
silver-tipped wolf, raked the side of his body with his claws then dug his
teeth into the rogue’s ruff. Sim fought back and shook his head violently,
hanging on to a mouthful of Nath’s fur. Owen was rolling around on the ground
with the rogue Beta, his forelegs wrapped around his opponent’s smaller body,
his back leg kicking out at his opponent’s belly, his jaws wide, biting down on
the Beta’s neck. The rogue Beta howled, screamed then slumped to the ground
with a gaping, wheezing hole where his throat used to be.

Owen stood over his victim, snarled then cocked his leg. He
ran back into the thick of the fighting, searching for another opponent.

The howls of fighting diminished as body after rogue body
fell to the ground. The men of Cutler’s pack closed in on the remaining enemies
then turned away with their tails at arrogant angles when they realized the
fighting was all but over. They scuffed their back paws against the ground as they
walked away, showering the bodies of the rogues with clumps of dirt. They and
the other weres who had gathered to witness formed a loose circle around the
final two combatants.

Fifteen seconds later Nath had Sim Brice pinned beneath his
powerful body, his jaws clamped on the back of the rogue’s neck.

Cutler, still in human form, walked toward them slowly. “My
brother, my Beta, asked for permission to take you,” he said conversationally.
He crouched down in front of them and tipped his head to one side so he could
see the rogue’s eyes. “I could have done it myself but that would have been
overkill. Don’t you think so, Nath?”