Dark Wolf Running (Bloodrunners) (7 page)

“How did he get the jump on you?” he asked as she quickly scooted over, needing to put more distance between them.

“I didn’t know he was behind me.”

Damn it.
The instant the words left her mouth, Elise realized her mistake, her heart lurching into her throat. Turning her head away from him, she tried to hide behind her hair, which had long since fallen from its twist, but he lifted his hand, pushing it behind her ear. Then he caught her chin, bringing her face back around. “They had their scents masked, but why couldn’t you hear him? Or sense him?”

It took considerable effort, but she forced a smirk onto her face to hide her shame as she jerked her chin free, then met his dark gaze with her own. “That’s none of your damn business, Runner.”

He opened his mouth, no doubt ready to argue that point, when Jeremy’s deep voice called out from the living room. “Hey, Pall, where are you guys? We let ourselves in through the kitchen door. Me and Cian need to talk to you.”

The corner of his mouth twitched with a wry, fleeting grin. They both knew that Jeremy and Cian, two of the most highly trained hunters the pack had ever known, could use their acute sense of smell to pinpoint their exact location in the house. Which meant they weren’t so much asking
where
they were, as they were inquiring as to whether or not they were
decent
enough for company. Idiots! She never should have danced with Wyatt at the reception. Now these jackasses were never going to let them live it down.

“We’re back here!” Wyatt shouted, and Elise quickly wrapped the flannel shirt even tighter around her body. In the next moment, a rain-soaked Jeremy and Cian came into her bedroom, followed closely by Carla and Mason, who were equally waterlogged. She could only be thankful that Eric hadn’t come prowling in with them because she was too on edge to deal with her brother at the moment. She hoped to God he’d stayed at the Alley, enjoying his wedding night. These four were bad enough!

Whipping her head to the side, she scowled at the gorgeous jerk sitting beside her on the bed. “Did you have to call
everyone?
” she seethed, hoping he could tell just how furious she was with him.

He gave an innocent shake of his head. “Hey, I didn’t make the call. I asked that Browning guy to do it when I was rushing inside.”

“Your neighbor called Mason, but we were already on our way up to check out something else,” Jeremy offered as an explanation, before shooting a frowning glance at the puddle of water he was leaving on her floor.

Before she could fire off another sharp-edged remark, Cian crossed his arms over his chest, propped his broad shoulders against the wall and cut his piercing gray gaze from her to Wyatt. “So what happened?” the Irishman asked them, lifting his brows. “The neighbor was waiting out front when we got here, but he didn’t know anything. Just said that he heard screams and fighting. We searched the woods back there but couldn’t pick anything up to follow. And the rain is coming down hard now. It hasn’t left anything on the ground to track.”

Keeping it short and succinct, Wyatt gave them the rundown. “I think whoever the scouts spotted on our land tonight paid Elise a visit. I was searching the woods behind the house when I heard her scream. There were two Lycans inside her house, wearing masks that covered everything but their lips and their eyes, which were brown in their human forms. I fought them, and they took off when they heard the rest of you show up.”

She could tell by the look on the Runners’ faces that they knew he’d left out a portion of the story. And though she understood why he would have to fill them in later about what had happened in her room—that she’d very nearly been the victim of another sexual assault—Elise was thankful that he didn’t make her sit there and listen to a recounting of the horrific event.

Looking at the others, Wyatt asked, “Can you guys give us a second?”

“Sure,” Mason murmured, clapping his hand on Jeremy’s damp shoulder as he steered his partner toward the door, motioning for the others to go before them. Without looking back, the handsome, rugged Runner said, “We’ll take another look outside and see what we can find. Maybe we’ll get lucky and pick up a scent.”

“Yeah, about that,” Wyatt grunted, sounding kind of shocked and embarrassed. “I forgot to mention that they had their scents masked.”

A few stifled curses could be heard out in the hallway, as well as a low laugh that sounded as if it was coming from Cian, who probably thought that important lapse had something to do with
her.
Mason was at the back of the group, and he stopped and turned in the doorway with a scowl that would have scared the hell out of most people. “No scent at all—same as the ones who attacked us in the Alley?”

Wyatt nodded. “Yeah. Just like those assholes. They were also stronger than they should have been.”

“Shit,” Mason growled, scrubbing a hand down his face. “Did they say anything that might reveal their identity? Or what they were doing here?”

They both shook their heads, but Elise wasn’t sure Mason believed her. “We’ll take that look outside,” he told them, “but I want you
both
at my cabin for a meeting in the morning.”

She frowned as the Runner left the room. She didn’t want to go to the Alley tomorrow morning. After tonight, all she wanted was to...to...
Hell,
she didn’t know what she wanted.

“How long will it take you to pack?” Wyatt asked, his deep voice pulling her from her troubled thoughts as he moved to his feet.

She tilted her head back, staring up at him in confusion. “Pack what?”

“A bag. You can’t stay here by yourself. You’re coming home with me.”

Her jaw dropped as she blinked. “Is that some kind of sick joke?”

“Naw,” Carla drawled, popping her head back into the room from the hallway. She’d obviously decided to ignore Wyatt’s request for privacy. “I know what Pall’s joke face looks like, and that isn’t it. He’s dead serious.”

Gritting her teeth, she said, “I’m not going anywhere with you, Pallaton.”

He pushed his hands into his front pockets, his eyes hooded as he watched her stand up, grab a couple of clean towels from the basket of folded laundry that was sitting on her dresser and start laying them out over the puddles that’d been left on her floor. “Don’t let pride make you stupid, El. You know this is the smartest thing you can do.”

“Wow. Do you have any idea how arrogant you sound right now?” She clenched her teeth as she tossed a towel to Carla, then snapped the last one open, laying it over the water that had dripped off of Cian. “What is it with you guys always bundling up us little women and dragging us off to the Alley? Where in God’s name did you all get the idea that we can’t survive without you around to protect us with your big bad selves?”

He didn’t say anything in his defense when she turned back to him with a blistering glare. But he didn’t need to. He simply shifted his gaze to the bruise she could feel forming on her cheek, then lower, to where she was clutching the edges of his shirt over her chest, reminding her of just what he’d saved her from, and she trembled with fury as he slowly lifted that knowing gaze back to hers. “You son of a bitch,” she whispered, and his expression tightened, the skin around his eyes and mouth revealing his tension and rage, though he seemed determined not to express them in front of her. For some reason, that just made her even angrier.

“We can argue as long as you want, but it isn’t going to change the outcome. Either you come back with me, or I’m planting my ass here with you. And I do mean
with
you, El. I won’t be shoved out on that short-ass sofa in your living room. There’s not much left of it, anyway.”

“You’ve lost your freaking mind.”

“Probably,” he muttered, scrubbing the palm of his hand against the hard angle of his jaw. “But it doesn’t change the fact that you need a keeper.”

“I can stay with my brother!”

He arched one perfect midnight brow. “You do realize this is his wedding night, don’t you?”

She flushed, wracking her brain for an alternative. “With Jillian and Jeremy, then.”

“Won’t work. They’ve already started turning their spare room into a nursery.”

She blinked, stunned. “She’s pregnant?”

He shook his head. “Not yet. But they’re hoping she will be soon and wanted to get a head start on things.”

“Oh. I...I didn’t know.”

As if he knew exactly what she was thinking, he said, “They only just decided this week to start on the nursery, or I’m sure she would have told you.”

She chewed on the corner of her lip. “I can always sleep on their sofa.”

Zoing!
His right brow arched again, as if it was spring-loaded, those dark eyes starting to glitter with a spark of humor, as if he were beginning to find something funny in her belligerent desperation. “When I have a perfectly good spare bedroom? I don’t think so.”

She was so frustrated she wanted to scream. “Who cares what you think, you arrogant ass? I do not take orders from you! Why can’t you just leave me the hell alone and stop trying to control me?”

Hmm. Maybe yelling at him again wasn’t the best idea she’d ever had. He suddenly wasn’t looking as if he still found this funny, the muscle pulsing in his jaw telling her he was done with this particular argument. “I’m not interested in controlling you. I’m just trying to keep you the fuck alive. So pack your goddamn bag and start acting like an adult instead of a stubborn child. Carla and I will drive you down and she can help you get settled.”

“Carla? Are you two bunking up together now?”

Carla snorted from her position in the doorway, making Elise flinch, since she’d somehow forgotten the female Runner was standing there. “You think I’m gonna live with that jackass?” The blonde laughed under her breath, blowing her bangs out of her eyes. “I’m not that crazy!”

Elise looked to Wyatt for an explanation. With a shrug, he said, “I just thought it might make you more comfortable to know that she’ll be around a lot. Her cabin is right next door to mine.”

“But we are
not
an item,” Carla added, shuddering. “I love the guy, but I don’t want you putting any sick images in my head. I’ll be scarred for life.”

It was dizzying, how she could go from being so pissed off one moment to wanting to bang her head against a freaking wall in the next. Glancing from one Runner to the other with a look of pure, disgruntled confusion, she said, “You two are so weird.”

“Yeah, we get that a lot.” Carla laughed.

At the same time, Wyatt growled, “Can we get a damn move on?”

When Elise simply remained where she was standing, he exhaled a short, exasperated breath. “Stop wasting time, El. If you don’t come with me, then I’m moving in here. Which is it gonna be?”

“Fine,” she snapped, making it sound like another sharp four-letter
F
word. “I’ll pack a bag,
Dad
.”

He ran his tongue over the front of his teeth, but didn’t call her out on her snotty attitude. Instead, he simply said, “Good. And make sure you pack enough.”

“Enough for what?” she asked, already walking toward her closet.

“A few weeks, at least.”

Oh, hell no. “A few weeks?” she growled, spinning toward him with another furious scowl. “Are you insane?”

“Getting there,” he muttered, heading for the door, the motion making all those mouthwatering muscles do interesting things under his tight, burnished skin. Even his freaking back was gorgeous, which just struck her as incredibly unfair. “If you want to argue about it, save it for the Alley,” he said over his shoulder. “Right now we need to get the hell out of here.”

“Why?” she whispered, his gritty words making the fear she’d been fighting down start to rise right back up. She licked her lips, struggling to stay calm, but it felt like a losing battle. “You don’t think they’re coming back, do you?”

“I don’t know what to think, Elise. But it’s better to be safe than sorry. And you’ll be a hell of a lot safer there than you are here.”

With her pulse pounding in her ears, Elise watched him leave the room, thinking he was probably right about her physical well-being.

She just wasn’t too sure about the rest of her.

Chapter 4

A
fter getting a still-irritated, snippy Elise settled in his spare bedroom, Wyatt grabbed a T-shirt and then walked back to the cabin’s living room, where Carla waited for him in one of the leather chairs that sat across from his sofa. Too on edge to sit down, he made his way over to the empty fireplace, crossing his arms over his chest as he braced his back against the mantel.

“What?” he grunted, since his partner was staring at him with a bemused expression on her face.

“Nothing,” she murmured.

Choking back a groan, he said, “I’m tired and in a shitty mood, Reyes. So, please, just spit it out.”

She coughed to clear her throat, then shook her head. “I don’t know. It’s just that you’re not usually this tense, Pall. You look ready to crack.”

He shrugged, not knowing what to say.

“So what’s going on with you two?” she asked, sounding genuinely concerned.

“Don’t know.” He rubbed his jaw as he glanced at the bottle of whiskey that sat on the sideboard against the far wall. Rolling his shoulder in a restless gesture, he kept his voice low as he said, “I want her. But I’m worried about her, too. So I’ll put the other on the back burner for the time being and help her deal with whatever’s going on.”

“You want her how?” Carla questioned.

He arched a brow. “How do you think?” His tone was dry.

Not one to mince words, his partner asked, “You’re just looking for sex?”

Wyatt scowled. “Do we really need to have this conversation? Because not to sound juvenile or anything, but it’s kinda freaking me out, seeing as how you’re one of the closest things to family I still have. And I sure as hell wouldn’t talk about my sex life with my sister, if I had one.”

“Yeah, I get that. And I’m sorry about the ick factor. You know I love you—but I like Elise, too.” A notch started to form between her pale brows, just visible beneath the edge of her bangs. “I don’t want to see her get hurt if you’re only looking to get laid.”