Deadly Pack (Deadly Trilogy Book 3) (21 page)

My entire body was alive with feeling.  My pulse was pounding in my ears and temples and wrists.  My skin was buzzing and tingling.  Warmth spread from tip-to-toe, adrenaline chasing through my system.

I took a step and more guns, small handguns, made an appearance.  I laughed once.  “Am I really that scary to you all?” I asked, and laughed again.  “You guys better hope you have perfect aim if you plan on using them.”

Smiley face guy chuckled and moved in close to me, so close that I could feel his warm breath puffing against my face.  I held his eyes, refusing to flinch.  His vibrant eyes were smiling, taunting, cruel, and confident.

He was poison hidden behind pretty eyes and a killer smile.

“I love that sound,” he said, and he looked almost … wistful.  His nostrils flared wide as he hauled a full breath into his lungs.  “And that smell.  I bet some of it’s coming from your mate.”  He licked his lips.  “And some from that friend of yours.”

He could have been right, but my nose was telling me that the blood wasn’t just from wolves, and well, I wasn’t even going to consider the possibility that some of that blood could be Aidan’s.  I just couldn’t.

I forced a snide smile.  “Nope.  Smells like cougar blood to me.  I’ve killed a few of those recently.  I know that smell.”

He slapped me in the face so quickly that I hadn’t even seen him move until he connected with my cheek and sent me staggering back.  My whole body quivered, and a growl ripped from my throat.  Bones started to break.  My ankle went first, then my elbow.  My face was shifting, my teeth, lengthening.  All around me I could hear my pack, fighting, snarling, and falling.  Okay, maybe I couldn’t hear them actually falling, but my brain was conjuring up a pretty vivid image of wolves lying motionless on the ground, blood pooling, cougars watching …

I hardly noticed the guns anymore.  Somewhere in the back of my mind I knew they were still trained on me, but I didn’t care.  I let my scent gather, and I was about to force my wolves to shift when Tommy said, “Jade, don’t.”

He was still leaning back against the truck, and I had to admit, it shocked me.  At some point he’d raised his hands, carefully holding his palms out in surrender.  But those hands had claws now, and coarse, dark hair layered the tops.  His face was like stone, set in a murderous expression, and his eyes blazed gold.

The man — Mr. Smiley Spokesperson — barked out a laugh.  “Yeah,” he agreed.  “Don’t.”  He didn’t seem to notice how close Tommy and I were to shifting or maybe he just didn’t think that any of us were a threat at all.  He actually turned his back on us and looked at my girls, who I noticed, were just barely holding onto their skin.

Underestimating us was a stupid, stupid mistake.

My breath caught.  A string of pops and snaps rang through the air.  Fabric tore.  Flares of heat shot through my limbs.

The guns opened fire.  Shots rattled
against the truck and the windshield exploded into cracks.  But by the time the first searing bullet grazed my skin, the guy who turned his back on me was already falling.

~ AIDAN ~

I could only stare.  The body lying not even ten feet from me — Dominic’s — didn’t look to be alive.  He wasn’t moving.  He didn’t look as if he were breathing.  The rusty-brown wolf had fallen to his side.  His muzzle was open slightly, his eyes were shut, and his legs and paws looked loose and relaxed.  He almost looked as if he were sleeping, and if it weren’t for the chunk of flesh and fur missing from in between his shoulders and the blood soaking into the ground around him, I might have thought he was.

Except he wasn’t moving at all.  Not even a quiver of his chest from a shallow breath.

I squeezed my eyes shut.  This couldn’t be happening.  He couldn’t be dead.  He just couldn’t be.  But when I opened my eyes, Dominic was still on the ground and he still wasn’t moving.

I hadn’t felt scared during the attack.  Not really.  Not until now.  I’d been focused, determined.  But now ... now I was terrified.  My mouth was dry, shriveled up, and so was my throat.  Dominic was my friend, the best friend I had in Dog Mountain, and he was ... I let out a painful whimper.

Somewhere in the back of my mind I was aware that gunshots were still ringing out, but I couldn’t pull my eyes away from him.

Seeing him so still hurt worse than anything I’d ever felt before.  I should have saved him.  I was his alpha, his friend.  I should have gotten to him.  I should have
...

Jade
.

My heart started to pound and my chest constricted with dread.  She was still in there with her team.  I needed to get to them.  Get them away from the bullets.  I needed to get them out of there.

I tore my eyes from my best friend, my beta, and surveyed my surroundings with a quick, swiping scan.  I was surrounded by death.  Cougars and wolves.  Bodies and blood.  My wolves were everywhere.  Some lying on the ground, injured, some still fighting.

I tried to stand up,
but the pain in my back legs seized me up tight.  They were broken.  I could feel the bones grinding as I tried to get to my feet again, and when I glanced down and saw how not straight they were, I winced.  They were a mess, bones snapped and flesh torn up.

I growled.  I was useless to Jade, to my pack, like this.  I needed to shift and let my broken bones reset and mend.

I wasn’t sure what had happened.  One second I had one of those bastards trying to gnaw off my legs, and the next there’d been a series of cracks that sounded a heck of a lot like gunfire and the cougar had let me go.

It felt as if it took hours for my body to change forms, but I was sure it was just a few seconds.  My inner-wolf fought against the shift, struggling to stay in control.  All he wanted was to fight, kill, and claim back what was ours.

Each broken bone in my legs burned as it snapped again and reset itself, and by the time I finished, I was covered in a thin sheen of sweat and my breath was strained and labored.

Another round of sharp, loud cracks came from the direction of the hunting camp.  Panic weld up inside me.  I pushed up to my feet and a twinge of pain shot through me as I put my weight on my legs, but it wasn’t unbearable.  My legs were moving before my brain could catch up, and I was running toward the edge of the forest.

I saw her — my mate — through the trees.  She was in wolf form, just lying there on the ground.  A man — it was the man who’d been at her window — was standing over her.  The shoulder of his T-shirt was drenched in blood, I noticed, as he bent down beside her.  He reached out to touch her midnight black coat and I felt the wildest, strongest impulse to rip him apart from limb to limb.  I could visualize it, and it was alarming and so very satisfying.

And then Jade moved.  Her skin started to crawl and she began to shake.  She was shifting, I realized, and I felt myself run faster.

I reached the edge of the tree line just as a set of arms wrapped around my chest, hauling me back.  “Aidan, stop!” Mark said.

“Let go of me,” I commanded, my tone firm, direct, and full of fury.  My imprint was blazing and my scent, thick in the air.  “Let go!”

“They won’t hurt her,” he growled.  His eyes were red and blurred with exhaustion.  “They need her.  Stop and think, Aidan!”

Mark started to pant and his arms were weakening.  I twisted, and yanked my body free of his grasp and as I did, Craig darted in front of me and shoved me back a step.  “You can’t help her, or any of us, if you’re dead.”  He was straining, too.  Fighting to stay strong and on his feet under the force of my alpha scent.  “Look around!” he shouted, panicked, and flailing his arm to point behind me.  “They need you more than she does right now!”

When I only growled, Craig shoved me again.  He puffed out his chest, squaring off with me, and pointed behind me again.  I wasn’t sure what he wanted me to see.  I wasn’t sure if I even cared.  In the back of my mind I knew that if the enforcers thought Jade was in real danger, they wouldn’t be stopping me.  They’d be killing anything that stood in their way to get to my girl.  She was one of theirs just as much as she was mine.

My nostrils flared, and every muscle in my body was strung tight as I did a slow circle, looking to where he’d pointed.

There was movement all around me.  Whimpering.  Heavy breathing.  Disturbed leaves crunched and crumbled. 
My wolves. 
They were stirring, limping to their feet, healing.

And the cougars that had been hiding in the trees were dead.  All of them.

Someone coughed, a hacking, painful cough, and the sound made my breath hitch.  My gaze snapped to Dominic.  Beck was standing by him now, his bloodstained muzzle nudging at Dominic’s shoulder.

A strangled sound worked up through my chest and my eyes started to burn.  Dominic wasn’t dead.  I blinked and then blinked again.  He’d managed to shift and pull himself into a sitting position, resting his head in his hands.  He was breathing hard, sweating, shaking, coughing.  But he wasn’t dead.

Silence fell.  Complete silence.  The gunshots stopped.  The screams silenced.  I swallowed hard and looked back to where Jade was lying, to see the man drape a blanket over her.  And the other females, they were being lifted and carried to the cabin.  They weren’t being hurt.  The men looked as though they were being careful, gentle even, now that my females were unconscious.

And everything snapped into hot, sharp, clarity.

Uniting the shifters.
  Jeff didn’t want us dead.  He wanted us to join him.  But he wouldn’t be that stupid, right?  Keeping the girls, even if they were wounded was dangerous.  They’d heal and he had to know that we’d come for them.

Craig’s hand fell on my shoulder and tightened.  “We’ve got to move.”

“What?” I asked, and turned my head to look at him.  I felt rage, so hot, so pure, it felt as if I were burning from the inside out, and it felt terrifyingly good.  “We’re not going anywhere without our females.”

He saw my rage.  His hand skittered away from my shoulder and his eyes dropped to the ground.  “They can’t fight,” he said.  “Most of them are struggling to walk.  We need to fall back.”

“I’m not leaving her.”  My voice was growled and my eyes flared.  “We’re not leaving any of them, the girls or the kids.”

Craig didn’t say anything, but he hadn’t moved out of my way, either.  I felt my face go red and the muscles in my clenched jaw fluttered.  My scent ramped up, my imprint blazed.

“Aidan,” Mark said in a soft, tentative voice from behind me.  “Look at them.  They’ve got to heal.  We can’t help the kids if we’re dead and you need to trust Jade to do her job.  She’ll keep those girls safe.”

I didn’t turn.  I couldn’t.  I knew what I’d see.  I knew he was right.  But leaving Jade ... My inner-wolf was going crazy, clawing at my chest and pressing against my skin at the thought.

Another hand gripped my shoulder and tugged me around.  “Look,” Mark said.  “Dammit, Aidan, look!”

And I did.  I looked at my pack, bleeding and cut up.  Some were limping, some could barely stand.  Dominic was hunched over, his back torn up and bleeding.  My pack was a mess, and I knew damn well if I forced them to attack now, we’d lose.  We’d lose the war and we’d put the girls in even more danger.

My pack needed me, but I couldn’t just walk away.  Not from her.  Not from any of them.

I swallowed hard and jogged over to Dominic, dropping to my knees beside him.  “You good?” I asked, which was probably a stupid question seeing as I’d been pretty certain that he was dead only a few minutes ago.

“Yeah,” he said.  “I’m good.”  He was still breathing roughly, but he looked better — steadier.  More color in his cheeks.  More of the typical coolness in his gaze.  He looked more like Dominic, and well, less dead.

“Good.”
I reached out and clasped his shoulder.  “I need you to do something for me.”

Dominic nodded.  It didn’t look like an agreement, but
more that he knew that now wasn’t the time to disagree.

“Take them back to that hunting camp we passed about five miles out.  Get them shifting.  Get them healed as fast as you can.”

Dominic looked sick and he wouldn’t look at me.  “Don’t,” he said faintly and pulled back from me.  “Don’t ask me to leave her.”

“I’m not asking, Dom,” I said.  “Go.”

****

There was a dull thump of flesh hitting the ground, and then another.

Beck and Mark were both breathing hard beside me, and low growls rumbled in their chest.  I wasn’t one hundred percent sure if those growls were a warning for me to stay hidden or if they were caused by what was happening just past the tree line from where we were crouched, watching in disbelief.

The cougars hadn’t been taking the girls to the cabin.  They’d been taking them to the cages.

My lips were curled back in a silent snarl and I pawed at the ground restlessly, watching as one by one, my females landed into the cages with a fleshy thump.

And still, the enforcers wouldn’t let me attack.

Craig’s teeth were pressing against my leg, holding onto the spot where the break had only just healed.  The three of them had held back to help me they said, but I knew the truth.  They were here to make sure I didn’t do anything stupid, and Craig’s sharp teeth were a constant reminder of that.