Rebel Wolf (Shifter Falls Book 1) (10 page)

H
er wrist was throbbing
in pain. Anna rolled to her knees. Snow had soaked through her jeans, and her fingertips were stinging. Her chin hurt, and she realized she had smacked it against the ground when the man had knocked her over. She hadn’t felt it at the time.

Big, strong hands took hold of her, and Ian was there. “Fuck,” he said, his low growl distressed. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.” Anna felt a sob in her throat, and she turned and threw her arms around his neck, gripping him tight, burying her face in his skin.

Ian hauled her to him and held her tight, his arms around her like bands of steel. He was warm as a furnace, his big body giving off heat. He was kneeling, and without thinking she wrapped her legs around his waist, trying to get closer. He sat back on his heels so she was fully in his lap, his strong thighs under her, and she barely had the chance to register that he was naked before he tangled his hands in her hair and pulled back, cupping her face and looking into her eyes.

“Are you hurt?” he asked, his green eyes dark with panicked concern. When she stared at him and didn’t answer, he said, “Jesus, Anna, did he fucking hurt you?”

“No,” she managed. “My wrist, but it’s not broken.” When he brushed his thumb over her scratched chin, she said, “He pushed me down.” Her throat closed up, a stupid panic reaction, but she fought it back. The man had grabbed her, had forced her to her knees. Put his hands on her. She took a breath, trying to erase the feel of the man’s hands with the feel of Ian, curled around her. “Who was he?”

Ian was still stroking his thumbs along her cheekbones, stroking her. His gaze was almost silver, half wolf, as intense as she’d ever seen it. “That was Crazy Ronnie Marcus,” he said. “I can smell his hands on you. He’s a dead man.” Then he leaned in and took her mouth with his.

It was hot, fiery. He made no apologies and he took no prisoners. He opened her mouth and he came inside, his big hands tangled in her hair and holding her head. His beard scratched her skin but his lips were soft, and the mix of sensations was intoxicating, sent her senses flying. She opened to him and kissed him back and let him do anything he wanted as her blood pounded and she breathed him in. He growled and kissed her deep, bruising her, and she whimpered, wanting more. Her fear transformed itself into pure, aching need, and the experience of those harsh, angry hands on her disappeared. There was only Ian, the smell of him, the taste of him.

He broke the kiss and pulled back, still holding her, breathing hard. Anna was holding his shoulders, her fingers digging into his bare skin, his muscles hard underneath. His eyes cleared, and as the cold air slid down her throat she remembered that he was naked. She was wrapped around a big, muscled, very naked man. He was kneeling in the snow, in his bare skin, and he didn’t even feel it. And her first thought was,
He’s not human. He’s really not.

As if he read her mind, Ian pulled back farther and slid her off his lap, gently setting her down. He stood and walked away—and once again she was too flustered to take a close look at anything, it happened so fast. By the time she got her feet under her and stood, turning to look at him, he was pulling on his jeans. Despite the situation, she felt a pang of disappointment. She didn’t even know if that kiss had gotten him hard.

“I’m sorry,” he said to her as he dressed. “I shouldn’t have done that.”

Anna touched a finger to her lip, which was still throbbing from the kiss. “It’s okay.”

“It isn’t.” He picked her knife up from where it lay in the snow and handed it back to her. His gaze was dark, tangled, and she knew he was lashing himself. “You don’t belong with me. I have no right to touch you. Especially since all of this is my fucking fault.”

“It isn’t,” she protested. “You’re not responsible for what that psycho does.”

“I’m responsible for you,” he said. “I’ve been saying it from the beginning—your safety is my job. And I left you alone.”

“It was twenty minutes.”

“Well, obviously that was too long, wasn’t it?” His voice snarled with anger, and though she knew it wasn’t directed at her, she fought not to flinch. Still, he saw it. He was fully dressed now, and he looked at her. “You’re shivering,” he said. “You’re cold. Of course you are. What a fucking idiot I am. I’m taking you back to the apartment.”

She wasn’t going to argue with that; she wanted to get out of here. He took her elbow and walked with her, strong and almost rough, taking her down the slope back toward the chain-link fence and town. She stumbled after him. She
was
cold; her feet were numb, her cheeks were smarting with cold, and she could no longer feel her fingers. Her wrist throbbed.

“What did he say to you?” Ian said as they walked.

Anna blinked and tried to remember the words through her fog of fear. “He—he said he was going to be alpha.”

That made him take in a breath. She remembered Heath saying that only the alpha’s blood can be the next alpha, that John Marcus and his son couldn’t lead the pack. They must be planning a coup, something that would put them in power against all shifter rules.

“What else did he say?” Ian asked as they walked.

Anna didn’t want to think about it. “Nothing else important.”

“Anna.”

“Just things.” They were at the chain-link fence now, and Ian stopped, facing her.

“What things?” he growled.

When I’m alpha, the first thing I’m going to do is take Ian Donovan’s bitch and make her mine
. She looked at the rage in his eyes and couldn’t repeat the words. “Rude things.”

That nearly made him snarl, his wolf near the surface. “
What. Rude. Things
.”

“I’m not telling you,” she said. “It will only make you angry.”

“Angry?” he said. “Jesus, Anna, I’m so goddamned angry I can barely think.”

“I know!” she cried. “You’re upsetting me.”

He stopped, as stunned as if she’d slapped him.

Anna rubbed her hands together. God, she was so cold. She felt like crying. “That was
terrifying,
” she said, her voice hoarse. “And now you’re being terrifying. And I can’t—” She took a breath. “I can’t handle all of this at once right now. I can’t take it if you’re scaring me, Ian. You’re the only person I have in this place. Without you, I’m alone. I need you.”

He scrubbed a hand over his face. His body was still tense, but when he spoke his voice was softer. “I’ll boost you over the fence,” he said.

She grabbed the fence, favoring her tender wrist, and started to climb. She gasped when Ian’s big hand gripped her rear end through her jeans and he hoisted her over the top as smoothly as if he was putting a basketball in a hoop. He climbed after her—a big stride up the fence, a swing of his long leg, and he jumped down.
Damn these werewolves,
she thought.

They started down the street. Anna put her cold hands in her pockets and realized she still had his watch and the wolf-claw necklace. She held them out to him. “I forgot. These are yours.”

He glanced at them, and to her surprise he stepped up to her, cupped her face in both his hands, and tilted it up to his. She looked at his dark-lashed green eyes and the shadow of stubble on his high cheekbones, his soft mouth, and for a second she wondered if he was going to kiss her again.

Instead he said frankly, “I’m very pissed off right now. Mostly at myself. But it isn’t fair to show my anger to you, to make you afraid.” He took a breath. “What’s important is that I owe you the deepest kind of apology. I am very, very sorry.”

Anna’s head spun. She had never in her life known a man so direct, a man who didn’t manipulate or play games. A man who faced his own thoughts and feelings so directly and simply spoke them even when they weren’t flattering. Humans wasted so much energy, she realized, dancing around things, making others guess. Ian always gave her the truth, even when it was to admit his own failure. She didn’t know what to make of it, but it felt like a gift.

“I forgive you,” she said.

Something flinched across his expression, and then his eyes narrowed. She knew what he was doing; he was still lashing himself. She raised a hand between them, placing it on his chest, which felt warm and strong through his wool coat. “Forgive yourself,” she said, “or you’re going to make a mess of it.”

“I can do that,” he said, taking his watch and necklace from her and putting them on, “but this doesn’t stand. It isn’t just because I want to avenge you. This is our way, Anna. Not one of us will let this go.”

He meant his brothers, she realized.
Not one of us will let this go.
The insult to her, the threat to the pack—it seemed that if anything could unify the stubborn, pig-headed Donovan brothers and make them stop fighting, even temporarily, it was this.

She swallowed. “Just don’t get hurt,” she said.

Ian gave her a smile that had no humor in it. “I don’t intend to get hurt,” he said. “Let’s go.”

“
W
ell
,” Brody said. “She made him bleed, anyway.”

Ian was standing with Brody and Devon at the top of the rise, in the place where Anna had been attacked. The sun was lowering in the sky—the end of a shortened winter day—and their shadows were long on the ground. Using partly their sight, and partly their wolf’s sense of smell, the three of them followed Ronnie Marcus’s human tracks, and then his wolf tracks, through the snow.

Ian ran a hand through his hair. After a round of negotiating, he had left Anna in Heath’s bar, the Black Wolf, with Heath watching over her while he tracked Ronnie Marcus. He could have left her in the apartment, but Nolan wasn’t home and he didn’t want to leave her alone. Leaving her alone hadn’t worked so well last time, and he wasn’t chancing it again.

Still, he couldn’t sit still while his brothers tracked the man who had attacked Anna. So he’d left her with Heath, who had to supervise the repairs to the bar anyway. And now he was restless, moody, still pissed at himself, and tense because Anna wasn’t near.

He hoped Heath wouldn’t make a move on her. He didn’t
think
Heath would make a move, but Heath was Heath, and Ian also hadn’t thought that Ronnie Marcus would get it into his head that he was going to be alpha and attack Anna out of the blue. He’d paid the price for that.

Not only had he left her vulnerable to attack, he’d screwed it up afterwards. He’d kissed her—and not a light, comforting kiss, either. He’d kissed her hard, and he’d kissed her naked, like a beast. And then he’d scared her. What the hell did he know about how to act around a woman? How to treat her when she’d just been attacked and was upset? Nothing, that was what. He had no experience with shit like this, and his instincts were all wrong. One second he’d been panicked that she was hurt, scared witless, and the minute he’d touched her he’d wanted to claim her. Erase Ronnie’s sickening scent with his own. Be inside her. Make her
his.

Yeah, he wasn’t exactly the sensitive type.

“This way,” Devon said. Marcus had run through the brush to a ravine, then along the top of it. The three of them followed, struggling through the thick vegetation. This would be easier terrain to travel as a wolf, but none of them wanted to change. Ian’s wolf was a loner. He had never changed alongside his half-brothers; in fact, he’d never spent nearly as much time with them as he had today. He didn’t trust them, and he sensed they didn’t trust him. Changing alongside someone, running with them, was an act of trust they didn’t feel. So all three of them stubbornly trudged along in human form, refusing to do it the easy way.

Besides, Ian really didn’t want to see either of his brothers naked.

“It’s interesting that he didn’t change while he was fighting you,” Brody said as they walked. “It would have been easier than staying in human form and grabbing for the knife.”

“His plan was to run, not fight,” Devon said. He was staring at the ground, following the tracks, his big body scraping through the thick branches. “He attacked while you were gone. He’s a coward.”

Ian agreed with that. “I was only doing a short run, but Ronnie didn’t know that. He probably thought I was going to be gone for an hour or more.” The thought awoke his wolf’s rage again. Ronnie had planned it so he would have plenty of time to do what he wanted with Anna.

“What do you think he wanted?” Devon asked, and then he glanced at Ian. “I mean, aside from the shit we can already guess.”

“It was a message,” Brody said. He followed Devon’s tracks, but took the time to gaze through the trees, around and behind them, always scanning for possible trouble, his dark eyes seeing everything from beneath the brim of his baseball cap. “Or it was supposed to be, anyway. I think Ronnie was sent by his father to scare us. To show us we can be gotten to. To show us who’s boss, so we’ll roll over and let him lead.”

“By using Anna as an innocent victim,” Ian growled.

Brody glanced at him, then said what they were all thinking. “It’s what Charlie would have done.”

They were quiet again. Even Devon couldn’t argue.

“What are we going to do about it?” Brody said as the ground sloped downward. All three of them leaned back, stepping carefully to keep their balance.

“We have to avenge this,” Ian said. “Not just because I want to, though I do. But because if we don’t, then John and Ronnie get their way. If we show weakness, others are going to follow the Marcus boys. Even though it’s against the rules. Strength always wins—Charlie proved that. They could lead the pack if we back down. And then it’s Charlie all over again.”

“I agree,” Devon said. “Aside from being cruel—and we
are
going to avenge it—it’s actually a good strategic move. If they’re planning a coup, and Ronnie says they are, then it makes sense to target Ian’s mate. If he succeeds, if he takes her and Ian backs down, it proves the Donovans are weak.”

“She’s not my mate,” Ian said.

“You sure about that?” Brody asked. “It could happen, you know.”

“I don’t think it will.”

“You two seemed awfully close.”

Ian ground the words out. “She sees me as a research subject.”

Brody winced. “Ouch.”

“Does she understand how it works?” Devon asked. “Did you explain the system?”

“She lives in the human world,” Ian said. “She’s going back to it. She doesn’t care about the system.”

“If she’s studying shifters, she’s going to learn about our mating habits,” Brody commented. Ian glared at him, and he shrugged. “Sorry, but it’s true.”

“Let’s get back to the problem here,” Ian said. “If we’re going to put down this coup the Marcuses are planning, if we’re going to show our strength, then we need an alpha. One we’re unified behind.”

Devon glanced at Ian and said, “True. Maybe we should fight for it.”

“What’s your problem with me?” Ian said to him, his anger rising to the surface. “Is it because I’m better-looking than you?”

“Stop it, you two,” Brody growled. “Ian is right. We can’t defeat the Marcuses if we’re busy fighting each other. We need to come up with something. And we need to do it without being at each other’s throats.”

They had reached the bottom of the ravine. They all stood and looked where the trail led, and Devon cursed.

Ronnie Marcus had done what anyone wanting to lose his hunters would do: he had gone into the stream at the bottom of the ravine, a knee-deep runnel of cold, icy water that trickled over a series of rocks. The trail was a dead end.

Devon splashed into the stream and across it, his wolf’s insensitivity to cold shielding him from what would probably give a human frostbite. On the other side he roamed up and down the bank, searching. He came out of the bushes again and looked at Ian and Brody from across the water, shaking his head.

Ian knew that this stream originated in the mountains and ran for miles, sometimes deep and sometimes shallow, full of melted snow running off from the far-off peaks. Ronnie could have followed the stream in any direction for the past hour, gotten out anywhere.

“All right,” Brody said when Devon had come back across the stream, his jeans soaked to the thighs. “We’ve gone as far as we can, and the sun is setting. We’ll need to be careful. I just hope that no one else dies tonight.”