For a long time, hours it feels like, I sit with my back pressed against the wall, my eyes closed, planning how I’m going to get myself out of this mess in one piece.
All the while, I feel the heavy weight of Derek’s stare on my face. I’m so conscious of it that, even though I’m trembling from the icy chill of the hard ground beneath me, and my shoulders ache, my focus remains on the unmoving alpha sitting opposite me.
Once he’s gotten Jackson out of the way, I’m sure he’s got plans for me. Plans that probably involve him trading me or selling me to a pack looking for an omega. But once they realize I have no idea what I’m doing, I’m dead.
The alternative is much worse. Derek could keep me, in which case, I doubt I’d survive a week before I said something or did something that made him kill me. And if not him, Leon would probably wait until I’m sleeping one night and rip out my throat. Since, you know, he seems to have a serious problem with me existing.
So, on the whole, my future isn’t looking all that bright. It’s looking downright dismal if I’m being honest.
At the sound of rustling in the forest, my eyes snap open, and I jerk my head to the entrance, probing the darkness to discover if it’s Jackson. But as the movement increases with the approach of a shifter, my nose tells me long before I see a wolf emerge that the situation has gotten worse.
It isn’t Jackson. It’s someone I hoped wouldn’t get caught up in this.
I watch as Riley approaches the cave before he shifts into the less thin and dirty blond-haired and brown-eyed boy I was hoping to save.
He avoids meeting my gaze as he steps into the cave and drops beside me, drawing Derek’s gaze away from me.
“The alpha?” Derek asks.
Although I feel Riley’s attention dart to me for a second, I don’t turn to face him. “He was at the big house.”
Derek’s expression twists into a dark glare. “And what,” he bites out, “is he doing there?”
Is Riley part of this? Has he been a part of this from the beginning?
“Shouting at a woman,” Riley says in a small voice.
When Derek turns to me with a frown, I gulp. “What woman?” he snaps.
“Uh-”
Riley doesn’t give me a chance to speak before he’s talking over me. “She was with the others before. The ones who left.”
Derek shifts his gaze back to Riley, and I struggle to hide my expression while trying to figure out what Riley is talking about because none of what he’s saying is making any sense to me.
“What did she want? Are there others?”
Derek’s question makes it clear what Riley was doing at the house. He was a spy. Derek had Riley watching the house and likely reporting back to him all this time.
Only, I know I wasn’t wrong about Riley needing help. I know I wasn’t wrong about his pain, so the thought that all this time he was betraying me and Jackson doesn’t feel right, despite all the evidence suggesting I’m wrong.
I wait for Riley to tell Derek that Lara came alone since he was there for her arrival. Except, the two-letter word isn’t what comes out of his mouth.
“Eight of them. And the brother.”
Derek rises and stalks toward me, his wolf in his eyes. “You said he was in Paris.”
I don’t have a second to prepare for him seizing me by my neck; He holds me above the ground, which leaves me fighting to breathe.
Frantically, I shake my head because I don’t know what Riley is talking about. It isn’t likely for Jeremy and Savannah to be back from Paris so soon when they’ve only just left. The eight people at the house have to be my pack, but again, it doesn’t make sense they’d return without telling me first.
But trying to explain all of this with a hand wrapped around my throat is impossible, especially when my priority is trying to breathe.
For several long seconds, Derek holds me in the air, his face twisted in a dark snarl. Then, with no warning, he lowers me until my feet once again touch the ground. I suck in great big gulps of air between a coughing fit that seems to go on and on.
“Now. This brother. What the fuck is he doing here?” Derek snaps.
I shake my head. “I don’t know. He wasn’t there before. He and Savannah weren’t supposed to be back for weeks.”
His eyes narrow. “You’re lying.”
“No, no I’m not,” I say in a rush.
Another probing stare later, and I swear I can visualize the end of my life.
“Why would they return early?” he demands.
I think quickly. “Maybe… maybe if Savannah was pregnant. Maybe he’d want them to come back. Or if they’d been hurt in an accident or something. They just left, so there’s no other reason they’d be back so soon.”
Derek stares at me without blinking for several seconds. “Perhaps she’s pregnant. He would want her somewhere he could protect her, somewhere away from other shifters,” he says slowly, as if thinking out loud.
It sounds so plausible that I start believing it, even knowing I just made it up, because I know Savannah wouldn’t return without texting or calling me first.
Just as suddenly as Derek seized me, he shoves me back down and I go down hard, my head connecting with the wall and leaving me stunned. “Stay, I have to think,” Derek snaps as he stalks to the front of our cave.
As I’m blinking the dizziness away, Riley returns me to my position leaning against the wall, but that’s not all he does.
With Derek’s gaze pointed outward into the darkness, Riley uses his claws to slash through the cable securing my wrists behind me. That Riley partially shifted while Derek was choking me confirms he didn’t betray me, but that he’s here to help me escape.
I have no idea if Riley is doing this alone, or if he spoke with Jackson back at the house and this is a plan that they cooked up together. But either way, my hands are free, which gives me my first bit of hope that I can get out of this. Somehow.
Since I have no intention of wasting this opportunity, I spend the next several seconds recovering from my collision with the wall as I wait for a chance to make a bid for freedom. I make sure to keep my hands tucked behind me for the moment, since the last thing I need is for Derek to see I’m free.
It’s not going to be easy to escape with Leon and Derek standing at the mouth of the cave. I’m also fully aware that I have more chance of Derek grabbing me and snapping my neck before I make it two steps outside of the cave, than succeeding. Then there’s Riley, sitting quietly beside me. Whatever escape attempt I make has to mean he gets out too, because I’m not leaving him behind.
As the seconds, and then the minutes tick by, I sit with my gaze fixed on Derek’s back, and I wait. And wait.
And then I hear something. A cut-off scream, maybe.
I’m not alone in jerking my head toward the sound. Even Leon lifts his head from the ground.
There’s utter stillness in the cave as we wait for another scream, or shout, or whatever it was we heard.
My heart is well and truly stuck in my throat because there’s only one reason for there to be a shout or a scream in the night like that. Jackson is coming for me, and he must’ve met the first of the shifters standing between him and me.
The seconds turn to minutes, but there’s no follow-up to the distant sound we all heard.
Just as Derek is turning away, there’s another cry, harsher, more pained, and once again, we all jerk our heads in the direction of this new sound.
Derek lowers his gaze to Leon. “Go find out what’s going on.”
Leon rises to his feet.
It must be slower than Derek would like because he follows his snapped order with a kick to the mangy wolf’s side that has him snarling. “Now.”
As Leon is slinking out into the darkness, is when Riley suddenly grips my arm and I know this is it. This is the time to move.
I rise as quietly as I can, but something must give me away, some scratch or some noise I don’t hear. Or maybe Derek just has eyes at the back of his head. Who knows?
All that matters is that by the time I’m on my feet, and before I’ve taken a single step toward freedom, Derek swings his head around to glare at me.
He opens his mouth, and then a small, far too thin wolf flies past me and sends Derek careening back with his arms raised.
They go down just outside the cave. As they do, I’m sprinting toward Riley who’s fighting to pin Derek. It’s a fight that Riley is already losing, and will lose if I don’t get to him fast.
I’m a foot away when Riley throws a harried glance over his shoulder and shakes his head once. Just once. And then Derek is rolling him, pinning him beneath his large body.
Still, I hesitate because I can’t just leave him behind and save myself, not when he came back to rescue me. Before I can help Riley, a low snarl, one far too familiar, reminds me that Leon didn’t make it to the forest to investigate the sound.
I lift my head and meet his gaze. The snarl on his lips tells me he’s just as eager to end my life as he has since the first moment he clocked me.
With my decision made for me, I turn from the wrestling match Riley is losing and run for the forest, knowing Leon is in hot pursuit.
I don’t have to try very hard to think about what Leon will do to me, or even worse, what Derek will if he catches up to me. Already I’m trying not to think about Riley, who’s probably dead already.
I can’t believe I left him. A boy.
He saved my life, and I left him behind for Derek to kill him.
Tears blind me as I run, but despite my tendency to run into trees, I avoid them as I charge through the forest with no real direction in mind. My only thought is to get away, get far enough away from Leon so I can shift because I cannot outrun a wolf on two legs.
From up ahead, at the sound of a wolf grunting in pain, I slow because although I don’t know every single sound Jackson has ever made, some internal sense is screaming at me that was him. That he’s hurt.
Slowing proves to be a mistake when Leon chooses that moment to tackle me.
I go down under his lunge, but I don’t stay down. Immediately, I twist and kick out at him, sending him flying back. I don’t have time for this. Not when I have to get to Jackson.
Half a second later, when Leon is back with a vicious growl on his lips, I dive at him. My vision shifts and suddenly the world around me is sharper, brighter, the sounds clearer as I reach for more of my wolf.
Right now, nothing is more important than dealing with Leon so I can go after Jackson because I need to know he’s okay.
As we tumble across the earth, I do my best to avoid Leon’s teeth as I wrestle him away from my exposed throat. What’s frustrating is, if I were a wolf or if he were human, I’d have already ended this fight. But because I don’t have the benefit of sharp wolf teeth, I’m having to spend more time dodging his attempt at ripping my throat out than fighting back.
Leon attacks again, and this time I feel his sharp teeth graze my skin. Coming dangerously close to doing serious damage. And that’s when my patience snaps.
While I had a moment of pity for this shifter who will remain trapped as a wolf forever, he’s stopping me from getting to Jackson, and he’s stopping me from rescuing Riley. I don’t wait for him to come at me again. I seize his head and I wrench it hard to the right.
Bone breaks and the mangy wolf, Leon, slumps against me. Dead.
As I lay pinned beneath him, I take a second to catch my breath, and try to figure out how he can be heavier dead than alive, someone rips his body away from me.
My eyes snap open and I see who that someone is.
Jackson.
The stark fear in his eyes tells me he expected to find me dead, and that’s all I have time to see of his eyes before he’s dragging me into his arms and burying his face against my neck.
His grip is almost painful, but I don’t tell him to let go. I wrap my arms and legs around him, fighting back tears of relief that he’s okay. That it wasn’t him grunting in pain earlier because he doesn’t look hurt and he’s not bleeding.
For several seconds, we cling to each other so tight, and I never want him to let me go. But then, after inhaling deeply, he raises his head and meets my eyes.
As he loosens his hold, I watch as the Jackson I’ve gotten used to seeing these last few days transform into a man I’m less familiar with. The amusement is absent in his whiskey eyes. He blinks, and then it’s his wolf gazing back at me from a face formed of hard lines and fierce determination.
This is the alpha I’m looking at.
This is the man who fought with Jeremy and Savannah against the Merrick pack and left countless shifters dead. Shifters who Savannah told us were some of the most dangerous lone wolves in the country.
Wariness at confronting this side of him has me easing back a step because now I’m seeing what I’m up against. While it was easy for me to imagine that I’d pack my bags and return to my life in Hardin without another thought about Jackson, I realize how naïve that was.
I ran once before, and he chased me.
It wasn’t long ago his brother tracked down Savannah when she ran from him in Chicago. Then, all Jeremy knew was her name, and that she was a model. Jackson would know exactly where I was going.
I look at him and I know there’s no getting away from someone like Jackson Stone, not when he’s made up his mind to keep you. And everything is telling me that he’s made up his mind to keep me.
Without seeming to move, Jackson is suddenly closer than he was before, curving a hand around the back of my head and holding me flush against him as he dips his head. His kiss is a brand of ownership. A statement that I’m his in every way that matters, and just like always, I melt into it.
The moment I do, he breaks the kiss. After he smooths hair from my face, he leans in close and mouths a word without letting a hint of sound escape his lips. Shift.
I nod because it’s going to be the only way for both of us to get out of this alive. I pull my shirt over my head, only to halt and turn at the sound Derek calling my name.
“Regan, I hope you can hear me because this boy you left to save your own life will pay the price if you don’t get back here in the next minute.”
I freeze at Derek’s threat. Even though his voice isn’t menacing, it’s gentle even, there’s no doubt in my mind that he means it.
I abandon my shift and run.
In less than a second, Jackson has me pinned to a tree. His eyes are dark with fury, but that doesn’t stop me from struggling.
He tightens his arms around me and lowers his head, so his lips are brushing against the shell of my ear. “Shift. Now.”
I barely hear his whisper, but that isn’t enough to stop me from struggling even harder because shifting isn’t important. Getting to Riley is.
Riley’s cry of pain stops me, and I jerk my head toward the sound.
“Or did you not care what I do to him?” Derek calls out in a singsong voice.
My eyes fill with tears because it’s my fault he’s back there. It’s my fault he’ll die if I don’t save him.
Jackson grips my chin and turns my head, so we’re eye to eye. He doesn’t have to say a word. In his gaze, I see fierce determination and a killing rage, and I know with every fiber of my being that he isn’t about to walk away and leave Riley behind. That he’s going after Derek.
Swallowing back my tears, I nod once to show I understand, and slowly, he releases his grip on me as if he still expects me to charge after Derek. As much as I want to, I know if Jackson hadn’t stopped me, it would be as much of a death sentence for Riley as it would be for me.
Jackson is an experienced alpha, which means I have to put my trust in him. When he steps back, giving me the space I need to shift, I drop to my hands and knees and focus my every thought, my every energy on shifting as fast as I can.
The faster I shift, the faster we can rescue Riley because, as a human, I don’t stand a chance against Derek. As a wolf, I probably still don’t, but I have more chance of surviving this confrontation. At least, I hope I do.
With my emotions right at the surface, namely rage and desperation, it takes me longer to center myself. But knowing Jackson is standing over me, protecting me while I shift, I don’t worry that any wolf-if Jackson left any alive on his way to me-will surprise me and attack while I’m at my most vulnerable.
A boy needs us, so even if it hurts, I need this to be fast. Faster than ever before.
My wolf and I communicate through emotion instead of words, and the glittering awareness of her rage and her fierce determination to save Riley who saved me-saved us-is so tangible to me, it’s as if she whispered her thoughts in my ear.
This time, I’m not letting the change sweep over me the way I always have. This time I’m throwing myself into it. I’m pulling my wolf from the place she lives deep inside me-dragging her out-just as she’s lunging out to meet me.
I bite off a cry of pain as everything happens all at once. Bones break and reform. My skin ripples with thick wolf pelt the color of honey-brown straw, and my nails lengthen and become claws.
For a second, I work to control my breathing as the shock of going from human to wolf in less than a minute holds me immobile. Everything feels raw, and it hurts so badly I know I will never do this again.
After taking a couple of breaths, I lift my head and meet Jackson’s gaze.
His expression is completely unreadable as he stares into my eyes. But I can feel his disapproval, and I know he’s going to have words later about me forcing such a painfully fast change. If we survive Derek, that is.
I glance at the way I came, at the direction I can scent blood in the air, blood I know has to be Riley’s.
When I turn back to Jackson, I’m confronted with the sight of a large gray wolf with gold eyes. The second I meet his gaze, he pads forward and nuzzles me. I inhale the warm scent of him that always makes me feel safe, taking comfort in his scent and his touch.
After backing up a step, Jackson shoots me a look loaded with warning before he leads the way to the cave. I don’t hesitate for a second as I follow close behind him.
Just hold on Riley. We’re coming.