45

45
ALICIA
It feels wrong to be human right now. It feels dangerous to be human. But if I shift, I can’t carry Emmy.
I try desperately to shush her cries. There are wolves in these woods, wolves who want to hurt us. We’re not far away from the house yet. If I let my wolf out, I would be able to run so much faster-but I have to be human.
I press Emmy to my chest, trying to quiet her cries. “Shh,” I whisper desperately.
I think it’s already too late. I can hear footsteps pounding. I can feel the ground shaking. I can smell them-
And then Lonnie breaks into view.
I’m going as fast as I can, but of course it’s not going to be fast enough. These are wolves. I’m strong, I know I am-I could probably hold my own in this chase if I were to let the wolf out-but as a human, I can’t do it. I don’t stand a chance.
They surround me quickly and close in on me, and then Lonnie shifts and grabs me by the arm.
I don’t bother trying to struggle. He’s so much bigger than I am, and he’s surrounded by his friends. There’s no way I’ll be able to get free, and if I try to fight, I’m going to get Emmy hurt. Instead, I crush her against my chest and get ready for a verbal fight-the only kind I can realistically engage in right now.
Lonnie leers at me. “Thought you could run away?”
“You want me to run away,” I say. “You-you want me to leave Greystone territory. You don’t want me here.”
That scares me badly. I know why he chased me, but why did he stop me? According to Brandon, he wanted me gone. Leaving should have been enough.
What’s changed?
A couple of the other men shift, though most of them remain in wolf form. They’re all strangers to me, although I do wonder if that’s just my fear getting the best of me. Maybe if I were calm, I would recognize these men.
It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter who they are. What matters is that my daughter is in danger.
“Let me go,” I say, doing my best to control the shaking in my voice. “We’ll leave the pack territory. You’ll never see me or my baby again. I promise. You won’t have to worry about us.”
Lonnie looks at one of his men. “Take the kid.” “No!”
They all ignore my scream. One of the men steps forward and rips Emmy out of my arms, and with Lonnie holding me still, I can’t do anything to stop it.
Emmy wails and reaches for me, and now I do struggle against Lonnie’s hold, but it’s no use. I can’t get free. I claw and scratch at his face, but he
grabs my arms and twists them behind my back. I slam my knee into his gut, and he lets out a puff of air-I know I’ve hurt him-but he holds onto me anyway.
I want to shift. The wolf is clamoring to come out. But I can’t. If I shift, they’ll all shift. And if this turns into a bunch of wolves brawling, it would take a miracle for Emmy not to be badly hurt, or even killed.
They don’t care if she dies. Only I do. So I’m the one who has to try to keep this from escalating.
“Give her back to me,” I cry, reaching out for her. “Please! We’ll leave, I promise. I swear.”
Lonnie shakes his head. “It’s too late for that,” he says.
“What do you want to do, boss?” the man holding Emmy asks. “Should we kill her?”
My wolf comes ripping to the surface. I barely manage to keep It caged. I need to be human. There’s no way I can beat all of them if it comes to a brawl. My mind is more important than my physical strength right now.
“No,” Lonnie says. “We don’t need to kill her. She’s a part of my bloodline. We’ll raise her as our own. Kill the mother.”
“What do you want to keep her for?” his friend demands. “She’s not
yours.”
“She could be, though,” Lonnie says. “She could be a strong member of this pack. And we can use all the strong allies we can get.”
“But her mother…”
“Doesn’t matter. Doesn’t matter who her mother is. Before long, she’ll forget all about these first few years of her life.
He talks about me as if I have nothing to do with him. Honestly, it’s kind of freeing.
And it changes things. If Lonnie wants Emmy alive, it means they won’t let her be killed. It means I can let the wolf out now.
Immediately, the wolf understands and rises gleefully to the surface. Lonnie notices the change in my stance. He looks down at me. “Fuck.”
“If you come near me,” I say, “any of you, I’ll rip your throats out.” My hands curl, ready for the release of leaping into my wolf form.
But I restrain myself.
I’ll do it if I have to. But I’m still outnumbered, and if there’s even a chance I can talk my way out of this, I still have to try that first.
“You can’t fight us all off,” one of the men says.
“I can kill one of you,” I growl. “Which one’s willing to die for this shithead?” I jerk my head in Lonnie’s direction. “Because if you are, come forward and let’s do it.”
They hesitate.
I thought so. None of them wants to die to advance Lonnie’s position in the pack. They like him because he’s a bully, because he pushes people around and gets what he wants for himself and his friends. They’re not prepared for someone who bites back.
They’re not prepared for me.
Lonnie snarls. “She’s the only threat to me becoming alpha,” he says. “Don’t you all realize that? She’s the only thing that can stand in our way now. If we get her out of the way, the road is clear. Vern stood up against me tonight, so we can take him out too. By this time tomorrow morning, I’ll be alpha, and we’ll all be running this pack together.”
“He’s not going to let you help run the pack,” I say to the others. “This is Lonnie. He’s not going to share power with anyone else here, and you know that.”
“Shut the fuck up,” Lonnie says. “No one fucking asked you to talk.”
“Just give me my daughter,” I say. “I’m not going to challenge you for power.”
“Yes you are,” Lonnie says. He looks around at the others. “We know she is, because Brandon was with her. He abandoned us and ran to her. He was supposed to be keeping her from attracting a mate, but he fell for her instead. He’ll challenge for alpha.”
My heart skips a beat. Lonnie knows everything.
This is why his plans have changed. He realized that Brandon wasn’t on his side anymore, that there was an actual threat to his power. He realized he was going to have to act or risk losing his chance to become alpha.
Brandon and I should have moved against him last night.
But we couldn’t. Our attraction to each other was so strong that it overrode everything else.
Fuck. I’m going to lose my baby. After all the effort I put into keeping her safe, I’m losing her in a way I never could have imagined.
Now. It’s time.
I let my wolf come ripping to the surface, jerking me out of Lonnie’s hold.
I whirl around, ready to tear his throat out.
And then, suddenly and without warning, Brandon rushes into the clearing.