“No,” he said. “They’ll shoot you the minute you’re in the open. “ It was then that his keen, ancient nose sniffed the explosives.
Chapter Three
Kole threw Sarah over his shoulder and took off running, hitting the outdoors the same instant the building went up in a massive explosion that threw them both in the air. Somehow he managed to hold onto Sarah and land on his back to absorb the fall. His bones rattled from the impact, but he didn’t let himself pause. He rolled Sarah onto her back and covered her body with his just as fiery pieces of the building came down on top of him.
Pain ripped through Kole’s back, fire torching his clothes and then his skin before he heard the shouts behind him. He rolled off of Sarah and tore off his jacket, and she was there in an instant, throwing dirt on his back to stop the flames.
“Be okay,” she was ordering him. “Be okay. God. Please be okay.”
Kole hurt but he didn’t care. It was the desperation and pain that rolled off of Sarah that was killing him, not the fire. He knew the instant the flames were out and he turned to Sarah and pulled her into his arms.
“I’m okay,” he promised. “Are you okay?”
Sirens sounded in the distance. “Yes, I–” She gasped and turned to the building as the implications and horror the explosion hit her. “No! No! No! No!” She started to run and he wrapped his arms around her from behind, halting her progress and molding her back to his front.
“Let go! Let go, damn it!” She kicked and fought and he held her tight, knowing it was too late, knowing she’d die if she ran into those flames. He wouldn’t let that happen to anyone, especially not her. She mattered to him in ways he couldn’t explain and had been trying to understand for weeks now.
“Damn you, Kole! Let go!”
“I can’t do that,” he said, burying his face in her hair, her pain twisting him in knots. “I can’t do that.”
She stopped fighting and a sob escaped her lips, followed by another. He couldn’t imagine the hurt he’d feel if he lost his parents, how he’d react, and he desperately wanted to turn back time, to make this not be real. She was shaking so hard it scared him. She was going into shock. He sat down and pulled her close, and would have called for Nico, their pack leader, but he never got the chance.
“I’m here,” Kelvin Ross, the Society’s primary doctor shouted, running towards him with Nico by his side. They both had shoulder length dark hair and were in leather to make a silver blade have to work just a little harder to make contact. Both damn good to see.
The sirens sounded loudly behind him as Kelvin and Nico knelt beside Kole and Sarah, who was shaking uncontrollably now, curled against him, her face buried in his chest, his t-shirt damp from the outpouring of her tears.
Kelvin, who was fifty years older than Kole and Nico, pulled a syringe out of his pocket and injected Sarah. She went instantly limp in Kole’s arms. “She’ll be fine,” he promised. “Get her to the ambulance and let me look at your burns.”
“I’m fine,” he said, glancing behind him to see the ambulance with a Society logo. He scooped Sarah up again, feeling a combination of possessiveness and of a need to protect her. There was something about this woman that the animal in him recognized and yearned for. “But I am riding with her.” His gaze lifted to the building, to the fire that had surely taken the lives of the wolves she loved, and he knew he had to be sure they were gone. “I need to go after her family.”
Nico narrowed his gaze and nodded, accepted Sarah into his arms. “They’re gone,” Nico said. “You have to know that.”
Kole didn’t reply. He took off running toward the fire, dreading what he would find, and dreading even more so the moment he had to tell Sarah what he found.
***
Sarah jerked to a sitting position in the back of the ambulance, alone and gasping for air. She could hear voices just outside the door, but neither of the voices were Kole’s. She was cold and shaking and she could feel the drug in her system. But she wasn’t like other wolves. Drugs didn’t work on her. She didn’t know why and she didn’t care. She just had to get to her family. She shoved off the bed and stood on wobbly feet, knowing she had get into that building.
She stopped at the ambulance door and leaned out to see what was happening. It was then that she saw Kole walking away from the flames. Alone. He was alone. He’d tried to find her family and he’d come back without them. Because they were dead. Dead. They were dead. Everything inside her seemed to turn to ice and shatter. She was shaking harder now but still she jumped down from the truck, glad Nico and whoever he was talking to were around the side of the vehicle, and she started running. She had no idea where she was running, just that she had to run. She had to get away. From this place, this reality, from Kole, who had saved her when she wasn’t even sure she wanted to live right now. God, why had he saved her and let them die? She hurt. She was broken. She ran.
Eighteen months later...
Present Day
Chapter Four
There was a woman, the country song playing in the crowded Ft. Worth, Texas bar declared. Wasn’t there always? Kole thought, tipping back his beer, and then set it back on the bar. Behind him was a packed dance floor and tables filled with patrons. Even with a few too many rowdy cowboys for his taste, it was still calm in comparison to a normal night at Benedantti, the club the wolves favored inside Paris Hotel and Casino. Past the hotspots VIP doors, there were no humans allowed, and wolves tended to let go a little too much. If they got out of hand, they answered to their Pack Leader. Pack Leader, a title that would soon be Kole’s as Nico had accepted a post with a Special Magical Task force that took fighting the rebels of their kind to a whole new level. A change that brought Kole back to the distraction he had to deal with before he assumed his new role. Back to the woman, to Sarah, who’d haunted his sleep for going on two years now, since she’d disappeared from that ambulance.
He’d looked for her after she’d disappeared from the ambulance, certain Derek had kidnapped her. All the more reason to hunt Derek with every free moment he had even after the council had declared Sarah dead. He’d never believed she was dead, never considered the possibility.
Then impossibly, six months ago, Sarah had started calling into the Society to report dead rebel wolf bodies needing cleanup. She’d become a vigilante and now she had the council’s attention, the King’s attention. Not that they were against the rebels destroying the rebels terrorizing innocents and trying to overthrow the government, but she was a wild card who risked exposing them to the humans, and the order was to bring her home for judgment. Kole knew that meant she’d be incarcerated and he wasn’t letting that happen. Not when he’d failed her, when he’d created what she’d become by letting her parents die.
He’d tracked her here, and it hadn’t been easy. With the help of a little witch he’d once rubbed shoulders with, he’d figured out that Sarah had been using some sort of magic to shield her location. And if he could figure it out, so could Derek. Just being in the same building as her, he could almost taste her kiss again, the sweet flavor of her passion.
Unfortunately, Sarah wasn’t the only wolf he scented in the place. There were four others here that he’d already placed at a corner table, drinking beer and laughing. Young wolves, not more than fifty, who’d been foolish enough to follow the rebel movement, using humans like puppets and pawns, power hungry and blood thirsty. A movement far too many of the elders like himself, those a century or older, and a quarter of a way into their life expectancy, had followed.
She was close now, behind him, and he had to give her credit for her skill at masking her hunger for vengeance and revenge. Clearly there was a reason why she’d earned her nickname the ‘raven devil’ beyond her hair color she often used wigs to disguise. Her real skill was that she could mask her emotions, her deep desire for revenge, the hate of the rebels, in a way few, even the ancients of their kind well over a century old like himself could do, let alone a wolf as young as she
.
He turned slowly, kicking back a tequila shot for the pure burn down his throat that reminded him he was alive and he wanted to stay that way. It didn’t scar like beating his head against a concrete wall, and wolves needed a whole heck of a lot more than a few shots to get drunk. That’s what he’d felt like searching for Sarah, like beating his head against a wall at every damn dead end.
He stood up, sensing her movement towards the back of the bar and weaving through the crowd. A woman stopped in front of him, her hands going to his chest.
“Hi good looking. How about a dance?”
“Sorry, in a rush,” he said, all too aware that Sarah was quickly moving away from him and stepping around the woman, he quickened his steps. He rounded the hallway towards the bathrooms and cursed at the sight of the exit door shutting. Surely, Sarah wasn’t foolish enough to go outside with a group of rebels alone. But she had been. There was no question about it.
Kole didn’t even try to be discreet. He’d found Sarah and even if she hated him, and probably did, he had to make things right by her. He had to protect her before his stupid failure to save her parents go her killed, too. Kole pushed through the door, stepping into the dark, unlit alley, shoved back his leather jacket and rested his hand on the silver circles in the leather pouch on his belt. Leaving his gun holstered was the closest he had to discretion. He meant to kill the rebel wolves and he didn’t plan to be coy about it. His gaze shifted to the small black car to his left as Sarah slid into the backseat, followed by a male wolf. Fucking late again. He grimaced and with one eye on the direction the car was traveling, he took off for the front of the building where he’d parked his bike, swearing this time late wouldn’t be too late. The idea that Sarah could already be dead set his pulse into overdrive.
By the time the car pulled onto the highway, he was on the back of his Honda Shadow and ripping a path through the parking lot, trying to close the distance between him and the main road. He hit the highway at sixty and accelerated from there, aware the wolves were headed toward a long stretch of mostly farm land, and concerned about them turning off on some dirt road and out of sight.
Relief flooded him at the sight of the taillights of the car, and he’d contemplated his next move, the possible downsides that might get Sarah killed if he forced the car to stop, when the decision became irrelevant. Suddenly, the vehicle skidded to the side of the road and stopped. Shit-shit-shit.
Kole accelerated even faster and came in behind the car, killed the bike engine, and dismounted. He drew two guns equipped with silencers and silver bullets and stalked towards the vehicle. The back door opened and one long, sexy female leg appeared before Sarah stood up and adjusted her short mini skirt, leaving the blonde wig she’d been wearing behind in the vehicle.
She straightened to face him in the darkness that both of their wolfish stares could penetrate, and he knew the wolves were dead. As impossible as it seemed, she’d killed all four. He slid his guns back into the holsters at his ankles.
“Hello Sarah,” he said.
“Kole,” she said, softly, a sudden wind lifting her long, dark hair. “How’d you find me?”
“You leave a trail of dead bodies worse than Michael Meyers and neither of you clean up after yourself.”
“I’m not going back with you.”
“I wasn’t aware I was asking.”
“If you try to force me, I’ll fight.”
He held out his hands. “I’m all about you and me playing some touch football. Let’s get to it.”
“I’m a better fighter than you give me credit for,” she said, at the same time that she discreetly, or so she thought, easing a few inches from the car, giving herself room to dart away. “Don’t force me to prove it. My fight is not with you.” She eased another step to her right.
“Run, Sarah,” he warned, “and I will catch you.”
Chapter Five
Sarah stood completely still, weighing her options with Kole. He watched her, his body relaxed, defying the readiness she felt in him, the watchfulness of his gaze. His presence crashed into her, rocked her to the core in some indescribable way she didn’t understand. Something about him called to her and defied his new role as her enemy when he’d come here to arrest her. And while Kole wasn’t the first Society wolf to try and capture her, he was the only one she wished she could let catch her. She didn’t want to fight him, but she might have to, because she wasn’t going to be thrown behind bars, at least, not until she knew she’d achieved retribution for her family.
“So shall we stand here all night or play that game of football?” Kole asked. “Or perhaps you prefer some other...game.”
“My fight isn’t with you.”
“Not directly,” he said, “but you have to know that the King ordered your arrest.”
“The King,” she repeated, wetting her suddenly parched lips. “No. I didn’t know I was worthy of his time since he didn’t put any priority on avenging my family, who served him for generations upon generations.”
He took a step closer.
She held up a hand. “Before you come closer there’s something you should know.”
He paused, arching a brow. “What would that be?”
“If I’m exposed to a fighting technique one time, I can imitate it with the reasonable level of skill. In other words, every fight I have, I get better.”
“More magic I assume?” he asked. “Because I know that’s how you’ve been hiding.”
She shook her head. “It’s not magic, or maybe it is. It’s nothing I did to myself or have any knowledge of anyone else doing to me. Whatever the reason, I can do it, I don’t care. I just know that it’s a good thing for me and a bad thing for my enemies.” A shiver of foreboding raced down her spine.
Kole’s gaze lifted beyond her shoulder at the same instant hers lifted above his, and she knew he saw headlights just as she did, only he saw or sensed something else because he cursed. Sarah whirled around to search the darkness, and her heart leapt to her throat at what she suddenly sensed as danger when she did, though she saw nothing. An instant later the snarls filled the air and a pack of at least six wolves, all in animal form, were visible and charging.
Sarah barely registered Kole revving his motorcycle. Instinct - no, just plain logic which served her well in battle - said she had no chance of standing off against the large number of wolves headed their way. She shoved her small purse cross ways over her shoulder and took off down the incline into the roadside ditch. She came back up again on the other side before darting across a long, open field, heading toward the woods a good mile away. Coverage would be her best hope of escape. Her high-heeled boots would be her worst. They sunk into the ground but she couldn’t stop and peel them off, and even if she could, she’d resist doing so much as she would shifting. She might be faster as a wolf, but she’d destroy her clothes, she’d need them later to truly escape.
The sound of Kole’s motorcycle engine grew louder, roaring closer, and she turned to find him rapidly gaining on her. Behind him, the wolves were clearly gaining ground as well, and they’d multiplied. Now, there were wolves coming from both sides toward her. There were too many, moving too fast. Sarah kept her forward pace, but she faced the music of having two choices. Shift and end up naked and maybe dead, or turn to Kole who’d try to arrest her later. But she’d be alive and that sounded pretty darn good.
She let him catch up, not that he wouldn’t have anyway. The instant he was by her side, she turned to jump on the bike. He reached for her without slowing and she grabbed his arm and this was one time when a short skirt came in handy, freeing her legs to straddle the bike. Even so, it was all she could do to hang on to Kole and get her legs where they needed to be, but somehow she did. The instant she was somewhat stable, she wrapped her arms around him and glanced back at the wolves that had been too close for comfort, but were quickly fading into the distance. Sarah relaxed against Kole, letting the night air, the wind lightening the humidity of the Texas
summer, and the feel of the wolf who’d once again saved her life, wash over her. At some point she had to face him as an enemy, as the wolf that could end her hunt for Derek. At some point. Just not now.
That moment of calm didn’t last. They were headed east, away from the highway and Kole didn’t stop for the bumpy terrain, or a rocky riverbed. He dodged and weaved through such impossible terrain that Sarah clung to him for dear life. Somehow though, he did it all safely and knew exactly how to get them back to a deserted stretch of the highway. Clearly they were no longer in Ft. Worth, but the outskirts. A mix of relief, anticipation, and dread washed over Sarah as the tires hit the pavement and there were no wolves but the two of them in sight. The instant they were back in the middle of some semblance of civilization, she had to make her escape. No sooner did she have the idea than she felt Kole wrap some kind of rope around her wrist. Suddenly, there was no way off this bike with her hand attached. She liked her hand. She like Kole too, but she had a feeling that was about to change.
***
Thirty minutes later, Sarah wasn’t surprised that Kole had kept riding through Ft. Worth and on into Dallas, nor was she surprised when they pulled to a stop in front of a downtown warehouse. The Society might be headquartered in Vegas, but their race was woven throughout the human population, and the Guard had small hubs all over the world.
He killed the engine and she climbed off the bike. Her arm was still caught in the rope he held, a common move in capture to prevent a wolf from shifting and potentially losing a hand. Kole didn’t get off. Instead, he pulled her against all that hard muscle, his blue eyes glinting with warning. “I told you that if you ran, I’d catch you. I meant it.”
There was a possessive alpha quality to the words, a heat to his hand where it molded her to his side. Desire took her off guard, though it should not have since Kole had always affected her. Nevertheless, it slammed into her, fierce in its intensity. She was burning up and frozen in place. She wanted to shove him away, she wanted to let anger control her, not her uncontrollable desire he’d soon smell. She wanted and failed because she wanted him.