Chapter Twelve

It was dark in the room, but traces of dawn licked the edges of the curtains. Not sure what had woken him, Sam stretched out, his bare toes hitting hard on the end of the single bed. “Damn it!”

“What’s going on?” Ian inquired from the lower bunk.

“Nothing. Go back to sleep.”

“Damn right I’ll go back to sleep. I had last watch.”

Some starlet had had an affair with her bestie’s husband and without any fodder for the cameras, the media had dropped Glenna’s story. With someone gone without a trace for two weeks other crimes had bumped the case onto the back burner. Even the feds had stopped looking so intently for their secret patient, and they weren’t looking even close to the house, so Lana had canceled the high alert.

Nothing was going on. He could catch a few more minutes sleep before doing an early sweep. He rolled, trying to get comfortable, but his aching back told him he was done.

“You’re not sleeping.”

“Hell, this bed’s not big enough for a squirrel, let alone a full-grown man. I can’t wait until we’re done here and I can get back to Ram’s Haven and to a real bed.” Ram’s Haven wasn’t Windy Gap, and it would never be home, but at least there he had a decent size bed instead of trying to sleep in a room with Ian snoring in the bottom bunk. “I’m getting up.”

“Is the bed the only thing bothering you?” The smirk in Ian’s voice raised Sam’s hackles.

He dropped out of the bed, seriously considering stepping on Ian’s arm dangling out of the single bunk on his way down. The brightening smear of pre-dawn light illuminated the room enough to see the grin on his beta’s face.

“What?”

“You didn’t even call her on it.”

“Did you think I would?” He grabbed his clothes and avoided Ian’s knowing look.

“She’ll just do it again.”

Sam sighed. “And you think letting her know we know she was searching our rooms, instead of recuperating, would stop her?” He headed for the door. “She’s a determined beast. Must be the red hair.”

“Yeah, that and the tits.” Ian snorted. “Women, who put them in charge anyway?”

“I don’t know, maybe the ancients thought it was funny. But get this—she doesn’t know she’s in charge. That’s why she’s sneaking around.” Sam gave Ian his own grin and left the room.

Early pre-dawn light seeped through the curtains of the living room, lending him enough light to stumble down the quiet hall and into the john. He was under the stinging spray of the shower before he realized that it wasn’t the cramped bed that had kept him from sleeping. Something else, something out of the ordinary had woken him up. He rinsed off and got out, thinking back, trying to place what he’d heard.

Dripping water, he slung a towel around his hips and went back into the hall, listening. The only thing he could hear over Ian’s soft snores were the early-morning birds calling to each other. But something was off and it tickled his skin like a spider. He prowled the hallway, poking his nose into each room and sniffing. Nothing out of the usual. The cabin was quiet, with the exception of the old humming refrigerator in the kitchen and the ticking of the wall clock. Ellen was gone for the weekend. Lana was still out on her birthing emergency.

That left their guest.

Sam padded barefoot down the stairs, keeping quiet, even though he knew before he’d gone down two feet.

No breath sounds came from the basement.

He checked all the rooms in the cellar, every second that ticked by, a second too long. He checked, even though he knew he would have smelled her, heard her, sensed her. If she’d been there, dead or alive, he’d have sensed her.

She was gone.

Chest as tight as if it were wrapped in rubber bands, he raced back up into the kitchen, the pounding of his bare feet echoing on the wooden stairs. He ran out the back door and stopped on the deck, sniffing the damp morning air.

Nothing.

Too quickly, too easily he desired to be wolf. And it came at his call, pouring through him, rising to his need. The shift was fast and rough, and when it was over his hair rose from nose to tail, the information overflow zapping his nerves.

He howled for Ian, not waiting for his answering call before hitting the deck floor with his nose.

She’d been here, and recently. Now, with his wolf’s nose, he could smell her in detail. Smell her anxiety and fear under the citrus soap that Ellen had brought in especially for her. The trail ran down the stairs, straight to the Suburban. He knew she hadn’t found the keys, because they were still in his pocket from yesterday, and if she’d come into his room with her delicious female scent, he wouldn’t be here now. It wouldn’t have mattered how tired he was, he would have woken up. After yesterday—watching her eat his food as if she were devouring his cock—if she’d come into his room, he’d have pulled her into his bed.

Her scent led down the drive, overlaying an old trail of Ian’s, straight to the road. He growled, and his wolf pushed to take over. She should not be following the beta’s trail—it made her smell like she was his.

Adrenaline pumped him fast down the trial. They needed to catch her before she flagged down a passing car and got help. If she made it to a police station, they were screwed.

Over his wolf’s displeasure he howled to his beta, and heard the response. But he couldn’t wait, and the rising wolf inside didn’t want to—he wanted to run and catch their quarry.

The trail was easy to read. Pockets of morning dew on the grass had captured her scent in their damp clutches. A strange mélange of Lana, the clinic, and the citrus scent that he now associated with Glenna’s femininity, but all of it overlaid with Ian’s strong scent. Clinic and Lana he understood, but Ian?

His wolf growled. Why did Glenna smell of the beta wolf?

Sam suppressed the competitive surge of jealousy, reassuring himself it was the wolf’s response to an attractive female. Two fucking weeks with his brother’s mate in the same house had pushed him to the edge, an edge he’d come way too close to two years ago to ever be sure of himself again. Ever since his stint in the wild, he’d known, the wolf was barely in check.

He kept his nose down and focused on following the trail and Glenna, praying he could keep control.

In the distance, up the curve of the mountain road, he heard an engine. A car was coming this way and closing fast. He caught a flash of red in the early dawn light and poured on the speed.

His quarry turned, some sense warning her of the adult male wolf barreling down on her. She started to run. Excitement flashed through his veins, giving him a burst of speed.

Prey.

He plowed into her, knocking her hard into the bushes at the side of the road just as the car flashed behind him. Momentum carried them out into the air. Time slowed in the suspension of gravity and Glenna’s screams ripped into the air.

Gravity took over and they dropped.

Sam hit the rocks hard, pain jolting his side. He rolled to a stop and lay there in the brush, gasping for each painful breath. A howl carried out over the early-morning air. Sam couldn’t suck in enough air to respond to his beta’s call. He panted and wheezed, trying to squeeze air back into his lungs.

Someone moaned.

Glenna.

He pushed himself to stand, then to scramble on wobbly legs up the steep slope. She lay further up the hill, in the embrace of a scrubby mountain ash. Her red jacket—Lana’s red jacket—almost disappearing in the flaming red of the tree’s fall color. He walked over to her. Two feet. One. And stopped only a few inches from her prone body, sniffing for blood.

Her eyes opened. They went wide as headlamps, the pupils in the center going dark. Her scent flooded with fear, and his wolf crouched, braced for danger.

“Nice wolf.”

His predatory instincts flared at the panic in her shaky voice, and he viciously tamped them down. She didn’t realize it was him. The dilated pupils, the short breaths, all indicated something more than panic at being caught. She was afraid of the wolf. Him.

Pack rules, pack law, pack instinct—all said that if there was no external threat, he’d done something wrong. The surge of anxiety and intense desire to soothe nearly knocked him over. His wolf wanted to drop to the ground, go belly up, and reassure her—they were not a threat.

He inched his nose forward, touching her shoe, wanting to soothe her, himself and his wolf, but instead the overwhelmingly strong scent of Ian’s feet wrinkled his nose.

He growled. Ian’s shoes. His human brain acknowledged the reason she reeked of the beta, but his wolf didn’t get it. All his wolf knew was that she should not have Ian on her scent. And in wolf form, his bestial instincts were dominant.

She shrank back. “Go away, wolf.”

The bushes shook on the slope above, and Ian’s snout appeared. Sam’s lips pulled back from his teeth. He placed himself between the beta and the woman, his low growl rumbling into full aggression. 

Ian dropped flat, nose to the ground and whined, but it wasn’t enough to soothe his wolf. It wanted to tear Ian apart. And Sam couldn’t let it.

He fought to contain the wolf. Ian was his beta and Glenna was nobody. She wasn’t pack yet. She didn’t smell like pack or even wolf, and they’d have no idea unless she went through the change if she would ever join the pack. Even if she did, this woman was not his. She wasn’t going to be his. Ever.

His wolf’s response was insane. And that scared him. He’d fought so hard to come back from the wild after the Gabe and Serena mess. Fought to keep from succumbing to his wolf and never becoming human again. But here he was, fighting to keep from attacking another man over a woman—something he swore he’d never do again.

Glenna’s eyes darted back and forth. Sweat oozed from her pores, flavoring her citrus scent with fear.

The instant anxious rush of defensiveness caught him by surprise. His wolf was still searching for what the female could possibly be afraid of, because to his wolf, it definitely couldn’t be them. They were there to protect her, not attack her. The wolf’s confusion throbbed like an ache in his bones.

Why would she be afraid of them? It had to be something else. And the wolf inside of Sam, the one that was never far from the surface these days, found the source of danger conveniently in the source of his own aggression. Ian.

The urge to attack Ian pulsed higher, pushing Sam’s humanity down deeper into his soul. He struggled against the urge to attack his beta, drive him away forever, all for the female cowering at his feet. Somewhere in the depths of his urge to fight he knew—his wolf wouldn’t relax until Glenna had lost her fear. And if this continued he would kill his own beta.