“No,” he whispered. He couldn’t hear his own voice through the agony pulsing outward from his midsection but he could feel the word leave his lips and it strengthened him. No, goddammit. He wouldn’t be defeated. He hadn’t gone through all this shit, hadn’t hinged all their hopes on this, just to have it fail.

“Sorry,” Barry said, and he did sound truly apologetic. “Nothing personal.”

He brought his arm back for another devastating punch, and Ryan knew if that one landed, he’d be fucked. Wolves were damn resilient, but bears were like tanks. He might as well be a Chihuahua when it came to pure strength.

Which meant he needed to be careful. He needed to have speed on his side, though that was easier said than done when he was still crumpled in half, holding his abdomen.

The fist came like a comet, soaring down across the sky.

Ryan closed his eyes and succumbed to the animal inside. Faced with so much pain, it was absurdly easy to just give in. One minute he was a man. The next, he was a wolf.

Dropping down to his paws, he felt the fist whisk through his fur, just barely missing him. Yelping with fury, he darted forward and sank his teeth into Barry’s ankle.

The bear roared and brought his hand down, claws slicing through the air. Ryan didn’t feel the blow, didn’t know how badly he had been injured by those devastating hooked talons. He gripped Barry’s ankle even harder and started wrenching his head around, yanking with the full weight of his body behind him.

Barry staggered and fell, unable to keep his balance on his ruined ankle. Blood filled Ryan’s mouth, bathed his face in a sticky spray of scarlet droplets, but still he kept at it.

This time he felt the burn of claws slicing through the muscle along his shoulder, but it seemed so insignificant compared to the hot rage inside his body. He leaped backwards, slipping on paws that were slick with blood, and lunged forward again.

Barry had fully transformed by this point. He was an enormous black bear with fur that glimmered russet with faint sunlight, with a splash of white on his chest. He swept out a paw that was as wide as a shovel, but Ryan skirted around it and grabbed onto Barry’s shaggy flank. Though the bear bucked and writhed beneath him, Ryan clung on desperately and clawed his way up on the bear’s back.

This is for Dylan, he thought grimly, and bit the back of the bear’s neck.

Barry threw his head back and trumpeted, the sound as loud and impressive as a roar of thunder. He stamped his feet in a classic bear expression of rage and then shook all over.

One thing about animals is that their skin tends to be looser from their body than a human’s. When he shook, Barry’s loose skin rippled violently over his muscular body, tossing Ryan around like a leaf in a hurricane. Nevertheless, he bit down harder even though his jaws were aching and it felt like any moment his teeth might be ripped right out of his skull.

The bear rose on his hind legs and then dropped down.

Ryan wasn’t prepared for that and the bucking motion sent him flying over Barry’s head, crashing down roughly on the concrete. Winded, feeling his ribs strain in his chest when he lifted his head, all he could do was watch as the immense black bear stampeded towards him.

Can’t give up, he thought dully somewhere in the back of his mind, where he was still human. The wolf inside him had completely surrendered to the attack, knowing when it was beaten. It took every ounce of strength he still had to lift his paw and slash out at Barry with his dull nails.

The blow was weak and glancing, lacking strength enough to pierce skin.

It was also a one-in-a-million hit. Barry had lifted his head at the last moment, jaws beginning to part for a devastating bite, when Ryan’s blunt wolf nails scraped across his eyes.

Suddenly there was no bear, only a sturdy man sitting on the ground screaming as he held his hands over his ruined eyes.

For a moment, all Ryan could do was be horrified at the damage he’d caused. Barry’s leg had been bitten clean through to the bone. Clear fluid and blood was dribbling through his fingers, and his neck was streaked with sticky darkness. If the man didn’t receive immediate medical attention, he might very well bleed out or go into shock.

Ryan turned his back on the mess he’d created. Through all the fights he’d been in, he had never made someone hurt so much before. Most animals fought for dominance only, which meant injuries were usually minimal and only the shattered remnants of pride would take time to heal. Yet, at the same time, he wasn’t sorry for what he’d done. It had been in self-defense, and Barry was no innocent.

No doubt there were already people scrambling, trying to find the source of the disturbing cries. Barry would get the attention he needed, whether or not he deserved it.

That meant Ryan was free to leave, which he did. He jumped over the fence and ran back around to the side of the convenience store where Barry had said they were parked.

And he saw them.

The two wolves were standing between two nondescript cars, one of which was a minivan while the other was a bright red Camaro, gleaming like it had been bought right off the assembly line. They were effectively blocking anyone from seeing what they were doing, while also managing to seem not very suspicious. Passersby would catch a glimpse of a thin young man holding a sleeping boy in his arms, placing him in the backseat of the minivan. It wasn’t a very thrilling sight. There were all sorts of reasons why such a thing might be happening, most of them innocent.

Ryan knew better.

He snarled and ran forward, regretting that he had to be a human for this. “Stop them!” he yelled, pointing. Everyone in the area looked at him as if he’d gone insane, not looking at all where he was gesturing, where the three men were going about their business as if nothing was wrong. “They’re kidnappers! They’ve got Hunter Johnson!”

But if anyone understood what he was yammering on about, there was no indication of it.

Corey took one look at Ryan, saw the blood on him, and processed the situation. He spoke a few rapid words that Ryan couldn’t hear, though he was rapidly closing in on the other men, and all three of them scattered to their respective vehicles.

Just as Ryan reached where they were parked, the vehicles both pulled out and headed for the street. The drivers hurried as they drove away but instead of looking like escaping lawbreakers, they looked like perfectly sensible people running away from a crazy man.

Can’t let them get up to speed!

He was fast, but he was only powered by his own strength, not an engine, and his strength was seriously lacking right now. He grabbed at the rear of the minivan, missed, and then grabbed again. This time he got his hand against the surface of it but there was nothing for him to hold onto and he fell as it suddenly accelerated. His hands hit the lip which jutted out in front of the very back door on the rear of the van, but though he managed to close his fingers in time, it took only a few feet of being dragged across concrete before he had to let go.

Behind him, people were screaming and shouting. Someone was yelling for 911. Another was loudly complaining to the police on their cell phone. Some of the shouts were aimed directly at him, while others seemed to be just a result of the general confusion.

Ryan ignored all of it and stared off after the minivan, which barreled down the road. He turned and ran back to his truck, which was still idle at the pump.

Dylan started to get out of the vehicle as he approached. “What the hell, Ryan?” he cried out.

He didn’t have the breath to shout back so he waved his hands, urging the other man to get back inside. He wrenched the gas nozzle out of the truck and threw it in the general direction of the lever, then tossed open the truck door and threw himself inside.

At least, he tried to throw himself inside. He didn’t succeed in getting very far because two beefy hands grabbed him from behind and wrenched him back out.

“Where the hell do you think you’re going?”

Ryan whirled around, half-expecting to see that Barry had somehow crawled out here to try and finish what he’d started. He was already baring his fangs in preparation for an attack when he realized that he was looking at a regular human, although a chunky one covered in tattoos that were all very nondescript and stereotypical.

The human punched him in the face.

Ryan didn’t even try to stop the blow once he saw it coming. The wolf inside him had been renewed by its miraculous success from before, all senses raging and racing. Time seemed to be moving slower for him, and he saw that the fist being thrown his way was lacking in finesse and strength. It grazed his jawline, snapping his head to one side, but not with enough force to do anything but throb in a dull, forgettable way.

Ryan slapped the human upside the side of the face.

He was strongly tempted to punch back but he really didn’t want to hurt anyone else. The force of his slap was more like a shove, pushing the human back without really doing anything but stunning him. Sure, his face would sting for a good while, but that was a negligible thing.

While the human was still reeling, Ryan climbed into the truck and slammed his key in the ignition. He threw the truck into drive and stomped his foot on the gas. The engine sputtered, the dials on the dashboard spun and flickered with confusion while the tires spun, throwing up gravel; then, the engine caught and the truck barreled forward into the mess of scattering cars and people.

Somehow, though he wasn’t sure how, he managed not to run anyone over on the way out. Under ordinary circumstances it would have been a disaster to try and get out of this mess of a gas station, but this seemed to be a day that didn’t allow for ordinary circumstances. He might have knocked off the mirror on the passenger side of the truck, making Dylan squeal with terror, but they emerged out onto the road otherwise unscathed. All the other drivers were fleeing with similar abandon, which resulted in a lot of clumping-together but also a good deal of free space—even if he had to drive through a hedge and over a curb to take advantage of it.

He paid no attention to the stop sign, jerking on the wheel to throw them to the right. An approaching car slammed on their brakes behind him and honked loudly, but he ignored it, pushing the truck up to the speed limit and beyond while heading in the direction the wolves had gone. His head swiveled around like a satellite dish out of control, trying to figure out which route they might have taken in an effort to lose him. They knew they were being followed. They damn sure weren’t going to lollygag now.

“Ryan!” Dylan had been trying to get his attention this entire time, between intermittent squeaks of fear. “Ryan! What the hell is going on? What the hell is wrong with you? What’s happening?”

He tried to speak, to explain, but doing so required a depth of concentration that he couldn’t afford right now. Every part of him was focused on the road as he accelerated past 50, pushing up to 60 and even faster. The world blurred around him, becoming mere smears of color that resolved themselves into images just long enough for him to notice. He swerved around other vehicles with inches to spare, the truck weaving and wobbling all over the road.

They wouldn’t head back to town, he thought. Too slow. Traffic. Where does this road lead?

The road curved abruptly past a stand of trees, pulling away from the city and heading towards the mountains. The number of other cars thinned significantly and then he saw it.

A flicker of silver, very far up ahead.

He had to hope it was the minivan. He jammed his foot down harder on the gas which didn’t do much because he was already flooring it.

“RYAN!” Dylan shouted.

Ryan flinched, but his hands stayed steady on the wheel, keeping them on the road—barely. “Sorry,” he grunted. “Things went south.”

“You don’t say?” Dylan let out a high-pitched laugh that was near hysterical. He had his body pressed back against the seat, gripping the door handle and the center console for all he was worth. “You’re hurt! What the hell happened? What are we doing?”

He’s never going to get in a car with me again after this.

Keeping his eyes trained on the silver speck in the distance, he tried to explain. “Dylan. There were these shapeshifters. Coyote and bear. They thought I was someone else.”

“I don’t understand.”

He managed to shove out the rest of the words, but he could see that he still hadn’t gotten the message through. “These people have Hunter. I saw him.”

A lightning bolt of pain shook through Dylan at these words. The force of it echoing through their bond was almost enough to make him jerk on the wheel hard enough to send him into the ditch; however, the pain quickly faded and was replaced with a sort of fury unlike anything the world had ever experienced before.

There was no force of nature in the world quite like the wrath of a frightened parent.

“Drive faster,” Dylan snarled.

Ryan tried to obey but the truck was at its limit. The speedometer needle was waving back and forth crazily between the 70 and 200 notches, as he had clearly pushed the vehicle too hard and broken something, but he could just tell that they weren’t going any faster.

Then, suddenly, the silver speck on the distance winked out.

“Fuck!” Ryan exclaimed. They were passing by all sorts of side roads that clearly led to different parts of the nearby mountain and these paths showed no sign of becoming sparser. He had no way of knowing which one up ahead the minivan might have taken.

“Slow down!” Dylan said.

Ryan would have stared at him if he trusted himself to look away from the road. “Drive faster? Slow down? What do you want, Dilly?”

Dylan grabbed his wrist with wrought-iron strength. “Slow. Down.” His voice dripped with venom. “We need to be able to see!”

Thank god for logical omegas.

Ryan stomped on the brakes now, skidding all over the road as he brought his speed down to a more manageable level. It made him feel like he was on the verge of going crazy to have to crawl along like this, but he resisted the urge to speed up again.

He looked around, staring at all the roads, some of which were paved, and others which were hardly more than dirt paths, trying to decide which one he would take if he was a dirty kidnapper.

Dylan grabbed at him again and pointed to their right. Just up ahead, dust still hung in the air from where something moving at an incredibly fast speed had turned onto a dirt road. Fresh tire tracks tore through the packed soil, veering off to flatten the grass before coming back onto the path again. “Turn there.”

Ryan obeyed, turning onto the road. Huge plumes of dust thrown into the air drifted over the surface of the road ahead. He plowed right through the clouds, grit scattering against the windshield. His shoulders were really starting to ache now and he could feel blood soaking his clothes, but he ignored the sensation and just pressed on.

The road led towards the mountains, heading deep into those beginning hills which rose at all sides to transport them into a different world. Though only grass covered these hills at first, the closer they got to the mountain, the more trees began to crop up until suddenly they were deep in the middle of a forest. The transition came so suddenly that there could be no predicting it until they were already there.

Because of the way the road rose and fell with the hills, it was impossible to see very far in the distance. There were also other roads branching off this one and he had no way of knowing which one the minivan might have taken. He watched for more signs of disturbance, but the forest undergrowth was such a tangled mess here that it was impossible to tell.

All he could hope for was a glimpse of silver.

Beside him, Dylan was a bouncing, writhing bundle of nerves, twisting around and craning his neck, trying to look in all directions at one time.

And then Ryan saw it. Around the bend and through the trees, a glimmer of exactly the silver he had been hoping for. The minivan was far ahead, but it didn’t seem to be moving very quickly. Given that they were heading steadily upwards all the while, Ryan figured there was a damn good reason for that. No one wanted to crash down the side of a mountain.

However, he was also damn sure that that was exactly what he was going to try to do.

He jammed his foot down on the gas and the truck shot forward again, although in a grudging manner as if it hadn’t forgiven him for his prior abuse of it.

This thing is going to be ready for the junk heap by the time I’m done with it.

Be that as it may, it was one insignificant detail amidst a whole mess of others. The life of a young pup was worth more than his truck. Anyone’s life was.

“Do you see it?” Ryan panted.

“I see it,” Dylan replied grimly. He was still gripping the door, but now he was leaning forward too, straining as if it would allow him to see better. “What are we going to do? Where’s it going? Where are they taking Hunter?”

His brain was thick and foggy from racing thoughts but he tried to think through them, to answer the question posed to him. “This is east,” he said. Mostly east, with a lot of winding back and forth, but that little detail was insignificant. “Mexico is to the west. That’s where they’re supposed to be heading. So they aren’t trying to go there. They’re shaking us off first. Thinking we’ll get lost in the mountains.”

“But we won’t.”

“Damn right we won’t,” Ryan snarled. His foot twitched on the gas and the truck struggled up another few ticks in speed, but it was starting to level out again. It wasn’t made for these slick dusty roads and the tires just weren’t getting enough traction.

The trees outside were mere blurs of green and shadow, the forest whipped into a nondescript smear by the speed he was flying through it. Up ahead, the minivan was getting closer and closer, but not yet close enough to do anything about it.

Suddenly, the van veered off to the left where there was no road. Dylan shrieked with shock and fury and fear, suspecting the worst. Beneath the struggling roar of the engine and the wobbly cadence of tires pounding over packed dirt, Ryan listened for the first crunch of impact as the minivan started to roll.

The sound never came and he saw why as he came nearer. There was a huge slope, but the angle was gradual and the gaps between the trees were more than wide enough for a huge vehicle like a minivan to pass through. The van hurtled down the slope, leaving twin trails of flattened undergrowth in its wake. At the bottom, the valley leveled out into a stretch of meadow bisected by another road.

“Ryan?” Dylan said. He was no longer leaning forward, but was pressed back again, bracing himself for all he was worth. “You aren’t...”

He was.

“Fuck!”

They went over the slope at full speed. There was an instant of weightlessness which was almost euphoric. As an animal confined mostly to the land, with limited forays into the water, Ryan hadn’t ever really understood the power of flight. He thought he had, but here in this moment where they were gliding through the air with the ground dropping away beneath them, he realized that he’d had no idea all along.

And then the arc of descent began, and they plummeted back towards earth, landing awkwardly on two tires and skidding sharply to the right. A tree loomed straight ahead, and he was about to hit it full-on. Someone screamed. It might have been him. Then they were blasting by the tree with the driver’s side mirror now lost forever to be claimed by the forest; Ryan’s fists gripped the steering wheel hard enough to make the plastic crack. He didn’t dare believe that he had survived that, that his instincts had managed to save them even now.

But they had!

It was a relatively straight shot from here down to the road at the bottom of the valley, which the minivan was heading for at a comparatively ponderous speed. Ryan had no idea why they were going so slow—maybe to protect their cargo—but he had no qualms about letting gravity take over the truck. Already moving at a blistering speed, now they were going even faster than that. At this point, the truck would flip if he tried to slow it down.

Which meant there was only one thing to do.

“Dilly?”

“Yeah?”

Brace for impact, was what he wanted to say. But the moment was upon them and he didn’t have time to get the words out because he was busy wrenching the steering wheel around for all he was worth.

For a moment, nothing seemed to happen. He saw the silver metal flank of the minivan right in front of him and knew that he was going to die. The impact would shove the steering wheel into his chest, shattering his rib cage. Best-case scenario, he would break his neck and die instantly.

Then, the world spun and the collision came with a surprisingly dull sound. Everything came to a very abrupt end, including him.

No one who has ever been in a car wreck can remember the moment of impact. There is always the instant leading up to it, then a flash of darkness that probably lasts no more than a second but which seems to be an eternity. Everything is lost, like a preview of death.

But then, the world returns. Life returns in a jolt, with everything hazy at first but otherwise more or less where it should be.

That was how the impact was for Ryan. He submerged from the eternity of darkness like a man surfacing above deep waters, drawing in a huge gasp of air to remind himself that he still lives. Everything was blurry and he seemed to be swaying, because his vision wavered, but he was otherwise aware. With a few blinks, his vision returned properly, and he assessed the situation with almost cold clarity.

His plan had worked.

At the very last second, he brought the truck around from a head-on collision to one which involved the body and bed of his truck. In fact, if he hadn’t been going so fast, he probably wouldn’t have had the momentum he needed to be able to drift so much.

He ached in such a way that he could almost believe he hadn’t ever felt pain before. Every muscle in his entire body felt as if it had been stretched to its limit before snapping like a rubber band. Weak, tremulous shivers jittered through him as he looked over at Dylan.

Dylan was very much aware, staring at him with his mouth open wide. He looked stunned. No, he looked positively mutinous, as if his anger had transcended the boundary of simple emotions and become something all in a league of its own.

Sorry, Ryan thought, but he wasn’t really sorry. Ahead of him, he could see the minivan and the massive amount of damage that he’d done to it. Great belches of black smoke—never a good sign—puffed from the exhaust pipe. The engine under the hood seemed to be smoking in a similar manner, though it might have just been the dust. A massive dent had caved in one entire side of the van, making it look as if the metal had just been bitten away by some giant in need of minerals. The back bumper hung on by only a few shreds, bouncing all over the place as the van tried to head off further down the road. It was succeeding, though in a sad, not-exactly-correct sort of way. Whatever damage he’d done to the surface of it was clearly not the full extent, as the van didn’t seem capable of going more than 20 mph now.

Ryan jammed his foot down on the gas. Nothing happened for an incredibly long, horrific moment and then the truck surged forward again, gaining rapidly on the van. He didn’t really have a way to tell exactly how bad the damage was to his own vehicle, since both his mirrors were gone and he couldn’t look away from the road to try to see under his own power, but the angle of the collision seemed to have left his own engine relatively unscathed.

He rammed the front bumper of his truck against the rear of the minivan, making both vehicles shudder and jump around. Pain stole his breath away and Dylan whimpered, but he couldn’t stop now and rammed the van again. Its rear bumper came loose, flopping limply into the middle of the road. Ryan swerved around it and nudged against the van for a third time, which was about when he realized that this wasn’t doing anything other than giving the van a little speed boost.

Fuck, he thought. Now what?

“Don’t you know anything?” Dylan rasped.

Ryan remembered that he had a mechanic here with him, someone with an intimate knowledge of how to put things together. Coincidentally, this also meant that he knew how to break things. After all, a mechanic needed to be able to figure out how something had come about in order to be able to fix it in such a way as to prevent the same problem from occurring again.

Which meant Dylan had seen his fair share of cars fresh from wrecks, and knew how those tended to work.

“Tap it from the side.”

The road curved up ahead. The minivan followed the curve but Ryan came at it straight, going through the undergrowth for a moment before rejoining the road. When he did, he jerked on the wheel and sent the side of the front of his truck slapping sideways into the rear of the minivan.

The van wobbled, fishtailing. Everything hung in the balance for a moment. It would have been so easy for the drivers to break out of that fishtail, to continue onward as if nothing had happened, but the van was no longer capable of following the orders given to it. It slid sideways off the road and came to a rest against a stand of trees.

The truck blasted past, but Ryan slammed his foot on the brakes and jumped out before it had completely stopped. He grabbed the keys from the ignition as he went, and jammed them in his pocket. Dylan was at his side in an instant as they headed for the minivan.

The van’s front doors opened and the two kidnapper wolves leapt out. Ryan hadn’t gotten a good look at them before but seeing them now, he wasn’t really very impressed. They were both beta wolves. He thought it was odd that most of the shapeshifters they had encountered in this venture were beta, but the detail was an insignificant one, quickly forgotten.

Ryan bared his fangs at them, automatically stepping in front of Dylan to protect him. “Give up, you sick fucks. We just want the kid.”

The larger of the two wolves shook his head, flashing a menacing grin. “Can’t do it. He’s ours now. We got paid for it. Least we can do is see this through.”

Dylan stepped forward from behind Ryan, shoving past him. “That’s my son,” Dylan said. “You heartless fucking bastards, I don’t care how much you’ve been paid. You took my son and now you’re going to be the ones who pay.”

“Yeah, right. Fucking try us, little man!”

Ryan moved to stand at Dylan’s side but he was stopped when the omega threw out one arm in front of him. “Ryan, no. This is my fight. Not yours.”

“They’ll kick your ass, Dilly!”

“No,” Dylan murmured. “They won’t.”

Ryan shouldn’t have believed him, but something happened in that moment which made it impossible not to. A fragment of thought, a shard of conviction, echoed in his mind from a source that didn’t belong to him. He was feeling what Dylan felt, picking up on what his friend was broadcasting.

Dylan was a wolf. He might be a sweet omega, soft and rough all at once, the sort of man who could wrap the world around his little finger with only a few words, but he was a wolf all the same. Wild animalistic desires raced through his veins. He was strength and freedom and love and instinct all wrapped up together in one devastating package.

But he was more than even that, because he was also a parent wolf. He had given the world a child from his own body, a child who was his world. He would fight to the death to protect his cub, and he would fight with the strength of all the others who had come before him because he wasn’t simply one person. He was one of many, a long line crafted of that love. And love might be gentle, but it also burned fierce enough to raze down an entire forest if that was what it would take to protect what was his.

Two men—two wolves—who had done his son wrong were never going to stand a chance.

I can’t believe I didn’t see all this before. Dylan, how much don’t I know about you?

Ryan nodded and took a step backwards, leaving Dylan to stand alone. “Okay,” he whispered. “Go get ‘em, baby.”

“Get Hunter out of their car. This won’t last long.”

Ryan nodded and headed off for the van, though he couldn’t help but to look back when Dylan let out a resounding snarl that would have scared an ordinary human to death.

Dylan dropped down into his wolf form. Smoky gray, he was the shadowy embodiment of all the dark feelings he had been struggling with for so long. His pelt was bushed out, making him appear twice as large as he actually was. He lowered his head and lifted his tail, assuming a dominant position. And though he was an omega, in this moment he was also dominant. A mother could be nothing less.

The other shifters also transformed. One of them was lighter gray, while the other was a rich russet brown. They both looked rather ordinary, which was astonishing to Ryan. He couldn’t have been able to tell that these wolves were child-stealing bastards if he’d just passed them by randomly on the street. He hated that. They deserved to be marked, to be scarred, and he hoped that Dylan would give them exactly that.

The light gray wolf, who looked a little ragged around the edges, made the first move. He darted in toward Dylan’s flank. White teeth glistened, trailing silver saliva. Dylan whipped around with lightning fast reflexes, fueled by his adrenaline, fueled by motherhood, and met the gray wolf’s jaws with his own. They grappled like battling alphas, mouths locked, pushing and shoving, each attempting to knock the other over onto their back in a submissive position. While the other wolf had weight on him, Dylan was fighting with fury at his side.

The brown wolf jumped in. All three wolves toppled over and the fighting dissolved from strategic grappling to a chaos of whipping limbs and flying fur. They formed a knot so tangled that they might never become unraveled again.

For Hunter’s sake, Ryan hoped they would.

He ached to join the fray, literally ached for it, but he knew his interference would only come back to bite him in the ass. And besides, he was beginning to hear moans coming from the back of the van.

Ryan turned to the back door of the van and pulled at it but it wouldn’t give in to his attentions. At first he assumed it was locked, but further tugging confirmed for him that it was only jammed. The crash had ensured that there was no way he was ever going to be able to open a door on this side.

He circled around to the other side and tried that one. It was difficult to tell that any damage had been done at all from this angle and the door slid open wide to reveal that the middle and back rows of seats had been shoved down. Lying prone on the floor without any sort of binding was a kid.

Hunter.

Hunter lay on his side facing Ryan, but he was angled so that much of his features weren’t visible. It was impossible to tell if he was awake, or if he was injured.

“Hunter,” Ryan whispered.

He could hear the battle going on just a few feet away and the fear was overpowering, but he knew he had to do this. It was what Dylan wanted. Even if Dylan was beaten, even if the kidnappers escaped, Hunter would be safe.

The little boy didn’t stir, although by now Ryan could tell that he was at least breathing. The rhythm was slow and deep, as if he was sleeping -though how someone could sleep through this racket, he had no idea.

“Hunter!” he repeated, a little louder than before.

That seemed to get his attention. His breathing hitched but then settled out into the same even rhythm though his eyes were now open. They were the beautiful green of new leaves, like some tender herb which had been carefully raised up in a sheltered garden. Hunter moved slightly, hands curling against the floor of the van. He moaned a little and tilted his head, then sank down again.

“Hunter!” Ryan said, putting a bit of command in his voice. He was aware of one of the other wolves lunging at his back, only to be intercepted and pulled away again. With a supreme effort, he ignored it. “Wake up, Hunter!”

The kid stirred around again, hands flexing once more. He moved his head as though it was too heavy for his neck, picking it up only a few inches to look in Ryan’s direction.

And Ryan was looking at himself.

The eyes weren’t the right shade, and the hair was a duller color, yellow rather than blond. However, Ryan knew that his work outside in the sun had lightened the color of his own hair. Hunter’s locks were very long and heavy, nearly reaching his shoulders, but with a haircut he might end up with a shaggy head of waves. His shoulders were just beginning to widen, and he had the small muscles of an active child, one who enjoyed running around and climbing trees.

Knock about 30 years off Ryan’s age and this was him.

“I think he’s going to be an alpha. Just like his Daddy.”

“Oh, my god,” Ryan whispered. “He didn’t mean Arden.”

And now all the hints he had been missing throughout the years came flooding in, all the signs which had made no sense until just now. He had been so blind, so ignorant, so inconceivably dense.

The reason he never saw much of Hunter was because Dylan didn’t want Ryan to recognize himself in the boy. Hell, he’d seen pictures of himself in the scrapbooks his mother kept where he looked exactly like this.

But even before that, even before Hunter was born, there were signs.  He and Dylan slept together, and then Dylan went off and found Arden to be his mate. Ryan had assumed all this time that this just meant Dylan had wanted to put that instance as far behind him as possible. However, since he now knew that Dylan had always been gay, the only conclusion he could draw was that Dylan had become pregnant.

With his child.

He wanted Ryan to never know about this, because he knew that Ryan hadn’t returned his feelings.

“Oh, my god,” he whispered again. There were so many things in their lives that he had fucked up, blindly believing that he wasn’t who he really was.

A soft moan broke him out of his thoughts and he looked back at Hunter, who had managed to prop himself up on his elbows. The kid was swaying slightly, head still wobbly on his neck. Now that Ryan had a better look at him, he could see the haze in Hunter’s eyes and the slack line of his mouth.

He was drugged. He’d probably been drugged from the very beginning. His jacket was torn where he’d ripped off the scraps to leave a trail, but Ryan thought it was a miracle the little guy had been able to do even that much.

“Daddy?” Hunter murmured. He tried to rub his eyes and, upon nearly falling over, seemed to think better of it.

“No, buddy. It’s Uncle Ryan. Remember me?”

He doubted that Hunter would. The last time he’d seen the kid, it had only been in passing and that was at least two years ago now. However, he had to try and establish some familiarity between them so that he didn’t get attacked for trying to help.

Hunter closed his eyes and then opened them again. “Oh...Uncle Ryan. Daddy talks about you a lot.”

“He does?”

Of course he does. Because apparently he’s been pining after me for our entire lives and I’ve been so blind about it. Of course he talks about me. I’m the only friend he has, because he made it that way.

“Yeah. Is he here? Is Daddy here?” Hunter’s voice was fading fast, his little reserve of strength running dry.

Ryan leaned down and slightly inside the van. The car reeked of smoke, body odor, and fast food. “He sure is. He’s kicking the asses of those bad men who took you. He told me to come get you. You’re safe now, honey.” He reached in but Hunter made no move towards him.

“That’s a bad word.”

Ryan stared at him, confused.

“Ass,” Hunter clarified in a slurred whisper.

Good god. Was this what it was like to have kids?

“Well,” Ryan said, “sometimes it’s okay to say bad words when bad stuff happens. You see?”

Hunter said nothing.

Ryan held out his hand. “Everything’s going to be okay now. Please come here, Hunter. It’s okay.”

For a moment, nothing happened. Ryan thought he might have to resort to extreme measures, just grabbing the kid and dealing with the consequences later, when Hunter’s little hand came out and settled in his.

Hunter didn’t react at all, but at that touch, Ryan felt it. He wouldn’t have known what it was unless he had just watched Dylan go apeshit-crazy on those two wolves out of his parental love. That’s what this was. Love. Instead of making him go into a rage, it instead left him feeling soft and gentle and warm on the inside.

This must be what Dylan feels all the time.

If this was what it was to love a child, then perhaps dealing with their annoying tendencies wouldn’t be so bad after all.

Holding Hunter’s hand, Ryan pulled him out and into his arms. Hunter weighed next to nothing, though his sleepy warmth was reassuring in its own way. He turned around just in time to see Dylan disappear beneath the weight of the brown wolf. Fear shot through him, and he was on the verge of dropping Hunter and lunging into the battle when the brown wolf suddenly went flying away, propelled from Dylan’s back from the sheer force of his body bucking. Dylan lunged after the wolf but didn’t continue his attack and it was easy to see why: the wolf wasn’t moving. He was breathing, but it looked as if he’d hit his head on the way down and knocked himself out cold.

Dylan turned around and looked at Ryan. His fur had been torn out in clumps and half of one ear was missing, streaking his face was blood. His jaws were dripping with saliva and yet more blood, and his paws were sticky with scarlet where he’d had some of his nails ripping out by the root during his fight.

However, he might as well have been unharmed.

“Hunter!” he shouted, voice warping as he went from wolf to human in the middle of it. He ran for Ryan and grabbed Hunter away, pressing his son close to his chest and kissing the top of his head over and over. Leaning against the minivan, Dylan stroked his fingers through his son’s hair, stroking and coddling his unconscious form. Tears streamed through the dirt and blood on his face. The words pushed from his lips emerged incomprehensible on a wave of sobs, but his eyes spoke volumes for him anyway. Relief and fear and grief mingled, along with the last fading echoes of motherly fury.

Ryan watched them, standing back awkwardly because he didn’t want to interfere. Hunter might have been his son, and Dylan might think of him as Hunter’s father, but he didn’t feel like a dad. He had no part in that celebration. It just wouldn’t be right.

He went to his truck and grabbed his jumper cable from the bed, using it to tie up the remaining kidnapper. Where the other one went he had no idea, but something told him that the guy probably wouldn’t be coming back anytime soon.

Once that was done, he waited and watched, and pretended that he wasn’t watching. Though he did want to be included in the celebration, especially when Hunter stirred a little to greet Dylan, he kept to himself.

That was, he kept to himself until Dylan came over to him and grabbed onto him with one arm—the other was still busy with Hunter.

Dylan kissed him. The kiss was dry and chaste and not at all romantic, but it conveyed so many words that it might as well have been a speech.

When Dylan pulled away, Ryan just looked at him. “What was that for?” he asked.

“Just...thank you.”

Neither of them expected to have come this far, to succeed so thoroughly. It was a miracle, as if all the stars had aligned just right to make this possible.

“I’d do anything for you,” Ryan said, and he meant it. However, he didn’t know just how he meant it, in what capacity he was saying those words. Was he talking to a member of his pack, to his best friend, to his lover, the bearer of his child? He just didn’t know. And quite suddenly he was realizing that all the things he had been pushing away to be dealt with later...well, later was going to arrive pretty damn soon.

Dylan looked as if he was about to say something else when a car drove across the road all the way up on the other side of the valley, which they had used as their shortcut. The car didn’t have its lights on but there was no mistaking it for anything but what it was: a police cruiser.

The driver slammed on their brakes upon catching a glimpse of them down below. Ryan could feel the power of the cop’s stare even from where he stood. For a moment, nothing happened. Then, several more cars appeared but slowed down and went back the way they had come almost immediately.

“He must be telling them to come down by this actual road.”

As soon as the other cars were gone, the driver of the first cruiser opened his door and then stepped out. He went around to the back of his cruiser and brought out several orange traffic cones, which he placed about ten feet in front of and behind his cruiser.

That completed, he started off at a walk down the valley.

Ryan made a mental bet with himself about who would reach them first, the man or the cars. As it turned out, he lost that bet.

The cop had his gun drawn but was holding it in an easy grip down by his side, prepared but not threatening. “No sudden movements now,” he said. His voice was very deep for a human but it still didn’t seem very threatening. Ryan relaxed. “Are you folks injured?”

Everyone present was bloody by this point, including Hunter, since he’d been held by both of them. It seemed like a real fucking stupid question to Ryan but he figured he would be polite and hold his tongue. He didn’t think he had the strength to start an argument.

He did, however, have just enough patience to pretend to be a goody-two-shoes professional, though he damn sure didn’t look like it.

“Yes, sir,” Ryan said. “We’re both hurt, and the kid has been drugged. He needs medical attention. And then we’ve got a bastard over here,” he jerked his head in the direction of the trussed-up wolf, now in human form, “who would probably like a few bandages.”

He would let the sick fucker die and rot out here if it was up to him, but that probably wasn’t the best thing to say right now. He would be the first person to preach about the benefits of speaking your mind, but he did know there were occasions when it was best to just hold your tongue instead.

The cop approached warily, looking around at the havoc that had been wreaked upon the vehicles and their occupants. He whistled and holstered his gun, though he kept one hand near it just in case. “Mind telling me what happened here? And why you’ve got the ‘bastard’ over here all wrapped up like a Christmas present?”

Ryan nodded. “That probably looks bad.”

“It sure doesn’t look good, son.”

Ryan rubbed the back of his neck, which was starting to ache. He figured he probably had whiplash. Hell, he figured that he had a lot of little injuries that a doctor could helpfully name for him and then treat with aspirin. “I’m sure you’re familiar with the Hunter Johnson case.”

“The kid that went missing? Damn near everyone and their neighbor knows about it. What’s your...Oh.”

The sound of realization was slow and drawn out, clearly played up for time while the cop readjusted his mental attitude. No doubt he’d been sent their way to investigate a couple of road raging maniacs, but he had stumbled upon something much bigger.

“Okay,” the cop said. “For the record, my name is Officer Dunham. You can call me Greg.”

I don’t think I will.

Greg surveyed the wreckage again and then shook his head, before looking over at Dylan. “You’re Dylan Johnson, then. I recognize you from your picture.”

“My picture?” Dylan frowned, not understanding. Ryan didn’t really understand either, though he thought he had an inkling of what it just might be. Hell, he’d bet his boat that he knew what it was. Dylan continued to stroke Hunter’s head. The kid was out again, drooling on his chest. “How would you have my picture? I’m no one.”

“So, you don’t know.”

Dylan looked skyward as if trying to gather his strength, though it was pretty obvious he was losing that battle. “Look, officer, I’ve just been through hell. I don’t want to play games or be told how far I am behind the times. If you could just enlighten me, that’d be great.”

Ryan reached out and touched his waist. “Hey, easy.”

To his credit, the cop didn’t look all that perturbed. He had probably seen things that were a thousand times worse than an annoyed, exhausted man. “Mr. Johnson, your wife was arrested last night and you were reported missing. The whole country has been watching out for you.”

This clarification didn’t really seem to do much to clear up Dylan’s confusion. He gripped his son tighter, no longer stroking him, but holding the back of his head with a protective hand. “Arden was arrested? For god’s sake, why?”

“She’s the one who caused all this,” Greg said. That was all he managed to explain before the other police cars finally arrived down the proper road, flooding in with their lights flashing to light up the forest. More cops spilled out of their vehicles, some of whom were radioing for an ambulance while others were simply shouting orders.

Ryan watched this development until a cop came by and grabbed his arm to speak to him separately. He went willingly, knowing now that even though the chase was over, this wasn’t the end.