Chapter Two
Time was of the essence. Logan knew that. Which was precisely why he was currently flooring his Harley on I 287. As soon as Mr. Petridis left his office, he began his research. Constantine told him what he knew of the wolves from Greece as relayed to him by his shifter daughter, and it didn’t take long for Logan to trace the Kostastakis wolves from Greece to New Jersey. Through his contacts, he also discovered they had several properties scattered throughout Northern Jersey as well as some in upstate New York. What he hadn’t yet figured out was in which one of them Teresa was being held and how much of this information Theodora had pertaining to these locations.
His reaction to the photograph notwithstanding, the human girl would have to be his first acquisition. She was the one in more immediate danger. “What the fuck was she thinking?” he muttered into his helmet not for the first time since learning of her brazen act. A human girl going after a pack of shifters, and one of them an alpha no less, was on a suicide mission.
He managed to re-trace her steps to one of the houses in New Jersey and when he finally arrived there, leaving his bike out of sight, what he saw puzzled him. A few wolf-shifter men lay twitching on the ground. He then heard a piercing scream coming from inside of the cabin, making his hackles stand, and his inner wolf furious.
He rushed inside. Thea was on her knees with her hands restrained behind her. The man in front of her had his hand poised to slap her … again, by the looks of the red mark on her cheek. He saw one more twitching shifter in his peripheral vision but paid no mind to him for the moment. The fact these men dared to lay hands on a woman had already signed their death warrants, but as he sniffed the air, inhaling the intoxicating scent of Thea, he immediately resolved to make their deaths that much more excruciating.
“Mate,” he said aloud. There was no mistaking it. Her earthy feminine musk permeated his senses, along with a distinct ambrosia underlining it that would call only to his wolf. His body shook with need and fury. He growled loudly as his canines dropped and his nails elongated into sharp claws. The two men instantly turned in his direction and then he smiled wickedly at their identical fearful expressions as they must have realized an alpha had just stepped into their presence. He could see their legs shaking, and the pair of them fighting to keep upright instead of falling to their knees in submission.
Logan’s almost maniacal bloodlust and the need to protect his mate prevented him from doing anything calculated like he would have wanted. Before the two wolves even understood what was happening, they fell dead to the floor, their throats ripped out. He turned to Thea, who was shaking on the ground in undisguised fear—of him. He wondered if she actually thought he’d hurt her, but then again, he had just single-handedly dispatched two men in front of her without so much as a scratch on himself.
He smiled at her, trying to reassure her that she was safe and extended his hand to her after wiping off his blood-stained hand on his shirt. “Come with me if you want to live,” he joked, in a poor imitation of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Austrian accent.
Instead of taking his proffered hand, Thea just stared at him, her eyes unblinking, and then she reached for a pink object beside her and lunged forward with it, making contact with his thigh.
“Ow! Fuck!” He growled as shockwaves ran up and down his leg.
He saw Thea’s eyes widen. “You didn’t … you didn’t fall.”
“Was I supposed to?” he asked, his voice rising an octave. The pain in his leg was starting to subside, but it still fucking hurt.
He then glanced over at the still-twitching figure on the floor and recalled the men outside in the same state. When he looked back at Thea, she had just managed to stand. He reached for her when she swayed a little, but she swatted him away.
“Don’t you touch me,” she spat at him. He could see that she was still afraid of him, but she squared her shoulders determinedly and lifted her chin. “And stop looking at me like that!”
“Like—”
“Like you own me. Like I’m your mate.” She emphasized the last word as if it was something dirty. “I heard you call me that, and I am telling you right now, that ain’t happening. No one owns me!”
Logan shook his head. It wasn’t hard for him to come to the conclusion she could only associate the word to mean something negative, given what had happened to her sister, what had been happening to Teresa since she was just a small child, but he had no time right now to go into detail with her on what being mated truly meant. Instead, he was just about to tell her they needed to get the hell out of Dodge before the twitching figures stopped twitching—not that he’d have too much trouble dispatching them as well, but he didn’t want the unnecessary bloodshed or for her to be more afraid of him than she already was—when she bolted.
****
Thea wasn’t surprised when the psycho wolf easily caught up to her. What did surprise her, however, was that the tall, and extremely handsome, she begrudgingly admitted to herself, brute swiped her feet from under her and ran the rest of the way cradling her in his arms. He then gently deposited her on the back of a motorcycle.
She immediately brought her leg around and hopped off. “You can’t just kidnap me,” she squeaked.
“I’m not kidnapping you, Theodora. I’m rescuing you.” He huffed in frustration. “Your father hired me.” He reached for a helmet. “Now let’s get this thing on you and get out of here.”
She was about to protest again about not getting the answers she came here for, when her supposed savior interjected. “I’m going to get Teresa back, too. I promise.”
Thea could sense the sincerity of his words and she also didn’t put it past her father to hire someone, especially given how frantic he sounded on the phone when she last spoke to him, but there was also the small matter of this lunatic thinking that he owned her. She realized, though, that she’d have to deal with that after he helped rescue her sister, especially since she now knew her weapons would not work on all wolves.
“My car,” she stated. “It’s a rental, but they’ll be able to trace it to back to me.”
“I am going to assume the men twitching on the ground will recover eventually—I’ll have questions for you about that later,” he said. “They won’t need a rental car to identify you. They’ve seen your face, and no doubt knew who you were the minute you stepped foot here.” He shook his head at her again. “What the hell were you thinking? Never mind. No time for that now.” He practically shoved the helmet into her arms. “Put this on,” he ordered.
Everything in her wanted to defy him, just as further proof he had no claim on her, but protecting her head won over. She dutifully put on the helmet.
“Tell me where the car is and I’ll have someone come get it.”
“Don’t you need a helmet?” she asked petulantly.
He gave her a sly smile. “I only wear one for show … and to avoid getting a ticket.” He knocked on his head and said, “Hard head. Let’s go.”
She put her hand out, palm facing forward, to stop him from lifting her. She was perfectly capable of getting on a motorcycle on her own. He held up his own hands in acquiescence, but she could see that he was warring with himself not to throw her onto his bike. Once again, she had to begrudgingly admit how incredibly hot he looked as he straddled his Harley. She had to clear her throat before speaking, and then she told him the location of her car, which was about a half mile away, before climbing on behind him.
“Hold on,” she heard him say before they sped off.