Chapter Six

Chapter Six

“Fucking coyote scum.”

Mick grunted in agreement. After breakfast, he had brought Zeke back to the site of Renny’s trashed vehicle, or as Zeke called it in his official deputy voice, the crime scene.

“They leave her anything?”

“She had a handful of papers when I found her here, but that’s about it.”

Zeke curled a lip and kicked a chewed and stained tennis shoe across the pavement. “Fuckers.”

“Agreed. Now can you do your job and gather evidence? Or whatever the hell you’re going to do. I still say we should just track the bastards down and gut them. Have done with it.”

“Haven’t ruled that out, but first things first.” Zeke reached into his cruiser and grabbed a digital camera. “Jaeger wants this on the record. Renny’s new in town, so people might wonder about her story. They won’t after they see this.”

Mick stifled a snarl and paced out of the way while the deputy moved carefully around the car and its scattered contents, documenting the scene. Personally, he could care less what the citizens of Alpha thought about his mate and her story. Anyone who wanted to challenge her would have to go through him first.

Shit. Now his friends had him thinking of the little she-wolf as his mate. He needed to slam on the brakes before he actually found himself biting and claiming her. They already had enough to worry about.

First, as far as he was concerned, was where to find the hunting party that had pursued Renny north from California and attacked her on his land the night before. Presumably, they were the same thugs who had destroyed her car and her belongings. No one had seen them since he’d chased them off, but the wreckage in front of him provided sufficient evidence that they hadn’t left the area. And that meant they could still be a threat to his mate.

Double shit. To Renny. Ren-ny, not mate. Stubborn wolf.

While Zeke played by his department rule book, Mick used the time to get a leg up on the predatory coyotes who were about to become his prey. He moved around the shoulder of the road in a tightening spiral pattern, using his nose to gather up and analyze the scent of each member of the hunting party. The cool mud did a good job of holding on to the distinct odors.

He counted five of them, which lined up with what Renny had told them about Geoffrey’s pals. The strongest scent was easy to place, since he’d gotten a good whiff of it the night before. It belonged to the coyote he’d shot, the one who had ripped open Renny’s flank and side. Bryce, she had called the bastard. He’d be the first to die.

“Dude, you’re getting fuzzy.” Mick looked up to find his friend watching him with an expression of mingled concern and amusement. “Remember, we are on a public highway that humans use, even if it is in the middle of Bumblefuck. You need to get a grip.”

Mick fought back his aggressive response and took a deep breath. Zeke was right. He had to get better control.

Things were different from the way they’d been when he was a pup. Humans knew about the existence of shifters these days, but the Others still tried to keep from rubbing the mundane species’ noses in the evidence. Shifting in public was frowned upon, while shifting into a wereform—the half-human and half-beast shape of human horror movies—was absolutely forbidden anywhere humans could see. Plus, shifting required getting naked, and humans had all sorts of laws about that.

“I take it you got their scents?” Zeke asked. “Then let’s get moving. I’ve got enough evidence here to charge them with destruction of property, harassment, and menacing. Oh, and littering. If we can round them up, I can haul them into town and keep them at least overnight. Maybe we can put the fear of the Goddess into them.”

Mick would settle for fear of himself.

The men stripped, stored their clothing inside their vehicles, and locked up before shifting just inside the cover of the trees. Then, shoulder to shoulder (or maybe shoulder to armpit), wolf and lion set off along the coyotes’ scent trail.

Mick led the way, his canine nose more attuned to following specific scents. Zeke could draw air in over his Jacobson’s organ and taste odors on the breeze, but Mick could follow the minute traces of it left on the ground and vegetation the coyotes had passed. Five of them had traveled this way, the slightly fresher quality indicating it had been on their way back from trashing the car. Hopefully, that meant it would take him to where they had decided to hole up overnight. With luck, they might even still be there.

When they reached the trailhead, Zeke shifted back first. “Look at this. Fuckers camp like frat boys.” He picked up a discarded beer can and crushed it in his fingers. “What kind of shifter treats the woods like this?”

Mick took in the litter that marked the temporary campsite with disgust. Most shifters fell just short of “hippie” on the scale of environmental consciousness. Their connection to nature bred into them a respect for the earth’s remaining wild places that humans just couldn’t match.

He spent a few minutes nosing around the area, drawing in much more concentrated doses of the five coyote scents. He sorted them in his head.

Bryce—or, as Mick liked to think of him, the Dead Man—smelled musty, like something that had begun to mildew and decay. The coppery overlay of blood confirmed that Mick’s shot last night had at least grazed the coyote, but there wasn’t enough of the odor to indicate a serious wound. He would heal quickly, but the bitterness underlying his signature scent made Mick want to curl his lip and sneeze to clear it from his nostrils.

Coyote number two, the one with the next strongest scent profile, bore an edge of something chemical under his natural odor. Mick had detected it before, but most often in humans. It was the scent of an addict, the coyote’s drug of choice leaving a permanent stain that marked his skin and everything he touched.

Three and four had similar base notes, indicating a close blood relationship. Brothers, or cousins, maybe. Three smelled a little more of a sickly sweetness that made Mick’s hackles rise, but he couldn’t put his paw on the cause. He just knew it made him uneasy, and it made the thought of three getting anywhere near his mate inspire him to violent thoughts. Four was less sweet and much earthier, but not like the scent of clean soil. More like mushrooms and skittering insects, earthy but not entirely wholesome.

Number five seemed to leave behind traces of metal and motor oil, like someone who worked with cars on a regular basis—a mechanic. The one most likely responsible for the damaged engine of Renny’s car. Mick’s opinion waffled on him. Five had contributed to his mate’s distress but also provided a reason why she couldn’t leave his territory very easily. The coyote thug had essentially helped force the mates together. Maybe his death would be quicker than the others.

Mick’s human mind struggled for control, but in his fur, his wolf’s instincts held more sway over their thoughts and actions. The man inside him might still be fighting against acknowledging the she-wolf as his mate, but for the wolf outside, it was a done deal. All that was left was the biting.

“So?” Zeke’s voice had him looking up from the tangle of odors to catch the other man’s smirk. “You going to lead the way to where Timmy fell down the well, or what?”

He snarled, but the deputy didn’t look scared. Maybe because they both knew a lone lion could kick a lone wolf’s ass in a fair fight.

That just meant Mick would have to cheat.

Zeke chuckled. “Bite me later, pal. I want to round up these fools before they decide to take another shot at your woman. It will save a lot of paperwork if I don’t have to fill out death reports on them.”

Mick growled but turned his attention back to the business at hand. Now they knew the coyotes had roughed it the night before and camped out in the woods between the highway and his place, but they needed to know where the five of them had gone since then. A slow pass around the perimeter of the rough clearing told him the other trail away from this site led back toward Alpha.

An uneasy feeling prickled his skin. He’d assumed that the coyotes would be doing everything they could to stay under the town’s radar for the simple reason that witnesses naturally made a kidnapping more difficult. Logically, the coyotes should want to get hold of Renny somewhere out of the way, where no one would know she’d gone missing until they had time to get far enough away to thwart any pursuit. But what if the hunting party wasn’t using logic? What if their orders to bring Renny back to Geoffrey made them ignore the dangers of a public attack?

He set off along the trail at a lope, not even bothering to glance back when he heard Zeke cursing. The man could shift and follow him, or he could run naked and barefoot all the way back to Alpha. Mick didn’t care. He just needed to find the fucking coyotes before they found Renny.

Renny’s first thought was a curse, but her second came out of her mouth in a scream. “Molly, run!”

Immediately, her head snapped back, her captor attempting to haul her away from the truck by the hair. Damn, that hurt! The pain jump-started her instinctive fight response, and she reached up and around to grab the attacker’s wrist. Fingernails turned to claws as she dug hard into skin, trying to loosen his grip.

Her eyes teared at the stinging pain in her scalp, but she could still see that Molly hadn’t listened. Instead of running, the blonde had bared a set of impressive fangs and hissed out a challenge.

“Back off, cat,” a voice snarled. “I only want the wolf bitch. Stay out of the way, and I won’t have to hurt you, too.”

“Fuck you.”

Molly sprang forward, sailing toward Renny’s shoulder, clearly aiming to knock her captor on his ass and free her friend from his grip. Unfortunately, she hadn’t spotted the second coyote lurking nearby. Or the third, who’d been crouching down between the parked cars in the lot. Both of them leapt at her, one from behind, one from the side. The one on the left succeeded in intercepting her momentum, forcing it away from Renny and her attacker and slamming Molly into the trunk of a sedan on the opposite side of the aisle.

The lioness shifted into her fur in midair and roared when feline flesh met hard fiberglass. The material dented beneath her weight, but Molly seemed more concerned with striking back at the coyote who’d hit her than assessing the damage to a stranger’s vehicle. Go figure.

The hand in Renny’s hair twisted, dragging her head along with it and stretching her neck to an awkward angle. It pissed her off, but it also pointed her nose in the right direction to get a whiff of who had grabbed her. The sharp, chemical sting of ammonia assaulted her, and she growled.

“Jordan.”

“Ding, ding, ding.” The tweaker laughed, sounding almost more like a hyena than a coyote. Then again, after years of recreational meth use, he was probably about as crazy as a hyena. “Say my name, bitch. Especially make sure you say it to Geoff, so he knows who finally brought you back to him.”

She didn’t waste her breath on a witty retort. She just held it to avoid the man’s stench and let her wolf out of its cage.

Renny had always thought shifting while fully dressed was life’s most miserable experience. Unlike in the movies, clothing didn’t magically disappear or tear away like tissue paper. It tended to tighten and tangle and generally make a person wish she’d stripped before getting furry. But now was not the time for nit-picking; it was the time for survival.

Shifting while someone had a death grip on her hair turned out to be even worse, but that was probably because the clothes she wore at the moment didn’t actually fit all that well, consisting as they did of Mick’s shirt and a pair of too-big yoga pants borrowed from Jaeger’s secretary. The garments pretty much slid away, but she guessed she might have a bald patch on the back of her canine scalp. A handful of her fur remained caught in Jordan’s fist when the rest of her twisted free. What mattered, though, was that the shorter strands and heavier muscle she shifted into allowed her to squirm until her teeth grazed his forearm, opening a gash and forcing him to drop her.

Renny fell to the asphalt with a grunt, but she got her feet back under her in the space of a heartbeat. That was long enough to glance in Molly’s direction and make sure that her friend hadn’t been taken down by the pair of coyotes that continued to harass her. The pair was using pack hit-and-run tactics to keep the lioness busy. One would dart in from the side to strike and then dance out of the way while the other attacked from a different angle to distract and confuse. It was a tactic the Molinas had perfected over the years. Tommy and Will were first cousins and had grown up playing and hunting together. Their routine was smooth and effective.

It was also leaving Renny on her own against Jordan. One-on-one, they were evenly matched. Renny’s wolf might be an overall bigger species than the coyote, but Jordan was a large male and the gender difference pretty much evened out that discrepancy. She thought she might be quicker, but if he’d been using, he might be on the hyperactive dopamine high of the drug, giving him faster reaction times and increased strength to go along with his feelings of invincibility. Plus, she was still dealing with the stiffness and weakness caused by Bryce’s attack. In all, the playing field between them was probably level.

Unless, of course, he’d brought more reinforcements than just Tommy and Will. She thought Bryce had been injured last night. She’d smelled his blood after Mick had fired on him, but she didn’t know how badly he’d been hurt. He might be healed enough to come after her, and he still had the last member of his hit squad, Eric, to back him up. For all she knew, the last two coyotes were lurking just out of sight, ready to charge in and turn the odds against Renny and Molly.

The way things were going, that would be just her luck.

Jordan squealed at the tear of her fangs, reaching out with his good hand to strike the side of her head, even as his injured arm fell to his side. The blow was sloppy and badly executed, but it still managed to catch the side of her skull hard enough to make her ears ring for a second.

She shook her head to clear it. Once the buzzing faded, she could hear the yowling, yipping sounds of battle being waged between Molly and the Molina cousins behind her, but one sound cut through the din with a sharp echo—the sound of a revolver being cocked.

Rather than shifting and taking her on in head-to-head combat, Jordan had chosen the easy way out. As usual. He’d pulled the gun from beneath his jacket and leveled the barrel in Renny’s direction. His eyes glittered with manic glee, and his pockmarked cheeks were drawn into a rictus. His shoulders trembled as if he were laughing to himself. It creeped Renny the hell out.

She froze, half crouched on the pavement, claws digging into the surface in preparation to launch herself at the coyote. Maybe that wasn’t such a good idea. She was fast, but Jordan was high, and he might be able to pull that trigger before she managed to get past his guard and tear his throat out. Did she want to take the risk? After all, he and his gang were under orders to bring her back to Geoffrey alive, but trying to predict the behavior of an addict was like trying to forecast next month’s weather—you could maybe get close in places, but never quite close enough.

“I don’t wanna kill you, Renny.” He paused, giggling. “Well, actually, I don’t give a shit one way or another about killing you, but it would piss Geoff off something fierce. He’s got plans for you.” He leered, as if Renny didn’t already know all about Geoff’s plans. He’d described them to her more than once. Graphically. “He said to bring you back in one piece. But he didn’t mention that the piece couldn’t have any holes in it, now did he?”

She heard a whisper of movement and spun just as a blur of motion came soaring over the top of Molly’s SUV. For a second, Renny’s heart stopped, and she thought Bryce and Eric had arrived to back up their friends, but then Jordan hit the pavement and the hot smell of blood hit her nostrils.

Not the coyotes, a wolf.

Her wolf.

Mick couldn’t see through the crimson haze of rage that clouded his vision, but he didn’t need to. He’d assessed the situation in the parking lot of the secondhand store with one glance from fifty yards away. It was as though Renny acted as a magnet for his gaze; not even the parked cars surrounding her had been enough to keep him from recognizing that his mate was in danger.

The coyote, however, never saw him coming.

He hit the bastard center mass from behind, taking the shortest route to him, which happened to be over the roof of Molly’s truck. The coyote—a user, by the smell of him—lost his breath in a startled grunt and went stumbling off to the side, the gun he’d been pointing at Renny swinging wide and discharging into the tire of a vehicle in the next row.

The smell of gunpowder and oil nearly obscured the scent of shock and fear. Good. Fucker should be afraid of him.

The two-legged shifter maintained his form and caught himself, apparently deciding the gun gave him more of an advantage in this situation than teeth and claws. He was probably right, but Mick could give a shit about being shot. He’d survive anything short of a direct hit to the heart or the brain, and he was willing to bet the tweaker’s hands were shaking too hard to aim that accurately.

“Step away from the bitch, wolf. I already owe you for the bullet you put in Bryce. Two’s just as easy as one.”

Mick simply bared his teeth and stared the coyote down. He kept his eyes on the man, circling to put himself between the gun and his mate’s body. Like he’d already decided, he’d take the bullet if he had to.

At least he didn’t have to divide his attention. Zeke had tailed him like a shadow from the moment he’d first caught Renny’s scent overlapping the trail left by the coyotes. He’d been following their scent closer and closer to town and getting more uneasy with every step they traveled. When he’d traced the group to a retail area, all of his senses had gone on high alert. Zeke had told him that Molly planned to talk Renny into going shopping with her, to replace some of the belongings destroyed by the hunting party.

It had been too much of a coincidence for his comfort. Mick had circled around behind the strip mall on the edge of town, nearly going feral when he caught Renny’s scent mingling with that of the coyotes. He’d made a beeline for the source of the odors and found the skinny, high-as-a-kite ball of mange pointing a gun at his mate.

He had fucking lost it, but it looked like Zeke had kept his head. The deputy had roared at the sight of his sister in her shifted form being harassed by the two coyotes, but he’d maintained enough control to nod to Mick before he went after Molly’s attackers. Mick knew Zeke would handle the pair and keep them from helping the one Mick was going to kill.

Now.

To hell with the gun. Mick sprang forward, and as he had suspected, the coyote was too strung out to shoot him. Reflex may have made his finger tighten on the trigger, but the second bullet went even wider than the first, and this time when Mick hit him, he took him down. The gun flew out of the addict’s hand and skittered across the parking lot, leaving him unarmed and defenseless with two hundred pounds of wolf standing on his chest.

Mick shoved his muzzle right into the fallen man’s face and bared his teeth. He wanted this little prick to see death coming before it ripped his throat out.

Zeke’s voice stopped him an instant before he struck. “Back off, buddy. I’ll take it from here.”

His head whipped around, and he snarled at the deputy. Zeke had resumed his human form, and the coyotes who’d been attacking his sister appeared to have fled. They were nowhere to be seen. Not surprising, considering the chances two medium-sized canines had against a pair of fully grown lions. If they’d stuck around, the Buchanans would have turned them into catnip. As far as Mick was concerned, the asshole under his own claws looked a lot like a nice, juicy Snausage to him.

“Mick.” Zeke stepped forward, his expression grim. “Let him go. He’s under arrest for assault and attempted kidnapping, in addition to all the other charges he and his buddies racked up last night. Let me take him to the sheriff’s office. He might be able to give us some information about where to find his pals.”

“Fuck you,” the coyote spat, and Mick opened his jaw for the kill.

Behind him, Renny let out a whimper.

His bloodlust didn’t disappear, but it sank under the much more urgent need to check on his mate. He had to make sure she wasn’t hurt, and to do that, he needed hands.

He shifted quickly and went to her side, running his fingers over her and checking for injuries. He paid particularly close attention to the semihealed wounds on her ribs and leg, but it didn’t look as if she’d reopened the lacerations. Still, she’d made a noise of distress. What was wrong?

“Um, excuse me, but you are stark-ass naked right now, which is traumatic enough for me to deal with. Did you just pull a pair of handcuffs out of your ass, too?”

Molly’s question had his mate huffing out a sound that could have been a laugh, if Renny had been in her human form. Relief washed over him.

“Of course not.” Zeke’s calm reply was punctuated by the metallic click of the locks engaging. “I stashed a pair in your truck the last time I borrowed it.”

“But you’ve never borrowed my truck while you were on duty. The last time I loaned it to you was when you wanted to help Jessie Vargas haul away some—” Molly’s voice cut off abruptly, followed by gagging noises. “Oh, ew! Gross! Ick! Blech! Yuck! That is not something I need to know about my brother. Argh! Get me some brain bleach.”

Under his hand, Mick felt a flood of warm energy as soft fur gave way to smooth skin. This time, he couldn’t mistake her laugh. Renny giggled like a loon.

“Oh, my Goddess, Molly, if you could see your face right now? You look like you just got your mouth washed out with soap.”

“I wish. I’d shove it in my ear next, and hope it got someplace really useful!”

The giggles turned into belly laughs, and Renny leaned against him for support.

Mick felt something snap inside him. Without thought, without hesitation, and sure as hell without a plan in mind, he let fangs fill his mouth for an instant and then sank them deep into the curve of his mate’s shoulder.

She was his, and he staked his claim with primitive satisfaction.

He marked her.

Renny cried out, not from the pain of Mick’s claiming bite, but from the realization that the most momentous act of her life had just happened in the parking lot aisle of a used-clothing store. Her shout ended with a note of disbelief and anger.

“What the fuck?” she demanded.

“Uh-oh,” she heard Molly chant gleefully. “I think someone’s in trooooouuuuble.…”

Not just in the parking lot of a used-clothing store, but in front of a damned audience! The jerk!

She punched him in the chest, hard. “I can’t frickin’ believe you, you asshole! What the hell were you just thinking?”

“Dude, he’s naked,” Zeke said under his breath. “I think what he’s thinking is pretty hard to miss at the moment.”

Molly made a sound of agreement. The added note of appreciation had Renny growling a warning at her new friend.

The woman’s eyes went wide and she stepped back behind her brother. “Yeah, so, Zeke, why don’t you give our little friend here a ride back to town, huh? And I’ll … I’ll just … go. Away.”

“Don’t bother,” Mick snarled, scooping Renny into his arms and surging to his feet. “My mate and I are leaving.”

Without another word, he tossed her into Molly’s car, snagged the lioness’s keys, and sped out of the parking lot, leaving his friends naked and carless behind him.

Renny stared at his intense, strained expression and swallowed hard. Huh. It looked like she was getting kidnapped after all.