Chapter 10

Castor

After he was dressed, he barked out a command to stay in the room and be vigilant while he got them some wheels, then left.

What had happened over the last few hours had shaken him to the core—the sooner he got this woman back to her pack the better. He didn’t do tender or gentle. His world was pain and darkness, yet something about her seemed to draw feelings out of him that had been buried deep inside. He couldn’t afford to let down those barriers, because it was those barriers that kept him safe. He’d seen how his mother’s death had destroyed his father, turning him into a cold, bitter man.

Sex to him was like eating or sleeping, something the body needed, and he’d chased his release as unemotionally as he ate his meals. He didn’t care where his burger came from and neither had he cared much about the women who serviced him. Yet he’d spent hours learning and loving Briar May’s body.

He had to get back to himself quickly, so he’d been cold and distant as he headed out. He felt like an asshole all seven blocks until he was far enough away from the hotel that he could catch a cab without having to worry about being seen. He’d gone out the hotel’s underground parking, sneaking furtively out the back from there. If anyone was watching, he didn’t want to lead them straight to Briar May, especially when he wasn’t there to protect her.

The look on her face as he’d left the room haunted him in the back of the cab. He stopped at a rental place, fake ID at the ready. He didn’t like that he’d leave a footprint, even with one of those many burnable identities. He rented a non-descript domestic sedan with the promise to return it in a few days. That wouldn’t happen and he was sorry for the trouble that the company would have to go to in order to get it back, but he’d make sure he left it somewhere it was sure to be identified and returned. He’d paid in cash and left them the required damage deposit and insurance fees they charged him. He hoped it would be enough to make up for their trouble.

On the way back to the hotel, he forced himself to obey the speed limit so he wouldn’t be noticed even though he wanted to do fifty in a thirty and seventy in a fifty. His heart beat hard, like there was an entire army of demons sent straight from hell to drag him back trailing behind him.

At least his damn wound was finally healing, which meant he could fight if need be. He still felt the occasional twitch, but other than an angry looking scar and the raggedy black stitches, he was almost as good as new.

After parking the car a few blocks away, once back at the hotel, he went in through the underground parking lot again. Much to his relief he found Briar May in the room, dressed and looking like she was ready to go to work in some office building. After the way she’d run off at the farmhouse, part of him had feared that she’d try to escape again, even though he was taking her back home. She was packed and had everything ready. She’d straightened up the room, tidying it even though the maid would come after them and take everything apart to wash it.

She noticed him looking and shrugged. “I had to do something. I was going crazy in here.”

He understood what she meant. He wouldn’t have liked to be the one left behind either, but he didn’t want to chance taking her out with him just in case. He couldn’t run proper intel on the hotel, and if someone was lying out there in wait, it was better that it was just him they took out.

“Is everything okay?” She looked beautiful, but her eyes shone even brighter when she was afraid, and it struck him that she was worried about him. Not herself.

Nothing was okay. She knew that. He knew that.

He knew better than to lie to her. His heart wouldn’t be in it. He needed her to be wary and aware, more than he needed to try to offer her platitudes. She’d been through hell and then some. He still couldn’t believe the night they’d had. He never should have done that.

She stalked over to him and put her hands on his shoulders like she could hold onto him. They both knew that their time was running out. Even after they reached her pack, what was he supposed to do? Stay with her? Take up fucking farming or whatever they did there? Live a life of peace when all he’d known since he was a child was bloodshed? All he’d set out to do was take Briar May for revenge, but now he wished he could steal time. He’d always been realistic because he had to be. He couldn’t start thinking this was something it wasn’t.

“We should get going. I have the car a few blocks away.”

She was hurt, he knew, but he had no soft words. Nothing he wanted to tell her could be put into proper language anyway.

They didn’t say another word while he grabbed their bags. They walked down the hallway and rode the elevator in stony, loaded silence. It prickled through him while he checked out and while they walked towards the car.

When they reached their rental, he didn’t breathe a sigh of relief. He knew they had a long way to go yet.

Briar May slid into the car and looked up at him. Her eyes were huge and wet. It was like she was offering her heart in those eyes, extending it out for him, a gift that he had no right to take. He wouldn’t treat it properly. He’d stolen her and he’d terrified her. He’d hurt her when he should have been gentle. She was only trying to prove something to herself that morning. Physical passion didn’t amount to feelings. It didn’t amount to a lifetime commitment. In their case, it couldn’t.

He forced himself to look away even though it felt like tearing a hole in his lung. He couldn’t breathe. The moment that had been suspended around them all night dropped to the road and shattered like fragile glass.

He got in the car and forced his hands to the wheel. He did all the right things, his body going through the motions, but it felt like the opposite of how he’d been trained and how he normally functioned. He usually tried to shut off what was on the inside, but now it was like he was doing that with the outside. Pretending it wasn’t there.

He was going to get them killed. He fucking knew better. Briar May’s safety depended on his ability to get them the fuck back to her pack lands. Nothing else could matter.

All the way through the city, Briar May stayed rigid in her seat. She looked straight ahead. She was so quiet that he swept his eyes to her more than once, concerned that she wasn’t even breathing. She’d blanked out. Gone inside herself. She was a warrior too, in her own right. A tiny, beautiful, fragile, loving, kind warrior who held his battle-scarred soul in the palm of her hand.

It was quite a feat considering that he’d doubted for a very long time that there was anything left of it at all.

***

Hours later, once they’d crossed the state line into Wyoming, Briar May still hadn’t said anything. She still sat perfectly rigid. She barely even blinked.

A few hours after that, they passed Sheridan. It was only then, when he allowed himself a sigh of near relief, that the icy surface cracked over.

“I’m sorry about your brother.”

That caught him like a punch straight to the jaw. It came out of nowhere, breaking the somewhat tense silence. He’d thought she was going to want to talk about what they’d done in the hotel room. How it might change things.

He didn’t have a fucking clue how to answer that if she did. He was trying to figure it out for himself. He shouldn’t have touched her, but he’d lost it. He’d never felt so mad for anything in his life. It was more than just wanting her. It was like she was an antidote to a poison that was slowly eating away at him from the inside out.

He couldn’t offer her forever. He couldn’t offer her half of what she hoped for. But she knew that. He’d made that clear. Hadn’t he?

He’d taken her virginity like a beast, even if he hadn’t known that’s what he was doing. He’d still watched her crawl on top of him and he’d let her. He’d fucked her and tasted her. He’d bathed her and held her. She was precious and he knew she couldn’t belong to him. Something so soft was all wrong for someone as cold and hard as he was.

“Will you tell me about him?” she asked without pressuring him. She left space there for him to say no, and he knew that if he did, she wouldn’t press him.

He was afraid to talk about it. Where did his thirst for revenge go? Why did no one warn him that it would hurt this much to allow himself to feel anything? Why had no one told him that it could break him? That it was the ultimate weakness? It was never laid out for him like that in words, but he could see why his pack chose practicality, training, and hard discipline over a soft touch. Vengeance could warm a body just like whatever he felt for Briar May.

He hadn’t felt anything like it before. It made him feel warm and stupid, and he knew that was a weakness. Anything less than total focus could get them killed. He couldn’t afford to be distracted. Vengeance could make a person blind, and that was equally as wrong as letting that strange buzzing in his head bloom into anything more. He had to tuck it away.

“It didn’t truly sink in with me when you told me at that farmhouse. That was wrong. It was insensitive. You’re in pain, Castor. I don’t like that you’re hurting. You’re hurting because of my pack, and I don’t know how to make it right.”

“I’m not,” he snapped curtly. His hands tightened on the wheel.

“Yes, you are. You didn’t come all this way because losing your brother meant nothing.”

“An eye for an eye. That’s how our pack lives. We always have. That’s why I came.”

“You came because you loved him. He was a part of you.”

“He was my twin.”

“Oh my god.” She choked on a sob. He didn’t realize that she was going to cry, but she was. She threw one hand over her mouth like she could press the sadness back in. The other thumped herself in the chest. “The two warriors. Your tattoo.” He didn’t dare turn and look at her. If he saw her tears, he’d need to pull over. He’d need to take her in his arms. He’d need to kiss them away. He’d need her because having her close made it hurt less for him.

He was a bastard. What she needed him to do was to keep driving her to her pack. To safety. They were getting closer now. Not more than an hour. He had to be hypervigilant. His pack was hunting him. They might never have left the area, hoping he’d be back. Maybe they were watching and waiting to take someone else to use as a hostage. If they thought Briar May was his mate, they’d want to hurt him in any way they could, and hurting the pack would get to him because it would devastate her. Also, her pack was looking for her. They didn’t know that he was bringing her back. They didn’t know anything of what transpired between them. He could count himself lucky on that score. If her brothers or her father knew that he’d taken her honor, they’d kill him on sight.

He had to say something. The silence was a brittle thing, the air like lead in the car. “He was a part of me. We went to war together.”

“I don’t know what to say, Castor. I do know what happened and why, but I’ll never give up the one who did it. I can’t do that because like your brother was to you, he’s a part of me. He’s not just my pack—he’s my family. I can tell you he was banished for life and no one from my pack even knew about it until it was too late.” She paused, and he considered her words. He could sense that what she was telling him was the truth, she wasn’t trying to make excuses or tell lies. “My father was alpha at the time, and he never would have allowed it. We don’t just… we don’t kill people. The one who did it acted alone. He was mad with grief. The Rangers have rules. I don’t know if you know that? No attachments, no mates.”

He let the question hang unanswered, right now she wanted to offer him comfort by telling him about his brother. It might hurt, he might know how Pollux died, but he wanted to know why.

Briar May continued, “He loved a woman who was a member of their pack. They killed her brutally for breaking their code and dumped her body on our land. She was in wolf form, and they’d tortured her like that. They cut off her paw and stuffed it in her mouth. We didn’t know who she was, but we buried her in our pack burial grounds and gave her a ceremony. We didn’t know until it was too late that she was a mate of one of ours. When he found out what happened, he went crazy. There was no stopping that kind of bloodlust. In your pack, are wolves like that? Like they are just mad with it? In both forms?”

Castor saw his mother, bleeding out before his eyes. His father hadn’t gone mad. He’d buried his grief and he’d acted on it. Turned it into a bloodbath and vengeance. No one in his pack ever acted like a madman. They were cold and ruthless, they were used to death. Grief never drove them to the brink because they didn’t know how to love like that. Or was it because they were seasoned against feeling any emotion too greatly?

“For us, the greatest achievement has been staying alive. Existing. Not getting stamped out. A lot of what we’ve done in our lives was born from necessity.”

That didn’t answer anything. That didn’t excuse anything.

“Will you tell me one thing that brings you joy? I know it’s not the right time to ask, but I just need to know. One thing that makes you happy or comforts you.”

He turned slightly and saw the dreamy look in her eyes that nothing was going to kill. What was he thinking of touching her? What did he have to offer her? He was a contract killer. He’d led the kind of life where regular people would say he got fed tragedy from the time he was a baby and shake their heads, offering up a sighed no wonder he turned out how he did. Soiled. Sullied. Wrong. Briar May would always be in danger with him.

“Food,” she pressed. “I haven’t seen you eat anything. Or drink. You made sure I had everything, but you haven’t worried about yourself. You almost bled out. You’re just a person, Castor. You have to have a favorite food. You have to eat. And grieve and love.” She sounded heated and a little desperate. Like she was trying to convince herself. They were close now. Only an hour or so from her pack. Things were absurdly dangerous. He had to keep his head, not talk about the mundane things that normal people thought were important.

I eat to stay alive. I don’t love because nothing in this world lasts. I grieve like I live, rough, and then I tuck it away and get on with survival because that’s the only way to exist.

“Don’t talk nonsense,” he snapped. “We’re running for our lives, not living out a fantasy.” He had no right to drag this woman down with him. Even in the best case scenario, he’d be dragging her all the way to hell with a millstone tied around her pretty neck.

“I know what you’re doing,” she snapped. Her hand shot out to his leg, and she squeezed like she could make him stay, like she could suspend the moment. She squeezed so hard and tight that her nails bit into his leg through the thin fabric dress pants. “You think unkindness and hardness will drive me away, but you’re wrong. You think that just because we’re close to my pack, you can wash your hands of me and go off and face the world alone again. I’m not going to let that happen.”

“You don’t know anything about me, and you know even less about how the world works.” Hurting her burned like acid in his gut. He’d done a lot of shit in his life, and he’d stomached it, but this bothered him. This made him feel sick. She was so pure and innocent and didn’t deserve to be sullied with the dark shit that followed him around, permeating every facet of his life.

“I can learn.”

“Says the girl who hid away from the world like a coward her whole life.”

Her nails bit in a little harder. There would probably be bruises. Maybe even blood. He wanted to pull that car over and take her right there, hammering inside of her sweet, tight cunt until he lost himself again.

That just proved how far he’d ruined everything. How much control he’d lost over himself.

“I’m going to hold on, Castor.” She kept saying his name. Different now. With ownership behind it. It made him instantly hard, her fight to keep him.

Wrong, wrong, wrong.

“I’ll keep fighting for you when it has nothing to do with our packs.”

More than anything, that made him realize how he needed to wrest control of the situation back. She had a head full of dreams. This woman had been raised that way. She still felt warm and effervescent with hope. She didn’t want to see the reality of the situation. His holding her all night and letting her mark him in the morning like he belonged to her and she to him only inflated that dream of a future.

He needed to find the right words to wound her so badly that she’d see that he was the last kind of person ever capable of living that out. His brain refused to cooperate. That would be poison. He needed to set her free, but he’d never wanted to hold on to anything so hard in his life.

Pop, pop, pop, pop.

“Oh my god!” Briar May screamed and hunkered down in the passenger seat. She threw her hands over her head, turning herself into a tiny little ball on instinct. “What is that? Castor!”

His heart thundered as he hammered his foot down on the accelerator and checked the rearview mirror. Pure warrior’s instinct taking over. A black SUV was behind them, then it swerved out into the left lane. The freeway was pretty much empty around them. How long had they been followed? He’d been so distracted that he didn’t even see them? They’d waited until there were no witnesses. Damn it!

The noises came again, he drove the car in an erratic zigzag as the bullets slamming through the trunk and into the back behind him.

“They’re shooting at us!” Briar May wailed, still tucked in a tight ball. That was good. She needed to stay down, just like that.

“They’ll want me alive.” He tried to sound confident, but honestly, he wasn’t so sure. He pushed the pedal down the rest of the way and the car surged forward, but he knew he’d never lose them.

The SUV fishtailed as the driver jerked the wheel hard to the right. He only managed to avoid getting plowed into because he’d seen the maneuver coming and slammed on the brakes.

Briar May’s scream of terror filled the car. He cursed, speeding up immediately, redlining the piece of shit little engine. He thought he could get there. He thought he’d be able to return Briar May to her family. He thought he could stay hidden in plain sight, trusting that he wasn’t being followed because he hadn’t seen or heard anything. He’d been right in the city. There was a good chance they’d been waiting for them out here, knowing somehow that he’d come back.

“Those are yours?” She cowered up against the door, her eyes wide and terror filled. Her teeth chattered. Seeing her so scared brought on something dark and violent inside him. He didn’t know if the people in the car were from his own pack, but he nodded, as it was clear they weren’t vigilantes from hers.

The terrain had changed long ago. There were fewer open fields and more wooded areas.

He couldn’t shake off anyone in this car, and if they didn’t want to take him alive, he was going to catch a bullet and crash going at crazy speeds. Briar May would be hurt, that’s if she even survived. Shifters could take a lot, but a car crash at a hundred miles an hour was a long shot. He was already scanning the area up ahead, looking for just the right place.

“Do you know your way back home from here? Could you find it?”

“Y-yes.” Her teeth chattered. “Yes, especially if I shift.”

“Hold on.” He saw what he was waiting for—a turn off for a side exit. He made like he was going to keep heading straight while the SUV tailed them, just about right on their bumper. They wanted him to pull over. He was ninety percent sure those shots were just warnings, unspoken instructions to get him to stop. They could have shot him if they wanted to. Those bullets never reached him in the driver’s seat.

He waited until the last possible second and took the exit so hard and fast that he nearly ripped off the driver’s side mirror with the steel meant to corral vehicles. He held his breath, hoping against hope.

“They didn’t take it!” Briar May shot up and he pressed her back down, gunning the car along the exit, heading for the backroads that shot through more heavily wooded country.

The engine screamed, but Briar May didn’t make a sound. She just sat there in her seat, shaking. Jesus, he’d brought hell straight to her doorstep. He’d plunged her into the thick of it. This was what life with him would be. They’d never be safe. It would be one tragedy after another. Horror. Terror.

She would never be safe.

He stroked her hair, so fine and near white. Her face was bloodless when he jerked the wheel and the car careened to the right. He sped down the side road, past houses that flashed by.

“They’ll double back soon enough. We need to shift. Run. Don’t stop. I’ll be at your back to keep you safe, and no matter what you see happen to me, you need to keep going. Get to your family. Do you understand me?”

“Y-yes.”

“They might be out even now, still looking for you. If you howl, would they answer?”

“If they’re near.”

“Can you run this far? If you can’t, you need to let me know now. I’ll make another plan.”

“I can run.”

“Can you outrun rogue wolves if they’re coming after you? Can you outsmart them?”

“How the fuck should I know?” She looked like she was going into shock. She was shaking harder now.

“Briar May.” He took her hand and thrust it into his leg again. She immediately squeezed like just that touch grounded her. “You’re not going to try to run straight at them again, are you?”

“I only did that to save the kids.”

“But you won’t try to save me. I need you to promise. You won’t turn around, you won’t stop, you won’t try to make a stand. Promise.”

“I can’t promise that!” Tears started streaking down her cheeks.

They sent such rage shooting through him that he knew he’d have zero trouble tearing anyone apart who threatened her. He thought he knew what real anger was, real rage, that blackout zone where a person was lost inside a haze to the point of a total memory wash, that berserker state. He tried never to go there because that got a person killed. The mind was as much a weapon as the body. Take that away and a person was left with pretty much nothing at all.

But those tears…

The thought of what his pack would do to Briar May if they caught her, painted red on the inside of his skull and shot a ripping pain through his chest so staunch that he threw up a hand, afraid that he’d been hit by a bullet he’d never seen or heard coming.

“You have to promise me. I’ll be right behind you.”

“You can’t sacrifice yourself. I won’t let you.”

“I have no plans on doing anything heroic or noble. I’m a killer, Briar May, not a white knight or a prince charming. The only reason I’ll stop is if I need to. I won’t let them take you. I’ll do what I’m trained for if it comes to that.”

Her throat worked hard and kept working, like she was trying to hold back sobs or trying to get words out, but they were too hot to make it past the blockage there. Fear. It had to be terror stopping it up.

There wasn’t time left to argue. He jerked the car over to the side of the road and killed the engine. He threw his door open and raced around to hers. He took her arm and then planted his hands on both of them. He squeezed gently. There were no words. He’d used them all up already.

She stumbled from him but gained her footing. It only took her a second and then she was running, kicking off her shoes and pulling at her clothes. She went right for the trees, and as soon as she crossed into their protective shelter, she let the shift happen. He was so used to the sound of limbs aligning, of bones snapping and reknitting, that it didn’t sound so loud to him, even though the air was perfectly still, and the day was calm. The sun was shining happily. If people thought bad shit only happened on rainy, stormy days, they were dead wrong.

Briar May was a beautiful wolf. She was all sleek white hair until the ruff around her throat and then the fur glistened silver tipped. She did look back. She hesitated. He’d promised to be right behind her. It would only take whoever had been in that SUV a few minutes to get turned around.

He wrenched the bag holding his axes from the car and left everything but them. Once in wolf form, he could loop it around his neck—not ideal and if they’d been in a less dire situation, he’d have shifted first and gotten her to put the handles through his legs like a halter—but it would have to do. He couldn’t leave his axes behind. He could do nothing against their pursuers if he was weaponless. His body and his wolf might be enough for any regular human or even a regular shifter, but anyone from his pack, even the children, were far from regular.

He raced for the trees, all his senses inflamed, but he heard no one pursuing them so far. Maybe they wouldn’t loop around. Maybe they’d come out in front of them somewhere. He had to be attuned to that possibility as well. He’d already put them in mortal danger by being distracted, now he had to be ready for anything. His wolf was better served in every way to protect them, so as soon as the trees sheltered him from view, he let his wolf out.

The wolf was a huge beast by anyone’s standards, but he could tell by the way Briar May paused and stared that even she was astounded. He loped up beside her this way, he could watch every angle. At her side, he’d be able to stand between her and the rest of the world.

They ran.

He was right beside her, but she was the one leading the way. He was certain, from what he remembered, that they were heading in the right direction.

They ran until Briar May’s stamina started to flag. He was panting hard as well, even with his training, and the axes lopping against his back were certain to leave dark, painful bruises. The scenery flashed by, their paws flying, churning up earth in spots, pounding over it in others. They flashed through trees and across fields, by roads and bounded over ditches. Mostly it was the woods, which both hid them and left them vulnerable to an attack they couldn’t see.

At last, when his lungs were burning and every gulp of air seemed to contain liquid fire, he sensed Briar May’s excitement. Instead of attuning his senses to danger, he inhaled deeper and focused. He couldn’t scent her pack yet, but she clearly could. Her body language changed, growing excited. She pushed her head down and doubled their frantic pace, even though she couldn’t have had much of anything left to give.

A howl from behind him chilled his blood. That howl was straight rage, and it was close.

He pulled up as soon as he heard the cries. He should have left them dead, his only thought at the time had been to get Briar May to safety, and in the heat of the moment he’d thought that killing Zeus and Apollo would result in worse fallout. Hindsight was twenty-twenty, and now he realized that dead or alive, his pack would have sought vengeance. But perhaps if he’d killed them, it might have bought them more time. Thankfully, they hadn’t been able to wrap around in front and cut them off. He’d probably been correct in assuming that Zeus and Apollo stayed behind, waiting in case they turned around. The turning back was probably the only thing that saved them from running headlong into anyone else from his pack. They hadn’t been able to make their way to them yet.

He turned at another wicked howl. It rattled through the woods, a wolf ready to do battle.

He knew the huge gray wolf, Apollo and the slimmer black one, Zeus. No one else. They were alone or they would have spread out and cut off any means of escape. The only thing that might yet save Briar May was that one slipup they’d made, missing them at the exit. Sometimes life was more about chance and luck than skill.

He’d fight to the death, and he’d make that death slow in coming. He had to. He had to give Briar May a chance to reach her pack lands.

Apollo and Zeus stopped and watched him warily. They didn’t trust that he didn’t have some trick or plan or an ambush of his own out here. It was clear they still thought he was mated to Briar May, which would mean he had connections with the Nightfall Pack. They were clearly heading in that direction and they had to assume he had more wolves hidden away.

As Apollo crouched low to the ground, Zeus’s fur bristled. He shook himself and then snarled, the saliva dripping from his sharp white fangs.

The way they both glared at him, their eyes cold and menacing, he knew he’d been wrong in assuming they’d want to take him alive, just because they hadn’t shot him while he was driving. That kind of killing would be too quick and merciful for them. They wanted it like this. The warrior’s way. It was personal to them, the way they thought he’d tricked and betrayed them, and they wanted the punishment of his death to be adequate compensation.

He’d been too focused watching for danger at every angle to fully try to pinpoint where they were, but they were closer than he thought. He only realized it when a series of chilling howls tore through the woods like wind whipped spirits. The cries lashed at them, a warning and a promise. Apollo and Zeus weren’t the only wolves in the woods looking for revenge.

The only wolves out this way had to be Briar May’s pack. Had she reached them? Was she safe? They would have no way of knowing that he was bringing her back. He was soon to face a threat on every side, utterly alone.

Apollo and Zeus froze at the howls. They looked at each other nervously and Castor could scent that they were nervous. His pack were trained fighters, but they went to battle with a plan, here they weren’t sure what they were readying themselves for.

They’d go down fighting. It would take many, many wolves to put them down and keep them down.

And many, many wolves there were.

White and silver, they materialized from behind the trees like shimmering ghosts. They ringed around the three of them, closing them in so there was no escape.

Their alpha was an impressive wolf, but not nearly as large as the three of them. Though it didn’t matter. There were at least thirty wolves. They were completely surrounded.

Castor expected them to close ranks and go straight for the kill, their sheer numbers a guarantee that it wouldn’t take long before sharp fangs ripped into flesh and arteries and tore the three of them apart. His instinct was to back up, to go back-to-back with his pack members, protecting their flanks. He owed them no loyalty, but it might be his only chance. The other half of him wanted to shift and use the axes. Let them come. Let them try.

He was a warrior and he’d die a warrior. He’d lived his whole life knowing this would be the way it ended. Mayne not by a pack of enemy wolves, but he knew the end would be violent and gory and painful. There was honor in that.

But the more wolves he killed, the more he’d hurt Briar May.

He might unknowingly kill her brother. Her father. An uncle, a cousin, a brother-in-law, a friend, god, he might even kill a mother or sister. He scented the presence of female wolves. In his pack, females were also trained as warriors to a certain extent, but they wouldn’t have been allowed to engage in a battle like this one.

He waited, watching the alpha wolf. He never gave the signal for attack.

The shots fired were almost soundless. Almost.

They were so focused on the wolves surrounding them that none of them realized the darts were coming until they’d already been hit.

After that, it was only a few seconds before the tranquilizer spread through their bodies. Apollo dropped first, then Zeus. He was the last wolf standing, but only for a blink longer. He went down, the darkness closing in on his thoughts, sucking him into oblivion, but Briar May’s lips were there, her soft eyes, her flowing wild hair, the softness of her skin, the sleek majesty and breathtaking beauty of her wolf.

He didn’t mind it if he couldn’t die a warrior’s death as long as she was safe.

She’d made it back to her pack and that was all that mattered.