Escape (Dark Alpha #4) (2 page)

He lurched into a run, one hand on his gun underneath his jacket. If he could just get close enough to shoot Mace while he was in wolf form… Beck noticed Jak first, barreling toward their pack. He snarled, and then Alric turned as well. Meanwhile, Mace was working his way behind Arianna, moving into the claiming position. He clearly meant to take her any second now, in the middle of the lawn, with Thomas smirking and watching.

There was no way in hell Jak was letting that happen.

He pulled his gun. “Get away from her, Mace!” He held it in front of him with both hands while still running toward the pack. Mace whipped his head toward Jak. For a split second, long enough for Jak to get a few feet closer, Mace did nothing. Then he roared and leaped away from Arianna, toward Jak. Which was exactly what he wanted. Alric and Beck had already shifted and were charging toward him, closing fast. Jak waited a heartbeat longer, just long enough for a clean shot at Mace without endangering Arianna.

He squeezed the trigger just as Mace’s betas reached him.

Jak shifted, twisting away from their snapping fangs and leaving a mouthful of jacket in his wake. While Alric and Beck tangled with his clothes, Jak charged toward Mace, who was snout down in the grass. Jak’s bullet must have found its target. His heart surged with hope, but before he could reach Mace to make sure, Thomas, the third beta, finally clued in and intercepted him. Thomas lunged in front of Mace, protecting his alpha and going for Jak’s throat.

They went down together, rolling across the lawn, snapping and clawing and drawing slashes of blood. Jak yelped as Thomas’s teeth sunk into his side, but then he rolled hard and flung Thomas free. Jak scrambled up, veering to avoid Beck and Alric who were after him again, and lunged towards Mace. He was still down, but he was moving.

And then he shifted to human form.

Goddammit.

Jak leaped over Mace’s body. The moonlight and smears of blood made it difficult to see where the bullet had gone in, but apparently Jak had only clipped his shoulder. And given Mace’s enhanced shifter healing, without a clean shot to the head or through the heart, he would live. Jak wrenched his gaze from Mace’s cringing form and loped to Arianna’s side, just to make sure she was okay. She was still cowering in her wolf form in the submission pose.

Arianna!
he sent a thought to her even as he dashed to the side, evading the betas chasing him.
You need to shift!

Now that Mace was back in human form, she should be able to. And he needed her in human form to escape—otherwise the mating bond would be too strong. With his first shot only wounding Mace, running was now their only option.

Arianna whimpered, but she managed to shift. Jak couldn’t circle back to her—he was too busy zigging and zagging through the open space, trying not to get trapped by Mace’s betas. He circled back toward his clothes, praying he could get hold of the gun, but Thomas was already there, in human form, rifling through Jak’s clothes. Jak galloped toward him, but Alric and Beck caught him from behind. He roared and snapped at them, but they sunk their teeth deep into his legs and dragged him down. Pain streaked white hot through his body. He was kicking and biting, but they had two sets of flashing razor sharp teeth, slicing through his flesh. Just like a hundred times before, when his older brothers had pinned him, Mace’s betas were ripping him to pieces until the agony overtook him, and he had stopped fighting. But Jak wasn’t giving up, not this time, not until he was dead. He raked a claw across Beck’s eyes and tore a piece out of Alric’s ear. Their yelps of pain and anger were enough for Jak to break free of their grips and scramble to his paws.

Just as he lurched forward, a gun went off… and something slammed into him with enough force to fling him back against Alric’s flea-bitten hide. The searing pain hit a half second later, blossoming across his shoulder and sending him rolling to the side. The world went white for a moment. He blinked through it, bringing the night back in focus just in time to see Arianna in wolf form, leaping through the air and snapping her jaws on Thomas’s arm. The gun went off again, which made Jak’s heart spasm. He struggled to get to his paws, but one whole side was useless and screaming with pain. Beck and Alric were at his back, but he couldn’t fight them this way. He shifted human, praying Arianna was all right as he struggled to his feet.

She was still wrestling with Thomas, on the ground, she in her wolf form and him in his human one. But a moment later, she shifted human. And when she came up, standing over Thomas in all her naked beauty… she had the gun pointed in his face. He just looked up at her, confused.

Jak almost laughed. It was the most gorgeous thing he had ever seen.

Alric and Beck had shifted human behind him, but they just stood there with dumbass looks on their faces. Arianna stepped away from Thomas then swung the gun to Alric and Beck.

“Stay back!” she yelled. “Don’t touch him!” She meant Jak, which flushed him with joy… until he realized how much her hand with the gun was shaking. The smile fell off Jak’s face, and he lurched to her side, leaving Alric and Beck still staring and Thomas struggling to get up off the lawn.

Jak’s body was screaming in pain—his shoulder and legs were a bloody mess—and a wave of dizziness almost made him lose his footing, but when he reached her, he took the gun from her trembling hands. He only had one good hand left. His other one dangled uselessly at his side. Flashes of numbness ran up and down it, and he could feel the blood gushing out of his body. His breath was becoming labored, and he shuddered violently in the cold night air. He was fairly certain he was going into shock.

Not good.

His hand shook even more than Arianna’s, but at least he stood between her and Mace’s betas now. And he had a chance of getting her out of there.

“Move!” Jak ordered Thomas away from the heap that was Jak’s clothes.

Thomas shuffled toward Alric and Beck, hands up.

More gently, almost in a whisper, Jak said to Arianna, “I need my phone. Right pocket.”

Arianna bent down and rifled through them. Mace was still moaning and holding his side, but he had managed to get to his knees. He must be hit bad because he wasn’t saying anything. But when Arianna stood up with the prize of Jak’s phone, Mace’s face came back to life.

“What are you
doing?”
he screamed at his betas, who were all clustered together with Jak’s gun trained on them. “Get him!”

Jak swung his gun to point at Mace. “Move a muscle, and I’ll shoot your alpha.” The three betas snarled and clenched their fists, but he knew with their submissions fresh, they wouldn’t do anything to endanger Mace. They would sacrifice themselves in a heartbeat, but at this range, there was no way they could reach him before he could pull the trigger. And Jak wouldn’t miss a second time.

Arianna huddled at his side. He was sorely tempted to simply kill Mace, but as things stood, keeping him alive was their only way out. If Mace died, his betas would make sure Jak was close behind. And Arianna would be on her own again: which meant one of the betas would claim her, and that was almost worse than Mace. Besides, Mace was in human form now. If Jak shot him, they would have more than a pack after them, they’d have all of Washington’s law enforcement agencies.

Arianna wouldn’t be able to make a new life, not that way. And neither would he.

Jak slowly backed away from Mace and his betas, edging toward the forest. He didn’t dare turn his back on them, just kept moving and holding them at bay while he and Arianna made their slow escape.

“Jak!” The word ripped through the air, carried on a command from his alpha. It stopped Jak in his tracks.

He kept his gun trained on Mace, but he couldn’t help searching for the source of the voice. Gage stood twenty feet away, Mason by his side, both of them looking aghast at the scene in front of them.

“What the hell are you doing?” Gage’s rebuke was harsh. Jak felt it through to his bones, but it didn’t have the power to hold him. He glanced up at the moon. It was close enough to full. His submission bond to Gage wouldn’t stop him from leaving. He started his slow backward march again, Arianna at his back as they crept toward the forest. Even if the bond wouldn’t stop him, the pain of walking away from Gage was worse than the physical agony ripping through his body.

“I have to do this,” Jak said to Gage, his voice rough but strong. “I can’t let him hurt her anymore.” It felt good to say the words out loud. It was the truth of why he was here, why he was taking her, and why the rest of it—the shooting, the betrayal, the breaking of pack law—didn’t matter. Because Mace had violated everything that made pack law decent and right. He had steeped darkness into the mating bond, the one that should be sacred above all.

Jak’s words carried across the cool night air, met only with silence.

He prayed Gage would figure it out and see that Jak was doing the right thing. But if he didn’t, that also didn’t matter. All that mattered was righting the wrongs done to Arianna. And setting her free.

Gage’s brow scowled deeper, and Jak figured he was putting together what had actually happened here; what had been happening all along. Between the six of them—Mace, his three betas, Gage and Mason—they could stop him. They might not be able to stop him from shooting Mace, but they could keep him from leaving with Arianna.

But Gage just stood and watched as Jak drew farther and farther away.

Mace growled when he realized his brother wasn’t going to help. He lurched to his feet. “Arianna, come here!” It was a full command. Jak could feel the strength of it, even though Mace wasn’t his alpha.

Arianna whimpered behind him and clutched his shoulder. Her claws came out and dug into his flesh. It hurt, but nothing like he imagined the fight she was waging inside, disobeying her alpha so she could leave.

“Stay human, baby,” Jak whispered. “Stay with me.” If she shifted, he would lose her. The bond would be simply too great to overcome.

He groaned as her claws dug deeper into him, but the rest of her stayed human. And they kept marching, slowly backward. They were far enough now that they might have a decent chance at escaping just by flat-out running. But their chances would be better if they reached the forest first.

Seconds ticked with each step closer to freedom.

Jak had to look away from Gage’s broken expression.

Mace snarled, but didn’t move. His betas did likewise. Mace must know by now that, if he tried to stop Jak, he wouldn’t hesitate to finish the job.

If Mace let them go, he would live.

Mace glared hatred across the growing expanse between them. Jak knew this wasn’t over. Mace would search the ends of the earth for Arianna and kill Jak, if at all possible. Jak would just have to make sure he never got that chance. He and Arianna kept inching backwards until they reached the forest.

Then they turned and fled into the darkness.

Arianna felt like her mind was ripping in two.

Her mate, her
alpha,
was furious.
Furious.
As she backed away from Mace, fleeing with Jak, Mace’s hatred reached across the night air and choked her. Part of her knew this was wrong—this vile, deadly hatred shouldn’t come from her own alpha, the man who was supposed to love and protect her—but her wolf whimpered to return to him, all the same.

It took every ounce of
human
inside her to withdraw her claws from Jak’s shoulder and still remain by his side. And seeing his injuries, his blood-covered body, made her tremble even more. She hated that she had added even a tiny scratch to his pain… because Jak was her
savior.
He may be a beta to the world, but in her eyes, he was all alpha. The good kind. The kind who, before her eyes, was giving up everything, risking everything, including his own life, to free her. Even with the turmoil in her mind, her love for him glowed like the sun.

Her inner torment lessened with more distance from Mace. And once they turned into the darkness of the forest, it eased considerably. She and Jak were running now, Jak leading her but keeping close by her side. He still held the gun, so he couldn’t hold her hand. His other one was slick with blood and hung at his side in a way that made her stomach clench. His chest and legs were also drenched with the dark red stain—she was amazed he could still walk, much less hurtle through the forest as they were now, with all the blood he had already lost.

“It’s going to be okay, baby,” he kept saying over and over. “It’s going to be all right.”

She kept a hand on his shoulder, claws retracted, so she could gently squeeze it in response. Her throat was too thick for words, and her breath too ragged. It seemed to take forever, but eventually, they reached the fence. She handed Jak’s phone over to him. Everything had gone wrong with their plan up until now: she half expected Jak’s program to deactivate the security system with a special app on his phone to fail utterly. For them to be trapped. Breath heaved out of her as she waited, but with a few swipes on his phone, the hum of the electrified fence ceased.

“Can you climb it?” Arianna asked as he handed the phone back to her. She couldn’t imagine how he could in this state.