Her Wanted Wolf (48 page)

Hell if the boy didn’t do him proud.

Micah acknowledged their acceptance with a brief nod and turned to face
Drew.

“Satisfied? I am now head of my pack, but I’m still screwed.”

“If it’s any consolation, you have in-laws who’ll help you hunt Rifkin.” Drew
hoped his words would help to ease the burden he couldn’t lift for Micah or his
sister because they would have to carry it together. They’d be saddled with
that daunting task until Micah caught his brother.

Micah snorted; it was a laugh and a weary sigh. “You call that a
consolation? It’s more of a booby prize.” He climbed to his feet with the jerky
motion of an old man. “How the hell are we going to clean this up?”

“Good question. What would be your preference?” Their options were few,
and they had to haul ass. They only had three hours max to accomplish the
impossible.

“I’d bury them all on our home turf if I could have my way, but that’s
not possible.” Micah bent down, pulled down Bardo’s eyelids to close his eyes,
and straightened out his limbs. The other Redmavens moved off to do the same
for their fallen pack-mates.

“Well, we can send a couple of men back to our transports, load the
bodies into the buses, and retrieve our clothing. I think Nara Sinclair can
help us. She seems to specialize in achieving the impossible. I’m going to give
her a call and see what she can do to preserve the bodies until you can get
them home.”

Whatever he could do to make this debacle easier for the weres who were
layin out their dead in a line that was way too long, he’d do.

Now all he had to do was find a phone to set the ball rolling.

Royal’s angry incredulous howl reverberated through the night sky, slicing
through the silence hanging over the dockside and enlightening Drew that Sabine
had confronted Rifkin and his minions.

Drew spun around, preparing to shift, his head already in were mode.
“Take care of your dead. One of my men will lead you to Royal’s place on the
outskirts of town.” He’d track and find his mate, no masking agent could hide
her from him. She carried his mate’s mark.

“No, some of my pack will see to it. It’s time I paid you back for all
you’ve done for me. If your mate is in danger, I might be the only one who
stands between her and Rifkin.” Micah nodded to his pack mates. As one they
transformed. Weres from both their packs fell in behind them and they raced to
the vehicles Royal asked for.

With every running leap, Drew prayed he wouldn’t be too late.

Chapter Thirty-five

Plagued by an uncontrollable twitching, Sabine was ready to chew off her
claws with frustration. If only she had full access to her faculties! But as it
was, her skewed awareness deprived her of a fragrance-rich scent trail to steer
her in the right direction. The thin lead she’d followed now felt like it’d
been a figment of her imagination. Her hunt was not going well. They traveled
in circles and the lack of progress weighed heavily on her.

She’d fail. Fail her mate, the Silverwolf bloodline, and her new pack. To
accept defeat was not in her nature, and she recoiled mentally as the
possibility seemed more likely as time passed. They weren’t far from Drew,
which was a small consolation.

She vaulted nimbly over one of the tar patches dotting the roof. She was
going to have a hard time getting the muck which matted her fur and gummed up
her paws removed. Grumpy in her uncertainty, Sabine studied her surroundings.
There were no landmarks to tell her if she’d passed this way before, every
building had a generic sameness. All she needed was a wisp of scent, a filament
to seize.

A distant howl rang out, shattering the silence and freezing Sabine in
her tracks.

Bardo was dead by Micah’s hand, and he’d assumed the leadership of the
Redmavens. His robust masculine spoor drifted on the currents. Every werekin
who heard his cry and caught his spoor would read the message in the aroma he
emitted.

The depth of emotion in the extended bay surprised her. Sorrow, rather
than the triumph she’d expected. Another yowling-croon followed his call. The
sound of his newly claimed pack acknowledging their new alpha resonated through
the air.

And there it was, an insubstantial trace, but it was all she needed.
Sabine raced forward. The faint whiff grew and became a churning billow of
odors overflowing with rage, disbelief, and rampant bitterness. Then it blanked
out.

It didn’t matter. The were’s loss of control gave her something to hold
onto. Sabine bounded from building to building, the tendons in her injured leg
throbbing, but she pushed on. Going from high to low, choosing structures with
the narrowest breaks between them, using pipes as bridges, as Royal had
instructed her.

The spike in her awareness drew her to her mark. Sabine stopped in
mid-stride, senses wide open to catch the subtle distinctions that guided, and
she listened.

Her lips pulled back from her fangs in triumph.

She’d found them. Breathing hard from exertion and excitement, her heart
thumped. Sabine crept toward the edge of the roof. Royal edged up beside her.
He tilted his head, asking for confirmation, and she nodded.

The insistent nudge of Royal’s muzzle, and the question in his eyes
spurred her to action. She had to tag the weres. Cautiously she inched forward,
careful not to let her claws rap on the surface beneath her paws.

Ishbel and Tija moved up to flank her to form a stalking trio. A hunter,
a spotter, and a fighter to cover the first two’s back.

A harsh, admonishing snarl, followed by the piteous yelps of the
reprimanded wolf, ricocheted up for the narrow tunnel. As one, the three
Silverwolves crept to the eave and looked down into the alleyway. Sabine saw an
oversized were hovering threateningly over a cringing female were. The reddish
streaks in the aggressive were’s fur gave away his identity.

Rifkin. And his hodge-podge pack. She did a quick head count. There were
about thirty weres milling about. And they were not the average wolves. They
seemed to be preparing to climb into the back of a semi trailer. They would get
away.

Terrifying memories of the oversized fangs tearing into to her flesh
flooded her mind. Icy fear held her frozen on the barren roof, staring down at
her worst nightmare, another encounter with his kind. Her paws curled over the
ledge, her claws digging into the unyielding concrete.

Rifkin sank his fangs into the cringing she-wolf’s ruff, shook her like a
dead rabbit, and tossed her aside. The pungency of the abused wolf’s terror
floated up to Sabine.

Feeling a kinship with the female, Sabine’s dread evaporated and sizzled
into fury like water on hot metal. She bunched her muscles and pushed off the
ledge to plunge down onto Rifkin’s back. Taken by surprised, he dropped on his
belly.

Sabine raked her claws over his muzzle. Rifkin reared up and bucked her
off in his astonished rage.

She landed her hard, the breath leaving her body in a soft whoof. On
shaky legs, she rose to stand between him and the cowering she-wolf. Sabine
snarled her intention to assume guardianship over the were who couldn’t fend
for herself.

Royal’s horror-struck furious growl reverberated above them. It grabbed
the attention of the rogue weres who’d been shocked into immobility by either
her sudden appearance or her daring to attack Rifkin. Vocal challenges flew
between the packs, vicious and insulting.

Rifkin didn’t react. He had his eyes fixed on her. Sabine recognized the
hard soulless avarice in them as they narrowed into slits, studying her. His
malevolent, triumphant snigger sent a frisson of fear through her.

Royal sent up a howl for every wolf in the area to hear before he hurled himself
off the roof. The Sinclairs, Silverwolves, and Lunedares followed in his wake,
and a chaotic melee ensued. At a glance, there was no way to differentiate
friend from foe in the writhing mass of fur, fang and claw.

It took her a second to scent and separate. Sabine was about to join the
fight when her newly acquired ward nipped her on the shin.

With a plea in her eyes, she clawed at the plastic collar cutting into
her neck.

She would have to wait. In spite of being outnumbered, the Redmavens seemed
to have the upper hand in the fight. Mortally wounded wolves littered the alley
and none of them carried the Redmaven markings. Sabine started to turn away but
the mute appeal in the other wolf’s expression and the piteous mewl gave her
pause.

Pressured by the need to join her pack sisters in the battling raging
around her, Sabine impatiently clamped her teeth around the thin circle and,
with a twist of her head, snapped it in two.

Malice glittered in the she-wolf’s eyes, her lips spread in a toothy
vengeful grin. She started to change in a slow elastic shift, not into a wolf
but something bigger and much more frighteningly dangerous.

Sabine skittered back. Had her impulse to help become a grievous, lethal
mistake?

The she-wolf grew to tower over them. Black bristly fur shot out of her
skin. Her features morphed from lupine to ursine, but not like any bear she’d
ever seen. It was primitive, like a less evolved ancestor of what a bear was
today.

Letting out a blood-curdling roar, she unerringly plucked up a Redmaven
from the roiling mass and ripped his head off. Blood spewed over Sabine in a
crimson spray.

Rifkin abandoned his fight with a pair of Sinclairs and leapt, fangs and
claws aimed at the bear’s neck. She swatted him away like a gnat. Rifkin
crashed into a brick wall and fell to the ground, his neck at an odd angle.
Sabine watched the bear use the bulk of her body and her scythe-sharp claws to
cut through the writhing bodies, dismembering Redmavens with lethal efficiency.

Several of Rifkin’s cronies sprang and attached themselves to Sabine’s
new ally like leeches, their teeth tearing at her fur. She tried to shake them
off. Claws unsheathed, she raked at them. The bear collapsed under their
weight.

Even knowing what the consequences might be, Sabine didn’t hesitate, and
she jumped to aid the woman she’d sworn to protect.

Clamping her teeth in the back of a wolf’s neck, she ripped at the
susceptible sinew, clawing at his vulnerable eyes and over the tender flesh in
his nose.

She was out of reach of his teeth and paws but her safe position was
short-lived. Other wolves jumped into the fray, fangs sank into her shoulder
and ripped at the tendons to do the most damage. But she didn’t let go, forcing
the wolf under her to release the clump of flesh in his mouth.

The confidence-bolstering scent of her mate’s spoor filled her senses,
though it came with a rumbling growl of promised chastisement, a moment before
he joined the conflict. The Lunedares had arrived
en masse
, bringing
with them Micah and the rest of the rebellious Redmavens. Micah let out a call
to surrender; some of Bardo’s followers did. The defiant were given no quarter.

The consequent fight was chaotic and ferocious. She pulled in her belly
to evade the deadly swipe of a strike. She slashed her attacker across the
muzzle. Sabine found herself summarily shoved aside. But there was no way to
avoid fighting. Her next opponent reared up to get at her neck from above. She
swiped his exposed groin and he curled up into a ball.

She fought a third were, until he fell under the double assault of Ishbel
and Rafe coming to her aid.

A sudden still fell over the combatants. Any rebellious Redmaven who
wasn’t killed or wounded took off with vengeful weres hot on his heels.

She hurt all over, even the tips of the individual hairs of her fur
ached.

Drew nuzzled her neck before he shifted. “Where are you wounded?” His
face was badly abraded and turning purple from repeated blows. His eyes glittered
with the fever of a fight.

She changed and laughed shakily. “Where am I not hurt?” She couldn’t
believe she’d come through with only one serious bite, but her body was a mass
of bruises.

Her mate snapped his dislocated shoulder into place, the bite marks on
his skin already knitting together. “We are going to talk,” Drew threatened
darkly, the authoritative tone of an alpha were warred with her lover and mate
in his voice.

She’d take whatever punishment he saw fit to mete out, and the loving
comfort he’d smother her in, soon. “And we will, but first I need to speak to the
girl.” She dragged herself up onto her feet, stumbled over to the bear in the
midst of changing, and knelt beside her.

She was no more than a little girl. Teeth rattling tremors racked her
tiny, underdeveloped prepubescent body. She was going into shock. She smiled up
at Sabine with gratitude and heart-wrenching sorrow.

“Thank you, you’ve set me free.” The light that shone with the vitality
of life was fading from her eyes. She was dying before their eyes.

Feeling helpless, Sabine took her icy hand in hers. “We’ll get you help.”

“No, I burned it all up, everything I had, and all that I was.”

“What’s your name?” Sabine blurted out, although that was the last thing
she meant to ask.

“Don’t have one, always wanted one.”

Pity for the unnamed girl spread like a hot ache in her chest. “Serene.
I’ve always liked the name Serene. What are you?” The need to know tempered the
guilt she felt for asking.

Licking her parched lips, the answer came out in fits and starts. “The
Silverwolves are not the only ones Milo used. He stole the
multimorphs’
DNA years ago. He planted it into our chromosomes, but we can’t sustain the
ability to change into multiple animals. We are good for three good shifts that
are not our base form and we burn ourselves out.” Her hand tightened on
Sabine’s. “Milo brags about what he does, intends to do. Stop him. There are
more like me. Find them, save them.”