Karly's Wolf (Hollow Hills Book 1) (11 page)

Against her will, her mind shot back to that moment when the lightning had lit up her room just as Colton turned from her window. Karly went from cupping her forehead to cupping her mouth as she remembered again the way he had rippled, melted, shifted right there in front of her eyes, dropping down onto all four legs before trotting from her bedroom in his Puppy guise.

No.

No, that had definitely been a dream. It just…it just wasn’t possible for a man to transform into a dog—

Wolf.

—anywhere except on a Hollywood movie screen.

“Don’t be stupid,” she told herself.

Except that it would explain so much.

“The hell it would.”

Like Puppy’s ability to open doors.

“Lots of dogs open doors.” Cats too. You-Tube and Facebook both were full of such videos.

Like Puppy and Colton never being in the same place at the same time.

Mama Margo yelling at Puppy as if he were a person…

Gabe, leaning against her car, talking to him and that moment when she could have sworn she’d heard Colton talking back, right before she’d rounded the tail of her car and Puppy had popped his head up over the seat to look at her…

A soft thump from downstairs made Karly jump. Her heart was racing, but it took her a moment to realize it had been doing that even before she’d heard that sound. She rubbed her forehead.

“Get a grip, for God’s sake,” she whispered, both in regards to her absurd thoughts and in her jumpiness. “He’s not a…”

A what? A werewolf?

That was just plain crazy.

Another soft bump. Karly felt her stomach tighten, but in the back of her mind, she already knew what that sound was: Puppy, doing his early morning Houdini routine, either letting himself out of the house or trying to get back in again.

Did she really want to go down there and confront him? She could just see herself now, refusing to let him back into the house until he proved he was just a dog and not Colton in disguise.

Shaking her head at herself, Karly jerked her nightshirt on, covering that mark on her shoulder blade, as if banishing it from even accidental sight might somehow rob it of its existence. Leaving the bathroom felt a little like fleeing, but Karly refused to continue standing there, entertaining the most absurd thoughts imaginable.

She hit the bottom of the stairs, turning left into the living room, but the body she suddenly came nose to chest with was much too big and much too human to be Puppy’s.

“I’ve got your divorce papers right fucking here,” Dan said, effectively ripping all breathable air right out of her chest. The panic didn’t hit until a half second later, a blinding shock of force that had her legs moving before her brain had even fully recognized the danger, when Dan grabbed for her. He didn’t have anything in his hands. He didn’t even have hands; he had fists.

Karly tried to run back up the stairs, but he grabbed first her nightshirt and then her ankles. She screamed as she fell, landing half on the second floor landing. Her nails scraped the carpet as he dragged her back down the stairs on her belly, whacking her chin on the corner of the topmost step as she went over it, hands flailing to grab anything with which to anchor herself.

When she hit the living room floor, she tried to roll over, but Dan had already shifted his grip, abandoning her legs to seize her by the hair. Karly grabbed his hand in both of hers just to keep from being scalped as he dragged her around the tiny living room, content for the moment just to make her crawl.

“You think you can humiliate me in front of everyone and then just walk away? Oh no, babe. ‘Til death do us part. That’s what you promised me, and that’s what I’ll fucking have!”

He flung her like a ragdoll against the wall. Karly grabbed blindly, catching hold of his belt as she fell, and he slapped her. Her ears rang. Everything spun. When she saw his hands coming at her, she slapped back, but he still grabbed her throat in both hands, slamming her to the floor as he squeezed and pinning her there.

Sucking but unable to find the air, Karly clawed at his fingers. The weight of him pressed down on her chest. No matter how she kicked and bucked, she couldn’t dislodge him. He just squeezed harder until spots of bright light began to flash in front of her eyes and the pressure in her head perched on the verge of explosion. Her own panicked pulse was pounding so hard in her ears that she never even heard the crash.

A shower of glass peppered her hair and face, but it was only when Dan ducked, letting go of her throat to shield his eyes that Karly realized she could hear snarling. In the next instant, Puppy was on them both, flecks of glass from the shattered living room window and drops of blood falling from his fur as he attacked. A gun went off; Karly hadn’t even realized Dan had pulled it from his jacket holster, but she both heard and felt the whiz of the bullet pass through her hair.

She screamed, but then so did Dan as Puppy’s jaws snapped onto his arm. Dan dropped the gun when the wolf shook him, yanking him off balance and off Karly, and letting go only when Dan hit the floor on his knees. That’s when Puppy went for his throat.

“No!” Karly screamed, but even as it was happening, she honestly didn’t know who she was trying to stop—Puppy, savagely pressing his attack, intent only on getting his strong jaws around Dan’s vulnerable neck…or her ex-husband, who was fighting back, kicking, punching, and already reaching for the concealed revolver he kept as a backup, tucked under his shirt at the small of his back.

Karly dove for the gun, lying where it had fallen on the carpet. She saw the glint of light flashing off the shiny nickel-plated revolver when Dan raised his hand, but she got hers up first. They were less than six feet apart. He could have shot her first had he noticed what she was doing, but he didn’t notice and Karly had no desire to warn him. She simply shot. Not once or twice, but over and over again

The sound in that tiny rental cabin was deafening. She honestly didn’t know if it was the sound alone that sent Puppy leaping to get out of the way or if she’d accidentally shot him. That she didn’t accidentally shoot all three of them was nothing short of a miracle, because she didn’t stop firing until the bullets were gone and the slider snapped out and locked.

If she hadn’t been such a coward, she would have shot Dan. But she was a coward. She’d wasted every bullet in that gun, shooting up the floor between them instead.

Panting, her hands shaking violently and her finger still fighting to pull that trigger, Karly stared into the wide and furious eyes of her ex. He blinked once and then again.

“You fucking crazy bitch,” he breathed, incredulously.

She had no bullets left, but Dan did. The gun in his hand was trembling, but he seemed to have forgotten he had it. He only stared at her, his shock visibly building back toward fury just before his gaze slid slightly past her. She didn’t realize he was staring just past her shoulder until she saw the anger in him suddenly melt into shock.

“Put that god-damn gun down,” Colton growled behind her, “or I’ll rip your fucking throat out.”

It was the fear on Dan’s face that made Karly turn around. She already knew what she was going to see and, oh, but how she didn’t want to.

She heard the clatter when Dan dropped his backup gun. She dropped hers too. Not just because it was empty and useless, but because Colton was crouching on all fours between her and the kitchen, where she knew for a fact he had not been bare seconds before. He was bleeding, rivulets of red dripping down the length of his arm from where a bullet she’d fired had grazed him and from all the tiny cuts that coming through that living room window had left on him. Worst of all though, he was naked. Completely unabashedly naked, with Puppy’s brand new collar decorating his neck.

His teeth were bared. He was growling, like something savage—a very convincing something savage—and he was…rippling. His muscles kept bunching, flexing; the leap that would bring him right back into the fight barely held in check, while his very flesh buckled in and out with a strange fluidity. He still looked human—of course, he did; how else was he supposed to…look? And yet, he also looked very much like something else. It was in his eyes. Those yellow, yellow eyes that remained locked on Dan, ignoring her completely even when her legs suddenly gave out under her and Karly sat down, right there in the middle of the bullet-riddled floor.

“Puppy,” she whispered, wishing more than anything that her eyes were lying to her.

For the first time, Colton dragged his lupine stare from Dan to her. He tipped his head, an animalistic shiver rippling through naked flesh. “Karly,” he growled, struggling to get the words out of a still too-wolfish throat. “Sweetheart, please stop calling me that.”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

“We can’t cover this up,” Gabe said as Colton glanced back across the room to where Karly sat swaddled in a patchwork quilt on the couch. Mama Margo was watching over her, trying to feed a little coffee mixed with a lot of moonshine into her.

“It’ll help,” Mama Margo kept saying, but Karly wasn’t responding. She was doing what she’d done pretty much from the moment he had transformed in front of her. She was staring at him. Just staring. Her face was a blank canvas, absolutely void of any discernable expression. That in and of itself was very telling, but not in any way that made Colton happy.

Tied hand to foot and gagged, Dan was in the kitchen, tucked back behind the half wall so Karly wouldn’t have to see him. Currently, Marcus was keeping him company. The lanky Omega was hunkered down directly in front of him, forearms braced across his knees, his eyes bright yellow. He didn’t move. His teeth all but bared, he didn’t speak either, but every few breaths if Dan so much as twitched, Marcus growled. So far, that had kept Dan incredibly still and absolutely silent.

Every bit as silent as Karly was being. Colton looked at her again. He wished she’d say something, do something. But from the moment he’d tied Dan in the kitchen, dug his clothes back out of the bushes where they’d been stashed and called this whole clusterfuck in to Gabe, she’d only spoken once: “Were you in my bed last night?”

Had Colton known that was the opening shot of a completely different battle rather than just a plea for clarification, he’d have chosen a completely different answer. “Do you know I’m real now?”

When she’d said that to him last night, it had stung every bit as badly as the physical cuts he bore now. He had poured his whole being into loving her. He had held her in his arms and in his eyes, and she had held him back, gifting him with the most beautiful surrender any woman could give a man. And she thought she was dreaming? He should have made his reality clear right then.

Who was he kidding? He never should have transformed in her bed in the first place, but the desire to see her with his human eyes, to touch her with his hand instead of his paw, had been just too overpowering.

Not that any of that mattered now. There were now two non-
volka
people in this room who now knew the secret behind Hollow Hills. That Karly was one, Colton didn’t mind so much. He wished she’d found out a different way, but he felt sure she’d keep their secret. Dan, however, was a completely different matter.

“Cole.” Lowering his voice, Gabe moved to block Karly from his sight and perhaps reclaim Colton’s attention. Which left Colton staring at Dan—Marcus was enjoying himself; the big, tough wife-beating cop wasn’t making a whole lot of noise right now. Colton couldn’t look at him too long before the urge to rip his throat out began to well up all over again. “Cole!” Gabe snapped. Finally succeeding in catching Colton’s gaze, he lowered his voice. “We
can’t
cover this up.”

“I heard you the first time,” Colton said. “It couldn’t be helped.”

“I know that.” His expression said he wouldn’t mind arguing that point, but Gabe held up surrendering hands, preferring instead to tackle the most pressing issue first. “I know it, I do. And he—” Dan shrank from Gabe’s accusing finger as far as his bonds and the kitchen wall would allow. “—he knows it too, but his cop buddies out in Redemption…they don’t know, and probably wouldn’t even believe it if you got the whole damn thing on video! He’s going to go home, spin this story to his best possible advantage, and then they are going to come back here.”

“They won’t believe him,” Colton scoffed, sounding far more certain than he actually felt. “What’s he going to say: I see werewolves? They’ll laugh him off the force. If he’s not very careful, he’ll end up with a psych-evaluation and be stripped of his gun. What he ought to be more worried about right now, is my arresting him and how the hell he’s going to spin the attempted murder of his wife to his friends back home!”

Dan looked at him now, and for the first time, some of that nervous fear disappeared behind a thin veil of dark calculation.

Marcus growled again, but Dan continued to stare at Colton until Marcus reached out a slow hand to take him by the throat. He leaned into Dan, coming in so close that the two men had to be breathing the same air. Marcus tipped his head, filling up the tied man’s entire field of vision. By the way Dan’s face began to redden, he was probably squeezing, cutting off his air.

“Don’t look at him,” Marcus murmured, soft as any lover. “I’m right here. You look at me,
chelovak
.”

The urge to give the order to snap Dan’s neck was every bit as overwhelming as his desire for Karly had been last night.

Gabe snapped his fingers in Colton’s face, twice. “You’re going to arrest him?” he said incredulously once Colton’s eyes had locked on him again. “Are you insane?”

“I’m not letting him go.” Colton let his eyes drift back to Karly. She hadn’t moved. She was still staring right at him, her face drawn, still ignoring Mama Margo and her moonshine strength elixir. He wanted to comfort her, but he had a feeling if he went to her now, comfort would be the last thing she took from him. “He’s going to pay for what he’s done.”

He looked at Dan again, swallowing back another surge of savage fury. Why the hell did he have to show up now—show up at all, even—and ruin what fragile progress he and Karly had made? He couldn’t remember the last time he’d wanted to hurt a human the way he wanted to hurt this man now. His muscles kept flexing, the wolf in him pressuring its way up through his guts until the pulse to shift was all he could feel pounding at the back of his head. If he looked in a mirror right now, he knew all that he would see would be the wolf, bright in his yellow eyes. It was already heavy in his tone, turning his voice raspy and gruff. “I swear it, he’s going to pay.”

“He’s going to pay?” Gabe stared at him, disbelief abruptly giving way to hard laughter. “What exactly are you suggesting we do?” He lowered his voice now too, the wolf shining yellow in his own eyes as he shifted to block Karly once more out of Colton’s sight. “I know it’s hard, but think about what you’re doing. Give the order and I’ll follow it, but the days when we could disappear little problems like this out in the backwoods are long and truly gone. If he goes missing, people will come looking for him. And if he turns up dead…well then, welcome to the twenty-first century: the great age of forensic achievement. No one can find Bigfoot, but in the hunt for a dead cop’s killer, I guarantee they’re
gonna
find a werewolf!”

He was right, and Colton knew it. But he was just pissed off enough to make thinking through the problem difficult. He kept glancing at Karly and his warring want of her, plus his need to make sure she never had reason to fear a return visit from this sonofabitch, made clear and rational thought impossible.

“We’re in the middle of a Hunt,” Gabe said, helping to keep him focused on the problem and the fury of the wolf tamped down. “We can’t have a bunch of outsiders from two different states poking around, looking for evidence and interfering in the breeding affairs of people who don’t care for humans or cops, and especially not for human cops. All it will take is one wrong word to the wrong
volka
, and the next thing you know, someone on our side is going to get irritated, someone on their side is going to grab their gun, and then someone’s going to get killed. God help us if a
volka
draws first blood, but God help everyone if a human does! It’ll be the Dark Ages all over again with huntings and burnings, entire packs wiped out of existence, and before you can say ‘piss in a bucket’, we’ll be at war! And this time we’ll be annihilated, Cole, because unlike before, nobody’s going to hold back in the hopes of finding a peaceful solution. Hollow Hills was that solution. If they come after us here…” Gabe shook his head.

Stabbing fingers from both hands through his short, dark hair, Colton tried to think beyond the anger. “I’ll talk to people. I’ll stress the need for patience—”

“How patient are you feeling right now?” Gabe asked bluntly. “And no offense, buddy, because you’ve always been Alpha to me, but you haven’t taken a mate, you’ve barely participated in the Hunt, and right now, McQueen is a stronger leader in the eyes of this county than you are. Nobody is going to listen to you, and the last thing McQueen will be when the
chelovak
start invading is patient.”

“Drink, damn it,” Mama Margo said gruffly, drawing everyone’s attention back to where Karly was stubbornly ignoring the drink in favor of shrugging out of her quilt.

“I’m fine,” she whispered, but her hands were shaking and so was her voice. Every inch of Colton came into sharp focus when Karly crossed the room, coming to within feet of him. She didn’t look at Dan. She just stared at Colton, at his eyes in particular. At his mouth.

He looked at her mouth too, the almost desperate need to kiss her sinking into his gut like claws. He tried to take it as a good sign that at least she didn’t seem afraid of him, but she was still wearing that expressionless mask and heaven only knew what her thoughts were like underneath.

“What are you?” she finally asked.

It wasn’t screaming or shouting, or crying; Colton hoped that might be a good sign too. “They called us
volka
.”

“You’re not gypsies,” she guessed.

It was a struggle to keep the wolfish gruffness out of his voice. “No.”

She hesitated, all but flinching as she said, “A-are you a werewolf?” For the first time, her mask cracked, giving him a glimpse of the confusion writhing within her. “Is…is everyone a…?”

She didn’t say the word again, but then, she didn’t have to. He knew what she meant.

“Yes.” He tried to reach for her, but she withdrew even further, already shaking her head.

“The w-whole town?”

“No,” Colton tried to assure, before Gabe added, “We have maybe fifteen, twenty humans in Hollow Hills. Most are half-breeds, though.”

“So, I’m not the only…” ‘Normal’ was right there on the tip of her lips. He watched her stumble over trying not to say it before the one phrase she’d heard here suddenly made sense. “…
chelovak
here?”

“Good save,” Gabe muttered.

“No, you’re not,” Colton said, frowning at him.

Karly glanced to her husband. “What happens now? What are you going to do with him?”

“I’m going to make sure he never hurts you again.”

“How?”

Colton knew better than to answer that. He’d sooner dig his own heart out with a spoon, than to make her share any part of what he intended for Dan. It was the hardest thing he’d yet done today, but he made himself turn away from her. “You’re not staying here anymore. Go with Gabe—”

Karly shook her head.

“He’ll take you someplace safe.”

“Where?” she countered. “Your house?”

He looked at her, but did not bother feigning either surprise or offense by her suggestion. His house was, frankly, the safest place in all of Hollow Hills. Both from outsiders and from its less understanding residents. And with her living under his roof, that would give him all the time and ready opportunities that he’d need to bring her back to where they’d been last night. Except the next time, there would be no doubt in her mind as to whether or not he was really there, lying with her, pouring himself into her.

“Go with Gabe,” he gruffly repeated.

“No.”

He reached for her arm, but Karly flinched, shrugging away from him, her hands held up as if she fully intended to shove or slap at him if he tried to touch her again. Colton frowned, not at all liking it that she was looking everywhere but at him now. Her eyes were strange—wide, angry, confused…hurt. Her gaze kept jumping from one fixed point in the kitchen to another, though none of those points were people,
volka
or otherwise. Dan grunted, his first pleading mew not to be left behind, but that mew was abruptly cut off when Marcus’s hand on his throat clamped down hard.

Karly moved then, but it wasn’t toward Dan. She retreated back out of the kitchen, crunching broken shards of glass into the carpet with every shallow backwards step that took her closer to the front door.

She tripped every one of Colton’s ‘rabbit’ sensors. She was going to run.

“Karly.” He stalked after her, catching her arm to stay her and refusing to let go even when she tried, just once, to shake him off. “Look at me.”

She did, but that more confirmed, rather than eased his fears. She was definitely going to run. He could see the decision as bold as the blue of her eyes; she was going to wait until his back was turned, and then she was fleeing.

“Don’t be afraid,” he tried to say, but it came out sounding like begging. ‘I will take care of you, I swear it.’ Those words were perched right there at the tip of his tongue, followed by an even more emasculating plea for her to ‘Stay.’ Just stay. That was all he wanted. His need for her burned inside him like living coals, and they barely even knew one another. ‘Don’t make me have to hunt you down’, would have sounded too aggressive and only served to scare her more. “Please,” he whispered instead.