Alpha Curves (Paranormal BBW Shifter Romance): Wolf Clan Book 3 (17 page)

Iris buried her face against Cade's neck as Esme slowly chipped at Dana's resistance.

"Oscar and I can't travel together any more than two cubs can." Standing on tiptoe, the witch nuzzled her mate's cheek. "And he needs you with him. You're the only father Oscar will ever have."

"You're the only love I will ever have." Tears glittered in the big wolf's eyes, as if he had already lost his mate forever, her leaving only a formality. "You said we would always be together."

Esme slid her hand across his chest so that the palm centered over his heart as she answered. "I will always be with you."

Chapter Eighteen

"Why do we even think the papers will still be there?" Remus asked with an hour's drive remaining on the run to Zanesville.

Having already justified the belief that her hiding place remained safe to Dana and Oram, Iris ignored the big wolf riding shotgun next to Tanner. Just four years older than Iris, she had known Remus since childhood. Like so many of the wolflings trying to impress their pack leaders back then, he had taken every opportunity to tell Iris she didn't belong. While his civility had improved over the last twelve years, he hadn't grown any friendlier.

Not that she would have welcomed his friendship. Some bridges weren't worth mending.

"I'd like to know, too."

Iris glanced at the man sitting protectively close to Esme. The wolf, a late twenty-something male named Navarro, wasn't part of Cade's team. He served Dana, who had not yet chosen a beta to carry out his orders and lead the clan in his occasional absence. Now, sent to protect Esme, his place at Dana's side was all but assured. Unless he failed to bring the witch back, in which case Iris assumed the young wolf was as good as dead.

Cade nuzzled her ear. "We've got an hour to go, baby."

She relented, for her mate and for Esme. The familiarity of the story would ease the witch's tension. And, judging by the way the woman had her hands protectively wrapped around her stomach, Esme's anxiety bordered on unbearable.

"Before the Hunters found me," Iris began. "I pawned everything from their car -- even parts of their car -- then I burned it."

Navarro nodded, smiling at the idea that she had made good use of their enemies' property after killing two of them.

"The money didn't last long, even with me sleeping outside at night." She didn't explain the particulars of why the money had evaporated so quickly. With her memory a blank on those weeks for more than a decade, she hadn't known herself. She had shifted for the first time during the attack by Hank and the Hunters. She'd almost died from the injuries. Her body needed fuel. Lots and lots of fuel. She had consumed as much food per day as she would have eaten during an entire week before the change. And it didn't stop her from losing weight. Nothing did until she had finished healing and subconsciously suppressed her ability to shift.

"It was raining, coming down hard, the wind so strong I could barely walk against it," Iris recounted. "I took shelter in a museum. It had been a school when first constructed and a stop on the underground railway..."

Sensing Navarro, and especially Remus, didn't want a history lesson, Iris shrugged. "Anyway, I spent a couple of hours walking around it, waiting for the storm to die down. The place was loaded with silver--"

She stopped as a light shudder descended the junior wolf's body from his head to the tip of his steel-toed boots. He had taken a Hunter's silver blade in his stomach less than two months before and the memory still uncomfortably tickled his gut.

"Of course, it was all behind glass so no one could steal it," she continued after giving him a second to recover. "But then I came up to this desk. There were replica blotters and inkwells, a fancy letter opener that was fake, too, and copies of Abolitionist manifestoes and stuff -- none of it real. But I could feel silver, just the faintest pull."

"Witches draw power from silver and iron," Esme explained as Navarro looked at her. "We're basically metal detectors for those two metals."

Iris glanced at the front of the tactical van. Remus, who had prompted the discussion, appeared to be staring out the side window, but she could see his eyes in the reflection and they were fixed on her.

She turned her attention back to Navarro. "I figured there might be a hidden compartment, and I was right. Inside, I found a silver coin, very old. From before the Civil War."

The find had been both a blessing and her near destruction. Knowing its intrinsic value was far greater than any pawn shop would give her, she checked the phone book for a local antique dealer who traded in coins. Walking into his store, she had almost turned around and left. But she forced legs that wanted to run hard and fast in the opposite direction to approach the counter where the man waited.

She held her breath as the same stink that had clung to the Hunters who tried to kill her clogged her nose in that little shop. She convinced herself that the owner had merely, and quite innocently, acquired objects that carried some kind of magic with them. She held onto that belief long enough to sell the coin for three hundred dollars.

She had been wrong, of course, and the mistake almost cost Iris her life. She had returned to the diner she had eaten at the night before. She needed more fuel for her injured body and the manager had offered her a job. With the three hundred in her pocket and a kitchen full of food to borrow from, she would have enough money to last her until she received her first paycheck. That and the tips would carry her to the next paycheck and the one after that while she figured out what she needed to do to expose Hank Mercer and rejoin the only people who had ever loved or cared about her.

"So, all those years sitting around that museum and no one ever found the panel or whatever?" Navarro asked.

Smiling, she nodded.

"The guy I sold it to must have been a Hunter or at least known what I was." Which was odd, Iris thought, because, at the time, she hadn't known what she was. So how could he? "Anyway, less than an hour later and two teams of Hunters steamrolled into town. I had the papers on me and I didn't want to get caught with them, so I made my way back to the museum and hid them."

Satisfied, Navarro grunted. Young and overly charming, he leaned forward and offered her his closed fist for a light bump in appreciation of the clever wolfling she had once been.

She returned the gesture then relaxed against Cade. She didn't mention that a bus from a Columbus high school had shown up at the museum while she was selling the coin and fleeing the Hunters. She hadn't told Cade or anyone else yet about how she had followed the students onto the bus at the end of their tour. Some of the kids had given her funny looks, but the terror in her eyes had silenced them. The terror and Jenna.

Jenna, the cool girl with her haunted gaze who lived with her grandparents because her stepfather had murdered her mother before committing suicide. Jenna, who had dared, with one glance, anyone to open their mouth and reveal that there was an extra body on the bus.

"What is it, baby?" Cade asked, his thumb secretly stroking the inside of her wrist.

"Just remembering the girl who helped me escaped...who convinced her grandparents to give me a place to stay until I could get my own."

Cade blinked and his mouth turned down at the corners, a barely noticeable quiver dancing at their edges. Leading a mission that could be a cakewalk or a death trap, he didn't have the luxury of expressing his sadness for the time his mate had been alone and hunted. But she saw it shining in his gaze and knew she would tell him later about Jenna and how, after everything Iris had learned the last few weeks, she was almost certain the girl had been a latent. But not at that moment because he had to focus on the team's safety and she would unravel if she thought about her lost friend.

"How close are we?" Iris asked, hoping to divert his attention.

Taking the tablet Navarro studied, Cade pulled up the location feed. Checking his watch, he growled toward the front of the vehicle. He returned the tablet to Navarro then scooted toward the back of the driver's seat.

"I don't care if it's past midnight," he snarled. "Slow the fuck down."

Tanner glanced in the mirror, his gaze landing first on Cade before locking on Iris. Her chest tightened and she shook her head, her gesture a warning or maybe a plea. Tanner had been quiet during the briefing, but nothing had suggested he wasn't focused on the mission. He'd gone through the checks as competently as Remus and Navarro, only without their banter.

She hadn't thought anything about it, but she hadn't looked him in the eyes until that moment, fifteen minutes out of Zanesville when they should have had half an hour to go. So she hadn't noticed the shadows haunting his gaze. Apparently no one else had, either.

Iris thought of the source of those shadows -- Michelle. Lovely, young, fragile, broken and genetically matched to a man old enough to be her father, a veteran who wore the scars of battle when other wolves remained whole.

Cade lowered his voice, his hand landing on Tanner's shoulder and squeezing. "I need you here, in this van, on this mission."

"I am," Tanner answered, his voice steady.

"You're not," Iris challenged, worried she was the only one who recognized exactly what was wrong. He loved a woman he didn't feel worthy of. Some ridiculous, chivalrous portion of him wanted to let her go, but he didn't know how. At least not directly, not while he was alive.

"He fucking said he's fine," Remus barked from the front passenger seat. He hadn't stopped facing the side window, but his eyes remained on Iris. "I don't care what you came back as, you're not in charge and you've got no fucking say. So let it go!"

Cade's hand closed around the big wolf's throat and applied an ever increasing amount of pressure. Navarro jumped toward the front, his hand on Cade's arm and his lips less than an inch from the lead wolf's ear.

"We're turning around," Navarro insisted.

Cade glared at him from the side of one eye, his grip on his team member's throat tightening.

Navarro shook his head. "You may have lead on this, but I have final authority to abort. We're going home."

"It's too late," Esme whispered, hands still protectively clutching her stomach. Her skin had turned almost translucent except for two bright dots of red flushing her cheeks. She looked at Cade then Iris before explaining. "We're not alone anymore."

********************

"Not alone" was an understatement Cade thought as he low crawled along the rear exterior wall of the Stony Academy. Unable to turn back on the highway, he had pushed his team into Zanesville, driving silently with the lights out through residential neighborhoods, looping slow circles, creeping along, parking for minutes at a time where they couldn't be seen.

Waiting for an enemy that never presented itself.

Deciding Esme was wrong, he took Remus and Tanner into the museum, with Iris and Navarro in the van to protect the witch and act as lookout. Bypassing the security system had been easy. Locating the desk and secret panel, the papers still inside, proved even less challenging.

Then a silver shrapnel grenade had landed two feet in front of them as they exited the building with Tanner running point.

Cade knew he should be dead. Tanner should be dead, too. But they weren't because of Remus. The man whose neck he had almost snapped a few hours before had cast one apologetic glance over his shoulder then threw himself forward and down. The explosive lifted his body two feet off the ground before scattering it in pieces in a circle almost fifteen yards in diameter.

Witch light had erupted a second later, missing Cade and Tanner but herding them away from the van where Cade had left Iris and Esme with Navarro. Breaking a window, Cade dragged a stunned Tanner back into the museum.

Somewhere, an alarm would be sounding. Maybe at a security center, maybe at the police station itself. In a town of only twenty-five thousand people, in the pre-dawn hours, the cops would be there in just a few minutes. That was all the time Cade had to reach the van, save his mate and evade the police.

Twenty seconds to reach the rear exit, five to push his wolf outside in search of the enemy, one to open the door and pull Tanner with him, throwing his team mate onto the ground and commanding him to follow...and to keep his fucking head down because the old wolf did not have permission to die on Cade's mission.

No one was allowed to die unless they were Hunters.

He and Tanner took another fifteen seconds to reach the end of the wall, two to hit the trees, three before the van was fully in view.

Seeing the side door open, the interior pitch black, Cade's heart sank.

Then another bolt of witch light almost took his head off.

"There!" Tanner whispered urgently as he tapped Cade's right shoulder.

Turning his head, Cade saw a navy blue van, three men and one woman sheltering behind it.

The woman was Camille Foster. And, if Cade had to guess, he would say the black haired man beside her was Quentin. But no Iris, no Esme, no Navarro.

The question of where his mate had disappeared to was answered a second later as twin blasts of opposing magic hit the blue van. Taking cover behind a heavy dumpster, the two women unleashed on their attackers. Crouching next to Esme, Navarro aimed the business end of a high-powered rifle a few feet to the right of the van.