Alpha Curves (Paranormal BBW Shifter Romance): Wolf Clan Book 3 (2 page)

Cade turned and glared his subordinate into an uneasy submission. The situation was far beyond the worst-case scenario Cade had imagined earlier. The scent told him that the woman was not only in heat, but was a female alpha. As rare as they were, an alpha she-wolf didn't need a signature match with an unmated male to fiercely attract his attention, she only needed to be in her breeding cycle without a life mate of her own.

Instead of one lust-filled wolf, he would have four -- surrounded by cops with guns and rifles.

Cade stepped away from the van. A dozen more steps and he heard the rustle of Mathis close behind. Cade issued another growl, the sound far below the range of human detection and meant to snap like jaws around Mathis's neck and throttle the other man's wolf until it turned belly up and whined in submission.

"We can't rescue her like this," Cade warned in a fierce whisper. "Get in the damn van and start the engine before I take your head off."

Mathis hesitated then his gaze flicked toward something beyond Cade's shoulder. With a grunt, the driver returned to the vehicle.

Pivoting toward the club, Cade noticed the approaching police officer. Forcing the tension from his muscles, he waited for the cop to reach him.

"My girlfriend's in there," he said before the man could open his mouth. "Please tell me the girls are okay."

"Yeah. Can't say the same for the bouncer with a knife sticking from his gut." Straining to see over Cade's shoulder, the cop eyeballed the van. "Who's your girl?"

"Mandy." Plucking the name from thin air, Cade managed a smile. He couldn't do anything about his throbbing balls or rigid dick, but his canines had retracted to human length. "I'd tell you she was the blonde with the really sweet--"

His hands came up as if balancing two heavy watermelons, and then his fake smile split wider.

"Yeah, that would describe half the ladies in there." The cop laughed. "It'll be an hour or more before the homicide detectives release them. You need to park your vehicle if you're gonna wait. I'll see if I can get a message to her for you."

Cade nodded, his mind running in one direction while his senses ran in another. The she-wolf's scent was on the cop, along with a dozen human women and as many males. His wolf dug past the distracting odors to find the only one that interested him.

He inhaled, his testicles swelling bigger. She smelled like the finest cut of meat dressed in oranges and cloves.

Oranges and cloves.

The scent punched Cade hard in the gut. He knew her smell like he knew his own face.

"Iris…"

Walking in the direction of the club, the cop stopped, his attention caught on the name Cade had whispered and the questioning tone he had used. Returning to Cade, the cop's gaze narrowed at the same time his hand eased to the firearm attached to his belt. "You know Detective Wilkes?"

Detective?

Wilkes?

Cade blinked for a few seconds, each flick another layer of the complicated situation processed. He had riled the cop's suspicion by apparently saying the name of a cop. Iris -- Iris North. His Iris, the eighteen-year-old she-wolf who had disappeared from Cade's life a dozen years ago without explanation or even a good-bye.

But why Wilkes instead of North? If it was for a fake ID, why not change both names? Had she married?

The last question struck him like a chainsaw in the chest. He blinked with a stunned slowness as he forced his canines to retreat once more. Cade smiled at the cop, his voice a low rumble as he spoke. "Yeah, I know Iris. Take me to her."

The cop caressed the butt of his gun just as the woman in question exited the building, her nose discreetly pushed up to scent the crowd. Beyond the intoxicating fragrance of her wolf and heat, he recognized the dark russet waves of thick hair and the creamy rounded flesh he had once caressed and nibbled at in trying his damnedest to coax her willing surrender to his wolf.

Iris North...his mate...in heat...surrounded by her fellow cops and the unmated wolves of his team...out in the open, exposed to the threat of Hunters...

Chest tightening even further, Cade nodded beyond the cop's shoulder. "There she is. How long has her last name been Wilkes?"

Iris froze, her nose lifting a little higher as her expression widened. Cade knew she had to have a full snout of him at that point. Would she recognize him or merely think there was an unknown male shifter in her vicinity? Joints rolled and popped along his body, the urge to transform running just below the flesh at the unwelcome idea of his mate scenting him as if he were a complete stranger.

Heat hissed low in his belly and he growled at the human in front of him. "I asked how long has she been Wilkes?"

Staggering backward, the cop reached for his gun just as Iris spotted Cade. Her expression widened and she quickstepped toward him. Her body deep in heat, each step closer magnified her primal draw on him, her wolf calling to his, her heat curling around his cock and sucking at his flesh until he thought he would explode.

Coarse hair popped along the back of Cade's neck and along his knuckles as he fought to restrain his wolf. Feeling his nails sharpen to lethal points, he eased them out of the cop's view.

"Show me your hands!" the man screamed.

Cade ignored the order, every microgram of his attention focused on Iris. Her heat was his to claim. Not another wolf's and certainly not the human male protectively trailing close behind her, his soft body draped in the kind of inexpensive dress suit standard for police detectives.

Behind Cade, Mathis started the van.

"Turn the vehicle off!" Hysteria coated the cop's voice. Raising his gun, he pointed it at Cade's head. "I said show me your hands, you stupid motherfucker!"

All hell was about to break loose but Cade just grinned. His hand darted out at superhuman speed, twisting the gun from the cop's grip and making the man squeal. Now fully aware of their brother cop's distress, patrol officers started shouting as more guns were unholstered and drawn.

Beneath the chaos, Iris tried to get Cade to submit, her high-frequency supplication broken and clearly out of practice.

Calm down and I'll get you out of here.

Cade growled again. His canines extended. The urge to bare them at the patrol officer and the male detective felt like hooks gouging and raising his top lip. Iris was out of her mind if she thought she could disappear without a word for a dozen years then issue orders to him.

The only submission he would accept was hers -- her heat, her body positioned chest down and ass up, her pussy dripping with enough arousal to ease his passage into her.

Iris stepped around the patrol officer, her body blocking Cade from harming the man as she repeated her command.

Damn it, Cade. Stand down!

Before Cade could respond, the crack of a high-powered rifle whipped through the air. The plain-clothes detective, his body so close to Iris he almost pushed into her, dropped to the ground, half his face exploding across the patrol cop and Iris before he collapsed.

Hunters on the roof, boss!

Mathis threw the van in reverse, the words in his high-frequency warning like a bucket of ice on Cade's arousal. Cade shot his arm out, his hard grip seizing Iris around the waist as she reached for her gun. Spinning, he threw his body backwards as the van slammed to a stop next to him, its side door open. Twisting as he fell, Cade pinned Iris to the floor of the van as Mathis threw the vehicle into drive and hit the accelerator.

A quick jerk on her wrist disarmed Iris. He tossed the gun from the van before shutting the door as another rifle shot ricocheted off the bumper. Hearing the shot, Cade threw himself across her body.

She fought, twisting and jerking, her nails swiping at him to draw thin streams of blood across his cheek as her knee searched for a clear shot at his groin. He wrapped a hand around her throat, his breath steaming against her face as he forced her to stop kicking by slowly denying her air. When she finally quieted, he shook his head at her, drew a deep breath and laughed.

"Baby, you're not supposed to smell like this."

Iris blinked once, surprise pulling at the sides of her face, and then her mouth went slack. A second later, the plump lips hardened into a scowl and she pushed at his thick chest.

"Get off me!" She screamed. When he didn't budge, she pushed harder. "I said get off!"

"Not happening." Growling, he buried his face against her neck and inhaled. "Or don't you realize those were Hunters shooting at you?"

The van shuddered as the driver took a hard right. Tanner’s voice squawked over the radio that more shots were being fired outside the club, with Hunters holding positions on two rooftops as the police scrambled for cover.

"We’re clear!" Tanner squawked again. "Going down the hole!"

Cade lifted his head and barked at Mathis. "Follow them!"

With the Hunters and the cops keeping each other busy, Cade settled his weight against Iris’s body. He tried to keep his expression stern. She had run out on him, after all! But his wolf -- hungry and horny -- smiled at her.

Struggling against him, she snapped, "That was my partner on the ground!"

Partner...

He growled at her use of a word too close to "mate" in his mind.

"Going back won't make him any less dead." Cade leaned in, sniffing again with the need to know just how deep her "partner's" scent went on her clothing. Cold metal touched his lips and he quickly pulled away. "Silver? You're shielding yourself with silver?

Reaching beneath the collar of the blouse Iris wore, Cade yanked a thick chain from her neck. The van jerked right, the frame almost buckling as a low whine of need sounded from the driver's seat.

"Boss, whatever you just did...fucking fix it."

"It" was Iris unmasked. With the chain broken, her heat permeated every inch of the van. Energy poured from her body, the waves turning to a carnal scream only a wolf could hear. Unmated, she was a ticking bomb ready to go off on his mission, jeopardizing her life and those of his team.

Unmated...

The word stuck in his head for a second before he crushed it like a tin can. Snarling, Cade reached between them.

"No." Iris shook her head, her deep purple gaze pleading with him to stop.

He tugged at the front of her pants, the fabric shredding beneath his claws. She wasn't unmated, just unfucked. She was his and if he needed Mathis to calm down in the front of the van and finish the rescue mission, then Cade needed to claim her.

"No," she whispered. Terror mixed with tears in the purple gaze, so that there was no she-wolf beneath him, just a frightened woman.

"Then control your heat," Cade snapped, the fear in his mate's eyes warring with his need to protect and claim her. "Or I will."

Every inch of his skin burning with his desire for Iris, Cade reluctantly eased his weight from her. She rolled to the side of the van and sat up. Her hands closed around the silver necklace he had torn from her. Finding the heavy clasp broken, she placed the chain around her neck then pinched the ends together. She started murmuring. Blue light erupted along her fingertips.

Surprise coiled around Cade's growl and squeezed to keep the sound inside him, the silence beyond the she-wolf’s murmuring broken only by Mathis in the front seat.

"Boss, why does she sound like Esme?"

Chapter Three

Esme...

Her flesh starting to burn from the silver and the blue light that erupted with her chanting, Iris shoved aside the vague memory of a teenaged witch-in-training. She knew the driver was talking about the words and not her voice.

Casting words were slippery to a shifter's ears. Wolves couldn't catch them, couldn't hold them in their minds long enough to roll them off their tongues. Wolves might be magic, but they couldn't learn or cast magic. Beyond her too round shape, her ability to not only remember the words the witches used but repeat them with effect had been the first clear sign that she was not a shifter.

Already an outcast among the wolves, she had told no one. The secret had saved her life the day she was forced off clan lands and had shielded her for over a decade from shifters and Hunters alike -- until today, when Cade Mercer stormed back into her life, his words and behavior claiming the impossible.

She was in heat.

Absolutely, totally out of the question -- she couldn't be. The blue light dancing around her fingertips and the foreign syllables rolling off her tongue proved as much. She wasn't a wolf, wasn't one of the clan's women even though she'd been born to a mated pair.

Iris looked at Cade to find him staring at her, his eyes wide and his jaw tight with suspicion. She pushed the distraction away and continued the chant. Beneath her fingertips, the silver melded to one unbroken length of chain around her neck. She knew the moment the chain was restored by the fresh growl that rumbled through Cade's chest and the way the van steered straighter beneath the driver's steadied hands.