Betraying the Pack (2 page)

Catching herself staring toward
the entrance—still apparently hoping he would come back sooner than he expected—she
sighed as she turned back to the bar and her waiting beer. It hadn’t taken long
for someone in the crowd to slip into the empty spot Gavin had just vacated.
Unlike her blond cowboy, though, the new fellow didn’t inspire lusty thoughts
of any kind. Actually, with his bright, almost feverish eyes and his wide smile
that showed too many teeth, her new neighbor made her stomach tighten unpleasantly.
Grasping her beer, she slid off the stool and moved away, losing herself in the
crowd.

Sipping on the pungent brew,
the heat, music, and alcohol soon went to her head. She put down the brown
bottle and weaved her way to the bathroom, her stomach roiling and her sight
blurring.

What on earth?
She
didn’t have a high tolerance for booze, but still, she hadn’t even finished one
drink, which made her current state seem odd. Bailey staggered and hit the wall
before the bathroom. She blinked her eyes, but each time she closed her lids,
it became harder to open them back up. A numbing languor spread through her
body.

I’ve been drugged!

The mental admission didn’t
stop her knees from buckling, but before she could hit the floor, hands grasped
her and held her upright. Had her sexy cowboy returned?

A whiff of rancid sweat made
her cringe, and a voice in her head howled—
Run!
A futile command given her body wouldn’t function. She also never got a chance
to see who’d caught her because she blinked one last time and slipped into
darkness.

Gavin didn’t welcome Wyatt’s
interruption, and neither did his wolf. He especially didn’t like the interest
in his pack brother’s eyes as he looked upon the human female who’d literally
bumped into him.

Something about the dark-haired,
shy creature drew him—and made him harder than a rod of steel. Damn, he didn’t
remember the last time, if any, the simple presence of a female affected him so.

When he took his leave, with a
promise to return later, he meant it, especially after his brief taste of her skin
and scent. Even though the woman was obviously not pack, she called to him.
Only a stupid wolf, or one determined to limit himself by frolicking only with
his kind, would ignore her appeal. In the Lycan world, the males outnumber the
females in large numbers. And the she-wolves they had weren’t for casual
fucking. If a Lycan maid caught a male’s eye, then he either mated with her or
went without. A male wolf also had to accept his place as only one of several
mates.

Lycan females were expected to
take on at least two men, sometimes more. It was a pack law, a law the council
leader, Nathan, and his mate, Dana, were trying to change. But, politics moved
slowly, even with Lycans. So far, Nathan had succeeded in at least allowing the
females to choose their own husbands, unlike the previous archaic way of having
a father select for the wrong reasons, or in rarer cases, the claiming, often
by force, of an unmated female. But the low number of females made limiting
matings to one of each sex still a futile dream.

So, how did this tie in to the
delectable human he’d met? No matter the law, the fact remained finding a mate
within his own species was almost impossible, and keeping her to himself even
less likely. Gavin also knew not all males found their mate in their lifetime, and
not all mates were Lycan.

Could the little darling be the
one destined as his? Her humanity would prevent conception between them, but at
the same time, her lack of Lycan gene meant he could keep her to himself.

However, he was getting ahead
of himself. Intriguing as he found the curly-haired cutie, it didn’t mean she
was
the one.
Only time—a more
thorough taste—and fate would tell.

“So who was the curvy
mouthful?” Wyatt asked as they escaped the noise and crowd in the bar.

Gavin stifled a growl as his
possessive side woke. “I don’t know. You interrupted me before we even got past
the hellos.”

“Well excuse me for thinking we
had a job to do here.”

“You don’t need to remind me of
my task.” Wyatt arched a brow in reply, and Gavin chuckled wryly. “Okay, maybe
I needed a little nudge. But damn me, there was something about her.”

“Something enticing,” Wyatt
added.

His friend’s answer stunned
him. “You felt it too?”

His pack brother nodded. “She’s
not wolf, but my damned beast was whining at me to sniff her and then lick her
all over.”

Gavin’s own beast paced in his
mind, and a low growl of jealousy almost forced its way past his control. He
couldn’t help himself from saying, though, “I saw her first. So hands off.”

“Why? Afraid she’d prefer my
mug to yours?”

“Not really, because we both
know I’m nicer.”

“Says you. Besides, who says we
have to fight over her? My father always did say sharing was the best plan.”

Gavin groaned. “We are not going
to talk about your father right now. I still haven’t recovered from the sex
talk he gave me at eleven. Some things a boy shouldn’t know.”

“Hey, he thought he was doing
you a favor what with your dad gone and all,” Wyatt replied defensively.

Gavin slapped Wyatt on the
back. “I know, which is why I’ve kept you alive, you annoying dick.” And stepbrother.
Gavin’s mother was mated with three men, of which Wyatt’s father was one. After
Gavin’s father died in a logging accident, it seemed natural for Kevin, Wyatt’s
dad, and also a widower, to take him under his wing.

A snort sounded as Wyatt opened
the truck door. “Oh please. We both know the reason you became my friend is
because you know I’d kick your ass in a second.”

“Ha.”

Their bantering, a familiar
routine held over from their youth, continued on as they traveled to the next
bar in search of rogues.

Gavin actually did have
business to take care of, council business. The Lycan packs answered to the
council, who set the laws and enforced them. Gavin and his group of pack
brothers were one of their sets of enforcers. Chosen because of their strength
and abilities to hunt—as well as kill—they traveled at the council’s behest,
taking care of problems before the humans took note.

In this case, they hunted rogues,
defined as wolves who no longer belonged to a pack and who behaved without any
regard for the laws and the consequences of their actions. In the last few
years, they’d seen an upsurge in rogue incidents. Nathan, their new head of
council after the previous one was executed for dereliction of duty for giving
some of their own to the vampires—a species thought, until recently, to be
myth—thought that the disappearances of males from the packs, and their
subsequent violent actions, were the fault of his father, Nathan’s supposed-to-be-dead
father, who instead, somehow, was now half Lycan, half vampire.

Personally, Gavin had to wonder
if their leader, Nathan, had gone off the deep end, because seriously,
vampires? Sure, werewolves existed, but bloodsuckers who could also control
minds? That really stretched things. Gavin’s theory was Nathan suffered from
guilt because he had to dispose of his father when he went mentally unstable
and began harming his pack instead of protecting it. This guilt made Nathan see
his father as some kind of ultimate evil behind the ever-increasing rogue
problems.

Regardless of their pack
leader’s mental state, Gavin couldn’t deny rogues were bad for all Lycans, no
matter who stood behind ordering them, or as Nathan claimed, mentally
commanding them.

As to their current assignment,
they’d received reports of rogues sighted in the area, enough of them to cause
concern even though this sector didn’t currently have an active pack. They’d
arrived a week ago, and while they’d caught vague traces of wolf in the area,
they’d yet to encounter any.

Of more concern were the
disappearances of the human women within a hundred-mile radius who kept
reappearing dead, their bodies raped, beaten, and clawed as if by wild animals.
The newspaper had barely touched on the murderous rampage, probably because, up
until a few weeks ago, the missing women were ladies of the night, aka prostitutes,
who probably ranked low on the crime-solving radar. As far as the public knew,
the first kidnapping occurred about two weeks ago, and the police, for some
reason, weren’t correcting the misconception.

It made him think of the little
darling from the bar. Alone, she appeared a tempting target, but he couldn’t
allow his newfound protective instinct, toward a veritable stranger, deter him
from his mission. The bar he’d just left appeared clean, not a scent of wolf
anywhere to be found. And, with his kiss, he’d left his mark on her, warning
others off—hopefully.

If Gavin intended to smear his
scent more thoroughly on her—while enjoying himself immensely—then he’d have to
do his duty first. So off he went with Wyatt, barhopping in the hopes of
finding a rogue trail. His other pack brothers, Jaxon and Parker, were doing
the same. Just another dull day of searching, where they’d later meet back at
the cabins they’d rented and compare notes.

A few hours later, longer than
Gavin expected, they ended up back at the country bar. “What a waste of time,”
Gavin complained. “I swear it’s like the bastards know we’re coming and
scatter. That last place, I thought I had one. I still don’t understand how
they’re hiding their tracks so well.”

“I’ll agree it’s frustrating,” Wyatt
replied in a low tone. “But we’ve got to keep looking. If we haven’t found
anything concrete by the end of the week, we’ll try in the next town over.”

Wyatt’s suggestion didn’t
entirely please Gavin. Leaving town meant leaving the dark-haired cutie he’d
just met, the one he hoped to see again—tonight.

Gavin pretended nonchalance as
he entered the still-rocking place, but Wyatt thumped him on the back and
laughed.

“Careful or you’re going to
scare her away with that hungry look of yours.”

Chagrined that his control had slipped
enough to make his desires evident on his face, Gavin schooled his features as
he scanned the place. He couldn’t locate his little darling’s scent, that sweet
blend of honey shampoo and baby powder deodorant. Too many odors crowded his
senses, making sifting them difficult. He moved toward the bar itself, halting
at the stool where she’d perched before. Too many bodies had since occupied it
for him to scent her. Turning to regard the crowd, his excitement slumped.
She’d left.

It made no sense for him to
feel so disappointed. He’d just met her, a simple human girl. Yet, despite the
brevity of their meeting, and her human status, he couldn’t stop himself from
wondering how he could find her again.

A sharp poke in his side
snapped him from his thoughts, and he turned to see a somber-looking Wyatt
gesturing at him to follow.

“What’s up?”

Wyatt didn’t bother answering
as Gavin followed him to the corridor that led to the bathrooms. “Need me to
watch your back while you pee?” Gavin joked.

“Smell.”

Gavin inhaled. He sifted the
myriad scents, the perfumes, and sweat, and . . . found a faint trace of his
mystery woman. And wolf. Make that unknown wolves. A ball of dread made his
stomach tighten as he followed the scent trail—wolf, wolf, and honey shampoo.

Stuck to his heels, Wyatt kept
up with him as Gavin went down the hall to the emergency exit and out into the
back of the place. Once outside, Gavin turned left, and then right, breathing
deep each time, before taking off at a jog toward the edge of the woods, where
he finally lost the trail.

“We missed them,” Wyatt
announced grimly. “They must have arrived after we left.”

“No shit, Sherlock. But the
better question is, why did they take my mystery lady with them?”

Wyatt’s face scrunched into a
grimace. “Shit, I thought the scent seemed familiar. Fuck, you don’t think
they’re going to—”

“Kill her like they did the
others?” Cold fingers of fear squeezed his heart. “Not if we find her first.
According to reports, the other women were kept alive anywhere from a week to a
month. We’ll need to move fast.”

“Gee, like we’ve been sitting
on our hands this entire time. We still don’t have any more clues than before.”

Gavin knelt at the edge of the
brush bordering the parking lot and pulled from the weeds a small black wallet
with a wrist strap. Opening it, he ignored the cash and pulled out credit cards
and a bank card, all with the name of Bailey Donovan. He found tucked into a
pocket a picture of his woman with an older couple who resembled her. “Well at
least we know who she is.”

“We do?”

Gavin held up his find. “Come
on. Let’s go check her place out and see if we find any clues.”

Whipping his cell phone out as
Wyatt maneuvered their truck through the darkened streets, Gavin called Parker
and Jaxon.

Jaxon answered. “Yo, mighty
leader. I was just about to head back to the cabin. Want me to grab a few
pizzas?”