Betraying the Pack (5 page)

With a spinning of tires that spat
gravel, he shot onto the road, heading for the roadside motel, their newest temporary
home during their search. His mind spun chaotically with thoughts of his
conversation with Leroy/Roderick, the danger his friends might face, and the
woman in the backseat, his mate.

The close quarters of the cab
brought her scent to him, and it confused both him and his wolf, for while she smelled
more or less as he recalled, if with some kind of harsh soap instead of her
honey shampoo, she now had an extra layer to her scent. The aroma tickled at
him, for it seemed familiar, but kept eluding his grasp.

Reaching the motel they
currently called home base—two interconnected rooms at the end of a row—he
parked. Checking his surroundings for prying eyes first, he then grabbed the
still-unconscious Bailey and carried her into his and Wyatt’s room.

She didn’t rouse at all, not
even when he laid her on the bed. It seemed the perfect opportunity to examine
her, not because he was some kind of pervert, but because he needed to judge
the extent of her injuries, if any. Her body held faint smears of blood, as if
from scratches, yet, he couldn’t see any marks. Perhaps the fluid covered them.

A quick trip to the bathroom
and he returned with a damp cloth, which he stroked over the smooth skin,
swallowing hard as he fought the arousal that lifted his cock. She truly was perfect,
from her round face with full lips and her crown of dark, curly hair, to her
lush frame with its indented waist and flaring hips. As he ran the cloth over
her rounded belly, he groaned at the exquisite torture of touching her without
actually
touching
her.

Oh, darling, I can’t wait to make you mine.

A disturbing fact emerged as he
cleansed her skin, though, which swept thoughts of seduction from his mind.
Dropping the cloth first, he then laid his hands directly on her skin. The
simple touch scorched him, but he ignored the sensation as he skimmed his palms
over the surface. He lifted her arms, legs and then rolled her onto her side to
look for signs of abuse. Her skin appeared virtually blemish-free, unnaturally
so given her mad

flight through the woods.

Why doesn’t she have any scratches?
He lifted her feet to examine them, but while the soles appeared dirty,
and he found traces of blood, not a scratch marred their surface.

If he didn’t know better, he’d
swear her body had healed itself, just as he did, like all Lycans did.
But she’s not a wolf.

What was she then? He stuck his
nose down to her skin and inhaled. It just about drove his inner beast mental.
The urge to nip her, to sink his teeth in to mark her and taste her blood,
starting the claiming process, rode him hard. He restrained himself, but only
because biting her while she slept didn’t exactly seem the right thing to do.
No matter if she was his mate or not.

A melody rang out in the
silence of the room, startling him. He scooped his cell off the table and
answered it with a hushed, “Status?”

Wyatt’s voice came across loud
and grim. “All dead. We tried to keep one alive like you wanted,

but . . . fuck, it’s like they
just self-destructed. I never saw anything like it before.”

“Roderick,” Gavin muttered.

“Who?”

“I’ll tell you later. Did you
find where they were holed up?”

“We’re pretty sure we located
the place, some abandoned house, but forget finding any clues. The place is a
raging inferno. Jaxon almost lost his pretty face when the windows blew out.”

In the background, Jaxon piped
in, “Chicks dig scars.”

Gavin bit back a grin at
Wyatt’s retorted, “We don’t scar, dumbass. Werewolves, remember?” A disgusted
sigh preceded Wyatt’s next words. “I swear, I’m going to get me a silver blade
and give him a scar one of these days.” Silver was the only material capable of
leaving a lasting mark, other than the mating one.

“You guys headed back to the
motel?”

“Well duh. Learn anything from
Bailey?”

“She’s still passed out.”

Wyatt grunted. “See you in a
few.”

“Bye.” Gavin hung up and
pondered what they’d learned. The rogues were all dead, which was kind of good,
as they wouldn’t be able to terrorize the surroundings anymore, but bad for
them because now they had no clue where Roderick was or what he was up to.
Dreading it, Gavin nevertheless rang Nathan, waking the council leader. He
quickly relayed the events of the night, which woke their leader up better than
a cold nose on the bottom of the feet.

“Fuck. Fuck and fuck.” Nathan’s
language seemed to match the mood of the moment. “You need to bring this girl
to us for questioning.”

“I don’t think she knows
anything.”

“Whether she does or not isn’t
relevant. Roderick kidnapped her for a reason. He might have acted like he
didn’t care about losing her, but it might be a ploy.”

Actually, the idea of having
Bailey protected within a compound held a lot of appeal. “But what do I tell
her about our secret?”

“Nothing until you’ve claimed
her, because that is your intention, correct?”

“Yes.” How he would accomplish
that while keeping his alter ego a secret, he wasn’t sure, but he’d figure out
a way. Although, he could always act first and beg forgiveness later.

“We’ll head back within the
next day then.”

“Good. Oh, and Gavin, be very
careful. Roderick is capable of nasty things.”

“I know.” Gavin hung up and
turned back to look at Bailey’s still-unconscious form on the bed.

Stroking a finger down her
cheek, the only part of her he dared touch with any kind of sensual promise, he
allowed himself to drink in the sight of her, pushing aside for the moment his
questions and anxiety. As if sensing his stare, she finally stirred. She opened
her eyes and saw him. Then she screamed.

So much for thinking she feels the same connection. Maybe I should have
bitten her first.

“She’s escaped!” His minion,
one of his very own creations—after numerous failures—part Lycan, part vampire,
burst into his room, eyes blazing and his teeth fully extended.

Such a gauche display
,
Roderick thought with disdain. “I know.”

“Shall I call the dogs together
to chase after her?”

Funny how his special minions
looked down upon the brethren they’d once belonged to. “Yes. Let the mangy curs
out for a run. But tell them if they hurt the girl, I will hurt them ten times
worse.”

Roderick already knew they
wouldn’t catch her. After all, he was the one who had orchestrated her escape, planted
the seed and compulsion, without her knowledge, of course. He’d wanted his
experiment to flee and think she’d slipped his clutches. Like any good
Frankenstein daughter, she’d obeyed and run right into the arms of destiny,
several pairs of them, he’d bet.

Just call me the puppet master.

Once a wolf, an alpha in charge
of a prosperous pack, Roderick despised the depths he’d sunk to, and yet, at
the same time, he gloried in his new state of being. Before he’d owned
strength, cunning, and an ability to heal that humans could only dream of. Now,
he had those same attributes in spades, along with an ability to control weaker
minds, a thirst for blood, and a few other skills he’d only just discovered. To
date, he’d only had to give up his wolf, and his dignity, to achieve his
superior state. Oddly enough, he missed the beast.

To think his own son was the
one who had deposed him from his status as alpha. His own flesh and blood who
had sent him to the council for justice, and all because he’d protected his
pack by killing a few humans.

And yet, with Nathan’s daring
action, Roderick ended up killing more. The irony of it never failed to amuse
him.

Gone to meet his judgment in
the form of the Lycan council, Roderick never expected to see his execution
transmuted to a living death. Unbeknownst to the packs, the previous Lycan
council had spun a deal with a devil, a she-devil, the queen of the vampire
covens. Roderick was handed over to her as a gift, the erroneous belief at the
time being that wolves could only feed vamps, not become them.

How patently wrong.

Roderick was undead proof that
with the right specimen, and lots of torturous pain, a hybrid mix could succeed.
Not that the queen celebrated her victory for long. Her powerful blood had
sated him for a while when he went into hiding from the covens.

Hiding in the shadows, though,
wasn’t something Roderick did with ease.
I
was meant to wield power.
With that goal in mind, he formed his own coven,
or should he say army. Not always a willing one, although they were obedient enough
once he got hold of their minds and bent them. However, obtaining subjects to
convert was proving harder and harder with both the werewolf community and the
vampire one hunting him and continually decimating his attempts at building a
sizable force.

Death, however, had its
benefits, one being longevity, which would come in handy with his new plan, a
plan that the escaped Bailey would play an unwitting part in.

The thought of it made him
almost giddy, especially knowing when the time turned ripe, just when she
thought herself safe and they let their guards down, he’d invoke the bomb he’d
secreted.

Through her, he’d get what he
wanted most of all and, as an added bonus, enjoy the fireworks of a pack
betrayed. And not just the pack, but the council led by Nathan, the ungrateful
son who’d started him on his journey to madness—and power.

Awareness returned, and she
stirred, the sheets she laid upon rustling. Bailey froze.

Where am I? Please don’t tell me I’m back in that house.

A calloused finger stroked down
her cheek, and she fought back a whimper. Fear made her keep her eyes clamped
shut as she thought furiously. The last thing she recalled, she ran through the
woods, pursuit at her heels, and . . . wolves. She remembered the wolf that
pounced on her, only to find itself jumped on in return. Then, she recalled
running again until she hit a wall.

It wasn’t a wall, though, but a chest, a naked chest belonging to—

Wrenching open her eyelids, she
came face-to-face with Gavin’s clear blue gaze. She couldn’t help it. A
piercing shriek escaped her.

Rolling sideways, she scrambled
off the bed, her feet hitting a carpeted floor. Peering about wildly, she
searched for escape, or even better, a weapon. Nothing came immediately to
view.

“Calm down.” His deep voice
washed over her.

Bailey’s eyes swiveled to meet
his, and she belatedly realized the breathy keening noise came from her.

Holding his hands out, Gavin,
now dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, approached her. “Shh, darling. You’re safe
now. I won’t hurt you.”

“Ha,” she snorted, the sound
watery with unshed tears of panic. “Like I’m going to believe you.”

As if her words were a painful
dart, his face creased in pain. “I swear it’s true. I just want to help you.”

“Just how much did you help
yourself to already?” The challenging words slipped from her as she peered down
at her naked body, searching for a sign he’d molested her while she lay passed
out.

Disgust twisted his features. “Give
a guy a little credit, would you? You were passed out. Of course I didn’t touch
you.”

“Oh.” For some strange reason,
his admission deflated her. Did he not find her attractive enough to grope?
Probably a good thing considering, good looks or not, there was obviously something
wrong with a man who ran around in dark forests wearing only his birthday suit.

“Here, take this.” He peeled
off his shirt and handed it to her.

Not that she reached out to
grab it right away, too mesmerized by the muscular torso he revealed.
Stop staring
, her mind screamed,
before he thinks you’re interested.

But what if she was interested? Her reaction
baffled her. Shouldn’t she currently scream hysterically having escaped one
untenable situation to find herself smack-dab in the middle of an even stranger
one? Regardless of how things looked, though, she didn’t get a sense of danger
from him. Her inner voice remained silent, and a sensation of safety made her
tense muscles relax.

However, the illusion of safety
didn’t mean she should tempt the Fates by staying naked around him.

Snatching the shirt from him, she
turned to give him her back while she pulled it on. A low chuckle from behind
sent a shiver skating down her spine.

“Kind of late for modesty, don’t
you think?” he said, humor lacing his remark.

“I know it looks kind of weird,
and probably unbelievable given how you found me, but unlike you, I don’t
usually go cavorting about in the woods naked.”

“Why not? I’ve always found it
invigorating myself.” He seemed amused by his remark, which she didn’t
understand.

She whirled around to face him,
her modesty appeased by the shirt that hung almost to her knees. “Speaking of
which, what were you doing out there in the woods, naked as a jaybird? And how
did you find me?”

“Would you believe I was
communing with nature?”

“No.”

“I’m secretly a werewolf?”

A glare was her reply.

“Yeah, well, I went skinny-dipping
with some buddies, and they thought it would be funny to steal my clothes. I
was walking through the woods looking for them when you ran into me.”

She took a step back, her fear
returning. “You’re friends with those guys from the house? The ones who wanted
to hurt me?”

“What? No!” He appeared angry
at her assumption. “I would never stoop to hurting a woman.”

“But you know of them?”

“I did after I found you. It
seems those
men
weren’t too eager to
let you go. My friends and I taught them otherwise.”

A tremble skated through her at
the implied violence in his words. “What about the other girl? The one at the
house? Was she rescued too?”

A frown knitted his brow. “What
other girl?”

“The one I heard crying.”

“I don’t know anything about
another girl, darling, I’m sorry. Are you sure you’re not mistaken?”

“No—I—” She shut her mouth and
tried to think back.
Is it possible it
was just me?
The memories of the night floated hazily in her mind, probably
an aftereffect of the drugs they’d given her to get her out of the bar. But
still, she thought she’d heard someone else crying in that ramshackle house,
and she’d seen that thug come out of a room buckling his pants. However, she’d
never actually seen another girl, just assumed from the evidence she’d
witnessed. “Maybe I was mistaken. Did you call the cops?”

A blank mask dropped over his
face. “No. Do you really want to deal with their bureaucratic crap? I mean, you
escaped before you got hurt, and we took care of the guys who abducted you.”

His evasion made her uneasy.
True, she didn’t want to get stuck in some police station being questioned for
hours, but still, a crime had been committed. “But, what if they decide to
kidnap someone else because I didn’t turn them in?”

“Oh, they won’t be trying
anything like that ever again. That I can promise you.” Dark menace made his
eyes flash, and his lips curled into a humorless smile.

A shiver traveled down her
spine. “What did you do?”

“Me? Nothing but get you out of
there, and smack someone called Leroy. My buddies, though, they’re quite handy
with their fists, and they took exception to the actions of those scumbags.”

Strangely, a savage
satisfaction filled her at the thought those thugs, Leroy in particular, had
gotten the daylights beaten out of them. The harder, the better.

What’s happening to me?
Since when did she revel in violence or find it acceptable? She needed
to get out of here, back to her place, where she could shower, and think over
the unreal events of the past evening, sort them and figure out why it seemed
like she should recall something else—something important that skittered just
out of reach. “I need to go home.”

“I don’t think that’s wise,” he
replied.

Narrowing her eyes, she tried
to read his expression, but while he returned her gaze, his face appeared shuttered.
“Why not? I thought you said those guys were gone, which means I’m safe.”

Gavin scrubbed a hand through
his hair, the blond tufts standing on end and making him look deliciously
rumpled, a fact she shouldn’t have noticed under the circumstances. “They are,
but we have reason to believe they weren’t working alone.”

For a moment, she stopped
breathing. “What are you talking about? What do you mean, not working alone?”

“Exactly what I said. I don’t
think you’re safe because I think the guys we caught aren’t the only ones
involved.”

“So we call the cops, and they
protect me.”

“The cops aren’t going to do a damned
thing because there’s nothing for them to investigate.”

“Okay, now you’re not making
any sense. I can tell them what happened.”

“Tell them what? That you woke
up in a house with two guys? You don’t have a mark on you. You don’t remember a
thing. What exactly do you think the cops will do?”

His logic irritated her,
especially since the more she thought about it, the less she wanted to deal
with the police. One part of his argument, though, took a second to sink in.
“What do you mean, I don’t have a mark on me? I fell down the stairs and then
ran naked through the woods. I must be covered in bruises and scra . . .” Her
voice trailed off as she took stock of the fact that not a single part of her
body ached. She plopped her bottom on the bed and lifted her feet to peer at
her soles, which, while dirty, showed no signs she’d cut and scratched them
during her mad flight.

It makes no sense.
But
it did remind her of the incident in the bedroom with the bloody cut.
What’s happening to me?

She wanted the comfort of her
familiar space more than ever. “I want to go home.”

“No.” He said it quietly in a
tone that said he wouldn’t budge.

“You can’t stop me.” She took a
step toward him.

Muscular arms crossed over his
bare chest. “Actually, I can. In case you haven’t noticed, I’m a tad bigger
than you. Good luck going through me.”

“So now I’m a prisoner again,
am I?”

“Think of it more as a
protective measure.”

“Says you. I say, screw you.
I’m leaving, and you’d better not try to stop me.”

Bailey marched over to the door,
which she hoped led outside, and pulled it open. Then she looked up, and up
again, at the man sporting the extremely wide chest blocking her way.

“And where do you think you’re
going?” the brick wall asked.

“Crazy apparently,” she mumbled,
stumbling back. “I swear this whole evening is getting weirder and weirder.”

“Evening? I would have thought
you’d have said days,” the brown-eyed giant replied.

An icy chill spread through
her. “What do you mean days?”

“Ah shit.”

Bailey whirled to look at Gavin.
“What’s he talking about? How long since you and I met at that bar?”

He shifted uncomfortably. “Five
nights ago.”

“Five!” That did it. Her eyes
rolled up in her head, and she slumped to the ground in a faint.

Parker caught the little lady
before she hit the ground, while ignoring Gavin’s glare. It wasn’t hard, not
with the plush form of the most delectable-smelling female he’d ever met. No
wonder her disappearance had driven Gavin nuts. This close to her, Parker
couldn’t deny her appeal—or his immediate attraction to her, a pull also felt
by his inner wolf, which paced in agitation.

“What did you go and tell her
that for?” Gavin’s irritation—and jealousy—came through loud and clear.

Parker managed to flip him a
bird while carrying the limp Bailey to the bed. “I didn’t realize it was a big
deal.”

“Neither did I,” Gavin replied,
his shoulders slumping. “I realized as soon as she woke up and started talking
that she’d lost track of time.”

Eyeing her frame up and down,
especially her plump thighs peeking from the edge of the T-shirt, an urge to
cover her body with his made his cock swell.
What is it about her that intrigues me?
Inhaling deeply, he let the
scent of her sift through his senses. His teeth lengthened as his wolf abruptly
pushed forward. Clamping his control down tight, Parker moved back a step and
frowned. “What is she?”

“You smell something different
too?”

“Not pack, and yet . . .”
Parker inhaled again. “There’s something about her, something familiar. But at
the same time—”

“There’s an aroma of something
not quite right. Not human, and not her. I know. It’s been driving me nuts.
Want to hear something weirder? She didn’t smell like this five days ago.”

That grabbed Parker’s
attention. “What do you mean she smelled different? Could those bastards have
marked her, or worse?”

“I found no signs of rape,”
Gavin replied, coming over to stand across from him on the other side of the
bed.

“Even stranger, there’s not a
single mark on her body.”

“Five days and they didn’t
touch her?” Incredulity made Parker’s eyes shoot from the girl’s form to his friend’s.

“Not even a tiny scratch from
the woods I caught her racing through.”

The information hit Parker, but
before he could assimilate it, the door to the motel flung open. Wyatt stalked
in, followed by a sauntering Jaxon.

“Did you get any answers?”
Wyatt growled, purposely ignoring Bailey to grab himself a can of pop from the
mini-fridge.

“None that you’re going to
like,” Gavin replied.

“I don’t think she’s one
hundred percent human,” Parker blurted.

Three pairs of eyes swiveled to
fix him.

“Explain,” Wyatt said curtly.

“Sniff for yourself. She
doesn’t smell exactly like wolf, but she’s got something in her blood. How else
to explain her lack of injuries?”

Wyatt wasn’t the only one
crowding in for a whiff. Jaxon jostled in beside Gavin, who hip-checked him to
the side. Stumbling, their youngest pack mate grinned and sidled over to stand
beside Parker. Parker didn’t bother resisting the urge to taste her aroma again.
He leaned in with his pack brothers and let himself enjoy the musky scent that
teased him.