Desired By The Pack: Part Three (7 page)

She instinctively knew neither shifter belonged to her. Their curious sniffs, followed by the dismissive looks they gave her, confirmed the feeling.

A third wolf followed them in and January knew him almost before she saw him. Anders circled the pool and came straight to her, ears lying against the sides of his head as he sniffed around her shoulders. He touched his nose to her neck before using it to brush aside the blanket and bare her breast.

She
swallowed, tense, unsure whether to hide the child or pass it to Cleo, but Anders made the decision for her. He licked the inner curve of her breast, then grasped the blanket with his teeth and moved it back into place.

Instead of joining Cleo and the other two wolves, Anders pressed up against her side and settled his head on her legs. His eyes remained open, alert, and eventually hers fluttered shut.

6

The forest stank of blood.

Death.

The foul odor oozed into the soil, stained the last snow of winter, and clung to the men stealing through the trees.

Beck turned his face away from the broken, savaged remains draped over his shoulder. A bag of meat and bone, not fit to eat and too dangerous to bury.

“We’ll put them in their own vehicles,” he said to Smoke, who carried two bodies over his own massive shoulders.

Smoke nodded, his head lowered, gaze trained on the ground as they made their way down from the mountainside they’d desecrated with the three hunters’ blood. “I’ll get you hooked up with someone who can put them on a freighter, dump them where they won’t be recognizable by the time they’re found.”

Beck accepted that plan with a grunt.

An ocean dump didn’t sit well with him, but eighteen bodies and five SUVs were too many to worry about the environmental repercussions. He couldn’t leave any evidence that would lead human investigators back to the river.

Bad enough they wouldn’t be rid of hunters now. The Headless Wolves weren’t a tight-knit league of brothers on a global scale but they were organized enough to keep coming once they started.
Especially if the first wave didn’t return.

If the Guardians were any other pack settled down anywhere else, they could pull up the few stakes they’d planted and move on. The Moon gate anchored them, though, and retreat wasn’t an option.

Smoke stopped walking and raised his head, his features fiercely attentive as he scanned the forest. Taking Smoke’s cue, Beck stilled as well. He looked to his right and saw it.

The misshapen animal had fallen across a downed tree.
Or brought the tree down with it. Beck lowered the body he carried to the ground and approached the unconscious beast that could only be Prince.

Shallow, gurgling breaths lifted its chest. Blood matted thick black fur. Beck signaled Smoke, who dumped his burdens and circled around until he and Beck stood with Prince’s unconscious form between them.

“I can’t believe he’s still alive.” Beck crouched well out of range of Prince’s head and examined him.

Blood stained the patchy snow that hadn’t melted from his body heat but he didn’t appear to be bleeding any longer. Most shifters reverted to their birth form in death or healing sleep but Prince’s bent form was neither human nor wolf. He looked like a shrunken version of the form Beck had fought outside the trailers, although his claws had retracted to sharp, overly long fingernails.

“What is this?” Smoke reached out and jabbed at something resting in Prince’s ruff.

“A bead.
He wore beaded braids as a man.”

Shaking his head, Smoke drew his hand back. “What do you want to do with him?”

“I want to talk to him. Call someone to help get these bodies out of here.”

While Smoke reorganized the clean-up effort, Beck watched Prince and hatched a plan to send a message to any other hunters who had a mind to pursue the Peace River packs.

Anders woke January with a nudge to the cheek. She groggily relinquished the baby to another female--not Mira--and someone handed her a dry shirt and loose sweatpants several inches too long.

Cross, she realized, when she looked up to pantomime a request for privacy. He stood above her, wearing an indecipherable expression.

Making the most of her blanket to shield her from the eyes of the growing crowd, she hurried into the shirt first. It clung to her
breasts and belly but fell past her fingertips. The pants were a better fit in the hips and the elastic waist secured them.

As she pulled her damp hair out of the back of the shirt, she took stock of her surroundings. Not as many people and wolves as she’d initially thought. Anders nuzzled her neck before joining Cleo and the two wolves, all of whom huddled around the pale woman who’d taken the baby. While January watched, the other woman put the baby to her bare breast.

January swallowed, confused by unfamiliar emotions that grew and tangled together at the sight.

Seeking a distraction, she looked up and met Cross’s gaze.

His lips moved in a single word as he extended his hand to her.

She was no lip-reader but she got the gist. Placing her hand in his, she accepted his help off the cold rock.

Unlike her, Cross was naked. She didn’t need much more than a brush of her forearm against his hard stomach or his hips cupping hers as they squeezed from the grotto to remind her how it felt to have his body wrapped around hers.

Desire seemed an out of place thing but it unfurled anyway, uncaring of convenience.

Cross wasn’t unaffected. The next time their bodies moved together as he helped her scale a short rock wall somewhere deep in the mountain, she felt his erection. His hands seemed to close hard on her hips, his breath warm on her neck, but she reached a level surface and he released her like nothing had happened.

They eventually emerged into open air. Dark still hung in the sky. The river slid past below. January breathed deep of the open
air and only realized she could hear something besides rushing water when she heard herself sigh.

Cross climbed through the opening after her.

January waited for him to settle before she asked, “What are we doing?”

“The camp’s been secured. I’m taking you back there.” He straightened, turned, and started moving down the mountain, away from the river.

January stayed where she was, waiting for him to realize she wasn’t following.

Waiting for him to actually look at her.

He was a couple yards away before he turned back. A scowl darkened his ruggedly handsome face.

For the first time, she realized he was a few years older than Beck and Anders.
Mid thirties, maybe, with twice the years’ experience in his eyes.

January knew this wasn’t the time, but when else would she have him right in front of her, with as much privacy as two people could get, surrounded by shifter packs?

Seizing the moment, she licked her lips. “You’ve barely looked at me in days. I thought we were friends.”

His brow lowered and the glower deepened. “We are.”

“But we aren’t, are we? The other night, you…we…” She trailed off, inexplicably shy.

Cross’s manner hardened as hers softened. “We’ve fucked before, and were still friends after.”

“You almost bit me.” The memory came back, clear and exhilarating. Her shoulders bunched as if the nerves there recalled the scrape of his teeth.

“You aren’t mine to bond.”

“No,” she agreed. “Beck and Anders have claimed that right. But I’ll be yours to want.”

“When it doesn’t matter that I can’t control myself, we can have this conversation again.”

She pressed her lips together but nodded. Cross backtracked and helped her off the rock she stood on, then he guided her back to the camp.

As the first trailer came into view, a long, melancholy howl arced through the trees.

January shivered uneasily. Beside her, Cross came to a stop and threw his head back. No sound came from him, but his throat worked and his mouth opened wide. It looked like a silent scream.

As other voices
raised to echo the first, she clutched Cross’s hand to her chest. She didn’t need a pack bond to decipher those mournful cries.

Someone hadn’t survived the night.

Cross stood there until the last howl faded and he shook his head as if emerging from a trance. He met her wide eyes, looked down at her hands wrapped around his, and scooped her high against his chest.

Unhampered by her tender feet, he ate up the remaining ground to the trailers. The infirmary was barely standing anymore. One entire side gaped open and the trailer sagged on its cinder blocks.

The building she’d been assigned was dark but otherwise intact. The door stood wide open. Cross carried her inside and sat her on her feet, then went prowling through the few rooms, rummaging through cabinets.

Moments later, he returned to her, carrying a battery-powered lantern. The small circle of light showed the grief lines etched at either side of his mouth.

She closed the door and went to him. “I don’t want to ask but I need to know.”

“I don’t know.”

Relief sucked the air from her lungs, deflating her. None of the alpha pack.

He nodded and stood a moment, looking around the cabin. “You should go to bed.”

“Are you staying?”

“Yes. The others have other responsibilities.”

She could guess what those were but decided not to. “Will you sleep with me?”

“I should stay awake.”

“Then stay awake while holding me.”

The corner of his mouth lifted. “You’re more wolf than you let on, Jan. Go get in bed.”

She took the lantern in and stripped, eyeing the bed. It was still rumpled from the hours she’d spent there with Beck and Anders. Such a short time ago, but so many things had happened since, it seemed like an eternity.

She changed out of her borrowed clothes and into the thin, silky chemise someone had gathered from her dresser. As she slid into bed, her doubts wavered. This was where she belonged.

Mira was dead.

Smoke had found her headless body inside the mine shaft Beck wanted to use to contain Prince.

The hunter who had taken her life cowered naked in the face of the wolves surrounding him. Beck stood over the bleeding, shivering man, his alpha will the only thing holding the wolves at bay.

As dawn crept over the trees, the wolves closed in, their blood thirsty circle begging for a signal.
Permission to tear the hunter apart, limb by limb.