I'm Not Afraid of Wolves (The Cotton Candy Quintet Book 4) (7 page)

The sparkle in his blue eyes lost their luster. “So there’s a Mr. Were Mountain Lion?”

I combed a hand through my sopping wet hair. “There was. Not anymore.”

And that was all I was going to say on that subject.

Colton nodded, catching the fact that I clammed up when it came to my past and my relationship with Shane. We didn’t have time to deal with the past anyways, so I pushed it towards the back of my mind.

We were in a life and death situation. There was no time for any of that.

“We’d better keep a move on,” I announced, my voice slightly strangled. It was sometime after two or three a.m., and I wanted to get as far away from here as possible by sunrise.

Everything was less scary in the daytime. But you also can’t hide as easily.

I didn’t realize how much I’d doubted that Colton’s truck would be in working order until we actually came upon it—and it was fine. None of the tires were slashed, the hood wasn’t dented. It was in the exact same condition it had been in earlier today, albeit much wetter and muddier.

I sighed a breath of relief as I saw it. Actually, it was more like a sob—relief straddled that line pretty easily.

Colton hadn’t been lying when he said that the truck was well-hidden. It was off the dirt road a ways and shielded by the trees around it. I wouldn’t have seen it unless I was looking for it.

Hopefully our attackers weren’t looking for it as well.

Colton took his keys out, and unlocked the car. I winced as the lights flickered on and off, afraid that it would tell the werewolves that we now had transportation. But I didn’t have time to dwell on that as we piled into the car.

As I helped Sara into the back seat, Colton leaned into the truck, grabbed the handset for the CB radio, and called for help. “Officer Donnelly, Dispatch.” He took his finger off and looked at me. I held my breath, waiting for an answer.

Nothing. The silence from the radio was long enough for my brain to freak out.

“Is the radio broken?” I asked.

Colton shook his head. “No. There’s nothing wrong with the radio.” I opened my mouth to say otherwise, but he turned away from me. “Officer Donnelly, Dispatch. Respond, dammit.”

Finally, there came, “Dispatch, Officer Donnelly. Dispatch, Officer Donnelly!” The man on the other end sounded flustered, like we had just caught him on the john.

Colton gave me an I-told-you-so smirk and responded, breaking all protocol for police radio conversations that I’ve seen on TV. I had the feeling that they didn’t follow the rules to the letter here. Which was fine with me, so long as we got going. He checked his GPS monitors. “Vicks, my location is at 34.823178, -83.563758. Are there any other rangers in the area?”

“Lemme have a look,” Vicks said on the other end.

I glanced behind us, out into the darkness. I couldn’t help but feel like we were being watched. We were sitting ducks out here, wasting time talking on the radio. It felt like it took all too long for Vicks to come back onto the line.

“The closest to your location is Barnett. And he’s thirty minutes away.”

Donnelly cursed under his breath. He met my eyes, and I nodded. I knew exactly what that meant.

We were on our own.

“Copy that,” Donnelly said. “We’re headed your way.”

“We?”

“Some ladies who have been assaulted,” Donnelly said. “I’ll get back to you when we’re close.”

“Copy that.”

“Over and out.”

Colton hung up the mouthpiece and combed a hand through his hair, obviously distressed that help was so far away.

Whose idea was it to go camping in such a remote area? Oh yeah, my sister’s.

“What’s happening?” Emily asked, her voice bordering on shrieking.

“Nothing,” I said. “We just need to get going.”
And figure this out when we’re in a safer place.

Just before I hopped into the passenger seat, Colton pressed the keys into my hand.

“Wait, what are you doing?” I asked.

“I’m going into the bed of the truck,” he explained. As if I should have guessed that. “That way if they ambush us, I’m ready to fight.”

I agreed with him to an extent. Transforming in closed quarters like the cab of a truck was never a good idea. “I don’t know where I’m going.”

He pointed down the road.  “You just take that road and don’t stop ‘til you hit the highway.”

I was pretty sure that it was more complicated than that, but I nodded. As long as it was away from the cabin, that was all I cared about.

I gulped. “All right then. I can do that.”

I pulled myself up into the driver seat and chuckled at myself. If anything, being in the driver’s seat only reinforced how much bigger Colton was than me. I readjusted it, checked the mirror just in time to see Colton easily hop into the bed of the truck.

I swallowed back the lump in my throat.

“Everyone situated?” I asked. I didn’t even wait for Emily’s or Sara’s response—I threw the truck into drive and hit the dirt road, mud and water sloshing all over the place.

I drove the unfamiliar truck, fighting the twisting, turning roads. There’s nothing more terrifying than driving at a high speed through the woods in the middle of the night during a thunderstorm. Emily kept shrieking, making me want to crawl out of my skin. We had to remain calm. We had to get out of here.

My reflexes saw it before my eyes did; I slammed on the brakes, the truck skidding to a halt. Emily screamed, and I only narrowly avoided flipping the truck over.

A massive tree, that looked like it had been knocked out by lightning, blocked our way.

We all knew better.

And on top of that tree was a werewolf, its red eyes glowing their way towards us. Lightning struck, illuminated the beast, and I recognized it as the big one from my fight in the cabin’s great room.

“Chad,” Sara whispered, her eyes locked on the windshield.

So this was the bastard that terrorized my sister. I clenched the steering wheel, feeling my anger rise. There was no way he was going to get away with this. I was going to kill if I must in order to save Sara.

As if sensing my thoughts, the beast’s orbs narrowed slightly. Another one joined him up on the log, and I recognized her instantly from her smell.

Andrea.

“Colton!” I screamed, my voice raising in pitch. I refused to look behind me to see if he was still there. I didn’t want to take my eyes off the monster in front of us.

I didn’t have a choice in the end. The doors to the cab tore off in a shower of metal and bolts, revealing snarling snouts. The monsters grabbed at me, at Sara, and at Emily, forcibly pulling us from our restraints. Seatbelts broke, glass shattered, chaos broke out.

“Sara!” I shrieked. “Emily!” I reached for them, but the monsters were too fast. They were out of my grasp before I could do anything to stop it.

A roar joined my shriek, and it took me a moment to realize that Colton had joined the charge. I closed my eyes, calling forth the beast in my mind.

Time to become the mountain lion.

I roared, surprising my assailants, who abruptly let go of me. I fell to my paws on the ground, and lunged at them, catching one of them in the face. They were stunned at my attack; moving slower than expected.

Apparently, they hadn’t known which one of us could shift into a mountain lion. I used that to my advantage.

As I moved away from the truck, I found that my friends were being dragged away, their terrified expressions pleading with me to save them in any way I could.

A large body landed next to me, and I cast one glance to make sure that it was Colton. I bared my teeth at him, telling him to pursue them alongside me. He bristled in response, a huge, hulking beast, and I made a mental note not to get on his bad side.

I seriously wished we could communicate to each other. We’d have to go off body language, which lost a bit in translation.

We charged, running towards the beasts. We almost got there, except something attacked me on my right-hand side, crunching ribs and tearing fur as I sprawled to the ground. I growled and looked up into blood-red eyes.

Chad.

I froze as he snarled down at me. Spittle dripped down onto my face and I winced, not wanting that vile liquid to land on me.

He had me pinned, and we both knew it. He could tear out my throat here and now, and end it. It was amazing in that moment, because a sense of hopeless peace descended upon me.

This is where it ends.

A roar sounded and Chad was thrown off me. I rolled to my side, enough to see Colton and Chad brawling. I only realized now how evenly matched they were. Both big beasts, both skilled at fighting. A strange thought crossed my mind:

Colton’s an alpha?

I didn’t have long to ponder that, because teeth grabbed me by the scruff of my neck. Not just one set of them; a few. How many wolves were here, I would never know, but it seemed like they all ganged up on me and pulled me away. I recognized one as Andrea. The others were unfamiliar, but it panged my heart that our so-called friend continued to betray us.

I dug into the ground with my claws, screaming, although I didn’t know who could have helped me at that moment. Sara and Emily were being kidnapped, Colton was in a fight, and I was being literally dragged away. My claws tore on the dirt, catching rocks and debris. I started bleeding, both from the teeth in my neck and from my futile efforts to stay put.

“Christine!” Sara screamed, so far away.

I looked up, and our eyes connected. She was pleading with me to fight.

Except it was no longer my choice. With one heave from my assailants, my claws left the ground and I flew out into empty space. Darkness swallowed me as I fell, the roar of water below rushing up to greet me.

I heard a howl of—anguish?—before I hit the unyielding river, swollen from the rain. I didn’t have time to fight the waves as my head struck a rock.

And I remembered nothing more.

The smell of coffee woke me up.

Man, that was a great idea. Because as I swam out of sleep, I realized how much caffeine I’d need to function this morning. I’d have to thank Sara or Emily, because with this splitting headache, I don’t think—

I froze, taking stock of my situation before I opened my eyes. My head was killing me, and I gingerly felt for the knot on my skull. My fingers met bandages, and a quick inspection told me that it wrapped around my entire head.

I opened my eyes—or rather, my left one, because I still couldn’t open my right eye—grimacing in the bright sunlight. I was on the couch in some sort of sunroom. A quick glance outside confirmed that I was still somewhere out in the woods, although where exactly, I wasn’t sure.

“Ugh.” My entire body ached. I had bandages and ice packs all over my body. I’m sure I looked like a boxer who just lost a match.

“Morning sleepyhead,” a voice greeted me.

I blinked, not recognizing it. It was an elderly woman’s voice, and that didn’t fit any of the people I last remembered talking to. I turned my head to see a woman, somewhere in her eighties, peering down at me over her horn-rimmed glasses. She looked spritely, like she could tackle me even now, and not just because I was so injured.

“Good…morning?” I asked, utterly confused.

She grinned. “Coffee’s almost done. And I’m sure you have a ton of questions.”

“Yes. I do.”

She put a hand on my shoulder. “The most important thing is, you’re safe for now.”

I frowned. “And my friends?”

Her expression darkened. “That’s something my grandson needs to talk to you about.”

“Grandson?” I pushed myself up to a sitting position, even though every muscle and organ protested doing so.

“Hey.”

I recognized this voice. And I quickly made sure that I was covered, because the last time I remembered being conscious, I was a mountain lion shifter, which meant that clothes never stayed intact.

Happily, I was in a frilly nightshirt, probably courtesy of the lady here. Who I just realized was Colton’s grandmother.

“You’re at my place,” Colton explained. Gauze covered his right ear, which confirmed that he was in just as bad a shape everywhere else as me. “You fell into the river and I saved you.”

The old lady beamed, like she was the proudest grandma in the world.

“And Sara and Emily?” I asked, narrowing my eyes.

He hesitated. “They were taken.”

“And you couldn’t stop them?”

He shot me a cool look. “I had a decision to make, and I saved you. They’ll be all right, at least for now. You, on the other hand, would’ve drowned.”

My stomach roiled. I must have looked sick because the grandma handed me a waste basket. I emptied the contents of my stomach into it, which admittedly wasn’t a lot.

Sara.

Emily.

Lost to those werewolves.

I failed them. They were my responsibility and I let them down.

“It’s going to be all right, Sugah,” the grandma said. I highly doubted that, but I didn’t say anything as she took the waste basket from me, and rose to her feet to dispose of it, leaving Colton and me alone.

“I did what I thought was best,” he said sheepishly, as if that answered everything. Sheepish from a wolf; Colton seemed to be at odds with himself.

I put my aching head in my hands, allowing myself to sob for a moment. I couldn’t believe that this was happening. I needed time to think, to figure things out. To save them.

“Do you think that Sara is a fully-fledged werewolf now?” I asked, my voice raspy.

He averted his eyes. “I don’t know,” he answered truthfully.

My hopes sank further, and I gulped down some air. It didn’t seem like I was getting enough oxygen.

“I will say this, though,” he said gently. “The sun rose only an hour after I fished you out of the lake.”

“What does that mean?” I didn’t mean to sound as harsh as I did.

“It means,” he said pedantically, “that I don’t think they would have forced your friend to become a werewolf; there wasn’t enough time.”

“How so?”

He snickered. “We kind of like theatrics with our rituals. At least that’s how it works in my pack.”

I almost snorted out loud. Werewolves and theatrics? The group of mountain lions that I interacted with when I was married to Shane had no room for things like that. They were just the rough and ready kind of folk who wanted things done quick and dirty. If werewolves wanted things done right, that was yet another difference between our species.

But that gave me hope.

“So we have until the next full moon for them to try again?”

His hard expression dashed my hopes on the ground. “The moon is full for three nights,” he said. “It’s not, technically, but it’s enough for us to make that first transformation.”

“So that means…”

He nodded. “They’ll do it tonight if we don’t stop them.”

That jolt of awareness brought me to my feet. I groaned, swaying slightly as my stomach threatened to unload again. I hit my head pretty hard, apparently.

“You’re not going to help anyone in that condition,” Colton said.

“I have to do something!” I twisted away from him, stumbling as the pain hit me. “Ow…”

“This should help her.” His grandma’s voice brought both of our attention to her in the door. She held a steaming mug of coffee, which she pressed into my hands. “Drink.”

I took a big sip, and the taste of whiskey filled my senses. I nearly spit the entire thing out. Instead, I managed to swallow it past the lump in my throat, but it burned all the way down.

“Grandma,” Colton groaned.

“I put a shot of whiskey in there to help you wake up,” she said, almost proudly.

I coughed. “I can tell.”

True to his grandma’s word though, I could feel it immediately helping. The mix of caffeine and alcohol both heightened my senses and dulled the pain. I took another sip, and now that I was prepared, it actually tasted good.

I took another sip.

“Does she know?” I asked, nodding to his grandma with my head. Being a shifter isn’t inherited, at least not biologically. I knew a lot of people who “keep it in the family”, but I wanted to make sure that his grandma was in the know.

“Call me Siouxsie,” she said.

I liked her.

“Yes, she knows that I’m a werewolf.” It was actually adorable seeing him blush about his grandmother’s spunk. “She was the leader of the pack before me.”

So he
is
an alpha.
My suspicions from last night were correct.

“A long time ago, I told Colton not to get caught up in this stuff,” Siouxsie sighed. “But he’s as hardheaded as he is handsome. He asked when he was eighteen and his grandfather turned him. Remember that, Colton?”

He combed a hand through his hair, wincing at the movement. “Yes, of course.”

I almost expected Siouxsie to pinch his cheeks or something, so I averted my eyes before I could burst out laughing. At least I could still laugh right now.

“Okay, so I can ask you point blank then,” I said, leaning against the couch. “This ritual…what goes into it?”

He crossed his arms and focused his full attention on me as if he could completely shut out his grandmother’s wry look. “In order to be turned into a werewolf, you first have to be bitten by one. As a failsafe, because we can get a little…rowdy at times…in order for someone to become a full-fledged werewolf, they have to have their first blood.”

“What does that mean?”

He sighed. “It means that the sire first draws blood on a human victim. And then the werewolf-to-be drinks it.”

I made a face. “Like a vampire?” And that confirmed for me that Emily was the one who was most at risk. Because these wolves had kidnapped her, and I could imagine that she was the easiest to access.

“Except we’re talking about werewolves,” Siouxsie corrected.

Yet still, Emily’s question about drinking blood earlier was oddly accurate. I made a mental note about that. “So then they can turn into a werewolf?”

Siouxsie nodded. “Why, how does your kind do it?”

“For mountain lion shifters, it’s less…rigid.” I shrugged, being swept up in memories. “Your sponsor starts licking you, cleaning you. Then others join in. And then it just ends up becoming a cleaning marathon.”

Colton had a look of disgust, which made me smile lightly. At least we could still have a sense of humor with all of this stuff.

“Do you have any idea where they would perform that sort of ritual?” I asked.

He shrugged. “After last night, I doubt they’d do it here.”

“Why?”

He actually looked offended at my question. “I have my pack on the lookout for them, and I put out an APB. If they pop up anywhere in a hundred-mile radius, we’ll find them.”

“Even in the woods like this?”

“We’re wolves, Christine,” Siouxsie said. “We’ll know if there’s anyone in our territory.”

“Like you did last night?”

He bristled. “There’s no law against wolves traveling through our territory. We’re not savages. I knew that Andrea was a werewolf, but she’s a part of the Atlanta pack. She’s allowed to vacation here.”

I guess that’s what she meant by her life was in Atlanta. She said that her brother renovated the cabin five years ago. Was her brother a werewolf too?

Colton continued, oblivious to the fact that my mind was running a thousand miles a minute. “I had no idea that your friend was running away from them when I saw you at the gas station. Or that Andrea was in on it.”

“Neither did I,” I said icily, “but the end result is the same.”

“I’m trying to find them.”

“
We
need to go out and find them. Call for help,
whatever,
” I said, exasperated. “And why are you smiling?”

He was. And it was irritating me. Why was he smiling so coyly when I was so distraught over my friends’ kidnapping?

“Because you’re pretty when you’re flustered. Nothing more.” He sighed before getting up. “It’s about ten in the morning right now, so you should probably get ready. We’ll head into Atlanta.”

“Why Atlanta?” I asked.

Both grandmother and grandson looked at me. “Because if I know wolves,” Siouxsie said, “and I’ve been one for sixty years now, they’ll want to do it on their own home turf.”

So we were trading the wilderness for the concrete jungle of Atlanta. And I had no idea how we’d find them in a city that massive.