Last Wolf Standing (14 page)

They were both within a few feet of reaching her when Curry smashed into Mason’s side, at the same time the bastard from the roof leaped onto Jeremy, taking a sharp bite from his throat. Jeremy staggered to his knees, his expression stunned while blood poured down the side of his neck, soaking into his T-shirt.

“Torrance!” Mason roared, fighting off Curry while a terror unlike anything he’d ever known ripped through him, sizzling and sharp, scraping him raw. “Get back in the goddamn truck!”

But she didn’t seem to hear him. She stared at the gray wolf standing over Jeremy, and the next thing he knew, she’d picked up a fallen branch near her feet, rushed forward and whacked the Lycan in the back of his skull like a ballplayer swinging at a pitch. Mason shook his head, unable to believe his eyes, and knew he was going to kill her when he got his hands on her—if the bastard didn’t get to her first.

Fighting off Curry’s slashing claws, he bellowed a bloodcurdling sound of fury as he watched the gray wolf turn away from his wounded partner…and leap onto Torrance, catching her in a roll that ended with the mangy beast on top of her, pinning her to the ground. She screamed, bucking beneath the werewolf’s body, the branch falling from her hands, and Mason felt the fury of his own beast struggle to break free, despite the golden smear of the sun still hovering low on the horizon.

“No!” he growled in a savage roar, power surging through him like a rising wave building across the surface of the ocean. His fangs burned in his gums as he threw Curry off, wrapping his claws around the bastard’s throat and twisting so hard, his head actually ended up parallel to his shoulders. Still roaring, Mason threw off Curry’s heavy weight, ready to leap on the gray wolf pinning Torrance to the ground, when the golden Lycan Jeremy had thrown aside sprang forward, taking the gray wolf with him as they rolled end over end across the road.

Mason rushed toward Torrance, who’d already scrambled to her feet, her expression dazed as she stared at his claw-tipped hands. “What the hell were you doing?” he snarled, wanting to shake some sense into her at the same time he wanted to kiss her senseless.

“Trying to help,” she offered weakly, staring with a mixture of awe and utter terror between the fighting Lycans and his claws. The look of horror on her face was so wrenching, that for a split second he almost allowed his hands to reform. But just as quickly, he squelched the knee-jerk reaction. Protecting her was more important than scaring the hell out of her—and deep down, he refused to be ashamed of what he was. If they had any chance at all for a future together, she was going to have to learn to deal with his dual nature, which meant claws and fangs and fur, as well as a vicious need to protect what was his.

Mason wrapped her in his arms, ignoring the way she flinched, going rigid against his body, and lifted her off the ground as the two werewolves rolled over the hard asphalt, slashing and snapping at each other. They were too evenly matched, until the one who’d attacked Torrance reached out for one of the small boulders that lined the rustic road and slammed it into the temple of his golden opponent. The younger wolf slumped to the ground, knocked unconscious, as the other stood up on his hind legs, turning to look at them with a malicious snarl curving his muzzled mouth. Mason lifted his upper lip and growled, backwalking toward the Tahoe, while keeping one eye on their remaining threat. When he felt the door at his back, he set Torrance on the ground, opened it and snarled, “Do not get out of this goddamn car!” as he tossed her up into the backseat.

“I’m going to enjoy having a go at that one, after I tear your head off, Dillinger.”

Mason stared at the gray wolf without bothering to make a response. It had been a close call with Torrance—too close—and he still didn’t know how badly Jeremy had been injured.

This bastard really needed to be dealt with quickly.

Moving with a speed and strength that had come from years of training, he leaped through the air, landing two feet in front of the wolf, then immediately kicked out with his right leg, wiping the beast’s legs out from under its towering body. The werewolf landed on its back, but was already springing up when Mason twisted with a powerful roundhouse, knocking his booted heel into the muzzled jaw, grinning with stark satisfaction when he heard the sickening crack of bone. The creature howled, a sharp, garbling sound, its bottom jaw hanging crooked and bleeding, eyes wide with shock as Mason reached for its head and twisted its neck, separating its spinal column and ending its life in the blink of an eye. Before the warm body had even hit the ground, Mason was moving toward Jeremy, who’d managed to prop himself against the bark-covered trunk of a majestic maple.

He allowed his claws to transform back to their human shape, and crouched down next to his scowling partner. “What’s the damage?”

“I’m more pissed than anything,” Jeremy muttered, his voice rough with disgust. Gritting his teeth, he pulled his shredded shirt away from his bleeding ribs. “It was stupid to let that bastard get a bite of me.”

“I owe you one,” he admitted gruffly, fully aware that Jeremy had risked his own safety in trying to get to Torrance.

“Hell, you owe me more than one,” Jeremy drawled with a low, shaky laugh.

Lifting his nose to the wind, Mason took a long, deep breath, searching for that strong vinegar smell that had been on the wolves. “Everything we didn’t kill has hightailed it outta here. But we need to clear the scene as quickly as possible.”

Wincing, Jeremy pulled his shirt off over his head, revealing ribs that had been slashed on his right side. Balling the ragged fabric into a wad, he pressed it against the bloody wounds in the side of his throat. “Yeah, and then let’s get the hell home. I’m in serious need of some of your secret stash of Lagavulin. After this shit, I’ve earned it.”

Mason gave him a long, critical look of assessment. “I guess you’re feeling better than you look, if you can be thinking about raiding my best Scotch.”

“Aw, it’s just a flesh wound,” Jeremy shot back in the crisp tones of a proper British accent, repeating the classic line from his favorite Monty Python movie.

Mason’s chest rumbled with a rough laugh, his relief sharp that the jackass felt good enough to crack a joke. It was going to take a few days before he was a hundred percent, but with their rapid-healing traits, he knew Jeremy would be back in fighting shape in no time.

Unfortunately, Mason wasn’t so sure about Torrance. Wondering how he was going to go about soothing his fragile little human life mate, he headed toward the Tahoe.

Mason hadn’t taken more than three steps when the back door opened and Torrance slid out of the backseat, her dark green eyes roaming the ground, pinging from one downed body to another. Once dead, a Lycan returned to its human form—and her surprise at seeing naked human corpses in place of the dead werewolves was evident in her stark, stunned expression.

Then she looked their way, and a sharp cry fell from her lips as she started running toward them. Mason opened his arms, ready to catch her, when she sailed right past him, falling to her knees beside a grinning Jeremy. “Ohmygod,” she gasped, her small hands fluttering in front of her, as if she didn’t know where to touch him without hurting him. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine, honey,” Jeremy replied with a warm smile, making Mason roll his eyes.

“Are you sure?”

“If he can flirt with you,” Mason muttered dryly, “I’d say that’s a pretty good indication that he’ll make it, Torrance.”

Whispering loudly enough for him to overhear, she leaned closer to his partner and said, “Is he always such a grouch after he wins a fight?”

Hazel eyes glittering with humor, Jeremy somehow managed to both laugh and wince at the same time. “I think he’s about to bust a jealousy gasket, so go easy on him, Torry.”

She cast a quick look up at his scowling face, giving him a critical once-over, a flash of relief filling her expression when she eyed his human hands. “I think you may be right,” she murmured, regaining her feet and moving a little closer to where he stood. “Thanks for—” her hand gestured over the horrific scene “—everything.”

Mason studied the hectic color in her cheeks, the way she nibbled at the corner of her lower lip, and just like that, he nearly staggered beneath the torrent of hard, provocative images swimming through his head.

Aw, hell. Wiping at the sweat streaming down the side of his hot face, he wondered what kind of bastard it made him, seeing as how he was rock hard in the middle of so many corpses. Huh. Probably a really a sick one…with a really dirty mind.

He cleared his throat, trying to get past the uncomfortable lump of lust that was nearly choking him. “Are you okay?” The growl that rumbled with those words sounded thoroughly pissed, and he winced at the rough sound.

“Yeah, he didn’t even scratch me,” she told him with a wobbly grin. “So I won’t be going furry anytime soon.”

He still felt shaken, but managed to smile down at her with a crooked twist of his lips. “That’s only if you’re bitten, Tor.”

“Really?” she asked with obvious surprise.

“Yeah,” he drawled, shaking his head at her stunned expression. “Not everything you see in the movies is real, honey.”

“Well, even though all of it nearly scared me to death, I’m fine, thanks to you.” She gave him a shy smile, then looked him over from head to toe. “I can’t believe it, but you don’t even look like you got a scratch.”

“I’ll be feeling it tomorrow,” he confessed with a deep sigh, knowing his body would feel battered and bruised. “Trust me.”

She took a step forward, looking as if there was something else she wanted to say, when Jeremy pulled himself to his feet and joined them. “Looks like Simmons has been building his own little gang, and now he’s got an army of head cases following him,” the blond snorted, still pressing the balled up shirt against his neck, the cuts across his side streaming with crimson color, until the warm spill of blood met the waistband of his jeans, darkening the faded denim. “This must have been his goon squad demonstration.”

“You sure you’re gonna be okay?” Mason asked, eyeing the wash of red running down Jeremy’s side. Generally, loss of blood from these kinds of injuries couldn’t kill them, but it could make them sick as hell, sapping their strength. “Do you want me to call some meds down from Shadow Peak?”

“Naw, I’ll live. Let’s just wrap this up, get in the Tahoe, and get the hell outta here.”

At the mention of the SUV, everything suddenly came rushing back at him, and Mason turned to stare down at the woman who’d managed to turn his entire life on its head and damn near give him heart failure, all within the mere span of twenty-four hours. God only knew what kind of havoc she’d end up creating by the end of the week, not to mention over the course of his lifetime. Her gaze flicked from him to Jeremy, then back again, and he smiled with grim satisfaction the second she caught his furious expression. “I thought I told you not to get out of the Tahoe,” he rasped, trying to control the tremor of fury that settled into his throat at the thought of what she’d done.

“You didn’t say anything about driving it, Mason,” she pointed out calmly, blinking up at him with those big green eyes, making him want to throttle her for putting her life in danger. At the same time he wanted to slide his mouth over hers, tangle his tongue with her own in a deliciously wet, carnal act of dominance and possession, and kiss her rebellious little backside into submission.

He drew in a deep breath, tall body shuddering with anger and the lingering traces of abject terror at the knowledge that something could have happened to her. “At this moment,” he stated in a silky murmur, “are you or are you not in the SUV, Torrance?”

Despite the lingering fear he could scent on her skin, her expression turned mulish and she crossed her arms, all but glaring at him while her toe began to tap against the road. “I didn’t get out of the damn thing until they started breaking their way into it! Should I have just stayed there and let them eat me?”

He took a step closer to her, invading her personal space, but she didn’t budge—and he couldn’t help but admit that he was proud of the way she was standing up to him. Proud…but still pissed. “If you had stayed down, like I told you to do, then I would have gotten to them before they could reach you.”

He paused to take a deep breath, getting ready to launch into her about the damn branch and the Lycan she’d used for batting practice, but she made a soft, feminine sound of irritation and muttered, “Why don’t you just stop being an ass and say, ‘Gee, that was really swell of you to try and help out, Torrance. Without you, I could have had my head chewed off.’”

Jeremy wheezed under his breath, trying to stifle his laughter—not out of any sort of loyalty to him, Mason knew, but because it hurt like hell. “I was not about to have my head chewed off,” he said grittily, insulted that she’d thought Curry and those other runts could get the best of him.

“That wasn’t what it looked like from my point of view,” she countered, her tone just as grim as his had been. “It looked—”

“Okay, kids, we need to save this delightfully entertaining…disagreement for later,” Jeremy cut in, pushing his blond hair off his forehead. “Right now we need to clear as much of this off the road as we can, call for some cleanup, then get the hell home.”

“I’ll get Brody,” Mason grunted, turning away to put in the call.

A few minutes later, when he’d finished on the phone and turned back around, he found Torrance moving in a slow circle, looking over the gruesome scene with a calm strength that astounded him, considering her fears. Then she came to a hard stop as she stared at the human body of the golden wolf who had, for some bizarre reason, apparently tried to save her.