Mated to the Pack (7 page)

It was then that her eyes turned upward and
she saw two gleaming yellow eyes staring menacingly in the darkness
on the stairs above her. A lip curled menacingly over two rows of
vicious fangs, and a deep, guttural growl rolled out smooth and
angry.

She opened her mouth to scream, but suddenly
something closed over it. In a blinding moment, she felt hands
grasping her from multiple directions. She was bound, gagged, and a
bag was placed over her head. She struggled frantically, but
moments later she was being whisked away as she kicked and
clawed.

Eventually, Allison realized that fighting
was futile, so she relaxed. She was being carried, and she could
hear additional footsteps nearby.
This must be Victor and his
pack
, she thought.

After a while, she heard the click of a door
opening, and then another. Finally, she was placed on a soft
surface. Her bonds were removed, but then she felt her wrists being
bound again.

“Victor, I assume,” Allison spat with a
voice full of vitriolic disgust.

“You are
our
mate,” Victor snarled.
“We claimed you first!”

“I will
never
be your mate!” Allison
shouted, spitting in his face.

Victor’s hand flew into the air over his
shoulder as if to backhand her, but suddenly the sound of
splintering wood and shattering glass yanked his attention away
from her. His head snapped backward, and in an instant, he shifted
right before Allison’s eyes, leaping into the air and twisting his
body to face the door.

Michael stood panting in the doorway, his
eyes narrowed and his fists balled beside him. His bare chest
heaved, and he gritted his teeth so fiercely Allison could hear
them grinding.

“Not today, Victor!” Michael snarled through
clenched teeth.

Victor lunged, and faster than Allison even
thought possible, Michael shifted. Shreds of his jeans flew into
the air and began to flutter around him, and he exploded into a
raging ball of rippling muscle twitching beneath a blanket of gray
fur. They connected, and curled into a snarling, snapping ball that
rolled right out the door.

Victor’s cronies shifted and dashed out the
door after them. She could hear the cries of canine pain from
outside, and her heart began to pound, nauseating her. She lifted
her head, trying to catch a glimpse of what was happening.

“Shh,” someone whispered, and she quickly
glanced to her right where she saw Logan smiling reassuringly as he
loosened the ropes that bound her right hand.

She left someone loosening the other, and
she turned her head to see Luke, who nodded a brief hello.

In seconds, her bonds were released, and she
leaped to her feet. Logan grabbed her hand and pulled, and she
quickly followed him out the back door, moving as silently as
possible.

Once outside, Logan and Luke shifted. Logan,
she noticed, was smaller and pale gray with a snowy white chest,
while Logan was thicker and his gray coat was mottled with flecks
of white and rust.

Logan lowered the front half of his body to
the ground in front of her, his muzzle resting on the ground with
his tail thrust into the air. For a moment, she stared at him
awkwardly, and then she realized what he wanted. She swung her leg
over him and grabbed two thick handfuls of the fur at the nape of
his neck.

Logan rose and began to sprint, Luke dashing
along beside him, occasionally looking over his shoulder. Logan
sailed over a fallen tree and ducked under a low branch. Allison’s
heart leaped into her throat and stuck there, choking her as she
clung fiercely to Logan’s thick fur. They were moving so rapidly
she could scarcely breathe, and the forest was a hazy blur of
greens and browns. She screwed her eyes tightly shut and buried her
face in Logan’s neck, hiding from her own terror.

Luke growled something and Logan barked a
hasty reply. She could hear their paws rustling the leaves as they
dashes away, two distinct sets of paws. Two.

“Michael!” she found herself gasping aloud,
her eyes popping open. “Logan, stop! We have to go back!”

Logan yelped with distress, but he continued
to dash through the forest. Her heart had already been pounding
furiously, but now it felt as though it were about to explode.

“Logan, stop!” she demanded, ponding his
shoulder with one hand.

He shook his furry head and continued to
run, while visions of Michael being torn apart by Victor and his
pack played through her mind like a horror movie.

Why wouldn’t he stop?

Luke continued glancing over his shoulder,
keeping pace beside his brother as though the two were one. Unable
to convince Logan, she shouted over to Luke and said, “Luke, we
have to go back! We can’t just leave him!”

Luke’s ear twitched, and she knew she’d
managed to reach him, but he continued to race beside his brother
as if she’d said nothing. Defeated, she buried her face back into
Luke’s furry neck.

Moments later, their paw falls began to
slow, and they came to a stop. Raising her head, she could see they
were outside a small cave. It was mostly hidden by a thick mass of
brush and tree limbs, but the dark entrance was still easy to
spot.

Logan lowered his body, and Allison took the
signal, dismounting him. Luke and Logan shifted. Allison flushed at
their nakedness and turned away.

“What’s to become of Michael?” she
demanded.

“Michael knew the risks when we came to get
you,” Luke said.

“So you’re not going back?” Allison
shrieked.

“The plan was for Michael to distract them
while we got you out and brought you to our safe haven,” Luke said.
“It seems to have worked. I don’t think we were followed.”

“And you just left him there to die?”
Allison shouted. Her rage had overcome her embarrassment, and she
wheeled to face the brothers, her eyes narrowed and her body
trembling with fury. “He’s your brother, how could you?”

The brothers glanced at one another, and
Logan opened his mouth to speak. He quickly closed it.

“We had no choice,” Luke said coolly.

“No choice,” Allison muttered. Then more
loudly, “No choice! Do you think Michael would say he had no choice
if one of you were back there?”

“I’ll not discuss this with you,” Luke said.
“Get in the cave.”

“Don’t you dare tell me what to do!” Allison
shouted. “You have no right to—“

“Have it your way,” Luke shrugged.

Then he snatched Allison up and threw her
over his shoulder, pushing his way past the brush and branches and
into the pitch-black cave.

“Put me down!” she shrieked, trying to
wriggle out of his grasp, but he was much stronger than she. “Put
me down
right this instant!
”

Luke ignored her, and a little while later,
she heard a click and a deep grinding noise like heavy stones
rubbing together. Light peeked through a small crack in the cave
wall, growing wider and wider until a doorway appeared. Luke
carried her through it.

Once inside, he planted her on her feet and
she slapped him. His cheek reddened deeply where her hand had
struck, but he said nothing, only staring at her for a moment
before turning and exiting the room. The stone wall began to close,
and she tried to follow him out, but the gap closed too
quickly.

“Damn it,” she muttered, crossing her arms
before her and glowering at the wall.

She turned to notice a fairly cozy room
built within the natural stone of the cave. Clearly, this place was
meant for wolves. Though it had beds in the form of creaky looking
military cots, and food, and another doorway that appeared to lead
to another room that Allison hoped dearly might be a bathroom, the
floor was earthen and the walls were bare stone. The room was lit
with the golden glow of lighting recessed into the walls.

“My, you guys are resourceful,” she
commented.

Her irritation was palpable. She began to
pace the floor as she waited. For what, she did not know. Would
Luke and Logan stay there with her? Would they go back for Michael?
She began to gnaw her fingernails as she paced.

She’d nearly worn a rut in the bare earth
when the door began to grind, and she froze with her thumbnail
between her teeth.

Michael, bruised and battered and with dried
blood crusted in his hair and wearing nothing but black shorts,
appeared in the doorway.

She twitched, her instinct to run to him,
but she stopped herself just in time. Instead, she tilted her head
to one side and said, “About time you showed up.”

“Nice to see you, too,” he muttered, limping
into the room, followed shortly by Luke and Logan, also in
shorts.

Michael rolled with a painful grunt onto a
cot and stared at the ceiling as the heavy stone closed, sealing
them in.

“Were you followed?” Luke asked.

“Do you think I’d have come here if I were?”
Michael growled.

“Don’t be a dick,” Luke grumbled.

Michael shot a warning glance in Luke’s
direction and said, “It’s because I’m a dick that you all are alive
right now.”

“Sorry,” Luke muttered, plopping heavily
onto a cot across the room, his face taut with frustrated
contrition.

“How long do we have to stay here?” Allison
wondered aloud.

Michael gripped his ribs and grunted as he
pulled himself into a sitting position, and he glared deeply into
her eyes. “This is our new home thanks to you.”

“Thanks to me?” she gasped, offended.
“You’ve got to be kidding! I didn’t ask for any of this!”

“No, but we could have just let Victor keep
you,” Michael reminded her. “We didn’t need to rescue you… either
time.”

Allison’s jaw dropped, and she started to
fly into an indignant rage, but she managed to suppress her rage.
He had a point. Instead, she dropped onto a cot and assumed the
same defeated position that Luke had been glowering in.

“Logan, please lower the lights,” Michael
said. “I must rest. Stand guard until I awaken.”

“Got it,” Logan said.

Moments later the lighting dimmed to near
darkness. Allison leaned heavily against the wall, biting the
inside of her cheek and glaring at Michael’s bare torso lying on
his cot across the room. Soon, her eyelids grew heavy, and
eventually she drifted into a fitful sleep.

The room was still dim when she came to, but
she noticed it was empty. Her brows furrowed, and she started to
call their names, but Michael emerged from the back room toweling
his hair with water droplets sliding down his bare midsection. She
noticed his wounds were completely healed.

Allison’s eyes lingered just a bit longer
than she intended, and then she quickly turned her attention to the
moth-eaten blanket on her cot.

“Well, look who finally woke up,” Michael
commented.

“Finally? What time is it?” she asked.

“About noon last time I checked.”

“Noon! I’ve never slept so long in my life!”
she gasped.

He shrugged and continued to rub his hair
vigorously with the towel before discarding it haphazardly across
the back of the lone chair that sat in the corner.

“Pig,” she muttered, crossing the room and
snatching the towel from the chair and taking it into the bathroom,
which she was startled to see was nothing more than a shower stall
devoid of a curtain, a small, rusty sink, and a rather disgusting
toilet. She threw the towel over the top edge of the shower stall
and quickly withdrew from the musty room.

“Don’t say a word,” Michael muttered.

“What?”

“I know what you’re thinking, Little Miss
Priss, and you can stuff it,” he grunted. “If our safe haven isn’t
to your liking, you’re free to go check into some upscale hotel
somewhere.”

“How
dare
you,” Allison growled.