Past My Defenses (Taming the Pack series) (Entangled Ignite) (17 page)

“Yeah, well, it’s been a week and the only things at risk seem to be my appliances. And you two are making being scent-matched look like an obscure form of torture.”

“Well, what am I supposed to do? She’s with you.”

Jordan blinked and shook his head. “And you’re suggesting I’m not good with women? Don’t they have a minimum IQ for this job? Have you considered maybe calling her and telling her that you don’t hate her? It’s been a damn week.”

“You don’t have to tell me how long it’s been.” If the fence posts they were pounding in were any sharper he’d be tempted to impale himself and be done with this. Life without Vanessa was hell. “Besides, I don’t hate her.” How could he? He was frustrated…and he couldn’t seem to make her stop running, but… He swallowed. “Does she think that because I sent her to you?”

“Would you like me to pass her a note in homeroom, Dane? O-M-G Do you like me? Check yes or no.”

“I really hate you.”

“I’ll cancel getting your name inked on my ass.”

Dane took a deep breath and let it out. This wasn’t helping anything. “This is why you’re here? To piss me off and to tell me it might be over, but you’re not sure, and thus you know nothing?”

“Pissing you off was more of a perk.” Jordan grinned. “But actually, since you brought it up…as the trail on the Lycan has gone cold and since the Oregon poacher attack rules out the presence of poachers currently, we were thinking if we had a fresh trail and more leads…”

“What does that mean?”

“We want to use Nessa as bait.”

“Oh, hell no!” he said, echoing her favorite phrase.

Jordan didn’t seem surprised. He narrowed his eyes and nodded. “Well, I said I’d ask.” He shrugged, and then he bent over like he’d dropped something, and never got back up.

The soft padding of feet alerted him that Jordan had changed, and Dane growled after the retreating noise, “Don’t you dare use her as bait! I swear, if anything happens to her, I will hunt you down and kill you.”

He circled the Jeep in time to see a glimpse of black disappear and to step in what appeared to be a puddle beside his Jeep.
Oh, no, he didn’t just mark my Jeep.
He was going to go over to Jordan’s house and piss all over everything…and then he might drag Vanessa back with him so her stupid Alpha couldn’t talk her into getting herself killed.

“Dane?” Sammy called.

Tonight, after she was home, he was going to go drag his mate home.

…

“I thought you said this was alphabetical,” Jordan said, flipping through the filing cabinet.

“It is.” How many times did she have to tell him? Alphabetical. You know…like the alphabet—a derivative of alpha and beta.

“So,
Q
comes between
B
and
C
then, does it?” He held up a file.

Vanessa snatched it out of his hand. Quinn. She’d just filed that an hour ago. “You planted that!”

He narrowed his eyes. “Why would I do that?”

She dropped into her seat and leaned across her desk, muttering into her arms, “I have no idea.”

Jordan sighed. “As much as I appreciate the quiet when you’re not sleeping and snoring to wake the dead, I think you’re on the verge of a breakdown from not sleeping.”

She was. How could someone she’d known a week and a half become her whole world? Jordan had forbidden her from going out at night without him, and she couldn’t exactly ask him to take a side trip so she could go apologize to Dane and maybe stay the night—or forever. Well, she could, but Jordan and Dane weren’t exactly on speaking terms. This all sucked.

Who knew it could be like this? It was like an obsession that could complete or kill you. When she was with him, she felt the most whole and healthy she’d ever felt. Then, there was this week. She’d beaten the crap out of Jordan’s blender—smashed it to bits—for no reason at all really. It just felt so good to break something.

Then she’d ordered him a new blender and swept up the remnants of his old one.

But damn, that had felt good to break something as thoroughly as she felt broken. She might break something every day to get through this life without Dane. He was probably relieved she wasn’t there to keep him awake or cause him trouble. He probably hadn’t run to his front door with a gun the whole time she’d been gone. His life was probably normal. Rainbows and ponies—only not rainbows and ponies because Dane was the human equivalent of Jordan.

This week had been such hell.

No rainbows.

No ponies.

Just a dead blender and apparently a bunch of misfiled project folders.

She wasn’t even any closer to placing the scent of the Lycan she’d met. Everyone kept asking her about it. They kept showing her possible names, but they all seemed wrong. She knew that scent! She knew it! Which means she must have spent some time with this Lycan.

Travis had swabbed her bites for DNA, but the wounds had been cleaned and canine DNA wasn’t exactly the same as human DNA. The dark coloring of her attacker didn’t eliminate many Lycans either. She was the only pale silver Lycan in their pack. The rest were all dark gray, brown, or black.

It had all happened so fast.

And she’d been too busy feeling incredibly stupid.

The only thing she felt was significant was that the Lycan had known to use Dane’s scent to lure her out.

Dane. Her primal instinct sniffed out a pathetic “mine?” and whimpered.
I know. I know. I screwed up.

The others had been on the other side of town when she’d been busy chasing the Lycan, investigating several items of Cheri’s clothing that had turned up.

They’d all been lured out.

They’d all been idiots. There was that. But she never should have left Dane’s side. When she got back there—if she got back there—she was never going to leave his side.

“I came to tell you this might all be over.” Something in his tone shot cold through her veins.

“What?” she asked, without turning around.

“Diamond Peak is missing five Lycans. They notified me while I was out at the Robinson property. We might be up against only a Lycan now—if there ever even was a poacher.”

“That’s a small pack,” she said. When she’d lived near Portland, Diamond Peak Lycans had stopped through occasionally. It was customary to notify a pack when you were within their territory for any length of time.

“They’ve evacuated to Mount Hood’s pack because they’re too few in number to handle poachers. And their panic is making them obvious targets.”

“How did the poachers find that small of a pack? Do you think whoever is here—the Lycan here—gave them up?” she asked, facing him.

He shook his head. “How many of our members would even know who is in that pack? Me. Travis knows their Alpha from when he is acting Alpha…but that’s about it.”

“I know one…maybe two.”

He raised his eyebrows. “Would you have shared their names with anyone?”

“No! Why would I do that? Of course not!”

He kept his gaze locked on her. “So, are you suggesting you’re our rogue Lycan? That this is all an elaborate murder/suicide plot?”

She shifted uncomfortably in her chair. He had a point. Also, clearly, he was right—she needed more sleep. “So, what happens now?”

“How about you go home and go to sleep?” Obviously his thoughts had coincided with hers.

She glanced at the clock on her laptop. “It’s two more hours. I’ll work two more hours, and then I’ll head home.”

“Okay, two more hours and then I’m not asking, I’m telling you to go home. Got that?” He made direct eye contact, and she nodded. He held up the file again. “Work on something easier than the alphabet.”

She glared at his back as he refiled the folder.

The long dark nights of winter and spring in the Pacific Northwest were usually ideal for them. They also carried around fur coats to deal with the rain and the cold. Normally, the dark and cold were perfect…except for rainy nights where her windshield kept fogging up, and the moron behind her seemed determined to blind her with his headlights.

Her eyes felt extra sensitive due to how exhausted she was.

So tired.

And she kept crying. Her eyes stung like they were embedded with sand—big chunks of sand.

“Ow. Give me some space,” she muttered to the car in back of her. This was ridiculous. There was no reason for them to be that close. If Travis didn’t already have enough on his hands, she’d call him and have them haul the idiot behind her in. Crap, even the rangers could pull these fools over since they were weaving in and out of national park property.

For a moment, she considered calling Dane to come save her from a tailgater, and it made her smile, right up until the car slammed into her bumper. Holy hell! She swerved on the slick roads. Just as she was trying to decide whether to speed up or slow down and wondering where her inhaler was, she jolted forward as the headlights shot toward her, and the cars impacted.
Smash! Screech!
Hell. Hell. Hell. She was going to die, and she hadn’t fixed things with Dane. Her heart was pounding in her throat. She was going to die—or she could do the car equivalent to running. She slammed on the gas and jolted forward, but she lurched as she was immediately tugged back.

Damn! The bumpers were locked. They rocked back and forth against each other as metal screeched loudly. Tires screamed and spun and her engine whined as the thing behind her applied its brakes. The bumper swung her back and forth—like a wolf with a fish in its mouth. Vanessa was too terrified to scream, too terrified to breathe.

Back and forth she swung.

She slammed on the gas again as they turned a corner.
Thunk!
The bumpers unhooked at the moment she swung toward the barrier, and then she did scream as she shot through the cables and over into the embankment. Her car careened down the hill before two trees slammed into her, stopping her momentum. She jerked forward and the seat belt knocked the wind out of her and sent sharp pain through her shoulder where she’d been bitten a week ago. For a moment, she sat there, nearly horizontal, staring through the spiderweb of her windshield.

Huh. She felt so weirdly numb. Like she was in a bubble.

Her horn was blaring.

Her air bag hadn’t gone off.

The pressure of her seat belt was making her sick.

The inside of the car lit with a ghostly glow, and it took her a moment to realize the car behind her had stopped.

No. Run. Run home.

She kicked the door open with both her feet, but her seat belt wouldn’t release, so she shifted into her fur and tore through it with her teeth. Then she was out, and the air bag exploded behind her, blasting the air like a gunshot. She saw a figure illuminated in the headlights…a figure that shifted as the car pulled away. A dark Lycan’s fur lit up as the raindrops shimmered.

Go home. Home.

And she was running. For the second time in a week. Running for her life. And she was going home.

Chapter Twelve

He still had his shoes on, but he was leaning over the counter, staring at his cell phone like it was a Magic 8 Ball. Yes. No. Try again later, Dane.

It had all sounded much easier in his head when he’d planned on dragging Vanessa home. Now he wasn’t completely sure how to do it without coming off as arrogant and pissing her off. He’d sent her away. He hadn’t wanted to, and he’d done it because he cared, but she might not see it that way.

She couldn’t possibly think he hated her.

He sent her away for the exact opposite reason.

Maybe he shouldn’t call first and give her the chance to think things over.

He rubbed his hand across his eyes. He needed her, though. Another sleepless night sounded like an endless night. He needed Vanessa back.

A howl shattered the silence. His heart sped up even before he realized what he was hearing…again. His mouth went dry, and Dane turned to look at the front door. It couldn’t be…but…no…wolf or human, he knew Vanessa’s voice. She was running scared again.

He was still in uniform, and he yanked out his pistol as he ran to the front porch. He was going to start keeping his gun safe by the door. He swung his gun in an arc, trying to pick out the sound of feet. A rustling came from the west, and he waited until his silver wolf broke from the forest before firing into the bushes. His fifth bullet brought a screech and a whimper as Vanessa leaped onto the porch and slid across it, like a runner sliding home. She must’ve changed after she swept by him because he heard a very human “oof” after she thudded into the side of his house.

“Stay there,” he yelled at her, pointing a stern finger, and ran out toward the woods, pulling out his flashlight as he did. He found the small smear of blood just inside the tangle of trees and a corresponding swipe on a nearby tree, but then it disappeared, and when he listened, the rustling was in the distance. He’d wounded it, but it hadn’t been enough. “Dammit!”

He turned and ran back the way he’d come. If he’d ever seen a sight as welcome as Vanessa lying naked on his porch, trying to catch her breath, it didn’t come to mind. He slowed and stood above her, grinning and shaking his head. Probably not an appropriate expression when your girlfriend arrived, running for her life, but this might become a regular thing with her—and he was so damn glad to have her back.

“Your walls…seem to be surprisingly firm,” she said.

“Well, that’s good.” He crouched beside her and traced a red stripe of skin that ran from one shoulder, between her breasts, to the opposite hip. Ouch. And the bite marks on her shoulder were bleeding again. Hell. “Are you ever going to arrive and not need first aid?”

Instead of explaining, she started laughing, and then, reaching up, she grabbed him by the neck and pulled his mouth to hers. Her mouth was heaven, and he would have stayed kissing her for hours if she wasn’t so winded that she was inhaling loudly through her nose to keep her mouth free.

He pulled back, a smile on his face. “Are you okay?”

She nodded and gasped in deep breaths.

“Because if you’d rather make out than breathe…we can do that.”

She grinned and mouthed, “You’re an ass,” as she continued to pant.

“Yes, I am.” He gathered her to his chest. She put her arms around his neck and nestled into him as he carried her in, stopping beside the door so she could flip the dead bolt. “Bed, counter, or couch? Where are we playing doctor today? I cleaned the downstairs so it shouldn’t bother your allergies, but I don’t have any of your meds here so we might not want to chance it.”

She tipped her head to the side and behind her as if she was looking at his place for the first time, then she smiled at him again.

“No preference. Okay, we’ll do the couch. It’s dark enough fabric that the blood shouldn’t show.” He set her down carefully, and she ducked her chin, trying to see her shoulder.

“Is it bad?” she asked in between breaths.

“It looks like you yanked it open a bit, but it’s already clotting—should be fine. What happened?”

“Car crash.” She pushed a strand of his hair back from his forehead. He almost thought he’d misheard her because she was smiling as she said it.

“You were in a car crash?” Well, that certainly explained the seat belt mark across her. “Are you okay? Do we need to go in and get you x-rayed?” She seemed awfully happy and upbeat for someone who’d been in a car crash. Other than the red mark and the bleeding shoulder, she was only out of breath. And she had run here from wherever she’d been, so she couldn’t be too injured.

She shook her head as he’d expected she would. He took the opportunity to slide a pillow under her. Maybe she was in shock. Maybe the adrenaline had dulled the pain of something.

“Are you sure you don’t have internal bleeding or cracked ribs?”

She nodded.

He held up two fingers. “How many fingers am I holding up?”

Her answer was to grab him by the neck and pull him down to kiss her again. When he attempted to pull back a moment later, she showed her reluctance by trapping his lower lip between her teeth…which led to him returning the favor, which led to more kissing and him whispering against her neck, “Okay just tell me if anything hurts.” If he was going to check for broken ribs anyway there was nothing that said it had to be a misery for them…

And then they heard the sirens…

They both groaned.

Leaning over her, he cradled her face in his hands and said, “When you are not in heat, we are going someplace where they don’t have sirens…or cars…or maybe even people.” And they were going to stay there for a very long time. Long enough for him to get her to stop running away. He needed time to convince her.

She laughed. “Maybe I should go put on some clothes just in case it’s not Travis.” She took breaths in between every other word and when he helped her to her feet, she swayed and fell back down on the couch. “Whoa, light-headed. Maybe not.”

“I don’t care if it is Travis…you’re still putting some clothes on.” He ran to his room and grabbed the first T-shirt and pair of boxers he could. He crossed in front of the door as two sets of headlights illuminated his porch. Vanessa still had a slightly stunned expression so he helped her put clothes on. He’d leaned in for a quick kiss when the pounding on the door started.

…

Home. She was home. Nothing else mattered. She slumped back on the couch as he went to answer the door. She was home.

It was the sheriff, Travis, and Jordan. Well, it was good that all of Dane’s shirts doubled as short dresses on her. They all burst into the house the moment the door opened, tripping all over one another.

“She
is
here!” Sheriff Terry said.

“Yup,” Travis said.

Jordan stood there, shaking his head, looking shocked.

The sheriff turned to Dane and punched him in the shoulder. “Why didn’t you call 911 when you picked her up? We’ve been hunting all over for her. We went to Jordan’s first because we thought she might be there. She was here!”

“Uhh,” Dane said.

“We just got here,” she said.

“Why didn’t you call on your cell phone?” the sheriff asked.

Very good question. Logical. “Mine is in my car,” she said.

“Well, how did you call Dane?”

“I just found her,” Dane said, looking at the other two for help.

“Do you know the crash is eight miles away? And only two miles from my place?” Jordan asked her.

She shrugged. “You told me to go home. I came here.”

“Well, I’m going to go tell them to call off the search,” the sheriff said, still shaking his head at Dane.

The moment he left, Dane said, “I shot whoever it was in the bushes—to the south.”

“Did you miss?” Jordan asked.

Dane’s eyes narrowed. “No. I just didn’t
kill
them. She doesn’t give me much notice. All of a sudden, something with teeth is charging out of my bushes straight for me. My life has become a video game—only instead of zombies, it’s werewolves.”

“I’ll go check it out,” Jordan said, seeming unimpressed. “You have a basement?”

Dane nodded.

Jordan looked at Vanessa. “With a den entrance?”

“Pet door, and it’s in view of the driveway.”

He slanted a look at Dane. “You’ll need to fix that.” Then he stepped out the back door and was gone.

The sheriff walked back in the front door and glanced around. “Where did Jordan go?”

“Bathroom,” she said quickly. Dane was still staring at his back door, looking annoyed.

“So, what happened with the car? Your horn tipped off Travis so he went down to investigate.”

“Someone rammed me from behind and then forced me off the road.” She still felt so out of breath. She should have left some spare meds and inhalers here. At the time, she’d wondered if Dane would ever even want her back. But he’d been happy to see her—not mad.

And she was home.

“Your purse is in the cruiser—I grabbed it from your car. You want it?” Travis asked.

She nodded. At least she kept backups of everything in there. She could get by until she got some of her stuff back from Jordan’s place. If she was going to… She cast a look at Dane, who was staring at the floor, biting his lower lip. Maybe he didn’t want her back. She’d arrived at his door running again. He mentioned that bit about going somewhere without sirens once this was all over, but maybe that was just something you said when you kept getting interrupted. He hadn’t called her in a week, and he’d sent her away.

But he had been happy to see her—at first. Maybe now that the adrenaline had worn off, she was just another problem he had to deal with—one that came with weird baggage like people trying to murder her.

“So, someone tried to run you off the road?” the sheriff asked slowly. “Are you sure they didn’t just slip on the slick roads too?”

“Twice? They hit me once and then sped up and hit me again.”

The sheriff shook his head. “Well, maybe we should take you into the hospital. You should have gone there directly. And why did we find your clothes next to the car?”

She took a few deep puffs from the inhaler in her purse. “I think I was in shock so I just wandered off without them.”

Sheriff Terry was looking at her like she was a mutant. Well, she could shift into a wolf so, technically, maybe she was, but he couldn’t know that. Maybe he thought she was mental. This night was never going to make sense to their sheriff.

He dropped his pen, and the other three looked at one another as he bent to retrieve it. Dane held Travis’s gaze for an extra second, and Travis nodded.

“Can you think of anyone who might want to harm you?” the sheriff asked after the deepest, most put-upon sigh she’d ever heard.

Anyone who might want to harm her? Cheri had hated her, and she’d never suspected. And now she had some rogue Lycan and possibly a poacher after her. She kept arriving at Dane’s running for her life. Apparently, there was a crowd of them. You’d have to stand in line. She had no idea who they were, and the sheriff wouldn’t believe a word of it anyway.

“Not really, but I’m not feeling so well…and I should call the car insurance and everything. Can I answer questions tomorrow?”

The sheriff nodded. “I guess that’ll work. It’s unlikely you’re in any danger here.”

“You know, I think I’ll wait and give Jordan a ride when he comes out,” Travis said.

The sheriff nodded. “Sure…sure…I’m going to go back and see if anyone saw this other car.”

He was gone a moment later, his siren blaring on the way out too.

“He does like that siren,” Dane murmured.

Travis sighed. “He does.” He looked between them, laughing. “Anyone else find it funny that he was the only one saying anything that made any sense, and we all knew he was crazy?”

Vanessa smiled, but Dane’s focus barely shifted. “So, if someone followed her here, and you didn’t find another car abandoned near hers…” Dane looked at her.

She nodded with a grimace. “There was someone else in the truck that pulled away as the Lycan shifted in the headlights. Someone rammed me—I think the truck was big—like a semi, but they had their high beams on to blind me from the second they pulled behind me. The lights were high, though. It must have been a semi. When they stopped, the Lycan got out to take me to ground, and the truck or whatever turned away.”

“Our poacher is still around,” Travis said. “Did you get a good look at either of them?”

“The headlights were too bright.” She’d been running blind for a few minutes. That and the injury had let the other Lycan keep up. She should have outdistanced it by a mile in that amount of time, but it’d yet to be a fair race between them. It stung her pride. She wasn’t great at staying and fighting, but she was fantastic at running. She should have arrived a good ten minutes ahead of the other Lycan—and she and Dane could have sat on the porch, catching up, while they waited for it to arrive.

It pissed her off.

Jordan slid back in the front door, buttoning his shirt. “If there’s two of them still, and they seem set on Vanessa, I don’t think she is safe here.”

“No?” Dane crossed his arms and stared at Jordan. “But she’s safe with you? She was going home to you tonight
and
you want to use her as bait anyway!”

“Bait?” she and Travis asked at the same time.

“It makes me wonder if she’s ever been safe with you,” Dane ground out, glaring at Jordan.

Jordan sighed and shot Dane a repressive look—which Dane would ignore. “It’s something that’s been considered.” He turned to Travis. “This is something the three of us need to discuss; I’ll confirm my decisions later.”

The deputy nodded and left the house with his head bowed in deference…which seemed to piss off Dane, if his stance and his set jaw were anything to go by.

Dane started to speak, but Jordan lifted a hand and nodded toward the driveway, indicating Travis still hadn’t left. Dane’s jaw tightened even more.

This wasn’t going well.

The second the car started, Dane hissed, “Don’t think, for even a second, that you have any authority in my house. You are nothing to me.”

She swallowed. If Dane pulled this crap with other Lycans around, it’d be viewed as a challenge for Alpha or an act of insubordination. He was seriously going to be the death of her.