Rebel Wolf (Shifter Falls Book 1) (13 page)

H
ours later
, they sat in bed, Ian’s back against the headboard, Anna between his legs. Her back was against his chest, her hair tickling his skin, his leg hooked possessively over hers as he curled his arms around her and listened to her breathe.

His wolf was happy.
Very
happy. His wolf was always happy when he was skin to skin with his mate.

And she
was
his mate. His wolf had chosen almost from the first, which was rare, but not unheard of. She hadn’t chosen him, not in the way his wolf wanted, not yet. But his wolf was patient.

“I have a question,” she said.

He dropped a soft kiss to her neck. “So many questions,” he teased her. “Go ahead.”

“Heath explained to me about mating,” she said, and he tried not to wince at her mention of his brother’s name. He wasn’t jealous, exactly, but no alpha wolf liked to hear another man’s name in his bed. “He wouldn’t tell me what happens when it comes to mating. He said it was hard to explain.”

He ran a palm down her arm, unable to get enough of touching her, the connection with her bare skin. “It is, a little,” he said. “What happens is that the shifter bites his mate.”

“He bites her?” She shifted beneath his touch. “Where?”

“Here,” he said. He brushed her hair from the back of her neck and ran his thumb over the skin there. It was the same place he had his Donovan tattoo, just above the knob of spine. “During sex. He has to be behind her, of course.”

He felt her shudder a little, and he caught the scent of arousal. “Does he turn her into a werewolf?” she asked.

“No.” He dropped his hand. “It isn’t possible to turn a human into a werewolf. Shifters are born, not made. The bite is a claiming ritual. It marks her as his, and only his.” He ran his palm down her arm again.

“Does it hurt?” she asked.

“I don’t think so. It’s very pleasurable, or so I’ve heard. I’ve never experienced it, myself.”

She elbowed his ribs. “I hope not,” she said. “If you have, you’re in big trouble right now.”

He dropped more kisses to her neck, tasting her skin, feeling the shiver of desire in her again. “There are no others, Anna.”

She sighed, and he couldn’t help but gently palm her breast, just to make her make that sound again. “Your wolf has chosen, hasn’t he?” she asked.

“Yes,” he rumbled. Her breast was soft and warm in his hand. He’d already explored them thoroughly, but already he wanted to do it again.

“Then… you want to…” She trailed off.

Oh, yes, he very much did. He could do it right now, sink his teeth into her and make her his. But an important part of mating is that the woman comes freely to the man, giving herself to him. “It doesn’t matter,” he said, though the words pained him. “We’re not going to.”

She twisted to look back at him, but he held her close and wouldn’t let her. “Why not?”

“Because you’re leaving,” he said. “You have a life in Denver. Things to take care of. Plans to make.”

She groaned. “I don’t want to go.”

“You have to,” he said.

“I’m coming back.”

“You can’t promise that,” he said.

She sighed again and ran her hand along his thigh. That made him start to get hard again. “If we aren’t mating, then what is tonight?” she asked.

He ran a thumb over her nipple and felt her skin shiver. “Tonight is tonight,” he said. “I get to have my way with you until morning. I have no problem with that. It’s more than I thought I’d get.”

She shifted away from his back, leaning forward, and he could smell how aroused she was. He slid his hand down between her legs, unable to keep from touching her, and she gave a little moan. “Your way is amazing,” she said.

He ran his other hand down her back as he rubbed her, cupping the perfect curve of her ass. Some man had had a relationship with her, had had all of her, and had never pleased her like this. And then he’d cheated on her. Ian shook his head. “Human men don’t deserve their women.”

She turned around and straddled him, then leaned down and kissed him. He kept her there as he kissed her long and slow, as he felt her melt against him. She could definitely feel how hard he was now, and it made her breath come quickly. She wanted him. “I’ll come back,” she said again.

“You always can, you know,” he told her. “It doesn’t matter how long it takes.” It was true. It would leave him desolate and grieving if she didn’t return, but it didn’t matter. She was the mate for him. If she came back in a month, or a year, or ten years, he’d be here. But his job tonight was to convince her that she wouldn’t want to stay away.

Because he didn’t just want a mate. He wanted his Anna. And as she slid onto him, and he ran his hands over her skin, he knew that he wanted her forever.

T
he snow stopped sometime
before dawn, but it took until nearly noon before the streets were clear enough for driving and Anna’s car was dug from beneath the snowdrift in the parking lot. She spent the morning having breakfast—and maybe doing other things—with Ian, then packed a suitcase with enough clothes for a week. She left the rest of her belongings in his apartment, promising him again that she would be back. He told her again that she wasn’t in a position to make any promises, and that she should do whatever she wanted. Then he took her into his shower with him and nearly made her pass out.

He was a very, very devious wolf.

He walked her to her car and tossed her suitcase in the back. The day was cold and beautiful, the snow clean and white. It felt festive, like a holiday, even though Christmas was over a month ago. Nolan supervised a few of the neighborhood teenagers, bossing them around as they shoveled his walk and the driveway.

Finally, there was nothing for her to do but get in her car and start driving. She looked up at Ian, at his gorgeous face with its high cheekbones and dark scruff of stubble, his soft mouth that she now knew so well, and lifted up onto her toes, putting her arms around his neck and kissing him, long and leisurely.

A few of the teenagers hooted, but Anna didn’t care. She broke off from him to see Nolan watching them, grinning. “Keep going,” he called to them when he saw that they’d stopped. “You look good together.”

“This is the most action you’ve seen in years, old man,” Ian called back, and the fox shifter barked laughter as Ian pulled Anna to him and kissed her again.

“Be safe,” he told her when he let her go.

She saw the calculating look in his green eyes and said, “What are you going to do?”

“It’s a nice day,” he said. “I’m going for a run.”

She narrowed her eyes at him. “Running, huh? As far as the city limits?”

Ian shrugged. “Maybe.”

“Your wolf doesn’t need to accompany me, you know.”

“He disagrees.”

“Okay. Just try not to get hit by a car or something.”

That made him laugh. “Get in the car.”

She kissed him one more time—she couldn’t help it—and reluctantly got in.

The roads were snowy, but she drove carefully until she got to the highway, which was cleared. She kept glancing through her side windows, trying to catch a glimpse of the wolf following her, but she didn’t see him.

Damn, she missed him already. This was not good.

She became lost in thought as she drove the highway. First, she needed to meet with Margaret and sort out her thesis issue. And maybe her shifter research wouldn’t be wasted. She could write an article, or even a book. She had learned so much that humans didn’t know about shifter society. Surely people would find it useful. Surely it would be good to show that part of them to the human world, to help people understand that shifters weren’t the lazy, violent animals everyone thought they were. Their ways weren’t human ways, but they had a simplicity to them that worked.

She was sure the Donovan brothers wouldn’t mind if she wrote about their ways, their lives. If they even noticed.

She’d have to get a place to stay. She’d call her old roommate and ask if she knew of anyone who was looking to rent out a room for a week or so. She could always stay in a motel if she had to, because she wasn’t planning on being in Denver for long. Just long enough to wrap things up, reassure her mother she was fine, and—

She jolted out of her thoughts at the sight of a huge, black wolf standing in the middle of the road.

Anna slammed on the brakes, turning the wheel so she wouldn’t hit the animal. It watched her from its golden eyes and didn’t move, didn’t flinch as her car fishtailed and spun onto the side of the road. The movement wrenched her neck, and when the car came to a stop she groaned and blinked, trying to get her bearings.

She looked at the road. The wolf was gone.

Her door was wrenched open, and a man’s big hand came in, shoving her hard. Anna screamed and turned to see Crazy Ronnie Marcus staring her in the face, a grin on his mouth. He was naked.

“Hello, sweetheart,” he said.

She jerked away from him, but her seatbelt was still on and she couldn’t move fast enough. Ronnie reached over her and freed her with one hand, then put the other to her throat. “Move over,” he said.

She spat in his face.

He flinched, then slammed her back into the seat, his hand hard on her throat. She could see the thinly healed scar on his arm where she’d plunged the knife into him, the marks where Ian’s wolf had bitten his shoulder. Anna thought she heard a far-off snarl, coming from somewhere near the trees, but the sound was drowned out by Ronnie Marcus saying, “Move over or I’ll kill you. I can show your corpse to Donovan when I’m alpha. It’ll have the same effect. It doesn’t matter to me.”

She gasped for breath and moved over into the passenger seat, as much to get away from his grip as anything else. He got into the driver’s seat, and as he slammed the door a wolf landed on the hood of the car, snarling through the windshield at them.

Ian.

Ronnie shoved the car into gear and drove forward, making Ian’s wolf scrabble on the hard metal. He turned the wheel back and forth, plowing the front of the car through the fresh snow at the side of the road. Ian’s wolf held on as long as he could, then lost his grip and rolled off onto the road. Anna screamed.

Ronnie turned the car. Ian’s wolf was getting up, shaking the snow from his fur. His jaw was open, his teeth big and bared, and he was snarling, his eyes snapping. Ronnie aimed the car right for him and gunned the gas pedal.

Anna reached over and tried to scratch his eyes.

Ronnie cursed, the car swerved, and Ian’s wolf leapt out of the way. When Ronnie turned back to her, her nails had left red marks on his face.

“Now look what you made me do,” he said. He backhanded her across the face, and she knew no more.

A
howl sounded
over the trees, long and throaty, echoing off the mountains and arching into the sky.

Ian froze on the road, where he watched Anna’s car drive away. He wanted to give chase. Every part of him demanded that he give chase, even though it was likely hopeless.

But his alpha was calling him.

He lowered his head and snarled, frustrated. Two instincts were at war in him, pulling him in two different directions. He couldn’t think as clearly in wolf form as he could in human form—his logic was muddier, and he mostly followed his animal senses. And right now, he was overwhelmed with anger that Anna had been taken.

Close. He’d been so close. If he’d just been seconds faster…

The howl sounded again, and Ian snarled. Brody was howling, summoning him, and he couldn’t disobey his alpha. Besides, it penetrated through his animal senses that Ronnie had turned Anna’s car around and headed it back in the direction of Shifter Falls.

So he left the road and loped into the fields, his wolf easily navigating through nearly a foot of snow. He followed the sound and the scent of his alpha for a long time, winding around the woods beyond the edge of town and to a clearing downstream from where they’d lost Ronnie Marcus. He passed the place where he’d shifted when he left town to follow Anna, so he took the chance to shift back into human form and put his clothes on. He could sense Brody and his brothers half a mile away, all of them in human form now. His alpha had never summoned him before, and he sensed he’d need to be human to deal with whatever was coming.

He found all three of his brothers in a parking lot outside an old warehouse on the outskirts of town. They were in a semicircle, standing around something on the ground, looking down at it. As Ian came closer, his strides long and fast, he caught scent of what it was.

Police Chief Will Oliver wasn’t dead, but he’d been beaten. He lay on the ground, tied up and moaning, his nose broken, blood in his mouth. Ian looked down at him coldly, unable to summon a single emotion other than his blaring, overwhelming concern for his mate. “What happened?” he asked.

His three brothers looked at him. Brody had left off his baseball cap and wore a flannel shirt with a jacket over it, unzipped. “Devon found him while he was patrolling,” he said, his voice short and curt. “He’s been given a message. But his directive is to give it only to you.”

Ian looked at Devon, and then at Heath. He couldn’t bring himself to care about Chief Oliver, even though the man moaned in pain as he lay on the ground. “Anna’s been taken,” he said to his brothers. “Ronnie took her. He’s got her in her car. I was too slow.”

“We know,” Heath said. He pointed to the man on the ground. “This is Ronnie’s work.”

Ian stepped forward and nudged the chief of police with his toe. “What do you have to say to me?”

Chief Oliver blinked up at him. His hands were tied in front of him. None of Ian’s brothers had bothered to untie him, Ian noticed, nor had they picked him up from where he shivered on the ground. Oliver was a human man, and felt the cold.

“Listen,” he said. “I had to cover for them. They’ve been staying in the old jail, in one of the cells.”

Ian watched him. His heart was ice. Anna might be dead right now. Right this minute. Ronnie could be hurting her, raping her. His mate. There was nothing else inside him other than that. Nothing at all.

“They threatened to kill my family,” Oliver said. “Ronnie and John Marcus. They told me I had to hide them until they were ready to make a move.”

“Do you have a message?” Ian asked. “Or should I just kill you?”

“Don’t kill me,” Oliver said. “John Marcus was your father’s trusted henchman. What was I supposed to do?”

“I say we kill him,” Devon said.

Ian glanced at him in approval. “I certainly will if he doesn’t stop babbling and tell me whatever the fuck he’s supposed to tell me.” He looked back down. “Five seconds, Oliver. I don’t have time to waste with you. I’ve got things to do.”

“Ronnie wants to fight you,” Oliver said, shivering on the ground. “A cage fight. He beat me up this morning and told me to tell you. I knew he was going to go after your girl.”

“And you let him,” Ian said.

“I’m starting to agree with Devon,” Heath said. He was wearing a t-shirt and his suede jacket, his long, dark-blond hair tousled in the cold wind. “Let’s kill him.”

“I’m not finished!” Chief Oliver shouted. “Listen. Two o’clock in the town hall. Ronnie wants to fight, one on one. The whole town is invited to watch. Winner is the new alpha of the pack.”

Ian glanced up at Brody. Their agreement wasn’t public yet; a pack alpha had to be confirmed in a public ceremony in any case. Brody shrugged. Ronnie had no say in who became alpha anyway, because he wasn’t Charlie’s blood; he was just crazy enough to think he could bend the rules. But his challenge to Ian meant that he had no idea the Donovan brothers had agreed on a new alpha.

He thought they were still fighting.

Ian wasn’t going to split hairs. Not when he had the chance to get Ronnie Marcus’s throat in his hands in just under two hours.

“Fine,” Ian said. “I’ll be there.”

“You said they were staying in the old prison,” Brody said. His voice was almost as cold as Ian’s. “Are they there now? Tell us, or you’re dead.”

Chief Oliver shook his head. “They knew they were going to be found out, so they moved hiding places. That’s why they did this to me before they left.”

“Fuck,” Brody said. He looked around at the others. “I bet we could find them if we tracked their scent from the old jail.”

“Let them come to us,” Devon said. “It’s better.”

“They could be hurting Anna right now,” Ian said.

“It’s unlikely.” This was Heath. “The whole idea is that they want her alive to make you give in.”

“Alive but hurt,” Ian said to him. “That works.”

“I couldn’t track them last night,” Brody said. “The snow messed up the scents.” He checked his watch. “Ninety minutes to the fight. I’ll go to the old jail and see if I can scent something. I’ll bring Heath for backup in case I come across the Marcuses. You two go to the town hall and scope it out. Learn every entrance, every nook and cranny, because you can bet the Marcuses already do.”

“If you don’t find them?” Ian asked him.

Brody gave him a look that told him he understood Ian’s pain. “If I don’t find them, we let them come to us, like Devon says. They have Anna, but we have what they want. We have leadership of the pack. So we’ll wait for them. And they’ll come.”