Rebel Wolf (Shifter Falls Book 1) (9 page)

H
is wolf was howling
. He needed to shift and run, badly. The meeting with his brothers, unexpected and tense. The news that someone had killed Gus Wallace after all these years of Ian imagining it himself. The memories that dredged up of his mother and the way she died. The entire situation in Shifter Falls and the mess Charlie had left.

Charlie himself, that bastard, who had done nothing for Ian but beat him up, break his mother’s heart, get her killed, and leave the Falls in disarray, dying before Ian had the chance to tell him how much he hated his father’s black heart.

And Anna.

It was safer if he brought her with him—that much was true. What he left out was that he didn’t
want
to leave her behind, to go alone into the woods while she sat waiting in the apartment. He wanted her with him.

He was growing used to her presence, her scent that was so thoroughly mixed with his. The way those blue eyes watched everything around her and missed almost nothing. The way he could feel her attuned to him—tensing when he was angry, calming when he did—and the way he was attuned to her, always on alert for her fear or her distress. He had spent his entire life alone, with no one to look out for, and no one looking out for him. He was surprised how quickly he felt that was inadequate now. He was starting to rely on her presence nearby. He was starting to feel less alone.

“You did good back there,” he told her as they got to the top of the rise and entered the trees. “You didn’t let any of my brothers get to you. A lesser woman would have been intimidated.”

“Oh. Well.” She shrugged, the corner of her mouth quirking. “You’re all different, but you’re all Donovans. I’m getting used to it. Though there was a lot of testosterone in that room. I may have ovulated a little.”

He gave her a look with a raised eyebrow, but he had to admit that was funny.

He unbuttoned his coat and dropped it, and watched her eyes follow his hands, her cheeks reddening. “Don’t worry,” he said. “I’m not gonna make you look this time. I’ll go into the trees.”

“You don’t have to. I mean, um, I’ll just go over here.” She actually stammered a little, shoving her hands in her coat pockets and looking away. The wind caught a strand of her dark hair and blew it across her forehead, and he caught the scent of agitation from her, and anticipation, and pure female arousal. His gaze dropped to her lips. What he could do to this woman. What he
wanted
to do to this woman. Her mouth, her flawless skin, the curve of her hips in her jeans below the hem of her coat. He wanted to tangle his hands in her long hair and taste her skin. But that was a terrible idea. She shouldn’t be anywhere near a wolf like him.

She turned away, heading for a clump of shrubs to give him privacy, but he reached out and curled a hand around her elbow, stopping her. “Hey,” he said.

She turned and looked at him, biting her lip.

“Twenty minutes,” he said. “That’s all. Set your watch.”

“I don’t have a watch,” she said, then winced, as if she thought she’d said something foolish.

“Then set mine.” He dropped her arm, took his watch from his wrist, and gave it to her. “Hold this, too.” He unclasped the thin leather from his neck and held it out.

She took it, looking at the charm, which was a single silver claw. “This is beautiful work. Where did you get it?”

“It’s the only gift my mother ever gave me,” he said. “Christmas, the year before she died.” God knew where she’d gotten the money for it; he’d never asked. She’d been relatively sober that day. She’d told him when he opened it that despite everything that had happened with his father, she was proud to have a werewolf son. Four months later, she was dead.

Anna closed her hand over the necklace and gave him a small smile. “Okay,” she said. “Twenty minutes.”

He pointed to the watch. “Starting now,” he promised. Then, pulling his shirt off over his head, he turned and jogged for the woods.

A
nna found
a fallen log and sat on it, slipping Ian’s watch and his necklace into her pocket. She pulled her cell phone from her pocket and checked it, surprised to see that the reception was good, probably because she was on the top of a rise.

She had a message from her advisor and another from her mother. She didn’t want to talk to her advisor right now, but she owed her mother some reassurance. So she dialed her mother first.

“Anna,” her mother said when she answered. “Are you all right? Where are you right now?”

“I’m fine, Mom,” Anna said, stretching her legs out in front of her. She was glad Ian had taken the time to run, but she hoped he would stick to his time limit. Could wolves even tell time?

“I hadn’t heard from you,” her mother complained. “You let your apartment go, and then you were going to prison to get your ex-con and going to that
place,
and then there was just nothing. I was worried.”

“It hasn’t been that long,” Anna said. Had she only arrived here yesterday? Already she felt different, as if her mother’s voice was coming from a world far away. “Anyway, I’m fine. Everything’s fine.”

“It isn’t dangerous?”

Um. Grizzly bear fights, feuding brothers, men being murdered and torn to pieces. She decided to leave those parts out. “Everything is fine,” she repeated. “I’m getting a lot of material for my research.” Including exactly what her subject looked like naked, and the best way to kill him if she had to. “I think it’s going to be really valuable. I’m learning a lot that we can add to what we know about shifters.”

“If you say so,” her mother said, unconvinced. “I just hope no one is bothering you. I’ve heard that shifters can be rather impolite with women.”

“Not at all,” Anna lied, thinking of Ian saying,
The best way to make you smell like me is if we fuck. Your choice.
“I’m being treated like a professional.”

“Is the hotel okay?”

“It’s fine.” Anna actually cringed, thankful that her mother couldn’t see her. She’d never lied this much to her mother, and the longer this conversation went on, the faster she was going straight to hell. “It’s very safe. The security is excellent. How are you doing?”

She listened to her mother talk about grading assignments and class schedules and incompetent teaching assistants and her sister’s kids, making agreeable noises. “There’s something I heard that I should tell you,” her mother said at last.

“What is it?”

“I saw that friend of yours, Carol, and she told me that Daniel is getting married. The date is set for April.”

Anna was silent for a second in shock. Daniel, the boyfriend who had cheated on her, was getting married?

“Anna, are you there?”

“Is it Isabelle?” she asked. “Is she the one he’s marrying?”

“Yes, it is.” Isabelle was the woman Daniel had cheated with. “Carol says they fight a lot, but who knows? Maybe they’ll work it out. I’m just sad you two couldn’t make a go of it.”

“Mom.” Anna suddenly felt tired. “I’ve told you a hundred times, he cheated on me. That isn’t the same as
not making a go of it.
”

“That isn’t what I meant,” her mother protested. “Anyway, honey, I have an appointment with a student in a few minutes. Call me and let me know how you’re doing, okay? And if you want to come back before the three weeks are up, there’s no shame in that. At least you tried.”

Anna hung up. That was typical of her mother—the back-handed insult that sounded like motherly concern. It was also typical of her mother that she would wait until the end of the conversation to mention Daniel’s engagement, as if it wasn’t important, and then blame Anna for the breakup. Her mother knew a lot about books and medieval monks, and almost nothing about real life, twenty-first-century people and how they felt. Her sister was someone her mother understood easily—married to a professor, mother to two children. But Anna had always felt like she didn’t belong. She didn’t want a life in academia, and she didn’t want a husband and kids. She wanted… something else.

Adventure. Fulfillment. Excitement. To help people. To see the world, to understand it. To experience things outside her comfort zone. Love. Passion. Life. All of it.

She tilted her head back and looked up at the sky, where a few large, lazy flakes of snow were falling. Ian’s image came into her mind again, the way he’d sat on his windowsill in his black t-shirt and black drawstring pants, so easy in his own body. Even his brothers were interesting, though they all growled at each other like half-human animals. Even with the drunken grizzly bear fights, you had to admit there was never a boring day in Shifter Falls.

Anna had experienced almost
nothing
in her life, she realized. Classrooms, a few dead-end jobs, money worries, a boyfriend she’d thought liked her but who thought nothing of her at all. She realized now that even the sex had been routine, two people doing it because they thought they were supposed to. In two years, Daniel had never once looked at her like Ian did, as if he wanted to rip off her clothes and devour every inch of her skin.

Sex with a werewolf, she thought, would not be routine.

The thought made her shiver, and not with cold. It was ridiculous. She’d only been here a day, and already she was thinking about sex with her research subject. The problem was that he was just so freaking
hot.

She checked Ian’s watch and realized that his twenty minutes were almost up. She had just slid the watch back into her pocket, brushing the flakes of snow from her hair, when the hand came out of nowhere and gripped her throat.

Anna gasped. The man behind her jerked her backward, into his chest, and slapped his other hand hard over her mouth, squeezing. “Hi there, sweetheart,” he said in her ear.

Anna tried to scream, though his hand blocked the sound, and drove her elbow backward. The man’s stomach was like iron, and he didn’t even flinch. She kicked her legs, but he moved the hand on her throat down to her waist and jerked her upward so they were both standing, her back against him, her feet raised from the ground.

He was big and freakishly strong, and he wasn’t wearing a coat. Anna realized she was in the hands of a werewolf.

“Shut up and be still,” he said. She didn’t recognize his voice; it wasn’t one of Ian’s brothers, or any of the other shifters she’d met. She kept struggling, kept kicking her legs, trying to get him in the knees, but it was no use. She couldn’t get free of him, and she couldn’t scream.

The wolf jerked her harder against him, wrenching her head to the side. “You don’t calm down, I’m going to hurt you,” he said. “Do you hear me? Calm the fuck down before I break your neck.”

Anna went still, trying not to panic. What did he want? What should she do? Where was Ian?

Then she remembered the knife. She’d tucked it in her left boot when she’d left the apartment this morning.
Knives are best,
Ian had taught her.
We bleed out.
She kept still, as if surrendering in the man’s grip, and planned how she’d grab the knife from her boot.

“That’s better,” he said. He put her feet back down on the snowy ground, but he didn’t let her go. His voice was wild, excited. “Now, get down on your knees.”

Behind his hand, Anna whimpered.

“Do it,” he said again, and he lowered down behind her, so she was on her knees in the snow. He still gripped her hard. “I’ve seen you with Donovan,” he said. “You smell like him, but I don’t care about that. You’re pretty, sweetheart. I’m going to be alpha. And the alpha gets any woman he wants.” The man leaned into her, his breath in her ear, his hips against her ass. “When I’m the alpha,” he growled, “the first thing I’m going to do is take Ian Donovan’s bitch and make her mine.”

Anna let her hand drop. She shifted the knife from her boot, and in one quick motion, she jammed it into his arm.

The shifter yelled and hauled back, letting her go. Anna screamed, yanking the knife from his arm and jerking away from him, trying to run. She got to her feet, but the wolf grabbed her and threw her forward so she landed on her stomach in the snow. The breath flew out of her, but she screamed again and tried to scramble away from him as he held her down, growling, pinning down the hand that held the knife. She was trying to jerk her hand out from under him when a massive shape emerged from the trees.

The wolf hit the man with a snarl, knocking him off her at a dead run. Anna rolled away from the fighting pair and turned to see the man—he was big, with long, light brown hair—wrestling with Ian’s wolf, who was snarling at his throat, teeth bared. The man grabbed Ian’s wolf by the neck and shoved it back, distancing the snapping teeth from his face, and then he screamed as Ian’s claws dug into his skin.

Anna scrambled in the snow and grabbed the knife, which was wet in her cold, numb hand. She ran to the man and the wolf, who were locked in a deadly struggle, trying to get a good chance to stab the man who had grabbed her, but they were moving too fast. Ian’s wolf was growling, snarling, snapping, and the other man was holding him off as they rolled in the snow.

The man grabbed Anna’s ankle and yanked, and she fell to the ground again, nearly losing hold of the knife. Still holding the wolf off with his shifter strength, the man wrenched Anna’s arm, his fingers working up and nearly splintering her wrist. He was trying to get the knife from her.

Anna screamed as pain shot up her arm from her wrist.
If you’re that close, and your knife is that good, and you aren’t already dead, then beheading is obviously your best bet...

They were locked there for a long moment—the wolf, the man, and Anna, trying to keep hold of the knife. He was stronger than she was, and his powerful hand was squeezing the fine bones of her wrist. She could feel herself weakening, feel the bones bending. In a second he would have the weapon, and Ian would be as good as dead.

Then Ian’s wolf slipped past the man’s defenses and sunk his teeth into the man’s shoulder. He shouted in pain, and his hand jerked on Anna’s wrist. She dropped the knife and watched it slide away in the icy snow.

The man rolled over, knocked Ian’s wolf off, and ran, using the same speed Anna had seen Ian use. As she rolled over and grabbed her wrist, she heard the sound of a wolf’s growl and its claws scrabbling as it ran away.