Dark Wolf Running (Bloodrunners) (11 page)

Lowering his arms, Wyatt shoved his hands into his pockets and thought that if there were ever a good time for a poker face, it was now. “I get that you’re her family, Eric, but Elise is a grown woman.”

The Lycan slowly arched a brow. “Meaning what, exactly?”

“Meaning it’s none of your goddamn business if she needs or doesn’t need a man
like me.
That’s her choice, not yours.”

Eric didn’t say anything right away. Just studied him with those hooded eyes that were shadowed with worry. Then, after what felt like forever, the Runner finally blew out a rough breath and muttered, “If you hurt her, you die. You understand what I’m saying?”

“I won’t. But if it happened, I would expect nothing less from you.”

Eric nodded, then gave him a sharp smile and smacked him on the back. “Hell, you screw up, Chelsea’s so protective of Elise, there probably wouldn’t be anything left of you for me to finish off.”

For some reason, the idea of having to face the little human’s wrath was even more unsettling than having Eric Drake gunning for his throat. He frowned, stifling a shudder, and Eric laughed, the look on his face saying he knew
exactly
what Wyatt was thinking.

With a knowing smirk, Eric turned and walked back into the kitchen, leaving Wyatt alone in the hallway. He propped his shoulders against the wall, dropped his head back and took a deep breath.

Did he know what he was doing?

Shit, did he even care if he didn’t?

Whatever the answer, it didn’t matter. She was in trouble, in danger, and he
needed
to be the one looking out for her. It wasn’t a case of want, though that was part of it. And it wasn’t about responsibility, either, though as a dominant male, he certainly felt responsible for her. It was simply a case of...need. Of necessity. He needed to protect her like he needed to breathe and drink and eat. It was something that vital. That real.

No matter what it took, he wasn’t going to lose her.

Chapter 6

D
espite the increasingly violent, chilled winds whipping through the forest as the sun began to set, Wyatt’s skin was heating as if he’d been on a long, grueling run. Just from the thought of seeing her again. After the meeting that morning, he’d spent the rest of the day on patrol with Cian, leaving Elise to spend the afternoon with Jillian and the others. He should have been as focused as a laser, but his concentration was shit. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t get that goddamn kiss they’d shared out of his head.

Stay alert, you jackass. Don’t let your dick screw this up.

He took a deep breath and continued making the last pass on the eastern side of the Alley, nearly a half mile from the cabins. Cian was mirroring him on the western side, and when they met up it would be time to head back and let Mason and Jeremy take the next shift.

When both he and Cian had reached the northern point of the patrol route, they started making their way home and ran into Mase and Jeremy a few minutes later. “We heard from my dad before we headed out,” Mason told them. “He already has ten names who are willing to help train the others.”

“Any backlash from the pack?” Wyatt asked.

“Sounds like Glenn Farrow is foaming at the mouth over the idea,” Jeremy replied, “but Robert said he would deal with him.”

Running his tongue over his front teeth, Wyatt made a private decision to pay Glenn Farrow a personal visit as soon as possible, making it clear to the asshole that he had better keep his distance from Elise. The Lycan wasn’t to be trusted, and Wyatt wanted to make sure he made the fact that she was now under Bloodrunner protection—and more important,
his
protection—crystal clear to the jackass.

Recalling the other issue they’d been waiting for an update on, he asked, “Has Carla learned anything about whether or not someone tampered with Elise’s alarm?” His partner had traveled to Shadow Peak late that morning to speak with an employee she knew at the security company that had installed Elise’s system. They’d decided the inquiry was better done in person than over the phone, since they didn’t know if the company’s calls were being monitored. They suspected someone might have tried to gain illegal access to Elise’s account, learning a way to bypass her system, and needed Carla’s contact to look into it for them.

Mason shook his head. “Not yet. But she said it might take a few days to get the information we’re looking for.”

They let the guys get on with their patrol and resumed their walk back to the Alley. After making their way in silence for a few minutes, Cian said, “Why doesn’t that partner of yours ever date?”

Wyatt gave an uneasy shrug. “Don’t know. Why?” He knew Carla was a grown woman, free to make her own choices. But that didn’t mean he was going to stand by and let her get her heart broken by a notorious, unapologetic womanizer like Hennessey.

“I was just curious,” Cian was saying, pulling out a cigarette. “I mean, have you taken a good look at our little group lately? We’re not so little anymore. Half of us have mated and married since last autumn, and now we have Eric and Chelsea. You, me and Reyes are the lone singles of the group, which got me thinking. You would think the one female Runner would have mated before the males.”

“Well, I don’t know what Carla’s story is when it comes to men,” he muttered, his nose tingling from the sharp scent of tobacco as Cian lit his smoke. “I prefer to think of her as...
Hell,
I don’t know. I just prefer not to think of her that way.”

“Yeah, I get that. I think we all see her as a kind of sister, you even more than the rest of us.” Cian took a long drag on the cigarette, held the smoke in his lungs and then slowly let it out. “Which means that if there’s something keeping her from getting out there and having a good time, we should know what it is.”

Wyatt laughed. “Oh, yeah? And have you shared all your secrets with the rest of us?”

The Irishman frowned. “It’s not the same. We’re males.”

“I would love to see you say that to her face,” he offered drily. “Something tells me you wouldn’t have all your teeth for very long.”

“Hmm. You may be onto something there,” Cian murmured. “She is a ferocious little thing. Probably scares the crap out of most of the guys she comes into contact with. Maybe that’s the problem right there.”

With the conversation about his partner at an end, Wyatt had expected to get grilled about Elise as well, but the Irishman wasn’t pushing the issue at the moment, and he was silently grateful. Last thing he wanted to be doing was dodging questions about what was going on between them.

“Did you hear that?” Cian asked, cocking his head toward the direction of the Alley as they got closer.

Wyatt started to ask what he was talking about, when he heard what sounded like a feminine, high-pitched scream, quickly followed by another. “What the fuck?” he growled, and they immediately took off running, jumping over fallen limbs, his boots almost slipping on a thick patch of moss as they raced to reach the glade. Fear churned through his veins like an acid, his head pounding as he worried about what might be happening. Had one of the Whiteclaw Lycans managed to get past them? Were they being attacked? But when he and Cian burst through the trees, slamming to a stop at the edge of the Alley, they stared in amazement, struggling to figure out what was going on.

“What in God’s name are they doing?” Cian muttered.

“Beats the hell out of me,” he replied, wondering why Elise, Michaela, Carla, Chelsea and Torrance were all standing on the hood of Brody’s poor truck, clinging to each other, squealing at the top of their lungs. Brody and Eric stood on Eric’s front porch, bent over at the waist as they roared with laughter, while Jillian tried to get them to shut up. Sayre Murphy, Jillian’s beautiful eighteen-year-old sister and a powerful witch in her own right, stood a few feet away from them, on the porch steps, wringing her hands with worry as she called for the women to calm down. Sayre didn’t live in the Alley, but she was often there, visiting with her sister.

Wyatt was getting ready to shout over the racket and demand an explanation, when Chelsea started pointing at the ground on the side of the truck and screamed, “Oh, my God, there are
three!
”

“Three what?” Cian muttered, sounding as confused as he was.

Narrowing his eyes, Wyatt scanned the ground and caught sight of three massive rattlesnakes slithering out from the far side of Brody’s truck, toward the center of the clearing. “It’s snakes,” he said, pointing toward the reptiles. “Three of them.”

“All this racket over some snakes?” Cian gave a husky laugh as he eyed the screaming women. “They look bloody ridiculous up there.”

Wyatt kept his mouth shut, biting back the denial burning on his tongue. Personally, he thought Elise looked hot as hell, even when she was jumping up and down and squealing like a girl. It was pretty fucking adorable, if you asked him.

“What is it about lasses and snakes?” he murmured, which made Cian laugh again.

“You do know that you could just eat the damn things, right?” Cian called out to Carla, who looked ready to hyperventilate as she watched the snakes slither through the recently cut blades of grass, the late-afternoon sunlight glittering against their brown scales.

“Eat them?” Carla choked out, turning an interesting shade of green. “I’d rather eat a skunk! Snakes are repulsive!”

“Are you blind? They’re beautiful!” Sayre argued, looking thoroughly insulted as she glared up at Wyatt’s partner.

“Eric, stop laughing and kill the damn things!” Chelsea screamed, shooting a furious look at her husband while she continued to cling to the other women.

“No! No one is killing anything! They’re not going to hurt you,” Sayre snapped, coming down the steps, which made the women shout for her to stay back. The young witch shook her head in exasperation. “Seriously, they’re more frightened of you than you are of them. You’re damn near scaring the poor things to death.”

Wyatt choked back a laugh and scratched his chin. “Uh, is she, like, channeling the snakes’ feelings or something?” he asked Cian.

The Irishman grunted, “God only knows with that one.”

As they watched, Sayre’s eyes began to glow with a fiery light as she held her hands out toward the snakes, her fingers extended. The wind blew her strawberry blond curls around her delicate face, whipping the fabric of her sundress against her slender form. The snakes came to a stop, lifting their wide heads and looking toward her, almost as if they were listening to her speak to them in some strange, wordless language. It seemed as if Sayre were actually communicating with the reptiles, and the scene sent an eerie shiver down Wyatt’s nape. He’d known, from talking to Jeremy, that Sayre was talented—but the young witch’s powers appeared to be growing beyond anything they had expected. After several tense moments had passed, the snakes flicked their tongues from between their jaws, seemed to give Sayre a regal nod and then quickly slithered across the clearing as they made their way back into the woods on the far side of the Alley.

With a wry look on her face, Sayre lowered her arms and turned back toward the slack-jawed group of women. “You can come down now.”

Wyatt glanced at Cian, who stood beside him with a cigarette hanging precariously from the corner of his mouth, his narrowed gaze still focused intently on Sayre Murphy. “Whatever you’re thinking, don’t,” he muttered under his breath. “She’s too young for you, man.”

At his quiet words, Cian seemed to shake himself out of his daze, his lips twisting in a cocky smile. “Trust me, boyo. I know better than to mess with little girls.”

Wyatt smirked. “If you don’t, Jillian will no doubt make sure you wished that you did.”

“Make sure he wished that he did what?”

They both looked ahead to see Jillian coming toward them, a pink-faced Michaela at her side. Cian gave a low laugh. “You know how Pall is,” he murmured with his lilting accent. “He’s just giving me a hard time.”

While Wyatt looked over the women’s heads, watching Elise and Chelsea lay into Eric for laughing at them, Michaela said, “Instead of standing over here snickering, you two could have helped!”

“And risk getting bitch-slapped by Jilly’s little sister?” Cian drawled. “Not in this lifetime. I’m—”

“Before you two start bickering, I came over because I have something important to say,” Jillian murmured, cutting the Runner off. Then she looked at Wyatt. “I’ve been thinking about Elise,” she explained, lowering her voice. “About what happened to her three years ago. And I think there could be a connection between her attack and what we learned about the Whiteclaw’s rape drugs when Chelsea was searching for her sister.”

His gaze instantly sharpened, while his insides twisted with fury, same as they did each time he thought about what Elise had been through. “What do you mean?”

“When we were talking about the drugs the Whiteclaw use to mask their scent this morning, it started me thinking about the other drugs they’re manufacturing that affect the girls’ memories when they’re attacked.” Jillian took a quick breath, then added, “Elise can’t completely remember hers, either. Maybe there’s a connection.”

“It could have been the trauma that makes her unable to remember what happened that night,” he pointed out, his voice raw. “Hell, if it’d been me, I wouldn’t have wanted to remember it, either.”

“But what if it wasn’t?” Michaela asked, her beautiful face pinched with concern. “What if it has some connection to what’s happening now?”

Swallowing against the blistering lump of rage burning in his throat, Wyatt had to choke back a deep, guttural growl. “You think they used one of the early versions of the drug on her?”

Sunlight glinted against Jillian’s blond hair as she nodded. “I think it’s definitely possible. And maybe it was more than the rain that night that made it impossible to track the males’ scents. They could have used their drugs for that, as well.”

“If that’s true,” Cian said, lighting up another cigarette, “and we assume that this recent attack on Elise is related more to what happened to her before than it is to the coming war, then why wait all this time to start messing with her? It’s been three bloody years.”