Rogue Alpha: Wolf Shifter Romance (Wild Lake Wolves Book 1) (19 page)

We got to the door of my room just as three wolves
emerged from the tree line. Just as I’d known it when I saw Tucker’s truck, I
knew these wolves were here for me.

Chapter Five

Tucker slammed the door behind him and engaged the
dead bolt. He peered out of the curtains, while I stood in the middle of the
floor, dripping with rainwater and just a little bit of rage.

“What do they want with me?” I asked. Somehow I knew
he wouldn’t take the question as absurd.

“It’s the storm and the full moon,” he said. “Makes
wild animals even wilder somehow. You should be safe enough in here.”

Safe enough from what? I wanted to say. And who
would keep me safe from him? Tucker turned, and his smoldering eyes made me ask
the question in my head again. His face was broad and hard, with a sharp,
square jaw. I wanted to reach out and run my fingers along it, and feel the
course stubble under my skin.

I ran a hand over my own sopping wet hair, smoothing
it back from my face. I turned and padded to the bathroom. I kicked off my
soaked flip flops so they wouldn’t stick to my feet. I grabbed the last two
clean towels, and tossed one to Tucker. He stood near the doorway, his t-shirt
plastered to his skin so tightly I could see the rippled outlines of his chest,
and imagined running my hands over that too. His pecs were hard and chiseled,
his nipples pointed to peaks under the soaked fabric. I became conscious of my
own appearance. If I could see his nipples, he could see mine.

Sure enough, his eyes flicked over me and I pulled
the towel close to my chest.

“Why did you come here?” I said.

“I just wanted to make sure you got here safe,” he
answered.

“Why wouldn’t I? Jake works for you, doesn’t he? Did
you think he wouldn’t be able to handle driving me two miles down the road?”

“You’ve been through a lot,” Tucker said. I didn’t
know him well, and hadn’t known him long at all, but I was done with his
half-truths and outright lies.

“What’s going on? Why were you so pissed Jake
brought me back to the park? Who’s Magda?”

Tucker’s eyes widened, then narrowed. He crossed his
arms in front of his chest, and a slow smile lifted the corners of his mouth.
“You’ve got good ears. That kind of thing can get you into trouble.”

“Why do I get the sense that the only trouble I’m in
started the minute I met you?”

That stopped him cold. He tossed the towel across
the chair by the door, and reached me in two strides. I had to crane my neck up
to keep his gaze. Something in me knew it was important that I did. I had the
sense he was testing me somehow. How far could he push me? Was I easily
intimidated?

I wanted to glower back at him. I wanted to tell him
to get the hell out of my room, and ask him who the hell he thought he was. I
could do none of it. The instant Tucker got within an inch of me, my whole body
seemed to go numb, and then spark to life all at once. He was heat and fire,
and I wanted nothing more than to feel his skin on mine. I trembled, but it
wasn’t from the cold anymore.

Then, he did touch me.

He ran his hands over my shoulders and gripped my
upper arms. He was gentle, but his fingers left a searing trail over my skin
and awakened something deep inside me. He cocked his head to the side. He
closed his eyes and inhaled my scent. His eyes snapped open and I saw fire
behind them. He let me go and took a staggering step backward.

“I need to go,” he said. His cocksure demeanor had
left him. Touching me seemed to have unsettled him as much as it had me.
“Promise me you won’t go outside again. Not until tomorrow morning.”

I nodded. “I won’t.”

“Good. You’ve got a ride?”

I nodded again. “My insurance company is sending a
rental car in the morning. Then I’ll be on my way.”

“Good,” he said again. “Neve? Am I saying it right?”

He pronounced it just right, rhyming with Bev.

“You are.”

“It’s unusual.”

“So is Tucker,” I said, smiling, trying to break
whatever tension had risen between us. “Do you have just the one last name?”

He let out a snort through his nostrils. “McGraw.
It’s Tucker McGraw.”

“Ah. So it
is
two last names, then. Well, it
was nice to meet you, Mr. McGraw. I promise to stay the hell away from any
wolves I see between here and Ann Arbor.”

He froze again as he reached for the door and looked
back at me. Something shifted in that moment, and I had the urge to go to him,
to take back the last thing I said. God. What the
hell
was with this
guy? Or more to the point, what the hell was with
me
when I was around
him?

“You’ll be okay,” he said. It was such an odd
statement, as if he could read my mind or my emotions. How did he know that’s
exactly what I needed to hear?

“Thanks,” I said. “And thanks for checking up on me,
I think.” I stopped there. The truth was, it had been a very long time since
anyone had.

Tucker smiled again, and this time it reached his
eyes and damn near melted me. I didn’t want him to go. I didn’t want him to
stay. He was about to walk out the door, and I would leave in the morning and
probably never see him again in my life. I felt an ache at that thought that
rocked me to my core.

“Goodbye,” I said, before I could put a name to the
feelings inside me.

Tucker nodded, turned, and walked out of my life. I
watched from the window as he climbed into his truck. The rain had let up
again. He flashed his headlights once and I waved as he drove away.

I looked back toward the tree line. Those pairs of
golden eyes were still there. But when Tucker’s tires squealed out of the
parking lot, they receded until they finally disappeared.

Chapter Six

The rental car was there by eight. I wolfed down
bacon and eggs at the breakfast buffet, and was ready to hit the road. The sky
was clear and blue, the temperature already in the eighties by nine o’clock. Last
night’s storm kicked up a thick blanket of humidity. I tied my hair into a
loose bun, and turned my key card into the day desk manager. He was kind enough
to warn me about a patch of construction on I-94 and the quickest way to divert
around it if I wanted to make good time to Ann Arbor.

“Thanks,” I said, waving my road map at him. Yes, I
still liked to use the things. My phone’s GPS was garbage when it came to
pointing me to side roads. My father instilled in me well that nothing could
take the place of a good map spread out on a car’s hood if you’re really lost.

If I was lucky, and so far I’d been anything but,
I’d make Ann Arbor well before my appointment with my advisor. There was still
enough time for early check-in at the dorms. I’d asked for a single room and
wondered now if that was a bad choice.

Maybe I’d spent way too much time alone in the last
nine months. So much of who I was had changed in the last year. The girl I was
two years ago bore no resemblance to who I was today. To anyone who knew me
from before, I still looked the same. But they knew the captain of the Cheer
Squad, the president of the Glee Club, the girl voted Most Likely to Make it in
Hollywood. But while all of my friends went off to college, I stayed behind to
care for my Dad.  They’d moved on, and I felt stuck in some kind of limbo. They
were still carefree, still filled with hope and light. For me, I just felt gray
space and heartache.

Just before my exit that would lead me to my short
cut, I saw the first orange barrels marking the rough spot the desk clerk had
mentioned. I got off the exit and headed east along the back roads, just like
he’d told me.

The roads were still wet with last night’s rain, and
the crisp, white paint of my shiny rented Jeep Cherokee got splattered with mud
in no time. Each mile that took me further from Evanston, Illinois, and closer
to Ann Arbor was bittersweet. But, I felt my father with me this morning, and
it comforted me knowing exactly what he’d say.

You got this, Neve. Keep moving
forward.

It’s all I could do.

I flipped down my visor against the high sun. The
sky blazed blue, and all traces of last night’s gloom and storm were gone,
except for the mud in the roads. I wished I’d asked for a convertible. I wanted
to sail down the freeway with the top down, and feel my age again. I was just
twenty. For my father, for myself, I would make myself start acting like it
again. I did the next best thing, and rolled all my windows down, letting the
fresh, August air whip through my hair. It flew around my face and I piled it
back on top of my head.

The desk clerk’s side route took me along the Paw
Paw River and I was once again surrounded by woods. This time though, the road
was clear and the smell of pine and birch was heaven. A chorus of cicadas rose
up in all directions—thousands of them must have been hidden in the sun-dappled
trees. God. My father would have loved this. He would have driven along behind
me with a big U-Haul, like fathers are supposed to when their daughters go off
to college. But dammit, I had to be done wallowing in the what-would-have-beens.
Had to.

It might have been the cicadas that kept me from
hearing what should have warned me. Or, rather, I should have noticed when they
abruptly stopped. But where the world had been the sound of those bugs and the
trees shimmying in the wind, all of a sudden there was silence. I had only a
split second to process the change in the air and then two great yellow eyes stared
me down from the crest of the next hill.

I slammed on the breaks hard, the car swerving. I
kept control of it this time. No careening into a nearby ditch. But, the road
beneath me was mostly dirt and gravel, and my tires spun just like it was a
sheet of ice. I came to a stop just a few inches from the massive, growling
head of a red wolf. Its dagger-like teeth were bared and dripping from saliva. 
For a moment, I sat transfixed, unable to move, unable to breathe. He snapped
his jaw twice, making his dangerous intentions clear.  If it weren’t for my
windshield and two tons of steel, he likely would have snapped my head off.

I laid on my horn, but the wolf only snapped its
jaws again. God, he was huge. Other than the one in the road yesterday, I’d
only seen them this close in the zoo. But this creature seemed so much bigger
than the zoo wolves, with thick, curled paws that he stomped against the road
with, reminding me of a bull ready to charge.

I put the car in reverse, and turned my head to back
away. From either side of the road, loping through the trees, were three more
monstrous gray wolves. They circled and surrounded my car. I said a silent
prayer of thanks now that I
hadn’t
insisted on a convertible. I didn’t
want to run them over.  Though their menacing threat was clear, they wanted to
do me harm. I wanted to get out of here without making road kill out of another
of their kind.

But, soon I wouldn’t have a choice. The four wolves
edged closer and closer. Each one snarled and chomped a few inches from my
bumpers. The leader in the front rose up on his hind legs and raked his deadly
claws across the hood of the car. Then he hopped up all the way and the
aluminum frame of the car shook, threatening to cave in from the weight of the
beast.

Shaking, I reached for the wiper blade and sprayed
fluid, hoping to get the creature in the eye, maybe distract him for the few
seconds I needed to slam on the gas and get the hell out of here. But, the car
wouldn’t budge. My rear tires spun and stalled, stuck in the mud. I put the car
in gear and slammed down the accelerator. The car lurched, but then stuck again.
I saw great chunks of mud fly up from my rearview mirror.

A moment ago, this had been a strange, frightening
encounter. Now, I knew it was about to turn deadly. The wolf on my hood
narrowed his gleaming yellow eyes and lowered his head, giving me an even
closer view of his sharp fangs. He meant to use them on me. I sensed his desire
to rip the flesh from my bones, if he could just get through the windshield. I
had the presence of mind to roll up the windows just before one of the wolves
flanking my vehicle lunged.

“Go away!” I shouted. It was absurd. As if the wolf
could understand me. He did, though. The minute I thought it, I knew it was
true. The big wolf held me in his gaze.  He was wild, he was deadly, and
somehow, this felt personal.

I tried in vain to loosen the suction on my rear
tires, but only succeeded in driving them further into the muck. My options
were limited. I could call for help. I could sit and wait, and hope they
wouldn’t tear the car, and me, apart. The moment I thought it, the great wolf
on my windshield reared up on his hind legs. He came down with thunderous force.
The car shook and threatened to roll. He went up again and came down just as
hard. This time, a web of fractured glass spread from the point of impact all
the way across the windshield.

He was going to get through!

I ripped my phone from the charging dock and tried
to tap in 911. The other wolves took their cues from the leader, and began
slamming their paws against the side windows. The car rocked and rolled, the
metal frame creaking from the tremendous weight and stress of the beasts.

I heard the 911 operator pick up the phone just as
one of the wolves launched itself against the passenger side door. The force of
the blow caved the door in partway and knocked my phone out of my hand. I
screamed for all I was worth, but knew that no miracle on the other end of that
phone would save me. Five minutes from now, I’d already be dead.

The biggest wolf reared its head back and let out an
ear-splitting howl, filled with rage and grief. Cold fear pooled low in my
belly, and something else too. Recognition. This was the same howl I had heard
twice the night before. Once in the distance after Jake drove me away from the
crash site, and again last night from my hotel room. It was
this
wolf.
Somehow, he
knew
what I’d done and wanted to make me pay for it.

He slammed his great paws against the broken
windshield again, and it was enough to finally breach the glass. It crunched
inward, the safety glass holding it in one sheet. I could run, but I knew I
wouldn’t get far. I could wait here and let them tear me to pieces right in my
car.

The wolf took a lumbering step over the hood and
swung his head through the gap in the windshield. His fangs dripped, and I felt
his hot, sticky breath across my chest. His body trembled with a constant, low
growl and the other wolves retreated.  I instantly sensed why. I was
his
kill and he meant to savor it.

The ground shook beneath me.  For an instant, I
thought it was the other wolves joining in with a chorus of menacing growls. It
was that, but it was something else too. The unmistakable roar of a Harley
engine revved alongside my car. The driver’s side door was wrenched open, even
though I had locked it.

I looked up into the flashing silver eyes of Tucker
McGraw. He reached out his hand.  “Hop on if you want to live!”