The Alpha's Mate (24 page)

Someone was on the back porch. Crash! Crash!
Crash! They were hurling themselves at the locked door. How long
could the weak locks withstand the assault? She readied the shotgun
at her shoulder and glanced at the front windows.

“Li-i-zz-ie.”

She heard his voice clearly in her mind.
“Marshall? Marshall! Oh, Dear God, make it be real,” she prayed,
too afraid it was a figment of her imagination, a psychological
need to know she wasn’t alone.

She heard the pan hit the kitchen floor. Had
they been successful in their assault or had the vibration simply
shaken the pan until it fell.

“Li-i-zz-ie… Leave.”

She eyed the front door. She’d have to leave
the shelter of her corner and turn her back to the room to lift the
bar. She heard a splintering sound from the kitchen. The door had
been breached.

“Run!” The word was loud and clear in her
mind.

She pushed the chair away and ran for the
door. A shadow moved in the kitchen doorway and she brought the
shotgun up and fired. The boom echoed in the room. Her ears rang.
She pumped the gun, loading another round into the chamber and
reached for the bar.

Glass shattered in the bedroom as something
came through the picture window. She heard a howl of pain.
Wolves!

She struggled with the bar, balancing the
shotgun in her arms and looking behind her for the next attack. She
dropped it to the floor, turned and fired blindly at the bedroom
door when it opened a crack.

And then she was running, running out across
the yard and toward the path that would lead her to Marshall. The
gun was heavy in her hand and awkward to carry, but she wouldn’t
let it go. From the corner of her eye, she saw a wolf approaching
from the side of the house. It was limping badly, but still moving
fast. She turned back to look at the house. Two wolves were
charging through the door.

“Marshall!” this time she screamed it
aloud.

A dark shape flew past her and she screamed
again, thinking it was the fourth of the thug wolvers she’d seen in
the restaurant. The wolf leapt high into the air as the two wolves
from the house leapt to meet it. The third wolf changed its course
and joined the fray.

“Marshall, Oh Marshall.”

Elizabeth raised the gun to her shoulder and
scanned the area for the fourth wolf. They might have left him back
with the car, but she couldn’t be sure. From her pocket she removed
four shells and quickly reloaded. She only needed three. She would
not be caught with an empty chamber again.

Her eyes were drawn to the fight, a swirling
mass of snarls and fur. She kept the gun at the ready, but there
was no way she could fire. One wolf was thrown to the side, but he
moved too fast. He was on his feet and back into the battle, a dark
shape with a slash of bared white fangs at its muzzle. It was too
dark to see which wolf was Marshall and which the enemy.

She heard something behind her and turned,
finger squeezing the trigger. A sharp, but friendly double woof
made her hesitate and her hesitation saved Henry’s life. He only
paused long enough to give her a nod before he went on the
attack.

She heard a scream and one wolf went down.
Another was thrown to the ground and two wolves pounced at once.
Marshall! He rolled, kicked with his hind feet and threw one
attacker off. The other lunged at his side.

Elizabeth started to run toward the beast,
ready to bring the gun to its side and fire point blank. A shadow
lunged from out of the darkness to her right. She turned and fired
without thinking. The recoil threw her back and she staggered to
regain her balance only to fall under the weight of the leaping
wolf.

She screamed and kicked at the belly of the
wolf as its jaws snapped shut inches from her face. She could feel
its blood soaking through her clothes. Even as it died, it made a
last lunge for her throat. She threw up her arm to protect herself
and the jaws clamped on the barrel of the shot gun. She never knew
how she kept it in her hand.

With lightning speed, Marshall was there,
jaws closed around the throat of the wolf as she raised the hand
with the gun. His lunge to save her sacrificed his own safety and
left him open to a vicious attack to his underside. With a
screaming howl of fury, he turned on his attacker and they rolled
to the side, Marshall’s enemy now pinned on its back.

Elizabeth struggled from beneath the dying
wolf and kicked at its jaws to release the gun. By the time she’d
extricated herself, the fight was almost finished.

Marshall staggered back from the last enemy
wolf, his muzzle bloodied. He surveyed the carnage around him and
raised his head to the sky. A long, mournful howl issued forth. It
was so anguished and filled with fury. Elizabeth felt the hair on
the back of her own neck rise. She had never heard anything like
this before.

Marshall’s forelegs gave way and he fell,
blood gushing from wounds on his side and flank. Elizabeth ran to
him and attempted to cradle him in her arms. He shook her off and
struggled to his feet. Golden glow surrounded him in a blinding
flash of light and he became man.

His wounds were no less hideous.

Behind him, along the edge of the trees, she
saw the darker outline of another wolf. Its green eyes glowed in
the darkness, watching.

“You bastard!” she screamed as she raised the
gun and fired. She was too far away. That didn’t stop her. She
marched steadily toward the wolf and pumped the gun as she moved.
She fired again and again.

The wolf didn’t move until the third shot was
fired. Then it leapt and twisted in the air and disappeared into
the trees. Elizabeth wasn’t sure if she had hit it or it was merely
maneuvering into a better position to attack.

“You won’t win!” she screamed at the trees.
“We won’t let you. If you come back, you’ll die. Do you hear me?
You’ll die! I’ll kill you myself.”

She was crying and she was angry. She wiped
away the tears on her sleeve. In the truck she’d been panicked and
afraid. Now it was anger that boiled to the surface and her tears
were those of frustration because she had no outlet for her
rage.

How dare this monster try to take what little
these people had. This terror, this carnage, for a piece of
land?

And how dare he force her to expose the
animal within herself. It was something that should have lain
dormant and unrecognized until the day she died.

She quickly reloaded and returned to
Marshall. She moved in slow circles, scanning the trees for signs
of the lone wolf. Pack Law be damned. She wasn’t part of the pack
and if the damned thing attacked, she’d shoot it just as she had
the other.

Marshall was kneeling over Henry, now in man
form, and if Marshall looked bad, Henry was worse. She gasped at
the blood gushing from the gaping wound in his neck. The Alpha held
out his badly shaking hand over the wound and the golden glow
emanating from it illuminated both the wound and Marshall’s
strained face.

“Marshall,” she whispered in awe and
fear.

The golden glow also illuminated his own
wounds. He was naked and the blood flowed freely down his side. The
areas around his ribs and lower abdomen were already beginning to
discolor. Henry wasn’t the only one in danger of bleeding to
death.

Before her eyes, Henry’s wound began to heal
from the inside out. In minutes, it became a gash, wide and ugly,
but not deadly. Marshall closed his fist and the light
disappeared.

“It’s done,” he said quietly. His head nodded
once and he collapsed to the ground.

“Marshall? Marshall!”

Elizabeth ran to him. He wasn’t breathing.
She felt for a pulse and sobbed with relief at the steady beat
beneath her fingers. Marshall gasped once and followed with a
series of shallow ragged breaths. Next to them, Henry groaned. She
switched her attentions to him.

“Henry. Henry.” She tapped his cheek. His
eyes fluttered open and slowly closed again. “Henry. You have to
wake up. Marshall needs you. I need you.” Henry slowly opened his
eyes.

She helped him sit and held him upright while
he wavered. He wiped his hand down his face and waved her off.

“What?” he asked weakly.

She took it to mean what did she want from
him. She handed him the shotgun. “If they come back, you shoot. Do
you hear me? Shoot them. I’ll be right back. Promise me, Henry.
You’ll watch over him until I get back.”

Henry nodded and hefted the gun.
“Shells?”

“It’s loaded and ready.”

She laid a few more next to him and ran for
the house. She gathered towels from the bathroom and shook the
shards of glass from the bedspread, rolled them into a ball in her
arms and headed for the kitchen. It, too, was a shambles and it
took her a minute to find her keys. She climbed over the chair and
sprinted to the truck, sure that someone would leap for her the
moment she left the steps.

The truck started with the first turn of the
key and she drove it cautiously around the cabin and through the
muddy yard to Marshall and Henry. She parked with the bed as close
to them as she could. The tailgate had taken most of the damage
from the SUV. It was a crumpled hunk of metal. Elizabeth had to
climb into the bed and kick it with both feet before it would open
and when it did, it flopped downward from its hinges.

This worked to their advantage as it formed a
kind of ramp to haul Marshall’s body up into the bed. She’d wrapped
him as well as she could, using towels to compress his wounds.

Once opened, the tailgate refused to close.
She handed the shotgun to Henry who sat with his back to the cab,
cushioning Marshall’s head in his lap.

“Anything comes from the side, you shoot it,
Henry. And hang on to him. Anything steps out in the road, I’m
running it over. Bang on the window when I’m near the turn
off.”

She didn’t drive anywhere near as fast as
she’d driven before, but she wasted no time. They reached
Marshall’s, she called Harmony and within minutes help and everyone
else arrived.

Chapter 25

Doc Palmer came from the bedroom shaking his
head. “I stitched up what’s on the surface, but it’s what’s inside
that’s going to kill him.”

He was a small man with an old fashioned
pencil mustache. He wore a grey sweat suit that was fashionable in
the 1980s.

“Can’t you take care of him Doc?” Henry was
sitting on the floor of the hallway, propped up against the wall
with his legs splayed out in front of him. His face was pale and
there were dark circles under his eyes. Marshall had saved him, but
his blood loss was still acute. He refused to go to bed until
Marshall’s condition was known.

“I’m a vet, not a surgeon, son. He’s busted
up inside.”

“Then we need to get him to a hospital.”
Elizabeth didn’t understand why they were all standing around
looking miserable when they should be doing something.

“We can’t,” Maggie answered. Her face was
hard and unyielding. “Our insides are different from your’n. So’s
our blood. We go to a hospital and they’ll find us out. Rabbit
Creek’s never had to worry much about it. We’ve always had a
healer.”

“Then find a healer!” Elizabeth shouted. They
couldn’t just stand around and let him die.

“Marshall is our healer. I don’t know of
another one in a hundred miles. It’s a rare gift that runs in
families. Goodman’s have always had the touch.”

Elizabeth turned to Doc Palmer. “Can you help
him enough to wake him up she asked desperately. “Then he can heal
himself.”

“Physician heal thyself does not apply in
this instance,” he said sadly. “It’s the flaw, a fatal one in this
case. A healer has no magic for himself. I’m sorry.”

“How long,” she asked miserably.

“He’s a strong man. It could be days or… it
could be hours.”

Elizabeth looked from face to face, seeing
only stony acceptance of Marshall’s fate. She hated them all. She
hated this place that had given her everything she’d dreamed of and
turned it into a nightmare. She stood up straight and turned her
back on them. She could hear their murmuring as she marched down
the stairs. There was a larger crowd gathered in the living room
and their hostile stares were nothing more than she deserved.
Marshall’s injuries were her fault. She turned away and fled
through the front door.

Once outside, she had nowhere to go. She
couldn’t go back inside and watch them all wait for him to die. She
couldn’t go to the Home Place. It was a shambles of broken windows
and doors.

The darkened barn stood off to the side. It
was a place to hide in her grief and misery. She opened the door
and reached for the light. The horses stirred in their stalls.

These were his babies, his Percherons from a
centuries old line of warhorses. Marshall’s line was centuries old,
too. She wondered if that was part of his affinity for these gentle
giants. He’d promised to introduce her to them. She’d have to add
it to her list of Things I’ll Never Do With Marshall. It would fall
somewhere after: Make love again, Have children and Grow old
together.

She walked to the nearest stall and looked up
and up into big, brown eyes. “Yep, you’re the same size you were
the last time,” she laughed through her tears. “I thought my mind
might have exaggerated your size what with the wolves and the fire
and all. But my estimate was pretty accurate. Marshall says you’re
strong and powerful. Max says you’re gentle as lambs.” Elizabeth
raised her hand and met the descending nose halfway. She scratched
the silken coat. “I think you’re like Marshall, a combination of
all three. Beautiful like him, too, though he probably wouldn’t
appreciate being compared to a horse.”

“This is somehow my fault, you know. None of
this ever happened before I came.” She sniffed in self-pity. “I’ll
go down in history as the girl who destroyed Mayberry.” Maybe
Charles was right and it wasn’t Mayberry, but it was damn
close.