Wild Game (Wilding Pack Wolves 1) - New Adult Paranormal Romance (16 page)

“How could you fucking
lose her
?” Owen’s fury shook his entire body.

Brad shifted so fast, Owen almost didn’t realize it before Brad’s jaws were snapping at his neck. Owen jerked back and stumbled, but the momentum of Brad’s attack carried them both to the ground. Brad’s claws ripped gashes into his shirt and flesh. Owen clamped his human hands around Brad’s muzzle to keep him from ripping out his throat. Then he rolled, trying to get some kind of advantage, but he was human against wolf, and those odds were not good. He pummeled Brad’s face, going for the eyes and throat while holding his jaw open with the other hand. But Brad’s claws were turning his chest into hamburger.

Fuck.

Owen screwed this up, storming in without a plan or a weapon. Brad’s pack was holding back and letting them fight it out‌—‌but Owen was quickly losing.

He roared as another gash dug deep into his chest. He squeezed his human hand around Brad’s thick, furry throat, but he could barely keep hold. Then Owen thought about Nova going under the Wolf Hunter’s knife, and a deep rage welled up within him.
It was his beast.
He tried to control it, but he was losing that battle, too. Before his eyes, his fingers shifted around Brad’s throat… only what they shifted into made him shudder. His hands had turned into claws straight out of a horror movie. They were a foot long, more like knives than bone, and ringed with white fur at the knuckles. Brad’s eyes flew wide as the blades sunk into his neck‌—‌he stopped ripping into Owen’s chest and started scrabbling at monstrous claws about to separate his head from his body. 

Owen wanted to kill him, but if he let this transformation go any further, he might not survive it himself. Except he could barely fight through the red haze of his fury. Brad’s pack growled around him, a swell rising up. Owen swiped at them with his free hand, flailing wildly while struggling not to decapitate Brad. The pack jumped back. He closed his eyes to fight the transformation, but there was too much rage inside him.

A metallic ding sounded in the distance.

“Owen! Oh my God…”
Jace.
He must’ve followed Owen from the safehouse, knowing exactly where he would go.

“Stand back! Everyone back!”
Noah.
 

Owen stopped flailing at the wolves around him, but kept his eyes squeezed shut, still trying to rein in his beast. His hand of knives was still clamped around Brad’s throat, but he was no longer in danger of killing him. Not that he didn’t want to, but now wasn’t the time.

“It’s all right, Owen, you can do this. Focus.” Noah’s voice was calm.

Owen sucked in a shuddering breath and forced himself to think of Nova‌—‌not under the Wolf Hunter’s knife, but having her in his arms. He needed to stay alive for that, too.

A wash of calm sent his beast scuttling back inside him. The knives retracted into fingers. He opened his eyes and shoved off Brad. Owen hook like a ninety-year-old man with palsy… but he was in control of his body.

One of the Wylderide wolves helped Brad to stand. He clutched his bloody throat and kept his distance with a wary look. The entire pack had backed up, forming an open space around Owen. He’d never seen a group of wolves look scared like this‌—‌freaked out.

But Noah stood by his side, and Jace was next to him. They both had their guns out, but they were pointed at the floor. Owen had a feeling it wasn’t the weapons that made the other wolves back away.

Noah gripped Owen’s shoulder, hard. “You got it together, man?”

Owen gave him a shaky nod.

Jace stepped in front of Owen and faced the pack. “All right, listen up, assholes. This guy…” He pointed to Brad. “Is my least favorite shifter on the planet at the moment, but we’re missing a girl, and we need to find her. So we’re going to put all this the fuck behind us and focus on the mission at hand. Are we clear?”

There was an uneasy rumble through the pack. They looked to Brad for guidance. Of course… he was their alpha now.

Owen raised a hand to point at Brad, and a surge of satisfaction ran through him to see the man flinch. “You’re going to tell us exactly what happened when you lost her. And you’re going to let me clean up your fucking mess until we find her again.”

Brad snarled, but he didn’t say anything. Then he glanced at the pack, and even Owen could tell he was losing face. After all, Nova was snatched under his watch. When Owen was her bodyguard, she’d survived an attempt on her life.

Finally, Brad straightened and pulled his bloody hand away from his throat, looking at it with disgust. “Of course, we’ll take any help Riverwise would like to give in finding Nova.”

It seemed like a sigh of relief went through the pack. These people were programmers and coders and game designers‌—‌not fucking security. As their alpha, Brad shouldn’t have been asking them to take on that role. He should have been looking out for all of them… including Nova.

“All right, then.” Jace ran a look over Owen’s shredded and bloody clothes. “You ready to get to work?”

The gashes on his chest hurt like hell, but they were already healing. Owen gave him a quick nod.

Jace pointed to Brad. “You going to live?”

Brad curled a lip. “How about you fuck off?”

“I’ll take that as a
yes,”
Jace said. “The rest of you are a bunch of computer nerds, right? Nova’s been kidnapped by a psycho somewhere in the city. We’ve already got Riverwise searching the city’s public cameras for any trace of her. We could use some of your servers to crunch the data. I’ll get our guys to call in, and you can hook that up.”

There were a few murmurs and a lot of nods, but even Owen could see the hope lighting up their faces. He wished he could share it‌—‌he knew how long the odds of that kind of search were, and that the clock was ticking for Nova even as they spoke. He didn’t want to let his mind go there, but a part of it already knew they would never find her, except in pieces. And then he would fucking kill Brad Hoffman.

The pack drifted back to their desks.

Noah tugged him away from the still glaring Brad and spoke softly. “Hey, man, was that the first time you shifted? I mean, after the cages? Jace told me what you were thinking…” He left the rest unspoken. Too many ears to overhear.

Owen nodded. “You weren’t in there as long as I was. You didn’t see the things I saw. The monsters they were making.”

Noah narrowed his eyes. “I may not have been there long, but trust me, I saw some pretty nasty shit. And they gave me all the latest serums.”

Owen frowned, not sure what he meant by that.

“The question is,” Noah said, “are you able to control it?”

Owen grimaced. “Yeah. Barely. Maybe.”

Noah nodded. “The fact that you survived all that time… I’m thinking that means something.”

Owen squinted at him. “I figured I was just lucky, outlasting everyone. Or unlucky, depending on how you look at it.”

Noah’s face went solemn. “Luck had nothing to do with any of it. Those bastards had everything planned out.”

Owen nodded. He and Noah needed to talk‌—‌especially about what happened overseas, after his time in the cages. But before he could ask, a round of swearing went up on one side of cubicle land.

“Brad, come see this!” someone called.

Jace was on the phone talking to someone, probably Riverwise, but he shut it off. He, Owen, and Noah hurried over to where the entire pack was gathering around one screen.

A new video.

A wash of nausea flooded Owen. It was a video of Nova, trapped in a cage, with some psycho poking at her with a cattle prod. There was a large, red digital clock counting down in one corner. It took Owen a moment to figure out that it was live streaming, not a recording. A torrent of emotions ran through him‌—‌
she was alive!
But what the fuck was happening?

“What the hell is this?” That was Brad, who had finally fought through the pack to see the video.

On the screen, the man with the cattle prod laughed as she jerked back and screamed. A roaring growl simultaneously went up from every shifter in the room.

The man turned to face the camera, then stalked toward it. For a moment, his hoodie and metal-looking facemask filled the screen. He was making some kind of adjustment to the camera, and it shook. The mask was different than the last video. This time, it was more futuristic‌—‌almost like battle armor for a future soldier.

When the Wolf Hunter stepped back, the view had broadened to take in the whole area around Nova’s cage. Black rectangular bricks were stacked around the cage, connected by wires. They looked suspiciously like explosives. Nova huddled in the corner, sobbing, and the sound was ripping out Owen’s heart.

“Well, here we are folks!” The Wolf Hunter’s voice was light and snappy. Sick fucking bastard. “We’ve got ourselves a real, live shifter. She might look like just a girl, but trust me, she’s not. Let’s see if we can get her to shift and show her true nature, shall we?”

He went back to the cage. The electric spark and Nova’s scream filled the dead silence in the Wylderide office.

The Wolf Hunter laughed again and step back. “You’ll notice that the bars aren’t all that strong. If she shifts, she’ll have enough strength to get out. If she doesn’t, she’ll be stuck inside until the bomb goes off.” He gestured at the explosives ringed around the cage. “It’s not all that pretty, but I assure you, there’s more than enough to blow up a little she-wolf.” His face loomed into the camera. “Of course, either way, I promise she’ll be dead by the end of our livestream. At which point, I’ll be demonstrating those dissection tips from my previous video. You can see the countdown in the corner. Make sure you share the link with all your friends! Time for them to see that this is all real. No tricks, no movie magic. This is one hundred percent shifter Red Room. Payback for what they’ve done. This one will pay, and then another one after that, and another… until all shifters understand they can’t just take our jobs and our women and infiltrate our society without consequence.” He grinned. “Stay tuned for the fun.”

Owen’s beast wanted to claw its way through the screen and take apart the Wolf Hunter one chunk at a time. Every shifter in the room had the same look of anger and horror on their faces. Owen couldn’t help going after Brad again‌—‌only Noah and Jace being there, grabbing onto his arms, held him back from plowing into Brad’s face.

Instead, Owen just snarled and threw words at him. “If she dies, I
will
kill you.” Then he shook off their hold and turned to the rest of the pack. “Let’s go find our girl.”

The pack growled as one.

Nova’s teeth were chattering so hard, the clicking echoed around her cage.

The man who captured her was stalking around the room, muttering to himself. She’d watched him talking to his webcam perched on top of his screen‌—‌and she’d never been more terrified in her life. This guy was a raving lunatic, and he had devised this weird set up to torture her and blow her up in front of whoever was watching. A full-body shiver went through her that rattled her teeth again. This time, it was loud enough to grab the man’s attention.

He swung back to her, marched up to her cage, and stopped just outside her reach. He had the cattle prod again, but he was leaning against it like a walking stick, not thrusting it through the cage bars at her. Still… she shrunk to the back, teeth clenched in anticipation of another attack. The shocks hurt like hell, but they didn’t seem to be permanently damaging her. Her shifter body could take a lot, which freaked her out‌—‌that only meant he could dish out a lot of pain without actually killing her.

He gave her a smile full of teeth. “Well, little shifter girl, you’re not so high and mighty now, are you?”

He seemed to be talking for the audience on the webcam. His face was covered with a futuristic mask, but she remembered what he looked like from before, when he snatched her from the parking garage. She was trying to figure out where she knew him from, and it was driving her crazy.

She’d been so foolish, running off like that, angry at Brad, trying to escape becoming his mate. She supposed that was a pretty damn horrible fate‌—‌being mated to someone you didn’t love‌—‌but it beat the hell out of dying. She should’ve tried to work it out with him, rather than just running off to find Owen. She’d been an idiot.

Her only consolation was that this raving lunatic had been messing with her car. He’d obviously been planting a bomb, and if she hadn’t interrupted him, she and Brad both would’ve been blown up in the morning‌—‌Brad had stopped looking for car bombs a few days after Owen left. Although, with all the explosives planted around her cage, it looked like blowing up was her destiny anyway.

She stared at her captor‌—‌she had a feeling there was a crazy grin under that mask as he mumbled to himself and fussed with something at a bench off camera.

What the hell was his deal? “This is all just a game to you, isn’t it?” she asked. She hadn’t spoken much since she woke up to the cattle prod sending thousands of volts through her body‌—‌mostly because she had been busy screaming. But he was holding off on the torture now, for some reason. The man raced over to the cage and banged his cattle prod against the bars. She jumped and lurched away.