Wild Game (Wilding Pack Wolves 1) - New Adult Paranormal Romance (2 page)

She shook her head‌—‌they weren’t far from the two gamer vets‌—‌and turned to walk back toward the door he had just come from. An orderly glided through just as they arrived, and Owen took a moment to check out his ID. It was one of the younger male nurses, and Owen recognized him from before, so he turned his attention back to Nova.

“Is there something I can help you with, ma’am?” he asked again.

She grabbed hold of the loose string of blue hair, twisted it, then cast a look back at the soldiers. She had a habit of doing that‌—‌playing with her hair when she was thinking about something.

He waited.

She turned back to him. “Do you think they’d be more comfortable if I weren’t around?” Her eyes were dark as midnight and twice as serious.

He frowned. “No, ma’am, I don’t. Not quite sure I take your meaning, though.”

She released her hair. “I was hoping the game might bring back some of that sense of camaraderie for them. But they seem to, I don’t know, act a little strange when I’m around? I’m thinking maybe, if I wasn’t distracting them, they might enjoy the game more.”

She must not have felt the heat of a million stares on her illegally cute bottom.

He held back his smirk as much as possible. “No, ma’am. These grunts have each other’s ugly mugs to look at all day long, every day. You’re doing a good thing here, breaking up the monotony. They just don’t know quite what to do with, well, the improved scenery you’ve brought to their day.”

She gave him a puzzled look. “Improved scenery? The game is set in a futuristic post-apocalyptic combat zone, as realistic as we could‌—‌”

Owen couldn’t help it‌—‌his laugh burst out of him. It cut her off quickly, and her pale cheeks pinked up, like little roses under those charcoal-lined eyes.

“
You
are the scenery, Ms. Wilding. No disrespect, ma’am, but they haven’t seen anything as good-looking as you in a long time. Certainly not something at their bedsides.” He struggled mightily to keep the grin off his face, but it would have been easier to catch a firefly with his teeth.

Her face opened with surprise then a frown took over. She shook her disapproval at the floor. Owen wasn’t sure what that was about.

She peered back up at him. “Nova,” she said with a tight-lipped expression.

“How’s that?” He must have missed something.

She scowled. “You’ve been watching over me for a month, Owen Harding. I think it’s time you called me by my first name.”

So she
had
noticed. He let that smile come out to play a little. “Yes, ma’am.”

She rolled her eyes, then turned on her black-booted heel to stride back to the soldiers in their beds. This time, she had a wide, flirtatious smile for them, and he’d be damned if they didn’t perk up twice as much as before. He suspected their playing skills were about to degrade substantially.

Nova Wilding wasn’t just hot, and obviously kind, she was also smart enough to run the gaming company her father had dropped in her lap when he died. Apparently, charming soldiers who had been wounded in the course of their duty was also in her skillset.

A tightness crept into his chest. She was just the kind of woman he could really go for… if he wasn’t such a fucking mess.

Damaged goods.
That was about all he was now. During the year he’d been imprisoned, the suppressor kept him from shifting most of the time… except for those few times when Agent Smith tried to force it by injecting him with some serum or another. Owen always believed the shift was simple magic, but maybe it was biochemistry after all. 

He hadn’t gone to college, but he was a straight-A student before he got the hell out of that small, dirt-scrambling Texas town he grew up in. He knew a few things, and he learned a whole lot more the Army. Agent Smith had been doing genetic experiments‌—‌on him, on hapless civilians, on a whole bunch of people‌—‌trying to create some kind of super shifter soldier. And Owen had seen some grisly, horrible things come out of it. People who weren’t people‌—‌or wolves‌—‌but some kind of half mutant thing in between. Whatever that alternate form was supposed to be, a lot of them couldn’t shift back because the result was such a freakish thing it kicked the bucket right away. It was a fucking Island of Dr. Moreau in that prison. Smith was dead now, but his legacy lived on… inside Owen’s body.

Even after he was free, Owen had been afraid to shift. He couldn’t summon his wolf anymore, and he was afraid to call it, anyway‌—‌who knew what kind of beast would show up? Figuring out that mystery might just be the last two seconds of his life.

But no shifting meant finding a mate got shoved right off the table of possibilities. Of course, he could mess around with human women, but Owen didn’t like the idea of exposing anyone to the thing he had inside him. Not when he didn’t know what it was himself.

Which meant work had absorbed all his attention.

Work… and watching Nova Wilding’s very attractive, little rear end. It wasn’t just her screaming hot body‌—‌it was getting to see all the sides of her with near 24/7 exposure. The days she straggled in after coding all night. The smiles she dragged out even when her eyes were hollowed after the funeral. And now the full-press flirtation show she was putting on for the soldiers playing her game.

Those boys were sure to be dreaming about her tonight.

But this desire of hers to give them a little relief… she was driving straight into his heart with that. Which started to be dangerous territory for him. These soldiers might recover, or even get fitted up with some fancy cybernetic limbs, but there was no physical therapy that could erase Owen’s genetic damage, whatever it was.

That was a ticking time bomb waiting inside him.

One of Wylderide’s employees, Brad Hoffman, came up to Nova and whispered something in her ear. Owen didn’t like the way his hand settled at the small of her back, a little possessive gesture from the resident company alpha asshole. It had taken Owen approximately five seconds to peg Brad as the Wilding pack member most eager to claim Nova as his mate. Although Brad and Nova seemed to fight as often as they had a civil thing to say to one another.

It wasn’t long before they started wrapping up. Nova visited each and every soldier with a hug before collecting up their laptop. A lot of grateful faces were left in her wake.

While Brad and two others started breaking down the gear, Nova strode up to him. “These guys will load up the van. I’m ready to go.” She looked tired.

“Yes, ma’am,” he said, automatically. She gave him a scowl that yanked a smirk right out of him. “I mean, yes, Mistress NovaCaine.”

She mouthed the words
Oh my God,
then strode past him, but he thought he caught a glimpse of a smile on her.

Owen spoke into his mic. “NovaCaine on the move. Clear the car.” He kept pace with her pretty easily‌—‌she barely came up to his shoulder, and those pretty little legs didn’t get up much in the way of speed.

“NovaCaine?” she asked, giving him the side-eye. “Have you been playing without me realizing it?”

NovaCaine was her gamer handle‌—‌he’d just taken to using it as her codename for their internal communications. He’d slipped up, using it in front of her.

“No, ma’am, er… Nova.” It didn’t sit right, calling her by her first name when he was supposed to be security. “Not a gamer, sad to say.”

She gave him a skeptical look. “You should give it a try. I could teach you, but you might need a little weapons practice first.” She smirked.

He might’ve spent a year languishing in a cage, but it wasn’t like he’d forgotten how to shoot a gun. “I expect I won’t get the same recoil from firing a keyboard.” He returned her smirk. “But I won’t pass up personal lessons if that’s what you’re offering.” Did he really just say that? What was he thinking?

She ran her gaze over him in a way that wasn’t at all unpleasant. “I don’t have much time for casual play anymore… but I might make an exception for the man who’s in charge of making sure I live through the day.”

“Sounds like a fair trade.” But his heart was thumping a little too hard for just walking.

They had reached the outside of the VA hospital, and the bright Seattle sunshine lit up the street. The VA was an entire campus of medical buildings, tree-lined lanes, and supporting businesses. The black sedan Owen had borrowed from Riverwise stood waiting for them, along with the River pack member who had volunteered to be Nova’s driver. Her father had been killed by a car bomb, so they swept for those every time. The sedan’s windows were rolled down, and Murphy and Simpson were just finishing up their sweep under the vehicle, looking for incendiary devices.

“All clear,” Murphy said, pulling the long-handled electronics detector out from under the car. Owen did his habitual sweep of the street, but everything looked normal‌—‌several cars parked along the winding, tree-dappled lane, some light traffic winding around the VA complex.

He held open the door for Nova, and she stepped into the backseat. Owen barely got the door closed behind him when something small and metallic flew through the back seat window. Time slowed. He vaguely noticed a car driving past. His heart thudded once in his chest, then sunk to his stomach. The grenade tumbled to the floor and nestled right between Nova’s boot-clad feet.

“Grenade!”
He screamed and dove for it, knocking Nova into the cushion seat with one hand while the other grabbed at the grenade. Somehow he grasped it by his fingertips and flung it out the window. Then he slammed Nova down on the car seat and covered her body with his. A deafening blast heaved the car into the air and tumbled them.

Nova screamed. He kept hold of her as the car flipped, pulling her tight against him and bracing out with his other arm. The car rolled, then dropped to a rest. She landed hard on his chest, and his back slammed against the roof, which was now the floor. Shouts sounded outside the car. Owen’s ears rang from the blast, and a sharp pain seared his chest… but it was only Nova’s claws. They had come out and dug into him, holding on for dear life.

He kept his arms locked around her, but he dipped his face down. “You all right?”

She gasped in air, then let out a squeak when she saw her claws ripping through the starched white fabric of his shirt. “Oh God, I’m sorry!” Her hands shifted back to human, and she tried to squirm away from him, but he just held her tight.

“Nova Wilding,
tell me if you are injured,” he demanded in his best command voice.

She stopped her squirming and looked up into his face. Her eyes were wide and panicked. “No, I… I don’t think so.”

“Then I’m getting you out of here.” He needed her calm so he could remove her from the scene as quickly as possible.

She nodded shakily. He lifted her off his chest, and they managed to crawl out the window. Murphy helped her, and Owen followed quickly.

“What the fuck was that?” Murphy was yelling at someone around the side of the car, but Owen didn’t give a shit about explanations at this point. He had to get her away from here.

He grabbed onto Murphy’s arm to get his attention. “You secure the scene and call the police. I’m getting her out of here.”

Owen didn’t wait for a response, he just swept his arm around Nova’s waist and practically lifted her off the ground as he hurried her down the sidewalk. He hunched his body around hers to protect her from any possible sniper shots or backup grenade-wielding assailants that might be positioned in case the first attempt went wrong. Hell, for all he knew, the first attempt was just a set up for the real attempt to follow. She was far from out of danger.

He quickly glanced back at the wreckage of the car. The grenade had detonated out in the street, wiping out two trees and throwing shrapnel into a car across the street… but the worst of it was the driver. He lay motionless on the pavement, in pieces. The car itself had flipped onto its roof on the sidewalk, taking out another tree and smashing out the windshield.

But none of that was his concern. His only thought was getting Nova to safety.

He’d already outlined a safe location in the event of something like this, so without thinking, his legs carried them there. Down two streets, past a medical building, up a small winding tree-lined path. The VA complex was vast… they just needed a secure spot to retreat to until the threat was cleared. A loading dock loomed above them. Owen ushered her up the stairs and into the back side of the medical supply shop he had picked out as a safe retreat.

There was no one in the warehouse, but Owen still pulled her all the way to the back between stacks of giant cardboard boxes and metal supply shelves.

He spoke into the mic. “I’ve got NovaCaine sequestered. Let me know when ya’ll secure the building.”

Now that he had released her, Nova backed up against one of the large stacks of cardboard boxes and stared at him with wide eyes. She was shaking so hard, her hair was fluttering around her face. His heart clenched, and he moved toward her on instinct. He took her by the shoulders and scanned her body. Dirt scuffed her costume body armor, but that was it, as far as he could see.

“Are you sure you’re all right?” he asked again.

“Y…yes.” But the word was even more jittery than she was.

He pulled her into a hug. His hold was tight, pressing her to his chest, one hand secure around her back, the other holding her head against him. It was how he would hold a wild animal when it was frightened‌—‌locked down tight, nowhere to run, no sense in struggling. It calmed them… and it seemed to work on Nova as well. She made a little whimper sound and sunk into his chest, her hands bunching up the lapels of his jacket and burying her face.

“Hey, now, darlin’, it’s over,” he said as softly as he could. “You’re fine now. No need to worry. We will stay put, right here, until everything’s clear.” He could feel the tremors in her body. It gave him the most peculiar feeling‌—‌a pure sort of satisfaction that she was willing to let him hold her mixed with a heady kind of rush that made him want more full-body clinging in his future.

Her head shook against him, like she wasn’t buying whatever he was sellin’.

“I promise, you’re safe,” he repeated. “This spot is as secure as it gets, given no one knows where we are. And I’m not fixin’ to leave until I know it’s safe out there again.” The rumble of his words seemed to stop the shaking. Her hair had worked loose and formed a sort of black halo around her head. His fingers worked into it, massaging and soothing her. He hoped.