Last Wolf Watching

“Eric?” Drake’s silver brows pulled together in a deep-seated scowl, his sharp cheekbones slashed with a vivid streak of ruddy color.

Crossing his brawny arms across his chest, the youngest son of the most pure-blooded line in the Silvercrest pack repeated his intention. “For too long this pack has benefited from the courage and sacrifice of the Runners, giving nothing in return except the offer to join a community that treats them as inferiors. Enough’s enough. It’s time we make things right and give something back. The boy will pass his Novitiate’s training, and when he does, he’ll become a Runner and hold a position that demands our respect. To see that it happens, I’m taking on the training of Max Doucet as my own.”

“Like hell you are,” his father hissed, baring his teeth as he jabbed one long finger in his son’s direction. “It’s bad enough that you and your sister have actually befriended them, but I will not allow my son to disgrace our family by aligning with these aberrations and taking responsibility for a human breed, the foulest creature of all!”

“You can’t stop him,” Elise Drake argued, stepping forward to stand by her brother’s side in a show of support against their father, though her nerves revealed themselves in the tremor of her husky voice and the violent trembling of her hands. Not that Brody blamed her. Elise had been through a hell of her own the week before when her father had used her in the attack on Jillian’s life, and now she had to deal with this.

For a moment, the misogynistic Drake stood rigid with fury in the face of his daughter’s defiance, and then a soft gleam slowly began to burn in the wintry depths of his eyes. “You’re right,” he murmured, straightening his cuffs in a purposeful act of indolence. “I can’t stop Eric should he choose to malign his honor in such a fashion. But I can enjoy his failure.” He all but purred with malicious satisfaction. “Fate has a way of righting all wrongs. It’s been many years since we’ve taken the responsibility for a Novitiate in this pack, but the rules remain the same. If the human breed fails to pass judgment at the end of his training, which I’ve no doubt he will, the punishment still stands and Max Doucet will be executed.”

“You bastard!” Michaela hissed, suddenly jerking forward, but Brody was already tightening his hold on her. She strained against his arms, but couldn’t break away as she shouted at the Elder, the horror she’d just endured pouring out of her in an uncontrollable flash of fury and pain. “If you hurt my brother, I’ll see that each and every one of you dies. Your town, your way of life. I’ll bring the entire world breathing down your neck. Just see if I don’t! And I’ll be damned if he’s staying here! I’ll do whatever it takes to get him away from you! I’ll get the goddamn army up here, and we’ll see how power—”

Cursing foully under his breath, Brody pressed his palm over her mouth, silencing the words he knew were only going to land her in deeper trouble. Muffled sounds of outrage vibrated in her throat, but it was already too late. The damage had been done. Drake hated all humans with a passion that went beyond obsessive—and because of their close association with the Runners, they’d known the Doucets would garner special attention from the unstable Elder and his followers. And now that Michaela had openly challenged him, Drake wouldn’t stop until he made her pay for the insult.

“The human is too unstable to be allowed her freedom,” Stefan Drake announced with a gloating smile, spreading his arms in a gesture of entreaty. “Surely the pack realizes what must be done. She cannot be allowed to interfere with our dealings.”

“Your so-called dealings sought out her family,” Mason growled, “not the other way around. We know you’re the one behind the rogues, Drake, and it won’t be long before we’ve caught you—along with the bastard working with you—and brought the both of you down.”

“Despite the slanderous accusations you and your kind have been tossing around like confetti,” the Elder argued, his hateful stare burning with maniacal triumph while whispered words traveled among the members of the pack, “my guilt remains unproven. The truth is that you have no evidence to back your claims. They’re all based on nothing more than hearsay and conjecture. And regardless of how it happened, her brother is now here and the fact remains that she is a threat to our well-being. I call for an—”

“There’s no need to call for anything,” Dylan growled, cutting Drake off. “She can be assigned a guard and the problem is solved.”

“I agree,” Fuller called out before Drake could argue, the Lead Elder’s relief to have ended the disagreement without bloodshed obvious in the softened lines of his expression. “The only question is who. Who is willing to accept accountability for her actions and watch over the human while her brother completes his training?”

Brody narrowed his eyes, his chest aching as he prepared to say the words he knew were going to change his entire life. It was insanity. Madness. The action of a fool. And yet, he didn’t have any other choice. He never had.

“I am.” The two roughly spoken words echoed through the clearing with the force of a cannon blast, and Michaela instantly stilled, stiffening against him as all eyes turned toward them. “Until this is over,” he growled, “the human is mine.”

Chapter 3

The human is mine…

The unbelievable words echoed through Michaela’s head, the evocative warmth of Brody’s breath against the sensitive shell of her ear enough to make her tremble with something sharper, darker, more visceral than shock or fear. She struggled for the source of her reaction to the possessive words—then realized it was hunger, urgent and sweet, spreading hypnotically through her system. A craving—a primal, instinctive need—that moved like warm, thick honey in her veins, settling deep within her like an intimate, pulsing glow of heat that she wanted to curl herself around. And it centered on the Bloodrunner who held her in his hard-muscled arms, the resonating beat of his heart banging out a powerful rhythm against her back.

Oh God, this can’t be happening.

“If you promise to behave,” he whispered in a low, husky rumble, his lips moving against her hair, “I’ll take my hand away from your mouth. Do you promise, Doucet?”

She gave a jerky nod, and sensation pierced through her like a physical jolt as her lips rubbed against the masculine roughness of his palm; the musky, outdoors scent of his skin filling her head.

Shocked murmurs continued to work their way through the surrounding pack, marked by low snarls and grumblings of disapproval, but a strange buzzing noise, like static, started to fill her ears as everything she’d experienced in the last few moments crashed down on her. She shook her head, trying to clear the confusion, but couldn’t escape the growing feeling of unreality. Through a hot sheen of tears, she watched as the Elders huddled into a tight circle. Only Dylan Riggs cast a sharp glance in her direction, before lowering his head and joining the other Elders in a heated conversation while the pack clustered together in groups of their own. She could see a few human mouths, as well as Lycan jaws moving, but couldn’t hear the words they produced over the frenzied noise thudding against her skull.

When a nearby group of Lycans suddenly stepped toward them, Brody moved with whipcord strength, shoving her behind his back before she even knew what was happening. “Mason, get her back to the Alley,” he grated, and she almost sighed with relief as the words sank into her system, the static whir slowly fading away. “The others can help me deal with things here. We’ll meet back up with you at the cabin when we’re done.”

Vaguely aware of Torrance grabbing on to her wrist and pulling her away, Michaela stumbled, looking back over her shoulder toward the clearing, watching as Eric Drake walked toward the incredible creature her brother had become, his dark fur gleaming like black satin in the moonlight. Eric began talking with Max’s guards, reaching for the chains that bound him, when his father broke away from the Elders and advanced on them. She struggled to see what was happening, but everyone was moving around and too many bodies blocked her view.

Looking back to the spot where Brody had stood, her muscles clenched with panic when she found him gone, lost somewhere in that swarming chaos of activity. What if something happened to him? It would be her fault, wouldn’t it? Male voices, raised in anger, reached her, and she knew instantly that it was Brody arguing with Stefan Drake. They both sounded furious, but she knew the Runner would win. And then he’d come to the Alley, where he expected to find her waiting.

Michaela had never considered herself a coward, but after the crushing experience with her last relationship, she’d grown wary of putting her trust in the opposite sex. And more importantly, she no longer trusted her judgment—or her body’s physical desires. And God only knew the powerful way she reacted to Brody Carter was enough to make any sane woman cautious. It was too much. Too…everything.

No, she wasn’t a coward, but she sent a sharp look toward the trees, wondering…

“Don’t even think about it,” Mason warned her with a gruff chuckle, the corner of his mouth edging up into a strained grin. “You wouldn’t make it more than ten feet before he had you down.”

Had her down? A hazy image of being trapped beneath Brody’s long, hard, muscular body flashed through her mind, and she trembled. God, talk about emotional overload. She was shaking so hard she could barely see straight.

“I don’t understand,” she whispered, turning a dazed stare toward her best friend. “What just happened, Torry?”

Arching one slim red brow, Torrance shot a questioning look toward her husband. “If I had to guess, I’d say you’d just been given a personal bodyguard.”

Mason nodded, his handsome face carved into a cautious expression of concern. With a strange bubble of emotion in her throat that felt as if it could end in either laughter or tears, Michaela wondered who that concern was for. Was he worried how well she’d deal with his brooding friend? Or was that hard expression that looked as if it’d been chiseled from granite for Brody? Did he think she’d lead a reign of terror over the quiet Runner’s life?

“And I get him?” she groaned, knowing it couldn’t be true. There was no way in hell Brody Carter had just volunteered himself…to what? The job had sounded more like a watchdog than a bodyguard. “When he said that I’m his, he meant his to watch over, right?”

Mason snorted a low, purely male sound under his breath, and led them deeper into the forest.

It took an hour of sitting there in the Dillingers’ cozy kitchen, with Torrance pouring another pot of herbal tea into her system, before Brody finally came to collect her. Michaela heard the commotion at the front door as he and his partner arrived. For a moment, she felt torn between the strangely opposing urges of running into the living room and demanding he comfort her, and sneaking out through the cabin’s back door, disappearing into the darkness…as if she could run away from the ugly reality of the night.

But she couldn’t move.

She waited, her breath held tight in her chest, until his broad-shouldered body filled the archway that led into the kitchen. His shadowed, dark green gaze trapped her the second he set eyes on her, refusing to let her look away, holding her with the sheer force of his will. The lines around his mouth were tight with strain, and at his sides, his hands were fisted, his knuckles bruised and a little swollen. His auburn hair was damp at the temples, his shirt torn at the shoulder and the sharp line of his left cheekbone had been scraped raw. Her brows pulled together in a tight frown as she added the details together and came to an unsettling conclusion. “You…you didn’t fight after I left, did you?”

“Are you kidding?” Cian snorted, edging past his partner as he walked into the kitchen. “It was just a playful scuffle. Hell, there were only ten of them, hardly enough to call it a fight. And none of them were brave enough to battle against Brooding Brody,” he drawled, hitching his hip against the counter. He crossed his arms over his chest, a cynical smile twisting the hard curve of his devil’s mouth, but Michaela couldn’t tell if he was teasing or not.

“And Max was okay?” she asked, her attention focused on Brody while Torrance filled the sink with hot, lemon-scented dishwater and Mason finished off the sandwich he’d made while waiting.

Brody nodded in response to her question, but didn’t move away from the archway. Instead, he crossed his own arms and propped his right shoulder against the wall, the recessed kitchen lighting glinting off the burnished stubble on his square chin, softening the stark lines of his scars. “Eric took him away before we left. He’ll take good care of him, Doucet. No harm will come to your brother during his training.”

Michaela worked to ignore the devastating effect of his deep voice—that husky, intoxicating baritone that slipped into her with a sweet, provocative slide and made her hot beneath the skin—but it didn’t work worth a damn. The tight, black cashmere sweater that had kept her warm outside now sat too heavy over her damp skin, filling her face with heat. Lowering her gaze to the steam rising from her tea, the china cup fragile within the straining hold of her hands, she asked, “And after that? After the training?”

“If he doesn’t pass, then we’d all stand together to ensure his safety, if it comes to that,” Mason told her. She flicked her gaze up to see his easy grin as he added, “But if he’s anything like you, that’s not going to be a concern. If there’s one thing I know about the Doucets, it’s that they’re tough as nails.”

“Thanks,” she murmured with a wry twist of her mouth. “I think.”

“Don’t worry,” Torrance laughed, sending her husband a teasing look. “Mase’s compliments are still a little rough around the edges, but he means well.”

The Runner flashed his wife a wicked, hard-edged smile and playfully wagged his brows. “Face it, Tor. You love my rough side.”

“Behave,” Torrance admonished under her breath, but her green eyes glittered with excitement, her cheeks flushed a warm shade of rose. The love the two shared was so potent, so rich and heady and intense, that it seemed to fill the room, making Michaela painfully aware of how…alone she was. All she’d had was Max, and now even he had been taken from her.

“Max will pass his training,” Brody rumbled, breaking the awkward silence. “And until all of this is over, I’ll…be withyou.” It almost sounded as if that last bit had stuck in his throat, and she wasn’t the only one who’d noticed.

“If you’re not up to the task,” his partner drawled, reaching behind him to snatch up one of the cookies out of the perpetually stocked cookie jar, “I could always be a pal and step in for you, partner.”

Brody didn’t so much as twitch, but she could see the vein that began throbbing in his temple, pulsing beneath the dark sheen of his skin as he tilted his head and glared at the smirking Irishman. Energy, red-hot and raging, surged around him like a fiery glow, so real Michaela almost flinched from the burn. “Like hell you will.”

“Why not me?” Cian laughed, sending her a teasing wink. The irreverent Runner obviously loved goading his partner and friend, but Michaela could sense something deeper than mere irritation in Brody’s reaction, and she didn’t need any of her so-called powers to see it.

“Why not you?” he softly snarled. “Because you’d be too busy bedding her instead of protecting her, that’s why!”