Broken Wolf: Moonbound Series, Book Seven (16 page)

If the collars really were going to make them shift into wolves at any moment, she needed every second to find out what the strangers knew before she couldn’t speak.

He was right on her heels as she crashed back through the trees into the flood lighted clearing in front of where the cages opened out of the pit.

The tall beaten and bloody male wolf leaned against the rock wall where they’d exited the cages.

“Who are you two?” Clara rushed toward them, halted abruptly by Owen. He grabbed her arms and kept her from getting too close. All the while he was watching every angle and listening to every rustle in the trees. “Do you know Luther? Is Faye safe?”

“We need to get out of the light,” Owen said, pointing up at the floodlights bathing the entire clearing. “We’re too easy to see here.”

The black-haired woman looked up. Suspicion and pain filled her blue eyes. “What is this place? Why didn’t he just kill us?”

“He doesn’t waste wolves. Big game hunters come in and leave with a new wolf pelt to add to their collection.”

The woman choked, but managed not to vomit.
Impressive
.

When Owen had told her what would happen she’d puked until there’d been nothing left.

Clara rubbed Owen’s arm, bathing in the warm magick that flowed between them. Stolen touches and kisses through a chain link fence had been so hard. Now they had a chance to touch…
really touch
and there was some asshole hunter trying to shoot them. She drank in the sleekness of his half-naked form, wishing for a quick glimpse beneath the scrap of fabric he had tied around his waist.

“Come on,” Owen urged.

The four moved south, away from the pit and the light.

Two blasts roared from the other side of the island, sending up two billows of flame and smoke into the night sky. The lights near the pit went dark.

Clara froze.

Owen gripped her hand in the darkness. “What the hell was that?”

C
lara’s hand
was slick against his and Owen pulled her into his body. The humming was gone. The electricity. The lights.

“What the hell was that?” he hissed into the darkness.

“Andrea,” Vadik whispered. “You set the charge?”

Owen’s eyes began to adjust to the dark and he could make out their faces, and Clara, staring at them in wonder, her fingers on the collar.

The strange woman sighed. “I assumed I’d done something wrong when it didn’t go off. I wasn’t sure how long I was out.”

Owen glanced back out into the jungle and tried to tune his senses into the danger lurking out there. Somewhere in the receded, fenced-in back-side of Rossi’s island, there was a hunter. He was out there, or they wouldn’t have opened the cages.

The lights being off made no difference. They were still going to be cannon fodder as soon as the hunter had had his fun. He still needed to get Clara as far away from these two as he could manage.

“Look, Clara wanted to come back for you,” he said, looking around with wary eyes. “So here are the rules.”

He pulled Clara tighter against him. She was all that mattered.

“The rules?” Vadik said, pushing himself away from the rock and standing. He was healing much faster than Owen had. Lucky man. He might make it.

“The rules of the hunt. Or as much as we can learn about them.” Owen held up one finger. “One wolf, that’s it. Each hunter is allowed to kill one wolf. He sets his own parameters, as far as we can tell, because it’s different every time. Sometimes, they shift us first and then open the cages. Sometimes, we run around for hours, hiding, and shift just before the first shot.”

“Why don’t you shift right away?” Andrea slipped her arm under Vadik’s, holding him up so they could walk. But they still weren’t moving fast enough.

Owen was going to have to leave them.

For Clara.

“Sometimes, we do.” Owen pointed toward the western side of the island, where Gabe was undoubtedly perched at the only high ground, watching for movement. “Gabriel, the angry guy in the other cage, he always shifts right away. It’s his way of saying
fuck you
to Rossi.”

Clara fingered the metal collar. “They can make us be wolves, but he won’t make us be human.”

“Not until after the hunt, anyway.” Owen took her hand and pulled her along behind him. “Somewhere out on the island right now, probably with night-vision goggles, judging by the time of the hunt, there’s a hunter with a long-range weapon. He’s going to kill one of us.”

The strangers exchanged looks and Andrea gripped Vadik’s body.

They reached the edge of the clearing, where the heavy forest began, and Owen stopped.

“There’s really nowhere to hide. Not forever. It’s best to stay on the move, we’ve learned.” He offered his hand for them to shake. “I’m Owen. This is Clara.”

Andrea took it first, then Vadik.

“That’s the best advice I can give you. Stay on the move. And good luck.” He yanked Clara along behind him and took off, running. She dragged at him, but he wasn’t going to listen anymore. They’d done what they could do. They couldn’t save everyone.

“We can’t just leave them.” She pulled hard on him, yanking him to a stop.

He rounded on her and grabbed her shoulders. “Look at me. If we don’t get out of the open land by the cages and get to the valley with the stream, we’re going to be sitting ducks. We have to keep moving. We told them that.”

“But that guy, Vadik. He’s wounded.” Her eyebrows drew together. “We’re going to leave him to die?”

“Better him than you.” Owen gripped her hard.

Her compassionate eyes looked back toward where the other couple had been left behind. “Better no one.”

“That’s not an option.” He pulled her into a run again and they dodged branches and moved through foliage. Owen kept running until he couldn’t hear the other couple anymore. He needed to put enough distance between them that he could focus on hearing the movements of everyone.

“Are we going to the stream?” she called from behind him.

“Yes,” he grunted, ducking around a low branch that popped into his vision. He wasn’t fast enough, and it caught him in the face. It struck Clara a moment later and a groan followed.

“Can’t we slow down?” she moaned. “Just to avoid those sharp branches.”

“I need to get you to the valley first. Then we can slow down.”

He needed to get Clara to a place where she could hide. There was only one place, and they usually left that for the children, when there were children. Gabriel certainly wasn’t going to use it. He wanted to survive on his wits alone. Owen had never used it himself, but he needed to get Clara to that little cave so she could hide there until someone else died.

They kept running along the hillside and then down through the heavy brush until he felt the ground level out under his feet. Finally. Water.

He stopped at the edge of the stream, where it crossed their path, and knelt in the water. It was the only time he got an honest-to-God opportunity to bathe. The guards hosing them down didn’t help much. He pulled the little square of soap from the little pocket he’d made in his loin cloth, and handed it to Clara.

“We should wash here. Clean off our scent so it will be harder for him to track us.”

“Is he… a wolf?” Clara’s voice wavered.

“I don’t know. But if he is, smelling like a sewer will make his job too easy.” Owen splashed cool water over his face and it dripped down his beard onto his chest. Clean water.

She glared at the square of soap and turned it over in her hands. “Where did you get this? This is from the villa.”

“One of the guards gives it to Gabe, probably about once every month or so. I think it’s one of the ones who remembers him.” Owen untied the cloth from around his waist and let it fall into the water.

“
I
remember him.” Her voice was so small and quiet, he had to glance up at her. There was emotion under those words. She had her hand on the neck of her cream-colored dress and stared off into the night.

“The soap.” He held out his hand and she walked through the water to hand it to him.

When their skin touched, the same familiar flare of heat washed through him.

She continued to stare into the night, and Owen rubbed up a lather, cleaning his loincloth and rinsing it. He had lathered his hands to wash his skin, and she still hadn’t moved.

He knelt in the water and rinsed off his lower half, careful not to spend too much time handling his dick. It was already half-hard just being around Clara, but he couldn’t afford to get caught up in his lust. If the collars activated while they were in the water, he’d lose his loin cloth, and the soap, and not only would he lose the ability to clean himself, but he wouldn’t be able to hide his erection in the folds of the natural fabric when he was aroused by her. If they had to spend another day in those cages, he needed the loin cloth.

He rinsed his skin, his chest, his hair, his beard, and Clara still hadn’t moved. She continued to stare at something in the middle distance, no doubt remembering the villa, or something that had happened with Gabriel when she was younger. He wrapped the loin cloth around his unmentionables and tugged at her dress, but she didn’t respond.

With cold, wet and quickly disintegrating soap, he worked up another lather and moved his hands up her legs. She didn’t flinch, and he continued to clean her, rinsing the skin after he washed. Her eyes stayed locked in the forest.

When his fingers reached the folds of her sex, she finally moved her hips. She spread her legs, spreading her feet in the stream for better traction.

Owen put his hands back in the stream and worked up another lather. He rubbed soap between her thighs, then around her pelvis and up her ass to her back. She leaned against him when he worked soap around every inch of her.

He brought water up to rinse her off, with both hands, and she shivered. His fingers brushed over the little, swollen nub and her moan ignited an urgency in him that had been building for twenty-four days. He needed to make her cry out. Wanted to hear his name on her lips. Wanted her to come.

There had been a moment, days ago, when he’d woken to her quietly touching herself. He would never forget that moment, his whole life long. With her fingers buried deep in her pussy, and one hand squeezing a hard nipple through the light fabric of that almost-see-through dress.

That moment had made him so hard, he had forgotten Gabriel’s light snore in the next cage, and he’d wrapped his hand around his own dick and seen his fantasy coming to life behind his eyes. Clara’s scent on him. Clara’s sex clenching around him. Clara’s nipples in his mouth.

He shook himself back to reality and moved his wet hands up, under her dress, mesmerized by the moment, wondering what was going on in her far-away head.

The soap slipped over her breasts and her nipples. He’d seen them, on more than one occasion, when they thought Gabriel was asleep, and when the fence was turned off. He’d touched her nipples. Even kissed them once. But they could never do too much, for fear that, at any moment, they’d be half-electrocuted.

Owen had been dreaming about this moment in the darkness for twenty-four days. He didn’t want it to end. There was a hunter in the woods somewhere, but he didn’t care. He just wanted his fingers to continue to explore her body.

Clara finally glanced down at him and slid her hand along his face, while his fingers brought water to rinse the soap from her breasts. She stroked his cheek for a long moment and stared into his eyes.

She bent down and brushed her lips across his, almost like an absent thought. Like they were standing in a kitchen somewhere in Middle America, and he was loading the dishwasher, and she was overtaken with a moment of desire for him. Or him for her.

It was the strangest feeling, to finally be able to touch her. It made his insides liquefy when she kissed him, and he could palm the whole weight of her breast with one hand, and slip his fingers inside her with the other. This was the kind of freedom he’d been dreaming about.

Clara whimpered against him and sank to her knees, gripping the sides of his face with both hands. She was back again, from her trip to the past, and she was ready to participate in her own washing.

That was why they’d stopped in the stream. To wash.

He leaned back to catch his breath, and pulled her dress over her head in one quick motion, plunging it into the water. Clara gasped and sank her hands into his wet hair, taking his lips with hers. The press of her hard nipples against his chest made him release the soap and the dress and pull her up to be able to wrap her legs around his body.

Stop. Stop. Stop.
He pulled at her hands and settled her back into the water, looking around for the soap. “We need to wash,” he panted. “And then I have to take you to the cave.”

“I don’t want to stop.” She leaned toward him, snaking her hand down to touch his erection through the soaking fabric of his loincloth.

Owen grunted and crushed her body against his. He laid on top of her, the water washing over them both, streaming her hair along with the current. But it was too deep to lay her against the bottom, and he had to pull her up for air.

All the more reason they should head for the cave. He reached for the dress that had tangled around her foot, and rung it out, pulling it back over her body. No matter how much sparked between them, and no matter how hard he was, he had to get control of himself.

“I just need you to be safe,” he whispered against her, kissing her one last time. “Now let’s go upstream and drink, so we can get to the cave.”

She climbed to her feet and twisted her long hair in her hands, wringing out the water. “We’re going up the stream?”

“To drink first,” he said, looking around for the soap. But it was gone. It’d washed away, along with the dirt and grime. He hoped someone would find it and put it to good use. He wouldn’t get any more if Gabriel was the one who died in this hunt.

“What happens after we drink?”

“The stream goes through the cave.” He sloshed through the water a few feet and came to the little pool where the stream started to get deeper. “That’s how we found it the first time.” He waved his hand. “Or, I guess, how Gabe found it.”

“And the cave is where we’ll hide.” She squeezed his hand. “So we can both be safe.”

“Yes.” Owen stopped and bent over to get some water from the pool. “Now drink. We should reach the cave soon.”

He didn’t add that there was no way he could stay in the cave. Not if they were going to shift. It wouldn’t be big enough for two fully-sized wolves. So one of them was going to have to go back out and brave the hunt.

And it would be him.

And he would survive.