Claiming the Moon (6 page)

Sam walked across the street and a couple blocks down into Doc’s office. Every step was agony, but she kept her whimpers to herself. Squeezing her eyes shut, she called to Clint with everything in her and hoped he heard. Then the time for thinking stopped, and she was sitting on a hard examination table, letting Sam and Doc pull off her coat and then her sweater.

Doc made soothing sounds as he cleaned off her back, and Sam moved to guard the door, his back turned to her so he couldn’t see her half naked. She stared at the wall over him, biting her lip against the pain.

“I’m going to give you shot of morphine before I stitch you up, Ellen,” Doc said.

“No!” She knew she sounded hysterical, but she couldn’t stand the idea of being that out of control with two men she didn’t know well, and a strange man out there determined to kill her.

“We have to do this, Ellen,” he said gently. “I can’t sew you up until I deaden the pain.”

She started to shake her head, but then Clint filled her vision.

“Give her the shot,” he ordered as he paced into the room. At her side, he took her hand, and she couldn’t look away from his eyes. Anger. Such deep, deep anger, but not directed at her. Well, not all of it. And terror. The terror was for her alone. Fear she’d been killed or badly hurt. Fear he couldn’t keep her safe. She gripped his hand in hers, tried to pour all her love down the bond between them. It worked. She saw some of the wildness recede, barely noticed the prick on her back as she clung to Clint’s hand.

Doc waited for the drugs to kick in before examining it again, making sure nothing vital was damaged. He explained it was a minor cut. It needed stitches and would hurt for a few days, but it wasn’t as deep as he’d originally feared. He sewed her up and handed her a bottle of antibiotics and a bottle of pain pills. She barely registered them since Clint was picking her up and carrying her out to his SUV. Anthony hadn’t said a word yet, and he stepped into the driver’s seat while Clint sat with her on his lap on the passenger seat.

Not the safest driving arrangement, but she was floating and dreamy from the morphine shot. Even if she’d had the voice to protest, she didn’t have the will. Especially not with Clint holding her gently, carefully, as if she was the most treasured thing in his world.

It wasn’t a long drive back to HQ. When they arrived, he carried her upstairs and put her to bed. She rolled onto her stomach, and he pulled the covers over her. Leaning down, he kissed her lightly and whispered, “Sleep, baby.”

Chapter Six

When Clint came back downstairs, he found everyone in Anthony’s office, but Sam was the only one he was interested in. He didn’t hesitate as he walked up to the other wolf and slammed him against the wall.

“What the fuck happened to her?” he growled.

Anthony was at his side, the Alpha he could never technically be in his voice. “Sam didn’t do this, Clint. Let him go so he can talk to us.”

His hand tightened around Sam’s throat. The werewolf wanted Ellen as much as Anthony did. Clint had smelled his desire the minute he’d walked into that examining room. What no one seemed to realize was Clint didn’t just act less civilized than them. He
was
less civilized than they were.

He shook the police chief a little, let his fingers tighten enough to stop his breath for a second before he let go and paced across the room.

“What. Happened,” he demanded, a snarl in his voice. Not even trying to control the wolf. The wolf wanted to tear and rend and exact retribution. The man agreed.

“Anthony called me,” Sam answered, rubbing his neck. Clint already knew that. He’d been sitting right next to him. “Wanted to know if I’d seen Ellen. Asked me to go look for her.”

His voice was raspy, and Clint wondered if he’d really hurt him, but dismissed it as unimportant. Sam would have reacted the same way if it had been his woman.

“She was in the parking lot of the post office when I found her. Some guy, human, was threatening her. He stabbed her and took off.”

The gaze he leveled at Clint was full of understanding and command. “I couldn’t go after him. Our women are too important, and I didn’t know how badly she was hurt.”

As much as Clint wanted the human’s neck in his hands, as disappointed as he was that Sam hadn’t caught him, he did understand. He would have done the same thing. His mate’s safety came first, last, and always.

Knowing all of that didn’t stop the emotions bombarding him. He shook with restrained fury, and it wasn’t all directed at her human attacker. A healthy dose of it was for Ellen. She should never have left the security of the house. She knew she was in danger after the first attack, so why do something so stupid? He wanted to go upstairs and shake her awake to demand answers, but he knew she wasn’t up for that yet.

The others in the room had gone quiet, probably sensing his internal struggle. He glanced at Anthony on his way out of the room. “I’m going for a run.”

There was understanding in the other were’s eyes. He knew Clint was in a killing frame of mind and needed to get rid of some of his aggression before he went to Ellen. While Clint was doing that, the Hunters would guard his mate. He trusted them with her safety, and they wouldn’t let him down again.

He went out the back door, stripped, and left his clothes in a neat, folded pile in a cabinet placed there for exactly that reason. Then he shifted, embracing the animal side of his mind. Body contorted, muscles shrunk, bones popped. It was pain and pleasure, over in mere seconds that felt like eternity. Then he was the wolf.

He took off into the woods behind the mansion and gave the wolf free reign. He ran for a while, but eventually his simmering anger cooled, and he slowed to a walk, exploring woods he hadn’t run in years. He was quietly stalking a rabbit when he caught the alien scent.

Going Hunter still, he searched his other senses. No sounds that shouldn’t be there. No sights out of place. He followed the smell to the fence that marked the Hunters boundary. Someone had climbed over it. Someone who didn’t belong.

He turned and followed the scent back to where he’d started. It went on, deeper into their land, and he tracked it easily. It ended in the tree line behind the house, on the opposite side of where he’d entered the forest. The stranger must have doubled back on his own trail to leave.

Anthony came out the back door and walked to where he stood. Clint shifted. Anthony wouldn’t have come looking for him for no reason.

“Ellen’s up,” he said, but he wasn’t looking at Clint when he spoke. Instead, he was looking around the area, nostrils flared to take in the scent that didn’t belong. When he looked over, his eyes reflected Clint’s fury. “Her attacker was here.”

Nodding, Clint stepped toward the house with Anthony at his side. He’d already figured that out.

“How the fuck did that bastard get in to my territory without my knowing about it?” There was a low snarl embedded in the question.

“When I ran last night, I didn’t come back here.” They’d reached the porch, and he dressed as he spoke. “I stayed near the road.”

“Waiting for us to come back.” Anthony shoved a hand through his hair. In anyone else, it would have been a nervous gesture, but he didn’t look the least bit contrite about the way he’d forced Clint to make his claim real.

“When was the last time someone ran the back of the property?”

“Too long. But that changes now.”

Clint only nodded when what he really wanted to do was flay Anthony alive for getting so complacent he thought no one would come after them here. And the Society probably wouldn’t. But if a human, a human who was very definitely in Clint’s sights now, could get this close, so could a rogue.

He preceded Anthony into the house and went down the long center hall to a comfortable parlor in one of the front rooms of the house. He couldn’t say how, but he knew Ellen would be waiting for him there. Growling low in his throat when he entered, he stalked across the room. He should have realized all the single males in the house would also be there.

Picking her up from the couch, he sat in one of the big, plush chairs with her in his lap. She snuggled against his chest, and his wolf calmed, accepting the affection that was its due. She turned her head up to him and smiling, pressed a kiss to the exposed skin just above the collar of his sweater. His throat closed at the tender gesture, emotion filling him nearly to bursting.

There was a discrete cough, and he looked up. Zachary and Asa were on the sofa, one on each end. Sam was in one of the other chairs, and Anthony in the one next to it. Declan took up the floor, one long leg spread out in front of him, the other pulled up to his chest with a forearm resting on his knee.

“Ready to tell us what happened, babe?” Anthony asked.

He narrowed his eyes at Anthony. “She has a name.”

Anthony just grinned at him and Ellen shifting in his lap, rubbing her ass over his hard cock, distracting him. She wiggled one arm behind him, pushing her hand up under his sweater. The skin-to-skin contact soothed his irritation at Anthony’s use of the endearment. He might want her, but she belonged to Clint.

“It was the same guy. He was also the deliveryman from the diner this morning. I didn’t recognize him because I didn’t see his face that night,” she said, turning her head to look at Anthony. “And he’s definitely human.”

Being human didn’t mean anything to Clint. Technically, humans, unless mated in, were not subject to pack law. He should let human law, human authority, handle this. But he wasn’t going to. When he tracked the man down, he was going to tear his throat out. It might get him exiled from his pack, but he didn’t care. The only thing that mattered was the safety of the woman in his arms. And retribution for the harm already done. He met Anthony’s gaze and knew the other werewolf was aware of his plans. And approved. He gave him the slightest nod. No one else even noticed it.

Ellen’s agitation distracted him. “What else, baby?” he asked her softly.

“You get to call her baby, and I can’t call her babe?”

He knew Anthony was trying to lighten the heavy, dark mood in the room, trying to put Ellen at ease. He knew, but his wolf side still responded to what it considered a challenge to its claim.

“She’s
mine
.”

Fingernails scratching his back got his attention. He looked down at the woman in his lap, responded to her slight smile. So damned perfect.

“Who knew you’d turn out to be such a caveman?” she teased. There was no bite in her words, only affection and amusement. What she felt for him shook him to his bones, his soul. He wondered if he would ever learn to temper the possessiveness, if he would ever get control over the urge to throttle anyone who dared look at her.

She shook her head, and her hair brushed against his neck. He wanted to feel it sliding over his skin again, this time as she rode him. His cock got harder, and she blushed as the heat between them seemed to go up about thirty degrees.

“What was I saying?” she whispered shakily, clearly caught up in what was between them.

“Human,” Anthony answered dryly.

“Yes,” she said, her voice steadier, laughter shading her tone. “He accused me of being a werewolf.”

His arms tightened around her. So the guy thought she was a werewolf and planned to kill her? “Not funny, Ellen.”

“Sure it is. In a sick and twisted kind of way.”

He got her point. There were no female werewolves. The gene that gave the ability to shift was only passable to males. Their mates and daughters were completely human, and there was no such thing as conversion. You were born a wolf or you weren’t.

“What else did he say?”

“Exactly?”

He nodded yes, and she closed her eyes in concentration. He knew she was still feeling the effects of the morphine.

“He said we’re a scourge on the earth and they’ll kill us all.”

“They?” Anthony asked.

“He said, ‘We’ll kill you all.’”

“They can try,” Anthony said. His tone was guttural with contained fury.

“So there’s more than one. This isn’t a case of one lone crackpot,” Sam said.

Ellen shrugged. “That was the impression I got. But maybe he’s just crazy and there’s no one else. That we could have been a generic we, meaning humans.”

“Could be,” Sam answered. “But I don’t believe it.”

“Me either,” Anthony said. “The Society has been too quiet lately. Maybe that’s because someone is doing our work for us.”

At the mention of the rogue organization, Ellen’s hand clenched his arm. “Whoever they are, if this guy is one of them, they don’t know that not all werewolves are bad. They don’t know they could be killing innocent people.”

Anthony shook his head. “I don’t think so. We aren’t getting any reports of suspicious deaths. Whoever these people are, they know the difference.”

“Then why target me?”

The room fell silent for a moment before Clint said the obvious. “Maybe they have their own rogue.”