Half Wolf (Alpha Underground Book 1) (19 page)

“Doesn’t look like much does she?”

I’d planned to feign weakness, but the truth was that throwing away the alpha mantle had taken a lot more out of me than I’d expected. So there was nothing pretend about my passiveness as one heavy human body after another jumped down to squelch through the muddy pit beside me.

“Looks can be deceiving.” This was Quill’s voice, his southern drawl no longer sounding so charming now that I understood the depth of his depravity. “So pay close attention.”

Then the cowboy shifter’s firm tone flickered into laughter as he caught sight of my underwear. I hadn’t taken the time to rip the thin layer of cotton off my wolf’s body during the minute recently spent in human form, instead choosing to focus on hunting down and then donning Crew’s collar during my last seconds alone. Now, as I realized how absurd my bedraggled wolf must look in her Tuesday undies, I regretted the oversight.

“Nice granny panties,” the nameless sidekick said, slipping one finger beneath the waistband to pull it taut, then letting the elastic snap back against my fur.

I almost growled, but restrained myself in time.
Sorry to disappoint, boys
, I thought instead.
If I’d known you were going to kidnap me and stuff me in a hole in the ground, I would have sprung for classier lingerie.

“Let’s get her up where we can see her,” Quill commanded, the moment of merriment past. My supposed pack mate clearly remembered how I’d taunted him with Lia’s stolen lips a few minutes earlier, and even my days-of-the-week panties weren’t enough to sidetrack him from his mission.

Two sets of rough hands settled beneath my shoulders and hips, and my wolf twitched despite my efforts to remain completely unmoving. At least I wasn’t two-legged while these monsters touched my bare skin. Instead, I felt absurdly grateful for the animal fur that buffered my wolf from our enemies’ malicious fingers.

Then my stomach swooped as I was heaved up to land on the edge of the hole. Until this point, I’d kept my eyes squeezed tightly shut, feigning slumber. But with my captors still in the pit below me, I knew my chance to escape had finally arrived.

Rousing my wolf with an effort, I reminded the animal of her marching orders as succinctly as possible.
I’m not going to weigh you down
, I told her.
Because you’ll need all the fleetness of foot you can muster.
We
’ve got to find cover before we’re recaptured.

She and I both knew that the wolf brain would only be responsible for the first few minutes of our retreat. After that, I’d take back over and buy us more time, keeping the SSS members away from Lia and Savannah for as long as possible. But, for now, our success or failure rested on the head of the wolf.

My animal half didn’t answer in words, but I felt her willingness as I carefully disentangled my human mind from her senses and dropped down her throat toward her belly. I didn’t want to go so far that I wouldn’t be available if she needed me. But I also wasn’t willing to repeat my usual mistake of not trusting the animal half to command her own skin, slowing our reaction time in the process. We’d need every bit of skill we could muster to tease the SSS males without being caught.

Then my lupine form was on her feet, running through wet grass that felt heavenly beneath our mud-caked paws. The sensation was distinctly different from my usual experiences of either being in charge or being entirely lost within the darkness of her insides. This time around, I could see our surroundings, albeit at a distance, the sensations similar to watching a movie rather than participating in the action.

As I’d suspected, my prison pit had been located beside a small house surrounded on all sides by trees. An inholding in the national forest, most likely.
Probably no more than an hour’s drive from the hotel where our pack holed up
, I mused.

Which meant we were roughly eight hours distant from Wolfie’s territory. If I’d had a body, my stomach would have sunk into my shoes. As it was, my human brain drifted a little lower down the wolf’s esophagus as I realized I’d made the wrong decision. I should have tried harder to track down local assistance rather than spreading my net so far afield. My new task of keeping Quill and his buddies busy for a third of a sun cycle seemed like an eternity.

“Shit! She’s awake!”

Speak of the devil. I didn’t look back, but from the sounds behind me I gathered that the second male had emerged from the pit and caught sight of our lupine form streaking away through the rain. Then Quill must have joined his comrade aboveground because energy began gathering in the air between us.

The tingling, hair-raising sensation was similar to the moment just before lightning struck, when electricity accumulated in the earth in preparation for spearing through the unwary. Although not as natural, our current reality was equally dangerous. My ex-captor was preparing to hit my wolf form with an alpha compulsion that her submissive nature had no chance of fighting against.

Based on the evidence of his elongated shift and his supposedly gentle persona, I hadn’t thought the cowboy shifter had it in him to order another wolf around. But now I realized that his supposed weakness had only been part of the act, just like his drifter persona and the tale of lost love. All had worked together to lower my defenses and prompt me to accept the cowboy shifter into our clan against both Lia and Hunter’s better judgment.

Now, I could finally sense the truth—Quill wasn’t a passive, laid-back shifter like Cinnamon. Wolf senses didn’t lie, and my animal body’s fur was standing on end even as she strained to put more distance between us and the power-hungry male.

We only had one chance of escape left. If I could squash my wolf as I’d done for most of my life, then the upcoming alpha compulsion would roll right off our back just like Hunter’s had when the uber-alpha appeared in my life for the first time. Quill’s superior dominance wouldn’t matter if I had no lupine nature to vanquish.

So I clawed upwards, struggling to dislodge my animal brain before Quill could recapture us with a single word. But it was too late.

“
Halt,
” the cowboy shifter commanded, the directive calm and even as if he knew exactly how his prey would respond.

And he was right.
I guess all those stolen halfie hearts paid off
, I thought as my wolf’s muscles froze to the earth.

Once again, we’d been caught effortlessly in Quill’s trap.

The pounding rain had picked up even more in the seconds I stood frozen to the earth, so I could barely hear the outpack males advancing. Still, I knew my wolf had only run about fifty feet before our muscles stopped working. Which meant I had roughly thirty seconds to get my act together before we ended up back down in that dark, dirty hole.

“Why are we taking her out now if moon-rise isn’t for another six hours anyway?” the nameless partner grumbled as the duo advanced on my frozen form. I felt my stomach rumble as I realized it had to be Saturday afternoon already, meaning I’d lost nearly a day to drugs and claustrophobic dazes. My legs abruptly weakened, and I rolled my eyes at my own psychosomatic reaction.

Wait a minute—I rolled my eyes?

Sure enough, taking stock of my physical sensations proved that my human brain now shared our lupine body with the animal. Which meant I might be able to push the latter aside after all and take to my heels before our captors reached our side.

Here goes nothing.

I strained with all my might against the wolf’s usually weak persona. Generally, it took no more than a flick of a virtual finger to toss her back down into the darkness of our shared subconscious. But Quill’s compulsion appeared to have locked the wolf in place just as thoroughly as it had pinned our paws to the earth a moment earlier.

But maybe....
Rather than straining against Quill’s command, I opted to work sideways this time around. Short of uber-alpha levels of control like Hunter’s, a compulsion didn’t usually halt involuntary body movements. Otherwise, underlings would all keel over from lack of oxygen to the brain.

So while Quill’s barked order made it impossible for me to move my legs or neck, my heart was still pumping and my lungs were still billowing. Plus, I maintained that other involuntary lupine reaction...the urge to scratch.

I tunneled my attention down to an imaginary itch directly beneath Crew’s collar. First, I pinpointed it in my mind—just under my left ear, midway down my neck. And as I focused, the creeping sensation slowly became real.

Muddy fur hung up beneath harsh fabric
, I thought and felt those wrong-directed hairs tweaking nerve endings in my skin.
Wet, heavy,
I noted, paying attention to the way the collar chaffed against my sensitive flesh. And was that a flea burrowing into the warm cavity underneath?

The imagined itch had become nearly unbearable by the time my wolf reached up with one hind leg to jab at our neckband. But I could have danced and sung inside her body with sheer relief. My ploy had worked!

Now, I’d just have to hope that the SSS’s banana extract was oil-based rather than water-based and hadn’t been completely washed away by the collar’s dunking. And that the wolf’s relentless clawing would be sufficient to dislodge whatever trace was left behind.

Scratch, scratch, scratch.
The collar moved in a circle around our shared neck, easing the itch and spreading relief through our nerve endings. But I didn’t relax because Quill and his partner were still moving ever close behind us. It might already be too late.

Then one lupine nail knocked against the tiny plastic receptacle that some nameless SSS member had sewn into our collar. The claw caught and dug in...and then the faintest aroma of rotten banana filled the air.

Abruptly, my wolf was gone. Or rather, the animal mind had been banished, leaving my human brain in full command of our once-shared lupine body.

Quill was close enough now that I could feel his body heat as one hand reached out to grab me by the ruff. But I was faster. I darted to one side, watching with delight as the cowboy shifter slipped and fell into the muddy ooze beneath our feet.

Then I was racing flat out toward the treeline not far away. Once I reached the forest, I’d have a little breathing room. Time to regroup and get my bearings, time to come up with a more complex plan than my current
escape at all costs
.

“Stop,
damn you!” Quill roared behind me. I glanced over one shoulder and saw that my enemy had regained his feet and was pulling out what looked like a handgun from a holster beneath his armpit. The SSS member’s current compulsion had failed, so he was going for more serious firepower.

Uh oh.
Good thing my wolf was still absent and my human brain wasn’t required to obey that second command.

I dodged behind a broad pine trunk as the first bullet ricocheted toward me. The next missile clipped the end of my tail as my human reflexes didn’t quite manage to dodge in time.

But then I was diving into the midst of a patch of greenbriers, slithering down a ravine, and darting deeper into the forest.

The outpack males’ voices dimmed behind me. I’d eluded pursuit.

Now, to see if I could keep Quill and his compatriots from giving up the hunt and turning their attention to the other prisoners for eight long, grueling hours.

***

As soon as I mustered a little breathing room, those dratted Tuesday panties were the first thing to go. I rubbed up against a rough-barked chestnut oak until the underwear slid down off my lupine hips and fell with a damp splat onto the ground at my feet.

Wrinkling my upper lip, I wished I could afford to simply dig a little hole and bury the offending garment right there. But, instead, I picked the fabric up in my mouth and trotted off. I had a plan.

As I’d hoped, my supposed alpha powers turned me into me a prize worth hunting despite the pouring rain. Nearly immediately, in fact, Quill had called in the third SSS member to join him and his partner in their search of the dripping woods, leaving Lia and Savannah alone in the momentary safety of their locked room. In other words, my plan had thus far been successful.

The goal now was to keep all three outpack males so busy searching that they didn’t have any leisure in which to molest the girls. To that end, I’d dodged into sight several times, leaving a paw print or purposefully broken twig here and there to signal my progress. It was a difficult game—always staying ahead of my potential captors without letting them lose hope that they’d eventually be able to find me.

But I needed a break. My stomach was rumbling and my brain was getting a little mushy from lack of calories. Plus, despite hours spent comatose within my prison cell, my eyelids were now heavy and begging a dose of REM sleep.

Let me lead
, my wolf whispered. Rather than soothing her with platitudes the way I would have in the past, I nodded our shared head. Yes, that was the perfect solution—for my human brain to nap within our shared body while the wolf took command for half an hour or so.

But the wolf didn’t boast the same complicated human logic that I found easy to harness. So I wanted to set her up with a good situation before I took a break.

Soon
, I promised, speeding up from a walk into a trot. One of my paws was cracked and already becoming infected after being dragged through miles of mud, but I ignored the pain and instead ran forward until I caught sight of a handy snag.

Riiip.
The inch-wide shred of pantie that remained behind on the protruding branch stub was just large enough to be noticeable without using up too much of my stash of fabric. And, to my delight, I saw that raindrops were already dragging dirt particles out of the cloth, leaving a whitish color behind.

Perfect. Even Quill’s brain-dead sidekick can’t miss that
, I noted. Then I turned right, wriggling under a deadfall to make the trail more difficult to follow before trotting straight up the nearest hillside.

Another snag, another pantie scrap, another elusive twist in my trail to keep the SSS members scratching their heads while thinking they were edging ever closer to their prey. Then, finally, when the last scrap of underwear was tossed atop a nearby bush, I gave my wolf the reins.

Wake me if you need me
, I requested. And, finally, I fell sound asleep.

***

The crunch of breaking bones roused me from what turned out to be a surprisingly effective nap. The sound was obviously not caused by big, worrisome wolf or human bones. Instead, tasty, little rodent bones splintered beneath our sharp lupine teeth.

My animal half had hunted down a snack.

Resourceful wolf
, I praised her. But then my human brain rose to look out of our shared eyes, and I had the impulse to take back every word of commendation...plus the hours of slumber that had preceded them. Once again, I’d trusted the wrong partner and let down my pack in the process.

While I’d been sleeping, the rainy day had dimmed into a clear but damp evening. And my wolf had hidden our shared body beneath a rhododendron bush at the edge of a clearing, so I didn’t have to worry about being noticed. No, the issue wasn’t inability to take in the scene or worry over my own safety...it was the gut-wrenching sight slowly coming into focus before us.

Altars.
I remembered one of the barflies mentioning that word on Tuesday evening and wondered now how I hadn’t realized that yesterday’s farm field was the wrong place entirely for an SSS ritual. Because there had been no sacrificial paraphernalia present there...unlike in our current location, where two huge stones caught the glow of the rising moon on their polished surfaces.

Surfaces that gleamed dark with previous rounds of spilled blood. Surfaces on which two small female figures were even now being bound into place.

Why didn’t you wake me earlier?
I demanded of the wolf. It was almost too late already. The SSS members must have given up on their hunt and returned to plan A some time ago, figuring two halfies in the hand were better than one in the bush.

I should’ve been present to dog their footsteps from prison cell to altar.

Maybe there would have been an opportunity to break the girls free. Maybe we could have all escaped already if my animal half hadn’t been more interested in rodent snacks than in the safety of our clan.

No chance to free them
, my wolf replied simply. Images flashed through our shared mind. Guns, an alert Quill, two other males watching his back. Then, she finished:
You needed rest and food. Now you can save our friends.

The animal brain wasn’t the best at expressing herself, but I could feel her emotions flowing through our shared body. She trusted me to come through with a clever plot to save the day. She figured that after a nap and a field mouse, I’d be capable of springing Lia and Savannah from their sacrificial altars, no sweat.

The wolf had so much faith in me. But I didn’t see how I could live up to her expectations. Not when I was naked and defenseless and faced with three armed men.

Speak of the devil
. While I’d wavered, Quill decided to get the ball rolling by calling into the half-light: “I know you’re out there, Fen. And I’m willing to offer you a deal. Surrender yourself and we’ll let these kids go.”

He paused, his honey-smooth voice turning ominous as he pulled a knife out of a sheath that hung from his belt. The blade was long and wicked, with a hook at one end perfect for gutting a deer...or a girl.

Savannah moaned in despair, but Lia kept her lips pressed close together as Quill’s knife rose seemingly of its own volition to settle in the soft spot at the base of her neck. “So what will it be, Fen?” my once-pack-mate demanded. “Them...or you?”