Kalen (2 page)

“Come on, you two. Don’t start bickering here. We need to search the room.”

Randy snorted at Bastien’s comment. “We generally don’t bicker with each other. We share that for our younger brother and Dimitri.” He bared his teeth in a large grin. “We can’t help it. It’s fun.”

Bastien was already digging around in the drawers of the bureau, opening and closing each one in turn. He waved back toward the bed without looking. “We need to get this woman out of here before she wakes up and starts screaming.” He took a moment to look at Kalen. “Take care of her while we continue to search. She’s going to have questions, lots of them, and we need to know how much she knows.” He shoved his fingers through his hair, obviously agitated. “And what the
good
doctor gave her. If she’s had the serum, we’ll have to take her with us, and she’s most likely not going to take kindly to our kidnapping her.”

Of course she wouldn’t, but they couldn’t have the woman running off to the police screaming that there were werewolves in her city and she was one of them. He looked out the still-opened door and into the parking lot of the cheap hotel. It didn’t matter that this was a small town. Otherwise sane people screaming werewolf usually raised eyebrows no matter how small the community.

Kalen knelt on the bed. Reaching out, he took the woman by the shoulder and rolled her over. Pain and terror-filled violet eyes stared up at him for a split second before she grabbed his forearm and sank her newly formed lycan canines into his wrist. The apron she wore declaring her as one of the hotel maids barely had time to register in his mind before her assault. He growled with pain as he grasped her chin and inserted ever-growing pressure on the hinges of her jaw in an effort to release himself.

“Shit! She’s biting me. Sonofabitch, it hurts like hell!” The woman had a good grip on him, too. Low growling sounds came from her throat as he continued to exert pressure on her jaw until she finally let go. He watched, horrified as she screamed, begging them to kill her to stop the pain.

“Cover her mouth, for crissakes,” Randy hissed as he ran to close the door. “We’ll be lucky if no one heard that.”

Hell, they were already lucky. The woman had jaws like steel. He looked down at the deep puncture wounds on his wrist, cocked his brow and gave the others a half grin. “She’s still mostly human— does this mean I’ll become one of
them
now?”

A muffled scream drew his attention. Cameron was trying to hold her mouth shut while her beautiful face elongated into a muzzle. He wasn’t sure
he
would have had the courage to try that.

She continued a mixture of screams and howls as she jerked around on the bed, her body trembling with exertion. Her organs shifted and her bones popped and cracked as she changed shape into that of a beautiful and large sable wolf.

The change was painful the first several times. The pain was so intense, one tended to fight it. He supposed he should have tried to get into her mind and help her, but he’d just been so startled that she bit him, not to mention worrying about what new hell her screams may bring to the door.

He laid a soothing hand on her head and looked down into those strange violet eyes. “It’s okay. You’re okay.” He smiled. “I know you may think I’m crazy, but believe me, everything will be all right. We’ll tell you what happened and we’ll help you to the best of our ability.”

He continued to stare down into her beautiful violet gaze that drew him in. Kalen was aware of nothing going on about them as he stared down into those startling eyes. It was almost as though everything in the world stopped and it was just the two of them in this room.

“Is she okay now?”

Cameron’s words brought him out of the strange trance she had lured him into and Kalen moved away with a frown. “Yeah, she seems okay. At least the change seems to have startled her into calming down. It’ll be a while before she changes back. We should probably get her in one of the vans and head back to Walker with her.” He shrugged. “At least if we take her out of here now, no one is going to call the cops and say we’re kidnapping a local.”

Randy yanked her clothes from her and rolled them up into a ball. “It wouldn’t do to have someone see you carrying what they are going to think is a dog dressed in jeans and a t-shirt out to the vehicles.”

“Yeah,” he agreed, “especially one wearing a hotel apron.” He shook his head. “How many others has that lunatic turned?” What if they’d missed someone? What if there were dozens of people out there turning into God knows what all over the place? The implications were just too horrible to contemplate. They were shifters. They shared what they had and they helped their kind with everything. Just the thought that there were others out there who needed their help was enough to make him growl.

Kalen leaned down and scooped the woman-turned-wolf up off the bed and carried her to the van. “Take her back to headquarters and don’t let her get away. That lunatic, Thornton, injected her. She can’t know what’s happening to her. Make sure she gets the help she needs.”

Two of the men gave him a short jerk of the head in response, shut the doors and climbed into the front seat.

Cameron ran out and handed them the wad of clothes through the window. “Take her clothes. Since we don’t know anything else about her, this is all she has for now. Toss them in the back in case she changes again.”

Leave it to him to think of the woman’s comfort. Kalen would have just expected her to lay back there naked. It was a fact of life for their kind. The unfortunate detail of her humanity hadn’t even crossed his mind.

He slapped the side of the van. “Get going. The faster you get her out of town, the better.” It was only a matter of time before someone came looking for her.

Kalen watched as the van pulled around to the driveway, the right blinker flashing as the driver made the turn that took them back the way they came. His stomach clenched as the van moved away. Something told him he should have been in there with her.

Shaking his head, he took a deep cleansing breath and headed back to the room. He needed to convince Bastien to get moving. God only knew how many others the crazy scientist would inject before this was all over.

The image of terrified violet eyes flashed though his mind. Kalen swallowed around the lump of sorrow in his throat and looked down at his shaking fingers. What was getting into him? Why should he give a damn about some strange woman-turned-wolf that he’d just met?

Chapter Two

Ally lay in the back of the van, horrified. She’d just been kidnapped! Worse yet, she had just changed into a dog and
then
was kidnapped. What other bizarre turn would her life take today?

She looked at the pile of clothes they threw in the back of the van with her, pulled them closer with a claw-tipped paw, then rested her head on them with a dejected sigh. What was she supposed to do now? Nothing came to mind as she closed her eyes to think. With luck, maybe she’d go to sleep and when she woke, this nightmare would be over and she would be human again.

One thing was certain, she didn’t like the fact that she felt relieved that she’d splurged and worn one of her three matching bra and panty sets today. Why should she give a damn what these lunatics thought of her underwear?

It was probably remembering the man she bit that made her go all girly and think of what underwear she wore. Ally didn’t look at him before she bit him. All she could think of at that moment was that she was in pain. For some reason she couldn’t comprehend, she struck out and sank her teeth into the first person she could reach.

The agony was so great that it drove her to want to hurt those around her. It was some strange impulse she had never experienced before. She bit him hard, too. She tasted his blood on her tongue and part of her liked it. She gagged as she thought back on it. How could she like the taste of blood? It wasn’t until after he managed to pry her teeth from his wrist that she got a good look at him.

He was tall. She could tell that by the way he loomed over the bed after he stood up straight. His gray gaze seemed to bore into hers with a look of…what? She tilted her head, thinking. Sorrow, perhaps. Sorrow mixed with anger and a touch of something else that, for a split second, she’d hoped was attraction.

Ally had done little more than stare at the dark hair, before her gaze moved to his broad shoulders, wide chest and well-formed biceps that were clearly visible beneath the too-tight t-shirt he wore. Hell, she could even see his eight-pack beneath the stretched cotton. She knew it was eight because she counted every well-defined ridge with a yearning she wouldn’t admit to out loud. His wide, muscular chest tapered down to a narrow waist just above an impressive bulge she didn’t even want to think about.

It was then that she regained her senses. The man was nuts. They all were. Shape shifters didn’t exist. There wasn’t some vile serum out there to change people into animals either. She was dreaming. That was the only explanation that made sense. If she could just manage to go to sleep, she would wake up and find her alarm going off on her bedside table and she would get up and call in sick. One thing was sure. She wasn’t going to work after
this
crazy dream.

Still, the strange gray eyes of the man she’d bitten haunted her. On a normal day, she would have thought those eyes beautiful, but not today. She shook her head. Nope. Today, those gray eyes meant imprisonment, perhaps death. They certainly meant kidnapper. She frowned—or was it dognapper? She
was
a dog now, after all. Whatever term she laid at his door, it certainly wasn’t drop-dead gorgeous, built like a linebacker on steroids hottie either. Really it wasn’t.

Ally sighed and watched the two in the front who remained silent. Every once in a while, the guy in the passenger seat would look back at her as though he expected her to disappear…or do tricks. Well, he could just forget it. She wasn’t rolling over for anyone. Ally supposed she could escape if she could just manage to get the door opened. How she would manage that without hands, though, was beyond her scope of understanding at the moment.

Too many things kept swimming around in the pudding she called a brain and not many of them had to do with thoughts of escape. In fact, most of them had to do with the man the others had called Kalen.

She thought back on his dark hair and tall, good looks wondering if she could stay attracted to a man like that in real life. She gave another sigh, deciding she could. The man was very well put together as well as handsome. It wasn’t every day you ran into a man like that who wasn’t on TV, or trying to make it there. Besides, he didn’t even seem to notice he was good looking.
That
trait was even harder to find in a male. They usually thought they were God’s gift to women even if they were bald with a potbelly and warts on their face.

Ally rested her head on her paws and groaned. Leave it to her to find herself attracted to a man who didn’t exist. She
knew
he didn’t. This
was
a nightmare after all. She just needed to find a way to wake herself up.

After what seemed like hours, the van slowed and they turned right and drew to a stop.

“You get the gas and I’ll run in and get us some snacks,” the passenger said to the driver. He turned back to Ally. “Stay here and I’ll get you something to eat.” He looked back at the other man. “I hope she likes hamburgers.”

Ally sat still in the van for a few minutes before she picked up her clothes in her mouth and made her way to the front of the van.

The passenger side window was down! Ally didn’t even think about it. She jumped, losing her jeans when a belt loop hooked on the door lock on the way out. The shout behind her spurred her on without them. At least she still had her t-shirt and underwear grasped tight in her teeth.

Besides, this was a dream. What did it matter if she didn’t have clothes? She would wake up soon anyway, wouldn’t she?

Everything would have been okay if it wouldn’t have been for some little annoying voice in her head that kept asking,
If you really believe this is a dream, why are you running?

* * * *

Kalen had just climbed into the van when his phone rang. He pulled it from his pocket on the third ring. It was Merrick, one of the men sent to take the woman to their headquarters in Walker.

She’s gone. She just jumped from the van and ran.”

“Then follow her.” How hard was that to figure out? Kalen shook his head. Sometimes these guys could be so dense.

“I can’t.” He paused and lowered his voice. “There are too many people hanging around. They’d notice me changing, or disappearing into the woods and not coming back. There would be no way to explain why or how I disappeared after I made it into the brush.”

“Dammit!”

“What is it?” Bastien asked from the back seat. His mate, Carly, sat on his lap as usual. There wasn’t a minute in the day that the newly mated pair wasn’t touching if they were together.

“The woman has escaped.”

Kalen turned his attention back to his phone. “How long ago did she get away?”

“Only a few minutes.” The other man cursed. “We stopped to fuel up. Alexander was pumping gas while I went in to get something to eat.”

There was a loud metallic thump over the line as though the other man punched the side of the van. He probably had.

“I forgot and left the damned window down. She jumped out and ran, leaving her jeans behind. At least she still had her t-shirt the last time we saw her.”

“Jesus!” He turned to Bastien. “The woman is loose in wolf form with nothing more than a t-shirt to wear if she changes back.”

When
she changed back was more like it. As a new shifter, she would be like one of their kind during adolescence. The change could come upon her at any time. Hell, she could already be human again. Cold and alone, she wouldn’t know where to go, or whom to trust.

That was just what they needed. Hot on the trail of Dr. Richard Thornton, they were too close to give up now. They had to keep going in search of the madman responsible for injecting so many with his serum. They had to stop him at all costs.