Lonely Alpha (11 page)

“What?” she demanded, rising onto her elbow
and fixing Jack with a betrayed stare. “I though you meant for me
to come with you.”

“Do you want to?”

She nodded without hesitation. Tracking the
hunter would be dangerous, but waiting here by herself while Jack
went after him alone…well, that would be downright agonizing.

One corner of his mouth tilted in a
half-grin. “Yeah, I thought so. Never did meet any shifter, male or
female, who would stand for staying behind while their mate went on
a dangerous hunt, if they could help it.”

Well, she’d walked right into that one. But
they’d already said all they had time to on the subject of mates.
“Let’s go.”

He nodded. “And don’t worry; I’ll protect
you. Just follow my lead.”

Within a moment, she found herself looking
into the eyes of a wolf. She shifted too – the unity and sense of
purpose she shared with Jack made it easy. To her surprise, he
paused to lick her muzzle, then flashed her a wolfy grin before he
slipped out of the den.

She followed, delighted to see that his gait
was smooth and easy, a far cry from the limping shuffle he’d used
to enter the den. The moon had worked its magic on him, as it had
on her. She felt no pain as she walked at his flank, stopping when
he did to sniff the ground, searching for the scent of their
hunter.

Jack nudged her shoulder with his muzzle and
looked pointedly down at his feet. Taking his cue, she lowered her
head until her nose hovered a mere inch above the ground and
inhaled deeply.

This man’s scent was nothing like Jack’s. It
was vaguely sour, with traces of soap that failed to completely
mask his natural body odor and a thin veneer of the outdoors that
spoke of hours spent stalking through the woods. She nodded,
signaling that she’d caught the scent. Now that she had it in her
head, she suspected that she’d be able to remember it easily. It
seemed that tracking would come naturally to her in her lupine
form.

Jack led the way, pausing frequently to
confirm the scent trail. They wove deeper into the woods, and it
was all unfamiliar territory to Mandy. She trusted that Jack knew
the way though, and felt surprisingly secure at his side as night
fell in earnest, cloaking the forest in darkness. That was another
advantage they had over their hunter. In this form, they had night
vision superior to that of humans. A crescent moon hung in the sky,
and though its light was faint to human eyes, it illuminated the
forest generously for them.

The hunter’s trail was long and curving, and
eventually it turned back in the direction of Jack’s cabin. Had the
hunter gone to wait for them there, assuming they’d eventually
return? They’d been smarter than that. Perhaps they could turn the
tables on him.

Just what kind of psychotic man must this
hunter be? When Mandy thought of big game hunters, ridiculous
images of British men with monocles wearing khaki short sets
flooded her mind, perhaps a product of the cartoons she’d watched
as a kid. That stereotype contrasted sharply with the Tennessee
mountains though, so her mind was left blank, and a prickle of
curiosity ran down her spine as they drew closer and closer to the
cabin. When it was clearly visible beyond the trees, Jack
stopped.

The cabin was dark and still, looking just as
they’d left it. The hunter’s scent trail was leading directly to it
though, and when Jack raised his muzzle and scented the air, a low
growl rumbled in his chest. Clearly, the hunter was nearby. Jack
simply watched, a statue-still sentinel, and Mandy did the same,
eyes searching for any sign of their enemy.

They didn’t have to wait long. A flash of
movement caught Mandy’s attention, and she knew by the way Jack
tensed beside her that he’d seen it too. As they watched, a figure
rounded the corner of the cabin, emerging from behind the building.
The barrel of his rifle glinted unmistakably in the moonlight. Was
he watching, just as they were, waiting for them to approach so he
could sniper them off as they tried to make it home? The hair on
Mandy’s hackles stood up, and a growl threatened to escape her at
the thought. The evil bastard hunkered down in front of the porch
this time, his gun held at the ready. Jack turned his attention to
Mandy, a hard golden gleam in his eyes. She could smell his anger,
his determination.

She followed him silently as he paced a wide
half-circle around the cabin, moving to the woods behind it. From
here, they’d be able to emerge from the forest unseen and sneak up
on the man from behind. She was ready to follow Jack, but he gave
her another one of those meaningful looks, this one unmistakably
stern.

She shook her head, taking a deliberate step
forward to stand by his side. He exhaled in what might have been a
canine version of a sigh, then shifted.

The wolf was gone and it its place was a
heavenly vision: Jack’s thoroughly human body, all muscle and hair
and sharp, chiseled features. And all naked. “Mandy, baby, stay
here.”

She shifted too – seeing him this way made
her want to be human so badly that she hardly had a choice. “I want
to go with you,” she said, placing her hands on his chest and
meeting his eyes with a firm stare of her own.

“No. You’d do more harm than good – I’d be
too worried about you to think straight. Just watch from here. I’ll
be sneaking up from behind, and I’ll be on him before he even has a
chance to fire a shot.” He smoothed a stray wisp of hair off of her
face – her blond locks always seemed to be especially crazy after
she shifted back to her human form. “It’ll be safer for both of us
if you stay.”

“Jack…” She wrapped her arms around his waist
and embraced him tightly. It was all too easy to remember the sight
and smell of his blood. “What if something happens to you?”

“I’ll come back to you. I promise.”

The next thing she knew, she was hugging a
big, shaggy wolf. His thick fur was warm and soft against her skin
as he stood on his back legs, taller than her as his paws rested on
her shoulders. He touched his nose to her cheek and then he was
gone, sneaking soundlessly out of the woods, toward the cabin.
Mandy shifted back into her wolf form and reluctantly resigned
herself to watching.

Jack stalked silently toward the oblivious
hunter, his steps careful and measured, yet eager at the same time.
With each pace he moved closer, and Mandy’s heart beat faster. By
the time he was within a few yards of the hunter, she was a bundle
of nerves. If she’d been in her human form, she would have been
doused in cold sweat. She watched intently, never taking her eyes
off Jack and the hunter-turned-hunted. She had to stifle a yelp of
dread when the hunter whirled.

Whether he’d heard or only sensed something,
it was impossible to tell, but he definitely knew Jack was there.
He leveled his gun as he pivoted, aiming the barrel of the
high-powered rifle right at Jack’s chest.

Jack was too quick for him. Just as the gun
fired with a resounding
boom
loud enough to hurt Mandy’s
sensitive canine ears, he weaved to the side, dodging the bullet
and leaping under the gun, his jaws snapping. A furious growl
drowned out the echoing gun shot, and Jack sunk his teeth into the
man’s lower leg. Mandy vaguely remembered reading somewhere that a
wolf’s bite was powerful enough to crush bone. It must have been
true, because the man roared, his cry ringing with pain. With a
quick jerk of his head, Jack pulled the man’s foot out from under
him, yanking him to the ground.

The man rolled, but that only made it easier
for Jack to bite down on the meatier part of his calf. The scent of
his blood drifted all the way to Mandy’s vantage point in the
woods. She didn’t even have time to be repulsed – she was just glad
it wasn’t Jack’s.

Her gratitude was short-lived. The hunter had
retained enough sense to defend himself, and while trying to shoot
Jack might have resulted in him blowing his own foot off, the butt
of the rifle still made an effective weapon. He brought it down
onto the top of Jack’s head, and the resounding
crack
could
be heard all the way from the woods. Mandy winced, her veins
flooding with worry. She had to help him. As that thought crushed
her mind with all the force of a falling anvil, a blur of motion
flared in the corner of her eye.

She shifted her focus from Jack for the
fleetingest of seconds, eyeing the pick-up truck that had just
rolled out from behind a screen of pines and into the open area of
Jack’s driveway. A logo and words emblazoned on its side marked it
as a state vehicle – a park ranger’s truck. Had someone finally
noticed the fallen trees, or perhaps heard the nighttime gunfire
and come to investigate? The vehicle was moving fast, and it
skidded to a halt, the door flying open. A huge bear of a man
jumped out, a rifle cocked and ready in his thick arms. He began to
raise it, and Mandy panicked. The scene had to look like an
innocent human being attacked by a wild animal. The ranger would
shoot Jack. She launched herself from her hiding place, dirt flying
under her paws as she bounded over the half-wild, moonlit lawn.

The blow over the head had apparently stunned
Jack, and though he’d managed to rise to his feet again, so had the
hunter. The ranger was only yards away, his gun raised. Any second
now, a potentially deadly bullet would fly from its barrel. As if
that wasn’t bad enough, the hunter had also leveled his rifle at
Jack. Both men were poised to shoot. Mandy growled with rage and
frustration and ran as fast as her four long legs could carry her.
Her heart was beating so fast it seemed in imminent danger of
bursting. It was easy to imagine sinking her teeth into the hunter
and tearing him apart, as Jack had begun to. But she never got the
chance.

The hunter’s head snapped in her direction,
and in the moonlight, she could make out dark eyes staring from a
face that might have belonged to any man. A cruel smile tilted his
mouth, and he hurried to train his rifle on her. Jack leapt,
snarling, teeth snapping, but the hunter pulled the trigger
first.

The bullet pierced Mandy’s chest, stopping
her as effectively as a brick wall. Her legs stopped moving and she
was airborne, flying through the moonlit night. She tumbled through
the grass, her body surely bruising as it met the hard ground, but
that didn’t compare to the fire that had begun to spread through
her chest. She gasped for air, but the pain was so intense that she
couldn’t seem to make her lungs work. A howl of pure horror pierced
the night, followed quickly by a second shot. Blackness was
threatening to invade her vision, and she let it, not wanting to
see Jack lying on the ground as she was, bleeding. She committed
her last seconds of lucidity to remembering the moment she’d
impressed upon her mind in the den, when she and Jack had been
making love. The sensuality stood in sharp contrast to the visceral
grip of impending death, but in a way it was much the same; she was
losing herself, fast.

Chapter 8

Something tickled Mandy’s ear, making it
itch. The annoyance was something she’d just have to live with,
because her limbs were heavy as lead, impossible to move. Besides,
her lungs were on fire, which proved a distraction, if an unwelcome
one. Her body was an immobile mass of suffering. And she was
suffocating. Realizing that, she sucked in a breath, which felt
like a mistake. Fresh agony knocked the air right back out of her
lungs. She wasn’t sure what had happened, or how she had died, but
she was clearly in Hell.

“Mandy!” A low voice cut through her
half-formed speculations, gloriously familiar.

Jack. She tried to say his name, but it
bounced off the walls of her mind, trapped inside. Frustrating, but
at least she knew now that she hadn’t passed into eternal
damnation. A sensation that had nothing to do with pain filled her
as a roughened hand cupped her cheek and Jack said her name
again.

“She’s human again!” Jack’s voice was
exultant, hopeful now. “I think it’s working.”

She didn’t know what he was talking about,
but the sound of his voice was a balm to her body and mind. Longing
flooded through her as she pictured his face, remembering how it
had looked as he’d made love to her. She had to see him.

Opening her eyelids was like lifting a car,
but she finally managed and was rewarded by the sight of the most
perfectly handsome man she’d ever seen. His hair was standing on
end, there were flecks of blood on his jaw and his eyes were
gleaming with something halfway between insanity and tentative joy,
but she still thought so. Another man stood – no, towered – some
distance behind him. Her heart sped as terrifying memories sent a
jolt of awareness through her mind. “Jack.” It came out a whisper,
though she’d meant to scream his name in warning.

“I’m here, sweetheart.” He picked up one of
her hands and held it to his mouth, his lips brushing it in what
might have been a kiss, or perhaps a silent prayer. The floorboards
creaked beneath the other man as he shifted his weight, but Jack
seemed unconcerned.

How was he not dead? She didn’t have the
ability to ask – not yet, but the question ate at her from the
inside as she stared at the enormous park ranger who had raised his
gun and fired at Jack. Had he really missed from such a short
distance? What the hell was he doing here? She forced her tired
eyes to focus on her surroundings. ‘Here’ turned out to be the
inside of Jack’s cabin. She was lying on what felt like the kitchen
table, directly next to the largest window. Moonlight filtered
through the panes, and the curtain was what had tickled her ear.
She would have thought she’d imagined the shooting, but there was
no denying that she’d been hit. The only mystery was how Jack had
survived and why the ranger was here, and the hunter gone…