Midsummer Heat (9 page)

He paused for a second, a howl ripped from the depths of his soul and welling up through his throat until he gave it voice. It was a sound borne of rage and a warning. They’d taken his mate. Taken his Kelli. And now they were going to pay.

Man and wolf were in accord as he leapt from the rock, picking up the trail with ease and chasing down his enemies with blood in his heart and murder in his mind. Kelli had run, and she was fast. Terror had lent wings to her heels as she’d led her pursuers a merry chase through the woods.

But she’d been caught. Max skidded to a stop as the scent of blood, Kelli’s blood, exploded on the air. Snarls filled the air as he snapped at it with his teeth, snuffling about in the undergrowth to find the blood. A few spots, nothing more, not enough to cause her permanent injury. He paused, analyzing the scents. She hadn’t changed. Why hadn’t she shifted? Fast as she was in human form, as any wolf was, she would be stronger and faster as a wolf.

He didn’t get time to think on the matter. A scream shattered the silence and echoed through the trees. His head snapped up, eyes narrowing as his lips curled back from his teeth. Kelli. They were hurting Kelli.

They were going to die. He’d be eating bear steak tonight and fuck what their alpha over in Katy thought about it. Stratton was wolf territory and they’d dared…
dared
to set foot here and commit violence against one of his wolves. Against
his
mate.

Launching himself in the air, he raced through the trees, following Kelli’s scent and the sound of her screams as he headed higher and higher. They’d taken her up onto one of the ridges… His heart stuttered in his chest, paused and slammed painfully against his ribcage. It was hard to kill a wolf, they healed everything but the most grievous injuries, but it was possible if the damage was great enough. Throwing a wolf off one of these cliffs, with the razor sharp rocks below… Yeah, the damage would be great enough.

He upped his pace, running flat out. Fear pounded in time with his heartbeat. If he was too late… God, he didn’t even want to think about that. He had to be in time, or his life was over. After he killed as many bears as it took to avenge his mate.

He neared the top of the rise, paws scrabbling over the loose rocks but he kept going forward. Never losing ground. Not slowing. The screams stopped. Fear exploded as he put on a last spurt of speed. He had to get there in time.

* * *

“You fucking bitch. You just couldn’t take the fucking hint, could you?”

Bethany had a hard fist in the back of Kelli’s hair, yanking her head back so she could snarl into her face. The utter hatred and rage there took Kelli’s breath away. Pain lanced through her body from the silver spikes, each the length of a finger, that Bethany had driven into her body while the bears held her down. Four points of icy-pain and fire, agony radiated from them, stopping her change and locking her into her weaker human form.

“Hint? You’ve got something wrong in the head, lady. I
told
you I was going back to the city before midsummer,” Kelli gasped between the waves of agony. She
had
been going back to the city. Past tense. That was no longer the plan, but this crazy bitch didn’t need to know that.

“Yeah?” Bethany snarled again, showing teeth longer than human in her anger. “But you just had to screw about with my mate first? Is that it? You had to fuck him, didn’t you?”

Driving a finger into the wound in Kelli’s shoulder, Bethany twisted, driving the spike deeper. She hissed in pain. The silver burned, the pain like acid eating at her flesh, but she refused to scream. She wouldn’t give the bitch the satisfaction.

“Your mate?” she asked when she managed to regain her breath. “Funny, all my life I’ve been told bonded mates can’t fuck about with others.”

Stupid thing to say. Bethany threw back her head and howled her rage to the sky. When she looked back down, her eyes were the clear amber of her approaching beast.

Kelli knew she had to fight, to escape, but with the silver impaling her, her wolf was caged and out of reach. She couldn’t match Bethany’s strength. Her heels dug furrows in the dirt, small stones scraping against the half-buried rock as the two bears looked on, their faces impassive and massive arms folded over their chests.

Appealing to them for help would do no good; they’d held her down as their wolf friend had driven the stakes into Kelli’s shoulders and thighs. There was no love lost between wolves and bears, but since Max had become Stratton Alpha, he and the Bear Alpha had reached an understanding. Why would they risk the treaty by helping one wolf kill another?

“We haven’t managed to finish the bond yet,” Bethany growled, her voice too low for human as she dragged Kelli bodily to the edge of the cliff. “But we will, as soon as you’re out of the fucking way.”

Oh God, she was really going to do it. Gasping, Kelli fought every step of the way, desperate to stay away from the cliff. She’d grown up around here so she knew exactly what awaited her over the edge. Even with her ability to heal, she wouldn’t make it. Her body would be shattered and sliced on the rocks below, too broken for even her wolf to heal. Sorrow filled her. She’d never told Max she loved him. That she planned to stay. Planned to claim
him
at midsummer.

She’d grown up around here.

She stilled as the thought slammed back into her head. Bethany gained more ground, dragging her limp form another couple of feet as Kelli thought rapidly. If the other woman had been interested in killing her straight away, then she’d have already been over the cliff and shattered on the rocks below. But Bethany was more interested in making sure her final moments were as painful as possible, her finger in the wound in Kelli’s shoulder, twisting the silver deeper as she dragged her to the edge.

Kelli closed her eyes as they reached the edge, lest she give herself away, her hands around Bethany’s on her shoulders. She’d grown up around here. She knew these cliffs. She just had to hope Bethany didn’t.

“You’re a high flyer, aren’t you Kelli?” Bethany snarled, holding her out over the edge, hands on her wounded shoulders. Only her grip on the other woman’s wrists kept Kelli from failing. “Some big wig in the city…it’s all Max fucking talks about. Let’s see how good you are at flying.”

Kelli opened her eyes and smiled. It wasn’t a nice smile. “You know the saying, what doesn’t kill me…” and then she let go of Bethany’s wrists.

* * *

“
Nooooo!
”

Max crashed into the clearing by the cliff just in time to see Kelli fall, tumbling into human form to give voice to his pain in a bellow of anguish and rage. Bethany turned, the expression on her face startled and guilty.

“Max…this isn’t what it looks like. She attacked me… I-it was awful. I had to defend myself,” she wheedled, excuses rolling off her tongue as easily as the lies he was used to. “But it’s all better now. She can’t hurt me…can’t hurt
us
anymore. She was a cancer… You needed to be free of her.”

She took two steps toward him, her hand outstretched in placation. It trembled, matching her bottom lip, but Max didn’t care.

Energy rolled through him, around him, and whispered over his skin. His wolf form was less than a heartbeat away as he stalked toward her, the sounds rumbling from his lips nothing close to human. He was going to kill her, tear her limb from limb. Make her suffer for taking Kelli from him.

He couldn’t speak, couldn’t form the words through his rage. He simply growled at her as the bears moved to block him, the threat of violence hanging in the air, so thick that Max could taste it.

He bared his teeth, the canines wolf-like and lethally sharp. He’d go through them if he had to, and the sudden flash of aggression in their eyes told him that they knew it too.

“Out of my way,” he warned on a low growl, gathering energy and rolling it through his hands. As the bears watched, they changed.
Snick-snick-snick.
His talons extended with soft fleshy sounds. Just the talons, nothing else, the famous control of a pack-alpha keeping the rest of his body human.

The lead bear, a blond Max had seen before on one of his infrequent trips into Katy, lifted his chin. “Make us.”

Max grinned, the expression evil as it spread over his face. “I thought you’d never ask.”

With a roar, he opened himself to the wolf inside. The creature burst free, bones popping and his human skin tearing as between one step and the next he went from man not to wolf, but to something in between. Over six feet of wolfman, he was like something out of a nightmare, with talons that would put a sci-fi monster to shame.

Clawed paws hit the dirt as he rebounded off it, a deadly snarl in the back of his throat as he leapt into the attack. They were slower to change, only partway through when he hit the first one in the middle of the chest. Caught between man and beast, a dark eye widened as Max’s talons bit deep, tearing through skin starting to sprout fur like a hot knife through butter.

Blood poured over his hands as the bear roared in pain. Max roared back, muzzle to muzzle with the creature as he hooked his claws through its ribs and tickled its heart with a deadly touch. The bear gasped, convulsing as razor sharp claws shredded heart and lungs and slumped. He threw it aside, the half-turned body sliding and rolling down the slope until it came to rest against a trunk, loose stones and dirt piling up against it.

He turned at the sound of a roar. The remaining bear hit him in the midriff, tackling him to the ground. The air rushed out of his lungs as he hit the dirt, the back of his skull slamming against a rock. Stars exploded over his vision as the bear rose over him, claws raking his furred skin as it roared again. Almost as tall as he was, it’s weight alone was crushing. Madness shone in its eyes as it hunkered over him, trying to get a purchase with claws or teeth.

He blinked back the stars in his vision, snarling at the bear above as he batted its talons away. He was bleeding from numerous gashes and slices, but his wolf physiology was healing them as fast as the other were could inflict them. His own teeth flashed, snapping in the air as he fought to turn the bear. Seeing the danger, it yanked its head back. Too late. Max’s teeth closed around it’s muzzle and with a heave, he tore it’s top jaw clean from its face.

“Oh my god. Baby, are you okay?” Bethany asked, the bear lifting off him as he heaved, her expression one of concern and caring. Max’s lips rolled back from his teeth as his hand shot out to close around her throat. He rose up from the ground, the bear carcass next to him still jerking and twitching as its lifeblood poured from the ruins of its face to stain the dirt, and lifted her high in the air above him.

The blood drained from her face, her skin turning as pale as a sheet. She scrabbled at his hand and wrist, trying to loosen his grip as he slowly crushed her throat.

“I needed to be free of her?” His voice was little more than a growl, the tones too low for anyone other than another were to hear, the words skewed by the vicious teeth that filled his mouth.

Not many could attain a half-form, and most couldn’t talk at the same time but Max had always been unique. Qualities he’d hoped to pass onto his children. But with Kelli gone, that was it. There would be no children. Not now. He’d avenge her, then it would be all over. He’d give up the pack and take the midnight run, ask her brother for permission to be buried beside her.

Bethany couldn’t answer, her face purple as she gasped for air and struggled in his hold.

“Free of her? The only one I need to be free of is you,” he growled as he tightened his grip further. “I should never have let you and your cousin join the pack. Should have put you down like the feral creatures you are.”

Anger made his grip brutal and the pain of losing his mate added a rough shake as he held Bethany high, her feet dancing a jig. Something in her throat under his hand cracked sharply. She gasped, her body rigid before her eyes rolled back in her head and she slumped.

“Please…don’t kill her. She’s not worth it.”

The whispered gasp made him whirl, dropping the woman in his hands like a hot cake to see Kelli, bruised and bloody, crawling over the lip of the cliff. Her hands, the nails ragged and torn, scrabbled for purchase on the rocks as she hauled herself over to safety inch by inch, climbing up the root system that latticed the side of the rocks. Within an instant Max was by her side, his half form lost in the mere second it took to reach her. He grabbed her wrist, hands human but no less strong as he hauled her up and into his arms.

“Oh God, Kelli. I thought I’d lost you.”

The words were torn from the depths of his soul as he crushed her against him, holding her tightly to his chest. She trembled, her delicate frame shuddering as he dropped kisses on her hair, over her temple, anywhere he could reach until she tilted her face up to his. Taking her lips, he kissed her with the ferocity of a drowning man claiming an air source.

“Please, don’t ever do that to me again,” he begged, breaking the kiss to look at her again. “The moment I saw you go ov…” The words paused, stilled in his throat, his eyes closing for a second as he re-lived that terrible moment again.

She chuckled, the soft sound of amusement snapping his eyes open again to gaze on her. Her smile was small and wry, her lips bracketed with pain as she lifted a hand to stroke her fingertips over his.

“Sure, I’ll avoid crazy psychotic bitches who are after my mate like the plague. Promise.”

My mate.

The words hit him like a juggernaut. His bigger body held still, he looked at her, trying not to let hope run away with him.

“Mate?” The words came out as a strangled whisper, but he didn’t care. “You mean… You’ll stay?”

She smiled, pulling his head down until his lips were a bare whisper from hers. “Midsummer…you’re mine, Alpha.”

The soft breeze carried the warm scent of the night forest and the wilderness. Kelli stepped out onto the back veranda of her childhood home, naked and totally unselfconscious. Unlike most women of her age she was comfortable in her skin. Perhaps it had something to do with the fact she had another, completely different one hidden beneath. One that she was so in tune with that when the moon was high she had trouble picking which she preferred.