Pack Challenge (4 page)

Zach shrugged. “It’s a flaw.”

“I’m glad you’re so comfortable with the real you.” Yates smiled. “You take first watch tonight with Conall.”

“Babysitting?” Zach didn’t bother trying to hide his annoyance. He hated babysitting and hated the thought of sitting around watching that adorable piece of ass from the woods.

Yates snorted and walked off, tossing back over his shoulder, “Every princess needs her knight.”

Zach sighed. “Princess my ass.”

Four hours since they left Marrec’s shop. Four hours and these two crazy bitches were
still
arguing, but now they’d moved on to clothes.

What Sara shouldn’t wear and what she should wear. Miki pushed for something conservative and easy to run in should they have to “Make a break for it.” Angelina wanted Sara in something classy but hot that would have Zach “Fucking her on his bike.” Sara had no intention of wearing any of their suggestions. But her two friends were like rabid dogs. Once they started arguing it was hard to get them to stop. Sara tried to escape when she closed up the store for Marrec, but they’d argued all the way over to her beat-up white pickup and got in with her.

Such a shame she stopped keeping her shotgun in her gun rack.

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Shelly Laurenston

Sara sighed and shifted on her bed, trying to ease the pain in her right leg. Honestly, the things she put up with. They were extremely lucky she loved them both so much. Otherwise, she might have killed them by now.

And while they argued and threatened, Sara obsessed and worried.

Her leg had gotten worse the past couple of months and she didn’t know why. It never fully healed after she and her father were attacked, although to the naked eye it simply looked like a badly healed wound.

That’s why she’d been drinking the other night. It was the only thing that truly dulled the pain and her brain. It had become a constant challenge for her to battle the voices in her head that told her nothing was right.

Her body wasn’t right. She wasn’t right. Her life was a mess. A boring mess, but a mess. Sara didn’t exactly live on the wild side. That night of drinking was about as wild as she got, and the only thing she remembered doing was kissing a stranger. A really gorgeous stranger. He had the thickest neck, and those beautiful hazel eyes just seemed to…

Sara shifted again. This time not from the pain in her legs but the throbbing between them.

This was ridiculous. She was a nice girl. Not a whore. Men either treated her with the utmost respect or they were cruel about her scars.

There was no in-between. They either treated her like a princess or treated her like a freak. Not Zach, though. No, he treated her like she was hot. But she wasn’t the “hot friend”. She was the sensible friend.

Angelina was the hot friend. The reason guys became friends with Sara in the first place. Angelina wore designer clothes and expensive high-heeled shoes. She was the only woman Sara knew who would come to Skelly’s on Goth night wearing a champagne-colored dress—her

“signature color” as Angelina called it—matching heels, and a purse.

Miki was the brilliant, super-cute friend. She was the one who could diffuse the bomb in thirty seconds with bubble gum, toothpaste and a binder clip while still looking cute in a belly shirt. Miki was working on

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Pack Challenge

her third master’s degree because she thought the whole “PhD thing” was so overplayed. Miki was the one in high school who hadn’t been able to use a computer or phone for three years “as per court order” and knew all the M.O.s of serial killers from the Twentieth Century because every woman should know the warning signs of a serial killer. “What if you’re dating one?” she’d always ask with a smile, before giving a gruesome detail or two about some murderer.

And then there was Sara. Reliable, dependable Sara. “The Golden Retriever of the group,” her grandmother once sneered at her over dinner. She was always the “good buddy” or the “little sister”. She was never the “piece of ass”. And after twenty-eight years she’d learned to accept that fate. She accepted it like the pain in her leg and the scar on her face. It was there and it was who she was. Might as well just deal with it.

Until
he
came along. Zach. She thought she’d dreamed that kiss.

That amazing freakin’ kiss. Part of her wished she had. The reality of it getting a little too much to bear. A little too stressful. Shit, she’d been drunk. Drunk-Sara was fun. Drunk-Sara set things on fire. Drunk-Sara grabbed groping men by the balls and squeezed until they passed out.

There was no way Golden Retriever Sara could compete with Drunk-Sara. And Drunk-Sara was a liability.

Sara didn’t remember much about the night besides the kiss and someone grabbing her while she was on the way to the bathroom. And beautiful man saved her. She still remembered the feel of his lips against hers and the impressive bulge in her hand when she’d massaged his cock. And, for some unknown reason, she was obsessed with his teeth.

She just couldn’t remember why.

Sara sighed. She could still hear her friends yelling. Something about a thong and how she wasn’t a slut…unlike some people.

Sara scooted off the bed and stormed into the living room. No use yelling at them, then it would be three crazy women yelling. Instead, she

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Shelly Laurenston

went to her stereo system and turned on some loud techno music from a DJ in Germany.

Miki and Angelina continued to yell for another minute, until they realized they couldn’t hear themselves much less each other. They turned to stare at Sara. When she was certain she had their full attention, she turned the music down, but not off.

“Are you two done?”

“She started it,” Angelina complained.

“
I
started it?” Miki snapped.

“That’s it!” Sara yelled. She walked to her kitchen and grabbed three beers from the refrigerator. “Here.” She handed one each to her friends.

“You two bitches are making me nuts.” Sara opened the ice cold can and took a swig. “Besides, it doesn’t matter what I wear.” She took another swallow of beer. “I don’t have a chance in hell with a guy like that.” Sara went to her front door, determined to sit on her porch and enjoy the cool night. But Miki’s cutting voice caused her to trip on the doorframe and stumble outside. “If we’d left the store, he would have fucked you on the counter.”

Concealed behind trees, Zach watched Sara’s place. “I want you at her house,” Yates had ordered after he’d argued. “Make sure she doesn’t have any more surprise visits.”

Yeah, he hated babysitting duty and Yates knew it. But Zach put up with it…for now. Because everyone understood, clearly even Yates, that Zach would be making a move to be Pack leader. He was ready. And Zach wanted it. He was just waiting for the right time to move. He loved Yates like a brother, but the man was getting weak. It wasn’t age either.

It was his woman. Casey was tough but toxic. Far too human for the role. Wanting power. Her primary concern, no matter what she said, was not the Pack, but her standing within it. The females put up with her, but he could tell that wouldn’t last much longer. His sister, who had

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Pack Challenge

been traveling for about a year, had a good shot at becoming Alpha Female, but he wasn’t sure she even wanted it or would leave Europe to come get it.

That’s why Casey’s recent foray into the past was an obvious tactic to keep Zach busy and out of the way. She never cared about Bruce Morrighan’s missing offspring before. In fact, they all knew Sara’d been taken by her grandmother after the brutal killing of the girl’s father. And although Casey thought she could keep Zach away for weeks “monitoring the girl”, as she put it, they never expected the Pride to actually be hunting the woman. Finish off the job they’d started so long ago. But Pride females were notoriously patient. They’d probably known where Morrighan’s offspring was for years, but no one, absolutely
no one,
would even think about going up against Lynette Redwolf.

Why? Because the bitch was crazy.

A Native American and a shapeshifter, Lynette rejected both aspects early on. Instead she tried to become a “normal woman”. She buried the Beast and stayed human. The fact that she’d come from a long line of shapeshifting shamans apparently meant nothing to her.

Her plan had been to raise her daughter, Kylie, the same. But Kylie figured out what she was by the time she was fourteen. At eighteen, she met her mate and Sara’s father, Bruce Morrighan. His family dated back to the sixteenth century. A tough Scottish clan of wolves that had done serious damage to the land before they’d gained control over their need to kill. Like Zach, Bruce was born and raised as part of the Magnus Pack. It was the only world he’d ever known. Until he met Kylie. Their mating supposedly one for the record books, their passion scorching the Colorado Mountains where they found each other. Bruce on a camping trip. Kylie trying to escape her controlling mother by working as a waitress in a local diner. Once they were marked and mated, the couple seemed to become more wolf than human. Staying in wolf form for days on end, they slept, hunted and lived the majority of their lives as wolves.

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Shelly Laurenston

When Sara was born, the Pack felt certain she would certainly become Alpha Female one day.

But then Kylie fucked with Annie Withell, head of the Withell Pride, and all hell broke loose.

During a confrontation, Kylie somehow killed the four-hundred-pound Annie and started a Pack-Pride war that continued to this day. By the time Sara was one-year-old, Kylie’s torn and half-eaten wolf carcass had been dumped at the front door of the Pack’s den.

Bruce had been inconsolable. With the help of several Pack mates and against the Alpha leader’s orders, he attacked the Pride, killing two of its prime breeding males. Then Bruce took his daughter and left.

Moved to Arizona. And everything went quiet, until the pair went on a hunting trip in an Arizona state park. No one knew the details, but Bruce’s human remains were found beside the campsite.

Sara was missing for a day, but eventually located twenty miles from where they found her father’s body. Unconscious next to a riverbank, her face torn like it had hit jagged rock. Her leg ripped as if hit by an animal paw. She was in a coma for a week and no one thought she would survive. Then Lynette brought her granddaughter here. To this town and these people. A town run by wolves. Marrec was a shapeshifter and so was half the town. He protected and loved Sara like his own daughter. He could have turned her himself but he hadn’t.

Yet Marrec’s loyalty to Sara was strong. Palpable, in fact. Apparently Casey had to do some fast talking to keep the guy from pushing them off his territory. Maybe now the old bitch was dead, Marrec decided it was time for Sara to know the truth. To know who and what she was.

Perhaps he’d waited until he felt the death of her grandmother was far enough away, Sara could more easily learn to accept what she was. But before he had the chance, they’d shown up. The Magnus Pack. Her true father’s Pack. Maybe to Marrec having her turned by her father’s Pack

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Pack Challenge

seemed only fitting. So, in the end, he’d allowed them all to stay without much trouble.

Now here Zach sat with only Conall to keep him company, watching a house on a chilly Texas night. He could see into her home through a window, but all he saw were the two other females still arguing. Boy, could those broads go and go and go.

Sara had disappeared and he was really starting to miss seeing her.

Although Conall seemed to be enjoying his view of Miki. The angrier the pint-sized woman got the more Zach could smell Conall’s desire for her.

Twisted
. Conall quietly padded by, his white-blond fur ruffled by the light wind coming from the East.

Zach scratched his muzzle with one paw as German techno music hit his ears.
Good
German techno music. In the boonies of Texas? He looked back at the house. The music died after a few moments and a couple of minutes later Sara stumbled onto the porch. She wore baggy sweats and a big hockey shirt. He heard her friends laughing, but he refused to believe they were laughing at the fact she seemed to have trouble walking. He’d hate to have to kick their asses.

Sara was laughing, though, and he realized he was getting protective over a woman he didn’t know and really didn’t want to know. He had no plans of getting all tangled up with a female. Especially not this female.

A good one-hundred feet from the house, Zach could still hear her clearly. “I hate both of you!” she yelled as her friends came out on to the porch. Sara straddled the banister and, boy, did he envy that banister, while Miki hit the swing and Angelina sat on the stairs.

He marveled at how they went from full-on screaming one minute to hysterical laughter the next.

And he wished he could have heard what they had been talking about in the house because Sara’s next sentence completely intrigued him…

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Shelly Laurenston

“But forget about me. I think Miki’s the one with the chance to get laid.”

“Don’t start,” Miki warned.

“He was like the dog,” Angelina offered, “and you were like the chew toy on top of the cabinet. He couldn’t quite reach it but he wouldn’t stop staring at it.” Sara burst into another round of laughter while Miki looked like she was about to lob her beer at Angelina but changed her mind and took a long swig instead.

“But,” Angelina continued, “no one seemed the least bit interested in me.”

“Well, of course not,” Sara answered. “You have no obvious physical flaws and you weren’t balls-out rude. Why would they be interested in you?”

The three women laughed some more at that. Then they drank their beer and quietly listened to the night.

Zach couldn’t take his eyes off Sara. She was so beautiful. And when she leaned back and stretched, a low growl coming from her throat that he felt more than heard, it took all his control not to charge over there and drag her beautiful ass back into the house and to her bed.