Promises Reveal (49 page)

She leaned back on the bed, drawing her leg up while easing her camisole strap down. “Then I guess you’ll have to be quick as well as thorough.”

Buttons flew as he ripped his shirt off, exposing all that delicious muscle she loved to feel moving against her. “Is that a dare?”

“Absolutely.”

Turn the page for a preview of
Sarah McCarty’s next novel

Coming soon from Berkley Sensation!

THEY WERE COMING.

Sarah Anne stared down the hillside, her night vision casting the trees and rocks in contrasting black and white touched with glimmers of silver. Through the shifting mist, she watched bits of deeper darkness weave through the natural shadows. Wolves. Their hiding place had been discovered. There was nowhere left to run. She and the other women would have to make their stand here. Beside her, her five-year-old son, Josiah, a wolf to the core, snarled. His small canines flashed white in the night. Sarah Anne dropped her hand to his head, desperation pulsing through her like a living nightmare. She had to keep him safe.

Her two-year-old daughter, Meg, as human as her father, was tiny, delicate, ever so vulnerable. She clung to her brother’s hand and gave name to the emotion scenting the interior of the cave. “Mommy, I’m scared.”

So was Sarah Anne. “There’s no need to be afraid. We’ve prepared.”

Three women. Two werewolf, one human. All armed with a few guns, ammo, and a mother’s drive to protect. They were going to hold off ten were-soldiers. They didn’t have a prayer.

“Are they the McGowans?” Teri asked from behind her.

“No.” The promise of help from the Boudine pack had just been another shimmering illusion. Sarah Anne was on her own the way she’d always been, ever since the day it became evident that her tainted genetics had left a mark. She’d come to the human world to avoid persecution. It had found her anyway. And now endangered her children.

Teri spun on her heel. “I’ll get the guns.”

Sarah Anne exchanged a glance with Rachel. Teri had no idea what they faced. The guns would delay, but not prevent, the inevitable.

“We should probably tell her.”

Sarah Anne shrugged. “She already thinks werewolves are monsters. No sense proving it and removing all doubt. Not when we have to fight.”

“She wouldn’t be here at all except for her pregnancy.”

“She wouldn’t be pregnant at all except for them.” With a wave of her hand, Sarah Anne encompassed the encroaching scum. She wouldn’t call them soldiers. Wolf soldiers didn’t rape. Wolf soldiers had honor. Integrity. They protected women. They didn’t abuse them.

Behind them a shotgun cocked.

“I told you before what happened isn’t your fault.” Teri stood with her feet apart, the rifle and a shotgun looking awkward in her small hands. Dark red rows of newly healed scars peeked out from beneath her light green mock turtleneck. Shame flooded Sara Anne anew. Right behind it came guilt.

“They wouldn’t have found you if not for me.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

Teri handed the rifle to Sara Anne. Being human, there was no way Teri could understand the sense of unity and responsibility that was part of werewolf culture. What one member of the pack did, all did. What wrong one committed reflected on them all.

“I still feel guilty.”

“Well, don’t. I wouldn’t trade our friendship for the world.”

The lie was in her scent. If Teri could, she’d go back in time and erase the friendship that had exposed her to the wolves who’d breathed her scent, recognized her as a potential breeder, and raped her, responding to instinct rather than logic. Half-blood children had no worth. Sarah Anne couldn’t blame her any more than she could bring herself to dispute Teri’s claim. The woman had just regained her emotional feet. And strangely, the pregnancy had provided the vehicle.

“So what’s our plan?” Rachel asked.

“Same as before. Shoot as many as we can.”

Teri smiled a cold smile. “That works for me.”

Sarah Anne cast Teri a glance. If she was terrified, she was hiding it well. “Remember, shoot for the organs and the brain. Do as much damage as possible on each individual. Wolves don’t go down easily.”

Only a catastrophic series of injuries could bypass a werewolf’s ability to heal.

Teri smiled. “I’m good with that.”

The scars were the tip of the iceberg when it came to the injuries Teri had sustained. Sarah Anne could easily believe she was fine with anything that had to do with taking out a male wolf. The shadows glided closer. Still only ten as far was she could tell. It might as well be one hundred.

“Rachel.”

“I know.”

She needed to say it anyway. “Don’t let them get my son.”

Rachel placed her hand on Sarah Anne’s arm. Her scent, her energy, all radiating comfort. Sarah Anne didn’t know how Rachel held on to hope. “Things aren’t going to be that bad.”

They already were. “Take Josiah, shift, go out the side entrance, and then run like hell.”

Rachel grabbed Josiah’s hand. “Maybe I can carry—”

Sarah Anne shook her head. “We already discussed it. You can’t carry Meg, and she can’t change.” Like her mother. “She’ll never be able to keep up.”

Meg hearing her name, sensing the tension, puckered up and stamped her foot. “I want ’Siah!”

Every instinct in Sarah Anne echoed Meg’s cry. She wanted to keep her son with her, within reach, where she would have a hand in his fate. Sarah Anne pulled Meg against her thigh, rubbing her hands up and down her daughter’s tiny ribs. How was she supposed to make this choice? She stared at the figures getting closer, the wind carrying the taint of their scent, and she knew. She just did. “Josiah’s going with Aunt Rachel.”

“No.”

She met Josiah’s stare. Someday he’d be an Alpha, maybe a Protector, but right now he was a baby and staring down his mother was beyond his capacity. But not by much. “You go with Rachel, Josiah. You do everything she tells you and you make your father proud.”

His little feet planted shoulder width apart. A snarl rumbled in his chest as his nostrils flared, scenting the warning of danger riding the wind. “I’m not leaving you.”

Sarah Anne blinked at the flash-forward to the man he’d someday be. His father would have been so proud. Smoothing her hand over his rich, chocolate-colored hair, she blinked again, this time in an effort to hold back the tears. “You have to go. Rachel needs protection, too, and I don’t have anyone else to send with her.”

His chin set. “She can stay here.”

He also had his mother’s stubbornness. “No, she can’t. She has to take an important message to Pack Boudine.”

“I do need you, Josiah,” Rachel interjected.

His chin trembled. He suddenly became her little boy again. Her little boy who was trying so hard not to be scared as she asked the impossible of him. Meg hugged her leg and looked up, blue eyes big with the belief that her mother could work miracles. “Please, Mommy?”

Sarah Anne heard the faint swish of brush against clothing as the soldiers approached. They were out of time. She grabbed Josiah, bending to hold her son and daughter close in her arms one last time—her life, her future—breathing in their familiar scents, playing over in her mind every good memory she could find, bonding them together in that moment, just in case there wasn’t another. “Remember who you are, Josiah.”

He nodded against her leg, the tear he wouldn’t let her see seeping through the thin denim of her jeans. “I’m Protector.”

“And Stone. Don’t ever forget that or think it’s not a valuable part of you.”

Another nod.

“We have to leave, Sarah Anne,” Rachel interjected quietly.

With one last squeeze she let Josiah go. “Be careful”

Rachel put her hands protectively on Josiah’s shoulder as she met Sarah Anne’s gaze, a small, strained smile on her face. “I’m the careful one, remember?”

Sarah Anne did remember, along with many other things.

Teri looked out the entrance. “It’s now or never, guys.”

A bolt of pure fear stabbed through Sarah Anne. Josiah’s escape out the side entrance had to be perfectly time so he wouldn’t be seen or scented, and even with perfect timing they only had a scant chance of success. Sarah Anne felt so empty without the sturdy body of her son. She wrapped her arms around Meg, the weight of impossibility straining her voice, as she lifted her daughter up. “Run very fast, Josiah.”

He nodded, looking like a little boy again as he asked, “And you’ll meet us at the south ridge come morning?”

Nothing short of death would keep her away. “That’s the plan.”

It was enough for him. She caught Rachel’s hand as she turned away, tugging her around. She had to say it. “Thank you.”

The words were so paltry compared to the emotion backing them. If they got out of this alive, Rachel could ask anything of Sarah Anne that she wanted and Sarah Anne would grant it.

Rachel inclined her head. “Anything for the Alpha female.” “I’m not Pack.” Even after seven years, it still hurt to say that.

Rachel, grimaced. Teri looked at them both and shook her head. “If Pack means family, then I think we’re it.” She hefted the shotgun. “Now, if nobody objects, I’ve got some damage to do.”

 
“YOU CAN’T FAULT them for courage,” Garrett murmured as a woman and a boy slipped out the side entrance of the cave, shifted, and then started to run perpendicular to the hillside, blending into the night, the female shielding the cub. The gun-fire from the interior picked up in a rapid spate, no doubt in a hope to keep the main group pinned down.

Beside him, Cur snarled as two bigger shadows slid into the night behind the woman an child, “Can’t fault them for a damn thing, but I’ve got a hell of a bone to pick with those SOBs hunting them.” He touched his hand to the transceiver attached to his ear.

“Daire, you’ve got two friendlies in fur heading your way.”

Daire’s distinctive gravely voice rumbled over the connection that linked all five Protectors on this mission. “I’ve got them.”

“They’ve got company following.”

Daire’s satisfied growl proceeded his, “Good.”

“Nice to know his reputation isn’t inflated,” Cur grunted over Garret’s private frequency, swinging wide to cut off two soldiers heading up toward the side entrance.

Garret supposed it was. He moved to the left, flanking the two soldiers who comprised his targets. The scum didn’t know it yet but they were surrounded. He switched to Cur’s frequency.

“I’m just glad he’s on our side,” Daire was a big son of a bitch, even for a were, and he wore the violence of his history in the scars on his body. It took a hell of a lot to scar a were.

“Thought when he went freelance he went rogue?”

“I’m not sure he hasn’t.”

He wasn’t sure of anything when it came to this new Pack, least of all Daire’s reasons for joining this mission. His and Cur’s motivations were easy to see. Neither had chosen to become part of the packless lost, and when the McGowans had approached them in the bar they ran and offered them Pack status, they hadn’t hesitated. The McGowans were legend. Fierce fighters. Old school Protectors that put pack and honor first. It would have been an honor for any Protector to be asked to join forces with the McGowans. For outlawed rogues like he and Cur, it was a prize without equal.

Below, there was movement. Garret sighted his rifle on one of the soldiers closing in on Kelon McGowan, just in case. He switched his transceiver back to all frequencies. “You’ve got trouble on your tail, Kelon.”

Through the sight, he could clearly see the smile flash across Kelon’s face. “Thanks.”

The enemy leapt straight for Kelon’s seemingly unprotected back. The rogue might be a soldier but Kelon was a Protector and that much faster, that much stronger, and that much more pissed. He spun and caught the wolf mid leap, evaded the swipe of the soldiers claws through the simple expedience of breaking his arm, and then in the spit second while the man hung helpless, gutted him with lethal efficiency. Justice delivered with a graceful simplicity Garrett admired. And when the call came, he’d do the same to the two men marked as his. These men hunted the women and children of his new Pack. They would not survive the night.

The sense of rightness strengthened as Garrett slid the rifle into the scabbard on his back and moved forward, ears tuned for the call to battle, adrenaline pumping through his body in a familiar rush, enhancing the drive of muscle, the acuteness of his senses, as for the first time he entered battle not to defend himself, or an ideal, but in defense of his Pack. Satisfaction and pride blended with cold calculation as he crouched and waited, his marks in sight, one moving up the slide of rock to the cave entrance, the other tucked behind a tree ten feet away, gun aimed at the cave mouth. Garret smiled, claws extending. He’d never get that shot off.

“Everyone in position?”