Right Wolf, Right Time (14 page)

“Well, that would make him a nutjob of the first order.” Axel nodded. “Never feeling his wolf, all that anger and ferocity balled up in a human body? Bound to make him psycho.”

Rafe studied her. “Tell me everything you know about your uncle. Everything. Axel, get on the horn. I want eyes on the last known location we had for him.”

“I think I know where he might be going.” She hoped. It was a long shot, but she remembered the many places her uncle had traveled to, often because she’d handled the logistics for his trips while her cousins, who’d been supposed to organize them, had been too busy having fun in the barn, doing thing she hadn’t wanted to know about.

She told Axel what she knew, and he quickly relayed the information over his cell phone. Then she told Rafe about her uncle.

The telling took a good hour, and she felt mentally exhausted at the end. “So, you see, I have to go. I can’t live with myself if I don’t do what I can for my mate. I
have
to.” Then she let her wolf come to the fore. “And
I’m going
to rescue him.”

Rafe just watched her, then smiled. “I knew you had the wolf in you, Sophie. You just needed an excuse to let her out.” He sighed. “You know Monty is going to be pissed as hell when this is all over.”

“If he wants anything to do with me anymore.”

Rafe shook his head. “Honey, if GrayClaw is so big an asshole that he can’t see what a gem you truly are, you have a place in the order. Don’t you worry.”

But she did worry. Because she now had not only a mate worth saving, but a tiny baby needing the protection of a mother
and
father—an Ac-taw not so screwed up that he couldn’t teach her baby how to live with the wolf instead of struggling against it for so many years.

Lost in contemplation, she didn’t hear Rafe until he repeated himself. “Oh, and Sophie?” She glanced up to see Axel standing over her with a resigned look on his face.

He sighed. “Rafe, do I have to?”

Rafe snarled. “Do it.”

“But—”

“Do it.”
Rafe turned to her. “You’ll thank me when it’s over.”

Before she could question him, Axel’s large fist struck her cheek. Then she saw black.

She woke minutes later, spurred by her wolf. Rafe’s and Axel’s voices faded as the front door creaked closed. The wolf whined and snapped at her to shake it off and wake the hell up. Sophie moaned and rubbed her throbbing jaw.

I cannot believe he struck a pregnant woman!
She was so telling Monty about this when she saw him next. If she saw him alive again, and if he would care. She sat up in her bed and pushed her covers aside. The idiot wolves had knocked her out and then tucked her in bed. She stopped moving when she heard movement and quickly lay back down and feigned sleep again.

She smelled cat and wolf.

“Monty is going to be unhappy when he hears about this.” She recognized Melissa’s voice.

“Nah, not if no one tells him,” offered the deep voice of one of the gray wolves. “Besides, we’re keeping her safe. He’ll thank us.” Dirk, she thought. Or Dave. Or
Dick
.

Annoyed with men all over again, she waited until the pair stepped away from the door and moved back downstairs. Great. Now she had a cat and a wolf as babysitters. Her duffel bag was nowhere in sight. Yet…

She slowly left her bed, well aware of how to move without making a sound. She searched her closet and retrieved her rifle, the one she’d won contests with. Hunter contests, unbeknownst to her. She took it and a bag of ammunition and made a plan.

Ten minutes later after a very brisk run in human form, she stood outside Monty’s cabin in the shadows, making sure she was alone. Nothing stirred and no one moved. She went inside and grabbed his keys, then used them before she lost her nerve. Sophie quickly texted Rafe to beware hidden traps. It was the best she could do under the circumstances. Then she muted her phone and tucked it into her backpack. She was twenty minutes outside of Cougar Falls, on her way to Kalispell, when her cell phone vibrated. She didn’t answer.

She had a very important place to be, and she had to get there before the wolves did in order to prevent a bloodbath. Simply put, she’d told Axel and Rafe where her uncle might have relocated, but she hadn’t thought to warn them of his safeguards until now. If she knew her uncle, and she did, he’d have wired the perimeter of his camp with booby traps, the way he had around the farm back in Tennessee.

Now it was up to her to get to Monty. And fast.

Per Monty’s GPS, she arrived a few miles outside of his camp and parked under a copse of trees. The moon remained behind a bank of clouds, and with no wind on the horizon, she didn’t have a spotlight on her as she moved through the forest, attuned to foreign sights and sounds. Her wolf whined at her to be set free, but Sophie needed hands for her rifle. For the first time in a long time, she openly communicated with her animal spirit, using the wolf’s senses and sharing her concerns.

No longer not allowed to be anything but herself, she embraced her twin soul and felt stronger because of it. When she came upon the first tripwire, she disarmed it and looked for a second trap to follow.

There. She cut it and continued, deactivating a half dozen more booby traps along the way. She could only be thankful Rafe and his wolves hadn’t arrived. A few of them would have been dead by now, she was sure of it. Her uncle didn’t mess around with defense.

Allowing herself the time, she sent another harried text to Rafe’s cell phone with her exact location.

As she moved, she kept her eyes open for the right tree. Within sight of the camp, of course, but tall. She found it another half mile to the west of her current position. After tightening the straps of her backpack and securing the rifle against her chest, she climbed. She made it twenty-five feet and settled in the crook of a thick branch. Then she took her ammunition and clips and set them close. She unwound her rifle and scope and took aim on the campfire.

She didn’t see her uncle, but then, she hadn’t expected to. She saw her cousin Charley looking as dopey and mean as usual. Not the brains of the outfit, which explained his position at the campfire, as a decoy. A few other inexperienced Hunters patrolled the outer edge of the small camp. A solid two dozen men. Hunters tended to be sexist. They considered women good for nothing but having babies. Nope. Not a woman in sight.

The Folly would be underground, through a makeshift hole against the side of a massive boulder that led down into a large underground cavern her uncle had expanded into his own personal hideaway years ago.

Sophie couldn’t believe she was up in a tree with a loaded rifle. She’d never done anything so risky before. But for Monty, she had to try. And then she heard them. The sound of footfalls, the four-footed kind.

She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. She’d never intentionally killed a person before, but she knew Monty and the others depended on her to survive.

“We’re here.” Rafe’s voice.

“Come on out, Shifter. We’ve been waiting.” That was Matt, her middle cousin. A rapist and murderer. She could only be glad she’d never been left alone with him, or she feared what he might have done. He had a sickness as bad as her uncle’s, and she knew he’d kill the wolves of the order without thinking twice. “You don’t come into the light, I off your friends. Starting with this one.” He nodded and her cousin Charley moved into the light holding a bloodied man by the collar. He’d been shot in both legs and could barely stand on his own.

She recognized him. It was James, a gray wolf who always had a ready smile for her when he’d stopped by the store.

She felt sick.

Rafe took a step, and she heard the telltale click of safeties. She zeroed in on sound and saw sharpshooters lined up in the woods behind the campfire, giving them perfect vision while hiding them from the wolves. Without thinking, she shot, rapid-fire, at the threat.

Rafe and the wolves in the woods took cover. Hunters returned fire at the wolves and at her. Then more shots came from Rafe’s side of the woods. The gunfire died and the wolves entered the campsite, killing the remaining stragglers until no one else moved.

The chaos stopped as suddenly as it had started and Sophie stared at close to forty wolves all over the place. Good Lord. Rafe had brought an army with him. She hustled down the tree with her gear and stopped when everyone turned to face her.

“Fuck it all, you’re not supposed to be here,”
a large white wolf sent her, his teeth stained red as he joined Rafe, now in wolf form. The pack often communicated telepathically, and Sophie had no problem understanding them.

She swallowed hard at the carnage around her. She’d actually killed people.
No, not people. Murdering Hunters who would have killed your pack,
the wolf reminded her. She tried not to find pleasure in the coppery scent of blood so near. “Someone had to save you from your own foolishness. Why didn’t you take me with you? If I hadn’t been here, you’d be dead now.”

“So
you
disarmed the traps in the woods. Nice job,”
another wolf said as he sidled next to Rafe. She looked at him with wolf eyes and inhaled.

“Mitch?”

“Hey, Sophie. Nice shooting.”
He chuffed at her with approval.

“Save it. Where do we go now?”
Rafe growled at her.

“
I
go in there,” she whispered and pointed her rifle toward a dark passage away from the campfire. “You need to wait. They heard the shots, they know we’re here. Just give me a little time. When they come running out, take them here and at the back. Let me show you.”

“No way in hell.”
Rafe nudged her behind him and Axel took up the rear.
“Shift into your wolf.”

“No.”

“Then you stay here.”

“I can shoot faster than you can attack. And Monty’s in there.” She yanked on his tail. “Rafe, please.”

He stopped still, his fur bristled.

“I know these people and this place,” she murmured. “You have to trust me.”

“Come on, Rafe.”
To her surprise, Axel agreed.
“She took care of the traps and the shooters in the bushes. We don’t have time to argue. Let her go—we’ll wait. If she’s not out, we go in anyway.”

Rafe snarled at her.
“Shit. Well, hurry up. Axel’s going with you. That’s non-negotiable. I’m giving you two a ten minute head start, no more.”

It would have to be enough. Sophie nodded. She showed Mitch and a few others the hideaway’s hidden back exit before returning to the front, where Rafe and Axel sat with their heads cocked. The other wolves had scattered around the camp, keeping to the dark and blending with their environment. The savvy canine hunters would give the humans a true challenge this time.

Axel reported,
“A few guards several meters from the entrance. I smell gun oil, carbon. Rifles, maybe a pistol or two.”

She nodded and checked her weapon, reloaded it, and set her mental guards for stealth mode. She couldn’t worry about the morality of it all. Not now. She had to concentrate on saving Monty. The Hunters normally had orders to kill Ac-taw on sight. She would do the same to them.

“Be careful.”
Rafe licked her hand as she passed.

She nodded and entered the cave, her rifle at the ready. Her first shot sounded overly loud to her enhanced hearing. But the ones that followed bothered her less and less, especially with Axel’s encouragement.

It was the absence of smell that alerted her to move back. And just in time. A bullet shattered the rock wall where her head had been.

“Not her, you idiot.” Uncle Ted’s booming voice still had the ability to unnerve her.

“I’ll circle around,”
Axel said and slid into a crevice she hadn’t noticed.

Then arms appeared out of nowhere and hauled her inside a place she could only describe as Monty’s Hunter hell.

Chapter Nine

Monty glared at the bastards on either side of him. Fucking Norris was taking no chances of him escaping this time. Their guns were trained on him and the leather collar bolted to his neck was attached to not one, but two iron chains affixed to stone walls.

The place looked like a reject from a backwoods horror movie. Dead bodies were piled up in corners, some human, some not. He’d seen and heard men fucking during the night, when Norris steered clear of the pit. Monty had been kept in a solitary cell that made him want to scream. Ever since his time with Norris, he couldn’t stand small spaces. But the wolves with him who’d survived had it worse, crammed into a tiny cell barely big enough to sit in without touching something vile.

God, the smells. Death and rot and evil. The noxious return of Hunter’s Folly. Blood, guts and entrails had a particular odor when combined, and fuck if it didn’t make him want to vomit. He’d been forced to watch cats and coyotes scrapping for two straight days. They were saving the wolves, apparently, and he had a bad feeling he knew why.

Sheridan would come after his wolves. So would Burke. God willing, Sophie would stay home. He wondered if his little mate would try to come after him. She worried, he knew that. And she’d offered to help him, but he couldn’t see her tromping through the woods with a gun, looking to shoot Norris. He was a bit disappointed she wasn’t stronger about all this, then swore at himself for wanting her to be something she wasn’t.