The Wolf's Mate Book 6: Logan & Jenna (23 page)

The sheer menace in his voice
sent shivers racing down her spine.  Dread filled her.  If they took her from
Logan, there was a good chance that she would never see him again.

Taking a deep breath, she
swung the shovel up, yelling mindlessly.  Jasper caught the shovel with one
hand and jerked her off her feet.  The knife thudded to the floor as Jasper
swung her around and drew the shovel handle against her throat.  He pulled
tight so her back was against his chest and the handle dug into her flesh. 
Immediately pain lanced through her and she couldn’t breathe.  Gasping and
choking, her hands struggled to push the shovel away, her nails raking down his
forearms before she began blindly lashing out with her hands.

One hand slapped onto the
counter and she felt the small bottles that she kept oils and fruit juices in
to use in her products.  The cork popped easily on one with her thumb, and as
her chest began to burn and her vision darkened, she flung the bottle behind
her and hit Jasper in the face.

He shouted, dropping the
shovel, and she fell to the floor gasping for air, her hands searching for the
knife.  Jasper yelled, “You bitch!  I’m blind!”

One hand closed around the
knife and she jumped to her feet.  Jasper lashed out with his hands, and she
caught a glimpse of claws in the moonlight.  One hand caught her upper arm and
raked across it.  She cried out in pain and he slashed at her again but
stumbled in his blindness and began to fall.  He knocked her down as he went;
she raised her hands to protect herself from his claws and she felt the knife
in her hand hit him and sink deep in his chest.

He made a strangled sound and
went limp as hot blood seeped over her hand and dripped down her arm.

She couldn’t see the door
because Jasper was blocking her view, so she didn’t know where his men were. 
Terror rose in her, knowing how vulnerable she was.  She choked on tears,
struggling under the heavy weight of the man on top of her.  She only hoped he
was dead.

She heard engines roaring
loudly and relief flooded through her.  Logan was coming!  It had to be him.  It
had to be!

Sucking in as deep a breath
as she could with Jasper’s body pressing down on her, she screamed the name of
her mate.  “Logan!”

Chapter 14

As Logan careened around the
corner onto his street, he caught sight of a black van.  It appeared empty,
sitting at the side of the road.  His street wasn’t very populated, and he knew
that the van didn’t belong to any of his neighbors.  A small part of him was
relieved to see the van, because it meant that whoever had come to harm her
hadn’t gotten away with her.  He felt in his gut that it was Jasper and his
pack.

He swore he could hear Jenna
calling his name in his head.  His wolf was going crazy.

He saw headlights catch up
behind him and knew that his packmates had come to help.  Missing the driveway
entirely, he raced the truck down the side of the house and stopped next to the
garden.  Leaping from the truck, he could hear the sound of Jenna’s heart beating
wildly.  She was in the shed.

Two figures dressed entirely
in black had been standing at the open door to the shed and they split up, one
running into the woods and one heading for the front of the house.  Logan
wanted to go after them, but finding Jenna was his top priority.

Stalking towards the shed, he
heard her scream his name.  Out of the corner of his eye he saw Jason head into
the woods after one male and the pounding footsteps of his friends heading towards
the front of the house where the other one had gone.  His pack would stop them
from leaving, and then they would deal with them.

“Jenna?” Logan called,
stepping into the dark shed.

“Logan?” she answered, her
voice cracking.  As his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he saw the glint of the
metallic strands in her hair and saw she was pinned underneath a wolf.  Rage
surged through him.  Had the male raped her?  Jerking the male off her by the
back of his shirt, Logan roared his fury, slamming him against the wall.

The male’s head lolled to the
side, his eyes open but unseeing.  He was dead.

Tossing the male outside of
the shed, he went to his knees before Jenna as she lay frozen on the floor, a
knife wet with blood in one hand.  Extracting the knife from her fist, he was
relieved to see she was still fully dressed.  “Baby, are you hurt?”

She gasped for breath but
didn’t speak as he leaned over her.  Running his hands over her quickly, he
scented for her blood.  He found an injury on her arm that was bleeding, but
otherwise he thought she was okay.  Just terrified.  He picked her up, careful
of the wound on her arm, and carried her out of the shed, stepping over the
dead body.

“Is he, is he dead?” she
whispered, clutching at Logan with her good arm.

“Yeah, baby.  Don’t look.”

She turned her face into his
neck and a sob wracked her body.  As Logan walked towards his house, Jason
walked from the woods at the same time as Teller rounded the corner of the
house.  They both had males slung over their shoulders.

Dumping the men in a heap
near the dead body, Jason said, “Fast fucker.  Good thing I’m faster.”

Logan looked at the two
unconscious men.  He looked at Jason and Teller as the rest of his friends
joined them.

Bo carried Douglas from the
side of the house and laid him on the grass near the back patio.  “He’s
unconscious.  I found a dart sticking out of his shoulder.  His cell was near
him.  I think he tried to call for help.”

Logan was glad that Douglas
was going to be okay.  Bo stood and said, “I’ll go meet Trick and let him know
to head back here.”

Patrick “Trick”
Flannigan
was Allen’s chief of police, human, and married to a she-wolf in the Tressel
Pack.

Logan looked at his best
friend.  “Thank you.”  Turning back to the rest of his friends, he repeated the
words to them.

Teller looked down at the male
that Jason had caught and grinned.  “Looks like your guy ran into a tree.”

Michael quipped, “Several
times.”

Jason said, “Go take Jenna in
the house, Logan.  We’ll handle things out here until Trick needs to talk to
her.  She doesn’t need to see this.”

Nodding, Logan turned and
walked into the house, flipping on the kitchen light.

Darlie was hovering just
inside.

“Thank you for coming for me,
Darlie.”

She nodded.  “Jenna was very
brave.”

Logan’s hands tightened on
Jenna.  “I know.”  He would forever be haunted by the image of Jenna underneath
that male.

“How did you find me,
Darlie?” he asked, pulling out a kitchen chair and setting Jenna on it.  He
didn’t straighten, but went to his knees so Jenna could continue to lean on
him.

“It wasn’t hard.  I’ve explored
the town, so I knew where you went.  I’m just sorry it took me so long to get
to you.”

“I’m in your debt, sprite,”
Logan said, his voice thickening with emotion.  He could have lost his mate. 
She could have been killed or taken from him.

Darlie hovered next to his
face for a moment and then kissed his cheek before buzzing out the door.

“Let me see your arm, baby,”
he said, easing her head to his other shoulder so he could look at her left
arm.  The long-sleeved shirt she wore had been shredded and was wet with
blood.  With as little jarring movement as possible, he tore the sleeve open to
expose her skin.  There were four slash marks.  That told him that the male had
shifted partially so his claws came out.

“You must have been so
scared, baby,” he spoke softly.

She started to cry in earnest
and his heart cracked sharply.  “I-I’m s-sorry,” she cried, her voice cracking
and her hand twisting in his shirt.

Smoothing back her hair from
her face, he said, “Don’t be sorry.  You didn’t do anything wrong.”

“I didn’t stay in the house
and I didn’t have my phone with me,” she sobbed the halting words.

He shushed her gently,
promising that he wasn’t upset about that.  His assurances didn’t seem to ease
her crying.  He was also having a hard time dealing with his emotions at the
moment.  He wanted to kick his own ass for leaving her.

He heard voices outside and
scooped her up in his arms, sitting down on the chair and arranging her in his
lap.  Jason and Bo walked into the house, along with Trick and an EMT.

Bo said, “I called Reika and
she’s on her way.  She can heal your wound, Jenna.”

Logan frowned.  “I don’t want
Jenna to be bitten.  She’s already been through enough.”

“She won’t have to bite for
this kind of wound, she’ll just shift into her wolf form and lick the slash
marks.  It will aid Jenna’s natural healing ability.”

Trick looked confused.  “Why
would Reika bite Jenna in the first place?”

Bo smiled.  “She’s a healing
wolf.  If someone is seriously injured, she sometimes needs to bite them to
inject her healing venom into their blood stream.  She did it for me, which is
why I don’t limp anymore.  Hurts like a bitch, though.”

“I’ll bet,” Trick said. 
“When I was young and stupid, I wrestled with my mate, Mia, and she
accidentally caught my arm in her jaws.  Split me open like a loaf of bread. 
She still feels guilty, and it’s been twenty years.”

The EMT was human, but
clearly had been around wolves and their mates before, because he approached
slowly.  “Can I check out your mate?”

Jenna didn’t say anything, so
he nodded, mentally leashing his wolf as the EMT knelt in front of them with a
red medic bag and unzipped it.  With a tiny pair of scissors, he cut away the
sleeve completely and then cleaned the blood from her arm.  The four slashes
were still bleeding, but not as bad as they had been.

“If you have a healer wolf
coming, then I won’t recommend stitches.  Hold this pad on the wound until it
stops bleeding.”

Logan asked, “Is Douglas
awake yet?”

The EMT answered, “He’s
starting to come out of whatever they drugged him with.  We’re taking him to
the hospital for observation.”

Jason said, “Let him know
that I’ll be at the hospital as soon as I can, and I’ve called his mate.”

The EMT nodded and walked out
of the house.

Jenna lifted her head and
looked at her arm and the gauze pad that Logan held to it.  Then she saw the
blood on her shirt and made a small sound of pain.  “Can I change?”  Her right
hand trembled as she held it over the shirt without touching the material.

Trick cleared his throat.  “Let
me get your story, Jenna, and then you can get cleaned up.  I’ll need your
clothes for evidence,” Trick said.

Her face paled as she looked
up at Trick.  “Am I going to jail?”

Logan bit back his snarl of
anger.  Trick shook his head quickly.  “It’s clear that this was self-defense,
Jenna.  Don’t worry about anything.  Just tell me what happened and I’ll handle
the rest.”

Jenna scrubbed her free hand
over her eyes and took in a few deep breaths.  Her voice was timid at first, as
she spoke of working in the shed to set up a place to make her soaps.  She
remembered that she hadn’t kept the phone with her, and assumed that Logan had
called and would be upset, so she headed towards the house to get the phone and
call him.

“The house was dark, and I
saw Jasper standing on the porch.  I sent Darlie to find Logan and ran into the
shed.  I braced the door shut but they got through it.”  Her voice trailed off
for a long moment and then she explained how he had choked her, she had blinded
him with one of her bottles of extracts, and then he tripped her and fell on
top of her.  The knife was just in the right place to kill him.  Once more,
Logan was very aware of how lucky his mate truly was.  If Jasper had started to
partially shift, then he probably would have torn Jenna apart instead of
kidnapping her again, if that had even been his original intention.

Trick said, “The knife slid
between his ribs and straight into his heart.”  Trick wrote a few more things
in a small notepad, asking questions about the other men that were currently
still unconscious but in custody.

A deputy came to the back
door.  “The coroner is here already, Trick.”

“I’ll be right out,” Trick
said.  Looking at Jenna, he said, “Are you sure that the dead fellow is Jasper,
the one that kidnapped you?”

Jenna nodded.  “Yes, it’s
Jasper.  I recognized the other two with him.  They were part of his pack and
were there when he took me.”

Logan’s ears picked up the
sound of a car pulling into the driveway.  Bo said, “That’s Reika, I recognize
the sound of her engine.”  He walked into the front room and opened the door.

Closing his notebook, Trick
said, “If I have any questions, I’ll call in the next couple of days.”