True Alpha (26 page)

No, they hadn’t – they would’ve given the agreed-upon signal if they had. The teams purposely avoided straying farther than a few miles from each other, and if one found something, they were to signify their discovery with a long howl so that the others could rush to the scene. The woods were silent as Ronnie removed his hand from Jack’s coat and led the way toward the next location circled in red ink on their map.

****

The scent of a man had Jack’s stomach in knots and his nerves on a razor-sharp edge. He inhaled slowly, examining the smell that had been carried down a wooded slope by a light breeze. The odor was unfamiliar – not that of the man who’d taken Mandy. But it could belong to any of the other Gruens. Silently, he paced around the slope, heading in the direction the smell seemed to be coming from and carefully scenting the air for more.

The others followed behind him, their paws rustling the leaves quietly, almost silently – and in Ronnie and Kimberly’s case, their boots crunching softly through the underbrush. Jack would have to find a suitable place to make Michael and Kimberly hide while he investigated wherever and whoever the human scent was coming from. This could be it – this whiff of human male on the wind was both the most encouraging and the most frightening thing he’d encountered all day. His entire body tingled with a potent cocktail of nervousness and violence as he proceeded, and when the next scent hit him, his gut cramped as if he’d been punched in the stomach.

There was a second man. A familiar man. The man who’d taken Mandy. His heart sped until he could feel it beating in every pulse point, hammering against his temple and echoing in every limb. With a sharp look over his shoulder and the lowest of growls, he stopped the others in their tracks.

He’d shared the kidnapper’s scent trail with the pack. As they breathed, their eyes grew wide and met his, their gazes fixed as they awaited his next command. Good. Nobody was trying to flout his authority and mess this up. Now, he just had to get Michael and Kimberly out of the way.

Jack had listened to all Michael had told him about the Gruens’ fighting techniques – apparently, they liked firepower, and plenty of it. They were conniving and vicious, as anyone had to be to hunt a wolf shifter, but were limited as all shifter hunters were by the desire to preserve their kills’ carcasses for trophy purposes. Jack could only hope that their greed for trophies wouldn’t be overshadowed by their desire to finally end Michael. There were a million ways to kill a wolf if you didn’t care what happened to the body, but shooting one through the heart with a silver bullet required a certain carefulness that might allow the pack enough time to break through their defenses, regardless of the intense firepower Jack had been warned to expect.

He motioned for the others to follow again and slunk forward, ears pricked and nose twitching. The scents were drifting from a higher elevation; Ronnie was right, they’d taken high ground. He’d never seen the little hunting shack Ronnie had said would be in the area, but that must be where they’d taken her.

The scents grew stronger when the wind picked up, giving Jack a clearer idea of where they were coming from with each breeze. It was too bad the rest of the pack wasn’t there, but he didn’t dare howl yet – doing so would give their presence away to Mandy’s captors.

As they rounded a sloping section of forest, circling higher ground, a third scent reached Jack, sweet, fresh and exactly what he’d been hoping and praying to detect for the better part of twenty-four hours. He froze and breathed deeply, inhaling Mandy’s wildflower-and-rain smell. It was fainter than the odors of her captors – did they have her locked away? Restrained inside the little building while they waited outside? Michael’s suspicions that they’d taken her for the sake of luring him to them seemed awfully possible, and as sickening as that was, Jack was insanely grateful that he smelled
her
, not death or decay.

She was alive. And she was bleeding. He could smell blood, a faint coppery taint on the breeze. His stomach lurched at the scent, and though a dozen terrifying possibilities tumbled through his mind, there was one that really stood out – had she lost the baby? An involuntary growl began rumbling in the pit of his chest. He wanted to – had to – hold her, and at the same time, he wanted to rip everyone who was responsible for harming her into a million little ribbons of flesh. That included Michael. If the baby had been hurt, if they’d caused her to miscarry or go into premature labor or whatever the loss would be considered at this point…

God, she might be in so much pain, suffering this very moment in a crappy little shed, alone. Not knowing that she was about to be rescued. They had to hurry, and yet, they had to be careful – had to make sure that her captors didn’t hurt her again or kill her when they realized that they’d managed to attract several wolves and a bear shifter. Because after she’d served her purpose as bait, she’d be expendable. Shifter hunters would never purposely allow a shifter to go free, pregnant or not.

Noah nudged Jack’s shoulder lightly with his nose, snapping Jack out of a violent fantasy.

Noah’s eyes were a bright hazel like his own, and gleaming with concern. Even wolves had facial expressions; Noah’s looked grim and determined and hopeful at the same time. A shared thread of emotion seemed to have woven its way through the pack; as Jack met the gazes of his packmates one by one, he saw his own feelings reflected in their eyes.

He refused to look directly at the brown, blue-eyed wolf at the back of the group – Michael looked too much like Mandy when she was in her wolf form. Instead he snapped his teeth, releasing a low growl as he tipped his head in the direction of a thicket several yards away. The vegetation wouldn’t offer any protection from flying ammunition, but it would camouflage Michael and Kimberly, and it was far enough away from where the scents were coming from that they should be safe anyway.

Michael shook his head and took a deliberate step forward.

Jack snapped his fangs. He would kill Michael if he slowed them down, if he refused to co-operate. Kimberly needed to be protected, especially since they’d only scented two of the hunters so far and knew that there were probably more somewhere. For all they knew, they could be sneaking up from downwind, and would take or kill Kimberly if she was left alone. He wasn’t about to do that to Mandy’s mother or let Michael’s defiance shave another precious second off of their window of opportunity. Somebody had to stay with Kimberly, and it sure as hell wasn’t going to be Jack. And he wasn’t about to ask either Noah or April to come with him while the other one stayed behind, forced to babysit a human while their mate faced potentially lethal danger. As for Ronnie, they needed his knowledge of the terrain and sharp-shooting skills. There was no way around it – Michael was the one who’d have to stay behind.

Noah surprised Jack – surprised the entire group, judging by their expressions – by lunging forward and nearly colliding with Michael, his fangs gleaming as he curled his lips back and widened his jaws, ready to bite. His growl was quiet for the sake of stealth, but still threatening. The thread of mutual emotion that connected the pack members changed, becoming charged with a furious, concentrated energy. Jack and April’s growls echoed Noah’s.

Michael had little choice but to obey and escort Kimberly to the shelter of vegetation. She walked beside him, one hand buried in the thick fur on his shoulders, her eyes wide and her face stained with dried tear tracks. She looked nervous and afraid; Jack would’ve felt sorry for her, if he’d had the time to spare.

With Michael and Kimberly left behind, the others were free to move on, to rescue the alpha female – the love of Jack’s life. He kept a firm rein on his nerves as they proceeded, aware that even the smallest of mistakes could have devastating consequences. One misstep, one overreaction, and he could lose her and the baby forever. His heart wrenched at the thought; he couldn’t go back to being the lonely alpha of the Half Moon Pack. Not now that he knew what it was like to have a mate, to love someone more than you wanted your next breath.

The earth rolled in this part of the forest, creating hills and valleys, all covered by the umbrella of the forest canopy. Bright sunlight fell in mottled splotches and shafts, reminding him how long it had been since Mandy had been snatched from the cabin porch in the dead of night. It had taken them longer to find her than he’d hoped, but the twenty-four hour window hadn’t closed yet. They’d made it. There was every reason to hope, even if the scent of blood did grow a little stronger as they rounded the swell of earth they’d been skirting and stepped into the edge of a dangerous valley.

Lethal was more like it, when he considered that armed men were somewhere at the top of the next hill. He could smell their stale, sweaty masculine stink. Silently signaling the others to be still, he froze, his eyes scanning the hilltop.

It was there – the hunting shack. Ramshackle and aged, its boards were so weathered that they blended right in with the autumn forest. The decaying wooden walls were a grey-brown, much like dead leaves. And inside the rickety shelter was his mate, his stolen bride; her sweet scent drifted down the steep hill, mingling with the alarming odor of blood. Where were her guards – the two men he’d smelled?

Patrolling, apparently. One soon came into view, his boots creating a quiet stir of dead leaves as he circled around the cabin, a rifle cradled in his arms and a sidearm on his hip. He moved slowly, deliberately, turning his head from left to right and scanning the landscape, presumably for signs of anyone come to rescue Mandy.

Jack, Ronnie, Noah and April were far enough away that Mandy’s captor probably wouldn’t notice them with his naked eye – not with the way their coats blended in with the fall foliage. And Ronnie, who’d dressed in camo pants and a brown t-shirt that almost matched the shade of his skin, had crouched behind a scrubby sapling.

Unfortunately, to get to the shack they’d have to either charge across the valley and up the steep incline of the front of the hill, or skirt around and climb the sides of the hill. Either way, they’d be completely vulnerable during the charge – easy pickings for anyone at the top with a gun. It was obvious why someone had chosen the hill to build a hunting shack on top of; anyone would be able to sit up there with a rifle and sniper any animal that wondered through the wide valley.

Jack shifted, carefully kneeling behind a tree trunk so that his human shape and light-tan skin wouldn’t stand out against the dark tones of the October forest. “Ronnie, I’m gonna need you to stay down here and act as our sniper.” He kept his voice as low as possible, speaking barely above a whisper.

Ronnie nodded while the others listened with their ears pricked forward.

“As for the rest of us, we’ll need the others in order to stand our best chance of succeeding. Noah, I need you to find the others and bring them here. They’ll be within the radius we discussed. Don’t worry – we’ll wait for you, unless something dire happens.”

Noah nodded and disappeared into the forest, silent as a ghost. A good beta, he hadn’t even questioned Jack’s decision and had trusted him with April’s safety. Jack would do his best to honor that trust. Unless they were discovered by the shifter hunters or it became obvious that Mandy was in immediate danger, they wouldn’t budge until the others arrived. They’d need every wolf they could get.

Jack remained in his human form, discussing the terrain with Ronnie.

“It’s high ground all around,” Ronnie said, his voice a deep rumble.

“Yeah, but the incline is less steep at the sides of the hill, especially to the left. Once the others get here, we’ll divide and flank them while you and Will stay here with your rifles at the ready.”

Ronnie grunted his consent, compressing his mouth into a narrow line as he surveyed the challenge before them. There was no way around it – they’d have to climb the hill, and every angle was a dangerous one. The hunters had chosen their position well, a fact that caused Jack to grind his teeth in frustration.

Nothing seemed to change as Jack, Ronnie and April waited for Noah to return with the others. The two hunters continued their patrols, walking in looping patterns around the shack, their weapons at the ready. Jack did his best to assess the situation, trying to figure out where the other hunters were. He would’ve liked to think that there were only two, but that would be too good to be true. They wouldn’t be walking out in the open like that if they weren’t covered. He had to determine where the others were before leading the pack up the hill – if they charged in blind, they’d likely die for it. He finally got his chance to determine the other hunters’ locations when a strong breeze rushed through the treetops, rattling dying leaves from their branches.

Jack shifted into his wolf form and inhaled deeply, taking in as much air as he could and scenting it anxiously for any sign of more humans.

They were fainter than the two patrollers’ scents, but the odors of other men were definitely there. Jack examined the scents, trying to glean any information he could. The smells of sweat and other body odors were just traces on the wind, not nearly as strong as the other two men’s. Differentiating them took several moments and wasn’t easy, but by the time the breeze died down, Jack guessed that there were maybe three or four other men that they couldn’t see. Probably four, which would bring the tally up to half a dozen – the number of Gruens Michael had said were after him.