Werewolves in Love 2: Yours, Mine and Howls (20 page)

She smiled at him then, a cold, hostile grin, the kind he saw more frequently on males than females, a smile that challenged and defied without a trace of tears or hurt or weakness. A fuck you smile, from one alpha to another.

“Where are you going?” Seth whispered.

“Home first. Then I’ll figure something out.”

Seth was shocked. “What about Lind?”

“Tomas called. No one’s seen Jakob in a week.”

“But he might—”

“Oh fuck no, we’re not doing this again. Seth,” he barked, and the beta’s attention snapped back to him, “who’s Tomas and who’s Lind?”

He could see that Seth wanted desperately to look over at Ally, but his Alpha’s command was too strong. He submitted, lowering his head. “Tomas is a friend of ours, a cop. Jakob Lind’s a guy who— A guy Ally went out with for a while. He turned out to be a head case—”

“Went out with?” Cade asked sharply as he stared at Ally. “How long?”

She shrugged as Seth replied, “Not long. Couple of months.”

“Were they lovers?”

Ally rolled her eyes.

“No,” Seth said.

“How do you know?”

“I always know who she sleeps with.” The wolf sounded more miserable by the minute.

“What’s he got to do with Ally going back to Houston?”

“Well, see, she, um…”

“She what?” Cade barked.

“I beat the crap out of him.”

She wasn’t hunched up and shaking any longer. She stood with her hands on her hips, watching Cade and Seth’s exchange with something like amusement. He’d never seen a female so cocky while so pissed off.

“Why’d you beat him up?” he asked, intrigued.

“I broke up with Jakob because he seemed too interested in Dylan. His ego couldn’t handle it. He showed up at the stables one night and tried to attack me.”

Rage clouded his vision at the thought of someone harming his mate. “What happened?” he ground out.

“I threw him across the stable. Then I hurt him.”

“You
what?
”

She shrugged again. “He shouldn’t have tried to jump me when I was on my period. I beat him up a little too much, and it would’ve been hard to explain since the scumbag is twice my size, so I dumped him in the parking lot of a nasty wolf dive. Then I thought maybe I should get out of town for a while in case he talked about it.”

“So you came up here.”

“I wanted to go somewhere by myself, but—”

“I didn’t want her to,” said Seth, still in submission to Cade. “We’d talked about bringing Dylan up here, and it seemed like a good time to do it.”

“Pretty goddamned convenient for Ally, wasn’t it?” Cade said quietly. “Good thing you had the pup for an excuse to leave town.”

Ally flinched as if he’d slapped her. Then her eyes narrowed. Her lips curled in a sneer, drawing out the words with contempt. “Fuck you. Seth, I’ll leave the keys at the bus—”

“You’re not going anywhere.”

“Excuse me?”

“I’m keeping the keys to the Cherokee, and you’re sure as hell not taking any of our vehicles.”

“You can’t keep me here!”

“I’m the Alpha, sweetheart. I can do anything I want.”

“What, you’re going to post a wolf outside my door?”

“Oh, you don’t have to stay in the house. It’s thirty miles to town. I think it’d take you a while to walk it.”

She cocked her head. “An hour if I jogged, thirty minutes at a flat run. Of course, that’s without the luggage. If I had to carry suitcases…”

He grunted in disgust. “On second thought, smartass, you can stay in the fucking house.”

“Hell I will.”

“We’ll talk later.”

“No. We won’t.”

“Seth, go. Remember, Allison—” he couldn’t help grinning at her fury “—inside the house. If you try to leave you’ll only embarrass yourself.”

He almost imagined he heard a low growl. As he reached the bottom of the stairs, she slammed the door so hard the floor vibrated. A picture fell off the wall.

Where’d she get that kind of strength?

Michael had heard it all.

“Cade. You can’t hold her here. That’s false imprisonment. What if she calls the cops?”

He sighed. “I’m not gonna keep her locked up for long, Michael. Just…for a while.”

“Well…I think it’s a bad idea. But we’ve got another problem.”

“Great. I need another problem.”

“I just got off the phone with Trey. He was at the hospital with Roman and Shawn. Rufus Stapkis showed up.”

“What happened?” Cade barked.

“Shawn was alone in the room. Rufus attacked him—”

“
What?”

“Shawn’s fine. The guys heard him yell. Hospital security showed up, ten kinds of hell broke loose. Stapkis got away and no one knows where he is now.”

“Fucking hell.”

They sat down in his office.

“What do we do?” Michael asked.

“Was he alone?”

“Yeah, I think so. No sign of any strange wolves.”

“Hmm. You said the Seattle pack acts spooked, right?”

“Yeah. There’s been talk about him being
loco
, and we know they don’t know where he is.”

“So. There’s no reason to assume we’ve got a pack war brewing. This could be one crazy old Alpha acting alone.”

“Probably.”

“Good. Call Seattle. If anyone hears from Rufus, he needs to know if I see him, he’s mine.”

Cade wouldn’t have to challenge at this point. His unprovoked attack on one of Cade’s wolves left Stapkis without any rights, especially since he’d entered Rocky Mountain’s territory without notice or permission.

“I want every wolf in the state on the lookout for him. He knows we’ll be after him now. He’s not entitled to protocol, so he’s got no reason to behave with honor.”

“You going up to Colorado Springs?”

“Shit. I should.” His mate or his enemy? Take care of the problem at home, or the problem roaming around somewhere in the vicinity of the whole fucking state?

“How’s Aaron?” He should’ve asked before now.

“No change. They’re not calling it a vegetative state yet, but he’s still out.”

Cade ran his hands through his hair and tugged hard. If wolves could go bald, this week would do it. “All right. Stapkis might show up, so I’m staying here. I want you to go to Colorado Springs. Talk to the guys, ask around, start putting out the word.”

“Leaving now.”

“Good.”

Cade had heard his wolves outside. Everyone had returned from exile. He stretched in his chair and closed his eyes.

He didn’t often find himself without a clue how to handle a situation. He could handle Rufus Stapkis. He could handle Sarah Jane and his daughter’s need for companionship. Apparently, though, he couldn’t handle his mate.

He couldn’t even tell her she
was
his mate. He’d thought after last night she’d be all soft and gooey, radiant with, if not love, at least affection for him. Instead, he hesitated to turn his back on her.

Worst of all, underneath his anger still lay the primal urge to cherish and protect her. He couldn’t forget the pain in her eyes when Seth submitted to him, or the head-swimming rage he’d felt when he heard about Jakob Lind. Maybe he should try to talk to her…

Hell no.
Let her stew.

So here she sat, under house arrest and the paw of an arrogant, control freak alpha asshole who was happy to screw her, needed to dominate her, and had no long-term interest in her.

She regretted slamming the door. Losing her temper had put her on the path to Colorado in the first place. For thirteen years she’d maintained control of her strange nature. That control had slipped when Lind attacked her. Since she’d arrived here—since she’d met Cade—it was disintegrating bit by bit, and she didn’t know how to stop it.

She lay flat on her back, trembling, clenching and unclenching her fists. Counting to five hundred, she took long, deep breaths and waited for the ache in her chest to subside, the knot in her throat to ease. She was as livid as she’d ever been, but just beneath the fury lay stark terror and more heartbreak. Everything she’d feared would happen had happened.

She’d lost Seth.

She didn’t blame her cousin for submitting to a powerful Alpha. Seth needed a pack. If he hadn’t felt he had to stay with her and Dylan, he’d probably have settled down with a woman by now.

No, she didn’t blame Seth for submitting. She blamed Cade for making him. He’d done it on purpose—to hurt her, to teach her a lesson, just to prove he could.

“Remember, Allison,” she said out loud in a perfect imitation of Dylan’s
nyah-nyah
tone, “inside the house.”

Asshole alphas.

Seth belonged to Cade now, and Dylan probably did too, and it hurt. It hurt so bad she could barely breathe.

But if Cade walked in the room in the next five minutes and tried to kiss her, she’d let him.

She hated herself for not hating him.

She sat up. Maybe she couldn’t think clearly enough to figure out her next move right now, but that didn’t mean she would just sit here like a good little prisoner. She didn’t need a door to escape.

After donning shorts and running shoes, she opened the bedroom window, which faced the back of the house. There was no one out there right now. It looked about thirty feet to the ground, forty at the most—nothing to a wolf or a woman with wolfish abilities.

At the very least she’d burn off some rage. Best case scenario, Cade would come looking for her and have a heart attack when he saw her gone. Grinning as she imagined his reaction, she jumped.

“You cannot treat your mate like this. It is shameful.”

Cade turned away from the computer in exasperation. “Sindri, I’m not going to discuss it. Allison and I are having issues, and you don’t know everything about—”

“I know more about her than you think. I know she is a good female, and she is supposed to be here.” The brownie’s wizened face tightened with anger.

“Well,
she
doesn’t know she’s supposed to be here, because she was getting ready to leave without telling anyone.”

Sindri frowned and pursed his lips.

“Yeah. She tried to make a run for it. And she hasn’t been telling the truth, and—”

“None of that matters. She does not deserve this treatment. Your parents would be ashamed of you. I am.”

Cade stood up. “Wait a goddamned minute, old man. You don’t tell me how to treat—”

“I am going to see the girl. She may be afraid.” Sindri spun on his heel and hurried out.

Cade was too surprised to react right away, but he caught up to Sindri before he got to the stairs.

“Hold up.” He put a hand to Sindri’s shoulder. The brownie angrily knocked it away. Cade couldn’t remember him ever doing something like that.

“You do not tell me what to do,
barn.
” He stretched his arm to stab at Cade’s chest with one long, skinny finger. “I am not your wolf. I am not your servant. I do not obey you. I care for you, as I cared for your mother and your brother. I failed them. I will not fail you.”

Cade watched, open-mouthed, as Sindri shuffled up the stairs and knocked on Ally’s door. When she didn’t answer, he let himself into the room. A moment later he came back out and peered down at Cade through the slats of the railing. Cade didn’t think he’d ever seen Sindri smirk before.

“She is gone. Your mate escaped out the window.”

Chapter Sixteen

He knew she hadn’t left the room. The window was open, but he didn’t see her crumpled body lying on the ground below. At this point, nothing she did surprised him.

It still scared the hell out of him.

Now that he’d claimed her, finding her would be easy. But how? On horseback? On two feet? Four? If he caught up to her in wolf form, what then? Would he change back and start yelling at her, buck-ass naked? After their recent scene, being chased by him on four feet might frighten her.

Or it might just piss her off.

He’d go on horseback. She had a head start, but a horse could catch up to her in no time.

Sindri acted oddly unconcerned, even a little amused, insisting Ally would be safe. Cade worried the four-hundred-year-old brownie might be going senile.

On his way to the stables, he ran straight into Dylan. “Ally jumped out the window. Any idea how she might be able to do something like that?”

“Um, well,” Dylan stammered, “I can’t— I mean, I can, but it’s kinda…”

“Never mind. Once I find her, we’re all going to sit down, and the three of you will answer every fucking question I ask.”

Dylan muttered, “Yes, sir.” Cade ignored him. He got Sleipnir saddled in record time and went after his mate.

She’d been running with defiant abandon for a while when she noted she was picking up a strange scent. She normally didn’t pay much attention to scents. Here on the ranch were so many different smells, from plants, wolves and other animals, she didn’t bother trying to keep track. Scent became background noise, like traffic in Houston.

Now she realized the new scent was one she’d smelled recently. She closed her eyes and began sifting through all the scents crowding her mind, plucking and sorting, separating them like tangled threads.

When she thought she had it, she tripped and fell, one knee banging into a large, jagged rock. Panting, she knelt in the scrub grass on her hands and one good knee, watching blood seep from the other one. She’d smelled that scent for a very brief time, but it had stuck in her memory, she guessed, because it was so closely associated with Aaron’s subsequent suicide attempt.

The scent came from High Voice Guy, the wolf who’d argued with Aaron at the restaurant.

He didn’t want to hear more lies. He didn’t want another fight. No enemy’s fangs could rip him up like her brash, bitter anger did. He knew she had feelings for him, but for some reason, she wouldn’t trust him enough to tell him what was going on.

Or else she really was a manipulative, cold-blooded female and she’d played him the way his mother had played his father. But his mother had loved his father, so Louis MacDougall’s life had been a happy one, whereas Cade’s life would be hell for the next five or six decades.

Maybe he’d get lucky and she’d die young.