Noah shrugged. “Just turn off the seduction routine. I’m not interested in you or your pack. I just need a mode of transportation, a map, and some supplies.” He still wasn’t clear on what supplies he might need, but if he just said supplies, maybe they would magically come together in a bag for him. Let her lackeys sort out what kind of supplies he needed. They knew the area. There was no reason to show his ignorance. It would be another sign of weakness.
She sighed. “Fine. Truth be told, I want you out of my space.”
He very much doubted that. He’d smelled her when he’d first shifted in the lobby. She wanted to jump on him. If she took a mate, most likely she’d fall back to second in command, and none of the wolves in this pack seemed like someone she’d want to take a ruling backseat to. But someone new, someone with power? Maybe. Though, despite her desire for Noah, there was also some truth to her words. She wanted to be the alpha, not second string of an alpha pair. And if she’d back the hell off, he would happily get out of her space and let her carry on as the queen or however she saw herself.
“Rafe,” Shira said over the music in the bar. “My room. Now.”
Rafe perked up at that and practically raced out of the bar. They’d all watched Noah turn her down, so now she had to prove she could still make any one of those wolves jump into her bed on cue. And most likely she could. She certainly had her charms.
Noah stayed where he was, irritated that they were no closer to getting the things he needed to get Sydney out of here. He’d wanted to leave the following evening as soon as she rose. They were still far too close to the facility they’d been held captive in for his comfort. But the possibility of getting out at sunset was beginning to seem less realistic.
His nostrils flared when he smelled Sydney in the lobby. He’d told her to stay in their room. He stalked out of the bar, livid that she hadn’t listened to him when he was trying to keep her safe. He could have thrown her down and marked her the second he had her. It would have protected her, but he was trying not to be a monster about it. What could she be thinking in this place with all these strange wolves? This wasn’t his dad’s well-behaved pack.
When he reached the lobby, he stopped dead in his tracks. The heavy metal screaming through the speakers that once were used for train announcements, made it hard for him to concentrate. All he could do was growl.
Two of the male wolves had dragged Sydney down here. He wasn’t sure if she’d left her room on her own, but the smell of fear on her made him somehow doubt it.
“What is the meaning of this?” Shira said, but her act wasn’t fooling Noah. He could tell by the way her body went rigid that she’d orchestrated it. She’d thought things would go a different direction and had forgotten to call off her dogs.
“But Shira, you said…”
“Release her this instant,” the alpha said.
Noah tensed, every instinct telling him to rip them all apart. But even if he thought there was some small chance he could do that, or at least could take out enough of them to intimidate the rest, it was too risky. Maybe this could be diffused another way. Maybe the cheery robotic voice had given him a sense of diplomacy over the years, no matter how artificial. If he’d used it once before to survive, he could use it now.
Sydney’s eyes glowed red and her fangs descended. She growled low in her throat. It was a menacing sound Noah never thought he would hear from her. She spun on one of her captors, hauled back, and landed a hard punch to his jaw. He reeled back.
Sydney stared at her fist, stunned. “I-I don’t know where that came from.”
The wolf she’d punched advanced on her and growled.
That was Noah’s cue. He shifted and pounced on top of the guy. The other wolf shifted as he got thrown to the ground and the two of them rolled around on the floor, snapping and snarling, blood flying out from the fight until the other wolf let out a horrible wail and became very still.
Noah was about to shift back to normal when Shira shifted and jumped on him. It wasn’t the fight he’d asked for or the fight he wanted, but it was the one he had. She was tougher than the male he’d just killed, and he knew without doubt as they fought, that she’d been strong enough to lead this pack. But she wasn’t strong enough to beat Noah.
His fangs dug into her as she shifted back, and he let go. She scrambled away, clutching at her throat, but it was obvious from the look in her eyes that she knew it was too late for her.
Noah shifted back and wiped the blood off his mouth. “You should have let us be on our way without the theatrics. It didn’t have to go this way. I didn’t want it to.”
The light left her eyes, and she stared sightlessly up from the floor.
The metal that had raged through the speakers, stopped, and the room fell quiet. The wolves that had been in the lounge, filed into the lobby. Noah moved in front of Sydney.
One by one, they dropped to one knee and bared their throats.
“We’re going back to our room,” Noah said, trying to ignore that about forty wolves had just pledged their fealty to him. No matter what his instincts said, he couldn’t lead a pack. He barely remembered how pack dynamics worked. He had some deep issues from being in that place. He’d only abuse those in his care. If he had a pack, he wanted to be like his dad. He didn’t want it like this. And he had to get back home so his family knew he was alive.
His parents would have had a memorial in honor of what would have been his coming-of-age birth moon. Tonight. They were mourning tonight, and he had a pack wanting him to lead them. It was too messed up.
One of the wolves rose and moved hesitantly toward him. “Um… sir, we have a much nicer room for the alpha to stay in. That room you’ve been in isn’t good enough for…”
Noah held back a growl as the wolf moved closer to Sydney than he was comfortable with after what almost just happened. What had almost just happened? He still wasn’t sure what Shira’s plan had been, but whatever it was had proven incredibly foolish. Perhaps she’d planned to get rid of Sydney and then execute the wolves who’d taken her, pretending they’d acted alone and not on her orders.
The other wolf took a couple of steps back.
“We aren’t staying. We’re leaving as soon as the sun is down and we can arrange transport.”
“We’ll go with you,” another wolf said. They were getting braver.
“Why? I don’t want a pack.” That was a lie. “I was only protecting my mate.” The mate I haven’t marked yet. He wasn’t even a fit mate. If he was, he would have done what was necessary to protect her first, before anything else, rather than treating her like they were a couple of humans on a date trying to see if maybe the other might be The One.
He’d known Sydney was the one. She knew it, too. Giving her a few days to make it seem as if fate hadn’t already decided for them only put her at risk—particularly when she couldn’t hold her own with anyone stronger than another frail human female. Although… she’d just thrown a pretty harsh right hook, most likely courtesy of his blood. And that was just from feeding once.
“S-sir, we need a leader. We’re willing to go with you, wherever you want. Anyone else here leading will be weaker than Shira. And while she was strong, our pack isn’t as secure as it could be. It will be less so if we follow someone else. It’ll be safer for you and your mate to travel with a pack.”