I pulled off my shirt, even as I was out the front door, shifting into my wolf body. I needed moments to collect myself. Then I’d return and be back to her.
If Mac were conscious, she’d tell me to do this. To settle. To be the wolf. Or some shit. She was a healer. An Omega. This was what she did. She’d put her hands on me and heal me from the inside out. I’d watched her push a bullet out of Jarret with nothing more than her mind and her hands on his body. She’d turned us all around from the control Ross Morgan had on us. The woman was nothing less than a miracle. My miracle.
And I was a total failure in helping her.
Fully shifted, I rushed into the forest around the swamp. The heat hit me differently than it did in my human form. I craved this. My vision tunneled. There was a rabbit nearby. What a stupid fucking rabbit to hang around in the vicinity of so many werewolves.
I wasn’t interested in hunting. Not then. What I needed was to run. I’d had enough blood, had enough fighting. I had to run until I could think, until I could come up with the Hail Mary pass that would save the love of my life.
So help me, I would not lose her to madness. I would not lose our happy future with her. We needed to just be allowed to be. I growled at the thought.
A scent caught my attention, and I turned to face the wolf who had come to invade my solitary run. I knew Anton’s as well as I did anyone. My brother who had been silenced by Morgan and his ilk when he was just a baby. They’d taken his fucking vocal cords.
There he was, staring at me through his wolf eyes. How long had he been out here? I didn’t know. Anton had always done his own thing. Whether that was a natural tendency, or because he’d been rendered mute and my mother had refused to help him communicate out of some fucked up need to believe he’d eventually be fine, I didn’t know. We’d never know.
He loved our mate with an intensity that matched my own. And right then, he was exactly what I needed.
Anton was here. That was great. We were going to fucking run.
Taking off as fast and mindlessly as I could, I ran against Anton’s speed. I ran against his pain. I ran, knowing he’d chase and maybe beat me because he could feel it, too. If ever there was a person who knew what this hole in my chest felt like, it was Anton. We were fighters. And we had no enemy to challenge, no battle to win.
Pack. Mate. They were everything, they were life. All of it dissolved while I stood with nothing to do.
That damned Loup. Why hadn’t some pack eliminated him when he first changed to the madness? We hunted the lone wolves who lost it. That was what we did.
Well…used to do. Until Morgan changed all that by pushing the Accords and somehow stopping us from having Omegas.
If I ever saw him, I might ask him how he’d done that. Then I’d tear out his throat.
I didn’t know how long we ran. Anton was a great partner for this. He kept up, sometimes pulling ahead, sometimes falling behind. There were new smells—alligators, snakes, flowers—that came and went. We were far from home. He must have realized that we’d gone too long at the same time I did, because we both skidded to a stop, panting.
Mac was too far away. I nodded my head at him before I bumped him in the side. We’d run back. That would have to be enough.
Anton shook his head, and I stopped. He nodded up toward the moon, and I followed his gaze. It was full tonight. Why did he want me to see that? Full moons had nothing to do with our lives. Not really. We were werewolves when the moon was full, we were werewolves when it wasn’t. What difference did it make? It was pretty, but I’d rather go after a gator if he needed to do something else before we returned.
I blinked. Hold on. Anton was incredibly smart, probably the most intellectually superior of any of us. All the time we wasted arguing and talking about nothing, he was forever thinking of things we never considered.
Why was he indicating the moon? What did that mean?
Fuck me. The Loups were affected by the moon. The rest of us, no. But they couldn’t help their shifts during that time. They had to. That was part of what made them so dangerous. Exposure.
Ross Morgan—whatever superior Loup he was—needed to shift tonight.
And must have every full moon for however long this had been going on for him.
He was old. We knew that much. At some point, that fucker had probably been caught. Humans didn’t know what to do when they ran into proof of us. They freaked out. Sometimes, they took to social media. The Accords couldn’t stop the Loups. Not that there were too many of them around anymore, but before we’d all shut off the best parts of ourselves, there had been wolves whose job it had been to take care of exposure. My father, Cristian, had been one of them for a while.
I took off running toward the house. It was going to be time consuming and mind numbing, but so help me, I would place money that I could find this asshole by just following his crumbs. Sighting after sighting, I’d go through all of them until he was mine.
I shifted as I hit the porch. I’d made the run back in record time with Anton right on my heels. Swinging around, I stared at my brother. We were both out of breath. “Thanks.”
He nodded before he placed his hand over his heart.
Yeah…that’s what she was. Our heart.
I grabbed a pair of sweatpants that we’d started storing on the porch to take care of the nudity-after-shifts problem and stormed into the house. I’d figure out a shirt later. Right now, I was too hot for one anyway. I stormed into my office.
Mac’s brothers were in there, but they both jumped up like they were ready for orders as soon as I entered.
“How is she?” Agustin asked first.
I shook my head. “Currently not verbal. Which might be better because she smells like pain.”
I’d had more than enough of that scent from her. We’d finally gotten her back from the agony of losing her mating marks. When this was all over, Mac was going to be warm, well-fed, well-loved, and happy every day of her life.
Or as close to that as I could make it.
Her happiness and well-being were going to be my main objectives in life. And if she didn’t make it through this…well, there would be big steps taken then, too. I wasn’t living a life without her, so there was just no choice but to get through this and come out the other end.
“We have to seek out information on werewolf sightings. I don’t believe the Loup is moving around. He has a central spot. We have to find it.”
Agustin’s eyes lit up. “Great idea.”
I nodded toward Anton. “It was his.”
My brother, shirtless like me, nodded. He held up the laptop computer on the desk. We needed more than just his tablet and my laptop. I had a pack full of werewolves. They all wanted to participate? Great. I’d put them to work.
“Agustin, take the cars. Go out and buy as many devices as you can on the credit card you’ll find in the drawer over there. It’s my work account. I’ll take up my misuse of the account with the IRS later. Buy the store out. And then order more to be delivered tomorrow. I want everyone on this. We’re seeking a place that keeps reporting werewolf sightings. This might take some time, but it’s doable. I know it is.”
Her brother squeezed my arm. “We’ll save my sister.”
We would. And then we were going to kill this fucker. Slowly.
I did love to play with my prey.