he’d promised her patience, he wanted her now.
Ever since the night of Max Doucet’s Novitiate’s ceremony, Wyatt had known she was his. A rogue wolf had bitten Max because of his sister’s association with the Runners, and the purpose of the ceremony had been to determine whether or not the teenager would survive his first change. In a surprising act of loyalty to the Bloodrunners, Elise and her brother had sided with the half-breed hunters that night, standing against their sadistic father and his maniacal plans.
It had been a macabre, hellish scene, and yet, Wyatt hadn’t been able to take his focus off the woman standing no more than a handful of feet away from him. The late-autumn winds had raged, whipping the thick, shimmering strands of her dark red hair against the perfect angles of her face, pulling her shirt tight against the womanly curves of her body. The violent gusts had surrounded him with her warm, intoxicating scent, creating a reaction in his body from which he doubted he would ever recover.
Take. Keep. Mine. Those three guttural words had echoed through his head over and over, too many times to count. Primal, raw and savagely possessive.
But while Elise Drake’s scent might have told him she was meant to be his, body and soul, he wasn’t going to allow that knowledge to rule his life. Even if his past had been...different, that wasn’t something he would just accept. And he wasn’t looking to make her the answer to his problems, as if saving her could save him from the mistakes he’d made. This wasn’t a goddamn do-over. He just wanted to protect her. To hear her laugh. See her smile. And be there when she finally realized there were still things in life worth living for, rather than just existing.
She’d arrived home only a handful of minutes ago, and as she moved past one of the back windows, Wyatt couldn’t help but follow the lines of her body with his gaze, appreciating the graceful, sensual way that she moved. Tension gripped him, and it took a significant force of effort to hold his position. He was debating whether or not to move in closer, when his cell phone silently vibrated in his pocket; a quick glance at the number told him it was Carla. Knowing she was going to rib him over his dance with Elise, he choked back a curse and quietly answered the phone. “What’s up?”
Carla’s husky laughter filled his ear. “And here I was wondering if I should be asking you the same thing.”
“Cute,” he muttered with a snort.
“I know, huh? But believe it or not, I had a reason to call beyond trying to get a rise out of you. A set of scouts on the south border called in saying they saw something. They tried to track it, but the rain that was coming down made it impossible. Just thought you might want to know, seeing as how your lady bird is in that vicinity.”
Wyatt glanced at his watch. “When did the call come in?”
“They phoned it into the command center in Shadow Peak about an hour ago. Guess the guys on duty figured we were all too busy with the wedding to pass it along. And before you freak, a bunch of us are already on our way up to talk to them. We’ll make sure they never make the same mistake again.”
He grunted in response, wishing like hell that Eric had been able to convince Elise to relocate to the Alley. The siblings had argued about it for days, after Eric had permanently moved into one of the cabins there with Chelsea. But for some reason the stubborn woman refused to leave her home, even when so many of the townspeople continued to treat her like shit simply because of what had happened with her old man.
He started to get a bad feeling in his gut. “You think someone’s sneaking around on Silvercrest land again?” The last time it’d happened, they’d nearly had their asses handed to them.
“It wouldn’t surprise me,” Carla responded, while the guys in the vehicle with her talked in the background. “Every pack on the eastern seaboard knows we’re still recovering from Daddy Drake’s bullshit. They’ll all come sniffing around eventually, just to test us. The Silvercrest have been dominant for too long now not to have a long list of Lycans who’d like nothing more than to see us tumble.”
Lifting his free hand, he rubbed at the knots of tension in the back of his neck. “We’ve already tumbled.”
“Yeah, but we’re still on our land. Trust me, there’s going to be someone who wants to try to change that fact, if for nothing more than the bragging rights. The pack that knocks out the Silvercrest, even when we’re not at our best, will be one that makes others cower. After what happened between Eric and the Whiteclaw a few weeks ago, you know those bastards have to be drooling for it.”
Wyatt didn’t doubt that she was right. Eric had met his human wife while she was searching for her younger sister, Perry. Making a bad choice, Perry had gone chasing after the wrong guy and ended up falling in with the Whiteclaw pack who lived to the south of the Silvercrest. With the Runners’ help, Eric had been able to prove that the Whiteclaw had partnered up with the Donovans, a corrupt local Lycan family, on a number of illegal activities, the most horrific being one that involved human girls. With the Donovans’ support, the Whiteclaw had been drugging the girls and pimping them out for Lycan gang rapes. The drugs not only acted as an aphrodisiac on the girls, but also impaired their memories of the attacks. The Runners had managed to close down the strip club in Wesley, a human town at the foot of the mountains, that the Whiteclaw had been using to find the girls, but tensions between the two packs had never been higher. Roy Claymore, who led the Whiteclaw wolves, was thirsty for Silvercrest blood, and Wyatt knew it wouldn’t be long before the Silvercrest found themselves embroiled in battle.
“Shit,” he cursed under his breath, running a palm down his face to clear away the misting drops of rain. “I’ve got a feeling something’s coming down. Soon.”
There was a wry edge to Carla’s worried tone. “And here I thought you’d have nothing but butterflies in your belly after that little performance on the dance floor tonight. We were all damn near riveted by the steam coming off you two smoldering little lovebirds.”
Christ. Wondering how long it would be before Eric confronted him about his sister, he muttered, “I don’t have time for you to mess with my head right now, Reyes. I wanna check the area, see if anything’s around.”
“Okay. But if you find trouble, don’t be stupid,” she told him, all traces of teasing gone. “We’re gonna check out where the sighting took place after we’re done in town, so we won’t be far. Call me before you go charging in like a bull or I’ll never let you live it down.”
“You never let me live anything down,” he grunted, ending the call before she could come back with another smart-ass remark.
Slipping his phone back into his pocket, Wyatt pushed away from the tree and began making his way through the woods, careful to keep one eye on Elise’s house. He’d learned the hard way when he was younger to always trust his instincts, and right now they were shouting at him that something wasn’t right. The restlessness of his inner wolf told him that the beast agreed. He drew in a series of slow, deep breaths, but the slight mist of rain made it impossible to pick up any trace of Lycan musk, the damp affecting his keen sense of smell. If there were someone out there with him, he was going to have to find him using good old-fashioned tenacity and skill.
Wyatt almost relished the thought of getting his hands on the trespasser, thinking a good knock-’em-down, claw-’em-up scuffle was exactly what he needed to work out his frustration. And if the bastard came anywhere near Elise, he was going to get more than a fight.
If he so much as set foot on her property, Wyatt was going to personally send him straight to hell.
* * *
Breathe
