Chapter 43
I froze, stomach plummeting, Pumpkin’s stick falling out of my hand. She was instantly on high alert, abandoning our game of fetch to stand in front of me as Brandon stalked around the lodge. The metallic glint of a gun in his hand sent me into immediate panic, and the peppy music blaring from the stereo felt almost obscene in the current moment.
Brandon walked slowly, keeping the weapon trained on us as he moved to turn down the volume.
“What—what are you doing here?”
“Had to see for myself that you actually survived.”
“No thanks to you,” I spat.
His eye twitched when he took a step closer, and I took one backward. Pumpkin growled, hackles raised.
My stomach turned when he took a deep breath, nostrils flaring and pupils dilating. “Fuck. You’ve never smelled this good before. You about to go into heat, baby?”
Nausea flipped my stomach. “No, and don’t call me that.”
“Don’t be like that. Come back with me and we can make everything the way it’s supposed to be. We can finally be together.”
“I’m where I’m supposed to be.” I hated how much my voice shook.
He took another step closer, anger flashing over his face. “Did you seriously turn me down and start fucking the guys who live here? Were you fucking the others back home too just to torture me?”
I squeezed my trembling hands into fists. “I never touched anyone from home.”
Pumpkin growled dangerously.
Run.
“I’ll do a better job this time if you won’t come with me,” Brandon promised. “I know you’re open for business by the smell of you. I’ll be sure to take a sample before I let the woods have you.”
Fucking. Run.
He was between me and Bear, and if Bear came out, Brandon would shoot him.
No, no, no, no.
My survival instincts snapped into place, the omega urge to flee from danger all-consuming as I turned on my heel and sprinted into the woods. He wanted me alive, mostly. I couldn’t let him hurt Bear.
Thank god it had frozen again overnight so I wasn’t skidding in snow-topped mud. But it didn’t stop me from losing my footing every so often, hands crashing against the sharp ground for as long as it took me to dig in and launch forward again. Brandon was taller than I was; the only chance I had was to be nimble.
Brambles snagged my clothing like they were deliberately trying to thwart my progress. Hopefully that meant they were working against him too.
I wove through the trees, swerving off trail to make it harder for him to follow.
I knew these woods. Kit had made sure of that.
Brandon grabbed a fistful of my hair, yanking back hard as he came to a stop, sending me careening to the forest floor. Pumpkin was on him instantly. She sank her teeth into his arm while he screamed obscenities at her, but that only had her shaking her head, making the wounds that much worse.
“Good girl,” I gasped out.
Scrambling for anything that might be useful, I wrenched myself away from Brandon and picked up a broken tree branch. It was light enough it was definitely long dead, but I slammed it down on his chest like a javelin anyway, the wood splintering apart.
“Pumpkin, come!” I tugged on her collar until she released him.
He took aim for her, and I swung around to block the shot, but the gun clicked uselessly.
Empty. Oh my god, it was empty?
Pumpkin whined and I bolted back to my feet, grabbed a stick to smack the gun out of Brandon’s hand, and hurled it into the trees before taking off again. The cold stung my cheeks, made so much worse by the tears streaking over them. Brandon’s heavy footsteps returned behind us all too quickly.
“Morgan! Fuck’s sake. If you came back with me, this could all be over.”
Every moment took me further from the lodge, and I fought with the panic trying to devour me. What if I really died out here this time? What if I never saw my pack again?
More tears ran hot down my face, blurring my vision before I hastily swiped them away. Somehow dying wasn’t the scariest part of all of this. I had just found somewhere I felt like I belonged and Brandon was trying to take that from me.
I wasn’t ready to give up my new home.
If I was going down, it would be kicking and screaming the whole way. Brandon might think I was an easy target, I was going to prove him wrong.
The alphas, my alphas, flicked through my head. They’d become home so quickly.
I didn’t want to die.
I wanted to go home to them.
Swerving around a tree, I took off in another direction. Brandon cursed up a storm behind me, tripping over fallen logs and branches he didn’t have time to adjust for when he was watching me and not the trail.
I had to get back.
A sharp whistle filled the air.
“Bear!” I screamed out, desperately hoping he might hear me. His panic soaring down the bond sent me spiraling.
The whistle sounded again but I couldn’t tell the direction it was coming from. Straight ahead was the only one that mattered right now.
What would happen to Bear if Brandon killed me and snapped the bond? The others would never forgive themselves for being gone. I couldn’t let Brandon hurt us.
Sweat prickled at my temples. Pumpkin raced along at my side, far more in shape than I was. Maybe I should’ve been playing fetch right alongside her so I didn’t have to risk death by shit cardio.
I pushed through a section of tightly packed evergreens, dipping beneath them to claw my way forward on all fours.
“Morgan, you stupid bitch, you’re not getting away from me. Not this time.”
I scrambled onward, Brandon forced to crawl on his hands and knees to follow me. At least this was one part of the forest where being smaller was an advantage.
“I’ll even give you a choice,” he called after me. “You don’t have to die out here. You can come back to the compound with me and accept we were meant for each other. One little heat and you’ll be all mine.”
Revulsion choked me. I wouldn’t survive him doing to me what Paul had done to Maisie. “I’d rather die.”
He lunged forward, grabbing my ankle, but I kicked out hard, heel meeting his face. The satisfaction of hearing that crunch was quickly overwhelmed by a fresh surge of panic as he dragged me closer. His hands tore at my clothing, curses falling as easily as breath from his lips.
Pumpkin didn’t stand for that. She grabbed my jacket, trying to pull me away from him while I kicked and screamed. I picked up anything I could, hurling snow, spruce cones, and other detritus at Brandon’s face until something hit home. He reared back, clawing at his eyes, giving me precious seconds to get away again. I risked one swift kick to his chest while he was temporarily blinded, twisting to dodge his grabbing hands.
“Go, go, go,” I ordered Pumpkin, sprinting after her on all fours before bursting back onto a trail and getting properly to my feet.
The whistle sounded again, further away than before.
“Bear!”
I had to get back to him. Brandon was not going to take them from me. If I was going to die, I wanted their marks on my skin first. I wanted a whole fucking life with my pack.
That was what it came down to when I was faced with losing them.
I wanted to keep them.
I wanted them to keep me .
And fuck it all, I was going to survive until I could make that a reality.
I screamed out for Bear until my throat was raw, my muscles aching, a sharp spearing pain in my side trying to force me to stop.
Come on, body.
I caught sight of a figure in the distance, and relief poured over me when the whistle sounded again.
“Be—” I crashed to the ground, Brandon getting his arm around my throat in a chokehold.
An unholy roar filled the air.
Brandon was ripped away from me, his shriek of pain rivaling that roar. Frantic arms scooped me up. Bear’s panic was so tangled with mine I couldn’t tell which belonged to whom. Our rushes of relief at finding each other crashed together and I fought my way back from the brink, rubbing a hand over my throat.
Pumpkin got herself between us and Brandon, barking up a storm.
Brandon rose up like some horrible demon and before I could warn Bear, Brandon stepped forward, but his whole face went pale, and his bellow scared the shit out of me.
The clank of metal drew my eyes down.
Holy shit.
A metal trap was snared around his leg. That could’ve been me if I had stepped the wrong way.
Bear pulled me to the opposite side of the trail, out of reach of Brandon, hastily checking me over.
“I’m okay,” I croaked. Then the dam burst and I locked my arms around Bear, sobbing those words over and over. I burrowed hard against him, breathing in the scent of him, the scent of home, overwhelmed all over again by how much I never wanted to be without him again, how much I…loved him.
Brandon shrieked again. He’d tried to release the trap and it had snapped right back onto him. I followed the chain attached to it, seeing that it was bolted into the frozen ground.
“Home,” Bear whispered harshly in my ear.
“What about Brandon?”
Bear sneered at him. “He can wait.”
My alpha scooped me up when I almost collapsed after getting to my feet.
“Wait!” Brandon frantically pawed at the metal keeping him secure. “You can’t leave me out here.”
“Why not?” I snapped. “You don’t think you deserve the same thing you did to me?”
Hate turned his eyes sharp. “Don’t you dare fucking leave me here.”
Bear turned, carrying me back up the trail toward the lodge, Pumpkin at our side.
“Morgan!” Brandon wailed my name until we were out of earshot.
“Are we actually leaving him?”
“We can call the sheriff when we get in,” Bear grumbled, wincing at the toll it took to use his voice.
“Wait a second. Let me stand for a minute.”
Bear set me on my feet but kept his arms around me.
“I didn’t have time to think about a lot while running for my life, but I had time to think about the important things. I knew I couldn’t die without telling you I love you and I really want to stay. I want your pack to be my pack and I want the lodge to be my home.”
His deep brown eyes were like a bottomless well, tears making them shiny as he dipped down to capture my mouth in a kiss that poured out all of his longing.
He whispered, “I love you,” against my lips.
The affection I always felt from him in the bond turned molten, filling me from the tips of my toes all the way to the top of my head. Desire lit me up from the inside out, a cramp twisting my stomach, and heat making me crave stripping down to lie in the snow.
Bear pulled away, his gaze flicking over my face. “Home. Now.”
My alpha scooped me back up and took off at a run. I whined in his arms. What the fuck was going on? Was my body going to respond to sprinting for my life with making me want to melt out of existence?
By the time the lodge came into view, I was a mess of desperation, slick dripping and core pulsing.
“Bear,” I gasped out. “What’s happening?”
“Heat,” he whispered simply.
“But I just had one!”
Fuck. Now that he had said it, I recognized the sensations, but this wasn’t a heat crawling in slowly over several days. This one had shown up to punch me in the face.
We weren’t prepared for this one. No one else was even home.
I needed them.
We burst inside and Bear quickly bolted the door behind us, racing upstairs with his boots still on. He set me on the edge of my nest and I tore off my clothes, shedding them as quickly as I could while he did the same.
“Bear.” I whined, clinging tightly to him. “You have to tell them. Don’t stop them from biting me this time.”
He cupped my cheek, hands shaking. “You’re sure?”
“Yes.” I shivered. “No one is allowed to take me from you. I’m going to want them when they get back and I don’t know where my head will be at when that happens. I need you to tell them for me.”
His lips took mine again, tangling the hot desire pouring down the bond from him with the need booming through my body.
“Tell me you will,” I insisted when we broke away for air.
“I will,” he whispered.
“You’ll keep me?”
“Forever.”
I let myself sink under, surrendering, knowing I was safe in Bear’s arms.