Chapter Two
His eldest brother would kill him if he ever discovered Eli’s stupidity.
Cyrus Sin wasn’t known for his forgiving nature.
Tough and single-minded when it came to keeping his brothers safe, he’d drilled into all their heads from the time they were kids to stay away from wolves and pack politics.
It was a rule they all lived by. And he was breaking it.
Eli shoved open the motel room door and waved her inside.
She didn’t have a knapsack or purse. She’d either fled with nothing but the clothes on her back, or she’d been robbed.
The second option wasn’t as likely. Not only was she tall for a woman, she was a wolf, which meant she could protect herself against humans.
But not against male wolves.
Ignoring the tightness in his chest, he locked the door and turned on a bedside lamp, more for comfort than necessity. As wolves, they could both see perfectly fine in the dim light. The room wasn’t much, but it was clean and had two double beds, so sleeping arrangements weren’t a problem.
She hovered just inside the doorway, shifting her weight from one foot to the other, ready to bolt at a moment’s notice. “Why are you doing this? Why the complete about-face?”
“Damned if I know.” It had been his intention to walk away. Yet he’d hesitated outside the bar, cursing himself, knowing he was going to wait for her to exit. He hadn’t expected her to come barreling across the parking lot and ram into him. Not many people caught him off guard, but she had.
Kinley Wright was trouble with a capital T.
It was past time for him to head home to Kentucky.
He and his brothers traveled all around the country and occasionally beyond for work, but they always returned home to Sin Mountain.
Earlier today, he’d delivered the dangerous felon he’d been hired to track and apprehend to the authorities and collected the bounty.
Rather than start driving late in the day, he’d decided to blow off some steam at the fight club and get a fresh start in the morning.
It might have been a mistake. He hadn’t bargained for this.
It was making his wolf antsy. He could almost hear Cyrus telling him to suck it up and do what needs doing. And right now, he needed information.
“Sit down.” He waved her toward one of the two chairs on opposite sides of the small table. “Did you stash a knapsack somewhere?” While she could have stored it in a locker at the train station, there was the risk of having to abandon it if the person or people tracking her found her.
She slid onto one of the chairs and waited until he sat across from her.
“I made the mistake of going to a motel my first night on the run.” Even though the room was almost stifling, she rubbed her arms as if chilled.
Werewolves were able to regulate their body temperature and usually had no problem with the cold, unless they were physically or mentally overstressed.
“The men sent by my uncle found me. It was nothing more than dumb luck that I’d gone to get some snacks from the vending machines.
I didn’t dare wait around or double back for my stuff.
It was only clothes. I had my wallet on me, and the prepaid phone I’d picked up so I could communicate with the contact Rufus gave me. ”
Leaning back in his chair, he rested his hands on his stomach and studied her.
She met his gaze without flinching. “Why are you on the run? Why aren’t you with your pack?
” He and his brothers were outliers. Most wolves stuck with their packs or found new ones.
Real lone wolves were far and few between, more myth than actuality.
She propped her elbows on the table, rested her chin on her clasped hands, and closed her eyes for a brief moment. “It’s a long story.”
“You got anywhere else to be?”
Her broken laugh thrummed through him like a physical caress, making every muscle in his body clench. “No, I guess I don’t. At least not tonight. It all started when my daddy died.”
He understood the pain of that all too well. He’d lost his daddy when he was only fourteen, his mama when he was eight. “I’m sorry.” Empty words and they both knew it.
“Me too.” She lowered her gaze and bit her bottom lip. “He was the senior enforcer of the pack.”
“Where are you from?” It was always best to know where the enemy was coming from.
“Alabama.”
She’d crossed several states to make it to Chicago. “How old are you?” She was no teenage runaway, but it wasn’t always easy to gauge as their kind aged slower than humans.
“Twenty-five.”
He raised an eyebrow. Not old, but certainly no child. “You’re an adult. You can go wherever you want.”
“You’d think so, but my pack is old-school. Women live with their parents until they mate.”
He released a long, low whistle. He might not remember a lot about his mama, but she’d ruled her husband and sons with an iron will and a heart full of love.
It was unthinkable to him that anyone would consider a female werewolf as anything less than an equal.
His daddy had never been the same after she’d died.
They’d been partners in everything. Of course, his daddy had left his pack for reasons he’d never shared with his sons.
“I was raised outside a pack, so I’m not familiar with the inner workings.
” That might have been an error on their part, brought on by an innate distrust and prejudice.
Going into any situation, knowledge was key.
They often spent days, sometimes weeks, investigating a job before they took it.
There’d been no need to know much about other wolves since they avoided them.
“I can’t imagine that.” Confusion and a hint of disbelief filled her eyes.
“Uncle Duke, my daddy’s brother, is the alpha.
He’d occasionally hint I needed to mate but didn’t push the issue when Daddy told him to let me be.
I wasn’t interested in settling down with anyone in the pack for the sake of making the alpha happy. ”
He couldn’t imagine getting hitched to a woman who didn’t really want him. Hell, he couldn’t imagine wanting to permanently tie himself to any woman. Wolf matings were primal and binding—not something to be taken lightly.
“How’d your daddy die?” As a senior enforcer, he’d have been tough and damn hard to kill. The packs worked on a hierarchy system with the most powerful at the top.
“I don’t know. I’d barely gotten the news when Uncle Duke demanded I marry the male he’d chosen to replace my father. I wasn’t inclined to obey, so I ran.”
Talk about cold. Downright suspicious, too.
Duke Wright hadn’t only lost his top enforcer, his second-in-command, but a brother.
It still didn’t change Eli’s stance on the situation.
As much as he sympathized with Kinley, he wasn’t dragging his brothers into a pack war.
That’s what would happen if he helped her, because the Sin brothers stuck together through thick and thin.
The more cynical side of him pointed out that involving his brothers could be the entire point.
As bounty hunters and mercenaries, they’d made plenty of enemies.
Although, how that could be related to her pack was a mystery.
Maybe something from their daddy’s past was coming back to bite them in the ass.
Or maybe it was exactly as she’d said it was. It was all speculation at this point.
Her story was designed to elicit his sympathy. If she was “bait” to trap him or his brothers, it was the perfect ploy. And just who was this mysterious mercenary she’d claimed was after her? Most likely it was a member of her pack. But was he tracking Kinley or Eli?
It pushed the boundaries of coincidence that she’d found him.
He didn’t believe in chance or happy accidents.
As a wolf and a bounty hunter with years of experience, he had an excellent bullshit meter, able to detect minor changes in voice inflection and see minute muscle twitches in facial expressions.
It didn’t matter that she’d shown no sign to indicate she was lying. Maybe she was a damn good liar.
His wolf whined, not happy with his train of thought.
The more time he spent around Kinley, the more he admired and respected her.
The more he wanted her, too. Being in an enclosed area, her scent teased his senses until he wanted to bury his face in the curve of her neck and breathe her in before tasting her full, pink lips.
Worse, he wanted to wrap his arms around her and promise her everything would be okay.
That would be a lie. Nothing about this entire situation was remotely okay.
He stood abruptly, needing to put some distance between them before he followed through on those urges.
“Make yourself at home. I’m going to run out and get us something to eat.
I don’t know about you, but I’m hungry.” If the local fast-food places were closed there was always a convenience store.
He also wanted the time alone to think. “You’ll be safe enough here until I get back. ”
She slowly pushed to her feet. “Will you be back?” Her tone was even, her chin defiantly tilted upward in challenge.
Dark circles rimmed her eyes, giving them a bruised appearance.
Her fingers shook slightly before she wrapped them around the back of the chair.
Whether she was telling the truth or lying, this was a woman at the end of her rope.
He motioned to his duffel. “Feel free to borrow a clean shirt if you want to take a shower.” Without waiting for a response, he left, making sure the door locked behind him.
He stayed there for some time and listened to see if she called anyone.
When the room remained silent, he jogged across the street, keeping watch for anything suspicious.
When he reached the other side, he pulled out his phone.
His brother Zach answered before the second ring. “What?”