Chapter Three #2
It was her recurring nightmare come to life, only worse. It wasn’t only her in their crosshairs, it was Eli. She shoved him away, or tried to. The man wouldn’t budge. “You need to go. This isn’t your fight.” She’d brought him into this mess. It was up to her to get him out.
“If you’re smart, you’ll listen to her.” Holden swaggered forward. “You’re outnumbered.”
“You need all three of you to fetch a single woman. I can see how brave y’all are.
” Eli’s attitude was relaxed, as if he wasn’t the slightest bit worried about facing three wolves.
Of course, his brother was close by, and Cyrus Sin was scary enough to put the fear of God in anyone.
It had taken every ounce of courage she possessed to face him.
She’d only been able to do it because she felt relatively certain Eli wouldn’t allow his brother to harm her.
Holden suddenly inhaled and frowned at Eli.
“You’re a wolf.” He scowled at Kinley. “You hooked up with some stranger rather than mate with me.” Without waiting for a reply, he turned back to Eli.
“Look, friend, I don’t know what story she’s spun for you, but she’s been promised to me by her uncle, the alpha of the Alabama Pack.
You willing to die for her? I doubt she’s that good a fuck. ”
His crudeness made her flinch. It also amped up her fear.
Holden considered her his property and wouldn’t hesitate to kill Eli if he thought they’d had sex.
“I hired him to keep me safe for the night, not sleep with him.” In other circumstances, she might have been tempted.
Eli’s steadiness and his confidence drew her.
Needing to get his attention off Eli, she asked, “How did you find me?” She feared she already knew the answer. It had to have been Cyrus. Either they’d tracked him or he’d contacted them with her location before he’d confronted them in the motel room.
Holden hooked his thumbs in the front pockets of his jeans, totally relaxed and sure of the outcome, certain Eli wouldn’t interfere now that he’d been given a warning.
If she hadn’t already despised Holden, this would have sufficed.
He was a bully and a brute, taking whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted it.
Her daddy had done his best to curb the worst tendencies in the younger generation of enforcers, but her uncle had often overridden his directives and turned a blind eye. This was the result.
“Wasn’t that hard.” His smug expression made her want to commit violence. “You left a trail a blind man could follow.”
He was lying. Not only was he trying too hard, he was tapping the toe of his right boot, a sure sign. “I don’t think so. You’re not good enough to have found me. You must have followed the bounty hunter Uncle Duke hired. Guess he didn’t have faith in any of you.”
A muscle in his jaw tightened. “Once you’re mine, you’ll learn some manners.
” Nothing she could do about the pounding of her heart or the fact she was sweating.
Able to hear and smell her fear, Holden smiled.
“That’s got you worried, doesn’t it? You need to start considering your place in the pack. ”
“I’ll never be yours, Holden. And I don’t have a place in the pack, not with my daddy gone. I’m never going back.”
Eli hadn’t left, nor was he interfering. She didn’t want him hurt but couldn’t deny being disappointed he hadn’t put up more resistance. It was a reminder that they were virtually strangers. She’d put him in this situation. If anything, she was the one who owed him.
Ridge Turner took a step toward her and offered a strained smile. “Don’t make this hard on yourself. Come home, Kinley. It’s where you belong.”
Betrayal slammed into her. They’d played as children, running wild through the forest, laughing and having adventures. “We were friends once. Why are you doing this? Why are you helping him?” She canted her head toward Holden.
He shrugged but didn’t meet her gaze. “It’s the way it is.”
Packless and friendless, she truly was a lone wolf. “Not for me. I’ll die first.” She glared at Holden. “Or maybe I’ll kill you.” It wasn’t likely, but maybe she’d get lucky.
He rubbed a hand over his jaw, his malevolent grin sending shivers of dread down her spine. “I’m going to enjoy taming that wild spirit of yours. Once we’re mated, you’re mine.”
Fighting down panic, she frantically searched for a way out of the situation. “I still want to know how you found me.” If she got the opportunity to run, she wanted to make sure she didn’t screw up again.
“I could have easily found you on my own, but Duke has contacts in the human world and used them to locate some hotshot bounty hunter.” He spit on the ground to show his utter disdain for humans.
“Personally, I think he wanted to give me time to calm down. I was shamed in front of the pack when you ran.” His eyes narrowed and his fangs briefly flashed.
“You need to atone for that. Now it’s time to quit stalling. ”
When he tried to grab her, she took several steps back and slammed into something hard, or rather someone. Eli steadied her but quickly released her. Throat tightening, she tried to swallow.
“You still haven’t told her how you found her.
Or rather how you found me.” Big and badass, Cyrus Sin strolled out of the motel room and across the parking lot.
In the early morning light, it was easier to see the resemblance between the brothers.
Individually, they were intimidating. Together, they were downright forbidding.
“Who the hell are you?” Holden demanded.
“I’m the hotshot bounty hunter Duke Wright hired. Only he withheld some important facts. I don’t work with or for any wolf pack.”
Holden’s gaze narrowed as he took in Cyrus and his resemblance to Eli.
Their distinctive black eyes were unmistakable and unusual.
“You’re a wolf. What the fuck do you care?
” His voice grew louder. Both Ridge and Edmund, who’d remained a silent presence, cast a worried glance at the motel.
There were people inside those rooms, people who might call the cops if a fight broke out.
The first rule of all the packs was that humans were never to know of their existence.
Keeping their presence a secret kept them alive.
In the modern world, it wasn’t as easy for a pack to remain hidden as it had been centuries past—too many laws, too much technology.
They might be genetically stronger and longer-lived, but there were far more humans than werewolves.
If it was ever discovered they existed, they’d be hunted into oblivion, or captured and experimented on by various governments and military groups.
Neither was a future any of them wanted.
“I want to know how you tracked me. You’re not very good at stealth. I knew you were on my tail from the start. I assumed you were another bounty hunter.”
With the men occupied, Kinley shuffled slightly to the left.
There was a good chance Holden had left the keys in his truck.
There was no need to remove them or lock the doors back home.
It might not have occurred to him to do it here.
He’d expected to grab her and be gone, not have a prolonged confrontation.
If there were no keys, she could still make a run for it.
Eli grabbed the back of her shirt, fisting the material in his hand. Unless she made a fuss, which defeated the purpose, he’d effectively stopped her flight. She wanted to scream in frustration. None of the others had noticed her moving.
“What do you care how we tracked you? You’ll get paid.”
Things had been tense before, but now they went nuclear.
She wasn’t sure what in particular Holden had said that set them off, but pure menace radiated from the Sin brothers.
They hadn’t made any threatening gestures, but there was no mistaking the situation was precarious and could erupt into violence any second.
Her wolf was silent but poised to attack if Holden or the others made a move toward them. Not that she thought Eli or Cyrus would welcome her help, but they’d get it anyway. They were in this mess because of her.
“What’s our first rule, Eli?” Cyrus asked in a relaxed, conversational tone, which was totally at odds with the deadly vibes rolling off him.
“We stay away from wolves and pack politics.” The reply rolled easily from his lips, as though he’d said it a thousand times. And he probably had. She hadn’t known him a day yet, and she’d already heard it a couple of times.
Cyrus removed a disposable phone from his pocket.
“I’m assuming the phone I was given has a tracking app.
I figured it was something like that when the broker insisted the client wanted me to carry it.
I should have known then that this job was going to be a major pain in my ass.
” He said the last more to himself. With a sigh, he dropped the phone on the ground and slammed his giant booted foot onto it, smashing it into pieces.
“Guess you needed the help. You go on home and tell your alpha I quit.”
She bit back a smile at the way he spoke to the feared enforcers from her pack, treating them like errant little boys.
Rather than object, Holden gave a curt nod. “If you don’t want the bounty, I’ll gladly take it. And her. Come on, Kinley.”
“What’s our second rule, little brother?”
Eli’s arm snaked around her waist, and he pulled her back to stand beside him. “We protect what’s ours.”
Surely, she’d misunderstood. Her heart leapt and began to pound furiously. Nerves fluttered in her stomach. But Eli wasn’t done.
“Kinley Wright is now under my protection.”
She took a shaky breath, but her relief was short-lived. There was no way Holden would let her go. Not without a fight.