Chapter 11 #3
She barely nodded, keeping her eyes down as he cut the plastic tie, then she walked until the trees swallowed her.
Noted where Rex’s truck was, mapping the straightest line to it in her mind.
This was, she was painfully aware, an extraordinarily stupid plan.
Run was barely a plan. Run was what you did when you had no plan.
He was a wolf, faster than her, stronger than her, almost certainly already suspicious, and her entire strategy amounted to go fast and hope for the best.
Maybe he would trip on a root and fall? Yeah, right.
Still, what was the other option? That’s right, she had nothing else.
Well, alright, then.
She took a long breath in; counted to three.
Then she ran.
She didn’t look back, never slowed down. The trees blurred past her, the ground was uneven, and she nearly went down twice, but she kept her eyes on the treeline and kept going—lungs burning, legs burning, brain burning. But fear burned more, so she ignored everything but the truck.
No shout, no calling after her or anything.
Only heavy footsteps–a man’s, then a wolf’s.
Fast and getting faster, closing the distance between them with ground-eating strides that reminded her, horribly, that she was human, he absolutely was not, and how in the world did she ever think this could work?
But she ran harder, because, what else?
The trees broke open, with the truck sitting in the parking lot. She aimed for it, dug in, and... please, please, please, let me get to it.
Behind her, the footsteps were too close. She felt him the way you feel a wave, the certainty of it hitting and taking you under. No matter. It only pushed her harder, past the point of pain, of hope.
Twenty feet.
Ten.
She wasn’t going to make it.
Another wolf came out of the parking lot, barreling toward her.
Zoe’s heart screeched to a halt, same as her feet.
Enormous, dark brown, moving fast. If he was part of this, if they had someone waiting, she was done. Completely and absolutely done—
He jumped. She shut her eyes, circling her head with her arms in a futile attempt at protection.
But no impact came.
There was a snarl, a crash, and... she dared to look.
It was a blur of movements so fast her eyes couldn’t track it—two wolves, hitting the ground hard enough to shake it, rolling, snapping. The smaller, grey wolf scrambled to his feet. The other one was already there waiting. Bigger. Darker. Angrier.
The fight lasted about four seconds. The grey wolf went down under the brown wolf’s strength and fury, yelped an ugly, startled sound, and then he was up and gone, limping away through the trees without looking back.
The wolf that remained shook itself once and ran toward her. Then shifted.
Owen hit the ground running, human again, and the look on his face... Owen, who she had never once seen angry, who smiled at everything, who called her Zo and stole food off her plate, was pure fury.
Relief hit her so hard her knees went soft.
“How are you?” Owen growled, reaching her.
“I’m okay, I’m fine. But Rex...” She yanked the truck door open. “I need to get to him. I need to get to Rex.”
Owen’s hand blocked hers before she could reach for the key. “Rex said to keep you here. Safe.”
“No.”
“Zoe—”
“I’m going to him, Owen.” She turned and looked at him full-on, and felt something move through her.
It wasn’t fear, nor adrenaline, but something deeper and, somehow, older.
A certainty that didn’t leave room for argument.
She held his gaze and said it again, feeling that something vibrating in her words. “I will go to him.”
Owen flinched, nearly took a step back, his jaw tight, his hands clenching at his sides. “Damn it, Zoe,” he said, through his teeth.
“I’m sorry.” She did mean it. “But I can’t feel him. He closed the bond, and I can’t—” She stopped. Swallowed. Squared her shoulders. “I’m going.”
“The asshat cut me off, too.” For a heartbeat, he just looked at her. Then something in his expression shifted, and he nodded. “Get in the passenger seat,” he said. “I’ll drive.”
REX WAS LOSING.
Not a thought or speculation. No. He knew it as a fact in the body.
Closing the bond had been the reasonable call—Zoe’s, Owen’s, the pack’s, all of it. Tactically, obviously, indisputably the right call. Her panic had been pulling him apart, and Owen’s rescue would have done the same. He’d sent the order and shut it all down before he could feel any of it.
He didn’t have the luxury of distractions, and shutting off was the only way to concentrate.
Or so he’d thought. Because now he was slower than he should have been, his attention split too many ways.
On one side, Dante. Then the gnawing worry about Owen getting to Zoe in time.
And the biggest one, the silence where Zoe should have been.
He’d lived with that bond for weeks now, had stopped noticing.
You don’t notice your heartbeat. And now there was nothing, and it was louder and scarier.
At least her fear had meant she was alive, somewhere, and now he had only worst-case scenarios to cling to, each one worse than the last, cycling through his mind every time Dante landed a hit that Rex was half a second too slow to avoid.
Dante bit down on his shoulder, and Rex snarled, twisted, and threw him off, but it was not clean, not fast enough.
He heard the truck, his truck, before he saw it, coming down the road too fast. Dante’s people were shouting.
Some of the pack were shouting back. Rex couldn’t afford to look.
Dante was already circling, looking for another one of the openings Rex kept giving him.
But he caught Owen’s scent when the doors opened, and then —
Zoe.
“Rex,” she screamed.
She was here. She was here, meaning she was okay, upright and moving.
He needed one second, just one, to turn his head and find her— she was standing just behind Owen, chin up, watching Dante with a rage, a scorn, he never thought he would see on her beautiful face.
His concentration snapped where it was supposed to be: on the fight.
It was time to put an end to this, and now he could.
Dante charged him.
Rex let him.
Let him think the distraction had worked, let him come in fast and overconfident, and then he moved. Not away, but into it, inside Dante’s speed—and hit him like a wall would.
The field went quiet.
Rex had his teeth at Dante’s throat in under two seconds.
Felt the pulse there, rapid and frightened, the arrogance choked out of him all at once.
The law, pack and human, would have been on Rex’s side if he decided to go for the final twist. The one that would have killed Dante. No one would have questioned it.
He held the thought for a long moment.
But it was not who he was.
He let go, shifted, and stood over Dante, who lay sprawled and shaking on the hard ground.
“You and yours have until sunset to pack your things and leave pack territory. If I catch you within pack lines again, I won’t be as merciful.
” His voice came out even. “The law will deal with the burning of the shed. You’re done. ”
He didn’t watch them go; he didn’t care enough to. She was all that mattered. When he turned toward her, Zoe was already moving, crossing the field toward him at a full run. He closed the distance between them in four strides and got his arms around her before either of them said a word.
She was shaking. So was he.
So he pressed his face into her hair to breathe her in, let the bond open up between them like a window thrown wide on a spring day, and for a long moment, that was enough.
That was everything.
Then she pulled back just far enough to look at him. Not pleased. At all. “Never,” she said, “do that again.”
“Zoe—”
“I’m serious, Rex. Never. I couldn’t feel you, I didn’t know if you were —” She stopped.
Her jaw was set, her eyes were bright, and she was clearly running on adrenaline and fury in equal measure.
Some of it for him, he was sure. “You don’t get to just turn me off.
I don’t care what the tactical argument is. Never again.”
He opened his mouth.
“Never,” she said again, in a tone that left no room for discussion.
From somewhere behind him, Owen said, “She’s right.
Full on right. Cutting me off.” Owen’s voice was drenched in outraged incredulity.
“Your Beta. In the middle of a fight. Tactically, strategically, by any measurable standard, it was the dumbest thing you have ever done, and Rex, I have known you for years.”
“I didn’t want the distraction—”
“I am the distraction manager. That is the entire point of me.” Owen spread his hands.
“You sent me to a fight blind—no information, no coordination, and no way to tell you Zoe was safe. You cut off the two people you’re supposed to keep the closest, at any damned time.
What exactly did you think was going to happen? ”
“You handled it.”
“Obviously I handled it.” He paused. “And before you get any ideas about being mad at me for not following orders to keep her away, your Omega here has just enough compelling power that I could not say no. I want that on the record.” He held up a finger.
“And I tried. Multiple times. I want that on the record, too.”
Rex went very still.
He looked down at Zoe, who had suddenly developed an intense interest in the trees far away.
“Zoe.”
“Yes, Rex?”
“Did you compel my Beta?”
“That’s a very weird way to phrase what happened.”
“Owen?”
“She told me she was going to you,” Owen said, his fists still on his hips. “And that was more or less the end of my free will.”
Rex looked back down at Zoe, who finally peeked up at him. The faintest suggestion of a smile was pulling at the corner of her mouth despite her very best efforts. “I didn’t know I was doing it. I only knew I had to get to you. And I always will, just so you know.”
“I know.”
He held her gaze for a long moment, then pulled her back in, tucked her against his chest, and just breathed.
“I gotta go, Callie is getting antsy. She knows what was happening because I didn’t cut her off, but I still want to go to her. Apologize to your mate,” Owen said, pointing a finger at Rex, “and think about what you’ve done.”
“I’m sorry,” Rex said into her hair.
"Good.” She settled against him. “You’re bleeding, just so you know.”
“I’m aware.”
“Can we also,” she said, muffled against his chest, “talk about the fact that there is a very significant number of naked people in this field right now, and nobody seems bothered by it except me?”
Behind them, Owen laughed, and Rex pressed his lips to the top of her head. “Let’s go home.”
“But the plant run?”
He sighed. Leave it to her... “Let’s get back to the forest, then.”