Chapter 9
Chapter
Nine
The alpha didn’t let me down—at least not right away.
Despite Hannah’s sharp tone, he kept me slung over his shoulder as we followed the pair back to their house. It wasn’t more than a five-minute walk, but the whole time no one spoke.
Okay, that wasn’t entirely true.
A few paces ahead, I could hear the sharp, staccato whispers of the ferus couple arguing, but their voices were so low I couldn’t make out a single word. Not that I needed to. I had a pretty good idea what they were bickering about.
Me.
Maybe the alpha wasn’t thrilled about his woman inviting an unwelcome visitor into their home, or maybe he just didn’t like the idea of her telling another alpha what to do. I had no idea. All I knew was that his growls and grumbles of annoyance sounded awfully familiar.
It wouldn’t surprise me to find out that was just how these creatures communicated.
But what did surprise me was that my dream alpha (God, I really needed to come up with a better way to think about him) had agreed to go with the pair at all. Especially when just seconds before, he’d been so determined to get me back to the Wall and toss me over.
It was almost as if he’d felt honor-bound to accept the woman’s invitation, but for that to be true, the ferus would need some sense of honor in the first place.
Of course, no one asked me what I thought about this late-night visit. Not that I would have been able to give them a straight answer.
On one hand, running into a reasonable woman in the Wilds felt like finding a life preserver in the middle of a stormy open sea. My first instinct was to grab on with both hands and hold on for dear life.
But on the other hand, now I was dealing with two alphas. Two seemingly indestructible beasts capable of tearing me in half with a flick of their wrists, and clearly, neither one of them liked having me around.
My mind was racing with thoughts of what to do when we finally arrived at the pair’s home. Lifting my head up from the alpha’s back, I was surprised to see it was nothing like the small shacks from my dreams.
It wasn’t a mansion, not by any means. From the outside, I guessed it housed no more than three or four rooms. And absolutely nothing about the place was modern.
There was no stucco or steel. No caulk or concrete.
Everything was built from wood and stone.
Rustic through and through, with a warm golden glow of firelight radiating from the slits in the window shutters.
And the place was even more charming on the inside. A wash of cozy warmth embraced me as soon as we passed through the heavy, hand-carved door. The scents of fresh-cut lumber and wildflowers filled the air. The crackle of a cozy fire called from the hearth.
It was a fairy-tale cottage straight out of a storybook.
Unfortunately for me, it was also the home of the big bad wolf.
“You can put her down in one of the chairs in front of the fire,” Hannah said once we were all inside and the door had been shut and locked.
My dream alpha grumbled, but followed the woman’s instructions.
Grimacing, I braced myself for the backside bruising impact of being slammed down on a hardwood surface. But instead, the alpha carefully slid me down his chest and gently settled me on the oversized seat.
But just in case I thought he’d had a change of heart, he shot me one more withering glower.
“Don’t get any ideas,” he hissed in my ear before rising up to his full height. “I’m still taking you back.”
Despite the raging fire, I started to shiver. Pulling my legs up onto the chair, I wrapped my arms around my shins, pressing my knees to my chest.
“Tauren, will you grab our guest a blanket from the closet and a bowl of stew from the stove?” the woman said, my view of her blocked by my alpha’s giant form.
The other alpha grunted in response before I heard his heavy footsteps thumping toward the far end of the house.
“Now,” she said after he was gone. “Which one of you wants to tell me what the hell is going on?”
My dream alpha breathed a deep sigh before turning toward the woman. “Hannah—”
“Holy shit!” Her shout shot through the cabin before he could say another word.
In a flash, her alpha was back at her side. “What happened?”
My dream alpha’s brows pulled together in confusion for a second before following the angle of his friends’ stares down to his blood-soaked shirt. Apparently, the stain had been hidden by my backside before.
“Oh.” He sounded like he’d forgotten all about the gunshot. “It’s nothing.”
Without even a wince, he pulled the simple tunic-style shirt over his head.
I bit into my lip, doing my best to swallow down the moan that threatened to slip out as he revealed his bare chest. Even though I’d both seen and felt it dozens of times in my dreams, the sight never failed to stir something deep inside me.
Even now, with a raw, red hole in the upper left-hand corner of his chest, it was still a magnificent sight.
Or it was...until I watched him pluck the crushed slug of lead out with his thumb and forefinger.
Holy crap.
How tough was the alpha’s skin? My arms still ached from the recoil of Chuck’s revolver. With that much force, the bullet should have ripped straight through him, but it had barely made a dent. Just a shallow, perfectly round crater that looked like it had already stopped bleeding.
“See,” he said with a shrug, placing the spent shell on the wide stone mantle of the hearth. Using a clean spot on his shirt, he wiped the rest of the drying blood from his chest. “Just a scratch.”
But his friends weren’t so nonchalant.
“You were shot? In the Wilds?” Hannah’s dismay made it clear this wasn’t an everyday occurrence. “Who did this?”
“It doesn’t matter.” He tossed his ruined shirt into the fire.
“What are you talking about? Of course it does,” Hannah shot back, before turning to her alpha. “Tauren, will you please talk some sense into your friend?”
“I don’t think he wants to talk about it right now, love,” the poor beast grumbled, caught between the two.
“Don’t give me that shit.” Balling her hands, she cocked them on her hips as she stood toe-to-toe with the towering alpha. “If there’s an armed threat out there in the Wilds, we need to know about it. Not all of us are bulletproof, remember.”
Squaring my shoulders, I straightened my spine against the hard back of the chair and gathered all my courage.
“It was me,” I said, my voice coming out squeakier than I’d hoped. “I’m the one who shot him.”
“You?” Hannah’s eyes went wide. Her mouth fell open in an almost comical display of shock.
But her reaction was tame in comparison to her alpha’s. A low, threatening growl filled the room as his eyes lit up with fiery hot rage. His lips curled up in a vicious snarl, exposing long, sharp fangs.
On instinct, I bolted up and jumped behind the chair, holding it in front of me tight like a shield. Not that it would have done me any good if the creature decided to lunge. He’d turn the solid chunk of wood into splinters in the blink of an eye…right before doing the same thing to me.
But surprisingly, before any of that could happen, my dream alpha stepped between us.
“Calm yourself, Tauren,” he barked. “It was an accident.”
But his friend didn’t look fully convinced. “How do you shoot someone by accident?”
“She was surrounded by a pack of wolves when I found her,” he said. “She was trying to scare them off, but hit me instead.”
That wasn’t exactly true...and the other alpha seemed to sense it.
With claws and fangs still glinting in the firelight, Tauren cocked his head to the side. “Let me hear her say it.”
And I would have gladly. After all, what was one lie after everything that had happened tonight? The only trouble was that my lips refused to move. The sight of the ferus’ primal weapons held me frozen in fear.
“I’m warning you, brother.” My dream alpha’s shoulders stiffened, widening as he drew in a tight breath. “Put your damn claws away. Now. Or you won’t like what happens next.”
“Tauren,” Hannah whispered, gently cupping her hand over his shoulder.
Looking over, I saw that her eyes were still wide, but with a wholly different emotion than the horrified shock that had been there just moments before. Now she looked like a woman who understood everything.
Even my deepest, darkest secrets.
Oh, shit.
An unsettled feeling twisted my stomach.
I think I liked it better when I was about to be sliced up like French fries.
“It’s okay,” she continued, her voice far too measured and calm for all the crackling tension in the room. “Why don’t you two alphas talk this out while I chat with our guest?”
“Absolutely not,” Tauren snapped over his shoulder. “I’m not leaving you alone with her. She’s already shot one person tonight.”
“It’ll be fine,” she insisted. “Look at her, love. She’s not a threat. She’s just a scared kirre woman who needs to talk to someone like herself.”
Tauren stared me down for another couple of teeth-chattering seconds before eventually relenting. With a snap, his fangs and claws disappeared.
“Fine,” he grumbled, his piercing gaze still cutting right through me. “But we’ll just be one room away. If I hear anything—”
“Yes, yes,” Hannah broke in, physically pushing him away from the fireplace. “You’re very big and scary. We all know.” Then she turned to my dream alpha. “You, too. Go with Tauren and hug it out. The kirre will be here when you get back, I promise.”
I expected more of a fight, but he only gave a small grunt of protest before following the other alpha out of the room.
Then I was alone with Hannah.
Being with another human, I should have relaxed. Still, for some reason, the warning bells in my mind kept ringing. And they only got louder as the woman smiled and gestured to the chair in front of me.
“It’s okay,” she said. “Have a seat. And then once you’re comfortable, you can tell me how long you’ve been having dreams about my friend.”