Chapter 11
Scotty couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt so exhilarated by a chase.
Maybe it was a release from the anxiety over sending Mace to the hospital.
Or maybe it was the cool night air, invigorating her muscles and filling her lungs with energy.
Or maybe it was the location. The rugged wilds of Alaska called to the huntress in her.
Whatever it was, she leaped nimbly over fallen logs and ducked through briars that made Blade curse as he tried to keep up.
She’d always been the fastest of their DART team, nimble and flexible. But it wasn’t as if the boys were slouches. Blade was a powerhouse, strong and fierce, rock-steady in battle, while Mace was quick and light as a fox, with a creative and tricky unpredictability that kept his foes off balance.
“Scotty.” Blade’s voice, hushed and harsh, sounded extraordinarily loud in the eerie silence. “Did you hear me? We’ve been chasing this thing for hours. We should check in on Jon and Skoll.”
“Just a couple more miles.” She came to a halt at the edge of a clearing.
To the west, the rocky mountainous slopes full of nooks and crannies would make great shelters for a wendigo.
And according to the info packet Kynan had provided, the area had recently become known for its cave systems after being discovered by a geological survey team.
But to the north and east, forested land provided cover for anything that wanted to hide.
“Which way?” she asked. “I haven’t heard the things screeching for a while now.”
They’d given chase for two of the wendigos, but when the creatures split up, it forced Blade and Scotty to choose just one to follow. Now, they had to watch their backs as well as their fronts.
Blade pulled up next to her on the right. He always went right. Mace went left.
He lifted his head and inhaled. She’d always thought he looked so…
wolfy when he did that. He didn’t like her saying that, though.
He didn’t like talking about his werewolf side.
It didn’t often make an appearance, but it was something he despised.
Blade had never liked being out of control, and the nights of the full moon left him grumpy, anxious, and a little feral.
“It went into those hills,” he said. “I can’t believe you can’t smell it. It’s like rotting meat and demon feces.”
“I smelled it earlier.” She forced down a shudder. “You’re not wrong.”
They took off after the thing, Blade in the lead, sniffing the air like a hellhound after wounded prey.
His sense of smell got stronger with a waxing moon, and she gave silent thanks that it was nearing its Waxing Gibbous stage for this mission.
And not just because it aided Blade. The illumination provided ample light for their hike to the mountain foothills.
Figured, though, that as they paused to plot their next moves, clouds strangled the moon from out of nowhere, and the scent of rain grew heavy in the night air.
Blade looked up at the sky and growled. “I hate Alaska.”
As if in response, the sky opened up. The downpour crashed down on them in a shockingly furious deluge.
“Way to go!” she yelled over the roar of the rain blasting the trees and hillside. “Insult the host!”
“Ha. Ha.” He made a beckoning gesture. “This way.”
They ran toward a rocky outcropping and ducked inside a shadowed crevasse. Water dripped down her face and plastered her hair to her skull. Using her sleeve to wipe her eyes, she assessed their situation.
“Well, shit,” she said. “We’re going to lose the scent and the tracks.”
Blade shrugged out of his backpack and tossed it to the ground. “On the bright side, we got a shower.”
“Hmph.” She unloaded her pack, too, since it looked like they could be holed up for a while. “Might as well use the break to call Skoll and Jon.”
Their comms were unreliable out here, and sure enough, she didn’t have a good signal. So, she plucked the old-fashioned relic of a radio from her mission kit.
Skoll responded immediately, his voice hushed. “Everything okay?”
“Yeah. We’re in the foothills to the northwest, taking shelter from the rain.” She gave him the coordinates. “How are you guys?”
“It’s not raining here yet,” he replied. “But we’re close to our target. We’ll let you know when we’ve bagged him. Good luck.”
“You, too.”
Blade watched her put away the radio, his eyes glinting with speculation.
“What?” She zipped up her bag. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
His gaze skipped away, focusing on the rain and the stream of water forming in the gully below. “No reason.”
“Stop lying.”
“Do I need a reason to look at you?”
“Stop stalling.”
He reached back to massage his neck and sighed. “I’m just…wondering.”
“About what?” She braced herself against a slab of mossy stone, grateful for a break. “And stop making me drag information out of you.” He could be so frustrating. Mace talked too much, and Blade didn’t talk enough.
He sighed again, but at least he looked at her. “Are you going to sleep with Skoll or Jon?”
She blinked. “Wow. Okay. A little out of the blue.”
“You asked.”
“You’re right.” This shouldn’t be a difficult topic. Not when she’d just asked her two best friends to help her lose her virginity.
But now, every time she thought of losing it to either Jon or Skoll, her brain misfired, and all she could think about was how she’d felt in Mace’s arms with his fangs buried in her throat and the hard ridge of his erection rocking against her core.
Even now, her cheeks heated at the memory, and she couldn’t look Blade in the eye.
Because the much more uncomfortable truth was that she was thinking about Blade differently now too. Mace had awakened something inside her, and she was seeing them both in a new, sexy light.
“Well?” Blade prompted. “Now who’s stalling?”
Right again.
“Sorry,” she said, waving her hand in dismissal. “I haven’t really thought about it much. We’ve been kinda busy.”
“Stop lying.”
Guilt burned in the pit of her stomach. Damn him.
Continually throwing her words back at her.
A gust of wind howled through the mountains, giving her a second to think.
Jon and Skoll were both hot. Any female would be lucky to get them into bed.
But the truth was that she felt nothing for them. Not sexually, anyway.
Not like what she’d felt with Mace.
“I’m not sleeping with either of them,” she said truthfully.
He seemed surprised—and a little pleased. But maybe that was her imagination.
“Why not? You could do worse. I mean, from what I know about Skoll, he’s a standup guy. Jon’s a dick, but I’m pretty sure he knows his way around a bedroom.”
Must have been her imagination, after all.
For some reason, she felt a little put out.
Which was ridiculous, given their oath. No matter how much changed regarding her newfound libido, the pact remained, and she would have to get her shit together or risk losing the best friends anyone could ask for.
“So, you think I should proposition one of them?” And how would that even go? “Hi, wanna have sex? I don’t know what I’m doing, just FYI.”
“Fuck, no.” Blade shifted away from a rivulet of water flowing off the rocks next to him. “I’m wondering why you would say no, when you seemed so adamant about losing your virginity.”
Shrugging, she stepped away from the growing stream on the ground. Geez, how much longer was this storm going to last? “Maybe I realized it’s no big deal.”
There was a brief pause. “Is it because of what happened between you and Mace?”
His words, spoken in a rigid, controlled voice, stole her breath. How did he know? A knot of panic formed in her gut. Panic and guilt and a fiery blast of heat.
“No!” she said quickly. Too quickly. Too guiltily. “Nothing happened. It was just blood. You know that.” Gods, could she sound any more defensive?
“Right.” Blade’s voice was deceptively quiet. “Just blood.”
A spark of indignant anger helped alleviate some of the guilt. “Yes, just blood. You know it was, and I don’t know what’s up your ass, but knock it off. You’re just jealous that I was able to help him when you couldn’t.”
She regretted her words the second they left her lips, and once again, Blade called her on her crap.
“Are you serious?” He stared at her in disbelief, completely oblivious to the fact that water was pouring down his shoulder now. “You think I’m jealous of you because my skills weren’t enough to fully heal him?”
Yes, she knew it was ridiculous. But something was up his ass. “Maybe you wanted to be the one to offer your vein.”
He waited for a peal of thunder to fade away, but he still had to shout over the din of the rain and wind. “First of all, my blood couldn’t nourish him the way yours did. Second, even if I had offered my vein, he wouldn’t have been turned on by it.”
So that was his problem? He was truly that bothered by the fact that Mace had gotten a little aroused?
“Blade,” she said softly, “that’s a dangerous path to go down. You can’t be jealous of him. You can’t. We swore an oath to prevent exactly that. Jealousy could tear our team apart.”
“I know.” Finally, he stepped away from the water, tucking himself closer to her, bringing his comforting warmth with him. “Believe me, I know—”
A simultaneous bolt of lightning and crack of thunder made her jump. Blade’s arm came around her, tugging her against his broad chest. It felt good. Better than it should. Guilt bubbled up again.
Blade went taut, his already hard body going as rigid as marble. “Can you hear that?”
“I just hear wind and rain…”
She frowned. There was something else, too. A rumble. Like a pack of hell stallions barreling through a forest. It grew louder, but now she could hear splashes and gurgles.
Abruptly, the horrifying answer came to her. “Flash flood! Blade—”
The wall of water hit them with the force of a charging Gargantua beast, cutting their legs out from under them. The thrashing river ripped them from their shelter and swept them along with the current.