Chapter Nineteen #2
As if to answer her, the radio on Cole’s belt buzzed to life. Through the static, she heard a woman’s voice. “Cole, we’ve had multiple calls about shots fired down by Renewed Relics on the square. Can you go check it out?”
The strength in Erica’s legs nearly gave out on her. Multiple shots fired at his store? It was pointless to hope that it had nothing to do with Wyatt and Dominic. That’s where they must have been.
He reached around and whipped the radio off his belt. “Any sign of activity in the store?”
“Jaime Gabors said he thought he heard a disturbance inside.”
“I’m on my way.”
He slipped the radio back and wrenched himself free of Erica’s grasp. Before she could talk herself out of it, she chased after him. “I’m coming with you.”
He laughed. “Like hell you are!”
“If Hank and Ronan are going to drop off the body at the shelter, I’ll be here by myself.”
Cole glanced over his shoulder but wouldn’t slow down as he made his way to the front door. “You’ll go with them.”
“I’m not going to sit in the back of a car with a dead wolf!” She hoped her feistiness could somehow mask her worry. If Wyatt and Dominic were fighting and guns were involved, what were the chances that silver bullets were being fired at her mate?
“You’re not going with me either. It’s too dangerous.”
Cole’s phone let out a default ringtone, and he stopped at the door long enough to answer it. Erica, still hopeful that she could persuade her father, waited for him to finish the phone call.
“You’re sure you saw them, Jaime?” he asked.
Now she wished she had super hearing like the shifters so she could hear the other side of the conversation.
“No, don’t follow them. I’m headed that way.” He snapped his archaic flip phone closed and stepped out onto the front porch. Ronan and Hank slammed the door to the back seat of a car, presumably Hank’s, ready to go with their cargo for the incinerator.
Erica stayed close on her father’s heels. “What’s going on?”
“They’re not at the antique store anymore. Jaime saw them going down Second Avenue.”
“Out of town?” Ronan asked as all four met in the driveway.
“Maybe.” Cole wrestled the squad car keys from his pocket. “Or to the other side of Jade Lake. There are too many houses between the town square and Larson Caves. They need someplace to fight without being seen.”
“Fight?” Erica squeaked.
“What did you think they would do?” Hank questioned with a note of contempt. “Dominic would have tried to talk it out, but if Wyatt’s already shooting, they’re done talking.”
“Dominic wouldn’t be shooting?”
“Dominic hates guns,” Cole told her as he moved around to the driver’s side of his squad car. She went to the passenger side. “I told you, you’re not coming!”
“I don’t have many other options.”
She saw Cole’s eyes dart toward Ronan and Hank, a wordless command for them to detain her, but she grabbed the handle on the car door before they had a chance to grab her.
Hank grabbed her arm. “If Wyatt wants to use you as leverage against Dominic, you shouldn’t be anywhere near him.”
Erica turned on them, shaking with indignation. “I’m not just going to sit around and twiddle my fucking thumbs while my mate is in trouble!”
A ripple of surprise spread through all of them, even Erica. She knew they were mated. Dominic had told her earlier that day, but she never thought she would have taken so much entitlement from the connection to throw it as a trump card in everyone’s faces.
The two shifters who she assumed had never had mates looked to the one who knew something about the mating bond and the kind of powerful, mind-altering effects it could have on a person’s heart. Cole would know something of what she was going through, perhaps not fully, but in part.
Erica looked to her father and entreated him for just a little compassion. He owed her that much after all she had been through. “Please. Let me at least try and help.”
She couldn’t read Cole’s hardened expression, half in shadows on the other side of the car. After a moment of consideration, he sighed and threw up his hands in surrender.
“Fine, but you’re staying in the squad car. Do you understand?”
She nodded, though she had no intention of doing as he said. The betas seemed put off by the way the alpha gave in so easily, but didn’t argue as father and daughter climbed in and tore out of the neighborhood, headed south for Jade Lake.
*
Dominic caught himself on the rough trunk of a pine and brought his momentary retreat to a full stop.
He ignored the fiery pain in his chest as he gasped for air.
A few broken ribs began to slowly mend back into place as blood trickled from the wound in his arm.
A moment to breathe—that’s all he needed.
Behind him, he could hear Wyatt struggle to his feet, panting and choking on his own blood that gushed up from the cut in his neck. That should have been the last blow, but the shifter kept healing and coming back for more.
Dominic had tossed away his shirt as soon as they entered the forest on the other side of Jade Lake.
It proved a hassle to lead the obsessed alpha out of town, away from the people who could witness their fight.
It might have looked like the Prime Alpha was running, but he was setting his pieces in place, preparing the battlefield.
Here, they could let out their wolves and finish this.
Men could fight with fists and bash away at each other as Dominic and Wyatt had been doing since the gun knocked out of the fight.
As beasts, this could be over within minutes.
He shook off the concussion that Wyatt had given him just moments ago and turned to face his opponent. Wyatt, blood drenched down the front of his expensive shirt, straightened and looked up with golden eyes full of menace. Dominic begged his wounds to heal faster.
“This is insane, Wyatt! Why would you even want Tolstone? Why go through all this?”
Though he had let the wolf take control and fight with a thoughtless ferocity that even Dominic hadn’t expected, it gave him some time to assess Wyatt’s motives.
This couldn’t just be about power and control over a pack or two.
This was about territory. The alpha wanted a place of his own, a town to claim.
There were dozens of towns in Illinois where no shifter had ever set foot.
They had even given them the locations when he first arrived, so that he could find a home for him and his pack.
Why couldn’t he have settled for one of those?
Why make a run for Tolstone when it was already claimed?
He was making it so much harder for himself by trying to take a place that didn’t belong to him.
With halting, trembling steps, Wyatt made his way forward like a man who had nothing to lose.
“Do you remember, from our application, how many times we had to move because we got pushed out by a bigger, stronger pack? Six times. Six fucking times! I’m tired of running!
” Wyatt spat out a mouthful of blood onto the grass.
“My pack and I can’t run anymore. Tolstone has a reputation.
No pack’s going to even touch this place.
We need that stability, that guarantee that we won’t have to ever move again. ”
He could understand Wyatt’s frustration.
It was nothing new to their way of life.
It was the alpha and beta’s job to hold a territory.
Once a town could be claimed, it had to be maintained.
If Wyatt couldn’t do that, because Xavier sure as hell couldn’t, then he had no business being an alpha, dominance or not.
It was no wonder the loyalty of his own pack was slipping through his hands like sand.
Dominic shook his head. “No one touched Tolstone because they respected it and its mission to keep shifters safe. Don’t you get it? As soon as you have Tolstone, it won’t be the same. It’ll just become another dot on the map.”
A crazed, determined look shadowed Wyatt’s face, and he knew that the failed alpha wasn’t listening.
His beast was too close to the surface, too close to bursting out that he could feel it in his own wolf.
There was no talking out of this. Wyatt still wanted Tolstone, still wanted to prove that he could make a home for his pack somewhere, but this was more about the wolf’s needs.
It wanted blood, vengeance, a resolution to his wounded pride, and validation that he was still strong and an alpha worth sticking with. Killing Dominic would prove just that.
Wyatt lunged forward, and Dominic had just enough time to dodge him and let him dash a quarter of a mile away into the darkness with his supernatural speed.
Wyatt’s claws raked across the tree trunk, scarring the bark as he flew past. With deft hands, Dominic undid his pants and stripped down to his skin in preparation for the quickest shift of his life.
“Give up now, Wyatt! You don’t have to die tonight. I’ll let you leave with your pack.”
He saw Wyatt spin and brace himself for another charge at the Prime alpha. “I’m not going anywhere!”
The blond shifter ripped off his clothes, and white fur gleamed in the rays of moonlight.
Dominic let the shift take hold, and when the agony of the transformation was over, Wyatt crashed into him in his wolfen form.
Hot, foul breath assaulted his nostrils as the alpha opened his jaws wide to clamp around Dominic’s neck.
He lashed out with his own fangs, searching for purchase in the frantic flailing as both wolves tumbled across the forest floor.
He tasted blood and felt razor claws snag around his shoulders.
His flesh burned with new wounds that barely had time to heal before Wyatt inflicted more damage.
Black and silver fur became encrusted with blood, both fresh and old.
Still, he fought, calling on all his muscles to keep pushing, to keep moving as long as his enemy breathed.