Chapter Eleven
Liam watched the steady rise and fall of Nory’s shoulder. The lights were off, but his night vision was something else.
She had this plan, and he understood her logic, but…
He was Liam Northman, Alpha of the Coeur d’Alene Lake Pack, werewolf since birth and follower of laws she didn’t understand.
No one was allowed to hunt his woman.
He’d followed the rules. He had stated clearly that Nory was his to Jackson. He’d let him know his intentions, and let him know she was off-limits, and he had still pursued her.
If he was a werewolf, Jackson would’ve already been dead.
The only reason he was still breathing was that human blood running through his veins.
He didn’t want to start a war with the humans in this place, but he would be damned if a scumbag like Jackson got a free pass.
He swallowed the snarl in his throat and stood. She would sleep for a few hours more. If he was lucky, he would be back before dawn.
He shut the bedroom door quietly behind him and made his way through the dark living room. Nate would’ve heard him take the misstep on the creaky floorboard by the front door, so he was surprised when his Second didn’t come charging out of his bedroom.
He stayed frozen there for a three-count and then pushed the door open and left Nate’s house. He’d know he was going to do this from the second he’d seen Jackson’s text that said, You’re mine.
He really shouldn’t have done that.
The wolf couldn’t forgive it.
Liam had parked far away from the house so he could escape without his engine waking Nory up.
He checked behind him one last time as he strode up to his truck, but the house remained dark and quiet. Too quiet.
“Where are you going?” Nate asked.
“Fuck,” Liam snarled, barely resisting the urge to take a swing at the asshole leaning against his truck.
“Where do you think I’m going?” he gritted out, yanking his door open.
“Oh, I know where you’re going. I just wanted to see if you were going to try and lie to me.”
“Piss off,” he told him as he got in and closed the door.
And Nate, that eternal asshat, opened the passenger’s side door and climbed in.
“Get out,” Liam ordered. Now, he didn’t give orders easily, but it was admittedly satisfying watching Nate choke on his own argument and jerkily remove himself from the cab of Liam’s truck.
“I want to go,” Nate gasped out.
Liam frowned. “Stop.”
Nate clumsily stopped and turned toward him slowly.
“Why do you want to go?”
“Because fuck that dude.”
Liam had talked to him about Jackson in more detail earlier, while the girls had been cooking, but Nate hadn’t seemed to care either way. It was “human business,” he’d said.
“Let me go or I’ll tell Nory what you’re doing.”
“You can’t if I order you not to.”
There was fire in Nate’s eyes as he glared at Liam.
With a sigh, he twitched his head. “Get in,” Liam told him.
Nate got in immediately and pulled the door gently closed beside him, checked the house. As Liam pulled out of the yard, Nate told him, “Delta is listening for Nory. She will cover for us.”
“Why would Delta do that?”
“Because she knows you are doing something Nory won’t like.”
“She likes Nory,” Liam rumbled as he turned right on one of the curves that would lead him to the highway. “Why would she cover for us?”
“Because she knows what is best for Nory,” Nate said. “If someone messed with what’s mine?” Nate cast him a serious look. “I would pluck his limbs from his body.”
Okay. All right. Nate did understand.
There was no need for conversation, or even music on the way to Nory’s apartment complex. There was a somber acceptance that they were about to clash with human law.
He could feel Nate’s excitement building, but that was natural.
They were about to hunt. His bloodlust was talking to him too.
Liam turned onto a dirt road before he got to the apartment complex. There was a lumber yard behind it and a thin strip of woods in between.
He didn’t say anything as they reached the locked gate.
This place had been abandoned years ago, but whoever owned it had chained up the gate thoroughly before they’d gone.
Liam threw the truck in park and cut the lights, got out, and strode to the gate.
There was old, rusted razor wire along the top, and he checked the tops of the trees.
He could see the roof of one of the apartment buildings from here.
He cast one last glance behind him at Nate, but he was already getting into the driver’s side.
Liam snapped the chains with a firm tug, and loosed the gate from them, then pushed it open, allowing Nate to drive his truck through. This was visible from the road, so he closed it back, leaving the chains off in case they needed to smash it open in a hurry with the nose of his pickup.
He followed his truck, and Nate parked it just fifty yards in. This place wouldn’t have motion sensor lights anymore, or cameras. The apartment complex though? He had no way to go in through the parking lot without video evidence.
He reached into the bed of his truck and grabbed the fence cutters as Nate cut the engine.
Liam cut the chain link fence in a line, where they could slip right to the green space that separated the trees from Jackson’s bottom floor apartment. Cameras hadn’t been placed back here or by the doors of the apartments. Just in the parking lot and around the office.
“We’re here,” Nate murmured, and Liam jerked his attention to his Second. “Hang up. Delta doesn’t need a play by play.”
A wicked smile stretched Nate’s lips, and he hung up the phone, and shoved it into his back pocket. Lifting his chin higher, he asked, “What makes you think I’m talking to Delta.”
Liam straightened slowly and sniffed the air. Something was wrong. Nate was up to something, and now he was feeling cornered.
“What have you done?” Liam demanded, body humming with violence.
This was a betrayal. It was an ambush. Was he working with the humans? Collaborating with the Elders? Had they decided he needed to go? Was this a coup?
He was going to kill Nate!
“What up bossman,” Vic said.
Liam spun around to find Vic carrying the struggling body of…Jackson.
“What the hell?” he asked, taking a step toward the figures emerging from the shadows. Vic had hogtied Jacskson, and he had duct tape over his mouth. Jackson was trying his best to scream behind it.
Behind Vic was Tabian and Dodger.
Liam was too shocked to put a coherent sentence together.
“Little help?” Vic asked, waiting by the tight slit in the fence.
Shocked, Liam pulled the cut fence apart and Tabian pulled the other side. Vic tossed Jackson through the hole they made like a sack of rocks. The human made an oof sound, like the wind had been knocked from his lungs. Good lord they were so fragile.
“How did you…”
“Nate told us,” Dodger said, pulling up his phone screen. “Look at this shit.”
He had a picture of an apartment living room, and a video monitoring system that took up an entire wall.
“What is that?” Liam asked, squinting at the huge monitor in the picture. It had several pictures on it.
“Oh, just wait.” Dodger showed him a video next, and it was scanning the room, and then went from the monitor set up into the hallway, and into a bedroom.
He was following a wire. The video panned up to the ceiling, following that wire, and it disappeared into the wall.
“I’ll give you one guess on where the video feed is coming from. ”
And it hit him. Nory’s apartment was just two floors directly above Jackson’s. Liam would be his life savings that wire went straight up the inside of the wall and peeked out somewhere in her bedroom.
A long, low growl rattled his chest as he dragged his glare to the man on the ground.
Jackson’s eyes were wide with fear. He had no idea what he’d stepped in.
Liam blurred to him and slammed his fist against his face.
He felt that satisfying crack, and then…nothing.
His vision collapsed inward until everything went dark, and all he could hear was the wolf breaking his bones to escape his skin.