Page 12 of Hunted

Maybe they were.Everyone in this pack knows I wouldn’t have left this alone. Not when a young wolf shifter almost dies in my territory.

“Esme! Bert!” he called out to them in greeting, and they stood. He winced inwardly. Both wolf shifters were old enough that their joints creaked when they stood, but they still had a vitality that many much younger than them couldn’t match.

He had, upon becoming alpha, insisted that the older wolves in the pack stop standing in his presence, but it was a habit they couldn’t—or wouldn’t—unlearn.

Maybe it’s for the best. I am the alpha, after all.

The voice in his head was petty and snarky.

It washisvoice, and he hated it.

“Sit down,” he said as he joined them on the porch. Esme twittered and fluttered around as she handed him a plate of cookies and fetched a jug of tea.

“Thank you, Esme.” He smiled slightly at Bert, who, as usual, said nothing.

“Now, all I want from both of you,” his voice carried the gravity of an alpha. “Is to tell me exactly how you found the young shifter you brought into this pack. I want to know every detail.”

Things changed then as Esme looked at Bert, who cleared his throat and sat forward. “Well, it was like this, you see.” Bert carefully explained to Dominic where and how they had found Abigail.

Esme agreed with everything Bert imparted and sometimes added a few details her husband had missed.

“She comes from that pack way over there.” Bert pointed a shaky, wizened hand toward the hills.

“You know what pack she comes from? How?” Dominic sat forward, more alert than he had been all day.

“She belongs to the Crimson Claw pack. She told us that in the car. She wasn’t really awake, though. I doubt she remembers.”

So, the young wolf revealed more about herself in her unconsciousness.

Dominic tapped his foot restlessly on the porch, and the slight drumming sound sent the mice that lived beneath the porch scurrying as their world shook. He had heard about the Crimson Claw pack. They were a large, powerful pack that lived beyond the hills as Bert had indicated.

But knowing about their existence and knowing why a member of their pack had been viciously attacked were two entirely different things.

“Did she seem afraid of anyone in particular?” Dominic struggled to keep his voice mild.

Esme tilted her head to the side as she considered the question. Bert gave a grunt and shrugged.

Again, the name Christian came to mind. To his surprise, anger burned through him, swiftly, violently, at the thought of the faceless Christian who had hurt the young wolf.

“Yes,” Esme said slowly, after a while. “She seemed afraid of someone. Almost didn’t want to come with us. She wanted to keep driving, that one did.”

So afraid. Afraid enough to flee with a broken arm and bruises and a face that looked as though it had been put through a grater.

Whoever Christian was, he had terrorized her so much she had run from her pack, swimming in her own blood.

“Thank you both.” Dominic accepted the cookies that Esme handed him, wrapped in a napkin, and slipped them into his pocket.

When he left the couple, he did not head directly back home. Instead, he decided to take a walk around the pack territory.

The wolf inside him needed the walk more than he did. Mostly because all the wolf saw when it closed its eyes—and all Dominic saw, too—were Abigail’s injuries.

He wasn’t sure why he cared as much as he did.

Maybe I care because if one of my pack was beaten up like that, I wouldn’t rest until I found and punished the perpetrator.

Sharp points of pain suddenly rippled through Dominic's hands. Glancing down, he realized he had clenched them into fists so tightly that his nails, short as they were, had pierced his skin. He relaxed his fingers, exhaling a deep breath.

Standing at the perimeter of the Moonstone pack territory, high on a ridge marking the border, Dominic surveyed the expansive forest below. The sight of his pack’s land spread out before him was breathtakingly beautiful.

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