Page 5 of Revenge of the Blood Pack

His brown hair is messy, and it's never messy. The dark locks falling over his forehead soften the badass, uptight look that he usually wears like a cloak. My hands itch to reach up and touch his hair, to push it back from his forehead the way he likes tokeep it styled, but I curl my hands into fists to stop myself. Instead, my gaze runs over the hard lines of his face, the dark arches of his eyebrows, his strong jaw, then down his body.

He's shirtless, and my breath catches. For a man who wears so many dark suits, he looks incredible out of them. His shoulders are broader than I ever thought possible, and the muscles that tighten his arms, chest, and stomach make me wonder how the hell he hid them so well. And why any man with a body like his would keep it concealed in dark suits.

It’s not attraction I feel toward him. Not exactly. It’s… something else. Maybe something to hold onto when I desperately need grounding. Something to make me feel safe. And this man feels like a safe harbor in an unexpected way that’s almost frightening. Because this isn’t a dream. What I do here matters. And if I make the wrong move here, I’ll pay for it.

"Are you okay?" he asks, his face soft with concern. His voice is husky, almost sleepy.

Yet no matter how softly he spoke, his words shake me from my stupor, and I feel walls around my heart and mind rising so fast that it's almost painful. "Yes." The word comes out a rasp.

"You were screaming," he tells me gently, his expression bouncing between one of disbelief and one of worry, maybe both.

"I'm okay. Just a nightmare." I try to sound confident, but the words come out shaky.

He hesitates, then pushes on. "You have a lot of nightmares. Are you sure this isn't something else?"

What, like I'm reliving one of the worst nights of my life?I almost laugh at the thought because it’s not even true. That wasn't the worst night of my life. It was the start of every night of my life being awful. It was the end of my innocence. The end of my family. The end of my life as I knew it.

Now, all that's left behind is a woman with a mission. A heartless, piece-of-shit woman with a mission.

I push away from him. "I'm fine, Dr. Phil."

His body stiffens, and he drops his hands, letting me climb off the bed and out of his lap. I look around the motel room, from my bed to his empty one. I've had nightmares with him before, and he'd always tried to help me, but this was the first time he'd touched me. I don't know how I feel about that.

"I'm going to take a shower," I say.

"Good." All softness is gone from his voice. "Because we have work to do."

"Surprise, surprise," I tell him dryly, gathering up my stuff for the shower, and trying not to notice how hoarse my voice still is from all my screaming.

"Just make it quick," he says, and it's the closest to snapping at me he's gotten.

I pause in the doorway to the bathroom and look back, letting my gaze roam over him. He’s wearing long grey pajama pants and no shirt. He’s running his fingers angrily through his hair and staring down at his bed. It’s the most… human-like I’ve seen him since we started “working” together. Like underneath his suits, he’s actually a man.

And seeing him as a man bothers me for reasons I don’t understand. Any time, even for a moment, that I feel a personal connection with him, I do something stupid. Normally, this is where I'd say something obnoxious to piss my captor off, but instead, I slip into the bathroom, not yet ready for a fight. Verbal or otherwise.

Locking the door, I turn on the shower to warm it up and strip down, shivering as the cold air hits me.Or maybe I’m still shivering from the nightmare. Or Max touching me.I’m not sure which, but my body feels like it’s overloading. Like I need toshift into my wolf form and go racing through the woods until I can’t remember what it means to be human any longer.

Not that I can do that. Not until I’ve righted my wrongs.

A soft whisper makes me jerk. But I know that voice. I know what it wants. And even when I see dark, wispy shapes out of the corner of my eye, I ignore them. I ignore it all because it can only bring me trouble.

Stepping into the shower, I turn it to scalding hot, then stiffen when it hits me. But hot water is exactly what I need right now; the pain helps to wash the memories away… and the knowledge of what I still have to do.

The terrible things I have to do.

I'm trembling, more from anger than fear now, but I don't want to stop being angry. The anger helps me. Keeps me going. And right now, the most important thing is that I keep going.

I sold my soul for a reason—to save my pack, or what's left of it—and I need the anger to remind me that I'm still a long way from doing that. Most of my pack died that night. The rest wished they had. Now, either I find them and try to save their tortured souls, orthe othersfind them before I do and kill them.

That night might have been the start of my journey into hell, but it's far from over. And if Max or the others get in my way, I don't care how handsome they are, I'll drag them into hell right alongside me.

TWO

Asha

It’s a cold morning.It’s so early that the grey dawn has just barely streaked the sky over the trees with light, giving the strangest feeling of the hours before a storm, even though I don’t smell rain in the air. It makes me uneasy, but I try to push the feeling aside. It’s just an early morning while working, nothing more. The clouds are clouds. Not some sign of trouble to come.

Max is inside questioning the waitress and some of the townsfolk. He’d told me to wait outside. Because, according to him, I get bitchy when people don’t answer our questions well enough.

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