Page 2 of Wolf Lost

He turned a sharp corner at the last second. It wouldn’t throw them off for long, but his agility was one of the only things he had going for him when running from the taller, stronger betas. They had the stamina to keep running long after he’d collapsed in exhaustion, but maybe if he could keep ahead of them for a little while longer, an opportunity would present itself.

He ducked down an alley where a group of people were smoking, dodging around them and hopping over a dumpster before turning down the next street. The smokers, who had largely ignored him, yelled angrily after the betas, who weren’t much for dodging. They were less leaves on the wind and more bulldozers over the leaves.

Halfway down the next street over, a scent almost stopped him in his tracks. It was creamy coffee and buttery chocolate croissants, and it made his mouth water and his stomach twist and grumble in protest. The trucker had given him some carrot sticks, but wolves were not meant to live on carrots alone.

His father would have laughed and told him wolves weren’t meant to eat chocolate at all, and at least carrots weren’t poison. The twisting of his stomach turned into full-blown nausea for a moment before he pushed the thoughts away.

His father was dead. The one thing Sawyer had never lost sight of in all that had happened was that his father had wanted him to be happy. He wouldn’t have wanted Sawyer to get caught and dragged back.

Lungs burning and legs aching, he was running out of options. The betas would overtake him if he didn’t find an escape soon.

The smell of coffee and chocolate got stronger as he neared the street corner. It was coming from what looked like a cafe, with two big red doors that faced the corner itself, not the side of the street. One was blocked an inch or so open with a little triangle of wood that might have been a doorstop.

It wasn’t logical to stop in a restaurant. The betas could grab him and drag him off before any concerned citizen called the police, long before the police showed up, and no average cafe patron could do a damn thing to stop them.

So he had no idea why he dodged inside, grabbing the little triangle of wood and closing the door behind him. Maybe someone would at least let him out a back door.

He stopped dead when he got a look at the place. It wasn’t a cafe at all.

Oh, maybe it had been, once. There was a black stone counter with an enormous machine that could be a fancy coffee maker sitting on it. An empty old bakery case took up one side of the counter, a drink refrigerator sitting silent beside it.

A pile of tables and chairs had been shoved haphazardly into a corner, and the only thing in the middle of the dark wood floor was an enormous crate.

A crate with a man sitting on top of it.

He was the most beautiful man Sawyer had ever seen, in every possible way. He was broad and muscled, with a stubbled square jaw and hair and eyes as black as ink.

Those coal-dark eyes locked onto Sawyer, and every cell in his body screamed to bare his neck and beg for help, or mercy, or possibly something a little less appropriate. The man didn’t look like the merciful type: jaw clenched and shoulders tense, eyes narrowed in apparent annoyance. He definitely wouldn’t appreciate the less appropriate offer.

The need to bare his neck was something he’d never experienced before, but Sawyer knew what it was. His father had been a pushover, a kind alpha who only wanted his pack safe and happy. Mark was a monster, for whom Sawyer felt no loyalty or faith.

This man. This wolf. This was an alpha with the ability to command. This could be the death he’d been half looking for, or the salvation he hadn’t expected to come.

2

Shelter from the Storm

It was their third empty shop of the morning, and Dez was already fucking exhausted. He didn’t care which one they chose. They all looked the same to him. Empty, dusty one-time restaurants, cafes, and bakeries, in varying states of disrepair.

The first one had been very nice, but on the outskirts of town, so Gavin hadn’t liked it. They wanted something in the thick of things, he’d said. Dez didn’t want anything to do with the thick of things, but he supposed a coffee shop in the middle of nowhere probably wouldn’t make money.

Asher had claimed the kitchen in the second was much too small. Dez didn’t know what difference it made, since none of them could cook. How big did a kitchen need to be for rudimentary baked goods? The kitchen in the house they’d bought was as big as the entire apartment his mother had rented when he was a kid, and all they’d used it for so far was hanging takeout menus on the fridge and storing leftover pizza.

This place was in the middle of Kismet’s tiny downtown area, and the kitchen was bigger than the ridiculous one in the house. Hopefully they could buy it and have done with the realtor. The man’s nasal voice was starting to grate on his last nerve.

“The ovens are a little dated,” Asher was saying, and Dez didn’t know how the hell he knew that. An oven was an oven, wasn’t it?

Damn, his leg ached. He hobbled out to the front of the place, which also seemed fine to him. Gavin had turned his nose up at the pile of chairs in the back with their cracked maroon vinyl, but Dez figured they’d serve as well as anything.

He settled himself on the crate the current owners had left in the middle of the floor and turned to look at the furniture. It was old, sure, but it could be reupholstered, and if not good as new, good enough that no one would care. Well, no one but Gavin.

Dez lay his cane on the crate behind himself and pulled his leg up to rest on the opposite knee. The muscles pulled uncomfortably, but they were better than they’d been a month earlier. And anything was better than standing all morning.

The guys and the realtor went out the back door, the annoying man droning on about trash pickup and city ordinances.

Without warning, Dez’s hearing focused down to a tiny hint of a sound outside. He hadn’t gotten completely used to the way his senses worked on their own now, as though an instinct outside his own was controlling them.

At first it had happened at every tiny sound: a conversation between the nurses, a bird on the ledge outside, a damned light bulb whining in a faulty socket. He’d thought he might go nuts, but the new instincts had eventually sorted out what was important to him and what wasn’t.

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