Page 23 of The Beast's Baby
Who was this guy? What the hell did he want with her?
Then there was the pronounced sound of sniffing reaching her, even over the blaring of the alarm. The wolves were picking up their scent because of course they would. That was why this was all a suicide endeavor. They would be discovered, and it wouldn’t matter how far they ran. They would be tracked.
Only, they weren’t going anywhere because the wolves were right outside the car.
She didn’t want to move in order to look out the windows, slouched down, trying to keep herself out of sight. But the temptation was real. Who were these other wolves? She’d spent time with other shifters, but she hadn’t gotten the chance to meet any other wolves at all. She’d met a few over the years, sure, but none of the shifters she’d been friendly with had been wolf kin. There was a sudden tug from deep within to reveal herself, to speak her true name, her wolf name.
Alpha.
The word entered her head from somewhere unknown.
She dared raise her head half an inch to look outside. There, outlined right in front of the hood of the car, stood the biggest wolf she could ever have imagined. He looked like he could easily flip over a bus. Jesus, he was huge. Gray, like silver almost. And she felt like she wanted to shift, she wanted to run with him, next to him. Howl at the sky together. They’d be unstoppable.
Then the thrall was broken as the car started, the lights glaring bright enough to make the Alpha wolf cower against it. He scrunched his eyes closed as if in pain, the brightness burning his retinas. Jay reversed away from the wolf, spinning the car around and then hitting the gas as though there was nothing at all to lose. Perhaps there wasn’t. Or perhaps there was everything to lose.
All Isobel could think was that she wanted away from that awful sound.
Why had the Alpha not been affected by it? Perhaps the guard squad had some sort of protection spell put on them. It wouldn’t surprise her one bit.
It took another minute and then, finally, the blare was distant enough for her to take her hands off her ears. She breathed a sigh of relief, looking over at Jay. He looked rattled, but when their eyes met, his face split in a smile.
“Holy shit,” he said.
She laughed. “Holy shit!” she yelled. “We’re not being followed, are we?”
“We will be,” he said. “But I know where we have to go.”
“Where?”
“A place that Olive brought me to. Her favorite place. If she’s managed to leave me a message there, then that’ll be our first clue.”
“Were you ever together?” Isobel wondered, surprising herself with the question.
“No,” he said. “We were just friends.”
As his eyes met hers, catching her gaze, as if wanting to know why she was asking, the ache started between her legs again. She rested her head back with a soft growl of annoyance at her lack of control over it. Then she smiled as the sound reminded her and she let another soft growl out. The sound of her wolf reverberating like a friend she’d known much longer than a mere month and a half.
Hello, she greeted, hoping her wolf could sense how happy she was to feel it again.
Another growl, this one internal—a quiet response that was more than a sound and more like a part of her blood—told her that it could.
But as the heat began to spread slowly through her limbs, making itself irreversibly known, she was reminded how she couldn’t depend on its presence. Her more basic animalistic urges were set to take over and drive her mad, weren’t they? There was nothing for her to do but accept it and hope… that she would be able to control herself.
But his scent…
She glanced over at him. There was fear on him of what he had just done. Of the rebellion he had just staged. And with it, there was power, because he was acting despite his fear. He was focused and relentless and she knew in that moment that there was nothing he wouldn’t do to keep them safe. Not because she was special, but because that was who he was deep down.
It was immensely intoxicating, like the soft aroma of freshly baked bread with butter after you’d starved yourself for a month.
She hadn’t had sex in a month. Okay, in longer than that. In about a year, if she was honest. She didn’t like casual, though she had it on occasion, and she hadn’t met anyone worth waking up with the next morning. Perhaps because she’d been scrambling to make ends meet since losing her job.
He noticed her looking.
“What?” he asked.
She wanted to tell him that he knew what but bit the inside of her cheek and directed her eyes on the road instead. She was grateful to him for the favor he’d done for her. But it didn’t change the fact that, if he hadn’t found that note from Olive, Isobel wasn’t sure what he would have done.
“Would you have fucked me like they told you to?” she couldn’t stop herself from asking.
