Page 63 of Frank's Felon
The plea coming from her sweet little voice speared Delilah. She wanted to pull Frankie to her and hold her tight, shield her from the beasts that had taken her.
Frankie’s whimpers turned into outright crying. One of the shifters backhanded her, knocking Frankie over. The child curled into a ball, a very silent, shaking ball.
Delilah’s wolf forced a shift, which scared the hell out of Delilah. She couldn’t afford to lose control, and running into that camp without a plan was suicide.
“Leave the kid alone, Royce,” the leader ordered.
“I can’t take her crying.”
“Then run a sweep.”
“Craig’s already doing that.”
“Join him. Go. Now.”
Royce shifted and disappeared into the trees.
After one last glance at Frankie, to make sure they’d leave her alone, Delilah prodded her wolf away from the campsite and toward the nearby cliff.
Her plan was crude, but she had no other options and time was running out. As soon as they caught her scent, she’d lose any advantage she had and any chance of getting Frankie to safety.
With all her heart, Delilah poured everything she had into a howl, a call for help. As her wolf lifted her snout to the sky, letting the howl rip loud and as long as she could, Delilah prayed one of Frank’s pack was close enough to hear her. Even if they didn’t reach Delilah in time to save her, they might be able to save Frankie.
Delilah’s wolf’s ears pitched back, listening for a howl, any howl, to indicate she’d been heard, that she wasn’t alone out here. None came. The shifter from earlier had moved out of range.
But Delilah wasn’t alone.
The white wolf’s scent was heavy in the wind. No. . . two wolves were approaching. She could take two wolves—depending on which two.
The wolf in front of her, Royce, the bastard who had struck Frankie, shifted to human form. “I thought I smelled a familiar cunt. Couldn’t stay away from us, I see.”
The second shifter, Craig, remained in wolf form and stood to her right.
As Delilah shifted, she bit back the growl and comments she wanted to sling at Royce. At least she had a handle on her fear. She could take these two. “I want the girl.”
The moment Craig started to shift to human form, Delilah attacked—without shifting. With the full force of her body-weight, she pressed down on the shifter’s throat, mid-shift. She had learned the trick from William—probably the only useful thing her alpha had ever taught her. Mid-point was that half-way point of the transition between man and wolf wherein the shifter was extremely vulnerable. It’s why a pack leader always shifted before his pack, so he could watch over the exposed packmates during their shift.
With the shifter in front of her essentially paralyzed, Delilah snapped his neck. The crack was sickening, and the last thing she heard before Royce’s wolf sank his teeth into her shoulder.
Pain exploded in her shoulder as the wolf took her down. His canines ripped through her hands as she tried to keep his jaws from her neck. She forced his powerful jaw up and bit into his neck with her human mouth—not nearly the force she needed to do damage, but enough to distract him and twist from his hold. She wasn’t fast enough. A claw tore down her back as she pulled away.
Delilah scurried to the edge of the cliff. As the wolf lunged for her a second time, she dropped to her back and pushed her legs up and out, catching the wolf in his belly. With all the force she could muster, Delilah launched the wolf over her head and off the cliff. A howl of fear pierced the wind. A moment later, complete silence blanketed the area. Only the sound of her heavy breathing filled her ears.
Delilah lay there, staring up at the sky as she tried to take control of the pain and push it aside. She was far from done. Her wolf was already working on her wounds, trying to stop the bleeding. Healing would take time, and pain management was low on the priority list. She and her wolf both knew it. She had three wolves left, and she needed to be in the best possible condition she could be to fight them. Delilah looked at her shoulder and fell back to the ground. The bites were deep and would take more than a few minutes to heal. She had to get out of there. The other wolves would look for their packmates soon enough.
Slowly, she rolled onto her side, trying to ignore the shooting pain in her back, shoulder, and hands. Shaking, Delilah steading herself on all fours as she waited for the nausea to subside.
Though she was tempted to peer over the cliff to make sure Royce was dead, she had been close enough to the edge for a lifetime. With three rapid breaths, Delilah forced herself up and teetered. . . too close to the edge. She stumbled forward and drew herself over to the dead shifter. His body had finished the shift to human form upon his death. The sound of his neck snapping echoed in her memory, and then she thought of Frankie. She’d do it all over again in a heartbeat.
Delilah finally glanced at her hands. They were torn up, and her back felt as if it had been ripped in two. The blood running down her back had slowed, but hadn’t stopped. Royce’s wolf must have dug in harder than she had realized. She needed to flee, fast and far before the remaining white wolves found her. They would have heard her howl as well, and with all the blood on her, she’d be easy to track. She needed even an hour or two to give her wolf some time to at least stop the bleeding. Delilah was in no shape for another fight.
She had only walked a few hundred feet when she caught the sound of another wolf closing in.
* * *
FRANK
Frank cursed the entire time he traveled north, searching for any sign of Delilah or the white wolves. His thoughts bounced between Frankie and Delilah to new worries over whether or not Hayden, Mila, Callen, and Kate were still alive. Damien never should have allowed Hayden and the others to go to Drake’s pack, tohelpDrake with his issues. What was Damien thinking? Drake wasn’t an honorable shifter in any sense of the word. He couldn’t be trusted. Then why had Damien trusted him?
