Page 43 of Wolf Unleashed
After giving Rafe insight into Liam’s personality and telling him about his conversation with Liam, Tiernan stripped and headed to his bathroom to shower. He stopped by the bedroom, staring at Alyssa sleeping in his bed.
“She’ll be fine, Tiernan. We all will be. It might take a while to figure out our future, but it will happen.”
“I want to blood-bond her again, Rafe, but I’m not sure what that will do to me. Or to her.”
“You’ll need to ask her permission, not mine. I’m not your alpha.”
“You will be. If you want our group to survive, you need to be. I’m not an alpha. My brother told me to start thinking like an alpha, but it’s not who I am.Youare. You need to take charge. Start calling the shots.”
Rafe nodded as Tiernan disappeared into the bathroom. Everyone was pushing him to be an alpha. To exert himself as one, at least. The last time that happened, nine shifters died at the DSA facility and Alyssa had been kidnapped. He’d failed as an alpha, but everyone was looking at him to lead. He hoped he could, for their sakes as well as his own.
* * *
TIERNAN
As soon asTiernan shut the shower, he heard footsteps. Too many footsteps. Then he smelled shifters, familiar but not ones he called allies.
High-pitched, muffled screams filled the cabin. Tiernan shifted to his wolf and raced out of the bathroom. Three wolves stood between him and the two shifters, who bound and gagged Alyssa and threw a bag over her head.
Tiernan released a howl, long and deep, alerting his pack about the intruders, and then he leapt over the three wolves, attempting to reach Alyssa.
Claws sliced through his exposed belly, shredding him as he landed on the shifter who’d tossed Alyssa onto his shoulder like a sack of dirty laundry. The force threw her into the other shifter.
Tiernan’s wolf rolled with the shifter and couldn’t pry himself loose before one of the wolves sank his teeth into his hind legs. His wolf snapped back, ripping the side of the wolf’s throat. He’d failed to damage anything vital, giving the shifters the time they needed to finish tying Alyssa.
More teeth sank into his torso, his forearms, areas he could no longer protect. Alyssa’s muffled screams filled his ears until they disappeared altogether.
The light in the cabin dimmed as all the scents disappeared. They’d taken her, and he was too injured to follow. His wolf struggled to staunch the flow of blood. So much blood loss…
Tiernan looked inward for the bond hoping, but not expecting, to find it. To his surprise, a sliver of light pulsed in the darkness. He focused on it, even as his wolf closed his eyes. A sense of relief washed over him, even greater than the pain. Hope. He hadn’t lost his bond with her, but it was weak, a mere tendril of what it should be.
He would find her and blood-bond her again, fully willing. This time he’d have the blood-bond with the woman he loved… if he lived long enough to find her.
Chapter Eleven
RAFE
“What do you mean, they lost her scent?” Rafe asked, trying to contain his rage as he watched the pack’s medic moving at lightning speed, trying to suture the puncture wounds in multiple arteries. Tiernan’s wolf couldn’t heal him fast enough, not at the rate he was losing blood.
Liam stared down at the pool of blood surrounding his brother on the floor. Rafe and Liam had been fighting off an attack at the central compound. A distraction, they realized when they heard Tiernan’s howl.
Rafe and Liam responded immediately, leaving Liam’s guards to defend the central compound while they raced to Tiernan’s cabin. They’d found Tiernan’s wolf bleeding out on the floor, dozens of deep bites and tears in his flesh. Rafe had clamped his hands on the worst of the wounds to slow the flow of blood while Liam’s wolf ran for the medic.
The medic had been miles away, and no one had come to relieve Rafe, to free him so he could pursue Alyssa’s kidnappers.
“My second reported that he tracked your female’s scent to an access road. The intruders had a car waiting.”
“Fuck!”
“You can take our car, but by now they’re on the interstate.”
Even if Rafe knew how to drive, he couldn’t track them on the interstate.
“He’ll live,” the medic said. “But it could be days before his wolf can finish healing him.”
“I can’t wait that long,” Rafe said as he stripped. “When Tiernan wakes, tell him I’m returning to the DSA training facility to have a little chat with Gallagher.”
Liam’s face was unreadable as he stared down at Tiernan. The shifter lay there, too still and too pale. Rafe questioned if Tiernan’s wolf could pull him through or the medic was simply trying to give them hope.
