Page 3 of Destined Prey
Another snort-like sound came from the animal.
Jack decided he was just going to have to hope for the best. He needed to get Rhett back to the house, and Rhett had a good four inches and fifty pounds on him.
“Well, I’ll just have to drag you, bro.” Jack felt for the rifle, then cursed. “Shit.” He hadn’t brought the strap for it. “It’s not like the wolves are gonna shoot us anyway.”
Rhett groaned, and Jack made up his mind. The guns— his and Rhett’s—would have to wait. Rhett needed to be looked at, and Jack couldn’t see for shit right then.
“All right, let’s hope for the best.” He maneuvered around and got his arms hooked under Rhett’s. Pain heated Jack’s side and shot all the way down to his knees. He couldn’t even cry out as his head spun and he feared he’d pass out.
Then there were hands on him, and he didn’t know what happened. He tried to say Rhett’s name, but could only gasp when his injured ribs throbbed.
He was on the ground, on his back, eyes closed as he struggled to get a hold of himself.God, we’re gonna die, gonna get torn apart by wolves…
Jack rolled over, then got slowly to his knees. After an unsteady moment, he carefully stood up. “Rhett?” Had Rhett laid him down? Jack stuck one foot out and tapped around, searching for his brother.
“Here.”
“Fuck!” Jack shrieked and slapped a hand to his chest, not his usual reaction to hearing a deep, sexy voice.
The sound of it jolted through him, low and rough like gravel under tires. It wasn’t Rhett. It couldn’t be Rhett. His panic spiked, tangled with something else he couldn’t put a name to. Desire had no place here, not with blood on his hands and wolves in the dark, but that voice hit him anyway, right in the gut.
“Here,” the man said again, and something was thrust in Jack’s hands.
There was an odd series of popping noises, then paws slapping the ground.
Jack realized he was holding a flashlight. “What the ever- lovin’ fuck?” he mumbled as he turned it on. “No way.” He shook his head, figuring he must have bumped it somehow.
“Rhett!” God, where had his brother gone? Jack remembered finding him, but a quick check of the ground nearby showed that Rhett wasn’t anywhere close. “Rhett!”
Jack shined the light farther out, but before he could spin all the way around, something nipped at his left heel. ”Shit!” A second nip sent him running, and a third had him hauling ass toward the house. It was almost like he was being herded, but that couldn’t be true. A fourth, sharper nip sent him bounding up the steps, and he prayed that Rhett had somehow made it to safety when he slammed the door shut behind him.
His back pressed to the wood, lungs burning, Jack clutched the useless rifle and swore under his breath. Wolves, voices, glowing eyes—none of it made sense. All he knew was one thing. Whatever was out there wanted him alive. And that terrified him more than dying.
Chapter Three
Benjamin Akers watched the sexy-scented man. The second he saw that the human was safely inside the house, where Ben had left Rhett—at least he assumed it’d been Rhett he’d carried into the home—Ben darted back into the fray.
Pack wars were becoming more common, and he hated that. The wolves didn’t want his kind, and the coyotes hated them, too. Coywolves weren’t popular with anyone in the shifterornative beast world. And they existed in both, since wolf shifters had, at some point, done the forbidden and bred with coyote shifters, just as wolves had done with coyotes and created a new species.
And it was wreaking havoc in the shifter packs, at least, because no one wanted the coywolves around. Add in the pissed-off ranchers with their deadly weapons, and Ben feared his kind wouldn’t be a species for long.
It was a good thing coywolves were proving to be hard to kill. They were, he believed, made of the best parts of both wolves and coyotes.
But tonight, the fight didn’t settle the way it usually did. Every slash of claws, every snap of teeth, his mind kept drifting back to that man. To the scent that clung to him, sharp with fear but edged with something warmer, sweeter. Something Ben had no business noticing when blood and dirt coated his own muzzle.
He shut off his human mind and leapt at the two wolves trying to take down his younger brother, Emil. The first, he caught at the nape, and was able to eliminate quickly. Emil handled the second one.
The third and fourth wolves were more difficult for them both. Ben scampered back to avoid having his nose bitten off at the very least when the big gray male snarled and snapped at him.
The copper tang of blood mixed with the musky bite of wolf-sweat and torn earth. Ben’s muscles ached, his lungs burned, but the coywolf in him thrived on it. Survival was a song in his veins. Still, somewhere under all of that, the image of a wide-eyed human with trembling hands haunted him. He shook it off with a growl and clamped down harder on the gray wolf’s throat.
Somewhere in the brawl, his oldest brother, Casey, was fighting the wolf pack alpha. Ben didn’t know where his other three siblings were, not specifically, except that they were also battling off attackers. He could hear their growls behind him, and at least knew they were still alive.
Ben focused on his own battle as the gray wolf leapt at him again. Ben dropped and rolled, not a particularly dignified move, but an effective one. He sprang up onto his paws and charged at his prey, head down, teeth bared. Ben hit him hard, hard enough to stun them both, though he recovered quickly. Before the gray could come at him again, Ben was on him, gripping the furry throat with deadly teeth. He growled, low, mean, and gave thewolf a warning shake.Cut this shit out and leave us alone, he willed the beast. Another shake, and the wolf whined.
A wolf’s word was more trustworthy than a man’s. Ben loosened his grip and stepped back, snapping his teeth at his defeated opponent. Not every animal fought to the death. The wolf scrambled up and ran away, then Ben turned and tried to decide which packmate to help.
Only, there was no need for him to help anyone. Whatever wolves weren’t dead had abandoned the fight once their alpha had gone down.
