Page 8 of The Forbidden Wolf

Let me loose.

Not yet.

The first male’s face flushed angry red as the joke sank in. His weight shifted ever so slightly off of me as he squared his shoulders and puffed out his chest. If I could hook his leg, I might be able to throw him into his buddies and roll out from under the whole dog pile. Then I could shift and make a run for it. I licked my lips and exaggerated my labored breaths, trying to keep the creeps’ attention on the upper half of my body.

“Not mated?” The second male let out a low whistle. “Baby, they’ve been wasting your time up there. Pretty little thing like you ought to be denned up by now.”

My wolf snarled, peeling back my human lips to show off her fangs. The two pervs laughed bawdily, but the first male’s Adam’s apple bobbed like maybe this wasn’t what he signed up for. Like maybe he’d just wanted to do his job.

The third male slapped the second’s shoulder. “Nothing we ain’t fixed before.”

“Is that so?” a fourth voice asked, and then a leather-clad arm snaked around the third male’s neck and hauled him from my line of vision.

With a frightened yelp, the second male sprang over my legs, and the first male scuttled backward, leaving me with nothing to look at but Jayla’s future husband on the wall. With my eyes properly focused, I noticed a piece of graffiti I’d missed earlier—the blood red words KEEP U.S. HUMAN sprayed across the man’s bare chest and spilling over onto the walls on either side of the poster. Weird. Maybe some sort of market—

Focus!

The chamber echoed with the frantic scrabbling of boots on dirty tile. I rolled onto my side just in time to see a tall figure spin on a dime, hurling my would-be attacker head-first into the stairs I’d tumbled down. The creep howled in pain, and then clambered up the steps on his hands and knees, tailbone tucked like a submissive wolf.

So, my hero outranked him. Interesting, given that the fourth male was presenting spectacularly human. A black motorcycle jacket stretched across his broad back, and a pair of dark blue jeans hugged his ass and every other inch of his long, powerful legs. All the way down to his black and white Chucks, a fascinating choice in footwear that explained how he’d padded down the stairs without any of us noticing.

“Take your team home,” he ordered the cowering male. “But if truth serum will show that you’ve forced yourself on any females, trespassing or not, then save me the time and take yourself straight to the gates of Halo.”

“But sir,” the second male’s voice sniveled off to my left, “we were only—”

“Now!” the fourth male bellowed. “All of you! Out of my sight!”

The third male ran up the stairs on all fours, and I heard the clatter of two sets of boots on the stairs leading up to the street’s northeast corner. They obeyed so quickly he had to be a future Beta. Like everyone in my pack had hoped I would turn out to be, but… well, I was a total box office flop. Not even the tiniest bit of talent for mental coercion. Or much of anything else for that matter. Hence Father’s rush to see me mated off so I could finally be of use to someone.

But this guy…

A long moment of silence followed the fading of the footsteps. I rolled onto my aching hands and bruised knees, never taking my eyes off the future Beta. His strong shoulders rose and fell at a rapid clip, like he couldn’t quite catch his breath. Angry? Overexerted? I gingerly sniffed his pheromones for a hint at what might happen next, but they gave almost nothing away.

Strange.

Must be a Beta thing?

Maybe…

My wolf retracted her fangs, but kept my human hackles raised. She wasn’t going to trust anyone with nothing more to go by than his age and mating status—a few years past twenty and somehow every bit as unmated as me.

Hmm. He’s probably like Evan then.

Shut! Up! I paused. Not that it matters.

My wolf snorted.

The silence dragged on, an unbearable tension building between me and this dude whose face I had yet to even see. My own breaths came short and fast. My heart hammered in my temples. Just because he’d saved me from one horror didn’t mean he didn’t have his own in store. Would he drag me back to the Manhattan compound and drop me at the feet of his Alpha for a handsome reward? Would my father be called? Would my sister’s mateship be canceled? Or would I simply be taken into the North Woods and eaten?

“You should go.” The Beta spoke gruffly, as if he had a frog in his throat, and yet somehow the command felt… gentle?

I pushed myself into a kneeling position, warily eyeing his back. Did I mention it was very broad? So broad. But then it tapered down to a trim waist and every lean muscle encased in those tight blue jeans. I bit my lower lip. The Beta was built like a sled dog. Um, not that I was into actual sled dogs; it was just something Kiana and I used to say when we were rating our male peers for mating suitability. Some were sled dogs, and some were show dogs, and some were wiener dogs and—okay, just forget I said any of that.

“You’re letting me go?” I asked, hating the way my voice came out in a breathy rasp.

His long fingers curled into fists beneath the worn cuffs of his jacket. “Yes.”

I squinted at the back of his head where dark feathery curls blossomed out from under his dark wool newsboy cap and brushed his collar like hanging vines. From six feet away, I could smell that he used one of those expensive, hyper-masculine shampoos that claimed to be scented like lava stones or prehistoric trees. I didn’t know what the hell it actually smelled like, but it was doing a damn good job making me want to rub my nose in his nape.

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