Chapter One Hundred Ninety–Eight
GRYFFIN
with the little bland man–child chained up in the After Quinn left I made à point of staying upstairs where I couldn’t be tempted to loy basement. I need to gather myself first and maybe even pat ingether at of questions to ask him when he finally comes to. It may sound stupid, but the truth is Ive never had one in my care that I didn’t outright minder. There have only been a handful of times that Gayle or I have been fortunate enough to take one of them alive, and each of these times my anger got the better of me. I ended up shifting and tearing them to hits. However, I can’t shift these days, so this time will different. This time, maybe I’ll get a few answers that I need and finally figure out which hunter it was that killed my mother.
Whoever he was, he took her body before we could retrieve it. I want it lock.
I’m not stupid. I know what the fucker probably did with it. It turns my stomach to imagine her that way, but what kind of son would I be if I let some bastard keep her like a stuffed trophy. Passing her down from generation to generation as if she wasn’t someone’s mother,
She was a queen, but we never treated her like one. We should have. We took the fact that we were shifters for granted. Thinking we wer safe. Thinking we were invincible. Well, we’re not. We’re just a lot harder to kill.
She asked me to help her that day. She said she needed me to help her track some hunter because there was something different about him. I blew her off thinking she was paranoid..
There was this girl, her name was Amber, she was a cheerleader at my high school. I wanted her for my mate. I even pretended she was my mate just so my mom would let me bring her around, but deep down I knew she wasn’t much more than a human girl with a bangin body. I was young, stupid, and horny. My mother was killed while I was out fucking the ditzy bimbo in an abandoned parking lot.
Believe it or not, I felt it when she died. The sad shame is, once I was finished fucking Amber, I didn’t want her anymore. Dumped her that same day. She cried and called me an asshole and I langhed as i rode off on my bike. In the next few moments, I felt it. The loss. The dread. The acute realization that something had gone terribly wrong and nothing would ever be the same again.
Back at the den everyone was in tears and right away, I knew, Goose had been with her. I guess when I refused to help her, she asked him to join her instead. According to Goose, she saved his life. He was just as young as I was, but with less training and ended up making some rookie mistake that put him right in the hunter’s path. Gouse said my mother yowled in warning, signaling that the hunter was in the trees, but by the time he spotted the guy it was too late. So my mother, forever the protective lioness, stepped in the line of fire like the queen that she was.
It should have been me
Gayle was her baby. I was her protector! Her oldest! I failed her.
She deserves a proper
burial.
Shaking off the ghosts of the past, the sound of a helicopter overhead catches my
attention.
I “Gryff!” Goose screams from downstairs and I race out of my ro
of my room as fast as my non shifting legs will carry me.
When I approach him, his face is a mask of panic. “What? What happened? Where’s Gayle?”
Goose shakes his head and Taedora shrugs.
“She attacked a female hunter. A sniper,” Taedora explains. “Instead of killing her quickly, she had her by the throat, trying to make the girl suffer. For whatever reason, Bartlett stepped in. He ripped Gayle off the human with his teeth and Gayle disappeared into the woods. No one has seen her since.”
What the fuck? And the hunter? The girl?” I ask, throwing open the front door and stalking into the yard to scan the woods. I cant see anything. I need my lion back!
1/3
Chapter One Hundred Ninety–Eight
A spotlight illuminates me for if moment as a helicopter hovers overhead Fuck. That’s not our regular chopper.
A woman’s voice could be heard coming from the ginnt speakers attached to the sides of the bird.
“This is a warning. All residents are urged to remain indoors. All visitors are ordered to ecuate the area. This is a no hunting zone and all violators will be detained. We are searching for a large adult conger. Assured to be near seven feet in length and two hundred pounds. This animal is extremely aggressive, please be advised. This is a warning. All residents… The voice continues, repeating the same message as the helicopter proceeds to circle a different area.
“What the fuck?” | hiss
“There are men all over the woods,” Goose says, idling up next to me. Duys from all over. My eyes rip toward him, and he shakes his head. “They’re hunting for Gayle.”
“What about the wolves?” I ask, knowing they’ve got more than a few guys on the force.
Goose shrugs, “I saw Tim and Koda. But Rain and Dom were with me taking care of the threat in the forest. There was a lot of commotion at the campsite, so we went our separate ways right when we were done. There’s blood in those woods, Gryff.”
“Fuck!” I growl. “They’re going to assume it was all Gayle. They’re going to hunt her down and kill her.“
“Gayle’s a little unhinged, yeah, Taedora says from behind me. “But she’s not stupid and she’s not deaf. She’s not going to head back toward the campsite.”
I sigh, shaking my head. My sister has been getting more and more out of hand. And now she has a human hunter for a mate. The little bastard tried to kill her and all she would say about it was that she just needed to meet him again. As her human self. She really thinks he won’t recognize her. She may be right, but I’m not willing to risk it, so I forbade her from trying to track him. I am the king of this den, but that doesn’t mean she’ll listen. Good thing she doesn’t know where to start looking for the prick. I turn to Tae and Goose and say, “Well it’s not safe for either of your to go looking for her as lions, and it’s pointless to go as humans, so I guess there’s only one thing left to do.
We wait.”
DELILAH
I don’t know why I wake up, but I do. My eyes pop open and at first I have no idea where I am. Sitting up in bed and seeing that I’m naked, I suddenly remember. My cheeks flame with heat and I can’t help but smile like an idiot. Quinn. I’m at Quinn’s place.
But where is he?
Glancing at the other side of the bed, I see it remains untouched. He must not have come to bed yet. The clock on the nightstand tells me it’s two a.m. Shouldn’t he have joined me by now?
Maybe he has to run at night or something? He is a wolf.
RAT, TAT, TAT, TAT.
A sharp tapping on my left grabs my attention and I listen intently, trying to figure out where the sound is coming from.
RAT, TAT, TAT, TAT.
The glass! The patio doors! Quinn closed the shades, so I have no idea what is making that sound. But what if it’s Quinn? What if he somehow got locked outside?
RAT, TAT, TAT, TAT.
Shit! I need to check
2/3
Chapter One Hundred Ninety–Eight
I throw off the covers and try to hot out of bed, but I stumble, Holy fuck or sore!
Okay… mybe try to walk a little shower, Del.
I push up off the ground just as the tapping starts again. This time, way more insistent.
RAT. TAT. TAT. TAT: RAT, TAT, TAT, ZATI
“Hold on!” I
“Hold on!” I say to the empty room. “Tm coming.”
My head swivels left and right as I search for my clothes, but they’re newhere to be found. “Shit!” I head into Quinn’s closet and grab the first hoodie 1 find, throwing it on and nodding with satisfaction because it reaches down to my knees. Heading for the patio doors, I flip on the porchlight then pull the shades back.
Then, 1 freeze with my hand on the latch.
You’ve got to be kidding me.
What the fuck? 11ho the hell is this?
A gorgeous blond female stands on the other side of the doors. But that’s not the worst part.
The worst part is what she is wearing. Or rather, what she’s not.
“You’re not Quinn,” I say, eyeing the intruder warily.
Anger erupts everywhere inside of me as I stare at the visitor on the other side of the glass.
This woman is naked and knocking on Quinn’s bedroom doors in the wee hours of the fm not shit but a player morning and she doesn’t even look cold.
Oh Quinn… just wait until I get my hands on you.
