Unchained (Dark Shifter Romance) (2 page)

It was revolting, making her stomach heave. But, distracted by the taste of her blood, his grip on her loosened a little...

Without thinking, Lacey slammed her elbow into his ribs with as much force as she could muster. The man let out a bark of pain, his hands letting go of her for a second.

A second was enough. Lacey tore herself from his grip, and ran.

She lurched away from the other men and women who had been watching, but they didn’t seem inclined to catch her. One of them let out a laugh, then immediately covered his mouth, as if hoping no one had heard.

Behind her, the man who had bitten her let out an inhuman growl. “Get back here,” he commanded.

Uh, going to have to pass on that one, chief.
Lacey staggered dizzily down the road as fast as she could, one hand clamped to the bleeding wound. She had to get somewhere safe, she
had
to! But she was slow, her legs wobbling with shock, and there was no-one in town but those monstrous men...

She stumbled, her head spinning, and caught herself on a safety rail. Down the incline in front of her, the river streamed along merrily, unaware of her plight.

“I said, get back here!” the man shouted, and there was real anger in his voice. Lacey heard the sound of his footsteps, coming her way. He wasn’t walking fast. He knew she wasn’t going anywhere. And how could she? Numb, her teeth chattering, she knew she was succumbing to shock. Even if she hadn’t been, there was no-where to run. She was trapped. He’d got her.

Fuck that. Everyone always said that Lacey was a contrary, stubborn bitch, didn't they? Why prove them wrong now?

She braced her blood-slippery hands on the railing. In one ungainly movement, she hurled herself over the barrier.

She’d just wanted some distance between her and the monster behind her, but as she tried to catch herself, her uncooperative feet slipped on the grass. The world spun around her as she tripped, showing her little blurry slices of the world: the railing; the man, his face contorted with rage as he reached out to grab her; the grass; the river, growing bigger and bigger...

Lacey fell into the icy cold water. She struggled, trapped in the current, her shock-ridden body unsure which way was up. The water, which had always looked so picturesque, buffeted her around until her lungs burned for air.

As her vision began to go dark, the last thing she thought was
Well, that was the world’s worst rescue. Great job, Lacey.

Everything went black.

All Jack could do was walk.

How long had he been worth walking for? He didn't know any more. Usually someone would have been there to mark the passage of time, to call him for meetings, or to invite him into their homes for dinner. The pack bond would have been deep within him, dozens of mind touching his, letting him know he was part of something greater.

Now… Now, there was nothing.

Colt's pack had come through the North-west, sniffing at the door of isolated little towns, turning them into their own savage dens and taking their human inhabitants apart. And Jack... Jack had been stupid enough to get in their way.

If he shut his eyes, he could still see them all, his pack-mates drawing the line at the next town on Colt's pack’s agenda, ready to defend people they didn’t know. At the time, their courage had filled him with a warm, golden, sense of pride. His pack, strong and glorious and ready to fight for what was right.

He hadn’t expected everything to go so badly.

But the cruellest thing of all wasn’t that Colt had killed each member of his pack. It was that he hadn’t killed Jack.

Jack had heard of alphas cut off from their pack, but simply hearing about it was nothing like experiencing it for himself. It was like Colt had cut off one of his limbs-- no, it was worse. It was like a lobotomy, like Colt had slipped a blade into his brain, severing some vital internal part of him.

The wolf inside him wanted to howl its misery to the uncaring sky, howling and howling until its throat was raw, calling pack-mates that would never respond again. Jack forced its urges down deep within. Colt had been willing to toy with him by letting him leave, but whatever small part of Jack that was still capable of sensible thought knew that wolves like that were easily bored. If they found where he was, they would track him down and kill him.

What's worse was that he thought he might welcome being put out of his misery.

No.
Jack forced the thought away. He wasn't going to let that happen. He needed to kill Colt, to revenge his pack. He needed that son-of-a-bitch in the ground before the memories of his pack could be laid to rest.

One foot in front of the other, step-by-step through the woods. But Colt had a pack to protect him; he was an alpha in the prime of his life with a pack to match. Jack had… nothing. Not any more. The loss of his pack had carved a hole deep within him, and he knew that without filling the hole, he couldn't match the other alpha in battle. Alpha duels were as much about fighting spirit and the will to protect your pack as much as they were about muscle and fangs.

If Colt had cut off a limb, Jack would have bled to death. But instead Colt had cut off his pack, and that was no less dangerous. Jack knew, deep down within him, drawing on wolf instincts, that if he did not fill the hole within him, he would die.

He needed his pack. He needed another mind connected to his, filling him with the urge to possess and protect and fight for them…

He needed a pack-mate…

Just one…

***

He didn't know how long he walked for, mindlessly moving through the woods as if blind. He wanted to lie down to rest, but he knew that the exhaustion seeping into his bones had nothing to do with simple tiredness. Even if he didn't know where he was going, he had to keep moving. If he sat down, he would never get up again.

Once, nothing had filled him with love more than the sight of nature, the magic of its ways. But that was when its majesty was reflected through the hearts and minds of his pack, all of them moving together as one aspect of nature, coming together as pack. Now, he felt cut off from it all, somehow alone.

Shit. He really did just want to die.

His misery was interrupted by a whimper. He froze, one foot held above the ground. The whimper sounded again, a noise of abject pain, the sound of something suffering.

In another life, he would have been curious, coming to see if he could help. Now, he didn't care.

But what if it was one of Colt's pack? What then?
The thought made something hot and pulsing throb deep inside his chest. He flexed his hands, knotting them into fists. If one of Colt's pack was out here, wounded and alone, well…

Colt might not know the pain of being cut off from his pack, but at least Jack could lower its number by one.

He walked quietly, now careful of his footfalls. The low sound of pained breathing was nearly drowned out by the noise of the river. If he hadn't been a shifter, he knew he wouldn't have been able to pick it out over the sound of rushing water.

Coming to a rise, Jack paused, then slowly peered out from behind the cover of an Aspen tree. He was prepared for the sight of a wolf or a man, wounded and ready to finish off.

Instead, washed up on the bank of the river, he found a woman.

Jack stared. Dimly, his mind worked, trying to figure out the situation.

He knew that the town had been cleared out weeks ago. Colt's pack had been efficient in what they'd done, and as soon as Jack’s pack had died at their hands, Colt's pack had turned their attention towards the human citizens of the town. They were well practised in violence, and they had torn through the town like the people were no more than cattle. Jack, set free in the woods surrounding the town, had been too caught up in his misery to pay much attention to the massacre when it had begun. Despite that, he'd heard the screams, had caught the scent of blood on the hour. He knew how savage Colt's pack was from first-hand experience. He doubted that there had been any survivors, especially after weeks without outside help.

But here was a girl— no, a young woman. Had she survived all these weeks out in the woods? He doubted it. He couldn't see much of her, but from where he stood, she looked like a city kid, not prepared for hiding in the woods. Skinny jeans, running shoes, a bright visible jacket, long honey coloured curls hair cascading down her back… No, she definitely didn't look like she'd gone to ground for weeks.

As Colt silently watched her, wary of being led into a trap, she whimpered again.

The sound did something to him. Just that one little sound, pitiful and alone and needing protection, jolted down his spine like electricity, grounding itself in his nervous system. He felt his heart beat fast and hard, his hands reshaping themselves from fists into clutching, grasping hands. His body responded to the sound of her helplessness, urging him onwards, together her up into his arms.

It's because you're cut off,
he told himself, trying to shake off the demands of his body.
Your instincts are crying out for someone to protect, that's all. Keep moving, don't let her get under your skin.

The instincts of his alpha side wanted to protect her. The logic of his human side told him to keep moving, to step aside from whatever trouble this mysterious young woman had bought with her.

But above both instinct and logic, engrained into his bones through the years, was habit. He’d never walked past anyone who needed help.

He made his way over to her, scenting the air warily, but caught no trace of any shifters on the wind. Another inhalation bought up the clean woodsy scent of the forest, but no human tracks. It was just him and her, alone in the woods. How had she got here?

A quick look around told him. She was soaked through, and crumpled up on the bank of the river. It didn't take a genius to figure out where she would come from, half mad from loneliness or not. A human, then, fallen in the river in a more civilised world, only to wash up in the nightmare slaughterhouse of the town. Jack grimaced as he knelt down beside her.
Whoever you are,
he thought,
luck is definitely not on your side.

No, luck was not on her side at all. As Jack turned her over, rolling her up to face him, the sight of blood stopped him in his tracks.

This girl had been bitten.

Jack's mind reeled. The bite was unmistakable, wolf teeth puncturing her skin between and throat and shoulder. The flash wasn’t torn, either, as if a real wolf had worried her, driving her down in the normal way of the predator. This was a clean bite, a wolf’s teeth puncturing in out of her vulnerable flesh without tearing or shredding.

This… this was a
making
bite.

Even despite his state, Jack’s blood turned to ice. Colt's pack was more depraved than he'd even given them credit for. Throughout the ages, shifters had occasionally killed humans, but turning them? It was worse than simply wrong; it was abhorrent, a taboo. Packs would shun or punish a wolf for killing a human, but if one turned a human, the pack would destroy wolf and human both, erasing the travesty from existence.

Unbidden, Jack's hand reached out to the girl's throat, his thumb and forefinger settling around the pale column of her neck before he could realise what he was doing. Belatedly, he pulled his hand back. Just the sight of that wound had been enough for him to want to put her out of her misery without thinking. But should he?

No.
He dragged his eyes away from the wound along the rest of the girl’s body. She was slender, attractive, even half drowned. Her clothes were soaked to her body, showcasing the slender curves of her form.

Despite himself, Jack felt the first embers of arousal begin to burn deep within him. He caught himself, shaking his head as if to clear out the thoughts. He may have been a shifter, but he wasn’t a monster.

But that mark… His fingers trailed along her shoulder, skirting the edges of the wound, even now still rapidly closing. Within a day, he knew that would be closed, the skin healing over as if never broken at all, save for a bite scar. And then what? She would begin the transformation into a shifter, with her wolf side being born even now within her, slowly coming into existence as she slumbered.

She would be tied to her maker, course. That was how things worked in the tales that had been passed down through his pack. Wolf bites human, human becomes wolf, wolf is now tied to wolf with the powerful bond that existed between pack member and alpha.

But she was out here all by herself, alone, away from anyone at all, let alone whoever had turned her.…

Jack knew that it was possible to change pack allegiance. His own pack had had members who had run away from other packs, forcing themselves away from abusive alphas or harmful dynamics. He'd seen the pain in their eyes as their inner wolf had held out for the alpha it was used to, but eventually, they'd settled in. They'd learnt to accept him as their alpha, and eventually they'd worked in his pack without hesitation, indistinguishable from the born members of his pack.

Was it possible to do that to a turned wolf? Jack's breathing quickened. There was no way that he could convince one of Colt’s pack to join with him, for a bond to blossom between the two of them. He knew that. A wolf that was ready to kill humans on the word of its alpha was not easily swayed by kind words.

But this girl… She had no alpha-- or, at least, none that was around. If Jack took her from here, tended to her wounds and took care of her…

… Would she bond with him, instead of Colt?

Desire rose up in his body, nearly overwhelming him. He wanted that! He knew nothing about this girl, didn't even know her name, but he suddenly wanted her with him with a hot, liquid intensity. He needed someone, and soon.

He needed her to need him.

She whimpered again, but he ignored it. If she was turning, then her wolf healing would deal with any injuries she had sustained. She would heal, and then…

Then she would be his, and he would be hers.

Sinking to his knees, Jack slid his hands underneath her, raising her to his chest. The girl whimpered again, a tiny, riveting noise, sending his instincts wild. He exhaled hard, cradling her to his chest.

A better man might have tended to her wounds, getting her to her feet, then taken her to safety, getting her out of the town. But with that wild crazed loneliness howling inside him, Jack could not be the better man.

Whoever this was, she was going to be his. She would give him strength, filling that raw, ragged hole within him, restoring him.

And then Colt was going to die.