Cry Wolf (Wolves of Angels Rest #7)(19)

LT turned back. “Oh, now you care about safety first?”

“I had no idea…” Diesel groaned. “I think it started when we were, like, seven.”

Malachi fisted his hand on the seat back and rested his chin on his knuckles, lashes fluttering. “Are you gonna tell me a story, Daddy?”

“Fuck you,” Diesel growled. “This isn’t funny. It could get her killed.”

“Should’ve thought of that before you mated her out of season.” Mal twisted to face front again.

“Not mates,” Diesel snapped. Not yet anyway.

“Explain,” LT said.

Diesel shuddered. He’d thought it was bad driving away from her in Vegas. Now that he knew… It was a thousand times worse. But he couldn’t let the nascent bond get any stronger than it already was.

“We slept together in Vegas,” he said.

“Duh,” Mal said without turning around. “We have noses.”

Diesel stuffed down the urge to garrote his friend. “But I didn’t recognize her then.”

LT hummed under his breath. “You knew her when you were young, you said.”

“I had mastered the wolf,” Diesel said. “So my parents let me go stay with a cousin for a couple weeks. Wendy lived next door. She was as fearless as any she-wolf. We play hunted—”

“Dude.” Malachi extended the vowel with a reproving drawl.

“I was seven,” Diesel groaned. “It was the end of May, just a sliver of the mating moon left in the sky. There’s no way…”

“Where there’s a will,” LT said pointedly.

“I didn’t will anything.” Diesel stared down at his clenched fists. He remembered tightening his grip on her hair, but under that rough desire, the memory of running and laughing teased him. “But my blood might’ve mingled with hers.”

“Latent all this time?” LT shook his head. “That’s…”

“Highly unlikely?” Diesel muttered Betsy’s words. “As unlikely as finding her again in Vegas of all places?”

“I was going to say amazing.”

Mal snorted. “And then you f*cked her. Finishing what you started twenty years ago.”

“Still, wrong time of year for mating,” Diesel objected.

LT shrugged his big shoulders. “Your wolf chose. Then it waited.”

“For twenty years?” Diesel slumped in his seat. “That’s gotta be the longest stakeout ever.”

“Wolf is patient,” LT said.

“Yours maybe,” Malachi muttered. “So what are you going to do, Deez?”

“I have to stay away. I can’t let the bond set. Not when we’re going off to fight.” He didn’t bother reminding them how dangerous taking on the Kingdom Guard would be. They knew as well as he did that they could die.

But LT’s glance back was inscrutable. “Not sure your idea is sound.”

“The wolf waited this long. It can keep waiting.”

“No. Once the chase is on, wolf doesn’t stop.”

Diesel tilted his head back to stare blindly upward. That had been his brother’s issue—he couldn’t stop chasing, couldn’t control the wolf. And that had kept his whole family on the run. Except for those two glorious weeks of a southern spring.

The climb up the mesa’s switchback road felt like it should be taking him to some guru’s mountain hideaway where he’d find all his answers. Instead, LT eased the big SUV between the evergreens disguising one side road and crunched down the rocky, sandy path to a wider spot between the trees. Parking there, they walked the last bit to the Villalobos house, emerging from the trees to see the big log house perched near the edge of the mesa cliff.

Usually serene to the point it seemed like a cathedral, now the house fairly vibrated with the comings and goings of the pack. Most of the local wolves were reserved with strangers—they knew LT was Kane’s army buddy, but Malachi and Diesel were studied sidelong and, if not actively avoided, then definitely kept at arm’s length. And fair enough, he supposed, since pack ties were everything, and he didn’t have that.

He didn’t have any bonds, except for his brotherhood with LT and Mal. But maybe…

No. He couldn’t get distracted by other possibilities.

In the week since they’d returned from Vegas with unlimited funds, they’d armed themselves well. Well enough that they would probably be on a list somewhere except for how ridiculously easy it was to go through some “acquaintances” for untraceable weapons. They also had chosen among a number of volunteers, only some with actual battle experience but all with the strength, reflexes, speed, and toughness of born predators.

Lastly, they had a plan. LT had strategized the destruction of more than a few enemy installations, and Kane knew his wolves better than any alpha Diesel had ever met. With the eyes-on recon of a couple wolves who’d actually seen the base, they had their best chance of getting into and out of the facility with their team intact and the other side in ruins.

They didn’t have any time to waste either, since they’d confirmed other shifters had been taken by the Kingdom Guard and were no doubt the unwilling subjects of more terrible experiments. The thought of being turned into a weapon against his own kind made Diesel’s hackles prickle, especially now that he’d found—