Cry Wolf (Wolves of Angels Rest #7)(39)

The blow tumbled all three of them deeper, but despite the turmoil of dust and stinging shards and her ears aching from the sound, she smelled the outside.

And she ran.





Chapter 14

“Fuck!” Diesel couldn’t hear himself say it, but f*ckity-f*ck did he feel it as he watched Willow the wolf leap out the hole gaping in the warehouse wall.

Kane’s team must have gotten all the prisoners out, and they weren’t going to give the KGB a chance to recover any of their research.

But seriously, Mal couldn’t have waited one more minute to blow the place up?

Diesel grabbed the back of Kurtz’s lab coat and hauled him toward the hole in the wall. Even with his werewolf strength, the professor was a dead weight. Worse than, since he twisted against Diesel’s hold, struggling to get back to the warehouse.

“My records,” he yelped.

“Confetti,” Diesel said.

With better timing, Mal chose that moment to reposition the rocket launcher and dropped another round right through the roof. Framed through the opening in the wall, they had a lovely view of the mini mushroom cloud of debris. Something caught fire too, just a single yellow lick of flame, and Kurtz swore.

As if night had finally fallen, a swath of darkness swept across the sky. Thunder crossed overhead on silent, menacing wings. Focused on his loss, the professor never even looked up, but Diesel watched the accelerant packages fall from Thunder’s talons.

The single flame within burst into a fireball that rolled outward. The heat expanded through the hole, blowing back Diesel’s cropped hair.

Kurtz stopped fighting, and Diesel might have thought he was dead except for the blood that pulsed sluggishly from his neck.

Sucked to be him.

Diesel dragged the professor to the base of the guard tower and dropped him there. Muffled shouts echoed around the other side of the warehouse; the guardsmen had escaped the building and were rallying, but too late. Thunder made a second pass, and this time the billowing flames reached hungrily through the roof. There would be nothing to save.

Diesel tore out of his black T-shirt and dropped it on the professor’s neck. “You’ve been bitten,” he said. “Bad bite too. By a wolf jacked up on your poison. I think you know what’s going to happen to you.”

Kurtz stared up at him with dull eyes. “Just kill me.”

“Not a chance.” Diesel took a deep breath of scorched metal, cold night…and the fading hint of a new-born wolf. “Actually, that’s not true. This is your second chance. This time, leave us alone.”

He strode off into the desert.

Behind him came the clatter of the guardsman coming down from the tower, overlaid with the thudding boots of a dozen men, clustering like frightened sheep.

Diesel didn’t even look back. He took another breath—ignoring everything except that elusive tang of southern sass. There.

He tipped back his head and shifted, leaving his boots and fatigues behind as he sprang out into the night.

No shots followed him. The Kingdom Guard was broken.

Now he had a bond to save.

He followed the faint pawmarks in the sand, lifting his head occasionally for a confirming sniff.

She was faster than he expected, and sneakier, which impressed him. She used the arroyos cut into the plain to head for the higher hills. Her wolf had been peacefully sleeping and then cruelly awakened, but it was wasting no time in asserting itself.

Could he win the wild wolf as he’d first befriended Wendy and then years later beguiled Willow?

He ran, not pressing her too hard, not to the point of panic, but not letting her get too far ahead either. Better if the wolf ran itself out a bit.

But near the top of the ridge, the arroyo ended in a stair step of boulders, washed clean by flashfloods. The wolf could make those leaps with little effort, but they did look imposing in the shadows, and Willow had hesitated, feeling the strain in her new muscles, probably.

She paced at the bottom boulder, staring up. Despite his instinctive silence, she must have sensed him approaching. She whirled to face him.

Ah god, she was beautiful. The perfect wolf, her heathered fur ruffling with each twitch of her sleek muscles. She held her triangular head high, ears half flattened warily, one forepaw lifted.

Ready to run again.

But he’d only let her go one direction: to him.

He took a few slow steps to one side, letting the wind carry his scent to her.

Her head lowered, nostrils flaring.

She knew him. Even if neither wolf and woman had seen him in this shape.

He shifted.

His muscles were pumped from the fight and the run, his skin heated. Good thing, since the night nipped unkindly at his tender bits.

He held his hands low to his sides. “It’s me,” he said softly.

No names, no pasts. Just the two of them, here and now.

She tensed.

Going through the change for the first time was confusing even for someone who knew what was happening. How much worse for someone who’d never considered werewolves? Worse, he couldn’t know what was spinning through her mind, scrambled Kurtz’s drugs.

Would the forced wolf let her go?

“If you run, I’ll chase you.” He kept his tone gentle, teasing. “And I’ll always find you, somehow. But I think you must be tired now, ready to rest, yeah? Let it go. I got you now.”