Midnight Wolf (Shifters Unbound #11)(12)

“Holy . . .” Tamsin whispered.

“Hurts, but it will help against infection,” Angus said without softening. “Shifters are only so invulnerable.”

“No kidding.” The worst of the blood and dirt were gone, but Tamsin’s arm was torn all to hell. Shifters healed quickly, but very bad injuries could kill a Shifter as hard as they could a human.

Angus finished the torture with the antiseptic and then wrapped gauze around her arm and secured it with a long bandage.

“Should help,” he said.

Before Tamsin could thank him—or say anything—he had her out of the bathroom and back into the hall. The gentleness with which he’d tended the wound didn’t mean he was going to let her go. Not at all.

Angus opened a drawer in a hall table and extracted a pair of handcuffs. He growled when Tamsin’s eyes widened, and he said, “Don’t ask.”

Tamsin grinned. “Kinky.”

Her bright word died as Angus clicked one of the cuffs around her left wrist and locked the other around a thick newel-post of the staircase.

“Stay there,” he rumbled. “I need to make some phone calls.”





CHAPTER FOUR


Tamsin waited for Angus to move down the hall before she partly shifted to her fox to slide her slim paw out of the handcuff.

It hurt like hell to do it, because she couldn’t change only one paw—both had to go, and her legs and face started to shift as well. Her injured arm protested, and she spent a moment biting back tears as she resumed her human shape. The fox could move faster, yes, but Tamsin would need her clothes and her money, so human she had to stay for a while.

She followed the sound of Angus’s voice to a room in the front of the house, next to the front door.

He’d hear her or see her if she slipped past the room—a human might not, but Angus was obviously a tracker and it was in his best interests to bring her in. He wouldn’t be careless.

Back door it was.

Angus’s words rang down the hall. “I don’t care if he’s hibernating for the winter. He said anytime. Was that just bullshit?”

Whoever Angus spoke to had him furious. Tamsin couldn’t hear the other voice on the phone at this distance, but no matter—it was clear Angus was calling for backup.

One wolf she could handle. A pack of Shifters cruel enough to give one of their own to Shifter Bureau she could not.

Tamsin crept down the hall to the back door.

That door slammed open, and a man stepped in, talking hard into a cell phone. He was on the short side—at least shorter than a Shifter—with black hair and very black eyes, tatts on his arms and neck, and his scent was . . .

Tamsin stepped back, snarling.

He eyed her in irritation, but his attention was on whomever he spoke to on the phone. “I told you I’d ask. He can be tetchy. His mate can be too—she hates for him to be called out for every bump and scrape, and I don’t blame her.”

“Well, tell him it’s an emergency,” Angus’s voice came from down the hall. “I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important. Jaycee will vouch for me.” His tone lost confidence. “Maybe.”

Tamsin swung to look down the hall, then back at the smaller man, who eyed Tamsin up and down. “Yeah, it does look pretty bad. I’ll do what I can.”

A growl came from the far room, and Angus stepped out and glared down the hall. He lowered the phone and bellowed at the smaller man, “What the hell? Why didn’t you say you were right outside?”

A shrug. “I wasn’t. Until just now.” The man nodded in Tamsin’s direction. “What is she?”

“What are you?” Tamsin countered. She did not at all like the whiff of otherworld she caught from his scent.

“Not Fae,” the man said with emphasis. He clicked off his cell phone. “The name’s Ben. Or Gil. Take your pick. Not Fae. Got it?”

He pushed himself around Tamsin—very carefully not touching her hurt arm—and strode down the hall toward Angus.

He left the way to the back door clear, and Tamsin headed swiftly for it.

Ben hadn’t bothered to close the door all the way, and it remained tantalizingly ajar. She heard Ben on the phone again, speaking jovially to whomever they were summoning to keep her here.

Two more steps, and she’d be gone. She could outrun wolf-man and not-Fae dude easily, but if Angus brought in more backup, she’d be in deep shit.

“She’s safer if she stays here,” Angus said behind her. “Seriously.”

Tamsin swung around. Angus wasn’t talking to Ben, who was in the room at the front, still on his phone. Angus’s line of sight was the stairs, but as Tamsin looked wildly at them, she saw no one.

Screw it. Tamsin bolted for the door.

Just before she reached it, the door swung closed and quietly clicked shut. Tamsin grabbed the knob, but the door wouldn’t open. She frantically searched for a bolt or lock that held the door in place, but the deadbolt was undone, the knob turned easily, and no chains were in sight.

She beat on the door with her fist before she told herself not to waste energy. Better to find a window, slide through it—hell, change to fox and climb out through a chimney if she had to.

Tamsin turned to find Angus right behind her, holding the handcuffs.