Wild Hunger (The Phoenix Pack, #7)(95)

Maybe she’d been experiencing the same choking, incapacitating, logic-stealing fear that was riding her now. It wasn’t just fear for herself and Lydia, it was fear for Trick. Frankie took a deep, controlled breath. God, she needed to think, plan, and—

Frankie heard the scrape of wood and a muffled curse. Someone was trying to clear the mess blocking the door, she thought. Hope briefly sparked in her belly . . . until she realized that Cruz had heard it too.

He roared. “If anyone tries to come in here to save these bitches, I’ll shoot their fucking faces off!”

Silence.

More dust slipped through the cracks in the ceiling and poured down on them. Squinting, he coughed, putting a fist to his mouth, lowering his hand for just a moment. It was the opening Frankie needed. She leaped at him and reached for the gun.

Flattening his ears, the wolf sprang at “Morelli.” With a renewed vigor, he slashed and bit as he fought. By now blood matted his fur, just as dirt muddied it. His rake wounds burned. His ravaged ear stung. His ribs—still sore from the crash—hurt with each heave of his chest.

Pain and blood loss were slowing him down. He didn’t care. His opponent would die. He would howl in agony. He would—

Something thudded into the wolf’s stomach. No. His mate’s stomach. An echo of her pain rippled through him. The wolf’s heart jumped. Panicked, he froze. His opponent took advantage and slammed into him. The wolf crashed to the ground, vulnerable, and—

Howls rang through the air, and then a number of wolves were running down the sloped walls. Not his pack mates, the wolf quickly realized. Their allies.

His enemy fled, taking him by surprise. The wolf jumped to his feet and pursued him, who scrambled over piles of rubble, kicking up dust. The wolf sneezed and growled, eyes itchy with the dust. He didn’t let it stop him.

He kept chasing his opponent. Wove through the construction cones. Ducked under the ropes. Leaped over wooden pallets. Hopped over wires. Almost crashed into scaffolding.

Pebbles and gravel dug into his paws. He ignored the pain and the wooziness. Kept running and running. His enemy slipped on a loose piece of shale, lost his footing. That was all the wolf needed. He lunged, maneuvered the other wolf onto his back, and—

Jaws clamped around the wolf’s leg and heaved him aside, allowing his opponent to leap to his feet and race away. Growling, the wolf spun and tackled the interferer onto his back. He delivered the killing bite, tasted blood. Dark satisfaction would have filled the wolf, but panic for his mate was still riding him.

He backed off the corpse, breaths sawing in and out of his heaving chest. He glanced around, searching for “Morelli.” Most of the other enemies had been taken down. He shook his fur, ridding himself of dust and dirt.

A sudden rumble filled the air, followed by the heavy scent of exhaust. The wolf whirled, narrowed his eyes. His opponent, back in his human form, was inside a truck. The engine revved. Something beeped. And then the truck charged him.

The wolf ran with the truck hot on his heels. He made a sharp turn. Tires screeched as the truck tried to follow. “Morelli” made the turn, but it slowed him down.

The wolf repeated the pattern. Ran. Sharply turned. Evaded and slowed the truck. On the third run, the truck didn’t turn fast enough. It clipped a crane. The large piece of equipment shook. Wobbled. Then toppled on top of the truck.

Trick leaped to the surface, wincing as every injury on his body blazed with agony. He hobbled to the truck, dragged a dazed Morelli out of the driver’s seat, and tossed him on the ground. The other shifters gathered around Morelli, some still in their wolf forms. All were breathing hard and covered in bites, rake marks, and blood. And all were glaring at the bastard with hatred and lethal intent in their eyes.

“I wanted to be the one to kill you,” Trick told him. He’d dreamed of it, fantasized about it, planned just how much pain he’d exact on Morelli. But right then, vengeance didn’t seem so important. Not when the pull to be with Frankie was so much more powerful.

“Is that so?” Morelli didn’t try to rise. He shot nervous glances at the growling wolves, eyes hard, chest heaving.

“Yeah. I wanted to take my time with you, make you suffer long and hard. But I don’t have the time for that, and there’s no fucking way I’ll give you a swift execution. Tonight, three of my pack mates and several of my allies could have died. Our mates would probably have died along with us. You would have killed other members of my pack—including the pups—and then stolen our territory. So I’d say all these wolves here have the right to make you bleed.” As one, the wolves leaped at him.

Trick turned his back as Morelli screamed and gargled while the wolves growled and snarled. He had something much more important on his mind. “I gotta get out of here,” he told Trey, who was currently being healed by Ally. “Frankie’s been shot.”

“Shot?” echoed Trey.

Not giving a shit that he’d be leaving them an SUV short, Trick hiked up the rough, sloped walls. Each step he took hurt like a bitch, pulling on his rake wounds and sending pain blazing up and down his fractured leg.

“Wait!” Ally called out. He didn’t stop, but—uninjured—she easily caught up to him and put a hand on his arm, sending healing energy trickling through him as she spoke. “Taryn should be with her by now, Trick.”

“Taryn?”