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Kellen nodded with too much enthusiasm and whipped out her cell phone.
If someone wanted me dead, I might not be their only target.
Dominick Alvarez wasn’t a very imposing figure. He was slight of build and barely taller than me. With his mussed blond hair and twinkling blue eyes, he usually looked more like a rebel angel than a werewolf king’s bodyguard. But watching him now, as he prowled the area around the crash site with an almost scary focus, I saw a whole new side of him.
The predatory side.
He had gone up one side of the road and down the other, sniffing the air and periodically bounding into the ditch, only to return a moment later empty-handed. I think he wanted to be the hero, coming back with a bloodied villain to lay at the feet of Lucas and myself. He looked more and more disappointed every time he came back with nothing to show for his efforts.
Lucas sat next to me on the dented, battered hood of my BMW. The yellow paint had been scraped away, the front bumper hung loose, and the whole front end up to the driver’s door was scarred and almost shredded.
That should have been my face.
Although I wasn’t cold, Lucas had insisted on draping a blanket around me, along with one of his strong arms. I’d found a comfortable spot nestled into the crook of his shoulder, and I was calming myself by breathing in his familiar musky fragrance, a smell unique to him that made me feel safe.
“Did you notice them following you past the city limits, or did they pick up your trail outside New York?” he asked. There was a fine, simmering rage in his voice he was obviously trying to keep buried but couldn’t manage to hide from me.
“I don’t know.”
“You didn’t see them?”
“No, I wasn’t looking for a tail. We were having a nice drive until the guy rear-ended us. He didn’t even have his lights on until then.”
“Secret, you have to be more—”
“More what?” I sat upright and met his soft blue eyes. His expression was etched with anger and worry, and I knew he only wanted to keep me safe, but sometimes he treated me more like a possession than a partner. “There was no way for me to see this guy coming, and I can’t spend my whole life living like a paranoid recluse. I can’t. It’s bad enough the Tribunal won’t let me hunt anymore, but I can’t live in fear that every shadow is hiding a potential killer.”
“Just promise me you’ll be careful.”
“I’m always careful.”
He smiled weakly and brushed a loose strand of hair behind my ear, pushing the whole curtain of blonde over my wounded shoulder. I flinched.
“I need you to be more careful. Please.”
I pulled the blanket tighter around myself, wincing as the rough wool grazed the bullet hole.
“I will make a focused effort to be less of a moving target.”
He smiled openly, laughing for the first time since he’d arrived at the messy scene on the highway. “Try not to be a sitting target, either.”
Jackson—a young werewolf in Lucas’s pack—was pacing the width of the road with an arm around Kellen’s shoulders, whispering something to her I couldn’t quite make out. The newest member of the pack was nice enough, but he made me uneasy. I’d first met him when he was acting as a guard for one of Lucas’s enemies, and after that he’d switched teams, so to speak, and ended up being a welcome member of Lucas’s crew.
So welcome, Lucas had once sent him to kidnap me.
I’d broken Jackson’s nose with a tire iron, and ever since then things had been a little, shall we say, tense between us. But he seemed to be taking good care of Kellen, and Lucas trusted him, otherwise he wouldn’t be here with us right now.
Morgan Scott, the third highest-ranking wolf in Lucas’s pack and the highest-ranking bitch I’d ever met, was standing next to Brigit on the shoulder of the road. I gathered Morgan was supposed to be making sure Brigit was okay, but the two women were giving each other hard looks and keeping a good three-foot distance from each other. Just as well.
We’d moved the BMW onto the shoulder in case traffic needed to pass through, but it was twenty minutes after the accident before we saw our first car. The Tacoma pickup rounded the bend and threw on its flashing four-way lights as it rolled to a stop beside us.
The passenger-side window rolled down, and I was about to tell the good Samaritan we didn’t need any help, when the curly halo of Mercedes Castilla’s hair preceded her out the window. Her hair was unruly on a good day, but she seemed to have gone for broke with her curls today and let them fly free in a frizzy brown cloud.
“I should have known better than to let you drive,” she said after a pause and a once-over to see I was still in one piece. She leaned into the cab and said something to the driver. I craned forwards to see better, and saw Owen the Bartender, a cute brunet who worked at a bar near her apartment, staring back at me. He offered me a small wave.
“You doing okay?” he asked as Mercedes opened the passenger door and climbed out.
“Oh, you know, Owen. Never better.” I shrugged, but it hurt too much so I let my arms sag.
