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Agile and strong as she was, even if she managed to wiggle away this time, she couldn’t outrun a bullet. Not at this close range. Her heart pounded, knowing the fate she might be subjected to if she didn’t think fast. Hunters like him weren’t supposed to kill her kind unless they broke one of the three rules set out by the North American Free Species Agreement, but she knew firsthand many often shot first and asked questions later.
Her uncle had learned that grim reality all too well.
She could still hear his keening in her ears.
A shiver ran down her spine. Limbs and muscles contorted as she started to shift. Pleading wasn’t her style; she was a packmaster, an alpha, after all—and one of the few females of her kind to claim the title—but if it would protect her pack and keep them off this hunter’s radar, she’d do whatever it took.
A low growl escaped her lips, slowly transitioning into the battle cry of a woman. He shoved off her as she slumped back onto the brick wall behind her in human form, bare flesh scraping. But he remained close, leaving her no chance of lunging for him or escaping his bullet again. A streak of rage rushed through her.
She scanned the alley. All brick walls, a couple of dumpsters that were too far off to offer protection, and nothing amongst the garbage she could use as a weapon. Nothing that would help her escape, and there was no way in hell she could dodge around him when she was cornered like this. He’d proven he was a good shot when he’d oh-so-successfully corralled her into a dead end.
She lifted her hands and held them up, palms out.
Draw him in. Pretend you’re weak. Then shift, and get the hell outta Dodge, she tried to reassure herself.
But within seconds, he was on her again, pinning her between the brick wall and his body as his blade pressed against her throat. She let out a small whimper of panic. She wasn’t below milking the helpless-female card. Not if it saved her.
Face obscured in shadow, he hovered over her, a massive black silhouette, nothing visible but the width of his body and his knife still trained on her. Yeah, there was no missing that.
“I’m not your enemy,” she said.
A rough sound escaped him.
Had he just scoffed at her?
She guessed shehadjust ripped into his arm like it was a chew-toy...
“I’m serious,” she insisted. “Look at the evidence. That woman was more than mutilated.” She gestured to her own nude body pressed against his fully clothed one. “I’m not covered in blood. I’m weaponless, and I don’t have the right...equipment to do what was done to that poor girl.”
Frankie held her breath as she waited for him to reply.
Blood rushed to her head, pounding in her ears.
“Don’t make any sudden moves.” His deep voice washed over her.
A chill rushed down her spine as the night clouds drifted, bringing him into focus in a pool of light. Her gaze traveled up his frame as the moonlight illuminated his face and for a moment, Frankie struggled to breathe.
Alpha wolf or not, she was suddenly aware of how very naked and vulnerable she was as she stared up at the hunter before her. She recognized this man, and he wasn’t just any hunter. He wasthehunter—or at least, one of a legendary few her kind knew by name.
Jace McCannon, wolf hunter for the Execution Underground, a man who, in the words of her own people, was both a fiercely protective warrior for humanity and a lethal killer of any wolf who dared cross him. She’d seen the photos. Heard the rumors.
And yet she’d bitten him.
Shit.
She swallowed hard. Even as an independent packmaster, Frankie made it her business to keep tabs on the politics of the larger packs out west. The Grey Wolves, a pack that outnumbered her own nearly a hundred to one ruled supreme over both the Seven Range Pact and the North American west, and this man who stood before her along with Quinn Harper, Reid Murphy, and a handful of other hunters were singularly responsible for bringing the Grey Wolves’ attempt to expand east of the Montana mountains to a halt.
It didn’t matter that it’d been years since that conflict, and the Execution Underground and the Seven Range Pact had now come to a tenuous mutual agreement—the Wolves of the West now helped the Execution Underground protect humanity from their mutual bloodsucking enemies in exchange for being left alone by the human organization. But during their fighting years, this man, this hunter, had been a verifiable killer.
As she understood it, Quinn Harper, the Execution Underground division leader in Billings, Montana, where the Grey Wolves made their home, had been the negotiator, butthisman had been his enforcer, the weapon to back them up.
Few of her kind crossed his path and lived to tell the tale.
So what on God’s green earth was he doing here? In Rochester, of all places?
Athercrime scene?
Abruptly, he shoved away from her, unpinning her from the wall as he traded his knife for his gun. At the sudden release, she slumped against the brick of the building, her legs weak post-shift. She was crashing hard from the adrenaline. Not to mention, her side was still bleeding.
