AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“You alright?” he asked, gesturing to the wound.
Alright?
The blood had already slowed to a trickle. It’d barely scratched the surface. He’d only cut enough to defend himself without actually hurting her.
She nodded. “It’ll heal.” At the rate her kind mended, it’d be closed within an hour. Already she could feel the skin knitting back together.
He nodded, but didn’t offer her any reprieve. Not that she’d expected as much.
“Good.” His voice was like a low growl in his chest. “Get up.” The gruff, deep vibrato hummed through her, even as his gun remained still.
Frankie didn’t dare move.
“That was an order, not a request,” he growled.
Slowly, she inhaled a deep breath. She didn’t respond kindly to orders, but for the sake of her pack, she found her footing and rose to her feet. Her hands remained steady, palms out. She wasn’t afraid of this bastard, and she intended to show it. His gaze raked over her, slow and assessing, like he was sizing up her strength and nothing more, yet heat flooded her cheeks. She was far too naked to be standing before this man.
“What’s your name, she-wolf?”
She-wolf?She bristled. On his lips she didn’t like the term.
Not in the least.
For a moment, her stomach churned. If she told him her name, he would know exactly who she was. No doubt he’d come across her name in the E.U’s records whenever he’d scoped out the packs in this area. Though she’d worked hard to keep her face off the Execution Underground’s radar, helping give her pack a low profile. She wasn’t about to throw that away by being honest, especially not with this particular hunter.
She didn’t think his division would likely want a war with her pack, but she couldn’t be certain. His kind wasn’t supposed to hurt innocents, but killing the Rochester packmaster and dispersing one of the last small packs this far east might be too sweet a temptation for an ambitious hunter to resist.
She swallowed hard.
He eased nearer, waiting for her response. Too near for her tastes.
“Come any closer again and I’ll tear into more than your arm tonight,” she growled.
A smirk quirked his lips. “Is that a promise?”
She didn’t answer.
His wry grin widened. “Let’s get something clear. You’re at my crime scene. I call the shots here.”
“Your crime scene?”
Ignoring her outrage, he lowered his gun. “Yeah, my crime scene,” he said as if it were a matter of fact, rather than a debatable point. “Now, you got a name or not, Princess?”
Princess?She snarled. “Francesca.” Her mother’s name, from which her shortened version originated. The half lie would save her.
For now.
“Francesca.” Slowly, he nodded his head. He chewed on the name as if he didn’t believe her for a second. This hunter was good. Too good.
“How about you?” she asked, deflecting the attention from herself. “You got a name?”
He smiled that smug grin again. “Sure,” he drawled. That wide smirk reminded her far too much of a hardened cowboy to be this far east, though his accent was pure upstate.
She quirked a brow. “Care to share?”
That grin widened. “Don’t need to. You already know it.”
She frowned. He was reading her like a damn book, and she didn’t like it.
