Jennifer Ashley - Lone Wolf

Cubs went through Transitions to adulthood at some point. Scott, another of Ronan’s brood, was going through his Transition—hormones flooding his body and filling him with mating frenzy, which made him crazed and dangerous. And whenever humans thought a Shifter endangered them . . .

“They kill them,” Maria said, her mouth stiff. “Don’t they?”

“Maybe,” Pablo said.

The sword definitely shimmered that time. Dylan fixed Pablo with a gaze that had become white blue. “Find out every single person who’s bought a captured Shifter and what happened to that Shifter. I want names and locations. I want them soon.”

“I don’t work for you,” Pablo said. “You know that, right?”

Dylan flicked his gaze up and down Pablo, and Pablo’s face lost a little color. “Do it,” Dylan said. “As a favor.”

“You’re asking for a hell of a favor. Does that mean you’ll owe me one back?”

Dylan held his gaze a moment longer then turned and walked away in silence, fading into the shadows.

Spike and Sean followed, their rigid backs betraying their barely contained rage. Ellison pivoted but remained as a shield between Maria and Pablo as he started to walk her out.

“You’re Maria Ortega, am I right?” Pablo asked in Spanish.

Maria stopped. Ellison did too, turning to face Pablo but again keeping himself a protective barrier for Maria.

“Why?” Maria countered.

“You’re the one they brought back from Mexico,” Pablo went on, switching to English, which meant he wanted Ellison to know what they were talking about. “From the feral pack. I heard how your brother treated you when you tried to live with him. If you want, I could always explain to him that he needs to be kinder to you.”

Maria thought about her brother and his old-fashioned ideas about how women should fit into the family. They were to be pure angels, married off to men of their parents’ choice, to produce children to strengthen the line. A ruined woman was of no value at all, except to be unpaid help to her brothers and sisters and their children.

Maria had put up with that at her brother’s house until she couldn’t anymore, but that didn’t mean she hated her brother. He was caught up in his own life with his wife and children, ignorant of what Maria had truly gone through. She could never make her brother understand, and she knew it.

“No,” Maria said sharply.

“He’s an officious little bastard,” Pablo said. “I could make life very hard for him.”

“No,” Maria repeated. Pablo wasn’t wrong about her brother, but she wouldn’t wish harm on him. If she became nasty and vindictive, Miguel would have won. “Please leave him alone.”

“You heard the lady,” Ellison said, still standing like a pillar between Maria and Pablo. “Touch her family, and I’ll make you regret it.”

Pablo eyed Ellison a moment, then his severe expression softened into a grin. The smile made him go from hard-ass to almost friendly in an instant. “Yeah, that’s what I thought.”

Ellison growled then ushered Maria out to the lot where Dylan and the others waited, Pablo chuckling behind them.

Maria paced back and forth on Ellison’s porch, the breeze of her passing touching Ellison where he leaned on the porch rail. Deni had joined them, folding herself up in a porch chair, watching Maria work out her distress.

Ellison couldn’t stop looking at Maria—her dark hair mussed from the ride home in the open-windowed truck, her body swaying as she walked back and forth, back and forth, her face flushed, her agitation uncontained.

“We need to do something. I need to do something.” Maria shook out her hands as she walked. “Mr. Marquez can possibly raise an army, and so can Shifters. We go after these men before they hurt the cubs.”

“We will go after them, sweetheart. Definitely. Dylan’s in there planning things.” He nodded at the house across the street, to which Dylan and Sean had retreated after they’d returned, and into which Liam had disappeared a few minutes ago. Spike had all but sprinted home when they got back to Shiftertown, worried about Jordan, but he’d walked back to Dylan’s house a little later. “They’ll come get me, and then we’ll go kick some ass.”

The only reason Ellison wasn’t in with the other Shifters was that he’d wanted to stick with Maria. She was too upset, too horrified. The need to comfort her, to reassure her, overrode everything else.

“I need to do something now, ” Maria said, her dark eyes flashing. “Call Pablo and ask him where we find Bradley’s headquarters, and we’ll go drag him out.”

Ellison pushed himself away from the railing. “I’m as mad as you are, sweetheart, but I know Liam and Dylan will put together a good plan. I’ll go with them, and Ronan, and we’ll get this guy. Trust me.”

Ellison itched to feel Bradley’s throat between his hands, wanted to see fear in the man’s eyes. After that, he’d explain to the three goons who’d tried to snatch Olaf why that had been a bad idea. He’d explain so hard they’d never get up again.

Killing humans was dangerous for all Shifters, as Ellison had tried to explain to Tiger, but only if the dead were obviously victims of a Shifter attack. Ellison could think of a number of ways to make it not obvious.

On the other hand, Maria wanting to rush up to Bradley and shake her fist in the man’s face scared the shit out of Ellison. Maria was crazy-furious enough to try it, and then some goon would try to shoot her. Or grab her and have fun with her.

No one was touching Maria. A growl of feral rage worked up in his throat, and Ellison caught Maria’s hand as she skimmed by again. “Come on.”

Maria stopped, agitated. “Come on, where?”

“Somewhere you can work this off.”

She blinked up at him. “We can’t leave Deni alone.”

Deni spoke from the shadows. “Since when? I’m not that fragile.”

Deni was upset, though, not happy about what Ellison had told her. Ellison had feared that the news of Bradley kidnapping and selling cubs might trigger another of Deni’s violent episodes, but she’d remained cognizant, if distressed.

Now she made a shooing motion. “Will and Jackson will be home soon. They’ll take care of me. You do what you need to do.”

Ellison tightened his grip on Maria’s hand. “We’re going.”

He half dragged Maria down the porch steps to the motorcycle that waited in the driveway on the side of the house before she could think of more arguments to stop him. Technically, the motorcycle was Deni’s, bought by Ellison to replace the one she’d been on when she’d wrecked, but Ellison was the only one who rode it now.

He knew exactly where to take Maria. He got her mounted behind him on the bike, warming to the way she confidently slid her arms around him, started the motorcycle, and slid it onto the street.

Ellison drove out of Shiftertown, and down to the Bastrop Highway to head east. Austin had spread in the last twenty years toward the smaller towns around it, but once past the last strip malls and housing developments, the land rolled into Hill Country. Roads were long, miles into nothing.

A while back, while exploring out here, Ellison had found a dirt road that wound up into hills by the river, the road shielded by a spread of trees that followed the small ridge. Few came this way, a perfect place for Ellison to change to wolf and enjoy loping through woods and up and down the hills. The main roads were distant, and not many knew about this place, not even other Shifters.

Ellison drove the motorcycle out to this road now, not stopping until they were as far from civilization as they could get to in one afternoon. Under the cool shade of trees, he helped Maria off the bike, not letting go as she regained her feet.