Jennifer Ashley - Lone Wolf

Ellison chuckled, more heat. “I know who my money’s on.”

Broderick growled again. “You’re going to leave her with the crazy?”

Tiger said absolutely nothing, but when his yellow eyes flicked to Broderick, Broderick swallowed.

Maria took a step closer to Tiger. “I’ll be fine. Get Olaf.”

Broderick made another snarling noise but took off down the tunnel.

“Be right back,” Ellison said. He touched his hat brim, gave Maria his big smile, and jogged down the tunnel after Broderick.

The wolf in Ellison didn’t like the tunnel of the culvert. Wolves preferred wide meadows, where they could run, or the quiet of woods that flowed for miles. Wild wolves did hole up in dens, but those were shallow caves, not deep tunnels.

The dislike of caves came from racial memory, maybe. The Fae had liked caves, not to live in, but as a place in which to keep their slaves. Slaves meant Shifters; that is, until the Shifters had told the Fae to go fuck themselves and had fought a long, bloody war for their freedom.

Ellison’s Lupine Shifter ancestors had been thrilled to be free of the underground, to run in the wild, where they belonged.

Bears, on the other hand . . .

“Why does he want to explore down here?” Broderick asked, a shudder in his voice.

“Bears. Damn things like caves.”

“But he’s a polar bear.”

“So maybe he likes ice caves.”

“Let’s find the shit and get him out of here,” Broderick said. “It’ll make the woman happy.”

The woman. That was how he talked about Maria, the beautiful lady Broderick said he wanted to mate-claim. Dickhead.

Ellison had drunk in the beauty of her, even as he’d worried for Olaf. She wore form-hugging jeans today and a tight-fitting shirt, a black elbow-sleeved T with spangled red and blue flowers on the front, two small buttons holding it closed at the very top. She was a delicious package. Ellison wanted to find Olaf quickly so he could return and enjoy it.

“Olaf!” Ellison called, his voice falling against the dead air of the tunnel. “Where are you?”

If they lost Olaf, it wasn’t only Maria he’d have to face. Ronan loved the kid. Olaf was an orphan of unknown clan who’d needed a home, and Ronan had volunteered his. Ronan was always doing things like that, the big, giant softie.

The big, giant softie had foot-long claws, and teeth that could rip a tree in half.

A trickle of water sounded up ahead, the tunnel built to carry runoff from creeks when they overflowed. Ellison always found it fascinating that Austin was crisscrossed by creeks and wetlands, while other parts of the vast state, not very far from here even, were bone-dry. Texas and its amazing diversity went on forever.

Ellison heard Olaf growl. A long, low growl, from a baby animal throat, at something that had the cub surprised and worried. Olaf was a fairly fearless little guy, so anything that worried him worried Ellison.

Ellison stripped off his boots, ready to let his wolf come out.

Shifting wasn’t always instantaneous. Ellison’s body fought it today, both human and wolf wanting to hurry and find Olaf and take him out. He willed himself to be wolf—easier to track, easier to fight in that form.

He shucked his jeans as his legs started to bend to the wolf’s, fur swiftly erasing his human flesh. Once Ellison’s four wolf feet hit the ground, the struggle ceased, and the wolf took over.

He pinpointed Broderick’s rank smell right away and ran past it, Broderick a smudge in the darkness. Up ahead, Olaf was still growling, throwing off agitated bear cub smell.

Ellison also scented Tiger and Maria behind him. Tiger was the musky male at the top of his strength. Maria was the gentler of the two, like the cinnamon and honey she put on her buñuelos. She smelled of home and things of light, a beacon in the darkness.

Ellison knew she’d hesitated following Olaf because the underground reminded her too much of her captivity. Ellison and she shared that hatred of the close darkness, which represented to both of them imprisonment, slavery, and terror.

Another odor assaulted Ellison’s nose and had Broderick growling. Humans. Human men not as afraid of confronting a polar bear Shifter as they should be.

They weren’t afraid yet. Ellison sped up and charged around a corner into a second culvert.

Three human men stood inside the tunnel, blocking the way to daylight behind them. LED lanterns threw pale shadows on the ceiling and over the polar bear cub who stood defiantly before them. One man had a tranquilizer rifle, pointed at Olaf, and the other two held a large net between them.

Ellison took this in with rapid calculation before he gave in to his wolf’s rage. He charged, his Collar sparking hard.

The scent from the men changed to panic. Facing a full-grown Shifter wolf was a different thing from facing a bear cub, though they’d have found Olaf a handful. But the gunman still had the tranq rifle, and he raised it to point it at Ellison.

Ellison let his body hit the ground, under the rifle’s aim. He slammed himself at the gunman, sweeping him from his feet. The man yelped as Ellison ran into him, and dropped the rifle, which went off as it spun around, the tranq dart flying. The dart hit nothing, clattering to the floor to be lost in the darkness.

In the next moment, Broderick came running in, in the form of his timber wolf. He hurtled toward the men with the net, his Collar snapping sparks, but Broderick didn’t let the Collar slow him down. The net men spun with quick reflexes, ready to snare him.

They’d done this before, Ellison realized. The three men worked as a well-practiced team, the rifleman rolling to pick up the rifle and reload it while the men with the net regrouped. In a second, they’d have the thing over Broderick.

Ellison went for the gunman again. His heavy wolf body crushed the man into the nearest wall, making him drop the rifle once more, and Ellison heard a bone snap.

Sparks zapped Ellison hard, and pain ran like fire through every nerve. Fucking Collar. Ellison could control the Collar when he fought in the rings at the Shifter fight club, because his brain knew then that he didn’t really want to kill the Shifter against him.

But these humans had threatened a cub , and Ellison wanted them dead. The Collar sensed his need to kill and went to work trying to stop him. The Collars evened the odds, in spite of the gunman’s broken wrist, and the net had started to tangle Broderick.

Olaf ran back and forth between the men, growling up a storm, grabbing legs and heels, biting.

“Shoot him!” One of the net men yelled. “Grab that damned bear, and let’s get out of here.”

“He broke my arm!” the gunman shouted back.

“Sixteen million! Think about sixteen million.”

Sixteen million dollars? Did they mean for Olaf?

Screw the Collar. Ellison slammed his body into the human’s again, letting his Collar’s sparks strike the man’s flesh. The man screamed, another bone or two definitely breaking.

Broderick fought and writhed, but the net, which appeared to be barbed in places, had closed around him. One of the men dropped his end of the net and dove for the rifle, coming up with it and the dart full of tranquilizer before Ellison could stop him.

And then the tunnel filled with noise, a roaring sound with death in it. The man who’d grabbed the gun executed a practiced roll, got to his feet, and shot the tranquilizer dart straight at the giant tiger that hurtled in from the darkness end of the tunnel.

The tiger was so big that he broke off pieces off the wall as he charged. The dart hit Tiger in the chest . . .

. . . and didn’t slow him a step. The rage in Tiger’s eyes escalated to madness as he kept on coming.