Jennifer Ashley - Pride Mates

Liam started the bike. "She works at the bar now. I never get involved with the help."

"I didn't say get involved. I said shag her. She's been happy to oblige you in the past."

"It's you she wants, Sean. I see her sweet gaze following your ass."

"Can we get a move on? I'd like to make this kill and be done with it."

Liam didn't reply. He knew Sean needed to calm his nerves, and stirring up his big brother was his favorite method.

Liam glided the bike, a Harley he'd bought for next to nothing and restored, into the street, then turned the corner and drove out of Shiftertown. He headed through crowded streets to the highway that would take them east out of the city. In his rearview mirrors, the skyline of downtown Austin glowed against the dark sky, the lit-up dome of the capitol a yellow beacon.

They turned down an inky-black road past Bastrop and rode across open country. Fergus's trackers had called right after Liam and Sean had finished their burgers, saying they'd followed the feral to some abandoned warehouses way east of town. The feral had made camp there, and the shit wasn't going anywhere, so could Sean and Liam please bestir themselves and come do their jobs?

If the trackers ran true to form, Liam knew they wouldn't show their asses if there was any kind of fight. They'd hightail it out of there as soon as Liam and Sean arrived. It was the trackers' job only to point the way, after all.

Liam parked well down the road from the warehouse, he and Sean doing the last stretch on foot. A chain-link fence surrounded the property of the once-prosperous business, but the flimsy barrier had been sliced open in plenty of places, with one whole section of it knocked flat. Crickets chirped in loud profusion outside the fence, but once Liam and Sean stepped over the fallen chain link, all animal noises ceased.

Liam smelled the stench right after that. Even a human would notice it, but to a Shifter the smell was like a body blow. Liam felt his lips curl back, his teeth elongate into fangs.

He tried to suppress his killing instinct, but it wasn't easy. Dylan seemed to think he and Sean would come out here and solve the problem in cool detachment. But Dylan hadn't seen the Shifter woman's body, hadn't found her children. Liam wanted to savage, no offers of mercy. So did Sean, probably even more than Liam did.

Without a word, the brothers separated, Sean unstrapping the sword from his back. Liam moved noiselessly through the shadows of the warehouse and stepped through a door that gaped open to the night.

The stench made him gag. Liam's cat's eyes adjusted to the dark, and he walked forward, scanning each sable shadow.

Before Liam had made it halfway across the warehouse floor, the feral stepped forward to meet him. He didn't look as wild as Liam had thought he would. He was dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, sweat-soaked in the humid Texas night. Except for being caked with dirt, not wearing a Collar, and his oppressive BO, he looked like any other Shifter from Shiftertown. Of course his neck was so black with filth, Liam wouldn't have been able to see a Collar if he had one.

"Don't you take baths, man?" Liam asked.

The Shifter snarled, his face elongating into something between human and wolf. A Lupine. Bloody wonderful.

"There's good soap nowadays," Liam went on. "Makes you sweet as a garden. You should try it. That is, if you're not busy killing wee ones like the bastard you are."

The Lupine grated, "Traitor. Collared pet."

"No, lad. Survivor. We don't go around murdering anymore, didn't you hear? Especially not the cubs, and damn you don't know how much I want to kill you for that."

"I wanted the woman. Not her spawn by another Shifter."

"Those days are over, lick-brain." Liam took the Collar out of his pocket, feeling the strength of the steel, the bite of magic that wound through it. "I'm offering you this chance because my father makes me play by the rules, no matter what. Me, I'd rather kill you." He stepped forward. "One size fits all. Come on, take it like a man."

"I'm not a man. Neither are you. Are you too weak to fight me, Feline?"

"No," Liam said. "But you have two choices. Face me, or face the Guardian."

The other Shifter tensed. "The Guardian isn't here."

"Yes, he is." Sean stepped out of the shadows behind the Shifter. He drew the broadsword, its blade ringing in the still air.

The Shifter swung to Sean. He inhaled sharply, then whirled back to Liam and did the sniff-fest again.

"I only smelled..." The Shifter broke off, his light blue wolf eyes fixed on Liam.

Liam held out the Collar, still offering. "You take the Collar, I might resist killing you. Maybe you didn't understand what you were doing. I have about two brain cells that believe that. You refuse...Well, let's just say our Sean is even more pissed at you than I am."

Liam felt the air contract as the man shifted all the way. He didn't bother taking off his clothes; he let them fray as his wolf's body split the fabric. Sean waited, and Liam wondered if the Lupine understood how much Sean was holding back. The brothers' instructions were to kill the feral only as a last resort.

The wolf shook off the remains of the clothes, his eyes filled with rage. Liam didn't move. "Come on, lad. Shiftertown pretty much wants you dead without quarter. Dylan convinced me to give you a chance. Don't throw that away."

The wolf snarled. He rose on his hind legs, returning to human form. Now he was naked, not a pretty sight.

"I smell it on you." His nostrils flared in contempt. "A human. You scent-marked a human woman." How the Shifter could smell anything beyond his own stink, Liam didn't know, but his blood ran cold. "Abomination," the Shifter hissed.

"You know big words, do you?" Liam asked. "Let me give you some short ones: Take the fucking Collar."

With a crackle of bones, the Shifter morphed back into a wolf. Liam braced himself for the attack, but the wolf abruptly whirled and sprinted in the other direction.

Sean was there, his sword biting into the Shifter's side. The wolf didn't slow. He howled, leapt out of the warehouse, and ran off into the night.

"Shit." Sean brought the sword up again. "Idiot!"

He could have meant Liam, the Shifter, or himself. Liam balled his fists as fear poured through him. "Bloody hell, he's going to track her."

"What are you talking about?"

"Kim. He smelled her on me."

"He's been wounded by the Guardian's sword. He won't get far. We'll ride after him and finish it."

"Not wounded enough." The feral had seemed unusually strong--he must have been to kill a Shifter female guarding her cubs. Shifter females didn't go down easily, and one protecting her precious young would fight twice as hard. Liam could taste the feral's adrenaline spike in the air, a more vicious tang than it should have had. Something was wrong with him that sharply ramped up Liam's fear.

Liam started swiftly out of the warehouse, running by the time he hit the weed-infested parking lot.

"Liam." Sean sprinted after him. "If he makes it, he'll track the scent back to Shiftertown first, and Dad will make short work of him."

"Not if he's as good as I think he is. He'll track both my scent and hers. Kim took that double-scent home with her."

He started the bike, and as soon as Sean leapt on he roared away. Sean might be right, and the feral Shifter might go nowhere near Kim, but Liam couldn't take that chance.

Liam raced the bike back down the highway to the city, then north on the freeway. He dove off and angled west, through the main city, circling fine homes that clung to the hillside above the river. The night was hot and dank, but the air rushing past the bike felt chilled.

He thought of the red dot on the computer map that indicated Kim's house. To him, the red dot was a target, an announcement of her vulnerability. He needed to warn her, protect her, hold her, taste her...