Rhyannon Byrd - Dark Wolf Running

She frowned as the Runner left the room. She didn’t want to go to the Alley tomorrow morning. After tonight, all she wanted was to...to... Hell, she didn’t know what she wanted.

“How long will it take you to pack?” Wyatt asked, his deep voice pulling her from her troubled thoughts as he moved to his feet.

She tilted her head back, staring up at him in confusion. “Pack what?”

“A bag. You can’t stay here by yourself. You’re coming home with me.”

Her jaw dropped as she blinked. “Is that some kind of sick joke?”

“Naw,” Carla drawled, popping her head back into the room from the hallway. She’d obviously decided to ignore Wyatt’s request for privacy. “I know what Pall’s joke face looks like, and that isn’t it. He’s dead serious.”

Gritting her teeth, she said, “I’m not going anywhere with you, Pallaton.”

He pushed his hands into his front pockets, his eyes hooded as he watched her stand up, grab a couple of clean towels from the basket of folded laundry that was sitting on her dresser and start laying them out over the puddles that’d been left on her floor. “Don’t let pride make you stupid, El. You know this is the smartest thing you can do.”

“Wow. Do you have any idea how arrogant you sound right now?” She clenched her teeth as she tossed a towel to Carla, then snapped the last one open, laying it over the water that had dripped off of Cian. “What is it with you guys always bundling up us little women and dragging us off to the Alley? Where in God’s name did you all get the idea that we can’t survive without you around to protect us with your big bad selves?”

He didn’t say anything in his defense when she turned back to him with a blistering glare. But he didn’t need to. He simply shifted his gaze to the bruise she could feel forming on her cheek, then lower, to where she was clutching the edges of his shirt over her chest, reminding her of just what he’d saved her from, and she trembled with fury as he slowly lifted that knowing gaze back to hers. “You son of a bitch,” she whispered, and his expression tightened, the skin around his eyes and mouth revealing his tension and rage, though he seemed determined not to express them in front of her. For some reason, that just made her even angrier.

“We can argue as long as you want, but it isn’t going to change the outcome. Either you come back with me, or I’m planting my ass here with you. And I do mean with you, El. I won’t be shoved out on that short-ass sofa in your living room. There’s not much left of it, anyway.”

“You’ve lost your freaking mind.”

“Probably,” he muttered, scrubbing the palm of his hand against the hard angle of his jaw. “But it doesn’t change the fact that you need a keeper.”

“I can stay with my brother!”

He arched one perfect midnight brow. “You do realize this is his wedding night, don’t you?”

She flushed, wracking her brain for an alternative. “With Jillian and Jeremy, then.”

“Won’t work. They’ve already started turning their spare room into a nursery.”

She blinked, stunned. “She’s pregnant?”

He shook his head. “Not yet. But they’re hoping she will be soon and wanted to get a head start on things.”

“Oh. I...I didn’t know.”

As if he knew exactly what she was thinking, he said, “They only just decided this week to start on the nursery, or I’m sure she would have told you.”

She chewed on the corner of her lip. “I can always sleep on their sofa.”

Zoing! His right brow arched again, as if it was spring-loaded, those dark eyes starting to glitter with a spark of humor, as if he were beginning to find something funny in her belligerent desperation. “When I have a perfectly good spare bedroom? I don’t think so.”

She was so frustrated she wanted to scream. “Who cares what you think, you arrogant ass? I do not take orders from you! Why can’t you just leave me the hell alone and stop trying to control me?”

Hmm. Maybe yelling at him again wasn’t the best idea she’d ever had. He suddenly wasn’t looking as if he still found this funny, the muscle pulsing in his jaw telling her he was done with this particular argument. “I’m not interested in controlling you. I’m just trying to keep you the fuck alive. So pack your goddamn bag and start acting like an adult instead of a stubborn child. Carla and I will drive you down and she can help you get settled.”

“Carla? Are you two bunking up together now?”

Carla snorted from her position in the doorway, making Elise flinch, since she’d somehow forgotten the female Runner was standing there. “You think I’m gonna live with that jackass?” The blonde laughed under her breath, blowing her bangs out of her eyes. “I’m not that crazy!”

Elise looked to Wyatt for an explanation. With a shrug, he said, “I just thought it might make you more comfortable to know that she’ll be around a lot. Her cabin is right next door to mine.”

“But we are not an item,” Carla added, shuddering. “I love the guy, but I don’t want you putting any sick images in my head. I’ll be scarred for life.”

It was dizzying, how she could go from being so pissed off one moment to wanting to bang her head against a freaking wall in the next. Glancing from one Runner to the other with a look of pure, disgruntled confusion, she said, “You two are so weird.”

“Yeah, we get that a lot.” Carla laughed.

At the same time, Wyatt growled, “Can we get a damn move on?”

When Elise simply remained where she was standing, he exhaled a short, exasperated breath. “Stop wasting time, El. If you don’t come with me, then I’m moving in here. Which is it gonna be?”

“Fine,” she snapped, making it sound like another sharp four-letter F word. “I’ll pack a bag, Dad.”

He ran his tongue over the front of his teeth, but didn’t call her out on her snotty attitude. Instead, he simply said, “Good. And make sure you pack enough.”

“Enough for what?” she asked, already walking toward her closet.

“A few weeks, at least.”

Oh, hell no. “A few weeks?” she growled, spinning toward him with another furious scowl. “Are you insane?”

“Getting there,” he muttered, heading for the door, the motion making all those mouthwatering muscles do interesting things under his tight, burnished skin. Even his freaking back was gorgeous, which just struck her as incredibly unfair. “If you want to argue about it, save it for the Alley,” he said over his shoulder. “Right now we need to get the hell out of here.”

“Why?” she whispered, his gritty words making the fear she’d been fighting down start to rise right back up. She licked her lips, struggling to stay calm, but it felt like a losing battle. “You don’t think they’re coming back, do you?”

“I don’t know what to think, Elise. But it’s better to be safe than sorry. And you’ll be a hell of a lot safer there than you are here.”

With her pulse pounding in her ears, Elise watched him leave the room, thinking he was probably right about her physical well-being.

She just wasn’t too sure about the rest of her.

Chapter 4

After getting a still-irritated, snippy Elise settled in his spare bedroom, Wyatt grabbed a T-shirt and then walked back to the cabin’s living room, where Carla waited for him in one of the leather chairs that sat across from his sofa. Too on edge to sit down, he made his way over to the empty fireplace, crossing his arms over his chest as he braced his back against the mantel.

“What?” he grunted, since his partner was staring at him with a bemused expression on her face.

“Nothing,” she murmured.

Choking back a groan, he said, “I’m tired and in a shitty mood, Reyes. So, please, just spit it out.”