Rhyannon Byrd - Last Wolf Watching

Last night, it had been Carla Reyes’s turn to wait at the hospital while Max worked his shift as a security guard. Michaela had been enjoying a relaxing evening at home after a long day at her store, when Reyes called to let her and Wyatt know that Max had taken his car and disappeared in the middle of making his rounds. Michaela couldn’t think of any possible reason that Max would do such a thing—unless it had something to do with Sophia Dawson. And she’d been right.

Sophia was an eighteen-year-old Lycan who’d discovered the gruesome murder of a human female the week before. She’d spent a few days at their home, before returning to her parents’ house in Shadow Peak, the mountaintop town that was home to the Silvercrest pack. Max and Sophia had become fast friends, despite Michaela’s warnings that her brother should be cautious. Sophia was mixed up with a wild party crowd down in Covington, and the last thing Michaela had wanted was to see her brother become involved in an unhealthy relationship. She didn’t care that Sophia was a werewolf—but she did care that the teenager was heavily involved in the local drug scene.

In fact, she suspected it was Sophia’s troubled lifestyle that had drawn Max to her in the first place. He’d always been a champion of the underdog, willing to take on everyone’s worries as his own. Michaela loved that his heart was so generous, but she’d also worried that it would eventually land him in trouble—which was exactly what had happened.

After Carla’s call, Wyatt had contacted the other Runners and a search of the city had been immediately set into action. Then Brody Carter had arrived on her doorstep with his heartbreaking news.

“ Max is still alive ,” the Bloodrunner had explained to her and Wyatt in gritty, clipped tones. “ Sophia Dawson showed up in Shadow Peak with him about a half hour ago. They’re trying to get the story out of her, but she’s pretty hysterical. Seems she’d called Max from a concert, scared that she and her girlfriends were being followed. Says Max told her he knew Reyes wouldn’t let him into that part of town, so he slipped out a back entrance at the hospital, grabbed his car and met up with them. He talked Sophia into coming back home with him, but before they could make it back to his car, they were attacked. The only thing that saved their lives was an accident that happened up the street. When he heard the approaching sirens, the rogue fled and the girls were able to get Max in his car. Sophia panicked and drove him straight to her parents’ house. They notified the Elders and he was taken into custody .”

Michaela had stood there feeling dead inside, a great roaring wave of pain ripping through her body, while Wyatt had talked with the scowling Runner. Then Brody had left as quickly as he’d come, leaving Wyatt to explain that Max would be kept in a holding cell in Shadow Peak, where he would be watched by guards until his first shift into a werewolf, which usually came the second night after an attack. Once the signs of impending change were noted, a Novitiates ceremony would be called.

Wyatt had driven her up to Bloodrunner Alley, a picturesque glade that sat several miles south of Shadow Peak on the mountain. The Alley held cabins where the Runners lived, and she’d spent the rest of the night with Torrance and Mason.

The wait for nightfall during the long, torturous day had been a living hell—but the call warning them that the ceremony would soon begin had finally come. They’d immediately set off for the clearing, which sat equidistant between Shadow Peak and the Alley.

And now it was time.

The muscles in her throat quivered, and Michaela wondered if she was about to lose the tea Torrance had forced into her before they’d left. The fear threatened to overtake her, too huge and monstrous to evade, swallowing her like Jonah in his story of the whale. The kind of fear that covered your skin after a nightmare, sticky and cold and wet. She knew they could scent it. From the shadowed edges of the clearing, the Lycans’ glowing eyes burned like embers as they watched her through the moonlit darkness.

They’re waiting for you to show your weakness, but right now you have to be strong for Max’s sake .

At the thought of her brother, a devastating sense of helplessness pierced through her, making her flinch—and it was at that moment that Michaela felt his gaze. Her breath caught, and without realizing it, she found herself searching the nightmarish scene for the man, the Bloodrunner, who sparked an uncomfortable awareness in her every time she saw him.

Brody . Her mouth formed the words, though she didn’t make a sound.

He watched her from the corner of his eye, as if he didn’t want her to know. But there was no way she could have missed him. All he had to do was enter a room, and her senses kicked into high alert, her equilibrium taking a spin that left her reeling, same as it had last night. He had the scarred body of a warrior, but in Michaela’s opinion, he was one of the most magnificent men she’d ever known. Not pretty, but so utterly hard and masculine that he all but bled testosterone. Everything about the rugged Bloodrunner screamed dark, intense intrigue, and despite her efforts, she’d been unable to stop thinking about him. The effect was even worse when he was near, like being struck by lightning, her nerves left revving and raw. A total and complete meltdown. Not even Ross Holland had affected her like that—and she’d thought she loved her ex-boyfriend…until the day he’d ripped her heart out.

Hah! Shows how much you know. When it comes to love, you’re as blind as a hawk beneath its hood .

Sad, but true.

Now Ross was nothing more than a first-class pain—and one she couldn’t get rid of. No matter how many different ways she explained it, he could not get it through his head that she never wanted to see him again.

It was strange, but with Brody near, she could barely recall what Ross even looked like. The Runner stood to her left, no more than a yard away from Mason, and her stare snagged on his powerful form, unable to look away. Though his muscular frame had been wrapped in a stylish tuxedo the first time she’d met him at Torrance and Mason’s wedding, tonight he wore his standard dark jeans, black boots and black T-shirt. The soft cotton of the shirt molded itself to the broad width of his shoulders and that beautifully carved chest, his thighs rigid beneath the worn denim of his jeans. His auburn hair burned a deep, dark red before the flames of the fire, lying soft and thick on his shoulders. Against the darkness of his skin, his scars shone like silvery pale rivers of pain, echoing the mysteries of his past as they slashed across his face in three thin diagonal lines.

After the “ I can’t get out of here fast enough ” way that he’d acted the night before, when he’d brought her and Wyatt the news of what had happened to Max, she hadn’t thought he’d even show for the ceremony. But here he was. His normally brooding expression burned with a cold, calculating fury—a charged energy buzzing around him that suggested the rigid control he always held over himself could crack at any moment. Though the calmest, quietest of the Runners, he struggled to master, even hide, an underlying violence. But it was always there, lying in wait of its escape, and she experienced a flutter of relief in her belly that he was on their side.