Alpha Omega 02 - Hunting Ground

sure that the shafts were useful.
    As she stared at it, a wolf snatched victory out of their reach.
    It was too dark to be sure who it was, even if she had known all the other wolves in their furred form. The wolf leapt out of an opening a story above the bag, snatched the prize, and disappeared into another opening a floor lower, still well over Anna’s head. Watching helplessly as their prize was stolen out from under . . . okay, above their noses, was maddening.
    Isaac snorted in disgust.
    And Brother Wolf was . . . surrounding her, his anxiety, his fear and love making her stagger against Isaac—which Brother Wolf did not like at all.
    Something was wrong. But when she asked, Brother Wolf couldn’t or wouldn’t tell her.
    She had to get to Charles. Now. The problem was, Anna didn’t know precisely how to get back—oh, she could have backtracked, but they had wandered all over the place and would have had to go through the narrow tunnel again.
    Up would be good.
    She was running full speed ahead when a white wolf pushed in front of her. A second wolf was hard on her tail—Isaac and Ric.
    It was Isaac who found the first set of stairs headed up. They emerged on the ground floor of the smaller warehouse, and when they made for the door, a werewolf in human form stopped them.
    â€œIf you cross the outer door, you are officially done,” he said.
    The Alpha wolf stared coldly at him and the man dropped his eyes, throwing up his hands as he backed away. “Just saying what I’m told, man. You go outside, that’s out of bounds.”
    They ran past him and out into the fresh air. Ric, his fur gray in the light of the yard, sneezed his pleasure at leaving the underground labyrinth behind. Anna took in a deep breath and smelled—vampire.
    She stumbled to a halt, examining their surroundings for the enemy. At last she saw him standing on the other side of the chain-link fence a hundred yards away.
    It took a moment for her eyes to link the spiffily dressed older man to the vicious killer she’d last seen sitting on top of Tom. But her nose had already made the connection. She’d gotten two good strides in when she hit the side of the white wolf, who’d run in front of her to stop her, his attention on the vampire as well.
    The dead man laughed and motioned with his hand. A blue minivan drove up, and he climbed in. It took off before he’d finished closing the door.
    Isaac growled low in his chest, an echo of the noise she was making, too. He’d known what that one was, all right. Ric gave them both a puzzled look—but Anna had never run into vampires before yesterday either.
    There didn’t seem to be much point in sticking around here, so Anna turned and made for the main room of the bigger warehouse, where the lights were blazing, Brother Wolf’s presence an ache in her chest.
    Inside the warehouse, all of the wolves who had stayed in human form were gathered in a tight group, focused inward. There were too many of them for her nose to tell her anything.
    All of the clothes had been pushed against the wall, and it took her a while to sort hers out. By the time she had them collected, Charles had found her. His eyes were all for the gathering in the center of the room, and there was an odd stiffness to his body that worried her.
    She changed, her body protesting the shift even more than it had when she’d taken wolf form. She, like all the wolves, had been well trained not to make much noise while she shifted, but, damn, it hurt.
    â€œOw, ow, ow,” she whispered as her hands slowly, grat ingly, reluctantly re-formed as wholly human. She tucked them under her arms and squeezed, the pressure helping the pain. Every change was different, but she hated the ones where her hands were the last thing to make it to human. There are so many nerves in a hand, and all of them hurt. It left her light-headed.
    Charles growled at her pain.
    She looked up, but there was no one anywhere close to them. Ric and his Alpha were still caught up in their change on the other side of the pile of clothing. She glanced at him and let her body grow still. His eyes were yellow, and the corner of his mouth twitched, then twitched again, as if he had a nervous tic.
    â€œCharles?” her voice was still hoarse from the change.
    â€œSunny’s dead.” His voice was guttural, and she knew that he was on the verge . . . of something.
    Anna worried about it