Alpha Omega 02 - Hunting Ground

brambles, now barren of berries and full of dead leaves and thorns. The path was mud and sucked at her shoes, half pulling them off, as it threatened to give way entirely and dump her in the creek.
    Charles’s paw prints stuck deep, where he’d stopped to drink. Bleeding made you thirsty, she knew. The blood trail had been less and less easy to follow. She hoped it was because he was healing. The more dominant wolves healed faster—as long as you didn’t combine wounds with silver, exhaustion, or magic.
    Couldn’t help but worry about him anyway.
    So it was with great relief she made it down to the beach, a rocky, wet, and cold stretch of land, and saw Charles shaking himself off. He’d been in the water, cleaning the blood off. “Brave of you,” Anna told him. “That water is too freaking cold for words.” But she’d never had cause to doubt Charles’s courage.
    Amber eyes watched her as she slid down the last ten feet of slope with more grace than she’d expected, only to stumble as her shoes hit the better traction the small rocks of the beach gave her.
    â€œSo,” she told Brother Wolf, “I have some things to talk to you about when you’re ready. But we’re safe enough for now. I left Angus in charge, back at the warehouse.” Had she? Maybe Angus had left himself in charge at the warehouse.
    The rocks were only high and dry in a strip about six inches wide. She looked at her muddy shoes and, deciding there was nothing she could do that would make them worse, she stepped out into about six inches of icy water. The air left her in a startled hiss. “Very cold,” she told him, then started off down the shoreline because her body didn’t want to stand still.

TEN

    CHARLES stood where he was, the icy water covering his paws and a few inches beyond. He’d been waiting for the goon squad and gotten the beauty instead, and it left him oddly defenseless.
    She walked along the shoreline, her muddy shoes splashing in the water that covered the rocks. Above them, beyond them, and to both sides, docks stretched out into the black water. Four or five docks down there was a ship being loaded, and he could hear the men talking in the grunting rhythms that working men have. They were far enough away that they would not see a woman and her very large dog walking along the water’s edge.
    He decided she was getting too far from him, and so he followed, padding behind her to make sure she was safe. He hadn’t killed the Beast who threatened her . . . a growl rose in his chest at the thought. He should have killed him. Should have torn his head off so he would no longer hurt the weak and helpless ones. Not hurt his Anna. No matter that she was proving to be neither weak nor helpless.
    Brother Wolf scented the air, but the scent of the other wolves was distant. Ahead of him Anna had found a log that had washed ashore, now a throne for his lady. But first she had to climb all over it.
    He detoured around it, making sure it would stay stable—and found it difficult to close the distance between them.
    She had seen him in action before, had seen him kill, and she had not flinched from him. But this had been different, Charles knew it. This had been . . . not unprovoked, but certainly not necessary either.
    Chastel thought too much of his own hide to try anything while in the middle of a pack of enemy wolves. He wouldn’t have hurt her, not right then. None of that had mattered to Charles, though—all he could see was those fangs buried in Anna’s throat and him all the way across the building and too freaking slow.
    He looked at her, just to make sure his vision hadn’t happened. She’d found a comfortable spot and stretched out on it, her face tilted toward him, resting on her extended arm.
    Anna had said she wanted to talk about some things. She hadn’t sounded angry or, worse, disappointed.
    And there were things he needed to know. Like why there weren’t dozens of wolves bringing him in—he’d heard Dana call for his hide, had expected them. Why Anna said she had left Angus in charge—though he expected that it had something to do with the pull he’d felt from her shortly after he’d left the warehouse.
    If Brother Wolf hadn’t been foremost, he’d have simply waited for the other wolves, acting for Dana, to attack him in the warehouse. But Brother Wolf had demanded the chance