Wilderness. Barbara Hancock J.
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with the bolt cutters in her hands, evidence of her bravery or her stupidity, only the next few seconds would tell.
Tess let her head fall back to look up at his face. He still cupped her chin, but lightly. His fingers brushed her skin as soft as a caress. She struggled to remember what she was supposed to do now. In this moment, confronted by the powerful man she had been sent to save, Tess wondered if she had fooled herself. Was she really up for this?
He leaned to bring his face closer to hers. She breathed lightly, trying not to panic.
Don’t be prey. Don’t be prey.
He smiled as he took in her reactions. It was a grim, barely there curve of his sculpted lips, but it was a smile nonetheless. His fingers tightened, but only slightly, holding her in place as if she wasn’t too scared to move.
“My savior,” he breathed, and it was a sigh even while it was a tease.
He saw her fear, was amused by it, and he was still grateful. The appreciation shone in his eyes. His chocolate-colored eyes, she noted, now that he had tilted forward, slightly away from the shadowed wall.
“May you never live to regret it.”
Tess’s heart leapt with those words, or maybe in reaction to his movement, because the last was murmured right against her lips before he jumped away quicker than her eyes could follow.
One minute, she felt the heated brush of his lips on hers, the next, he was at the rear of the truck ripping open the sliding door.
It was over quickly, but that didn’t make the blood less red or the screams any less gut-wrenching.
Tess was thrown against the wall of the truck’s interior when it lurched sideways and surged into the ditch. The blow to her head left her dizzy, but it didn’t knock her out.
Mores the pity.
She crawled out the steel door Masterson had torn apart with his hands and she fell to the ground.
It was weak to lay there in the tall grass by the side of the road, but she allowed herself to do it for several long moments. She could have told herself it was to catch her breath and regain her equilibrium. She could have laid there even longer as spots swam before her eyes.
Tess didn’t.
She knew why she didn’t want to get up on shaky legs and walk around to the cab of the truck. Knew why a tight knot of dread had settled in the pit of her stomach.
In the aftermath of cutting the chains, surviving the crash and hearing the screams, it seemed surreal that birds sang in nearby trees and the verdant odor of crushed grass should fill her nostrils. It would have been easy to pretend she didn’t have to move, but Tess had learned life wasn’t easy a long time ago.
She pushed herself up from the ground and forced herself to look around.
He was gone.
And the two men who had captured him would never turn over another innocent for torture.
Tess vomited in the bushes.
Again, knowing something had to be done and witnessing it…two very different things.
She was bruised and battered. She was pretty sure her nightmares (and possibly even her dreams) were refueled for the next six months, and Lily was still gone too soon.
Tess limped her way to the rendezvous point haunted by Masterson’s dark eyes and his even darker words.
Chapter Two
Colin ran and his blood coursed through his veins like liquid joy. He had been less-than-alive for a week. First in a holding pen that smelled of despair and unwashed flesh, then in the back of a truck that reeked of gasoline and loss.
Except, of course, for the vanilla cappuccino.
He’d known she was there the whole time, even as his captors were oblivious. The scent of creamy sweet coffee hadn’t come from the cretins who threw his silver-weakened body into the back of the truck. Neither had the teasing scent of lavender shampoo.
He had waited patiently for her to show herself, but he had still been surprised. By her beauty, by her fear, by her intentions, in spite of her fear.
As each link fell away, severed by her purposeful but shaking hands, he’d been caught in another trap altogether.
Her vulnerability paired as it was with her obvious determination snared him as surely as wicked silver. He shouldn’t have touched her, but the heady rush of freedom’s call had overwhelmed his good sense. Now, he ran because of her. He lived again, because of her.
She had given him a second chance to save his people.
His father hadn’t been so lucky.
Jack Masterson had led their pack for twenty years, and he had kept them safe and prosperous. But he had led them during years of a population explosion when it was easy to survive happily on the fringes of society without being noticed.
Now, their pack was down to fifteen, including himself. They were his now to guide and protect. At twenty-eight, he didn’t even have his first gray hair, but he was Alpha.
Colin felt joy as he ran in the night, but he also ached. For years, he’d had the luxury of scoffing at ancient tradition. He hadn’t felt like a prince and hadn’t intended to be one. His father had talked of persecutions so old he couldn’t even imagine the time when they’d occurred. In the age of cell phones and civil rights that kind of wolf hunt just hadn’t seemed real.
Then an influenza pandemic changed the world. Suddenly, people with unusually strong immunity stood out. Werewolves and countless others who were different.
All of them were lumped under the term Supernaturals.
After the pandemic, his people and the other Supernaturals had no rights. They could be hunted, caged and killed, or worse-than-killed, all in the name of science. Scientists struggled to map and isolate the genes responsible for immunity, but he suspected that much of their time was spent trying to unlock the secrets to power.
Supernaturals held secrets in their blood and the government wanted those secrets.
His father had been one of the first to die. He’d actually gone willingly into the hands of authorities, hoping to shield his pack with his sacrifice.
No one spoke out against the experiments. Survival justified any measures the government cared to take. No one cared except for H.A.E.S. and naive little heroines with vanilla-flavored kisses.
Colin ran on.
Tess sipped a fresh, steaming cup of coffee. The whipped cream that floated on top wasn’t frivolous. It was medicinal. She needed the caffeine and the calories and the comfort. Her nerves were so shot she could almost hear them crying out for her favorite indulgence, but the brew didn’t prove itself as soothing as usual.
For one thing, the steam floating off the top of her Styrofoam cup teased across her lips like a moist reminder. Tess shivered and licked cream off her upper lip.
She was twenty-four years old. She’d shared a few kisses, but none had left her trembling hours later. Her lips still tingled from the werewolf’s kiss. The Super’s kiss. She corrected herself and looked around guiltily in case any of her fellow H.A.E.S. had detected her less-than-PC thoughts.
Supernatural was the appropriate name for any human with special abilities. Like Colin. Like Lily. Even like herself. Though, in her case, special might be too strong a term to describe her dreams. She had escaped being put on the government’s wanted list because she’d almost died from the flu. She’d been ill for weeks. Lily hadn’t had so much as a sniffle.
Logically, Tess knew she’d been weakened by her long bout with depression following her parents’ death. Her will to live had been shaken. Her hope for the future almost lost. Then, she had lost her sister and suddenly she’d found new depths of resolve. Logically, she knew