Chapter 15

ZACH

Zach’s eyes were glued to Anna as she walked away, the burst of laughter dying a quick death as she started muttering curse words.

A small smile appeared on his face at her ferocity, even as he considered what a dirty mouth she had on her.

None of it mattered, her anger or Mitch, because she wasn’t scared of him.

Even after watching him try to tear her friend apart, Anna was ready to take on Zach herself. Theresa was right, she would be good for the pack.

The brief thought of Mitch threatened to sink Zach into a deep pit of guilt.

He would focus on the male later when they were back in the den and he was able to hold Mitch properly and apologize.

He knew, however, that an apology would not be enough for what he had done. An alpha was supposed to be safe, the heart and soul of a pack.

He was not supposed to come out and attack you for teaching self-defense to a weaker pack mate.

Zach forced the thoughts away, striding after Anna.

He made sure he was just slow enough that he wouldn’t lose her, deciding that giving her some space would probably be wise at the moment.

Smirking inwardly, he wondered how long it would take for her to get tired and ask for help.

They were an extremely long way from the den, and she still wasn’t able to shift.

Zach was quickly beginning to realize, though, that soft, little Anna was actually as stubborn as hell.

Alex was never going to let him live it down that the one female meant for him was just as stubborn as he was, if not more so.

Thinking of Alex, Zach sent out a mind-link. ~“Alex, what’s the situation with Mitch?”~

He unwittingly held his breath as he waited for a response, hoping that someone had reached Mitch in time.

He knew Anna had reached out to the pack. He had heard her plea in his own head but had been too caught up in his fury to stop.

~“Alive. Barely.”~ Alex was terse, but Zach understood it. ~“What the hell happened?”~

~“My fault,”~ Zach admitted ashamedly. ~“I thought he hurt Anna, and I lost it.”~

There was a long silence that spoke more than anything else Alex could have said.

Zach was supposed to be the core protector of the pack, and today, he had nearly killed one of his own.

It was going to take more than a lot of groveling to win the trust and respect he would have lost due to this.

It would take even more than that before he even started to make things right with Mitch.

~“Have you taken care of it?”~ The question surprised Zach, who thought that Alex had broken contact.

Before he answered, he looked up ahead, his eyes tracing the spine of the woman stalking in front of him.

Her long, auburn hair was caught in a ponytail, the ends swinging softly against her back.

Her tight training pants were hugging every curve, showing how much she had filled out since she had been in the pack.

Zach felt his wolf prowl through his mind, wanting to get closer to her, wanting to inhale, touch…bite.

“Attempting to right now,” he finally murmured back to Alex, even his mental voice husky with desire.

He heard a chuckle before Alex fell silent, obviously busy taking care of things back at the pack.

As Zach pulled his full attention to Anna, he started increasing his speed so that he could catch up to her, planning to force a conversation.

Just before he reached her, a sound drew his attention to their left.

He paused mid-step, staring into the dense trees with his wolf eyes.

Even with the animal side helping, he couldn’t see anything out of the ordinary.

He waited, a predator on alert, and was rewarded when the sound of a stick snapping reached his ears.

“Anna.” His voice was low, an almost indiscernible growl. Anna immediately froze, hearing the power of an alpha in his voice.

She turned her head to look at him, almost in slow motion, as her own instincts made her aware that the situation had changed.

Zach prowled closer, his body moving in between hers and the direction from which the sound had come from, shielding her from the threat that he sensed.

A slight inhale warned him that Anna was about to speak. Zach turned to look at her, his head moving sharply in a negative motion.

He raised a finger to his lips, and Zach watched as understanding filled her eyes before her gaze moved to the woods, searching.

Zach knew that they couldn’t stay where they were. They were an open target.

He considered the situation quickly, knowing that with Anna unable to call on her wolf, there would be no easy way out of this.

Just as he decided on what to do, a quiet ~snick~ reached his ears.

Without hesitation, Zach dove at Anna, tackling her to the ground and covering her body completely with his own.

A microsecond later, a spray of bullets slammed into the tree that had been standing directly behind them, bark flying everywhere.

Anna gasped, staring at the bullet holes in horror, knowing that both of their heads would have been gone if Zach hadn’t moved as fast as he had.

~“When I shift, get on my back,” Zach ordered Anna on a private mind-link before his mind reconnected with Alex’s.

~“We’re under attack. Guns. Anna can’t shift; we’re going to have to run. Send reinforcements.”

~“On our way.” The reply was immediate.

Zach felt a surge of pride that he had a man like Alex covering his back, not only as his second but as a friend.

In the next breath, Zach gave in to the call of his wolf. It was a second of pure agony coupled with ecstasy.

Shifters never quite get used to the feeling of electricity that whips through their bodies as their bones break and realign to create a completely different kind of being from their human bodies.

When his eyes opened, he was closer to the ground. His senses were sharper than in his human counterpart, and the world was brighter, clearer.

Zach could smell the three humans who were creeping through the trees toward them, and he could almost taste the bitter stench of the rifle that had fired.

They only had seconds before another barrage of shots would slam into their bodies.

Zach’s large head nudged against Anna’s legs impatiently, prompting her into action.

She quickly ran her hand over his back, causing him to shudder, before curling her fists around the fur surrounding his neck.

She swung her leg over his back hesitantly, and he got the sense that the little mouse was scared of hurting him with her weight.

A huff of amusement escaped him, sounding rough and gravelly in the throat of the wolf.

She was finally on, her hands so firmly entwined in his fur that it was tugging almost painfully against his neck.

He wasn’t going to complain, though, because hopefully, it meant that she wouldn’t fall off.

Zach lunged forward, feeling Anna’s body jerk against his own at the unexpected movement, but it didn’t take long before she started moving with him.

He nimbly navigated through the trees, knowing this forest like the back of his hand.

Most other wolves his size would have struggled to dart around the tree trunks, but Zach was alpha for a reason.

The sound behind them was muted, but Zach could hear someone cursing and the clear sounds of the humans following, slowed by the unknown territory.

Another shot was fired, narrowly missing Zach—pure luck on the shooter’s part—and Zach let out a loud growl.

His wolf was itching to turn around so that he could tear the attackers to pieces for daring to attack Zach in ~his~ territory while also putting Anna in danger.

If she hadn’t been with him, he would have moved through the trees, unseen, able to move like a ghost through the debris.

He would have stealthily taken them out one by one. They wouldn’t have seen it coming…but he couldn’t take that chance while she was there.

Zach was confident in his skills, but the risk that an attacker could slip past him to get to Anna was too great.

“We have surveillance on the shooters.” Alex’s voice was dark and angry, sending brief, flickering images of the screens in front of him to Zach.

Zach couldn’t make out much, but he could see—

“The damn humans. Why are they attacking now?”

And how had they moved so quickly to a new location?

Even in violent fury, Zach had been aware of the location of their latest encampment and had thus run in the opposite direction.

“It has to be you, Zach. Present them with an alpha target and of course they’re going to take it.” There was the briefest of pauses.

“You know what this means, right? They shot first.” Zach felt his lips curling up in a wolfish smile.

He knew that if any of the humans could see him now, they’d shit themselves in fear.

“Kill them all, except for one. I have some questions.”

~“With pleasure.”~

***

ANNA

Anna was panting, her chest aching as fear swirled in her body.

She fought the urge to look over her shoulder and try to spot their assailants through the trees. Instead, she tucked herself closer to the wolf’s back until the white strands of fur tickled her nose.

Any closer and she would probably melt right into him.

A spurt of illogical anger filled her. She had been wanting to get this close to Zach for days, and now, here she was, and she couldn’t even enjoy it because someone was trying to kill them!

It was starting to feel like she was surrounded by death.

Anna was exhausted by it all, thinking humorlessly that the reason she had been so willing to listen to Blake and come to Silver River had been because it meant a fresh start, away from all the violence.

She had been so utterly wrong.

If anything, everything had just gotten worse because, at least before, no one had been dead.

Anna knew she wasn’t responsible for any of it, but logic had no role right then.

Especially because every incident seemed to have her right at its epicenter.

A growl drew her attention to the present, and she focused completely on the wolf underneath her.

~“They’re trying to flank us,”~ Zach murmured into her mind, his voice distracted.

~“But…how the hell are they moving so fast? They shouldn’t be able to keep up with me.”~

There was no pride in his voice, only frustration, and Anna knew he was just speaking facts.

If the enemy were just human, they wouldn’t have been able to keep up with a young wolf, let alone a powerful alpha.

Even Anna should technically be able to outrun humans if she could shift.

A glint in the corner of her eye had her head turning to the left.

After a moment, her eyes focused on a man moving in and out of sight through the trees.

Zach was right, they were definitely keeping pace, but he looked human.

He started turning, and as Anna watched, he lifted his arms as if pointing toward them.

She stared, wondering what on earth he was doing, when the man went through a patch of sunlight, causing the metal of his weapon to glint brightly.

Anna gasped just before the shot rang out, the sound close enough now to be almost deafening.

Anna flinched so hard that she nearly lost her grip on Zach, tumbling to the side before managing to catch herself.

She gripped his fur tighter, righting herself, when the metallic stench of iron filled her nose.

It took her a long time to recognize what it was, but then, alarm bells started blaring.

She quickly took stock of her body, trying to find where she had been hit before her eyes caught Zach’s hind leg.

Blood was steadily staining the white fur red, his gait slightly uneven though he refused to slow down.

“Zach…” Anna felt her panic surge. She turned so that she could try to reach the wound and attempt to stem the blood flow.

“Stop.” His voice was firm, unwavering. “I can manage. You’re going to throw my pace off.”

Anna listened immediately, facing forward again, taking comfort in the feel of his muscles bunching under her own as he continued to race through the forest.

It didn’t seem like he was tiring, but she knew he must be losing a substantial amount of blood.

“Will we make it?” Her voice was quiet, even in her own head, and she knew that he would be able to hear her fear.

This was how she knew that she couldn’t possibly be his mate.

Rachel had said that true mates were two halves of a whole, that they completed each other.

An alpha of a large pack needed a strong companion, one who could fight by his side and help lead.

Anna didn’t know anything about belonging to a pack, let alone leading one... and she knew, she knew, that if she hadn’t been there right then, Zach would have fought his way out instead of running.

She was the absolute worst possible choice, and she would convince Zach that he was mistaken... as soon as they were safe and he wasn’t bleeding.

“Yes.” His voice was confident, almost arrogant.

Suddenly, a furious howl rent through the air, raising the hair on the back of her neck.

Anna instinctively knew that it was an attack signal.

There was a moment’s pause, a moment when it felt like the whole forest was holding its breath, and then, a tortured scream rang out, echoing through the trees.

It was the scream of a man who knew death was imminent.

It was a sound that had the potential to send Anna spiraling back into her nightmares of blood, death, and Blake, but it didn’t.

Instead, she only felt smug, as if something deep inside was taking great pleasure in the pain of the men who had tried to kill them and had succeeded in hurting Zach.

“Will they all die?”

“Yes, but one will last longer than the rest.”

He paused.

“He probably won’t consider that a blessing.”

The dark humor made the corners of Anna’s lips curl upward.

She had never been bloodthirsty, but right now... she wanted to turn around and sink her teeth into something fleshy.

These men had threatened her family, her pack, her Zach.

Anna decided that she wasn’t going to touch that last thought with a ten-foot pole.

It probably appeared because Zach had put the idea of mates into her head and that was filling her with such violent possessiveness.

Comforted by that, she relaxed against the wolf so that her body was fluid, moving with him and creating the least amount of resistance as he continued to run.

Their pack was with them now, but she knew that Zach wouldn’t stop until he had carried her clear of the danger, and then…he would probably head straight back out there, bleeding leg and all.

“Will you take me to Mitch?”

Anna felt rather than heard the agreement just before a flood of shame filled her, making her head droop under the force of it.

Shocked, she shook her head as if she could physically shake it away before she realized it wasn’t her shame she was feeling.

It was someone else’s… Zach’s?

She didn’t know the mind-link was capable of transferring emotions.

Anna decided that Zach didn’t realize what he was doing, so she was quiet too, trying to find something, anything, she could say to try and relieve the guilt filling her body.

After a moment, she knew that there was nothing she could say.

Instead, she tried her own transfer, pushing feelings of comfort and forgiveness toward him.

Zach’s big wolf head turned, one preternatural, glowing blue orb glancing at her briefly before he turned forward again.

As he did, Anna felt him close the mental link between them.

It was as if he had slammed a mental door down and completely cut off all contact, his mind separating completely from hers.

Anna hadn’t been aware of how much of a presence he had been in her mind until he wasn’t there anymore, and irrational grief filled her body.

Right then, she knew that if she hadn’t been physically touching him, she would have wholeheartedly believed that he was dead.

It was as if his essence was completely gone, and Anna had never felt such emptiness.

Confused, she thought about saying something. Demanding that he stop whatever it was that he was doing and open that mental door again, but as they came into view of the ranges, reality crashed into her.

She had no rights over this male. He was her alpha, not her mate, and she needed to remember that.