Limp, she falls into the straw alongside the shovel.
Grinning and bleeding, Gabriel leans over his prize.
* * *
She wakes in the dark, her hands stuck behind her back, a gag in her mouth.
She tests her bonds and winces when the fine hairs on her wrists tear out as she twists.
She focuses on her surroundings, trying to get a clue about her location.
In the movies a bright heroine can save herself from her captors if she learns enough to use her location against them. But this isn’t a movie. This is Jessie’s real life.
Plus werewolves.
It’s not long until Gabriel is back and wrenches her onto her feet. With no explanation he forces her out into the breeze and makes her stagger a distance, blinded by snow flurries before he shoves her just hard enough that she falls.
* * *
He leaves Jessie then, seeking his true quarry—the alpha female and leader of the pack he considers his family: Marlaena. She’s on the second floor of the dive motel they’re staying in—a dive motel, yes, but still much better than their normal living quarters.
Her long red hair, a few shades deeper than his own, falls along her shoulders and frames her face, setting off her high cheekbones and fierce mouth and making a fiery curtain that threatens at any moment to obscure her teasing eyes. He pauses to catch his breath, to get his mind and mouth under control. He’s risked a lot doing this and he’s about to find out if it’s all worth it.
If he’ll finally win the role of alpha.
And the girl—Marlaena.
She’s leaning against his usual rival for her attention, the broad-shouldered, dark-skinned Southern boy, Gareth. The gentle gentleman of the crew who acts more the lover than the fighter, but Gabe’s seen him draw his claws and bare his teeth.
Marlaena’s wanted Gareth since the moment she first saw him back in the sticky heat of Mississippi. He’d just been released from jail on good behavior. Good behavior was the last thing Marlaena expected of her kind.
They’d attracted like polar opposites always did.
And Gabriel had hated Gareth since the moment he’d realized …
He clears his throat and waits.
Nothing.
He clears it again.
Gareth turns to face him first, his eyelids low over purple irises, giving him a sleepy look. His dreadlocks shift, and Gabriel catches sight of the beads the other girls have recently added to their hair ends.
He hates Gareth a little more for that.
“Can we help you?” Gareth asks gently. He spots Gabe’s hastily bandaged hand and the chunk of flesh missing from his face. “You okay, man?”
Marlaena glances his way now, too, finally noticing Gabe’s existence.
“Yeah. I’m fine. And, no, you can’t help me,” Gabe says to Gareth. “Just Marlaena,” he clarifies. “I need to speak to you. Alone.”
She squints at him, finally noting the blood that marks him. For a moment his heart speeds and he thinks that she’ll be worried about him. But his hope is short-lived. She sighs. “Right now?”
“Yes.”
She had hesitated to even get in the backseat with him and help staunch the bleeding when he’d been shot.… So why does he still want her? Why does he hold out hope?
He repeats himself, “Yes,” and adds, “now,” for good measure wondering why, after everything, he still crawls and begs for any scrap of attention from her.
“Wait here for me?” she asks Gareth.
“I’m still on duty, ’Laena,” he says with a smile.
Gabriel chokes down a growl, dabbing his cheek with his bandaged hand. ’Laena was his nickname for her first. He was her number one before Gareth was even discovered. He’d established precedents Gareth was benefitting from.
“Guard, guard, guard,” she chuckles, rubbing her hand along his chin.
Gabriel turns and heads toward where he’s stashed Jessie, motioning just once over his shoulder for Marlaena to follow.
When they finally descend the steps, he leads her to an area not far from the motel.
She glares at him, already tired of this wild goose chase. “What’s going on, Gabe? Why the secrecy?”
One last time he clears his throat and works up his courage. “You’re way more complicated than most of the girls I’ve dated,” he admits, scrubbing a fist across his forehead. He’s already bluffing. He hasn’t dated many girls at all, so most of what pours out of his mouth next is a mix of theories and hypotheses. “Some girls like candy; some are into flowers or jewelry—but you don’t care about any of that.”
Her hands settle on her hips, her fingers curling into tight fists. Cocking her head to watch him, he can tell she’s not sure where this is going, and she’s certain she doesn’t like it.
“But we’re not dating, are we?”
“We sure as hell aren’t,” she replies.
“And it seems there’s nothing I can do to change that…” He looks at her from out of the corner of his eye, weighing things, and shifts his weight from one foot to another.
Her mouth is working awkwardly before she even manages to get the two small words out. “I’m sorry?”
“Yeah. Well. I don’t even know when your birthday is—you realize that? No one does. That’s how distant you are. But I’ve run with you for more than a year, so I must’ve missed it. And I think that sucks: missing birthdays. We don’t get many. We should celebrate each one.”
“Gabriel.”
His head snaps up, hearing his name on her lips, but the spark lighting his eyes gutters when she says, “I don’t want anything from you.”
“I know. You’re amazingly self-sufficient. But, as you’ve pointed out, needing and wanting are different things. And I noticed something you need.”
She blinks.
“I’ll admit, I couldn’t get exactly what you need, but I’ve found the means to an end. This gift I’m about to give you—”
Her nostrils flare, pulling in the surrounding scents, and her eyes pop wide open in recognition.
The scents of horseflesh, hay, and a simple floral deodorant flood her nose.
“—will provide you with a way to get the thing you really need.” He jogs a few yards away and drags back Jessie. He grins at the look on Marlaena’s face.