“I killed one of them. The one who was on Robyn. I just wanted to get him off her, so I pounced on him, and he smelled like her, and he’d bitten her, and everything just went red after that. But then Steve slashed my front leg, and the other one stabbed Dani. Then they took off into the woods.” My tears were a mercy, smearing the carnage all around me. But they couldn’t blur the overwhelming scent of blood. “I couldn’t chase them. Not with my front leg sliced up and Dani dying.”
“Of course not. You shouldn’t have shown yourself. You could have been killed.” Jace sighed, the sound a mixture of worry for me and rage on my behalf. “Just stay there. We’re coming to get you. We’ll call the cops on the way back.” I heard voices in the background, as other toms volunteered for the emergency mission. Save the damsel in distress—one of those moments every enforcer lives for.
Only I didn’t have time to be rescued. “I can’t stay here, Jace. They’re coming back for me. And they have Robyn. I have to get her back before they hurt her.”
“No!” A car door slammed and Jace’s engine roared to life. He was already on the go, no doubt with his three best enforcers. “Abby, do not go after them. That’s an order.”
“Jace, they’re gonna kill her!” And by the time they got around to that, she’d be begging for it.
“And if you go after them, they’ll kill you too.”
“I can handle myself. I’ve been training with Faythe.”
“Sounds like you picked up more than just her left hook,” he muttered, and in the background, another tom chuckled. “Faythe’s an Alpha, and before that, she was an enforcer. You’re an elementary-ed major with two summers’ worth of self-defense. Sit tight. We’ll be there in an hour.”
“She’ll be dead by then!”
“But you won’t.”
I hesitated. I honestly did, because disobeying an Alpha was serious shit. Even a young, hot Alpha I’d known my whole life. But Robyn was the priority. “I’m sorry, Jace,” I whispered, digging through my pack again for an extra set of thick socks. “You can kick me out of the Pride if you want, but I have to help Robyn. I’ll see you in an hour.”
“Abby, no—!” he started, while his enforcers went apeshit in the background. I flipped the phone closed, put it on silent, then slid it into my pocket.
The phone buzzed as I pulled my socks on, then again while I dug Olsen’s pack from the pile. He had a hunting knife. I’d seen it. And in human form, I would need it.
I slid the knife into a loop on the right leg of my pants, then crossed the clearing and grabbed the insulated jacket they must have made Robyn take off before they tied her up. Her small folding knife was in the right pocket, and the material was still warm from her body heat. I couldn’t believe how fast everything had happened.
Armed, dressed, and now fairly warm, I knelt next to Dani, avoiding looking at the guys. “I’m so sorry,” I whispered, as I unlaced her hiking boots. Mine were a quarter mile away, in the opposite direction. “I hate to leave you like this, but I have to help Robyn. I swear they’ll pay for what they did to you.”
Fortunately, she had small feet, so the boots were only half a size too big, and with an extra pair of socks, I could barely tell.
Finally as ready as I was gonna get, I put on my hiking pack and stepped into the woods with only a single glance back and a fleeting bolt of sympathy for the forensics team which would soon be confused over her bare feet, the paw prints, and the drops of blood from the cut on my arm.
I headed in the direction I’d last heard Steve’s, Billy’s, and Robyn’s footsteps, mentally crossing my fingers that they would stick to that heading—that they’d actually known where they were going from the moment they’d left the campsite. My human form kept weight off my injured arm, but for that advantage—that necessity—I’d sacrificed most of my enhanced feline senses. My nose and ears were still more sensitive than a human’s, but they were nowhere near the advantage they would have been in cat form. And the flashlight I carried was no substitute for feline vision, a huge benefit in the dark.