Page 6 of Claimed

“Children, you are making a mistake,” he says.

That’s the final straw. None of us are children, and Trent has no patience whatsoever for being disrespected.

The guy isn’t going to leave. He’s clearly rich and powerful and the sort of person who is used to getting what he wants. The pack has lost patience.

“Turn around and walk away.”

I’m impressed that Trent is nice enough to give that very last warning. Of course, the stranger doesn’t know what he’s up against. He has no idea who he is messing with. He sees a bunch of kids in a field getting into trouble and thinks he can tell us what to do. He’s about to find out just how wrong he is. If he knew anything about us, he’d be worried by the fact that a lotof the guys are starting to get undressed, kicking off nice shoes, pulling off shirts they’re going to want later. Some of them are even straight up taking their pants off.

I’m a little concerned that he’s not reacting to that, actually, because by normal person standards, a bunch of guys getting close to naked in the middle of a field should ring alarm bells. It doesn’t seem to.

He doesn’t even say anything in response to Trent’s last order. He just stands there, looking for all the world like he owns the place. And that is the final, final, absolute last straw.

Bare flesh bursts into massive rippling pelts of fur. Smirking smiles turn into massive bared canines. The pack shifts almost simultaneously.

They’re going to rip this guy apart if he doesn’t submit to them.

Maybe if he curls up in a ball and pisses himself, they might leave him with nothing more than a few bites. Blood is going to be shed, and this guy is going to learn a lesson about the world at large being bigger and weirder than he ever imagined it could be. He’s going to come out of this forever psychologically changed, and probably physically scarred—but that’s it.

Contrary to popular belief, you cannot make someone a shifter by biting them. That’s a vampire thing. I keep forgetting to ask if vampires are real. Now’s probably not the time either.

I wait to hear the shrieking and the begging and the squealing and everything that comes with a man suddenly finding himself absolutely surrounded by the world’s most dangerous predators.

For a second, I see him surrounded by the pack, and then I can’t see anything. The wall of fur and fang is too dense. I hearsnapping jaws, growling, snarling, but no begging, no panic. Instead there’s a sound, a cross between a bark and a snarl that gets my attention.

The energy changes. I feel it before I know what’s happened, before the very same wolves fighting to protect me suddenly start flying around me like squirrels being tossed by a vicious dog. I am caught by a wall of muscle as one of them spins toward me, doing its best to avoid crushing me, massive paws dancing around me, the side of his flank pushing me out of the fray.

In the middle of the pack is a new wolf. A much larger, much more intensely dominant shifted beast.

“Fuck,” I whisper to myself.

The man who I thought was a rich idiot about to have his throat ripped out is the most incredibly large and entirely dangerous creature any of us have ever beheld. He’s at least one and a half times larger than any of the others, his eyes are ice fucking blue, and his pelt is jet black with a few stripes of silver here and there around his muzzle. He is an incredible creature, and I cannot stop staring at him.

The pack has backed off. They’re as wary and impressed as I am. I’ve heard that when you become your wolf self, you can be much more brutal than usual, but there is also all sorts of animal signaling that happens that makes it much less likely to get into an actual fight.

The wolves in the pack submit to Trent because everything about him is dominant. The same thing is happening now with this stranger. Something about him is activating the submissive fawn response in the pack. I watch them crouch down in front of him,whining. Some of them even roll over where they are lying and show their bellies. Even Trent bows his head.

In an instant, I have lost my pack’s protection. I am standing in the midst of what amounts to a battlefield of fallen soldiers.

The stranger shifts back into his human form. He is now naked in front of me, and of course my eyes are drawn to the weighty meat between his legs. I’ve seen penises before, of course, but nothing like his. It’s an absolute weapon.

He clears his throat, and I yank my eyes away from his private area, knowing that I’m staring like a freak, and that this is the very last thing that matters right now. This shifter wants to abduct me, and there’s nothing my pack can do about it.

“Anya,” he says.

My name is like a release cue. He knows my name. He wants me. He’s coming for me.

I turn, and I run as fast as I can. The barn sits on rolling acres of farmland adjacent to a forest, which I always thought was really picturesque, but now even the few dozen yards seem like a bare open desert to sprint through before there’s any kind of cover.

I am pretty fast, and he has to get through a pile of submissive wolves, so I almost get to the verge of the woods before a large naked Russian man brings me down in a tackle. He tries to soften it, I think, but there’s only so soft something like that can be, and I get a mouth full of grass before I am rolled over and picked up like a sack of potatoes over his shoulder.

“Let me go! Let me fucking go!” I kick and flail for all I am worth, but it does nothing. He’s strong. He has that alpha shifter strength that makes resisting him almost impossible. Buthe’s not entirely invulnerable. He is naked. There’s got to be something I can do with that. I try to knee him somewhere vulnerable, but he flips me back over onto my stomach and pins me face down on the ground.

My pants are pulled down by a big, dominant hand. I let out a scream that nobody responds to. Then several hard, painful slaps are laid across my cheeks. He’s spanking me for daring to fight him, or for being ready to run, or just because he fucking wants to. I don’t know. I just know that it hurts like hell.

“Get off me!”

“Stop being a spoiled little girl and listen,” he growls down at me. “I have important news, and I had to track you halfway across the country to find you, because you are not in college.”

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