Page 47 of To Hunt A Wolf
“There are things in motion.” His fingers stroke my hair. “So much of this began long before you walked into that warehouse. If I could go back and change it—”
“You’d what?”
His eyes are steady on me. Too steady.
Too full of secrets.
Another sob builds. Because whatever this is, it isn’t a reconciliation.
The back door of the van is torn open at the same moment the sliding door slams ajar. Both openings reveal men in ski masks. Their scents hit me—a dozen wolves, none of them Black Moon pack.
I jump to my feet. My adrenaline spikes, and my instincts scream at me to do whatever it takes to get away. The logical side of me knows it’s already too late.
The thug at the back door reaches for me. I pull my leg back and slam my heel into his nose. He cries out, stumbling back. Hands shove at me from behind, and I careen forward. Giving in to the momentum, I jump out of the van, determined to get free of this corner they’ve backed us into. But another attacker takes his place, and instead of landing on the ground, I’m plucked out of the air by a vise-like grip. Unfamiliar arms come around me, locking against my torso, bruising my ribs.
I scream, twisting my body in a corkscrew motion in an attempt to wriggle loose. But these guys are professionals. Another one grabs my ankles, neutralizing that particular threat.
When I twist again, I catch sight of Levi exiting the truck, and my heart literally stops beating for long enough that I think I might actually be dead.
If I am, this is Hell.
Because he’s not fighting, and he’s not being attacked.
In fact, he hops out of the van with an expression that might have shattered my heart had he not done that very thing to it already.
Levi doesn’t look at me. That, more than anything, confirms my fears.
“You’re late,” Levi tells them.
“You missed the rendezvous point by three miles,” one of the men snaps. He’s the one I kicked in the nose, and I’m rewarded now by the sight of blood pouring from his face and dripping off his chin. “You might have mentioned she’d put up a fight.”
“If you’d been on time, she wouldn’t have,” Levi says.
I stop struggling. The shock of awareness literally paralyzes me.
It’s not the fact that he’s just out-maneuvered me that’s breaking me down. It’s the realization that those stolen moments on the futon were all part of his plan to distract me from this.
He set me up.
“Load her up,” Levi says, and the two men holding me like a sack of potatoes begin carrying me toward another van parked behind ours.
This one’s newer, sleeker. Black with tinted windows. It looks professional like his team. They wear matching dark uniforms, and every one of them moves unlike any thugs-for-hire I’ve ever encountered.
Something tells me if they get me in that van, it’s all over.
I start fighting again, redoubling my efforts. I probably look insane with the crazy-ass way I’m corkscrewing around, but it’s the only way I know to break their grip.
It doesn’t work.
They get me to the van and toss me in like garbage.
A hand reaches for me, and I catch it with my teeth, biting until I taste blood. The man barks out a curse, and I let him go, spitting his blood on the van’s scratchy carpet.
“She’s fucking rabid, boss,” one of the goons complains.
“Tie her up,” Levi says in a voice devoid of any emotion.
It takes three of them to hold me down while one zip ties my wrists and another my ankles. I curse them all using an old Cajun phrase I picked up from one of my mom’s marks. The guy rears back, eyes wide through the ski mask he wears.
