Thrown to the Wolves (Gemini Series) Page 2

  The trouble with Zed was, he didn’t itch. He hadn’t since Meredith.

  Until Joann.

  “Maybe it’s best if we don’t do this again.” She punctured holes in the foam lid of her container with the tines of her fork in a methodical sweep, making him wonder if she was counting each individual one or multiplying by rows. “I don’t want to make things awkward.”

  He let her take his silence as agreement while inside the wolf toyed with the idea of biting her, marking her a bit, just enough she forgot about Dell and focused on him.

  Get your teeth near her, and I’ll lock us in this skin for a month solid and tip Dell to call the dog catcher on your mangy ass.

  The wolf didn’t see the problem with a love nip, but the threat of lockdown convinced him to drop the idea.

  Zed had no intention of going anywhere. Jo might be saying this was the last time she invited him to dinner, but all he heard was that next time he got to do the asking. One dinner invitation wouldn’t mean they were dating. It would make them square. Satisfied with that logic, Zed tucked into his meal.

  Thanks to the local country station playing softly in the background, the quiet didn’t bother him. The same couldn’t be said for Joann, who kept puncturing holes as though lost in thought about the conversation they weren’t having.

  “How long will you be in town?” Zed wasn’t much for small talk, but he could fake it for her. “I thought you were in college.”

  Yet another reason why he ought to get while the getting was good.

  “I took a semester off to help Aunt Li.” Joann set down her fork and gave up pretending to eat. “I have the most experience running Panda, so it makes sense.”

  “How is your aunt?”

  Li Zhuang had been kidnapped by a runaway fae prince and used as domestic staff in the ramshackle house where he had hidden until the pack located him and returned him to his people. She hadn’t been physically harmed, but she was missing a portion of her memory. Part of that was by design, to protect the wargs from discovery, but part of it was also the magic the fae had used to keep her compliant.

  “She’s better now. Sleeping through the night. No recent memory loss.” Joann sipped her water. “I plan on going home in two months.”

  Two months was too long and not nearly long enough to curb the wolf’s fascination.

  “Let me know if there’s anything I can do to help.”

  “You’ve done enough.” She reached out like she might cover his hand with hers but stopped at the last minute and curled her fingers into her palm. Eager to be petted, it was all Zed could do to stop the wolf from nudging his hand under hers. “My family and I are so thankful you found her.”

  Li’s bike had been discovered mangled on the side of the road a day prior to Zed returning her to her family. The story the pack settled on was that Zed spotted her on his way to work and pulled over to assist. Doctors in town hypothesized she had been struck while riding her bike to work and suffered a head injury despite the absence of bruising or other wounds.

  Good thing humans were so quick to believe in miracles.

  “I’m glad I could help.” He might have aided in the rescue, the real one where the wargs fought the fae and won, but it still shamed him to accept her blind gratitude. “It’s getting late. I ought to let you get on with your night. Thanks for your help with Dell. I’m sure she’ll come home when she’s ready. She always does.”

  Joann rose when he did as though his standing had elevated her too and walked him to the door. She waited until he’d stepped outside to ask, “Will I see you tomorrow?”

  “Yes.” Now that he knew she looked for him, he would make himself easy to find.

  “Goodnight, Mr. Ames.”

  “Zed.”

  “Zed,” she murmured. “Call me Jo.”

  “Jo.” He savored the small intimacy like she’d offered him a four-course meal instead of leftovers. “Goodnight.”

  Jo ducked her head as she closed the door behind him. He meandered toward the stairs, waiting to hear each twist of the locks he’d noticed on his way out before taking the first step down. Halfway to his truck, he caught the same otherworldly scent, and his hackles rose. He trailed it as best he could with his duller, human nose, but he lost that one thread among myriad others.

  Shifting on the heels of his last change would leave him vulnerable to an unknown threat, but the dusting of snow he expected overnight would muddy the scents even more if he waited until tomorrow, and it would make tracking next to impossible. The wolf snarled in his belly until he consented to the plan. More than Joann’s—Jo’s—safety was at stake if one of the fae had infiltrated the town under the pack’s nose. He couldn’t afford to wait.

  The sensation of being watched prickled between his shoulder blades, and he spun to identify the source. A silhouette in a second-floor window raised a hand. Jo. She was probably wondering why the hell he was pacing circles in her parking lot like a madman. Growling with the knowledge he could do nothing more to protect her tonight, not on two legs, he cranked up Tallulah and pointed her toward home.

  Chapter 2

  Jo watched until Zed’s taillights faded, her breath gusting clouds on the icy windowpane. “He’s gone.”

  Aunt Li strolled from the bedroom wearing a peculiar expression. “You like him.”

  “Is that so bad?” She rested her forehead against the glass. “The wargs aren’t our enemies.”

  “His pack is honorable, but he is broken. It’s dangerous inviting his attention.”

  Zed didn’t feel dangerous, not to the beast straining in her middle. He felt necessary.

  “He’s been hunting me since you were taken, since the night we first met.” Jo forced her gaze from the ruby pinpricks miles down the street and straightened. “I’m not sure there’s anything I can do at this point to dissuade him.” A pulsing rumble vibrated up the back of her throat at the thought of purposely hurting him. “Or her.”

  Jo’s inner beast was purring for Zed, and they were barely on a first name basis.

  “I had wondered.” A sense of inevitability enshrouded Aunt Li. “You could leave. Return to campus. Put distance between you.”

  Wild wolves could cover thirty miles a day while in search of food or mates, running at speeds of up to forty miles per hour. Warg endurance was twice that. Outrunning his interest wasn’t an option.

  “I’d rather stay and help you.” Aunt Li was a fierce warrior, but their kind hunted better in pairs or small groups. “The town needs us. So do the wolves.”

  The Lorimar pack had no idea two Bìxié were aiding their cause to protect local humans from fae predation thanks to a powerful spell bought off a local witch. The charms they wore ensured their scents remained human and uninteresting to the multitude of supernaturals in the area.

  “My brave girl.” Aunt Li wiped away proud tears before they fell. “You honor your family.”

  Grinning at her sentimentality, Jo toed off her shoes. “Are you ready to hunt?”

  A red haze shrouded her aunt’s vision. “Always.”

  Unlike the wolves, who minded communal nudity about as much as a kid minded finding a dollar on the sidewalk, Bìxié culture was more subdued. There was no shame in nudity, but neither was it flaunted. Jo left Aunt Li to her change in the living room while she undressed in her room. Naked, she sat on her bed and sank into the meditative state that woke the beast within. The pulse she had just slowed leapt in her veins as the change swept over her in a prickling wave. The sting was no worse than the pins and needles sensation of Zed returning circulation to her hands.

  As the last prickle faded, Jo leapt to the floor on all fours with leonine grace and shook out her sleek fur. Her delicate wings rustled as they settled against her spine, and she padded into the living room to greet Aunt Li with a gentle headbutt under her chin, a sign of affection among big cats.

  Her aunt was leaner than she had been before she was taken by the fae prince, but her tail swished with e
agerness, and the nubby horns curving from her temples over the back of her head shone under the lights.

  A whiff of magic teased Jo’s nose as they settled the glamours that camouflaged their true natures into place. Anyone who saw them now would see only what the magic allowed—a pair of tawny strays perfectly at home on the city streets.

  Aunt Li pawed the lever on the front door, and it popped open. She exited the apartment then stood on the landing while Jo used her prehensile tail to pull the door closed behind them. With no means of locking or unlocking the door in this form, Jo had bartered some of her rare feathers in exchange for a protective ward she activated with a thought as she joined her aunt.

  “I scent kobold,” Aunt Li purred in Jo’s mind through the mental link shared by their pride of two. “One must have tracked us back to our den.”

  “They’re getting bolder. We need to end this.”

  Last night alone, they’d killed five kobolds in a clutch nesting on the outskirts of town. According to fae lore, kobolds were benign entities. The truth? Any insult or slight brought out their malicious side, and they weren’t adjusting well to living among humans, who would have shunned their green skin and clawed hands. Pissed they had to hide to survive, that this world was no better than the one they had abandoned, their anger was escalating. So far, they’d killed fourteen pets in the area and eaten them. Jo had found the bones, scorched by campfire, herself. Two small children had been attacked, but the parents intervened in time. They couldn’t risk a third attempt. That kid might not be as lucky. The nest had to go before they developed a taste for human flesh.

  “Agreed.”

  Aunt Li prowled into the woods behind the apartment building, and Jo fell in line behind her to watch her back. They loped through the trees, following the pungent stink of unwashed kobold until reaching the spot of last night’s massacre. From the look of things, the others had cannibalized the remains of their fallen.

  “We need more dissolution powder,” Aunt Li lamented. “It’s dangerous leaving carcasses behind for humans to find.”

  “The witch is out of town until New Year’s. We’ll have to make do until then.”

  Skirting the carnage, they crept up a small hill to perch on the lip of a short ravine. Down in the gully, the green-skinned fae trundled about their business, oblivious to the predators in their midst. Kobolds weren’t the brightest fae. Despite losing half their number, they hadn’t relocated their camp.

  Then again, maybe it wasn’t stupidity but determination that rooted them in place. Winter was cold and harsh, and food got scarce fast. The need for easy hunting near town must have trumped the threat of a secondary attack in their minds.

  A tingle zipped down Jo’s spine, an awareness that they were being hunted, and not by kobolds. No. This predator churned the stirrings of genuine fear in her gut. Swiveling her ears in frantic sweeps, she picked up the crush, crunch of paws on snow.

  Jo clung tighter to her invisibility. “Aunt, we should—”

  A massive wolf sprang where her aunt had crouched seconds earlier.

  Zed.

  He must have scented the kobold in the parking lot and circled back to scout for his pack.

  Sidestepping his first attack had saved Aunt Li from the sharp end of his teeth, but he had locked onto her smell and launched himself in her direction again.

  The lioness in Jo’s heart refused to score a line down his side, he was so thin and rangy, his pelt mottled and wiry. Losing his human mate years ago had ruined him, and she couldn’t bear to cause him an ounce more pain.

  “Run,” Aunt Li screamed as she lowered her head and plowed into Zed’s side, using her polished horns as a devastating battering ram. “Cover your tracks as best you can. He must not learn the truth.”

  “I won’t leave you.” She didn’t want to harm Zed, but for Aunt Li, she would.

  The force of Aunt Li’s blow slammed Zed against the trunk of a sapling tree, and she didn’t stop there. She bit and tore at him until his fury bypassed whatever luck had saved her moments earlier. He lunged for her throat, ripping and snarling, and tore with all his might.

  With a strangled roar, Aunt Li’s glamour flickered and died.

  Once Zed got an eyeful of what he had been battling, he backpedaled so fast he bumped into the same tree that had almost broken his spine. He hacked a few times, rubbing his muzzle in the snow to clean off the blood before lowering his nose to inhale in rib-cracking breaths.

  Lifting his head, he scented the air before turning his head and finding Jo unerringly. He didn’t tense to attack, didn’t blink, didn’t breathe if the lack of white plumes in front of his muzzle were any indication.

  Aware she was making herself an easy target, Jo listened to her gut and lowered her glamour. The wolf approached her warily, fur standing on end. His golden eyes locked with hers, and she watched the calculations running behind them, saw the moment he came to his own conclusion.

  Zed angled his neck a fraction to the left, the tiniest sign of submission, or perhaps an unspoken offer of peace, then he hit the ground on his side.

  Jo waited until the change seized him to seek out her aunt. There was nothing for her to do but curl around the wounded lioness to provide warmth and lick the wound as blood spilled in a crimson stain across the snow. Cuddled up to Aunt Li, she kept a warning eye on Zed.

  She had never witness a warg shifting, and she hoped to never see it again. His spine bowed, agony rippling across his features as one half of him battled the other for rights to his skin. He didn’t cry out once during his transformation, only grunted once or twice. How he managed to contain so much pain awed her. She might have asked him, but he would say he had gotten used to the hurt when she saw with her own eyes there was no blunting the agony of being ripped in half and sewn back together in a new configuration.

  A quarter of an hour later, he sat naked in the snow, panting so hard his breath fogged his expression and made it impossible for Jo to read him.

  “Shift,” he ordered Aunt Li in a tone that said few wolves disobeyed him. “I can’t carry you like this.”

  Jo’s ears perked at the desperate edge to his voice as he inched closer. She wanted to ask where he planned on carrying Aunt Li. They had no family here, no one to treat the wounds, which might prove fatal for a lioness of her age. But there was no talking to him in this form.

  “Jo.” He flicked his gaze up at her while checking her aunt’s pulse. “Tell her to shift.”

  She startled at her name on his lips. He’d recognized her, even in this form. That shouldn’t have surprised her, and yet somehow—the furious undercurrent in that one syllable—did. Paws weren’t going to save Aunt Li, so Jo released her other form and wrapped her arm around her aunt’s still body.

  Zed made a strangled sound at the sudden appearance of a naked woman in front of him.

  Since when were wargs prudes?

  “You’ll freeze,” he gritted out, just as naked and miserable as she was at that moment. “Shift back.”

  “Aunt Li is unconscious. She can’t shift like this.” Forcing down the blush that wanted to rise, Jo got to her feet. “You need help carrying her.”

  With a growl pumping through his chest, Zed scooped the lioness’s front end into his arms and waited as Jo hefted her hindquarters. He walked backward without missing a step, guiding them down an old game trail, until they reached a vintage truck patched together with salvaged parts.

  “Where are you taking us?” She left him no wiggle room to ditch her.

  “We have a healer.” His snarl cracked like a whip across her senses. “Do you?”

  If she hadn’t already been half-frozen, the way she mashed her lips together would have numbed them. “No.”

  “Then get in.” He jerked his chin toward the cab. “You’re coming home with me.”

  “I’ll ride in the back with her.”

  “Suit yourself.”

  Together they eased the pliant lioness onto the bed of the truc
k, and Jo crawled up beside her. Zed reappeared with a blanket from the cab and tossed it over them. Jo laid down on the chilled metal and wrapped her arm around Aunt Li, holding on tight as Zed gunned the engine and praying to the gods Aunt Li would survive.

  “Everything will be all right,” she soothed. “Zed’s people will help us.”

  The lioness barely breathed in response.

  Jo remained curled around her aunt until the truck slid to a rough stop. Tires crunched, and gravel pinged the undercarriage. Her head cracked against the wheel well, but she didn’t make a peep out of fear Zed would focus on her minor hurt instead of her aunt.

  “What the hell, Zed?” a woman’s voice demanded from somewhere to their left. “Are you trying to kill yourself?”

  “Not today,” he huffed without amusement. “Call Abram. I’ve got an injured…something.”

  A gorgeous redhead peered over the tailgate, her nostrils flaring as she breathed them in. “Not fae.”

  “We’re Bìxié.” Jo struggled to her knees and wrapped the bloodied blanket around herself like a bath towel. “Please, can you help my aunt?”

  “You’re Joann Zhuang.” The woman palmed her forehead. “I thought I recognized you.” A furrow knitted her brow. “That’s Li Zhuang?”

  “Heard I got a patient waiting. Who got drunk and…” An older man joined the woman and glared down at them. “What the hell?”

  “Can we talk inside?” Jo pleaded. “Our elders don’t heal quickly. She’s bleeding out while you gawk.”

  The man jerked as if Jo had slapped him and sprang into action.

  “Give me a hand,” he barked at the woman. “We need to get her in the clinic.”

  Once they lifted the lioness clear of the truck bed, Zed appeared. He extended his arms, and Jo grasped them to ease herself to the ground. But he proved clingier than kudzu, folding her against his chest and striding toward a tall building built to mimic a miniature castle as viewed through the lens of an amusement park interior designer.