“I’ll take a quick shower,” I tell her. “I put our clothes in the washing machine. Not that I want you to put any on.”
If I could somehow keep and hold forever the smile she sends me, I would. It lights up my insides like a wildfire, demolishing every resistance in its path.
Why haven’t I claimed her?
Because losing her would kill me, I remind myself.
But not having her is killing me, too.
Lance calls as I’m about to get into the shower. I consider not answering, but I’m the alpha. I can’t ignore my pack members.
“What’s up?” I growl into the phone.
“We’re moving in on the cartel,” Lance says.
“What? Not without me you’re not.”
Lance makes a dismissing pfft sound. “We don’t need you. They’re just human. We found out where they operate. They have a mansion outside Santa Fe. Channing, Deke, and I are driving down right now. We’ll take care of it. You keep your mate safe until we’ve eliminated the threat.”
“Negative. Wait for my command. I repeat–”
Lance ends the call.
Sonofabitch.
I call him back, and the fucker sends it to voicemail. I am seriously going to kill him for breaking the chain of command. Even as I rage, I recognize what he’s doing. My pack is trying to take care of me for a change. I can’t stand it–just like Adele can’t stand letting me take care of her. Yet accepting help is as much a gift as offering it. Every time Adele allows me to help her, it soothes my wolf. Maybe it’s not exactly the same for my pack–they aren’t my mates–but I can see how they might want to do this for me.
For us.
Just like I’d do anything for them.
I grit my teeth and climb in the shower. I’m sure they can handle themselves. They’re well-trained and nearly invincible. They definitely know what they’re doing. Still, something niggles in the back of my mind. Something doesn’t feel right about any of this.
The Stranger
They threatened his mate. These petty criminals high on their own dust. The minute the alert went out on the dark web channels his hackers haunted, he knew she was in danger. His eyes slitted, and his spine vibrated with the advent of the monster.
No one threatened his mate and lived.
It took a few hours for his hunters to find the cartel headquarters. Another day to deliberate the cartel’s end. He had an army at his beck and call, but why should they get the pleasure of destroying the damned? Of razing the cartel’s compound to the ground? The cartel threatened his mate. This was personal, and called for a personal solution.
There was a monster inside of him. It was time to let him out.
The flight to the cartel’s headquarters was easy. He took off from a nearby helipad, and a few minutes later hovered over their mansion. The air whipped over his face, scented with aspen and pine–tinder for the coming fire. As he drew closer, the wind blew the lawn furniture askew. Atop the roof, the stone chimney trembled.
He took a brief moment to savor the cartel’s destruction. A deep inhale, and then… the cleansing flame.
It was the work of a moment. He did not wield a weapon, he was the weapon. Like conquests of old: the targets knew his wrath and glorious power a second before they died, consumed in fire.
After the first pass, the screams of the dying seasoned the air. Gray smoke billowed from the remains of the enemy’s mansion, like incense rising from a priest’s censer.
Another pass, and gusts of wind flattened the lawn grass, tore down trees, fanned the rapidly spreading flames. He was patient, he was thorough. His flame carved a path through the cartel’s mansion, turning the center into an inferno. Blue fire incinerated the wood and cracked the stone. Turning sand to glass. Turning the mansion and the living beings within to charcoal and ash.
And then: blissful, holy silence, broken only by the beating wind. The epicenter of his destruction was a blackened hole. Triumph!
He’d extinguished the enemy's lives as quickly as snuffing a candle. The threat to Adele was gone, and he was the one to obliterate it. Not the Alpha wolf who thought to protect her. They were late to the hunt. There was no living thing left for the wolf pack to kill. They would find that soon enough.
The wailing sirens of the human emergency vehicles echoed up to the clouds. Soon the world would know what would happen to anyone who dared threaten his beloved. And the wolf shifter who dared to think Adele was his? Lightfoot would soon know the truth.
She is mine!
He would protect Adele. She belonged to him, not the wolf. Lightfoot had served his purpose: instinct had told him to hunt the wolf, and instinct had been right. The wolf Lightfoot had led to Adele. After years of searching, he’d finally found the only woman in the world for him. He’d been patient, bided his time to learn more about her, so he could woo her properly, following the rituals of his people. But now there was no time.