Styx's Storm (Breeds 16)

All she had to do was reach the main road.

Luck. If luck were on her side, then the Breeds and the Coyote Gena had brought with her would still be fighting it out at the cabin, neither side any wiser to the fact that she was once again on the run.

Styx wasn't with the Breeds. He couldn't be. She knew he wasn't. He wouldn't have left her like that, alone and frightened.

If she could get a ride into town and find a hole to hide in for just a few hours, then maybe she could figure out where to go next, what to do next and how to get the ring to Jonas Wyatt safely.

One thing was for certain, the information her father had left in her care was going to get her killed if she didn't do something. Just as it may have gotten Styx killed.

She had to give it to Jonas, she couldn't allow the Council to take it from her. That le

ft her stuck between a rock and a hard place, with no room to turn in, and she was so tired of running.

As she raced up the steep incline before her, the soil beneath her feet gave, throwing her off balance for precious seconds. Grabbing a slender branch on a nearby bush, she couldn't stop the cry that passed her lips when thorns dug into her flesh.

Instinct and pain had her jerking back, completing a disastrous arc that sent her spinning on the wet dirt and tumbling down the slope.

Her body hit hard, her face slamming into the ground as she hit the bottom and dug her nails into the dirt, fighting to push herself to her feet.

One more try.

Breathing hard, weakness slamming through her, Storme stumbled again as she struggled to drag herself up the hill to the road above. She could see the lights of the passing vehicles, smell the asphalt and the heat of the tires racing over the road.

It wasn't that far, she told herself desperately.

She could make it.

Just a few more feet. She was just a few more feet to safety.

Digging her fingers into the wet earth, she clawed her way up the slope, stumbled onto the shoulder and swayed as lights pierced her vision, blinding her for precious seconds as the sound of squealing tires streaked through her senses.

A vehicle, dark and large, slammed to a stop in front of her. A van of some kind. Storme swayed dizzily as the side door slid back with a thud and she found herself hauled into the darkened interior.

Dizzy, exhausted, there was no way she could fight the too strong grip, or the male bodies that shifted around her, blocking the exit before the door slid closed with a bang and the vehicle accelerated quickly from its position.

All she knew was the fact that she was fucked. So well and truly dead that she might as well go ahead and say her final words to her maker, because sure as hell, she was getting ready to meet him real damned soon.

Only Council soldiers or Breeds could have staged this. And she knew the Breeds were busy protecting their own now.

She wasn't one of their own, therefore she wasn't protected.

Styx hadn't come for her.

The flight, the dizziness, the terror and the sheer heart-break that suddenly suffused her raced over her senses then. She felt the darkness, felt the blessed oblivion, and sank willingly, gratefully within it.

Mating heat.

Styx held his mate against his chest, feral fury pouring through him as the scent of the other Breeds became offensive to his senses.

The animal howling inside him demanded that he get his mate to safety, that he check the wounds on her body, that he do something to ease the heartrending agony he had felt inside her before she passed out in his arms.

The rage that had burned inside him when he had regained consciousness at Haven, only to learn his mate had been taken, was something Styx never wanted to feel again. He never wanted to feel that bloody primal fury overtake him, control him.

The Wolf had been acting on instinct alone. Nothing had mattered to him, nothing had existed in his world but finding his mate.

The glands beneath his tongue had instantly pumped full of the mating hormone. His mind had filled with the need for her, the possessiveness and overriding protectiveness that had obliterated any other thought or instinct in his mind.

When he had learned Ghost Team had allowed Marx Whitman and Gena Waters to escape with his mate, he had nearly gone mad.