Free Web NovelChapter 17: Hunt Her Down
Behind the thick oak tree, Rhea’s breath caught in her throat. She looked up at the towering Alpha beside her, her voice barely audible. "What did you do?"
Adam didn’t look at her right away. His dark amber eyes glinted with mischief, completely captivated by the chaotic unraveling of his nephew. A slow, infuriatingly handsome smile curved his lips before he finally turned his gaze down to her. The intense heat of his body pressed flush against her back in the cramped shadow.
"I took you," he murmured, his deep baritone a smoky caress against her ear that made her inner wolf, River, purr with sudden warmth. "Right from under his nose."
Out in the clearing, Daniel scrambled to his feet and frantically signaled the lower-ranking enforcers to start clawing at the earth with shovels.
Kaleb stood entirely rigid, his eyes pinned to the mound of sand, his chest heaving under his leather vest as his golden eyes gleamed with paranoid anticipation.
"Alpha, stop." Daniel looked genuinely disturbed. "This is a Luna’s grave." His eyes flickered toward the mound.
"Former Luna," Kaleb corrected, his eyes never leaving the dirt.
"The men already think her death brought bad luck to the pack." He swallowed. "If the elders hear about this—"
"I don’t care about gossip," Kaleb hissed, his fangs threatening to push through his gums. "I just want the truth."
"And it’s not in the dirt," Daniel argued, stepping into Kaleb’s line of sight. "We should be tearing the packhouse apart, not this forest. Someone inside our own walls helped the intruder. The Luna is dead and gone, Alpha. The more time we waste digging up a corpse, the more distance the thief has to run."
Kaleb went entirely still. His eyes narrowed into slits as his gaze darted erratically between the shallow grave and his Beta’s face.
A sudden, sharp gust of wind swept through the canopy, rattling the dry leaves and violently shifting the scent of the forest.
Rhea’s heart stopped. The wind was blowing directly from them toward the clearing.
Kaleb’s nostrils flared instantly. He sucked in a massive breath, his head snapping toward the dark thicket where Rhea and Adam stood concealed. The scent had hit him, the unmistakable, potent trail of rain-soaked earth, heavy musk, and wild pine. freewebnovel.cσ๓
Rhea’s jaw tightened, her hands pressing flat against Adam’s solid chest as panic spiked her scent further. "Something is wrong," she breathed.
Daniel stepped forward blindly. "We need to leave, Al—"
Kaleb hoisted a rigid hand, cutting his Beta off mid-sentence. His golden eyes locked directly onto the shadows hiding them, his wolf fully surging to the surface.
"She’s here," Kaleb blurted, his voice choked with a terrifying mix of horror and rage.
Daniel blinked, frowning in sheer confusion. "What? Alpha, that’s impossible, she’s—"
"Spread out and find her!" Kaleb roared, his Alpha aura exploding through the clearing like a thunderclap, shattering Daniel’s words. "Find her! Hunt her down! I want her dragged to my feet alive!"
Rhea’s eyes widened, her chest heaving heavily as the Ironfang enforcers dropped their shovels, bared their fangs, and began fanning out directly toward their hiding spot.
"We have to—"
Adam’s hand closed around her waist before she could finish speaking. Rhea stiffened as he pulled her down behind the stone ruins beside him.
"Calm down. You breathe too loudly for someone trying not to get caught," he murmured near her ear.
"I wasn’t trying not to get caught."
His mouth curved slightly. "That," he said quietly, "doesn’t surprise me at all. But I’m sorry, I can’t let that happen."
While the rest of the Ironfang wolves fanned out through the thick brush, Kaleb moved with a singular, lethal focus. His eyes glowed a manic, terrifying gold in the dim light of the canopy.
He could smell her, the faint, lingering trail of the mate-bond he thought he had severed. It was right here, and he was going to drag her from the shadows at all costs.
In the dark hollow of the ancient oak, Adam’s jaw set into a rigid line, his eyes flashing a dominant, predatory amber. The danger was close enough to make the hairs on his arms stand up. He shifted, his massive frame pressing flush against Rhea’s back to push her deeper into the roots.
Rhea jolted as his bare skin brushed against her arm, a sharp, electric shockwave of heat racing through her veins. Before a gasp could leave her lips, Adam’s large hand clamped gently but unyieldingly over her mouth, sealing the sound inside her throat.
"Your heart is racing like a panicked rabbit," Adam breathed against the shell of her ear, his deep voice a subterranean vibration that made her inner wolf shudder. "Your pulse is spiking your scent. He’s tracking you right to this tree."
Rhea’s jaw clenched tightly against his palm, the metallic taste of fear and adrenaline sharp on her tongue. She pried his hand down just enough to whisper furiously, River roaring like a caged beast inside her mind. frёewebnoѵel.ƈo๓
"I don’t care about that! Let me go. I’ll take my chances with him. I’ll tear his eyes out myself!"
"I will not allow it," Adam rumbled, his fingers tightening on her waist with absolute, terrifying authority. He leaned over her, his broad shoulders completely blotting out the rest of the forest, trapping her in a cocoon of his rich, intoxicating scent of pine and cedarwood.
"You are my partner now. I need to make sure you live long enough to deliver on your promises before he can put you back in a cage."
Rhea’s brows furrowed, her chest heaving against his solid pectorals. "What do you mean?"
Adam didn’t reply with words. Instead, he moved with fluid, terrifying speed, wrapping his heavy arms around her and pulling her completely into his chest. He buried his face into the crook of her neck, his hot breath fanning across her pulse point.
"Let me shield you," he murmured, the rough edge of his voice turning surprisingly raw, almost possessive. "I did not drag you out of a grave just to hand you back to him."
Rhea’s body screamed at her to fight him, to push against his massive chest, to scream for her freedom, but the moment his Alpha aura completely enveloped her, masking her scent with his own overwhelming, dominant musk, something strange happened.
River’s snarling abruptly stopped. The silence inside her mind terrified Rhea more than the approaching wolves. Her wolf should not have felt safe in another Alpha’s arms, not after Kaleb.
Out in the clearing, Kaleb froze dead in his tracks. His brows furrowed deeply, his nostrils flaring as he sucked in a massive lungful of the damp forest air. He sniffed erratically, his hands curling into claws.
The scent of Rhea was completely gone. Or rather, it had transformed. The delicate, bleeding trail of his former Luna had been entirely swallowed up, crushed beneath the suffocating, apex-predator mark of a massive Alpha whose power made the very ground beneath Kaleb’s boots feel unstable.
Suddenly, hurried footsteps rushed towards Kaleb.
"Alpha, you need to see this," Daniel said, extending a piece of cloth to Kaleb. "One of the men found it."
Kaleb stared at the cloth. For a long moment, nobody spoke.
Then his face drained of color. "Bloodveil?" he whispered. His eyes snapped toward the border. "This belongs to my uncle’s pack."
