Serengeti Sunrise ss-4 Read online

  Zoe nodded once. “The girl’s scared shitless. She shouldn’t be a problem. The one guy I saw was sort of thinnish, but if they’re armed—” She broke off, her eyes scanning every surface of the tiny office even as she applied pressure to the wound in his shoulder. “D’you see anything I can use as a shield? Kevlar would be nice, but I doubt they left a flak jacket lying around for me.”

  Tyler wrapped his fingers around Zoe’s wrist to get her attention, focused on the one part of her statement that scared him most. “You aren’t going in there.”

  “You want to wait ’em out? I gotta say that’s a pretty crappy plan, Tyler, since I’m pretty sure the exit to this tin can is through that room. Unless you’re feeling up to tearing through another wall.”

  “I’ll go.”

  “You’re bleeding. A lot. There’s macho and then there’s dumbass. Don’t be a dumbass.”

  The animal rose up inside him, fast and violent, and he ground his teeth against the primal urge to shift. He’d probably die of blood loss if he did, but instinct didn’t care. “I can’t watch you get shot, Zoe,” he growled. The sight would kill him faster than a bullet.

  “Yeah, well, I can’t stand here and watch you get shot again. The one who isn’t injured gets to take on the bad guys. Those are the rules.”

  “Together.” The word was painful to push out, but Zoe was right, he wasn’t much protection shot up and unable to shift to his more powerful form.

  “Together? Bonnie and Clyde style?”

  Tyler winced. “Maybe pick a couple who didn’t die.”

  “Can’t think of any. Butch and Sundance… Thelma and Louise…”

  “Zoe. Stop.”

  “Together is good,” she said, a catch in her voice.

  He squeezed her wrist gently, looking away from the door to study the curves of her face he’d long since memorized. Dark circles smudged the smooth skin beneath her eyes, lines of stress bracketed her mouth and her eyes were glassy, but her hands were steady. “Zoe,” he whispered.

  She swallowed thickly, looking up to meet his eyes. “Yeah, I know. I love you too.”

  His heart lurched. He’d run from her, from this, for months. He’d known from the second he laid eyes on her that Zoe King was his, and he’d done everything he could to keep from falling for her. He’d seen her as another duty, another weight of responsibility, but Zoe wasn’t an obligation, she was his whole heart. He didn’t just need her or want her, he loved her with an intensity that made the rest of his life small by comparison.

  What kind of fool saw that truth only when their life together might last only a few more minutes?

  Tyler wrapped his uninjured arm around Zoe and held her against his chest, pressing a kiss on her forehead, breathing in the scent of her—even if it was overlaid with the thick tang of his own blood.

  A muted thud from behind the door to the lab called them back to the task at hand.

  Zoe pulled away, straightening to stand on her own. “Let’s do this.”

  Zoe crouched on her haunches beside the door, trying to shake the woozy feeling that had accompanied her latest shift. Tyler hunched to the left of the doorway, ready to throw it open so Zoe could leap through—a plan she’d feel much more confident with if he didn’t look like he was about to pass out from blood loss.

  They made a great team. Dizzy and dizzier. If surviving came down to a race to see who could lose consciousness first, they were set.

  But the situation wasn’t going to get better if they waited. There was nothing in the office to stitch Tyler up and nothing for her to eat to get her energy level up. They were never going to be in better shape than they were in right now.

  Zoe nodded once—the gesture always feeling oddly foreign in her feline form—and Tyler reached for the doorknob.

  She darted through the opening as soon as it was wide enough to fit her body, belly low to the ground, teeth bared, claws out—and drew up short, paws scrabbling to stop her momentum on the smooth tiles of the lab.

  Two bodies lay prone on the floor, unmoving, white foam dribbling from their mouths and a sickly sweet smell rising off them. Zoe hissed, instinctively backing away from the too-sweet death scent.

  Ponytail guy and a younger, even thinner man with a military-style haircut weren’t going to be a problem anymore.

  “What the hell?” Tyler stood in the doorway, frowning at the bodies on the floor.

  A clicking sound brought Zoe around sharply, and she saw the girl, huddled in the corner between an exam table and a metal cabinet, sobbing silently and shaking so hard her teeth were rattling against one another. “I c-c-couldn’t,” she moaned, holding something clutched tightly in her fist. “Please don’t h-h-hurt me.”

  Zoe closed her mouth to hide the sharpness of her fangs, rising out of her hunting crouch.

  “A suicide pill?” Tyler bent over the bodies to check for pulses, his nose wrinkling at the sweet-and-sour scent. He turned his head toward the girl. “Why?”

  “B-B-Ben said the bullets didn’t stop you. We didn’t have s-s-silver,” she explained, somewhat calmer now that she wasn’t being snarled at by a few hundred pounds of pissed-off lioness.

  Silver bullets. Thank God for superstitious idiots.

  “Ben was a lousy shot,” Tyler grunted. “Why not just run?”

  “They knew too much to be captured and tortured by weres.”

  Tyler’s eyebrows arched speculatively. Zoe could almost see him assuming the mantle of a pride lieutenant. “And what do you know?”

  The girl’s teeth began to chatter again. “I don’t know anything! I’m new. They only brought me in a couple months ago in San Antonio. Long after they broke off from the Organization. I don’t know where any of the research bases are, I swear. Just don’t hurt me!”

  The Organization. Zoe’s ears pricked forward. The girl didn’t know how much she did know. The shifters had never even had a name for their boogeyman before now.

  “We aren’t going to hurt you. What’s your name?”

  “C-C-Candice. Candice Murphy.”

  “Candice. Where are we?” Tyler asked her.

  Her face screwed up in concentration. “New Mexico? We couldn’t make very good time because Dr. B couldn’t use the main roads with you making the truck swerve all over, throwing yourself around back there.”

  Zoe eyed the two men on the floor, wondering which of them was Dr. B. Her stomach rumbled noisily, hunger from her multiple shifts stabbing into her gut. If she didn’t eat soon, she’d be tempted to take a bite out of one of the bodies. Just a small bite. A little nibble from the calf maybe. Did it even count as cannibalism if she was in her lion form?

  The room dipped and swayed around her and Zoe sneezed, shaking her head sharply to try to get the world back to rights.

  “Zo? You all right, babe?” Tyler came toward her, digging his fingers into the fur behind her ears. She leaned into his touch, steadied by his presence.

  When the wall behind him began to slide to the side, she thought it was just her eyes playing tricks on her again. Until the muzzle of a gun lowered into the opening, aimed at Tyler’s broad back.

  Dr. B wasn’t on the floor.

  Zoe roared, throwing her weight against Tyler’s legs to knock him to the ground and leaping past him toward the opening as the gun fired, deafeningly loud in the enclosed space. Zoe didn’t have time to see if the bullet had struck Tyler. She landed hard on the heavy-set man behind the sliding panel which led to the cab of a truck. Her claws ripped through flesh, her teeth sinking deep into the soft tissue of his throat, cutting off any attempt at a scream. Warm blood gushed in a sweet rush into her mouth.

  This man had tried to kill Tyler. He’d kidnapped her and experimented on her. Who knew how many other shifters he’d harmed? She basked in the last feeble beats of his heart before dropping his body with a thud. She swayed over him, dizzy from expending the last of her energy, and felt Tyler’s hands on her, steadying her.

  She looked u
p, seeing only that he was whole—no new bullet wounds marking him. Then the world flipped upside down and whooshed away from her like a train through a dark tunnel, and Zoe collapsed into blackness.

  Chapter Eleven

  “Ben and Andy worked for the Organization for like six months, but they weren’t being given any responsibility, see? So they decided to go it alone. They’d heard about Dr. Busey getting kicked out of the Organization for trying to, you know, breed the weres in captivity, which went against the Organization’s, erm, mission statement, I guess? So they went to find Dr. Busey and get some hands-on experience. When I met them, they’d all been together for a couple months, hunting weres. Dr. B was definitely the boss, but he let Ben and Andy have, like, responsibility, right? They were more like equals. I mean, Ben barely even got in trouble with Dr. B for telling me about the weres. I almost knew already. I’d read a lot of werewolf books, right? And I told him I really wanted to see one up close, see? So Ben convinced Dr. B to let me come along as a research assistant. That was when we heard about this town.”

  “So the Organization doesn’t know about this pride?” Landon’s sharp question cut across Candice’s rambling recital.

  She sat on a chair in the mess hall, her hands wrapped around a cup of cocoa, surrounded by the pride’s war council. They hadn’t needed to torture anything out of her, though Zoe thought they might need to apply thumbscrews to get the girl to shut up about how cool it was to be around “weres”.

  “I don’t think so. I mean, Dr. B was always saying how the Organization had their heads up their you-know-whats cuz they were ignoring all the signs of were activity south of the Rockies. He says they were dumb to fixate on the wolves. Said,” Candice corrected after a moment, her eyes flicking sideways to Zoe before scuttling back to gaze worshipfully at Landon.

  So the pride was safe. For now. As safe as they’d ever been. And more informed than they’d ever been.

  Zoe shoved away from the wall she’d been propping up and slipped out the side door, restlessness driving her feet. She was halfway up the path to the infirmary before she realized where she’d been headed. Tyler was up there, getting patched up by the pride doc. He’d insisted Zoe be looked at first, idiot man, and after a nutrient shot and eating her weight in red meat, she was fine and dandy. While he still had a hole in him.

  Zoe rubbed a hand against the pressure in her chest, turning and walking down the path away from the infirmary.

  The jumbo-sized camping backpack that had traveled with her across the country was dusty when she pulled it out of her closet. Zoe brushed off the thick fabric and unzipped it, flopping it open on her bed. Packing wouldn’t take long. She didn’t have much she wanted to keep. Travel light. That was her motto. Easier to run that way.

  When a soft tap came at her door, Zoe flinched, her hands freezing in the act of stuffing her rain poncho into a side pouch. She half-expected Tyler, though it was early yet for him to be released from medical. Her other instinct was Landon, but he must still be interrogating the prisoner.

  She didn’t want to see anyone else. She didn’t particularly want to see those two either. She just wanted to go. And she didn’t want to think about or talk about why.

  The knock came again, accompanied by “Zoe?” in Ava’s distinctive husky rasp.

  “Shit,” Zoe muttered. Ava would look at her with those big, eerily ice-grey eyes, all wounded and shit that Zoe hadn’t planned on saying goodbye. Guilt rose up like bile and Zoe swallowed it down. One thing she wasn’t was a coward. “Come in.”

  Ava opened the door just enough to slip her slight frame inside and shut it behind her, leaning back against the wood. “Hey.”

  “Hey.” Zoe didn’t stop packing—a silent reminder to them both that she wouldn’t be talked out of going.

  “I didn’t expect to find you packing,” Ava said softly. “Not after the way you came back.”

  Zoe didn’t need the reminder of their dramatic return. She’d been dipping in and out of consciousness, but even she knew what it must have looked like. Tyler driving through the gates in the truck with the researchers’ trailer hitched to the back, kicking open the door and carrying Zoe to the infirmary, even though his shoulder was bleeding through the makeshift bandage Candice had rigged for him. The message had been clear to everyone who saw it—Tyler had saved her, saved them all. But instead of sending her swooning into his oh-so-heroic arms, Zoe couldn’t face him. She had to get out of here.

  “Pride’s safe now,” she said shortly. “You have Candice and all the files those nutjobs collected on us. Landon doesn’t need me anymore.”

  “Landon was pretty upset when the two of you vanished like that. We all were.”

  “Tyler’s popular.”

  “You are popular, Zoe. Sticking around for a few days to reassure your brother wouldn’t kill you. But I don’t think Landon is the only one who’s going to protest your departure,” Ava commented. “Zoe, I haven’t interfered in the past—”

  “Then don’t start now.”

  Ava ignored her. “I always figured whatever was between you and my brother was your business, but—”

  “This isn’t about Tyler,” Zoe interrupted sharply. The words were only half a lie. It wasn’t entirely about Tyler. A lot of it was about her. Who she was when she was with him.

  “At least talk to him before you go,” Ava urged. “He deserves that courtesy, don’t you think?”

  “Tyler doesn’t want a mate any more than I do,” Zoe said harshly. “He’ll understand.”

  Ava grimaced. “Maybe you’re right. He probably will. God, if two more commitment-phobic people ever existed on this earth…” She sighed, turning to go, but stopped to deliver one last blow to Zoe’s willpower. “If you guys weren’t so busy trying to prove how independent you are, you might just find that you’re perfect for each other. If you would just let yourself be.”

  Zoe waited until the door clicked shut behind Ava to slump down onto the bed. Ava was right. Tyler was perfect, but more than that. He was perfect for her.

  But perfect didn’t change anything. Zoe grabbed her toiletry bag, zipping it up and shoving it into her pack.

  Tyler trotted down the steps of the infirmary, ignoring the doc’s order that he take it easy. One thought drove all others right out of his brain. He needed to find Zoe. Now. He hadn’t seen her since the doc had taken her out of his arms, and his heart wouldn’t slide down from the place it had lodged in his throat until he could see with his own eyes that the reports that she was good as new were true.

  He needed to touch her, to feel the texture of her skin beneath his fingertips so he could breathe again.

  The path to Zoe’s bungalow felt a million miles long, like it had been stretched since the last time he walked it. He moved faster, half-jogging and then running. His shoulder ached like the devil, little jabs of hot pain spearing into him with each jolting footfall, but he didn’t slow. Mara was coming up the path, but stepped out of the way as she saw him coming, a knowing smile quirking her lips.

  He didn’t care who saw him. Didn’t care who gave him that smug must be newly mated look. He just ran.

  The door was open when he got to her bungalow. The room was usually so bare it took him a moment to realize it had been stripped even further. The only item that was Zoe’s left inside was the cowboy hat someone must have collected from the perimeter where they’d been taken. It sat lonely and abandoned on the bed.

  She was gone.

  Tyler didn’t waste time searching her place. He scented the air and took off after her. He’d be able to track her more easily in lion form, where his sense of smell was sharper, but he wasn’t quite panicked enough to rip his stitches by shifting form. Yet.

  Rounding the corner of his garage, he saw her. She stood at the door where he’d pinned her only days ago, a piece of paper in hand, her backpack resting against her ankle. His heart eased its panicked seizing at the sight of her. But his voice was gruff with the aftereffects of
fear and anger when he spoke.

  “A note?” he growled. “You weren’t even going to wait until I was released from the infirmary?”

  Zoe spun toward him, her eyes widening in a way he would have thought was pleasure to see him and something like relief—if not for the fact that she was clearly leaving him. “Tyler.”

  “Going somewhere?”

  Her expression hardened, firming with resolve. “Yes. I have to go.”

  “You don’t have to. No one wants you to leave, Zoe.”

  “I want to.” She made a face, turning away from him then turning back before he could take a step toward her. “I don’t like who this is making me,” she said, waving between them to indicate the this. “If I leave, at least I’ll be me again.”

  Tyler felt his expression softening, even as his chest ached with remorse. This was his fault. He’d failed her. “I’m sorry about what happened in the trailer,” he said, fighting to keep his voice low and steady. “I shouldn’t have let you be put in that position. You shouldn’t have to feel guilty for killing that man.”

  Zoe’s snort cut him off. “God, Tyler, that isn’t it. You think I feel bad for killing that bastard? He was trying to shoot us. Put us down like animals. I’d kill him again in a heartbeat—and I’m sorry if I’m a little too bloodthirsty for you, but I figured you of all people would understand why I had to do it.”

  “Of course, I—Zoe—if not that, why are you…?”

  Her shoulders sagged. “I was the damsel in distress,” she muttered toward her feet. “I expected you to save me. Yeah, I got over it and kicked some ass, but there was this moment when I just waited for you. I can’t be that person, Tyler. I don’t like that part of me. The part that wanted to just sit back and let you rescue me. It feels too much like I’m losing who I am, if I become that girl.” She looked up, meeting his eyes for the first time during her speech. “I can’t be with you.”

  “It isn’t weakness to rely on someone else, Zoe,” he said, approaching her, needing to touch her, feeling that if he could just get his hands on her, she wouldn’t be able to slip out of his life like smoke on the wind. “I’ve spent my entire life protecting everyone around me, doing it all myself, being the rock. You were the first person I depended on. I wouldn’t have let you watch my back if you were weak.” Close enough to touch her now, he gently brushed a hand across her jaw, cupping it. “I wouldn’t love you if you weren’t a warrior.”