Hot Blooded (Wolf Springs Chronicles) - By Nancy Holder Page 0,109

on his face.

Closer.

She darted her gaze in their direction. With barely perceptible gestures, Mr. Fenner tapped her arm and pointed to his own face. Keep your eyes on me, he was telling her. Watch me.

She understood a little better now what it meant to follow an alpha. He was in charge of her survival. And in the werewolf world, he was supposed to be.

He pointed at her, and then at the truck. Mimed pulling a trigger. She sucked in a breath and nodded. Oh, God, they were doing this. He held up a single finger, then a second. One, two, three.

“Go,” he whispered, then as she bolted upright and ran, he transformed nearly instantaneously. A fierce growl exploded from powerful lungs as he raced through the grass in the direction of the voices.

Birds shot from the treetops as she ran. She heard shouting, then more howls as she dashed to the truck and yanked open the door. She felt for the gun, found it, and froze. She crouched behind the door and watched through the window, her instinct for self-preservation taking over.

In the short brown grass of the meadow, Mr. Fenner’s white wolf form lunged at a black wolf and a tawny-hued one the color of Dom Gaudin’s human hair. The black wolf charged Mr. Fenner and knocked him backwards, then sprang at him as the tawny one circled behind. Mr. Fenner raised his head and opened his massive jaws. As the black wolf fell on him, he clamped his jaws around the black wolf’s shoulder. Its howl cut through the forest like the cry of a human in pain.

Then, before the tawny wolf could get to the white wolf, Katelyn’s alpha wheeled around and hurtled himself at it. The tawny wolf feinted left, then attacked Mr. Fenner’s right flank. There was a rolling ball of brown and white. Blood began to spurt. Whose, she couldn’t tell.

The gun in her hand, Katelyn ran toward the meadow. Blood was gushing from a large rip in the white wolf’s side. The black wolf pushed him over just as the tawny one positioned himself over Mr. Fenner’s thick neck. Then the black wolf fell down on top of Mr. Fenner, pinning him. Mr. Fenner flailed and fought, but Katelyn could see that the fight was going out of him. The tawny one threw back his head and howled; he was about to go in for the kill when Katelyn stopped and raised the gun.

“No,” she whispered, not wanting to do this as she aimed at the tawny one’s head, knowing she had a good chance of making the shot. Her vision telescoped. She could see the hairs on the tawny wolf’s face, the intelligence in his eyes. He was going to kill Mr. Fenner.

And what then? Would she be able to draw breath enough to reason with him then before they killed her, too?

Katelyn took a breath and held it in, as she’d been taught to do. Took aim.

Her finger found the trigger. She began to pull. She could almost hear the bullet chamber.

Then at the last minute, she raised the gun into the air. It went off, startling all three wolves. At once, the black one leaped off Mr. Fenner. The tawny one got in a parting nip, then disappeared into the trees with the black one as the report of the weapon echoed against the hills.

The white wolf became a man in rags, writhing in pain.

Katelyn ran to Mr. Fenner and stood over him, aiming her gun in the direction his attackers had fled. All she saw was shadow.

“No,” he said in a breathy voice. “Don’t waste the bullets.”

“Can you get to the truck?” she asked him, glancing down. She saw blood on his hand, and in the grass.

“Keep the silver away from me,” he said, pushing himself up on his elbow. “Give me a minute. I’ll start to heal.”

She kept watching the trees. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I shot wide.”

“Best thing you could have done.” He kept his voice soft. “You could only get one. If the other one figured out what we had, he could report back to the Gaudins.”

“But you might have died.”

His smile was strained, but it was there. “It’s not about me, darlin’,” he said. “It’s about the pack.”

She was amazed. She imagined him as he must have been before he started losing his mind, and she understood a little better why Justin and Cordelia were both so distressed by his condition. They weren’t supposed to