Gray (The Boundarylands #10) - Callie Rhodes Page 0,8

there buck naked in clear view of her telephoto lens.

"Why the fuck did you take pictures of me naked?"

The thick material covering her mouth was sucked in by her gasp. "Oh, shit, I forgot about those. I'm sorry."

She reached for the camera, but Gray held it out of her grasp. "You're sorry? Sorry has nothing to do with this, lady. Who told you to take these and why?"

"I told you I don't know," she said, her voice cracking. "You have to believe me."

Gray couldn't remember the last time he'd felt rage as pure and focused as now—and he didn't like it. He was known for keeping a cool head, for reserving judgment until he had the facts. He always stepped up to mediate arguments between his brothers. He was the one they turned to for an unbiased opinion.

But he was still an alpha. He still ran on testosterone and sheer will, and his boundaries were as important to him as to any of his brothers. In fact, he'd been ready to slaughter anyone who tried to cross them.

So why didn't he just rip out this woman's throat and be done with her?

Maybe…maybe it was because of the honesty in her voice, faint but unmistakable. Maybe it was because of the desperation reflected in her eyes.

It wasn't that Gray believed her ridiculous story, which was too absurd to take at face value.

It was that he couldn't be sure.

And that was intolerable. As an alpha, he depended on his senses to guide him, but he couldn't trust them now. And he wasn't about to be led by his emotions like some beta whiner.

There was something else. Despite the beta belief that alphas were lawless animals driven only by instinct, Gray had principles. And among them was not slaughtering a woman without being damn sure she was guilty.

Still holding the camera in one hand, Gray hoisted the woman up over his shoulder with the other, causing her to let out a small shriek.

"What are you doing?" she yelped. "Where are you taking me?"

"To find out what the fuck is really going on here."

Chapter Four

Olivia's stomach churned as the alpha carried her through the dense forest. No doubt some of the nausea came from the hard shoulder pounding into her stomach with every swift step, but that was only part of the story. The real reason she was about to lose that morning's half-digested protein bar was good old-fashioned fear.

She wasn't a stranger to the emotion. Working with animals had given Olivia plenty of opportunities to experience fear.

The rattle of a snake's tail at the heel of her boot or an unexpected rustle in the tall grass of the Serengeti set off a primitive response. Fight or flight; run or start throwing punches. It was the kind of fear that demanded immediate action.

But this fear…this was different. This was dread.

And the dread that had taken over her mind and body was the opposite of active. It was a heavy weight strapped between her shoulder blades. It was quicksand sucking at her feet. And the worst part was that there wasn't a damn thing that she could do about it. At least when Olivia was being charged by an angry rhino or menaced by a gang of chimpanzees, she could use her wits and training to escape.

But now? She was slung ass-in-the-air over the shoulder of an angry alpha, her face bumping against his rock-hard back with every step, and there was not one thing she could do about it.

As he carried her through the dense forest in the direction of his cabin, she began to feel dizzy on top of everything else. The alpha's strides were at least twice as long as those of an ordinary beta, so her view of the forest floor was little more than a blur.

But just when Olivia thought she was about to lose control of her guts, the alpha shrugged her off, and she fell down hard on her ass. Wherever he'd been headed, they had arrived.

Taking a few deep breaths to settle her stomach, Olivia looked around. Spotting tendrils of steam rising from a rocky outcropping, she realized exactly where she was—the hot spring up the slope from the cabin where the alpha bathed every afternoon.

She ought to recognize it since she'd captured dozens of photographs of the alpha, buck naked and dripping wet, against that backdrop.

Shit.

Had he dragged her all the way here just to punish her at the scene of her crime? Maybe he planned