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  Captured by the Pack

  ANNE MARSH

  GIANNA

  I hit the sidewalk, moving quickly. It isn’t too late—barely nine o’clock—but the Baton Rouge city streets are already dark. Sometimes, even in the safest of cities, bad shit happens. My expensive and admittedly upscale neighborhood should be poster child safe, but my car battery died unexpectedly and without warning a block ago. One minute I was zipping along, running over the day’s cases in my head, and the next… nada. I’d coasted to a stop by the side of the road. Since I’m less than a dozen blocks from home and my tow service is an hour out, walking sounds good. I’ve had a long week at my law firm.

  The weather is cooling down now from the baking heat of the summer months. It’s time for sweaters and fires, apples and pumpkins, and all the stuff I’ve never had time for. Maybe this year I’ll make time. Our senior partner’s words replay in my head. Take some time off. Get out of town for a while. He sounded like a bad movie, but the concern was genuine and I appreciated it.

  My involvement with the case was accidental. Our firm does a certain percentage of pro bono work, one of the many qualities that drew me to them in the first place. When a local biker gang threatened a nice old granny and her not-quite-so-nice grandson, I obtained a protective order for the pair and then went one step further when the gang continued to stalk and threaten. When local law enforcement tried to arrest the offender, he ran straight into the heart of bayou country.

  The running and the subsequent arrest came with an unexpected bonus. I met Cruz Jones, the local sheriff in Port Leon. He was instrumental in helping take down the defendant when the offender ended up in Cruz’s jurisdiction. Jones is a big, good-looking man, laid-back and with a sense of easy humor. He definitely goes on my list of dating possibilities as soon as I get my personal life straightened out.

  Convicting the guy and his bully best friends should have been a case of open and shut. Instead, everything went to hell. Despite not playing by the rules, the defendants are still on the streets and… yeah… downright unhappy with me. I’ve had threats at the office that I’ve duly turned over to the Baton Rouge Police Department police department. The brouhaha will likely die down in a week or two—since I passed my bar exam, I’ve received more than one threat from losing parties—but something about this particular case triggers every self-protective instinct I have.

  They’re goin’ to hunt you down, bitch. The feral look in the defendant’s eyes as the bailiffs dragged his unwilling ass out of the courtroom to start on his five years almost made me believe hunt wasn’t a euphemism. That’s crazy, and I left the crazy behind the day I turned eighteen and moved out of my parents’ place.

  People don’t beat up people in my world. They don’t come gunning for you or lie in wait or key your car when you wear Michael Kors suits and three-hundred-dollar heels. I’m not naïve—not after growing up the way I did—but the hurting that goes on in the courtrooms is on a whole different level. People play head games or take their anger out on your yearly bonus rather than on your skin.

  Twilight and October make it easier than usual to play Peeping Tom on families through their open windows. Those happy faces crowding around the dinner table give me a pang of something. I don’t need a husband or kids, but I have no one waiting at home for me. I’ve been loverless for ten years because I haven’t had time to deal with my personal life. Haven’t made time because honestly I have no idea where to start on the mess I made. I went to Vegas and… I might be married. Possibly. Or maybe not, but to know for sure I’d have to track down my partner in crime from that evening and ask him what he remembers. And since my own memories are more than a little fuzzy on details like names and places, my Vegas records searches have turned up zip.

  Ten more blocks and I’ll be home safe.

  Something dark flickers in the corner of my eye, and I can practically hear Fate yell ha gleefully.

  Someone curses, a harsh, foulmouthed word I recognize instinctively.

  Keep moving. The unexpected, unwelcome shush of sound behind me means I’ve got company. It could be harmless. My heartbeat picks up even as my head jumps into the game, analyzing. This is an expensive neighborhood, the homes set back from the street and surrounded by hedges and old oaks. Telephone poles stretch overhead, edging the lush expanses of green lawn. The sidewalk comes and goes, the shadows stretching over the well-manicured landscaping. Cursing and violence don’t fit in here, not right out in the open.

  I drop to one knee and listen. Pretend to be tying my shoe and never mind that my heels don’t come with laces.

  Feet pad softly behind me, the quiet slap more doglike than human. I listen for another heartbeat, counting the steps. More than one set of feet and almost certainly canine. I’ve never had a problem with dogs here, and I’ve paid plenty of attention. One of my least favorite childhood memories stars me taking refuge on top of a Dumpster behind the trailer park while a neighbor’s dog lunges and snaps. I’m so not into a repeat.

  I sneak a quick peek over my shoulder as I get to my feet and start moving again. Something darts closer in the shadows thrown by a hedge of sweet olives. Then another shadow moves in, closer than the first. The streetlight clicks on, illuminating… fur? A feral dog pack? God, I have no idea what I’m dealing with here.

  An enormous dog nudges out of the shadows. Do we have wolves in Louisiana? I eyeball the distance to the nearest house. Two hundred yards and the front windows are dark. Banging on the front door there is unlikely to yield good results. Walking faster, I grope in my bag for my phone and my Mace pepper gun. Call 9-1-1. Point the trigger. That’s a two-step plan I can work with.

  Wishing I’d stayed in the car won’t help. Wishing never does.

  The smooth voice of the operator is a welcome relief. “9-1-1. What’s your emergency?”

  I inhale, fingers wrapping around the gun. “I’m being hunted by a pack of wild dogs.”

  The moment of stunned silence on the other end isn’t completely unexpected. I’m a lawyer. I know exactly what kind of calls the woman on the other end of the line usually processes. Shootings, stabbings, and bloody mayhem are the dispatcher’s day in and day out. Dogs, however, are foreign territory.

  I scan the shadows behind me. “At least four dogs, sixty, maybe eighty pounds each. No visible tags.”

  My estimate may be on the light side. These animals are large and brutish, muscles moving sleekly beneath their fur. They’re also fast. The pack splits, flanking me on either side. Jesus Christ. They’re herding me.

  The operator regroups fast. I’ll give her that. “What is the location of the emergency?”

  “I’m at the corner of Teal and Sanchez. I’m approximately four hundred yards from the open space.”

  Open space sums it up, a slice of odd-shaped land the developer turned into a neighborhood park. In addition to a play structure painted in primary colors, the local kids have access to three tire swings and a truckload of sand. There are also a couple of benches for the parents and some trash cans. Unless I’ve developed a MacGyver talent, nothing there will help me fend off a dog attack.

  Reacting, not thinking, I drop the phone and slam my back against the hedge as the first dog lunges. Whipping the gun up, I thumb off the safety, take aim, and fire. My world narrows to the patch of sidewalk in front of me and the animals racing toward me. Aerosol goodness explodes out of the can, hitting the lead dog in the eyes. Score one for me. The animal growls and falls back, pawing at its eyes.

  Shit. Can dogs communicate? Four of the biggest dogs I’ve ever seen move in, trapping me in a loose ring. With the hedge at my back and their teeth at my front, there’s no way out but through them. I’ve practiced shooting the pepper gun with
water cartridges, but fifteen minutes in my backyard hadn’t prepared me for this.

  The operator is still doing her thing, a tinny, too-far-off voice blah-blah-blahing out of the cracked iPhone. “What is your name?”

  Holy hell. She needs to skip to the “send help now” part of the operator script. “Gianna Lynn. They’re lunging for me.”

  The gun’s weak-ass LED lights up the nearest dog’s face when I aim the muzzle again. Lips peeled back from its teeth, the fucker looks almost like it’s laughing at me. Undistracted by the gun’s light—the manufacturer is so wrong on that count—the dog paces toward me.

  LUC

  Fuck, but I hate the city. There are too many humans, and since the Breed claimed Baton Rouge as their territory, there are also far too many wolves who would just as soon tear out my throat as have some kind of civilized conversation.

  Not that I’m jonesing for conversation, civilized or otherwise. Non. My wolf snaps and growls, the beast too close to the surface for quiet. Fate’s a son of a bitch for the wolf shifters because, if a male doesn’t find his true mate and bond with her, eventually shifting back from his wolf form becomes impossible. I’ve seen my pack brothers mated and saved. Now it’s my turn. Each time I shift, it takes longer and longer to come back. If it was just me, I’d let it all go. Running wild in the bayou on four legs isn’t a bad end. My brothers, however, won’t let me slip away even if I’m willing to dump my responsibilities as pack Alpha on their broad shoulders.

  I’m the Alpha, the goddamned leader of the lot, and so here I am in Baton Rouge rather than deep in the bayou with my pack, looking for a female I met, fucked, and mated ten years ago in Vegas. In this particular case, what happened in Vegas definitely stayed there. I let Gianna go because she deserved better than a lifetime stuck with my surly ass, but now… Now I need to reconsider that decision. Each day the shift from wolf to man gets harder and harder. I’m hanging on, but willpower can take me only so far. Maybe there’s something the two of us can work out. Maybe the miracle has occurred, and she really is in the market for a werewolf mate and happily ever after in the Louisiana bayou.

  And maybe hell has frozen over.

  Which is why I’m standing outside her house—a very nice piece of upscale property—waiting for her to come home from work like I shift into a pet poodle and not two hundred pounds of feral wolf. Hell. Maybe she’ll bring me one of those little pink collars with the faux diamonds and bells. I don’t like this situation, with me needing her and her needing absolutely squat from me. I’ve kept an eye on her these past ten years through a private security detail I hired to keep her discreetly safe. Their reports have emphasized her success in the legal profession. She’ll be an Alpha there in her own way in another year or three.

  She’s smart, driven—and always, always on track. So the fact that it’s now thirty-four minutes past seven o’clock is a red flag I can’t ignore. Gianna arrives home like clockwork at seven. Fuck. I shouldn’t have dismissed the security detail until I actually made the handoff and took her myself. The cause could be simple. Car troubles, a late night at the office, a slow takeout pickup. Whatever. But… Gianna likes her schedules.

  I’m wolf and I never ignore those instincts. I backtrack her route, house to office. Ten blocks later I have my answer. Gianna is on foot, suggesting car troubles are indeed the root cause of her delay. What I didn’t expect was to find her starring front and center in an ambush.

  The stretch of sidewalk is perfectly ordinary, bordered by ruthlessly pruned green hedges and lots of big-ass trees and houses. This is most definitely not the kind of neighborhood where shit goes down. Nevertheless, Gianna has her back to a hedge, a small gun in her right hand.

  She fires, the pop pop pop an unmistakable call to arms, although instead of bullets, the muzzle launches a cloud of vapor. Unfortunately for my mate, using pepper spray to face down a werewolf attack is like adding A.1. to the steaks and thinking that might put off the lions.

  The stink of the wolves tells me plenty. The Breed run a ruthless biker gang out of the city’s dive bars. They make their money from a combination of drug running, arms dealing, and old-fashioned intimidation. When the gang rolls up on their bikes, the local business owners pony up their cash rather than risk a beatdown. And that’s without knowing that the shakedown comes from a bunch of wolves. Baton Rouge isn’t my territory, but I still come up here once, maybe twice a year.

  Because fuck me if I can walk away from my mate entirely.

  She sent me a message recently asking to meet. Not directly, of course, because she’s pretending I don’t exist. She also hasn’t said why she wants the get-together. Instead, she sent not one but three private investigators after me, which is only fair since I’ve pretty much done the same to her. None of those men found me because I hadn’t wanted to be found.

  The woman on the sidewalk is every bit as buttoned-up, ironed, and pressed as she was ten years ago. She wears a power suit paired with ridiculous shoes, and from my spot in the shadows, I can read the tiny, shiny label on her leather bag. Kate Spade. She’s always liked things that have names.

  I’ve sent a few messages of my own, namely by depositing funds into her checking account twice a year. She belongs with me, and if I can’t have her in my home, I’ll make sure she never goes without. I bet it drives her crazy. She’s changed banks three times in ten years and has never spent a dime of my money—except on those crazy-ass, impossible shoes of her. There’s a fuck you right there, but when I look at her shoes, I don’t see a waste of money or a scrap of leather that costs more than the rent on some apartments. Non. I see her heels digging into my back, hanging on to me as I slam inside her sweet, tight channel.

  My mate is of average height for a female, although I’ve never seen her in anything but heels. She clearly belongs to the taller is better camp because the current pair adds at least three inches to her total. She has the same long, dark hair meticulously straightened into a sheet of gorgeous, although it’s mussed up some now because fighting to live has that effect on a hairdo. She’s pale too, like she doesn’t get outside much and can’t be bothered with a spray-on tan from a can. Thank God. She smells sweet and natural rather than like chemicals. The rest of her is just like I remember: brown eyes, long lashes, straight nose, and a mouth sporting a freckle above her upper lip. She has freckles in all sorts of interesting places. On her left ear, two on her throat, and a gorgeous little spray on her right breast. I can’t wait to get reacquainted with her freckles.

  Later. After I stop the biker gang from hell in their murderous tracks.

  The Breed splits their numbers, half herding her down the sidewalk and half closing in on her from in front in a classic pincer move. The incoming wolves will either go through the hedge or leap it. Either way, she won’t see them coming, so I’ll take care of business for her now.

  A quick survey turns up ten wolves, the five waiting in the wings plus the five closing in. I shift into a fighting stance, palm my blades, and go to town on the five wolves lying in wait. Before the fuckers know what’s coming, I’ve slammed into them. The faster I strike, the faster I control the situation.

  I balance on the balls of my feet, facing the wolves. Knees bent, elbows in, I bring the knife up. With my left hand, I check the first wolf with a brutal fist-meets-throat move while my right hand cuts. One down.

  Stepping in, I close the distance between myself and target number two. I have no intention of retreating, and I sure as shit don’t mind getting cut. The knife flashes, an extension of my cutting hand. Wolf number two yelps and bounds off, leaving a trail of blood. Tracking the bastard down and taking him out is a job for later, however, because wolves three and four lunge, working to bring me down. I kick and cut, all animal instinct and reflex. Small sounds of feminine distress filter through the hedge, encouraging me to step it up and finish punching holes in the aggressor wolves.

  Bodies hit the ground with a thump-thump. And… game over. The wolves can drag
themselves off or lie there and bleed until they’re either empty or local animal control hauls their asses off to the pound. Not my problem. I vault the hedge, shitkickers slamming into the pavement beside my mate.

  “Run, shug.” I’ve cleared the path. It’s past time for her to evac and get the hell out of here. Her presence is a vulnerability, because if those wolves get her, I’ll go down fighting for her in the wolf version of until death do us part.

  Her gaze shifts briefly from the wolves to me. She doesn’t have a clear shot at me, but I can practically feel her trigger finger itching—and her head counting down the pumps remaining in her pepper spray gun. No recognition registers on her face, although she gives a little start at my voice. A new wolf comes at her, and I angle my body between her and the new attacker. The hi-how-are-ya-remember-me? can come later.

  “Now.” I bark the command as wolf number one hits the ground. That bastard won’t be rejoining the fight.

  She kicks off her heels—smart girl—and bolts. Her pretty little bag lies on the ground, so I hope like hell she’s got a code for the front door of her place. I didn’t scent trouble there, but I’m not fucking perfect. I could have missed something. Someone.

  I itch to shift and fight the wolves tooth to tooth and claw to claw. If I shift, however, I’ll be buck-ass naked when—if—I shift back, and no way Gianna will have a conversation with me then. Hell, I wouldn’t want to talk to my ugly ass. So I’ll stay fully clothed and do this the old-fashioned way. I slam my fist into a furry side and then get busy with the blade.

  GIANNA

  I run like hell. No second invitation necessary. No matter how fast the cops get here, it won’t be fast enough once the dogs get hold of me. There’s no time to stick around and ask my rescuer: Hey, you sure you’re okay with a dog mauling? Nope. Definitely time to hightail it and move, move, move.

  Air saws out of my lungs, the burn and stitch in my side reminding me that skipping cardio is a bad idea. Not that I need to be skinny and toned for the dogs, but being able to run like the wind suddenly takes on a whole new appeal. Stopping isn’t a good idea either. I count breaths, forcing myself to move faster as my world narrows to the slam of my feet against the pavement. It’s not like I’m running on glass, but I’ve never done the barefoot running thing before and my feet protest. Desperation is a great motivator, however.