Wilderness

Barbara J. Hancock

Chapter One

He was chained.

Tess Haverty examined the silver bindings that twined once, twice and again around his bare, muscular torso. Considering her plans, it was lame to mentally go down the list of how well he was bound…arms to chest (check)…wrist to wrist (check)…ankles to floorboard (check). She chalked it up to nerves mixed with a hearty dose of survival instinct. She had known this would be dangerous, but somehow knowing and seeing were two very different things.

His dark eyes followed her movements. Only those eyes reacted to her sudden presence when she came out from her hiding place behind a lopsided stack of crates. Beneath her feet, the cargo truck rumbled and shook. Her steps were unsteady at best, awkward, stumbling and not the least bit heroic at worst.

She braced them apart in a wide stance and tried to ignore everything about him but the chains. It wasn’t easy. The chains, however daunting and relevant to her mission, suddenly seemed insignificant.

Colin Masterson. 6’2”. 220 lbs. Those facts on paper hadn’t translated to a real, solid man in her imagination.

He was real. Too real.

She stood at five feet six inches and one hundred twenty pounds (after a pizza binge), and even the muscular physique she’d managed to build up with a few months of intense preparation and training didn’t seem anywhere near adequate for her task.

His eyes burned with anger, curiosity and interest. She didn’t know which was the most threatening.

Tess reached for the compact bolt cutters she’d stowed in one of her pockets, all the while unable to look away from those all-too-attentive eyes.

He lifted his eyebrows when he saw what she held and for the first time his whole body reacted by stiffening. She saw the tightening of his fists and the resultant bulge of muscle in his arms. She noted how the chains bit into his straining flesh. Even in the gloom, she could see the angry red welts caused by his skin’s severe reaction to the pure silver links.

With a deep breath, she dropped to one knee. This was the do-or-die moment. Tess knew the truck was only about fifteen minutes from its destination. It was time to act. She just wished she didn’t have a sudden twist in her gut that redefined the moment as do and die.

“I’m with H.A.E.S. I’m here to help you.”

Humans Against the Exploitation of Supernaturals. Tess had never been a thrill seeker. Unfortunately, in the past six months the thrills had sought her out and changed her life forever. Funny how you couldn’t turn a blind eye toward government labs capturing and studying supernatural creatures when your twin sister was one. H.A.E.S. had saved Lily from the clutches of scientists, but she’d committed suicide before Tess had gotten a chance to see her, before Tess could try to help her. Ha. Tess helping Lily. That would have been…unusual. Tess had always been the mouse, the timid one, content to let Lily shine while she preferred the anonymity of shadows. After all, her occasional dreams were nothing compared to Lily’s dazzling visions.

Colin Masterson was on his way to the same lab that Lily had been sent to. Once there, hidden in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains less than fifty miles from Washington, D.C., he would be poked and prodded and traumatized with exploratory surgeries.

Of course, Lily hadn’t been a werewolf.

It was crazy and dangerous to get anywhere near Masterson, but Tess was here. She had been too late to help her sister, but she was here, now.

She swallowed and repositioned the tool in her fist so she could get to work.

“Wait,” he ordered. Amazingly, the low growl of his voice sounded unbound, as if he was in command of the situation.

Tess stopped. In fact, she froze. Survival instinct again. It told every nerve ending in her body that his voice must be obeyed.

His voice was human even while it was low and urgent. The only growl in it came from the masculine quality of its tones. It was a whisky-kissed burr of syllables, but, far from monstrous, he had the kind of voice perfect for pillow talk, deep and seductive.

Her heartbeat kicked up a notch and she felt her eyes widen. She knew the involuntary physical reaction that displayed her fear was a mistake. She just didn’t know how to stop it.

Don’t be prey. Don’t be prey.

The mantra didn’t come to her rescue. Her pause extended as he held her motionless with a look that had taken on a predatory gleam.

She knew that her training had been rushed. She knew the people banded together to form H. A. E. S. weren’t experts. Through trial and error, they had learned that Masterson’s kind didn’t change into bushy-tailed canines with soulful howls nor did they become the silly wolf-man from old Hollywood movies. She’d heard the morph described as more subtle and terrifying than either of those myths.

When provoked or when they chose…the jury was out on that one…they simply changed into something that wasn’t quite human.

Tess watched Masterson for any signs of change as he held her in place with the force of his will. His face was angular and well balanced. In spite of the five-o’clock shadow, or maybe because of it, he looked like he could carry off an ad for expensive cologne. He was rugged, but in an attractive, exotic way. Definitely not pretty, but handsome wasn’t a stretch. Of course, his body was perfect. In this instance, under these circumstances, scarily so.

Six pack abs. Serious arms and pectorals. And much of it on display because silver worked best on bare skin. He wore jeans and nothing else. Not even shoes. Rather than make him seem helpless, he looked less-than-civilized, wild. His hair fell to his shoulders in a dark mass of unkempt waves.

But in the dim light, Tess saw no elongated canines marring his firm, perfect lips. His hands had unfisted and she saw no claws.

“If you do this, men will die.”

She hoped he meant “men” as in the two evil thugs currently driving him to hell and not “men” as in mankind. Anyone willing to transport innocent people like her sister to labs little better than concentration camps deserved what they got.

“I understand,” she whispered through lips gone cold with the realization of what she said. The bolt cutters in her numb fingers may as well be the pen signing their death warrants.

So. Be. It.

She wasn’t a mouse. Not anymore.

Suddenly, she was free to move. Her eyes flew to his as she swayed forward. She had to brace herself with her free hand against his chest or fall right in his lap. One of his brows quirked higher than the other, and she thought she saw a corner of his mouth tilt slightly. It did definitely tilt when she jerked her hand away from his warm, firm skin.

“Steady,” he said.

She didn’t know if his amusement was enough of a promise for her safety, but she positioned the sniping head of the cutters over a link of chain anyway.

“For Lily,” Tess whispered as she used both hands to bring the tool’s handles together.

The chains rattled slightly and she looked up at him once more. He didn’t speak again, only waited. She could feel his tension, his preparedness. Tess shivered. Then she cut another link and then another.

Finally, the chains slipped to the floorboard in a gleaming puddle around his feet. Tess looked at the shining pool and braced herself. She held her breath and thought about moonlight and swing sets and chasing fireflies in the dark. Deep in her mind her most treasured memories echoed with Lily’s childhood laughter.

She drew in a quick breath when a warm hand touched her face, but she didn’t flinch. She didn’t try to pull away when his calloused fingers cupped under her chin.

Loosened from his bonds, he had come away from the wall slightly to sit on his heels. She knelt between his knees with the bolt cutters in her hands, evidence of her bravery or her stupidity, only the next few seconds would tell.

Tess let her head fall back to look up at his face. He still cupped her chin, but lightly. His fingers brushed her skin as soft as a caress. She struggled to remember what she was supposed to do now. In this moment, confronted by the powerful man she had been sent to save, Tess wondered if she had fooled herself. Was she really up for this?

He leaned to bring his face closer to hers. She breathed lightly, trying not to panic.

Don’t be prey. Don’t be prey.

He smiled as he took in her reactions. It was a grim, barely there curve of his sculpted lips, but it was a smile nonetheless. His fingers tightened, but only slightly, holding her in place as if she wasn’t too scared to move.

“My savior,” he breathed, and it was a sigh even while it was a tease.

He saw her fear, was amused by it, and he was still grateful. The appreciation shone in his eyes. His chocolate-colored eyes, she noted, now that he had tilted forward, slightly away from the shadowed wall.

“May you never live to regret it.”

Tess’s heart leapt with those words, or maybe in reaction to his movement, because the last was murmured right against her lips before he jumped away quicker than her eyes could follow.

One minute, she felt the heated brush of his lips on hers, the next, he was at the rear of the truck ripping open the sliding door.

It was over quickly, but that didn’t make the blood less red or the screams any less gut-wrenching.

Tess was thrown against the wall of the truck’s interior when it lurched sideways and surged into the ditch. The blow to her head left her dizzy, but it didn’t knock her out.

Mores the pity.

She crawled out the steel door Masterson had torn apart with his hands and she fell to the ground.

It was weak to lay there in the tall grass by the side of the road, but she allowed herself to do it for several long moments. She could have told herself it was to catch her breath and regain her equilibrium. She could have laid there even longer as spots swam before her eyes.

Tess didn’t.

She knew why she didn’t want to get up on shaky legs and walk around to the cab of the truck. Knew why a tight knot of dread had settled in the pit of her stomach.

In the aftermath of cutting the chains, surviving the crash and hearing the screams, it seemed surreal that birds sang in nearby trees and the verdant odor of crushed grass should fill her nostrils. It would have been easy to pretend she didn’t have to move, but Tess had learned life wasn’t easy a long time ago.

She pushed herself up from the ground and forced herself to look around.

He was gone.

And the two men who had captured him would never turn over another innocent for torture.

Tess vomited in the bushes.

Again, knowing something had to be done and witnessing it…two very different things.

She was bruised and battered. She was pretty sure her nightmares (and possibly even her dreams) were refueled for the next six months, and Lily was still gone too soon.

Tess limped her way to the rendezvous point haunted by Masterson’s dark eyes and his even darker words.

Chapter Two

Colin ran and his blood coursed through his veins like liquid joy. He had been less-than-alive for a week. First in a holding pen that smelled of despair and unwashed flesh, then in the back of a truck that reeked of gasoline and loss.

Except, of course, for the vanilla cappuccino.

He’d known she was there the whole time, even as his captors were oblivious. The scent of creamy sweet coffee hadn’t come from the cretins who threw his silver-weakened body into the back of the truck. Neither had the teasing scent of lavender shampoo.

He had waited patiently for her to show herself, but he had still been surprised. By her beauty, by her fear, by her intentions, in spite of her fear.

As each link fell away, severed by her purposeful but shaking hands, he’d been caught in another trap altogether.

Her vulnerability paired as it was with her obvious determination snared him as surely as wicked silver. He shouldn’t have touched her, but the heady rush of freedom’s call had overwhelmed his good sense. Now, he ran because of her. He lived again, because of her.

She had given him a second chance to save his people.

His father hadn’t been so lucky.

Jack Masterson had led their pack for twenty years, and he had kept them safe and prosperous. But he had led them during years of a population explosion when it was easy to survive happily on the fringes of society without being noticed.

Now, their pack was down to fifteen, including himself. They were his now to guide and protect. At twenty-eight, he didn’t even have his first gray hair, but he was Alpha.

Colin felt joy as he ran in the night, but he also ached. For years, he’d had the luxury of scoffing at ancient tradition. He hadn’t felt like a prince and hadn’t intended to be one. His father had talked of persecutions so old he couldn’t even imagine the time when they’d occurred. In the age of cell phones and civil rights that kind of wolf hunt just hadn’t seemed real.

Then an influenza pandemic changed the world. Suddenly, people with unusually strong immunity stood out. Werewolves and countless others who were different.

All of them were lumped under the term Supernaturals.

After the pandemic, his people and the other Supernaturals had no rights. They could be hunted, caged and killed, or worse-than-killed, all in the name of science. Scientists struggled to map and isolate the genes responsible for immunity, but he suspected that much of their time was spent trying to unlock the secrets to power.

Supernaturals held secrets in their blood and the government wanted those secrets.

His father had been one of the first to die. He’d actually gone willingly into the hands of authorities, hoping to shield his pack with his sacrifice.

No one spoke out against the experiments. Survival justified any measures the government cared to take. No one cared except for H.A.E.S. and naive little heroines with vanilla-flavored kisses.

Colin ran on.

Tess sipped a fresh, steaming cup of coffee. The whipped cream that floated on top wasn’t frivolous. It was medicinal. She needed the caffeine and the calories and the comfort. Her nerves were so shot she could almost hear them crying out for her favorite indulgence, but the brew didn’t prove itself as soothing as usual.

For one thing, the steam floating off the top of her Styrofoam cup teased across her lips like a moist reminder. Tess shivered and licked cream off her upper lip.

She was twenty-four years old. She’d shared a few kisses, but none had left her trembling hours later. Her lips still tingled from the werewolf’s kiss. The Super’s kiss. She corrected herself and looked around guiltily in case any of her fellow H.A.E.S. had detected her less-than-PC thoughts.

Supernatural was the appropriate name for any human with special abilities. Like Colin. Like Lily. Even like herself. Though, in her case, special might be too strong a term to describe her dreams. She had escaped being put on the government’s wanted list because she’d almost died from the flu. She’d been ill for weeks. Lily hadn’t had so much as a sniffle.

Logically, Tess knew she’d been weakened by her long bout with depression following her parents’ death. Her will to live had been shaken. Her hope for the future almost lost. Then, she had lost her sister and suddenly she’d found new depths of resolve. Logically, she knew that she and Lily shared the same genes and similar psychic abilities. Still, in her heart of hearts, Tess didn’t consider herself a Supernatural. She wasn’t super in any way. No cape. No tights. And she’d never heard of anyone shouting, “Dogged determination to the rescue!”

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