Her eyes shone bright amber.
His narrowed on her as awareness swept through him. “You even think about shifting and I’ll shift too. You’re injured and I know this terrain better than you. You honestly think you can outrun me?”
He grabbed her other arm when she threw a punch at him.
Yanked her against him and caged her with his arm around her back, pinning her to his chest.
“Think hard, Wolf. You want six-hundred pounds of angry bear bearing down on you?”
Her panted breaths washed over his face, bathing his skin with their warmth, making him hyper-aware of how close she was to him, how he had pulled her against him, pressing her body to his. He really hadn’t thought it through. By pulling her to him, he had made her feet slip from his thigh.
A thigh she now straddled, the apex of her legs pressed against it, her heat seeping into him.
Gods.
Fear lit her eyes, the sight of it enough to have him shoving her away from him and averting his gaze. He kept hold of her wrist, but loosened his grip, couldn’t bring himself to look at her as she tugged the hem of the fleece she wore down, her hand unsteady.
Shaking as badly as he was inside.
He cursed himself, cursed her too for good measure, and pulled her with him, leading her to the cabin. She followed him in silence, not helping matters. Where was her spit and fire now when he needed her to be loud and rude, to fill this tense silence with noise?
To show him that he hadn’t just crossed a line with her.
“Why can’t you just let me go?” she murmured and he resisted the temptation to look back at her, knew that if he did the softer part of him that had somehow survived his years in captivity would make him want to do just that.
It didn’t come to the fore often, but when it did, he ended up looking like some weak, pathetic sap.
A bear with a big heart.
Rune crushed that part of him and shoved it back down deep, where the wolf wouldn’t see it. He didn’t remember the male he had been before the arena, before Archangel hunters had shaped him into the beast he was today, but sometimes he had the feeling he had been soft, warm of heart, perhaps even gentle.
He wasn’t that male anymore though.
“I told you. I want you to answer some questions. You’re the one making this more difficult than it needs to be.” He led her around a tree, his gaze scanning the darkness ahead of them as his senses reached out in all directions, trying to pinpoint the cabin. “Just answer the questions, Wolf, and then maybe you can be on your way.”
“Maybe?” she bit out.
And there was that spark he was coming to admire in her, the spit and fire that she used as a shield to protect herself. For a female, she had strength. Not just physically. She was strong mentally too. Many females would have broken down if they had been in her position, succumbing to fear.
Not this wolf.
She had spirit.
Courage.
Either someone had raised her to be strong, or life had moulded her into a warrior.
Rune wanted to ask her which it was, but held his tongue. He had no reason to ask her such a thing. No desire to learn more about her personal life. He needed to stick to the important questions, ones that her answers to would determine whether he let her go or not. He wasn’t here to be her friend.
Wasn’t interested in being more than that either.
She started battering his hand again. “Maybe isn’t good enough, buddy. Let me go. You have no right to hold me like this.”
Rune turned on her, flashing fangs as he growled, “I have every right. You trespassed into Black Ridge territory.”
She locked up tight, a flicker of fear in her eyes that was gone in an instant as she reared her head forwards and cracked it against his. He grunted as pain shot outwards from the point of impact, snarled and seized her by her throat when his sharp senses warned she was going to headbutt him again. He gritted his teeth as he closed his fingers around her throat, fighting the urge to squeeze, to repay her for hurting him.
He scoffed at that.
Hurting him?
Irritating him then. Her blow had been weak, not nearly enough to fell him. The fiends who had held him captive had moulded him into a killer, had told him time and again that he had a hard head. He could take a blow from a male ten times her size and strength and not black out.
Her amber eyes edged downwards, towards the hand he had locked around her throat.
“I’m being nice here, Wolf. You want to find out what happens when I’m not nice?” He squared up to her and growled down into her face, refusing to let her sharp intake of breath affect him. “I got real good reasons not to trust any of your breed. So if you want to keep pushing me… keep on pushing. You won’t like what happens when I push back.”
She stared at him in silence.
He held her gaze, looking deep into her eyes, into amber cast with bright golden sparks of fire and tiny flecks of darkness. There was a fighter locked behind those eyes, a female who wanted to lash out at him and keep on pushing him, provoking his darker side. Why? What had happened to this female to make her want to take on the world? To make her so angry at it and everyone in it?
Sure, he deserved her wrath for how he was treating her and the fact he was holding her, but his gut said that rage and hurt he could read in her eyes, feelings that made it hard for her to control her reactions around him, had nothing to do with him. Not really.
Someone had hurt this female.
Deeply.
Rune loosened his grip on her throat, easing his fingers open, but couldn’t convince himself to break contact with her. Her throat worked on a hard swallow, her pulse fluttering against his fingers as she stared up at him. Not just her pulse. Her entire body was shaking as she stood before him, as a war erupted in her eyes, one that had them edging away from him, towards a point over her right shoulder.
Towards the place where the mountains that enclosed the valley met the highway.
Rune looked there too. “Why are you running?”
She whipped to face him, surprise shining in her eyes. Shocked that he could read her well enough to know she was running from something?
And she was running scared.
His mood took another dark turn.
“Is it hunters?” he growled, the urge to forget her and rush back to the Ridge flooding him. “Is it Archangel?”
The mortal hunter organisation were monsters, thrived on hunting and harming his kind and hers. Their façade of a peaceful group who only targeted dangerous non-humans fooled many in their world, but he knew the other side of that mask. He had seen just how twisted and cruel, how evil, that organisation truly was.
She was quick to shake her head. “No.”
An answer at last. It seemed the little wolf didn’t want to meet Death tonight, didn’t want him associating her with Archangel and convincing himself that she was working with them or had led them to this valley.
To his home.
“Someone is after you, and I want to know who it is.” He turned away from her and tugged her towards the cabin.
It was close now. He took determined strides towards it, the need to reach shelter driving him forwards. Just in case Wolf was lying like all her breed had a tendency to do.
The cabin would provide cover, allowing him to keep an eye on his surroundings without exposing himself, and giving him time to question the female and get the answers he wanted.