David stopped in his tracks but didn’t look over his shoulder. He heard Jace step toward him.
“If you go in there injured like you are, you’re both going to be killed, and how will that solve anything?”
David’s whole body trembled as he fought down the rage growing inside his chest.
Jace placed a hand on his shoulder and squeezed. “I swear to you on my life, I’ll get her back. But you know we can’t go out unprepared.”
David’s hands clenched into fists. Jace was right, and he knew it, but his anger refused to subside. He should have been able to save her. He should have been able to track that fucker down right now, and murder him slowly and painfully. A loud, angry scream sounded in the air, and it took David several seconds to realize it was his own.
FRANKIE PACED AROUND the platform with her cell phone at her ear. The ringing seemed to echo on a never-ending loop. Finally an automated female voice instructed her to leave a message at the beep.
She growled into the receiver. “Pick up your phone, Alejandro.” She hoped he heard her on his answering machine.
A small beep sounded. “Hello?”
“Allsun O’Hare’s been kidnapped.”
Alejandro cursed under his breath. “Do you want me to assemble everyone?”
“Yes. You know the drill.” Without another word, she hung up the phone, then turned back toward David and Jace. “They’ll be here within forty-five minutes.”
Her heart dropped into the pit of her stomach as she watched David clutch his head and squeeze. She swallowed past the lump in her throat. “I’m sorry, David. Jace is right. We’ll get her back. I swear.”
He circled the platform, swearing and cursing under his breath like a madman. So this was the man Allsun loved. Not long after she’d first encountered the petite, half-blooded faerie and agreed to let her into the Rochester pack as an associate, Allsun had confided in her about how she was running from a relationship, a healthy, good relationship that she was convinced she would destroy.
Frankie thought of Allsun’s face: the sweet smile that rarely left her lips and her pixie attitude. Allsun was a fighter, but when Frankie imagined her in Robert’s clutches, she nearly vomited all over the floor.
The time that passed before the pack assembled stretched on for what seemed like days. With each passing second, the dread in Frankie’s chest built and her sympathy for David deepened.
At one point she leaned up to Jace’s ear to whisper, “Jace, is he going to be okay?”
They turned together to watch David continuing to pace the room, despite his injured leg, as if he could wear a hole in the ground that would lead him to Allsun.
Jace shrugged. “He’s in love with her. Always has been. He’ll do anything to save her.” He looked Frankie in the eyes. “He won’t be okay until she’s safe again.”
When all of the pack members finally arrived, Frankie stood in the middle of the platform with her head held high but her morale quickly sinking. She should have expected Robert to come after the people who mattered to her and kept a closer eye on her pack members. She should have made sure that even the strongest females were escorted by men or moved in groups. She’d shirked her duties as packmaster, and now Allsun was paying the price.
Once the pack quieted down, she launched headfirst into the problem.
“Allsun O’Hare has been kidnapped.”
A roar of angry conversation erupted among the crowd. She held up her hand to try to silence them.
“We need to move in and locate her, and we need to do it fast. From what we know, she’s been missing since the night of the pack meeting.” She paused to gauge everyone’s reaction. The faces staring back at her were a mixed bag of emotions, but there was one common denominator: they were all eager to retrieve Allsun.
“I know it’s custom to vote on which warrior will save her, but I think this case calls for special circumstances.” She fought hard not to show any sign of weakness. “As we discussed before, Jace is the only one of us who has any possibility of destroying this bastard, because this killer isn’t just a normal werewolf, he’s something else. We’ve already approved Jace to hunt him down, so now let’s approve him to save Allsun in the process.”
Small murmurs cropped up around the room, mostly among her warriors, the highest-ranking males. After briefly conferring with several of them, Alejandro stepped up to the stage.
“If you expect us to let a non-pack member do our job, then he needs to prove himself. He needs to show us that he’s stronger than all our warriors.”
A loud growl sounded as David climbed laboriously onto the platform. “That’s a waste of time. We should be out looking for her right now. A whole search party could be out there if we weren’t too busy standing here scratching our heads like a bunch of dumb-asses.”
Alejandro frowned. “It’s pack policy. Only one male and one female will go, so we don’t risk multiple members for the sake of one. Frankie is the strongest female here, no one doubts that, so it’s a given that she should go, but Jace is not a member of this pack. He’s a temporary ornament.”
David’s mouth tightened into a thin line and a look of anger crossed his face. His temper visibly shot up. Frankie interrupted before he said something that turned the pack against him.
“Let’s also remember that Allsun is an associate member of the pack. That means only some of the pack rules apply to her.”
Alejandro shook his head. “True, but this rule stands firm whether she’s a full pack member or not—one male, one female, to retrieve her.”
Frankie’s hands balled into fists at her sides. “Alejandro, you’re combating my every move just because I —”
“I’ll do it,” Jace said.
Everyone looked at him.
“I’ll pass your little challenge and beat all your asses to a bloody pulp if that’s what it takes to save Allsun.”
Alejandro met Jace in the middle of the platform, and the two men stood face-to-face.
“You’ll fight my warriors and you’ll fight me, and you’ll prove you’re as strong as we are?” He leaned in so close to Jace’s face that their noses nearly touched. “You’ll prove you can shift
Jace matched Alejandro’s glare. “You bet.”
From the confident tone in Jace’s voice and the way he stared Alejandro directly in the eye, if Frankie hadn’t known better, she would have thought he had shifted a thousand times before. He didn’t even blink as he stared Alejandro down.
But she knew the truth. Jace had scraped the surface of shifting with the slight transformation of his hand, but he was nowhere near ready to shift into complete wolf form. And even without being aware of the specifics, Alejandro had to know that Jace couldn’t yet match the skills of a seasoned warrior when it came to transforming. He’d set up Jace for a battle he couldn’t possibly win.
She grabbed Alejandro by the elbow and tugged him away.
“We need to talk
AFTER BRIEFLY ATTEMPTING to calm David down and realizing it was a battle he couldn’t win, Jace followed Frankie and Alejandro the Prick out of the main room of the club. The two strode down a nearby hallway until they reached an office at the end, the sounds of David’s curses still carrying from the main room. The man wouldn’t
