“Wow. You’ve known him that long?”
Rylan nodded. “Ten years.” He whistled softly. “Jesus. Time passes, huh? Anyway, Pike and I moved up in the ranks and were tasked with training other outlaws who wanted to join the fight, but there was never any sort of organized effort. For all the training and boasting, everyone was too scared to make a move against the GC. Hell, they’re still scared. Eventually we got tired of the promises and ditched the group. We were wandering around doing shit-all when we met Connor.”
“Where was that?”
“Out west. The Enforcers had just wiped out his camp, and he was making his way east.” Rylan grinned. “We tagged along despite his many protests. He didn’t like it at first, but I finally won him over with my natural charm. It was tough – I had to work twice as hard to make up for Pike’s surliness.”
She laughed. “I bet.”
“Though if I’m being honest, I think Con preferred Pike, at least at the beginning. You may not have noticed it, but Con’s not very chatty. He and Pike got along great.”
No, Connor certainly wasn’t chatty. Which drove her nuts. Would it kill the man to tell her something about himself? At this point, she’d be overjoyed to know his favorite color.
“Anyway, the three of us came across this camp and decided it would be a good place to hole up for the winter. But we needed to gather supplies and fortify the place, which meant going on a lot of runs. We met Xander during a raid. He knew Lennox – he’d crashed at the whorehouse a few times – but Xan was a nomad, wasn’t interested in staying in one place. He and I hit it off, and I convinced him to come back with us.”
“And Kade came last? From the city?”
Rylan snickered. “The dumbass was being attacked by bandits when we ran into him. We saved his sorry ass and nursed him back to health. It was my idea to let him stay.”
“Of course it was.” Hudson had noticed that Rylan liked to surround himself with people; the only time he was ever alone at camp was when he turned in for the night. She wondered if it was easier for him to keep up his laid-back charade when he had someone to perform it for.
“And there you have it.” He shrugged again. “I told you it wasn’t an interesting story.”
Hudson had a feeling it would have been very interesting – if he hadn’t left out so many details. Like what it had been like growing up on a farm, what his parents were like, what dangers he’d faced as a child. But she wasn’t in a position to judge him for the omissions. She hadn’t been completely honest, either.
In the back of her mind she knew Dominik and Knox were still looking for her. She could feel it, as if their anger and frustration were being transmitted through the air like radio waves. It was an unnerving sensation that she felt often. Impending doom. Ever-present peril. Each time she found herself relaxing, that nagging feeling poked at her, reminding her that everything could go wrong at any second.
For some reason, the feeling gnawed at her now, as Rylan took her hand to help her step over a fallen log. No sooner had the uneasiness surfaced than an inhuman shriek ripped through the forest.
“What was that?” Hudson said in alarm.
Rylan already had his rifle trained in the direction of the eerie sound. “Stay here,” he ordered.
“No way.” She quickly unsheathed her knife and hurried after him.
Twigs snapped beneath their boots as they moved through the brush toward the commotion. Hudson was nearly knocked off her feet when a blur of white fur flew past her. She registered four legs. A snout. Something dark and fuzzy in its mouth, but the animal disappeared into the trees before she could get a better look.
Rylan caught her arm to steady her, his rifle trained on the retreating creature. “You okay?”
“I’m fine.” She took a breath. “Was that your wolf?”
He shook his head. “My wolf is black as night. Because she was created by the fucking devil.”
Hudson glanced around warily. “Do you think there was some kind of animal fight?”
“Let’s find out. Stay close to me, though.” He smirked at her. “I don’t want that pretty face of yours getting mauled. Otherwise you’ll never find a husband.”
She snorted, but heeded his command by sticking to his side. She hadn’t come across many wild animals when she was living at the compound. The Enforcers had installed an electric fence that zapped any living creature that got too close, so the risks of getting attacked by a wolf were pretty damn low.
But there was no risk when she and Rylan finally reached the scene of the crime. No danger. No fear. Just heartache that cut her deep.
“Oh,” she whispered.
“Shit,” Rylan mumbled.
Hudson stared at the black wolf lying on the dirt. Blood pooled around the creature’s body, not only from the throat that had been torn open, but from the mangled hind leg that jutted out at an angle.
The bloody paw prints on the ground brought a wave of infinite sadness and the sting of tears. She was suddenly reminded of the dogs that lived at the compound, German shepherds and Rottweilers that were bred to accompany the Enforcers on colony sweeps. There were no veterinarians in the city, though; animal life meant nothing to the men. If a dog got hurt, it was put out of its misery. But sometimes Dominik would secretly bring a dog to the hospital for Hudson to patch up, or at least he had before he’d turned into a callous bastard like the rest of his men.
Her heart lodged in her throat as she timidly approached the wolf, clinging to hope that maybe it was alive, that maybe there was something she could do. But it was like hoping for the sun not to rise. There was no coming back from a gashed throat.
“Goddamn it.”
The chord of sorrow in Rylan’s voice caught her off guard. When she turned around, she saw her own anguish reflected back at her.
“You weren’t supposed to die like this, you silly bitch.”
It took Hudson a second to realize he was talking to the wolf. She moved back to his side and reached for his hand, lacing their fingers together. “Is that the she-devil?”
His throat bobbed as he nodded. “I’m the one who was supposed to kill her.”
Except… he never would have done it. His relationship with the wolf had been unconventional, to say the least, but Hudson suddenly realized how much it had meant to Rylan, how much he’d needed something to occupy his thoughts, even if that something was just a silly rivalry with a wild animal.
“No. You weren’t,” she said softly.
He sighed. “No. I wasn’t.”
They looked back at the dead wolf.
“Should we bury her?” Hudson asked.
“Nah. She’s part of the food chain now.”
It was a harsh way to put it, but Hudson couldn’t exactly disagree. She also couldn’t see how a burial was even an option, considering the dirt was packed tight and they didn’t have shovels on hand.
They turned away from the wolf and headed in the direction they’d come from, but Hudson stopped in her tracks when another sound broke the silence.
She furrowed her brow. “Did you hear that?”
Rylan frowned. “Yeah. What…?”
She heard it again. A half squeak, half growl.
Narrowing her eyes, she walked past the wolf’s body and pinpointed the barely audible noises to an overgrown cluster of shrubs about twenty feet away. Her spine stiffened when she noticed a trail of blood leading toward the vegetation. No, leading away from it, as if something had been dragged out of the bushes.
“Damn it, Hudson. Let me check it out before —”
She gasped. “Oh my gosh! Ry, come here and help me.”
He appeared at her side in an instant, using his rifle barrel to push aside a tangle of leaves and skinny branches until he saw the same thing she was seeing.
Wolf pups.
Hudson counted five of them, all black as night, and her heart sank like a stone when she noticed their fur glistening in some places. Wet with blood. She bit her lip,
making out another gaping throat, a throat that was so damn tiny compared to its mother’s.
The tears welled up again, then spilled over and trickled down her cheeks in salty rivulets. The she-devil must have been protecting her young when the other wolf came along. And now they were all dead. She and Rylan must have imagined those growling noises.
Her vision was so blurry from the tears that when she glimpsed a flash of movement in the black mass of little bodies, she thought she’d imagined it. She blinked rapidly, trying to get her vision to focus, then dropped to her knees at the same time a small head lifted from the pile.
Fearful ice blue eyes peeked up at her. The pup had an adorable face, a tiny snout, and barely formed teeth that were bared when the animal snarled at her. Or tried to, at least. The snarl came out as another squeak, and Hudson’s heart promptly cracked in two.
“Easy there, little one,” she cooed. “I’m not going to hurt you.”
“Hudson —” Rylan started.
Ignoring him, she leaned closer and reached for the baby wolf. It instantly made its unhappiness known by attempting to wriggle out of her grasp, but she held on tighter, even when it tried to bite her with teeth that weren’t capable of breaking skin.
Once she’d secured her grip, she stood up and held her prize up for Rylan. The pup was roughly the size of its mother’s head, which told Hudson that he couldn’t be more than a month old.
“He’s alive,” she said in astonishment.
“She,” Rylan corrected.
She followed his gaze and grinned at what she saw between the pup’s legs. Or rather, what she didn’t see.
“She,” Hudson conceded, cradling the wolf pup to her chest. It was no longer wiggling in protest, but burying its face against her breasts as if it were trying to crawl into her.
“Can we keep her?” she pleaded.
He was quick to shake his head. “Bad idea, Blondie. It’s a wild animal.”
“No, it’s a baby.” Her grip on the wolf tightened protectively. “She’ll die if we leave her out here.”
Reluctance creased his forehead. “Connor will flip out if we bring a wolf back to camp. It’s just another mouth to feed.”
“I’ll deal with Connor, and I’ll feed her myself,” Hudson said firmly.
She had no intention of backing down. Clearly Rylan could see that because he let out a frustrated groan. “Goddamn it. We can’t —”
Loud ringing interrupted him, and they both looked around in alarm before realizing the noise was coming from the satellite phone sticking out of his back pocket. Xander was still trying to make the phones operational, and he’d ordered them to take one with them in case he worked a miracle.
Rylan looked confused as he pulled out the phone. He stared at it for a moment before pressing a button and raising it to his ear. “Yeah?”
He paused, listened, and then a huge smile filled his face.
“You brilliant son of a bitch,” he crowed. “You actually did it.”
Hudson was equally impressed. Wow. Xander had actually gotten the phones up and working. The man really was a tech genius.
Rylan went quiet for a beat, then said, “We’re on our way back now.” He paused again, glancing at the bundle in Hudson’s arms. “Um. Yeah. You should probably go tell Connor that we’re bringing home a guest.”
Connor spent a very tense twenty minutes waiting for Rylan and Hudson to get back to camp. When Rylan had informed Xan that they had “guests,” Connor had immediately assumed the worst – they’d come across a straggler in the woods, they’d run into a group of bandits, they’d captured an Enforcer…
The fluffy thing in Hudson’s arms had not been on his worst-case-scenario list.
“What the hell is that?” he demanded.
“We found her in the woods.” Hudson’s voice held a defensive edge. “We couldn’t just leave her there to die.”
Connor didn’t answer. He drew a long, calming breath, then turned to Rylan. “Are you out of your mind? Why would you let her bring it back here? The last thing we need is another mouth to feed.”
Rylan glanced at Hudson. “Told ya that’s what he’d say.”
“I don’t care.” She stuck out her chin and leveled a determined look in Connor’s direction. “I’ll feed her myself. She can share my portions.”
Disbelief and irritation mingled in his blood. “The damn thing can’t eat stew, Hudson. She can’t be more than a month old – she needs her mother’s milk.”
“Well, her mother’s dead.” Hudson was glaring at him now. “And she’d be dead too if we hadn’t saved her.”
Connor raked a hand through his hair. It was growing out and he needed to cut it, but right now he appreciated the length because he needed to grab onto something before he throttled the woman.
Christ, it was one distraction after the other with Hudson. Ever since she’d shown up, he’d lost sight of what mattered most to him – finding Dominik. And fine, Hudson had unwittingly brought him a step closer to that goal by telling Xander about the Enforcer comm program, but Connor knew he’d be riding Xan a lot harder about hacking it if he weren’t so infatuated with her.
It was time to stop thinking with his dick, damn it. Dominik needed to be his only concern. Vengeance needed to be his only concern. He’d tried his damnedest to be who his wife needed him to be, and though he might have failed her in life, he sure as hell wasn’t going to fail her in death.
He couldn’t let Hudson keep distracting him, and he couldn’t keep indulging her every whim. Allowing her to scrub and organize cabins that were better left empty. To clear out the barn so it could serve as a gathering place one day. And now she was bringing home wolves?
Enough was enough.
“The wolf goes,” he said flatly.
Hudson’s jaw tightened. “If she goes, I go.”
“Fine. Then go,” he shot back. “I don’t have time for this bullshit. I’m not about to have a wolf running around camp and have to sleep with one eye open in case it tries to rip my throat out.”
Hudson’s laughter annoyed the hell out of him. She held up the tiny creature and said, “You think she’ll rip your throat out? She still has her baby teeth! She can’t even bite through the skin of a tomato!”
“She won’t stay a baby forever. How do you think she’ll behave when she’s a full-grown wolf?”
“She’ll behave perfectly, because I plan on training her.” She gave him a smug look, then added, “I’m not giving her up, Con. So you can either throw us out, or suck it up.”
His chest rumbled with aggravation. “For chrissake!”
A chuckle from behind him drew his attention to the porch, where Xander and Kade were watching the exchange in amusement. So was Pike, who was leaning against one of the wooden posts, his dark eyes revealing nothing, as usual.
Connor stifled another curse when Hudson dismissed him by turning to Rylan. “How do we get her some milk?”
“Um…” Rylan’s expression conveyed visible unease, as if he knew how close Connor was to pulling out his gun and shooting his own brains out.
Jesus Christ. He couldn’t believe they were even having this conversation. Wolves didn’t belong at camp. End of fucking story.
Was he the only levelheaded person here?
“Don’t answer that question,” he snapped at Rylan. “The wolf isn’t staying.”
Hudson’s eyes blazed. “So then you’re ordering me to leave?”
He scowled at her, and it was on the tip of his tongue to follow through with the threat. To tell her to get out and take her new pet with her. But much to his annoyance, the words refused to leave his mouth, which led to a heated glare session between him and Hudson.
“I’ll get the milk.” The gruff announcement came from Pike.
Hudson looked over in shock. “You will?” Her tone grew suspicious. “How?”
Pike strode toward them, his heavy boots kicking up dirt with each step. “We get dairy products from a farm abo
ut sixty miles north of here. I usually pay them a visit once a month.” His dark gaze flicked to Connor. “I know I’m not scheduled to go until next week, but I can take one of the bikes and leave now.”
Connor was dumbfounded. “Are you insane?” He glanced at the others, none of whom had backed him up. “Have you all gone insane?”
Rylan shifted awkwardly.
Pike and Kade didn’t answer.
It was Xander who finally spoke up. “Ah, come on, Con. Look at that little face. She’s adorable.”