Pack Challenge

Chapter Thirteen

TOC

Zach had smelled them as soon as they had hit the parking lot. He, Marrec, and both their Packs were already out the door of the hospital when Angelina ran into them. Silently, panic and fear for her friend coming off her in waves, she grabbed Zach by the hand and dragged him to where she had last seen Sara.

He caught her scent immediately and within seconds had shifted and took off into the woods, shaking his clothes off as he went. His Pack right behind him.

At first, the bastard cats didn’t shift. They couldn’t taunt and terrify her as cats. Only men could do that. Besides, he could still smell the human. But then, they must have realized that she was a lot faster and stronger than they had expected. About two miles from the hospital, they changed. And Zach knew that it wouldn’t be long before they caught up with her. Before they killed her.

Soon he figured out where she was heading. Home. She was going home. To where she felt safe. To where she had guns.

Good girl, he thought. Anything she could do at this point to buy him time.

Sara knew as soon as they had shifted, but she kept moving. If she had a moment to think, she would be marveling at the fact that she hadn’t run since her attack when she was 8. And now she had run almost 5 miles and felt—no, she knew—that she could go another 20. But they were gaining on her. She had been right. They were much faster once they shifted.

Sara cleared the woods and made a mad dash for her house. She leapt over a car parked in front of her porch, which bought her precious seconds, flew up the stairs and through her front door. She turned and slammed the door just as the cats made it up the stairs. She could hear them throwing themselves against the wood. She wondered how long before they forced the heavy oak off its hinges? She wondered where Zach and the rest of the Pack where?

She wondered how long before the bitches behind her actually said anything?

Sara looked over her shoulder at the four women standing behind her, one holding her shotgun.

They were beautiful women. Tall. Powerful. Blonde. Really blonde. Impeccably dressed, sporting $400 gold-colored shoes and gold jewelry she could never afford.

“They were right. You do look like your mother.”

Sara was having such a bad day. She sighed and stepped forward to face the leader. She wasn’t the tallest, but clearly she ran these females.

“She killed my sister. Now I’m going to kill you.” She stated simply. “I had hoped to do it long ago, but that bitch grandmother of yours moved like lightning.”

“Then let’s end it.” Sara was so tired of the bullshit. “Here. Now. Anything to get you to shut the fuck up.”

The woman hissed her displeasure and Sara snarled back. Her lips pulling back over her growing canines.

Then the bitch’s hand was around her throat, dragging her close. Sara grabbed at the hand cutting off her oxygen, panic spreading through her. Panic. Fear. And anger. Definitely anger. The female leaned in and smelled her. “How sweet. Just turned. Just marked.” A tongue that should not have been able to fit in the woman’s mouth lashed out and swiped up the entire side of Sara’s scarred face. It wasn’t really wet, but dry and painful. “I bet he’ll miss you when you’re gone.” Then she lifted Sara off the floor and tossed her across the room and through the closed glass window.

Zach skid to a halt in front of Sara’s porch, Conall practically slamming into the back of him. He watched her body flying toward the window and his mind howled in anger and pain. He was going to lose her. Lose the only woman he’d liked much less loved. But as Sara’s body cleared the glass, he watched her change. Her limbs smoothly shifted to hind and front legs. Her hands and feet into paws. Black hair spread over her body. And her beautiful face elongated into a muzzle and snapping jaws.

Then she hit the porch, bounced and flipped off it; sliding across the grass in front of her house and coming to a halt when she slid right into Zach’s long front legs.

And just like that she’d shifted, officially becoming one of them. One of the Pack. But this was her first shift. She’d need time to come to terms with it. Time to learn to use her new body. Time none of them had.

Sara felt her body go through the window. Felt the glass shredding her clothes, tearing her flesh. She briefly wondered how long she could fight if she lost a lot of blood.

She felt herself hit the porch, bounce once, and flip off it into the air. Then she felt grass and dirt against her body as she slid into Zach. He wasn’t the Zach she was used to seeing. He was the wolf she’d set up on her couch. But she recognized those eyes. Those hazel eyes. If she’d seen them that night, she would have known it was him. No one else had eyes like that.

She smelled the cats coming closer and heard them moving, surrounding her and the Pack, and she scrambled up on all fours, ready to fight.

It took her a good five seconds to realize that she was no longer human. She realized she’d shifted when she went through the window. That explained why she’d bounced so easily from the porch. She shook herself out of her clothes as the power of the wolf coursed through her new body. She felt the strength of centuries of breeding. And felt the lust for the hunt and the kill. She turned to the beast behind her father’s death. A golden lioness stood on her porch and roared in rage. And Sara realized that as a lion, the bitch was huge.

All the cats were. She stared in awe at their size and beauty and tried to figure out how, exactly, they were going to fight animals that weighed a good 300 to 400 pounds more then any of her Pack did? Then she felt Zach brush up against her. She felt his strength. His power. And his utter confidence in her. Confidence in the psychotic bitch he’d come to love.

He was right. She was a psychotic bitch. And these heifers had killed her father. She was probably going to get herself killed today, but she was going to hurt, maim, and kill as many as she possibly could.

She turned to face them; her lips peeling back to bare her teeth, a snarl angrily forced out of her. And that’s when they burst out of the woods. Thirty-strong. She saw Marrec and his Pack. People she’d known most of her life. She knew each one even as wolves. Jake. Fogle. Lana from the hair salon, and so many more. She recognized their scent. The rest? True wolves. Wolves and descendents of wolves that had watched over her since she was a child.

Sara turned back to the lioness. Things had just evened up a bit. And being the psychotic bitch that she was, she charged her head-on. The lioness let out a roar that shook the trees and went up on her hind legs, but Sara kept coming. She collided with the female and clamped her jaw around the beast’s throat. Then three of her Pack joined her. Two went for its groin. The other gripped its head in her mouth. Then they all bit down and wouldn’t let go. The lioness fought but still Sara wouldn’t release her. Big paws clawed at her, tearing her fur-covered flesh. She ignored the pain and the blood she could feel running down her side and muzzle. Instead she dug her teeth in deeper and, using all her new-found strength, yanked out the bitch’s throat. Sara stood back to watch the lioness struggle to get back on her feet. But blood was gushing from her wounds and eventually she stopped fighting.

Sara spit out the remains of the lioness and turned to see Zach, Conall, and Yates dispatching one male. Marrec and six of his Pack were fighting another. The full-blooded wolves had taken on two males. Her Pack had taken on another female.

Sara watched as two more females came at her. She tore down the steps of her porch and slammed head first into one of them, the two bouncing off each other into opposite corners. The other lioness was slower and became the tragic victim of a white pickup truck driven by a crazy Latina.

Angelina hit the brakes and violently turned the steering wheel so that the truck spun out; the side of the two-ton vehicle hitting the lioness and knocking her across the temporary battle field. Miki leaned out the window, Angelina’s shotgun in her hands. Sara watched that expression of cool detachment that Miki always got when she was hunting. She pulled the trigger once. The beast gave a pained roar and landed in a heap, a large part of its skull gone. Sara saw that Miki smile and knew her friends were as much predators as she was.

Assured her two friends could handle themselves, Sara turned back to see the last female scramble to her big feet. She roared out in anger and frustration. When she did, Sara attacked. She wrapped her maw around the back of her neck and twisted the beast around so that they both hit the ground. Then Zach was there beside her. He grabbed the lion’s throat. Conall grabbed its rear right leg. Marrec grabbed the rear left. Casey, Yates, and Marrec all took a firm grip on exposed flesh. Zach crushed her windpipe. As she struggled to get breath, they all tore her to pieces.

Sara released the animal and trotted over to Miki and Angelina. They looked down at her, but their eyes widened. At first Sara thought they were simply afraid of her as wolf. But she realized that she was suddenly freezing cold and shaking. She looked down at her crouching form and saw blood- and dirt-covered skin. She had changed back.

“Oh, honey.” Angelina reached into the truck and pulled out a blanket.

“I’ll take it.” Zach took the blanket.

“Dude, some clothes!” Miki, the entire left side of her face already black and blue from the punch, turned away to look at the truck, the ground, anything but her friend’s naked boyfriend. But then she saw Casey prance by with her muzzle wrapped around a hunk of lion leg. “Okay. You people are killing me!” She rubbed her eyes with balled fists as Angelina put her arm around Miki’s shoulders.

Zach crouched down beside Sara and wrapped the blanket around her.

“Zach, I’m so cold.” She barely got that out, her teeth were chattering so hard.

“Don’t worry, baby, it’s normal. It’s your first change. It’s to be expected.”

Sara still broke into a grin. “My first change? You mean I’ve popped my change-cherry?”

Zach looked at her and started laughing, “Yeah, I guess you could say that. If you’re tacky enough to say that.”

He picked Sara up in his arms and held her close, making sure the blanket was tight around her.

“Clothes! You people need clothes!” Sara peeked over Zach’s shoulder to see a naked Conall standing behind them and in front of a clearly disturbed Miki. Considering she’d just taken out a 500-pound animal with one shot, Sara thought to herself, you’d think she’d handle the naked thing a little better.

“Go on,” Conall said to Zach. “We’ll take care of cleaning this up. You take care of her.”

Zach nodded and walked into the house, Sara’s head resting against his shoulder.

Within minutes, Zach had Sara in a hot bath. He washed the blood off her face and out of her hair. He cleaned her wounds and gently licked the one’s on her neck, face, and shoulder. He dried her off with a big towel and carried her into the bed. He lay down next to her and pulled her to him, resting her head on his chest, his arms tightly wrapping around her long body. He nuzzled his nose against her wet hair and kissed her forehead. Sara sighed once and in a few seconds she was asleep.

It was morning when she woke him. Her naked body was stretched out on top of him. Her lips moving along his neck. Her hands moving down his waist.

Zach took her head in his hands and turned her to look at him. To be blunt, she was all fucked up from the previous night’s fight: her left eye black and blue, a deep wound on her neck, a vicious cut across the bridge of her nose. She is so hot, he thought. And she was glowing. Clearly she took after her mother more than any of them realized. She was all about the hunt.

“Okay, what? What are you staring at?”

He wanted to tell her. Tell her that he loved her. Tell her that she was his mate and that together they would rule the Magnus Pack. He really wanted to tell her.

“There’s something I need to tell you.” Her eyes narrowed with suspicion. “Nothing bad,” he added hurriedly. “I don’t think.”

She pushed herself off of him and sat at the other end of the bed, “Well?”

He cleared his throat. “Um… see, after yesterday… You know, you’ve kind of… well, you’ve kind of established yourself as the dominant female… which kind of means… that… uh…” She just stared at him. Okay. So she wasn’t going to make this easy. “You see, it’s just that… for the Pack it’s all about…um …and for me… you know…” Why was this so hard? Maybe it was the way she was just watching him, her arms crossed in front of her breasts. “Uh…”

Then her phone went off, “Hold that thought.”

She easily swung herself off the bed and grabbed the phone from the top of the TV. “Hello? Hey, Mik. Whasup? You doin’ okay? How’s your face today?” Sara flopped stomach-down across the bed. Zach stared at that delectable ass and became completely lost, forgetting what he was talking about. Who she was talking to. He forgot his name. He forgot all of it. “Good. Me? I’m doin’ just fine. Just waiting for Zach to quit dancin’ around the bush and tell me he loves me.” Zach was startled but just couldn’t tear his eyes away from her ass, “It’s taking him an hour and a day.” Sara’s legs were lazily moving front to back, her breasts barely touching the sheets, her chin tucked into the palm of one hand while the other held the phone to her ear. “That’s a good idea. Hold on.” She looked at Zach, “Would it help if I told you I loved you first?”

Zach didn’t know what to say. Hell, he was still staring at her ass, so he just sort of nodded. Sort of.

Sara went back to the phone. “You’re right. Apparently that would help. You’re so smart.” Sara was silent for a moment, listening to Miki on the other end. “Yeah. You got it.” Sara snapped her phone closed and tossed it on the night stand beside the bed. But she tossed way too hard and the phone hit the wall and flew back, disappearing under the bed. “Well, shit.”

Zach watched her lean down to search under the bed. She slid half her body to the floor trying to reach the phone, but all Zach could see was her ass bent over the bed, one leg sliding across his thigh. He growled.

Sara had just gotten her hands on her phone when she felt Zach’s tongue slide over her. She was so startled she flipped right off the bed.

Cell phone still gripped in one hand, she pulled herself up to rest on her knees. Zach was laying on the edge of the bed, smirking at her. “Could you warn me before you do something like that?”

“You shake your ass at me like that, you get no warning.”

She tried to stop herself from smiling, but just couldn’t. “I’ll keep that in mind for the future.”

“You mean the future of five seconds from now?” He grabbed her arm and yanked her onto the bed.

“Hey!” Sara’s already bruised and damaged face, slammed into a pillow. She lifted her head so that she could brush her hair out of her eyes. “You know, you’ve been tossing me around a lot.”

“Uh-huh.” Zach was behind her. “And that bothers you because…” He grabbed her legs and pulled them apart, then dragged her down until her ass was on his lap.

“I didn’t say it bothered me, I just think I deserve a little more respect than that. You know, with me being Alpha Female and all.” His head snapped up in surprise and she grinned at him. “Don’t look so surprised. I’m not stupid. I knew in the hospital, when you wanted me to yell at the girls. Hey!” He’d just slapped her butt.

“You’re a real smart ass. But I’ll let it go because you have such an amazing butt.”

She growled, “You know, I’m not your…” She stopped and they looked at each other. They both knew what the next word out her mouth was going to be. “Okay. So maybe I am your bitch, that doesn’t mean I’m your chew toy.”

Zach raised one eyebrow, and Sara watched him lean down and lick her lower back. Her hands gripped the sheets, “You asshole, you’re trying to distract me again.” But his tongue took its time moving across her hot and hungry flesh and it felt so good, it was really difficult to remember what the hell she’d been complaining about.

“What were you saying, beautiful?” He asked as she felt his fingers slowly enter her sex, his tongue lapping at her accursed damaged thigh. Sheets shredded under her hands. She looked back at him. And there was that smug prick she’d grudgingly fallen in love with. The wounds he had sustained on his face, neck, chest, and back the night before had already begun to heal. He’d gotten every one of those rips and tears because of her and he didn’t care. She knew he didn’t care. Clearly the only thing he cared about at the moment was getting her wet and getting her off.

He caught her staring at him and nipped her ass cheek. “What ya starin’ at?” He asked playfully.

But she was deadly serious when she replied. “You. I love you, Zach.”

He looked at her for several moments then leaned down and kissed her ass. His hands slid under her breasts and, holding them firmly but gently lifted her so that her back was flat against his chest.

He kissed her along her neck and shoulder. Licking wounds new and old. When he reached her ear, he leaned in closer than any one before him ever had. “I love you, baby.” He whispered in her ear. “More than anything.” Then he was inside of her and she forgot about everything else.