Wild Blood: The Trueborn Saga Book 1 Page 3

  "Can I get you anything?" I ask as I fight to keep my smile from fading. I instinctively know that I can't show them any fear or weakness.

  One of them leans forward and breaths in deeply through his nose as he stares avidly at my chest. "Honey, I can think of a lot of things you can get me," he rumbles out lewdly.

  Yuck. The guy's face is broad and intimidatingly hard. I can see tattoos wrapping around his thick neck and curling up to disappear up under the black skull-covered do-rag that covers what I suspect is a shaved head. His arms are hugely muscled, stretching under the black leather of his worn jacket. He's so scary, he could be a walking poster boy for an outlaw biker gang.

  "We have a special on draft beer tonight," I reply, thinking ignoring his innuendo is probably my best course of action.

  "Do they have any specials that include you?" the other one asks in a harsh rasping voice.

  This one is taller and less stocky with dark greasy hair pulled back into a low ponytail. His features are sharp and angular, his dark eyes even scarier than the other guy since they seem devoid of any emotion besides the lurid hunger that's now directed at me. I'm so freaked out that for a second, I actually think that his eyes flash red at me, but that can't be real, and just shows how much these men disturb me.

  "If you'd like something harder, we have a full bar as well," I continued breezily.

  "I've got something harder for you," scary ponytail guy says and briefly cups his groin.

  Ew. I play dumb and fight to keep smiling. Show. No. Weakness.

  "I'll give you two a few minutes to decide," I say quickly and then turn to hurry away before they say anything else I don't want to hear.

  They laugh at my expense behind me, and that dirty feeling only increases as I feel the weight of their eyes on me again, and probably on my ass this time. Ignore it, Raven. Just ignore it. I decide to go ask Chavez to wait on those two since I have absolutely no desire to go anywhere near them again.

  "Excuse me," a low male voice calls out politely just as I pass one of my other tables.

  I was so focused on getting away from those creepy ass bikers that I didn't even notice that the table is now occupied. Shit. I paste on another fake smile and turn toward the voice. I'm met with a pair of dark yet warm brown eyes and a friendly smile set in an attractive face. The guy is dressed in a T-shirt and jeans, and looks a little older than me with cropped wiry dark hair and a short scruffy beard. He looks...normal. Thank God. I literally sigh in relief.

  "What can I do for you?" I ask with a genuine smile.

  "My friend and I want a pitcher of your draft special and a couple of burgers," he says.

  "How would you like those cooked?" I ask as I glance across the table toward his friend. After that, I don't even register if my question gets answered, because this other guy isn't normal. Not even close, but definitely not in a bad way.

  He's unbelievably gorgeous, and literally the hottest guy I've ever seen in my entire though relatively short life. He has strong handsome features with full kissable lips and a just visible scruff that covers a chiseled jawline that's just begging to be touched. His dark hair is short on the sides and longer on top with soft sexy waves styled in a careless tousle that makes me want to latch onto it and never let go.

  His broad shoulders fill out a tight dark-blue T-shirt that hugs every bulging muscle of what I can see of his torso to perfection. My eyes caress the hard and sharply defined muscles of his arms where they're resting on the worn tabletop. What would they feel like wrapped around me? His eyes are currently fixed downward as he sits stiffly in his chair with tension thrumming through every line of his body. What would all that masculine perfection feel like moving above me? That thought has my lady parts bursting to life in an instant conflagration between my thighs. Throbbing heat burns through my body as lust ignites inside me in a dizzying rush. My nipples peak, and I know that my panties are now soaked.

  Please God, please let him look up at me. Please. And a second later, I get my wish.

  Clear icy-blue irises rise up, and I'm swallowed up by them in a heartbeat. Everything around me is just gone, an afterthought rendered meaningless and unimportant now as I fall into that glorious gaze. For a second, I'm so lost to it that I think I see a flash of silver flicker across his eyes that couldn't possibly be real.

  He lets out a low almost imperceptible growl, then jerks his eyes back down to the table, and I find that my brain can actually function again.

  "Rare," he says in a low gruff rumble.

  "Wh...what?" I blurt out in a bewildered tone as I finally manage actual speech.

  "The burger," he explains, his voice dropping to an even rougher tone as his hands tighten onto fists. "I want mine rare." How is it possible that his voice is even sexier than his appearance?

  "Mine too," another voice says. I look over to see the other guy, who I'd completely forgotten about, eying his friend with a narrow-eyed expression of concern.

  "Um...uh...I'll get...I'll get right on that," I reply, then hurry away before I have a chance to make a complete idiot out of myself like I usually do in front of guys I find attractive. Although, in this case attractive doesn't come close to applying to this guy. He's on a level of good-looking that I can't even fathom.

  I go to the kitchen window to deliver the food order, then to the bar where Brett has another drink order ready for me, as well as a pitcher of beer I didn't even ask for.

  "Who's this for?" I ask as I motion toward it in confusion.

  "Those two," he barks out as he gives me a put-upon glare and thrusts a chin in the direction of the hot guy and his friend.

  "They've been here before?"

  "Duh," he replies with an eye roll, then turns and walks away without anymore explanation than that.

  Great. I get to be rendered a babbling idiot every time they show up. Lucky me. I huff out a beleaguered sigh and pick up my tray, deciding that this time I just wouldn't look at the guy. I'll say as little as possible when I deliver their beer and get the hell away before I did something embarrassing. There. Problem solved. Then I turn away from the bar.

  I watch what happens next like it's a slow motion train wreck. The groper in the trucker hat, who's already up and walking between the tables toward the restroom, nears the bikers' table just as the one in the do-rag suddenly thrusts out one big heavy boot. The poor creep trips over it and goes sprawling across another table, sending drinks flying all over the group of men sitting there.

  In the next instant, three very angry and beer soaked guys are rising to their feet and grabbing a hold of poor trucker-hat-guy, whose own friends are already up and rushing to his defense. There's a brief moment of yelling and hollering before the pushing and shoving starts, and when the first fist finally flies, all hell breaks loose. Within seconds, a bar fight erupts and seems to suck in everyone around it, then expands outward like some sort of living thing that's bent on nothing but destruction, and just I stand there watching in awe-struck shock.

  "Out the back door! Now!" Brett bellows behind me, and it breaks me out of my paralysis. I shove the tray of sloshing drinks back onto the bar and practically sprint for the door. I make it all the way there, and am just about to push my way through it when I remember my dog. I gasp and whirl in a panic.

  "Luna!" I yell over the din inside the bar, hoping she can hear me over the screaming, shouting, and the sharp sounds of breaking glass and wood as fear grips my heart. "Luna, come!" If anything happens to her, I don't know what I'd do.

  Suddenly, I see a flurry of white and silver fur come barreling out from the mass of writhing battling bodies and head straight for me. Oh thank God. I lunge for the door, just as she reaches me, and we burst out of the building together into the blessedly cool night air. I keep on running as fear-fed adrenaline courses through me, then pull to a stop a few yards into the woods just behind the bar. What the hell am I doing? I whirl around to head back toward the building and plow into a wall of immovable muscle. I look up to
see a pair of dark dead eyes aimed down at me. It's the biker with the greasy ponytail. I gasp as steely arms wrap around me and hold me tight before I can even react.

  "I'm gonna really enjoy gettin' a taste of you, sugar," comes his low and terrifying voice as he leans down close to my face. His breath is foul, his smile heartless and cruel. Fear streaks through me as I begin struggling to get away, but he's too strong, and I'm not going anywhere.

  I hear a furious and familiar snarl, then look down to see that Luna has latched onto the guy's lower leg with her teeth. I watch in helpless horror as he yanks his leg free and sends a hard vicious kick at my dog that sends her flying into the darkness with a high-pitched yelp followed by a sickening thud, and then silence. Oh my God! Did he kill her?

  "Luna!" I shriek as I struggle even harder, kicking and biting and scratching.

  A hand tangles in the hair at the back of my head and fists it in a firm and painful grip. My head is forced back until I'm looking at a nightmare come to life. His face...his face isn't right. The bones under his skin look almost like they're moving underneath. His eyes seem to gleam red in the darkness. Am I so afraid that I'm hallucinating?

  "Hold still, bitch," he snarls out harshly, and I swear to God his teeth look longer...sharper. I freeze in terror, my heart seizing in my chest. He pulls back a big meaty hand to slap me, and I brace for the coming blow.

  "Quit fucking with her," a rumbling voice announces from behind the man holding me. "We need to go now."

  The biker with the do-rag comes into view, and now I know I'm really screwed. The guy holding me abruptly hefts me up to dangle over his shoulder like I weigh nothing, and then I'm being dragged kicking and screaming farther into the darkened woods. I don't know exactly what's going on, or who and what these men are, but I have a horrible feeling that I'm not going to be around long enough to figure it out anyway.

  4

  EMMETT

  "Get a grip, Em" Cooper hisses out at me as she walks away from our table.

  The scent of her and her sweet arousal is still lingering in my nose. It taunts and tortures the man and the wolf inside me, making my dick throb behind the zipper of my jeans and the beast roil under my skin. For the first time ever, I'm seriously wishing I didn't have a wolf's sense of smell, or hearing for that matter, since I could clearly hear her heart racing with her desire.

  "I am," I growl as I lean forward over the table to glare at him, my fingers pressing down on the table.

  He gives me a dubious expression and glances at my hands. I follow his gaze to see that I'm gouging little half moon shapes into the wood. Fuck. I clench my hands into fists and lean back into my chair.

  "We need to go," he snaps out sharply, his face hard and grim as he holds my gaze.

  I stare him down with an equally fierce and unrelenting expression. "No." My rasping reply doesn't sound even remotely human, re-enforcing just how much I'm struggling to control the beast. I don't care. I'm not leaving her here with those disgusting abominations.

  Coop's eyes flash over my shoulder and widen. "Oh shit," he blurts out.

  I whirl in my seat just in time to see a fight breaking out a few tables over. It expands in seconds, spreading from table to table as if the people involved were just waiting for the opportunity to exact their pound of flesh from everyone else around them. Coop and I jump to our feet to face the threat as bottles and glasses crash and shatter on the floor amid all the kicks and punches that are being thrown in every direction.

  I glance around to find her, and thankfully see that she's already making a break for the back door of the bar. Good. I turn toward the fight again, and the next thing I know a chair comes flying at my head. I bat it aside like it's nothing, then get tackled by the big bald fucker swinging it. I land hard on our table with the guy on top of me, and the whole damn thing collapses under our weight with a loud crunch. I slam down onto the floor amid the splintered remains of the table with a sharp and heavy grunt, and my attacker immediately starts raining blows on my face with his ham sized fists. It only pisses me off.

  It's all I can do not to shift and rip his fucking throat out here and now. I barely rein it in, and I'm just about to fling the guy off of me and hurl him across the fucking room, when Coop bashes a bottle over the guy's head with a vicious snarl. The asshole falls limply down onto me, and I shove him violently off of me with an angry growl.

  "Come on," Cooper barks out as he reaches a hand down to me, his eyes flashing amber. "We need to get the fuck out of here."

  I nod as I take his hand. He helps me up and heads for the front door. I'm about to follow him, when I notice one of those evil bastards hurrying out the same door that the raven-haired girl just left through a few moments ago. Oh hell no. Without a thought, I spin on my heel and rush after him, wiping away the blood from my already healing split lip and busted nose. The taste of my own blood only fuels the raging fire driving me.

  "Emmett!" I hear Coop call out behind me, but I'm beyond listening to him now. He either follows me or he doesn't. Either way, I'm not letting that bastard lay a hand on her. I'm out the door and already pulling my shirt off as I hit the tree line, when Cooper comes up next to me swearing loudly.

  "What the fuck, Emmett?" he shouts as he paces me farther into the woods. "You can't shift now. What if she or someone else sees you?"

  "I don't give a fuck," I reply as I toss the shirt aside and begin unfastening the fly of my jeans.

  "Em-" he begins rebukingly.

  I spin and grip Cooper's collar with a snarl and shove him against the nearest tree trunk so hard it forces a grunt of air out of him. "Help me or don't!" I say in a harsh guttural voice. "But you're not going to stop me from doing this." I can feel the familiar and oddly comforting pain of my teeth shifting in my jaw, feel the fur rippling under my skin and my nails lengthening and sharpening.

  "You're really going to risk all of us for some human piece of ass?" he asks incredulously.

  I lean in closer, knowing my eyes are completely silver now. "She's not some piece of ass," I growl. "She's mine," the wolf adds, shocking me with the truth I can't deny.

  His eyes grow huge, and his mouth falls open in astonishment. "You...you mean..." he trails off.

  "Yes," I barely get out as my voice drops and thickens with the impending shift.

  I abruptly let him go, and he stays leaning against the tree as he watches me in disbelief. I make swift work of stripping off everything else I'm wearing and shoving it all under a bush, then let the shift fully settle over me. The rush of adrenaline and endorphins that follows tempers the intense pain of my body violently changing under my skin as fur bursts out like tiny tingling needles across every inch of me. I bend down, and huge paws hit the soft dirt beneath me instead of human hands. My claws dig deep into the sweet blessed earth, and I push off at a dead run into the night with my nose to the wind and my tail streaming out behind me. I can hear Coop running after me on two feet. Good. Less of a chance of being discovered if only one two-hundred-pound wolf is out running around tonight.

  I have no time to savor how good it feels to be the wolf again, the freedom, the power, the rightness and just more of it all. All that matters now is getting to her before it's too late.

  I catch her sweet and glorious scent amid the stench of sulfur and hone in on it, instantly adjusting my direction as I continue running, eating up the distance far faster than I ever could on two feet. In mere moments, I'm upon them. My night vision is excellent, and I see the bastards clearly through the trees. They're several yards apart, one farther ahead of the other with the girl struggling and hollering as she dangles down the fuckers back. I don't smell any blood, so I'm relieved that they haven't hurt her yet. There will be blood very very soon though, and righteous fury and bloodlust surge to life and sing through my veins.

  I come up behind the first one before he even knows I'm there. I leap onto his back before he can turn to see me coming for him. I ride him down to the ground, my fangs sinking
deeply into the back of his neck as he lands under me with a loud grunt. Bitter and disgusting blood floods my mouth, and with one hard and brutal twist, I snap his spine.

  The gurgling sound of his death catches the other's attention, and he stops and whirls around to face me. He snarls inhumanly and his eyes flash red when he sees me, knowing exactly what I am and what I'm here to do...kill him. I move forward again, head down and hackles up. I let out another ferocious snarl as blood drips from the dark-gray fur of my muzzle amid sharp white teeth.

  He suddenly flings the girl off his shoulder and tosses her to the ground. She stares up at him in terror then looks over to see me. She gasps and freezes as her eyes widen and her face pales. Her breaths are harsh and panicked, and I can smell the sharp tang of her fear. I don't like it one damn bit.

  "Run, little girl," he growls out, his voice thick and menacing. "Run!" he barks when she doesn't move. She's nothing to him now that he's faced with me as a threat. He doesn't know how important she is to me, and I'm grateful for that, since it probably saved her life tonight.

  The girl startles and starts crab walking backwards away from us with her big eyes fixed on me, probably afraid I'll chase after her if she turns her back on me to get up and run. She thinks I'm the bigger threat. She thinks I'm just an animal. She's wrong on both counts.

  "Come on!" the greasy fucker taunts me as he beats one hand on his chest, then spreads his arms wide. His eyes flash crimson again. His jaw is shifting, widening and lengthening into something grotesque. Long and vicious claws are already sprouting from his fingertips, fangs appearing in his mouth.