Unleashed by her Bear: Black Ridge Bears Series Book 4 Read online

  But there had been a few close calls.

  Sometimes, his past rolled up on him, stole control and made him react, that instinct to survive kicking in. It was him or them, and he always picked him.

  He had a gut feeling that tonight was going to be one of those nights where he found it hard to resist killing. That darker part of himself was still snarling and growling, wanted him to deal with this wolf by spilling blood, and it was hard to rein it in and bring the quieter voice into focus, listening to it instead.

  He had heard the howl when he had been at a celebration, surrounded by his pride and their latest addition. Knox and Skye were freshly mated, and the thought of a wolf being near her or any of the females that had recently joined their family had his mood running dark.

  Dangerous.

  The need to ensure Skye and Cameo, and even the little cougar female, Holly, were safe was strong, had overpowered him at times as he tracked the wolf, filling his mind with pleasing images of their broken carcass at his feet and their blood on his hands.

  That same protective streak had seen him running along the creek for a good distance of his trek, using the water to cover his tracks and his scent, ensuring Maverick couldn’t follow him. His friend meant well, only wanted to protect him too and make sure he was all right and handled things without losing his head, but Rune couldn’t let him near the wolf.

  The need to protect Maverick wasn’t the only reason Rune had done everything in his power to lose him though. Deep in his heart he knew that Maverick would try to stop him from killing the wolf and Rune couldn’t allow that.

  Not this time.

  If he killed the wolf, they couldn’t hurt the females.

  They couldn’t hurt Maverick and his pride.

  Wolves were cold. Manipulative. They were traitors.

  All of them would hurt another in a heartbeat if it meant they gained something, and none of them cared about the welfare of others. They only cared about themselves.

  Rune flexed his fingers again and growled through clenched fangs.

  This wolf would be no different.

  He had to kill it before it could hurt the females.

  Rune ground to a halt and tightened his fists until his bones ached. No. He couldn’t. He looked back in the direction of Black Ridge, not needing to be able to see through the dense canopy of the pines, spruces and firs to see it. He could see it in his mind. Could always see it.

  Home.

  The only home he had ever really known.

  Or at least could remember.

  He couldn’t kill the wolf. He felt that in his soul, deep beyond the part of him that raged with a need to spill blood, to protect the females at any cost. To protect his pride.

  He wouldn’t have a pride if he slaughtered the beast as he wanted.

  Saint would be furious with him, and gods, he didn’t want that. That deeply buried part of him was still waiting for the male to wise up and kick him out of his pride, to realise that allowing him to join it all those decades ago, together with Maverick, had been a mistake.

  Rune drew another slow, deep breath, calming his raging need to lash out at the wolf and kill it. Satisfied that he would be able to control himself, he trekked onwards, picking up the trail again. It led him towards one of the mountains, and he frowned and paused again as he found an animal track. There were hundreds of them that crossed through the forest, trails made by years of every beast that lived in the valley using them, whether that was ungulates like the white-tailed deer and moose, or predators like the cougars and bears.

  This one was a popular route along one side of the valley, following the line of the mountains, and it led towards somewhere.

  An old hunter’s cabin.

  It was a long way from Black Ridge, just outside the pride’s territory. The thought that the wolf might be heading towards it gave him comfort, easing his fears, but also had his thoughts darkening again.

  If he killed the wolf out there, by that cabin, Saint would never know.

  He could lie to his alpha and tell him that the wolf had run.

  Rune clenched his fists again. No. He wouldn’t lie to Saint. He would never lie to him. Saint had been good to him, had given him more than just shelter and food. He had given Rune a home. A pride.

  And he took great pains to make sure that both Rune and Maverick had everything they needed, were both on their way to leading normal lives again.

  So he would never lie to Saint.

  He would drive the wolf away and that would be that.

  His need to get rid of the wolf before it could cause hurt to the pride would be sated and he could return to the celebration before Maverick or Saint worried about him. Gods, Maverick was going to be worried sick about him. For a tough bear, Maverick had a good heart. He just couldn’t see it. Right now, having lost Rune’s trail, that heart would be filled with fear, with thoughts as dark as Rune’s had been over the last few miles.

  Rune was going to have to apologise to him when he returned to the Ridge.

  And maybe take a few punches.

  Maverick had a bad tendency to do his talking with his fists.

  Rune eased to a crouch beside the trail and touched the various paw prints that had been left in the dirt, experience allowing him to pick out even the barest trace of a mark. The scuff of claws was enough to tell him which breed of animal had used the track in the last day, and he easily picked out the tell-tale sign of a wolf shifter.

  The grooves dug into the dirt by claws were unmistakably wolf, but the print was too large to be that of the animal variety. Wolf shifters were larger than their animal counterparts. The difference was only the matter of around one hundred pounds, but it was noticeable.

  Rune teased some of the dirt in the print loose, brought it to his nose and sniffed it. Definitely wolf. Definitely shifter. The scent had a manufactured note to it, one that reeked of perfume or cologne. One that riled him for some reason, had his mood taking a sharp dark turn and his fangs dropping.

  He stood and followed the tracks, picking up pace again as his focus locked onto the distinct shape and size of the paw prints. Everything else fell away, nothing else mattering to him in that moment. He didn’t care about the cougar prints that crossed the path or the distant grunt of a moose. Didn’t care as smaller nocturnal creatures skittered about the forest floor in search of food or the birds in the trees watched him as he passed.

  He only cared about the wolf.

  About finding it and driving it away.

  Or killing it.

  Gods, he wanted to kill the owner of that scent. He wanted to rip them apart with his bare hands. He wanted to make them pay for crossing into his territory, for daring to come near his pride.

  He tamped down that need, wrestled with himself and somehow found the strength to deny the need to kill.

  A rapid heartbeat reached his ears and he slowed to a jog and then a walk, his senses reaching out into the forest around him and instantly narrowing as soon as he detected the owner of that trembling heart.

  That fearful heart.

  Rune eased through the darkness like a shadow, slowly closing the distance between him and the wolf, his eyebrows knitting hard as he focused on it. It was in distress. Why? Because it knew he was coming?

  The scent of fear hung heavily in the air, but couldn’t quite mask the other smell he detected as he closed in on the wolf.

  Blood.

  Rune steadied himself, breathing deeply to get oxygen into his muscles, to prepare his body for a potential fight to the death—a fight he would win.

  As soon as he felt ready, he shifted a step to his right, emerging from behind the thick trunk of a lodgepole pine.

  Only he wasn’t prepared for the sleek black wolf he spotted just feet in front of him.

  A female.

  She desperately tried to bite at something, twisting around towards her hind leg, and snarled as she wrestled with it.

  Rune wanted to snarl too when he shifted his focus there and saw why she was scared and why he smelled blood. The wire of a snare wrapped tightly around her right leg and cut into her dark fur. A hunter’s trap.

  He stepped out of the shadows.

  She froze, amber eyes lifting to him.

  She panted hard as she stared across the narrow span of forest floor to him.

  Rune caught the pain in her eyes, and the fear too. He looked at the snare that held her at his mercy, bared his fangs at the evil device as it hit him that she knew she couldn’t shift back into her human form and she was desperately holding on to her animal one.

  If she shifted, the wire would cut into her ankle as it thickened. At the very least, it would slice deeply into her flesh. If she wasn’t as lucky, it would break the bone.

  Rune met her gaze again.

  Determined one thing about her, something that resonated with him.

  She was a fighter.

  She had to be, because usually pain caused their kind to shift back into their human forms. The fact she was still in her wolf form revealed the depth of her fortitude and how desperate she was not to hurt herself.

  He stared at her in silence, debating whether to finish her off, but as she continued to gaze up at him, he found he couldn’t bring himself to do it. He had a chance to kill a wolf, and he couldn’t.

  She was waiting for it. He could see it in her eyes. She was waiting for death and for some unnerving reason, he didn’t like it.

  In fact, he hated it.

  Rune shoved aside all his feelings, purging them and allowing a cold and calculating sort of calm to wash through him instead. The same calm he had used countless times to focus his mind and his body before a fight.

  Only this battle wasn’t going to be fought with fist and fang. It was going t
o be fought with words. Something he wasn’t accustomed to doing, but he would learn on the fly because he wanted to know what a lone wolf female was doing up in the valley.

  Of course, that meant he needed her to shift back so she could answer his questions.

  He doubted she was going to come quietly. That edge her amber eyes were slowly gaining said he might have to fight her after all. Dangerous. If they fought, he might not be able to control himself. He might not be able to stop himself from hurting her.

  And for some damned reason, he didn’t want to hurt her.

  Rune mentally prepared himself, steeled his mind and told himself that he could take a few hits if it meant she survived to answer his questions. He could.

  She snarled and bared fangs at him as he approached her, even though he held his palms out in front of him, trying to show her that tonight was her lucky night and he wasn’t going to kill her. When he eased into a squat near her rear quarters, she snapped at him and tried to move, yelped as the wire pulled taut and cut deeper into her flesh.

  “Idiot,” he muttered and grabbed the wire, intending to pull it towards him to loosen the grip it had on her.

  She really didn’t like that.

  In a lightning-fast move, she whipped around and sank her fangs into his left forearm, growling the whole time.

  Rune flinched and growled right back at her as pain burned up his arm, as warm blood slid over his skin beneath his black fleece, but he didn’t miss a beat. By lunging for him, she had moved closer to him, loosening the wire. He let her use his arm as a chew toy as he tugged at the loop of the wire with his other hand.

  The second the loop was large enough for her to free her leg, she released his arm and made a break for it.

  Rune grabbed her by her scruff, fisting it hard, and pinned her to the ground. She snarled, wriggled and desperately tried to break free, her good rear leg scrabbling around in the pine-needle-strewn dirt, stirring the scent into the cooling night air.

  “Not so fast, little wolf. I’ve got questions and you’re going to answer them.”

  He growled and shoved her down. Her amber gaze slid to lock with his. His mood took a sharp, dark turn as anger shone in her eyes, as he realised that she wasn’t going to give him what he wanted, and the bite marks she had left on his arm throbbed and stung. He let his claws out and dug them into her skin, giving himself a better grip on her and making it clear she wasn’t going anywhere.

  “You’re going to answer my questions.”

  Rune held her gaze.

  Snarled.

  “If you don’t, you won’t live to taste that freedom I just gave you.”

  Chapter 3

  Callie had gone from one bad situation to another. She growled as the big male manhandled her, tightly gripping her scruff, his nails piercing her skin, making it sting. Payback. It was payback for what she had done to him. He wanted to hurt her, to make her bleed as she had him, and wanted her to know that out of the two of them, he was the stronger and more dangerous.

  Anger and fear were joined by irritation and a serious dose of shame as he stood in one fluid motion and hauled her into the air with him. He held her aloft before him, as if she weighed nothing, the muscles of his right arm flexing hard beneath his form-fitting black zip-up fleece. Fire blazed in her scruff where he held her in a vice-like grip, her weight pulling on it as she hung from his hand, her legs dangling above the dirt.

  Callie reacted fiercely, the feeling he was mocking her rousing a reaction in her that she couldn’t contain. She couldn’t stop herself from twisting and snarling, snapping her fangs at him and shaking her head. The bastard was belittling her. He was making it painfully clear that she was no match for him. That feeling grew, spread poisoned tendrils through her mind as he just stared at her, his pale blue eyes ice-cold and impassive. She kicked her back legs, jerking her entire body in a bid for freedom.

  He only tightened his grip in response.

  She bared fangs at him, kept on growling and snarling, viciously snapping her teeth at him. He was right to hold on to her. If he released her, she would sink her fangs into somewhere that would be far more painful for him than his arm.

  The big brute arched a dark eyebrow at her.

  As if her fury, this rage that burned inside her, born of the fact he was drawing a line between them by holding her like this, by easily caging her, meant nothing to him. She wasn’t weak. She might be female, but she was strong, and if he let her go, she would prove that. She would make him see that he was wrong about her, and about females in general. She would rewrite his opinion of her gender in blood.

  His blood.

  “Calm down,” he grunted as she made another attempt to wriggle free of his grip.

  Easy for him to say. He wasn’t the one being held at someone else’s mercy, threatened with death if he didn’t answer their questions.

  The wolf in her said to keep struggling, keep fighting, and she would escape his hold. The more logical side of her brain said that there was only one way out of this. She wasn’t sure she wanted to take it.

  She settled and slowly swung towards him as she went still, allowing her to see him. To see those cold eyes. That scar that said he was a fighter. The hard and unyielding cut of his mouth as his lips flattened.

  Callie had never been shy, but something about this male made her acutely aware of how naked she would be if she shifted back.

  It was the only way to make him release her though.

  At least, she hoped he would release her.

  The alternative didn’t bear thinking about.

  “Wolves,” he scoffed, spitting that word as if it was disgusting to him. He sneered, his lip curling, and muttered, “Should’ve known you’d have a bent moral compass too. You’re all the same. Thinking you can do as you please. Thinking only of yourselves.”

  The look in his eyes shifted, backing up his words and making her feel he would rather kill her than spend another second in her company.

  It was the last straw.

  Callie willed the shift, giving up her fight to hold on to her wolf form. Her feet easily touched the ground as her body morphed, bones lengthening and changing as her fur swept away to reveal flushed skin.

  Skin that flushed even deeper pink as she grew intensely aware of his gaze on her naked curves.

  She turned to face him, covering her awkwardness by stoking her anger, denying the hot flash of desire that rolled through her by focusing on her rage, on the fury born of what he had said to her, speaking of her as if she was despicable.

  He didn’t know her.

  She planted her hands on her hips and glared at him. “What’s your problem?”

  The brute stared right back at her and growled, “You’re my problem.”

  Callie swept her left arm up and knocked his hand away from her nape, must have caught him off guard because he looked pissed as he lost his grip on her. He lunged for her and she hopped back a step, placing herself beyond his reach and making sure she landed on her good leg.

  She flicked her fall of black hair over her shoulder and tipped her chin up, and tersely said, “Thanks for freeing me. I’ll be on my way now. No more problem for you.”

  She went to turn.

  He seized her wrist.

  Callie smacked his hand away again, growled at him and bared her fangs. “Keep your filthy paws to yourself, buddy.”

  His pale blue eyes flashed with chilling fire, with rage she knew she was stoking, but she couldn’t bring herself to heel. Something about him riled her, rubbed her the wrong way, made her want to push and fight him despite his size and how strong he was.

  Maybe she was just sick and tired of overbearing males thinking they could order her around.

  He proved how overbearing he was by saying, “Answer my questions and I’ll think about letting you go.”

  She huffed at that. “How kind of you. I’ll skip the answering questions part and move straight to the leaving, thanks.”

  He made another grab for her.

  Callie was on to him, moved too quickly for him to keep up, nimbly leaping away from him to place a good ten feet of dirt between them. She grimaced when she placed some weight on her right leg as she landed and pain shot up it, arcing along her bones.

  He growled, only this time it was a low groaning sound that bordered on sorrowful or oddly melancholy, and it sent a shiver down her spine and rang alarm bells in her head as it revealed what he was.