Dark Instincts

Cursing, a dark-haired jackal jumped out of the passenger seat. At the same time, a guy came running over, shouting. It was clear by the way he moved that he was no shifter. Shit. Roni turned wide eyes on the human male. “Help! They’re trying to rob us, and they’ve hurt my friend!” Roni squatted down and put a protective hand on the stomach of the drugged jackal. This bitch was going nowhere.

Thinking on her feet, the dark-haired jackal dragged the other unconscious female into the car, and then the three shifters hightailed it out of there without even a second look at their drugged friend. No loyalty among . . . sick freaks.

“Hey, are you girls okay?” asked the human, panting. “Do you need me to call the cops?”

Now how to get rid of this guy.

“I’ll file a report later. Right now, I have to get my friend to a doctor. My other friend’s in the bakery. Could you please go over there and tell her I need her right away? Her name’s . . . Sheridan.”

Like the good citizen he was, the human sprinted over to the bakery. By the time he came back, Roni would be long gone.

“Um, Roni, could you please tell me why there’s an unconscious female in the trunk of your car?” Rubbing at his nape, Eli frowned down at the blonde. “When you said, ‘Come see what I’ve got,’ I thought you meant new sneakers or something.”

He’d made his way to Roni the second she pulled up on their territory to warn her that Kathy was looking for her. Although it was fair to say they took sibling rivalry to a whole new level, they always stood united against a common foe—particularly their mother.

Roni removed the lollipop from her mouth to answer. “She’s not just any unconscious female. She’s an unconscious female jackal.”

“Jackal?” he growled. “I wondered what that smell was.”

“Blondie here and three of her friends tried to jump me in the parking lot when I went to pick up some donuts for Shaya. They wanted to whisk me away in their car.”

He spat out a stream of curses. “You all right?”

“Fine. But we need to tie her up and put her somewhere to question her. The drug should wear off soon.”

“You drugged her?”

“It was only fair, since she tried to drug me.”

He exhaled a long breath, shaking his head. “Marcus is going to lose his shit.”

“I’m fine.”

“It doesn’t matter. He isn’t going to like that someone tried to harm you. Call him, tell him to pass on the story to his Alphas. The Phoenix wolves will want to be here when she wakes up; they should hear what she has to say.”

She walked a little distance away so she could talk to Marcus privately.

“Hey there, pretty baby. How’s my favorite wolf in the world?” Marcus’s smile was obvious in his voice.

“I, um, I’m fine. Good. I, um . . .”

“Roni, what’s wrong?” he asked cautiously.

“Nothing’s wrong. Look, don’t panic, don’t go postal. Everything’s fine, but—”

“Roni, tell me what the fuck’s going on.” So she told him. As Eli predicted, Marcus exploded. “What?”

“Really, Marcus, I’m fine. It’s okay.”

“They tried to drug and kidnap you! No part of that is ‘okay’ to me! Wait there; I’ll be five minutes.”

She refrained from pointing out that he couldn’t possibly complete the journey in five minutes. “Make sure you bring the others with you. I brought one of the jackals home for a chat.” She ended the call before he could lecture her on bringing home strange shifters that had tried to hurt her.

“See, told you he’d lose his shit.” Eli, who’d crept up behind her to eavesdrop, didn’t bother hiding his smirk. So she punched him in the gut.

“Now I have to tell the other overprotective male in my life. Won’t this be fun.” After binding the jackal and dumping her in the tool shed, she and Eli locked the door securely behind them and sought out their brother.

They found Nick sitting with Shaya on the porch swing at the rear of their lodge; he was having a beer while Shaya was drinking a bottle of water. Maybe it was Shaya’s presence, or maybe it was simply that Roni didn’t have a scratch on her, but he seemed to take the whole thing pretty well. He didn’t interrupt her even once. Didn’t say a word. To add to that, his cool expression didn’t alter.

Once she was finished, he leaned forward. “Let me get this straight.” Damn, that dark rumble meant bad things, which was most likely why Shaya winced. Clearly he wasn’t so cool and collected after all. “And tell me if I’ve left anything out. You were almost drugged, abducted, and got into a fight with two jackals—”

“I wouldn’t call it a fight. More like a scuffle.”

“—in full view of any humans who might happen upon you—”

“Only one actually saw something.”

“—and then you decided that, hey, you’d bring home the crazy bitch who tried to stab you with a syringe.”

“We have questions, she has answers; it makes sense.”

Shaya shrugged at her mate. “She’s right, it does.”

“Why didn’t you call me, Roni? I would have come to you!”

“I didn’t need you to,” Roni stated. “I took care of it.”

“What about afterward? You don’t think I’d want to know someone just tried to take you?”

“I’m telling you now.”

Nick gaped at her. “How can you be so fucking calm? It’s obvious why they wanted you, Roni! You were supposed to star in one of their special vids!”

“Well . . . yeah. But it backfired on them, and now we have one of their people. So it’s all worked out quite well for us, don’t you think?”

“Worked out quite well,” he echoed quietly before turning to Eli. “Is she fucking kidding me?”

“She was actually whistling a merry tune when she pulled up outside,” Eli ever so helpfully chipped in, chuckling.

“Sorry about the donuts, Shaya,” said Roni. “I’ll get you some more tomorrow.”

“Donuts?” bellowed Nick. “Who cares about fucking donuts? You were almost taken!”

“I know.”