Hunting Ground (Alpha & Omega 2)

Inside the warehouse, all of the wolves who had stayed in human form were gathered in a tight group, focused inward. There were too many of them for her nose to tell her anything.

All of the clothes had been pushed against the wall, and it took her a while to sort hers out. By the time she had them collected, Charles had found her. His eyes were all for the gathering in the center of the room, and there was an odd stiffness to his body that worried her.

She changed, her body protesting the shift even more than it had when she'd taken wolf form. She, like all the wolves, had been well trained not to make much noise while she shifted, but, damn, it hurt.

"Ow, ow, ow," she whispered as her hands slowly, grat ingly, reluctantly re-formed as wholly human. She tucked them under her arms and squeezed, the pressure helping the pain. Every change was different, but she hated the ones where her hands were the last thing to make it to human. There are so many nerves in a hand, and all of them hurt. It left her light-headed.

Charles growled at her pain.

She looked up, but there was no one anywhere close to them. Ric and his Alpha were still caught up in their change on the other side of the pile of clothing. She glanced at him and let her body grow still. His eyes were yellow, and the corner of his mouth twitched, then twitched again, as if he had a nervous tic.

"Charles?" her voice was still hoarse from the change.

"Sunny's dead." His voice was guttural, and she knew that he was on the verge... of something.

Anna worried about it for all of a half second before his words registered. "Arthur's Sunny?"

He nodded a quarter of an inch, his eyes locked on her face. "Vampires. We found her body just outside the gates."

And the vampires had hidden, waiting for the wolves to find Sunny. When he-the vampire in the suit-saw Anna, he made sure she saw him, too. Staring into those wild gold eyes, she decided it was something she would tell Charles in a while. The vampires were gone. She had the plate number, but it wouldn't matter: probably the van was rented anyway.

A wolf howled, a wild mournful cry, and a half dozen other voices lifted in song to show their sympathy for one who had lost his mate-all of them from human throats.

Charles held out his hand, and Anna let him pull her to her feet. She was a little stiff still-and he looked as though he needed something to do.

He used his body to shield her from the sight of anyone in the rest of the room, as if he knew she didn't really like being naked in front of a bunch of strangers. Most wolves got over that in the first year of being changed. For Anna, it was still an effort. Not because of modesty, but because clothing gave her the illusion of safety from the attention of the males of her first pack.

She grabbed her clothing and put it on as quickly as she could, shoving her feet into her tennis shoes while she tucked her socks in her pockets.

"Is Arthur all right?" she asked.

Charles closed his eyes and pulled her to him, pressing his nose into the crook of her neck, breathing in like a marathon runner.

"No," he said. "And neither am I."

Her skin hurt, her bones ached, and she wanted to be held as much as a person who'd fallen asleep on the beach for four hours without sunscreen would want to cuddle. But because he needed it, she relaxed against him.

Sunny had been killed by vampires.

"Sunny would have been an Omega if she'd been turned." She made it a statement, but she meant it as a question.

"Yes."

Anna shivered, and his grip tightened. Her change-sensitive skin protested, her sore muscles complained, but her wolf wanted to burrow inside of him, to keep him safe.

SHE was here, she was safe. He let the reality of her, of her scent, push away the need to make something bleed.

He was holding her too tightly, he knew it. Just as he knew she needed time to recover, and he couldn't give it to her. The sound of her pain as she changed had stirred the wolf up again. Brother Wolf wanted blood or sex, and he wasn't going to get either. No blood-and no sex, not until he calmed down a lot. Brother Wolf wouldn't hurt Anna, but he might scare her.

Holding Anna was the next best thing. Gradually, as she softened against him, Brother Wolf consented to settle down a bit. It would be a long time before he calmed enough to cede Charles full control again. It was too easy to see Arthur's agony and understand that it could have been his own.

The attacks were odd. Too focused on the wrong things, the wrong people, to accomplish anything. The attack on Anna could have been an attempt to kidnap her for ransom or hostage. But Sunny's death accomplished nothing. An na's death would accomplish nothing. He couldn't see why Omegas would be targeted-especially since one wasn't a wolf. So maybe they had targeted the mates of two of the three most powerful or dominant wolves at the conference. What would that accomplish? Especially given that the talks had done all that they could.

He couldn't see the shape of what the vampires, or whoever hired them, were after yet. Nothing fit.

Omega.

Anna thought the vampires were working for a wolf. Her personal experience with the enemy gave her instincts weight, and he would trust her insight-Brother Wolf did, and that was good enough for him.

Whatever the ultimate goal, Charles could think of at least one reason why a wolf might hire someone to murder Sunny and attack Anna. A wolf, especially a dominant wolf, would have a hard time deliberately hurting an Omega, even a human Omega.

Maybe even Chastel wouldn't have been able to do it.

Charles made himself let Anna go and stepped back to give her space. He tried to ignore the relief in her body posture-it wasn't a reaction to him. It was the feel of the change still lingering on her flesh that made her want to stand alone.

"You're the first ones back," he told Anna. "What brought you in so early?"

She gave him an odd look. "Brother Wolf told me you needed me here."

He had no idea what to say to that. Should he admit that he had no idea what Brother Wolf had been up to? Would that worry her? Before he had to make a decision, Dana broke free of the group around Arthur and approached Charles.

"There is some concern for Arthur's sanity," she murmured softly as soon as she was close.

And there were no other wolves here who would stand a chance of controlling Arthur if he lost it, she meant. They needed him to be on watch.

"I'm coming," Charles said.

"I'll come over, too," Anna told him. "It can't hurt, right?"

He didn't want her anywhere near the other wolves. There were too many of them. If they all attacked her, there was no way for him to protect her.