Hot-Blooded Alpha by Eve Bale
Dayne
“Being back there will break her.”
Dayne didn’t take his eyes from the paper in his hand. The demand. “No, she’s stronger now. He won’t break her. She’s different. And she’s pregnant now. She has more than herself to defend.”
“But she doesn’t know. Unless you managed—”
It was the concern in his beta’s voice that finally had Dayne lifting his gaze to meet Luka’s gunmetal gray eyes. “She was so convinced I wanted to talk about that uncle of hers, or her struggle to control her ability to shift that I don’t think it ever crossed her mind it was neither of those things.”
She’d believed he’d have to put her down. Kill her.
He’d seen the fear flashing often enough in her large chestnut-brown eyes to know that she believed he’d kill her without a moment’s hesitation.
And it had been because of what he’d said, about his putting an end to his crazed old alpha.
No matter how many times he’d tried to get her to talk—or even to listen, she’d revealed a level of stubbornness he’d never expected her to possess.
A smile touched his lips at the lengths she’d gone to. “She’d started swimming in the lake to hide her scent, and she’d disappear into the forest. There were times I only found her through pure luck.”
He surprised a laugh out of Luka. “That’s dedication.”
But all too soon, Dayne’s smile slid off his face.
“Dayne, we will find her,” Regan said from the couch, her face a study in determination.
They’d settled in the den after breakfast that morning. Mostly the rest of the pack had been talking quietly among themselves while Dayne and Luka hashed out a plan.
For the first time since Dayne had become alpha, he’d ordered the pack home—no excuses—after he’d woken from a blow to the back of the head to find Talis’ uncle had abducted her.
Other than Dayne’s enraged wolf, Regan’s voice had been the loudest that they go after Talis that same night. And while he wanted nothing more than to go after her immediately, he wasn’t a reckless alpha.
Glynn would have been planning this abduction for some time.
They needed a plan since chasing after Glynn Merrick without one would only get Talis, and most likely one or more of his pack, killed.
“I know we’ll find her.” But how much damage, how much harm would Glynn do to her before he got her?
“That wolf—” At Savannah’s first words since they’d gathered in the den, Dayne wasn’t alone in turning to face her as she stood in front of the window with her arms wrapped around herself.
Being back in the farmhouse where she’d witnessed her childhood friends—her family—being slaughtered wasn’t easy for her.
He’d done all he could to make her laugh since a scentless wolf with terrifying eyes had chased her back into a place she’d been determined never to return.
But memories lived under your skin.
They weren’t easy to turn away from, sometimes even time didn’t help.
“Yes, Savannah?” he asked the woman who’d been his dead sister’s playmates, and the closest thing to family before he and Talis had mated.
Savannah kept her gaze fixed outside.
Talis’ wolf nearly attacking her had shaken her badly, and she’d retreated into herself. “You didn’t see the wolf’s eyes. The one near my cabin. If he’s one of the Merrick pack, we need to go soon and bring her home.”
Her words had him widening his eyes in surprise, and he wasn’t alone in reacting that way. Dayne could feel the others' sharp glances.
They all knew, just as he did, Savannah was no fighter.
She’d been in too bloody of a fight to volunteer to be in one again.
“Are you sure, I’d thought—”
Savannah turned to face Dayne. Although fear shadowed her eyes, there was also a fierce determination that mirrored Regan’s. “She’s pack. Family. We need to bring her home.”
Something in him eased at hearing Savannah say it, and at seeing the rest of the pack nod in agreement.
It had been two weeks since he’d brought Talis home. Not long. But long enough for her to make her mark on them.
She was one of them. Family. And they needed to bring her home.
“He won’t return her. Even if you give him what he wants, he’ll use her to squeeze even more out of you,” his third, Marshall said.
Dayne nodded. “Yes, Glynn Merrick is a piece of work.”
There was a soft throat clearing and Dayne turned to Jenna, another friend of Talis, and his most submissive wolf.
She’d been crying and seeing the evidence of her tears always hurt. “But maybe he will, maybe…”
Dayne shook his head. “You didn’t see him at the moon-blessing. Any excuse, any opportunity to hurt her, he took it. I forced his hand before. He won’t let it happen again.”
Dayne had never seen anyone take as much pleasure in hurting another as Glynn Merrick did in torturing Talis.
He’d been close to breaking her spirit, if not her mind.
It had taken Dayne months to even get Glynn to agree to a meeting in the first place since it seemed he hadn’t wanted to let go of his punching bag.
In the end, Dayne had been ready to kill the shifter and take Talis, even if that meant he’d won the right to rule the Merrick pack. It was the last thing he’d wanted with his own responsibilities and his own pack to run.
But when he’d caught his first glimpse of Talis since that night he’d heard her crying, he’d realized the rumors of her being mistreated hadn’t come even close to what Glynn had been doing to her.
It looked to have been torture—pure and simple.
She’d been sitting in the forest, her bruised arms wrapped around her legs as she stared into the middle distance.
Dayne had stopped and stared.
His plan to climb into his truck and drive away from the Merrick land after hearing the long list of Glynn’s demands went right out the window.
The demands had been a joke, and no alpha would have agreed to even a quarter of what Glynn had wanted.
The amount of cash he was asking for alone would have been enough to send most alphas walking away without a second look back.
But seeing her, her complete inability to absorb the fact a stranger was watching her with the intensity he was doing it had alarm shooting through him.
And that wasn’t even the worst of it.
There was something so defeated in her sloped shoulders and her lowered head that had him slamming his car door shut and returning to the Merrick house.
He would give Glynn whatever he wanted. He would do whatever moon-blessing ceremony the wolf demanded, because he knew, looking at Talis, that she would not survive another month.
And then once Talis was safe in the Blackshaw pack, he would do anything—everything he could to destroy the Merrick pack.
“Why does he hate her so much?” Jenna asked, drawing Dayne back into the present.
Dayne saw that while his mind had been in the past, Marshall had shifted closer to her on the couch and she was leaning into him, as if for comfort.
His pack was finding happiness—love among themselves, and it filled him with joy to see it.
At any other time, he’d smile, but not today. Not with Talis stolen from him.
“That, I couldn’t tell you.”
Dayne turned his attention to the note in his hand.
Give me back all you took.
It wasn’t hard to figure out what Glynn meant.
Money.
Before he’d even gone to collect Talis, he’d ordered Luka to intensify the work they’d been doing to uncover every single hidden bit of information they could find about Glynn and the Merrick pack.
It hadn’t taken long to discover that Glynn liked to pretend he knew how to invest. In reality, Glynn knew jack-shit and was frittering money away on a long line of worthless investments and crooked get-rich-quick schemes.
They’d already began the work of buying up the bad debt and contacting other creditors, because Dayne could see how easy it would be to ruin him, bankrupt him, absolutely and completely.
His plans to gently ease Talis back into the land of the living had been shot the second the scent of her fear had filled his car.
She didn’t trust him.
She believed him to be just as bad, just as depraved as her uncle. She believed him to be the cold-blooded alpha, so that was what he would be.
That was what he would pretend to be…
Until her alpha side woke up and started making her voice known, that is.
Then he’d come clean.
But all the fury, all the rage he’d felt burning in the pit of his belly at what Glynn had done to Talis had nearly made him explode.
Luka had seen it the second he’d stepped out of the truck when they were back on pack land.
He’d needed to get inside. Get away from everyone before he blew out of control.
So, he’d left her afraid and alone with a pack full of strangers because if she saw him lose control the way he wanted to. The way he needed to, she’d have run and kept on running.
At first, they’d been subtle, careful to hide the ruin of the Merrick pack, but as time went on, as he saw the way Talis flinched in fear, and her inability to see herself as anything more than worthless, care went out of the window.
“Fuck subtlety,” he’d snarled. “I want the complete and utter ruin of the Merrick pack. I want them—I want Glynn to not have two fucking cents to rub together. Ruin him. Whatever it takes.”
And then Glynn had learned what Dayne had been doing.
Why else had he sent his beta Abel to come sniffing around? A shifter who had disappeared the moment Talis had? And the one Dayne strongly suspected was responsible for bashing him over the head while he’d been distracted with Glynn.
“I could hack some cameras.” At Dean’s words, Dayne shook his head.
Any opportunity to put the computer skills that saw him making a ridiculous amount of money as a software developer and Dean would take it.
It had become a running joke in the pack, but Talis’ abduction was no joking matter, and no amount of hacking would get her back.
“Cameras wouldn’t do anything. We’re going to Dawley.” Dayne straightened from the wall and crossed the room, on his way upstairs to throw some clothes in a bag. They could formulate a plan when they were closer to the Merrick pack.
Luka cleared his throat. “If he catches sight of us…”
Dayne tucked the note into a back pocket but didn’t slow. “Then we’d better make sure he doesn’t.”
