Unleashed By her Bear by Felicity Heaton
Chapter 13
Rune’s senses sharpened, stretching around him to chart everything in the vicinity. He growled when he picked up the wolves’ signatures. Callie hadn’t been lying. Carrigan had ten men with him.
He didn’t like those odds.
Rune seized Callie’s hand and tugged her with him as he broke into a run. She stumbled as she twisted to face him, as she struggled to catch up with him. His heart thundered, blood pumping hot and hard as he kept his focus locked on the path behind him. If they were lucky, he and Callie could reach the crossing before the wolves caught up with them and they would be safe for a while.
The urge to fight Carrigan was strong, but his need to protect Callie was stronger.
The thought of her ending up captured by Carrigan and his men drove him, had him running harder, desperate to outpace the wolves who were moving swiftly behind him. They must have sensed him and Callie and started running the second they had. Fuck.
Rune cast a glance over his shoulder.
His heart jolted into his throat as he spotted the wolves. Several of the males were big, rivalling his size. Not good. His gaze locked with Carrigan’s and an urge to turn back and attack the male swept through him, the need to avenge Grace strong and almost overwhelming him.
Callie’s gasp as she looked back too was enough to shove that urge out of his head.
He couldn’t fail her.
Wouldn’t.
He needed to get her to safety, would uphold his vow to protect her. Nothing would happen to her. He looked at her. Saw a flash of blood-soaked skin. Shook it off. Memories roared up on him despite his efforts to deny them, tore at his strength as images from that night flickered through his mind, as Grace’s harrowing screams chilled his blood.
“Rune!” Callie barked.
He snapped back to her, the darkness of his past falling away as he sensed what had her panicking.
Two of the wolves were closing in fast.
“Stop them!” Carrigan roared.
Rune looked back and growled as he saw two of the males had shifted, were running at them in their animal forms now—one a sleek grey wolf and the other a dusky brown.
Instinct took over.
Rune grabbed Callie, hefting her over his shoulder as he ran harder, silently apologising to her as she bounced on his shoulder, grunting every time her stomach came down on it.
“I can run by myself!” She sounded as angry and offended as he had figured she would be, but she made no move to get out of his grip. She clung to him, fiercely holding on to his black fleece, and her heartbeat was off the scale, drumming frantically in his ear. “Oh gods. Look at that drop.”
Rune was trying not to look at the deep ravine just feet to his left. He was trying not to think about how the rock fell away into nothing or how one wrong step could send both him and Callie plummeting to their deaths.
The scent of her fear drove him, making him push past his limit as he spotted the bridge ahead of them.
If he could reach it, he could fend off the wolves and give her a chance to get to safety.
His senses blared a warning that he wasn’t going to make it.
The wolves were too fast.
Rune dropped Callie close to forty feet from the crossing and shoved her towards it. “Run for the bridge.”
He turned and bared fangs at the two large wolves, readying himself as they hurtled towards him, malice in their sharp eyes together with a hunger he was familiar with. They wanted to fight. He would give them one.
“What bridge?” Callie hadn’t moved and he wanted to growl at her for that, wanted to snap that she wasn’t helping him keep his head by lingering. He knew when she had spotted the crossing because she yelled, “That is not a bridge!”
“Get your damned backside across it.” He reached around behind him and shoved her towards it, backed up with her as the wolves closed in.
Callie left his grasp and he sensed her moving away from him, turned his focus back to the wolves and tried to reassure himself that she was going to be fine. He would make sure of it. She would get across the bridge and she would be safe.
No one was going to hurt her.
The need to protect her that had been growing inside him since he had met her transformed into a powerful primal urge as he faced off against the two wolves, as awareness of the other nine that were closing in drummed in his veins.
“I can’t do this.” Callie’s voice shook and he growled as he sensed her fear.
“You can. I need you to cross that bridge, Callie. Please?” Because if she didn’t, he was going to lose it, and he wasn’t sure she wouldn’t end up caught in the crossfire. He didn’t want to hurt her. Just the thought of it sickened him, made him feel wretched.
“Okay. I’ll try.” She shuffled a few steps forwards.
He wanted to shout at her not to ‘try’. He needed her to do it.
The grey wolf put in a burst of speed and leaped at Rune, sailing through the air towards him. Big mistake. Rune was ready for him, grabbed him as he barrelled into him and twisted his body, flinging him to his right.
Over the edge of the deep ravine.
The male shifted back and screamed as he plummeted towards the river far below.
Out of the corner of his eye, Callie gasped and flinched away, locking up tight at the very start of the bridge.
“Go!” Rune barked.
She tensed and wobbled, shrieked as she desperately clung to the old ropes that formed the handrails of the ancient wooden footbridge.
Rune grunted as the brown wolf smashed into him, bellowed as the bastard sank his fangs into his left arm, ripping into his flesh in the same spot Callie had less than a day ago. He wrestled with the wolf, smashed him repeatedly in the top of his head with his right fist. When Rune grabbed his ear and yanked, almost ripping it off, the wolf yelped and released him. Rune bared his fangs as his arm throbbed, sickening waves of heat rolling up it, and locked his senses back on Callie for a heartbeat, needing to know she was safe.
His eyes widened as she shot past him, a blur of black fur. She snarled as she leaped on the dusky wolf’s back, vicious as she sank her fangs into the male’s nape and shook him. The male wolf growled and snapped fangs at her, twisted and tried to get hold of her. She released him and leaped back, bared bloodied fangs and looked ready to attack him again.
Rune grabbed her by her nape as she lunged forwards, stopping her and earning himself a black snarl. He kicked at the brown wolf as the male launched at her, knocking him away and sending him tumbling towards the ravine. His hindquarters went over the edge and he scrabbled with his front paws, whining and desperately seeking purchase to stop himself from falling as he shifted back.
Rune bundled Callie under his arm, ignoring her snarls and growls, because he wasn’t going to release her and let her get herself killed. He grabbed her clothes as he passed them at the start of the bridge, aware she was going to want them once she had cooled off enough to shift back. The second he stepped onto the worn, sun-bleached wooden boards of the bridge, Callie went deathly still. Apparently, even in her wolf form she was afraid of it. It worked for him, allowing him to move without fear of dropping her.
He kept his focus locked behind him as he carefully placed each foot, testing the board to see if it would take his and Callie’s weight before committing to standing on it. The narrow bridge swayed and creaked with each step he took and his mouth dried out, his muscles aching with the tension as he moved further along it, passing the middle. Just twenty, maybe thirty feet to go. They could make it.
The brown wolf reached the start of the bridge behind him and in the distance someone howled. Callie stiffened and then growled, twisting and turning in Rune’s arms, trying to break free of his hold.
He tightened his grip on her. “Shh, Callie. Bastard isn’t going to reach you.”
Judging by her reaction, it had been Carrigan who had howled, no doubt to command the rest of his wolves to follow the one that was hot on Rune’s heels now.
Rune risked it as he sensed the male closing in on him, mentally crossed himself and prayed to his ancestors that the old, fraying bridge could take it and he wasn’t about to get him and Callie killed.
He ran.
The wooden boards groaned beneath his weight with each heavy step as he raced for the other side of the ravine, his eyes fixed on it, his senses guiding him. Behind him, the wolf snarled and put on a burst of speed. Rune clutched Callie to his chest as one of the boards gave out beneath his right boot, his heart shooting into his mouth and staying there even as he left the gaping hole in the bridge behind and closed in on the two thick wooden posts that marked the end of it.
He didn’t feel any sense of relief as he hit the other side of the ravine, didn’t even pause for breath. He hurled Callie clear of the bridge and turned back towards it, shoved and kicked at the nearest post until it wobbled.
Rune bent and grabbed it, wrapped his arms around it and heaved upwards, every muscle in his body straining and burning as he wrenched the post free of the rock and earth. A grunt burst from his lips the second it was free and the weight of the bridge yanked him forwards, towards the edge of the ravine. He quickly released the tall wooden post and glanced at the bridge.
The brown wolf had shifted back again, desperately clung to the remaining rope railing, his bare feet pressing to the ends of the wooden boards that now dangled vertically below him. The male’s dark eyes widened as Rune moved to the other post and he frantically shook his head as he began moving, quickly edging along the tips of the boards.
Rune showed him the same courtesy he had given every male he had fought in the past, every one who had fallen to him in the cage and outside it.
He looked him in the eye as he grabbed the frayed top rope attached to the remaining post and broke it in two. The male dropped as the rope lost tension, scrabbled and grabbed hold of the wooden boards, clinging to them.
Rune broke the remaining rope.
The wolf screamed as the bridge dropped, desperately twisted and managed to get his fingers between two of the boards, his bare body plastered to the rest of them as the bridge swung towards the other side of the ravine.
Bastard might live to see another day.
Rune winced as the bridge hit the rough rock wall of the ravine and bounced the male loose, hurling him into thin air.
Or not.
The wolf plummeted into the rushing water and was lost beneath the turbulent white surface.
Rune lifted his head and stared across the fifty-foot gap to the nine males standing on the other side, the whole of his attention locked on one of them.
Carrigan stood just in front of his men, the hems of his black fatigues fluttering in the wind that tousled his blond hair, tugging shoulder-length strands loose from the knot he had tied it back in. He breathed hard, his dark green jacket tightening across the breadth of his chest with each one, and took a step forwards, narrowing the distance between them down to as little as possible.
Rune stepped up to the edge of the ravine and stared him down, locked in a silent battle with him. Even at this distance, he could sense the rage in Carrigan, could see the shock the male was trying to hide as he glared across the gap at him. Rune grinned at him, satisfaction rolling through him.
Surprise.
He wanted to holler that word, but settled for continuing to stare at Carrigan in silence, savouring the male’s shock, how his face slowly darkened and the anger Rune could feel in him grew stronger. A male who didn’t know him as well might think that Carrigan would give up his chase now he knew Callie had an escort—a protector—but Rune knew him. Carrigan wasn’t happy that their paths had crossed and that he was protecting Callie, but it wouldn’t stop him from coming after her.
The male always had been a cocksure bastard.
Back at the compound, that part of his personality had seen him rise in the esteem of the hunters and had gained him their protection and countless benefits as he had betrayed his own kind, snitching to his masters about the smallest things to please them.
This time, it would be his downfall.
Callie trotted up beside him.
Glared across the ravine at Carrigan, her amber eyes bright with a hunger for violence.
Rune reached out to brush his hand over her black fur to soothe her.
Callie broke away from him and ran.
