Page 18 of Hunted

Chapter 9

Gunn viciously slammed the button to shut off his screen and put his head in his hands for a moment, fingers laced through his hair.

Just when he thought his life couldn’t become more of a cluster fuck, it did.

He shoved away from his desk and walked out the back door, nodding to the guard on duty.

He probably should have given Mikey her clothes back after he searched them, but gods, the woman could push his buttons like no one else. Not to mention she was a fuckin’ escape artist. If she stayed wolf—or stayed naked—it would make any escape harder.

He had to take every advantage he could get.

Pulling his remote from his pocket, he locked down the whole bunker from outside, and headed up the path to Thanatos’s house. It was a mansion, concealed deep in the woods, completely self-sufficient with generators, at least two wells, and satellite dishes for communications. The damn place could withstand a siege.

Gunn had no idea how long it had been here, but he suspected that it was on nobody’s tax rolls or census reports. Thanatos owned all the land for miles around—had owned it for years. Possibly decades. Or centuries? Gunn had only found out last year that Gregor, the former alpha of the pack, had been over a hundred years old. Thanatos could easily be that old—or older.

No one knew who he was or what he was. Some kind of shifter, probably, but what kind was anybody’s guess. He’d made the territory a sanctuary for broken, burned-out wolves, and the only reason they hadn’t killed each other had been Gregor’s influence, and respect for Thanatos.

Not to mention a healthy dose of fear.

The front of the house looked like it had been created by forest gods. Its front columns were massive polished tree trunks; lots of carefully planted shrubs mimicked natural underbrush. The carved front doors looked like they’d been made for giants.

They were banded with iron, like an old-school castle. But the guy who opened them was ordinary-looking: thin, wiry, with white-blond hair and sunken cheeks, like he hadn’t eaten in weeks.

It was deceptive. Sugar was strong, fast, smart, and deadly.

He looked Gunn up and down. “Well, you don’t look as shitty as usual. Things going to hell must agree with you.”

“Shut up, Sugar.”

The other wolf gave a shrug and a half-grin. It was hard to insult Sugar.

Gunn said, “Is Thanatos in the throne room?”

“Don’t call it that in front of him. He’ll dismember you.”

Which might or might not be a joke.

Sugar stood back so Gunn could come into the huge entrance hall. The vaulted roof soared above him, supported by polished timber beams, and a double staircase wound around the walls. In the far wall was an elevator; they walked inside and the doors closed silently before it moved smoothly downwards. There were no numbers show what floor they were on—no doubt so no one could tell how many subterranean levels existed under the mansion.

The elevator came to a stop and the doors opened into a single hallway. Sugar walked him down to where the hallway ended in a set of double doors made of wood so dark it looked black, polished to a high gloss. Even in the dim light of the hallway, Gunn could see his reflection.

Which he could do without. Sugar was wrong—he looked even shittier than usual.

The doors swung silently open, all by themselves. They were probably on remote control, but it was still spooky.

Sugar gestured. “You know the drill. Have fun.”

Gunn stepped into the room, and the doors closed behind him.

For a second he was in the dark, and then a light began to glow at the far end of the enormous room, behind a huge, high-backed chair sitting at an ornately carved wooden table. As Gunn walked forward, the light grew brighter and brighter.

When he got near the table the light shone directly into his eyes, and he instinctively paused, blinking. But the next step was enough to change the angle so he could see past the light again—and a huge, bulky figure in a hooded cloak had appeared in the chair, his face in shadow. Only the gleam of his eyes showed beneath his hood.

Gunn had never seen Thanatos’s face—and as far as he knew, no one else in the pack ever had either. Some of the guys had bets—very quietly—about what he was: vampire, dragon, minotaur, basilisk. Or some other kind of hideous beast, that had lost its ability to Change completely back to human form.

And with a flair for the dramatic and a love of old horror movies, if his chosen method of presenting himself was anything to go by.

“Gunn.” The deep, resonant voice seemed to fill the room. Gunn came to a stop in front of the table.