Page 49 of Hunted

Mikey said, “Trevor mentioned his Chicago estate when I met him in New York. He only had it built a few years ago, so the blueprints should be in the municipality planning department’s current files.”

“I’ll get Switch on it.”

Gunn got out his phone and sent a text to Switch, and then started the car. He said, “Speaking of making plans, what was that apartment you were talking about, in Chicago? Is it a safe house?”

“Safe for us. It belongs to a friend of a friend, and his mate. Also not an Enforcer,” she added. “As he would say, he’s somebody who hangs out more on the shady side of the street.”

Another one? “Careful, Princess, or your squeaky-clean image will get besmirched.” He put the Lexus in gear and headed down the road. They were on secondary roads at the moment, avoiding a toll station on the main highway.

“I’m not worried. It was only ever in your mind, anyway.” She opened the bag of snacks she’d picked up at the convenience store. “I told you I had a juvenile record a mile long.”

“Juvie,” he snorted, like that meant nothing. Which, to be fair, it really didn’t, since it was sealed. But the idea that all her friends and family were squeaky-clean and law-abiding was laughable. It was just that after she’d joined the Enforcers, she’d been careful not to talk about the ones that weren’t.

She picked out a dark chocolate and caramel bar and started to unwrap it. She didn’t care what Gunn said about protein; she needed sugar. “There’s a lot you don’t know about me. And my friends.”

“Then why don’t you tell me?”

“I will,” she said. “But you first.” Even though she wasn’t going to kill him anymore, or even punch him in the face—probably—there were things she still needed to understand. “I’d really like to know more about your pack, and how you became alpha of Outlaw Ridge.”

For a minute she thought he wouldn’t tell her. He was the kind of man who found it really hard to show any emotion except anger. But she needed to know. She needed to understand.

Unfortunately, she also needed to let him make the decision. You couldn’t push a man like Gunn. Especially when they were an alpha. All shifter crews were influenced by their alpha’s emotions, but wolf packs more than most.

That meant they sometimes had to slam down the walls around their own feelings. And the people around them had to get that and make space for it.

But finally, he took a deep breath and started to speak.

Chapter 22

Gunn kept his eyes on the road while he talked. Michelangela faced forward too, eating her candy bar.

For people who weren’t good at opening up, having someone staring at you while you did it was sometime too intense.

He said, “I was there when the old alpha died. I never really told you about Gregor, but he had an incredible gift for taking in last-chance wolves, keeping them from going rogue, molding them into a team. When he passed…” Gunn shook his head.

“The town was being attacked,” he went on after a moment. “Hawk was sheltering there with his mate—Ariana—who escaped from a South American drug cartel run by her brother. The brother came to Rockhaven to get her back. With a small army. Gregor was…”

She could see the emotion welling up in him, but he swallowed it down. “Gregor was down in the town, and the pack were up the mountain. Without them, the town would have been destroyed. Maybe the Ridge, too. Gregor was fatally wounded in the first wave of the attack, and the wolves just lost it.”

Mikey could imagine. All those broken minds, suddenly set adrift, knowing that they were about to lose their center.

“Gregor made his way back up to the Ridge, and I found him there. As he was dying, Gregor gave me this amulet.” Gunn hooked is finger under the gold star he wore on a chain around his neck. “He was so anxious, so insistent, I took it just to calm him down. I didn’t know it was magical, that it held a lot of the power of his bond with the pack. But there was so much chaos in his mind, at the end, he thought everyone was an enemy, and the delusions spread to the pack. They turned on each other—and when I tried to stop them, the amulet lit up like a fucking flare.”

He closed his hand around it for a moment, then dropped it. “I could suddenly sense the wolves. All of them, like I was inside their minds. I used the power to pull them back together, so they’d stop trying to kill each other and go down and fight the cartel.”

But he’d bonded with them, Michelangela realized. He’d become the pack’s center, their anchor. Their alpha, whether he wanted to be or not.

Michelangela said, “But they did it, didn’t they? They fought for Rockhaven. That’s why Hawk said the town was grateful to Sanchez and the Hounds. They were grateful to the whole pack.”

Everything was starting to make sense. She hadn’t been able to imagine the Hounds doing anything except scaring people. Or killing them—and their little Pomeranians, too. But if they’d saved the town from cartel soldiers…

“Well, yeah,” Gunn said. “But Sanchez especially. When Rico De León came, he brought over fifty men, trucks carrying heavy artillery, and a fucking tank.”

Michelangela hissed in her breath. “A tank? Those people are lucky any of the town is still standing.”

“Yeah,” Gunn said. “When the pack finally made it down off the mountain to help, De León had just gotten the tank rolling. The Hounds went in close, right through the enemy lines. Sanchez disabled the tank by diving under the turret gun and heaving explosives directly under one of the tracks. Damn near didn’t get out again.”

Whoa. That gave her a whole new perspective on Sanchez.