Page 79 of Hunted

Gunn said, “If you help me get my mate back unharmed, you can blow up all the stuff you want.”

“Yeah,” Boomer muttered. “You say that now.” But he and his brother fell in behind the others, at his alpha’s back.

It felt good to have them there. It felt right.

“Let’s go.” Gunn strode towards the huge front doors of the house.

Suddenly, a dozen wolves appeared out of the shadows, led by Sanchez and Cisco in human form, their eyes flashing gold.

“Siding with the girl instead of your pack,” Sanchez growled. “As usual.”

Gunn didn’t have time for this. None of them did. “Don’t make me hurt you, Sanchez. If we don’t get to Mikey before it’s too late, there might not be a pack. Thanatos has no fucking idea what he’s dealing with.”

“You’re lying.”

Gunn could feel him wanting to believe in Thanatos—wanting to believe in anything. “We have to get to her,” he said. “For all our sakes. Come with me, or get the fuck out of my way. You have ten seconds to decide.”

He didn’t even have that long. Inside his head, Gunn felt Mikey’s presence explode, as though a wall had broken down. Power surged through him, making him glow with an unearthly light.

And then she screamed.

Gunn reached into his well of alpha power and slammed it outwards. Wolves went flying in all directions, like they’d been punched with giant fists. Sanchez was flung into one of the huge tree trunks that made up the house’s front pillars. He slid to the ground, groaning.

His wolves at his back, Gunn walked up to the great wooden doors, slammed them open, and stormed the Big House.

Chapter 35

Michelangela fought to keep the little man from breaking down the walls in her mind. She wasn’t so worried about the ones hiding her secrets, although she had no intention of giving those up.

The danger was the barriers that might be holding back mental powers she’d never accessed or wanted to use. Without any inhibiting safeguards, there was no telling what damage she could do to the minds surrounding her.

And the pack was vulnerable, without Gunn here.

Come on, DB, she called out. She really wanted to call out for Gunn, but there was no way he could be anywhere near here.

The annoying little man was staring into her eyes, trying to find the information he wanted. “Tell me the location of Tristan Barnes.”

“You won’t find him,” she said, throwing images of glitter and pink ponies at him just for spite. “He lives on another planet.”

“Tell me the truth.”

But she was telling the truth. Tristan lived with the Al-Maddeiri Draken clan, in an interdimensional bubble at the nexus of this world, the Dragonlands, and the spirit world.

“He does,” she insisted. She knew he wanted more, and the drug made her want to tell him things, so she added, “But it’s very, very small. Tiiiiiny. And there’s monsters there.”

The man said to Thanatos, “She seems to be telling the truth, but she’s not making sense.”

“Make her make sense!”

She could feel the man’s frustration. And Thanatos’s frustration. And the wolves’ frustration, outside. Everyone was in a bad mood.

And it was all slipping away from her. She couldn’t hold on…

The man leaned closer, so all she could see was his face. “You will tell me!” And he stabbed into her mind.

“Fuck!” It felt like a wall fell inside her, and power rushed out. It hit the mind man in the face, and he staggered back. It spread out, and out and out…

She screamed, and everything went all jumbled. She was everywhere and she was everyone, so many minds and all their thoughts and feelings. Wolves and wolves and wolves, and a very old, very dark presence, rooted in the ground underneath her.