Dark Wolf Rising. Rhyannon Byrd

do is leave.”

      Her fingers tightened around the strap of her bag until her knuckles turned white. “How is that the best thing, when it means leaving my sister in the hands of this stranger and not caring about what happens to her?”

      In a slightly gentler tone, he said, “I didn’t say it was easy.”

      She blinked up at him, staring into his eyes with a sharp, intense focus, as if she knew there was more…something important he wasn’t telling her. Taking a receipt from his pocket, Eric reached around her, into the truck, and grabbed a pen from the center console, then handed them to her. “Give me your mobile number.”

      “What for?” she asked with a heavy dose of suspicion.

      “I’ll look into some things, and if I do happen to run across your sister, I’ll call you.”

      She hesitated for a moment, then quickly wrote down her number. With a slow shake of her head, she handed the slip of paper back to him. “You’re so sure I’m going to do what you say, aren’t you?”

      “You’d be an idiot not to,” he muttered, shoving the receipt back in his pocket. “And I have a feeling you’re anything but.”

      She absorbed his words with a small nod, studying him for a moment longer, then shook her head again and held out her hand. Eric took it, closing his hard, roughened fingers around the tender softness of hers. It was a small, endlessly feminine hand, not bony, just cushioned and lovely and sweet. He wanted to pull it to his body and press it against his skin. Feel it hold him where he was hard…feel it grip him…the unwanted need making him restless, angry. With another scowl pulling between his brows, he released her chilled hand and took a hasty step back, hating the urgent feeling prickling beneath his skin. She was like a rash that he needed to shake, before the damn thing spread.

      “Well, goodbye, Eric Drake,” she said huskily, hitching the backpack higher on her shoulder. “It was certainly…interesting.”

      Eric gave her a jerky nod and clenched his jaw as she turned toward the hotel, walking away from him with a tired, but proud, confident stride. When he realized his gaze had snagged on the way those low-rise jeans hugged her ass, he muttered a blistering curse. Heading around to the driver-side of the truck, he quickly climbed behind the wheel and made his way back onto the road, gunning the engine.

      He might not like it, but the truth couldn’t be ignored.

      No matter what demons she faced on her own, Chelsea Smart was a hell of a lot better off without him.

       Chapter 4

      Chelsea Smart needed to have her little backside blistered. And Eric was tempted to do it himself, just as soon as he managed to find her.

      As he pulled into the parking lot of the Heaven and Hell strip club late the following afternoon, he didn’t think he’d ever been so furious. There’d been an odd ache in his chest just moments before, when he’d driven past the Travelodge without spotting Chelsea’s bus—which had been delivered to the hotel early that morning—in the parking lot. Though he’d known it was for the best, the idea of never seeing her again had been uncomfortably disturbing, a strange sense of loss weighing heavily in his gut. But instead of easing when he’d caught sight of that ridiculous bus parked in the club’s lot, he was suddenly in a world of hurt. One much darker and deeper than before. One that was angry and hard and violent.

      She’d blatantly disregarded his orders, and now the headstrong little idiot was chin-deep in the kind of danger he’d tried to warn her about. Son of a bitch.

      He’d mistakenly assumed that with her being a woman and him being a big, intimidating, dominant Lycan, it would be enough to make her realize she should listen to him, whether she wanted to or not. But he’d obviously been wrong.

      After a long day of dealing with issues up in Shadow Peak, Eric had headed down to Wesley intending to visit the club to see if there was anything he could learn about Perry Smart’s whereabouts, as well as to get a better idea of exactly what was going on there. He hadn’t planned on having to save her older sister’s stubborn ass, though that seemed the more likely scenario now that he knew Chelsea hadn’t left town…but had done exactly what he’d told her not to do instead. Damn. He’d known she was willful, but still. The woman was downright destructive.

      Pulling in a deep breath, he struggled for patience as he finished a pass around the two-story square, windowless building and parked next to her bus, trying to give himself time to come up with a plan, but the lingering traces of her scent inside his truck were still screwing with his head.

      There were things hidden in that scent. Confusing things. Important ones. Things he needed to understand. He just…he couldn’t quite catch hold of them, as if a strong wind kept whipping them out of his reach, like meandering whorls of smoke. One instant they would be so close, and in the next, whoosh. They were gone.

      Climbing out of his truck, Eric dug his cell phone from his pocket, then reached into his other pocket for the receipt with Chelsea’s number. The call went to voice mail after eight rings, and he ground out something that would have made his mother box his ears when he was younger. Whatever Chelsea was doing inside the club, she wasn’t in a position to answer her phone, and a cold sweat settled over the back of his neck.

      Her bus had been delivered to the Travelodge at six that morning. It was now five-thirty in the afternoon. Which meant she’d had eleven and a half hours to get into trouble. Nearly half a damn day to be bullied or threatened or whatever the hell else might have happened to her. Rape. Assault. Torture. The nauseating list was endless.

      Muttering another gritty curse under his breath, Eric quickly scrolled through his contact list until he found the next number he needed.

      “Burns here,” said a deep voice, after only two rings. Jeremy Burns was one of the pack’s Bloodrunners, and a serious badass with a warped sense of humor. He was also the husband of one of Eric’s closest friends, Jillian, the pack’s healer, which had put the two males on rocky footing when things had started heating up between Jillian and the Runner the year before. But as soon as Jeremy had accepted the fact that Eric and Jillian were nothing more than friends, he and the Runner had slowly become friends themselves. He knew he could trust the guy with his life, and with anything else he threw at him.

      “It’s Eric,” he said, locking the door to the truck behind him. “I need to let you know where I’m at, in case I don’t make it back to the Alley tonight.” Bloodrunner Alley was a secluded part of the forest where Jeremy and the other Bloodrunners lived, and where Eric had been spending a lot of his nights lately.

      “Well,” the Runner drawled, “that’s a hell of a way to open a conversation.”

      He scanned his surroundings to make sure no one was listening in. “Save the sarcasm for another time. I’m down in Wesley, in the Heaven and Hell parking lot.”

      Jeremy cursed, but didn’t waste time demanding to know what Eric was doing there. Instead, he asked, “You got weapons?”

      “Yeah, but can’t take them in with me. They’ll have security at the doors.”

      The Runner’s frustration was evident in the hard edge of his voice. “I should have known something was up when you started asking questions about that place this morning. Didn’t think you were stupid enough to actually go down there on your own, though.”

      “What can I say?” he grunted, squinting against the last dying rays of the sun. “I needed something to do.”

      Jeremy snorted. “Yeah, well, next time just ask. If you’re bored, I’ll think of something to keep you busy. Jillian’s gonna kill me if anything happens to you.”

      He started to tell the Runner that that’s why he was calling—to make plans if something did happen—but Jeremy suddenly told him to hold on a second. Eric could hear him talking to someone else, relaying the situation, and then another voice came on the