Dark Wolf Rising. Rhyannon Byrd

      But the words stuck in her throat. Her options were more than a little limited here. The idea of staying in the woods had been scary enough when the opportunity for retreat had been available, but to be stuck out here in a broken-down car didn’t strike her as smart, even though she had a gun. Then again, neither did driving off with Mr. Tall, Dark and Deadly Gorgeous. But if he was going to hurt her, he could have already done it. Right? The other two men, who were still waiting over by his truck, clearly submitted to his authority, as if he were some kind of superior they deferred to. She had the feeling that if he’d attacked, they’d have done nothing to stop him.

      Which meant…what? Was she actually trying to talk herself into taking him up on his offer? She didn’t have enough money for a motel room, but she’d figure something out. She always did, one way or another.

      As if sensing her disquieting inner conflict, he wiped the scowl off his face and let go of her door, that warm, male scent pulsing off him the most interesting thing she’d ever smelled. “It’s okay,” he said in a low voice. “I won’t hurt you. Just a ride into town, to a motel, and then I’ll have your bus delivered to you in the morning.”

      “How can I get it fixed if I leave it here?” Not that she had the money to get it fixed, but he didn’t need to know that. “Can’t we just tow it behind us?”

      “I’m going to call some mechanics I know and have them work on it here,” he explained as if it was the simplest thing in the world to do. “They’ll have it in running order by morning.”

      Wrapping her arms around her middle, she asked, “Why would you do that?”

      “Consider it a fair exchange for the fact that I’m kicking you out of here,” he offered with a strained smile. He clearly wasn’t any happier about the situation than she was, and yet, he seemed determined to help her.

      She didn’t agree or disagree. She simply said, “It isn’t smart.”

      A deep, almost silent rumble of laughter vibrated in his chest, and he arched one of those damn black brows again. “Neither was camping out in your car in the woods all alone.”

      “But at least I had a good reason for that.”

      He could have argued that she had a good reason for taking him up on his offer, as well. But he didn’t. He just stared at her, the silver metallic of his eyes mesmerizing, like the liquid swirl of mercury in a vial—making her feel as if he could see right past her sarcastic bravado, down to the real woman huddling inside her skin. The one who was scared and tired and pushed to the edge of her limits. His cool air of command made Chelsea want to slap him, just as badly as she wanted to press her lips against that hard, utterly masculine mouth and find out if he tasted even half as good as he looked and smelled.

      Pulling her lower lip through her teeth, she finally said, “If I accept, it doesn’t mean that I owe you anything.”

      Instead of agreeing, he simply gave her a charmingly crooked grin that made her body react with ridiculous ease. “My name is Eric, by the way. Eric Drake. And you would be…?”

      “Chelsea Smart.”

      He started to laugh under his breath, as if there was something funny about her name, but choked it off when he caught her glare.

      “So, what’s it gonna be, Chelsea?” He stepped back from the bus, shoved his hands deep in his pockets again and lifted his shoulders. “Will you trust me?”

      The question was offered casually, and yet, she had the strangest feeling that her answer was somehow important to him. Which was crazy, seeing as how she’d never been all that important to anyone before, much less to a gorgeous man who didn’t even know her.

      What was it going to be?

      She was acutely aware of each second passing slowly into the next…of each breath that expanded her lungs…each hard, powerful beat of her heart that shuddered through her body.

      Then she did something that she never did, and opened her door, putting her trust in another person. And not just any person.

      No, for the first time in what felt like forever, Chelsea put her trust in the hands of a man.

       Chapter 3

      By the time Eric pulled onto the gloomy, rain-sodden streets of downtown Wesley, he’d managed to learn a bit more about the human than just her name and the fact that she had a prickly attitude. She was twenty-six years old, had just bought her first condo and taught Women’s Studies at a private university in Smythe, Virginia. He’d also learned that she had spent the past few weeks searching for her younger sister, a nineteen-year-old named Perry, who also lived in Smythe…and whose party-girl lifestyle and recreational drug use had a habit of landing her in a variety of unsavory situations.

      According to her roommates, Perry had suddenly disappeared a month ago, after hooking up with an amazingly hot guy at a weekend party. He’d fed her some bullshit story about how he really cared about her, but that his life was just too dangerous for a girl like her, and then skipped out. But Perry wasn’t willing to give him up. After asking around about him, she’d learned he was heading to another party in a neighboring county, and she’d set off after him, determined to track him down. Then she hadn’t come back.

      When a few days had gone by and her roommates hadn’t heard from her, they got in touch with Chelsea, claiming they were worried about their impulsive, risk-taking friend. Chelsea had been worried, too, while waiting for word from her sister…or a sign that she was okay and on her way back home. When her phone messages on Perry’s cell went unanswered for over a week, Chelsea left Smythe and followed Perry’s sloppy trail from one college party or nightclub to another, until her search eventually led to a strip joint right there in Wesley called Heaven and Hell.

      Unfortunately, by the time Chelsea had arrived, Perry’s short stint illegally serving cocktails in the club was already over. No one had been willing to talk to Chelsea or to give her any information, until she finally got lucky that afternoon and caught one of the girls, a hollow-eyed little slip of a thing named Maggie, on the way to her car in the parking lot. The girl had reluctantly divulged that a tired-looking Perry had hit the road after only a few nights at the club, when some guy she said she’d been looking for came in.

      Apparently, the guy—a good-looking blond who Maggie had seen before, but whose name she didn’t know—freaked out when he saw Perry working in the club. A fight started between him and the bouncers when he demanded Perry leave with him, but then they eventually told him just to get her out of there. She’d run in the back to collect her things, giddy with excitement, and told Maggie that her boyfriend was taking her home with him, to a place somewhere up in the nearby mountains.

      And that was how Chelsea Smart had ended up in Silvercrest pack territory. Chelsea had left Wesley not long after talking to Maggie, determined to search any towns she found up in the mountains until she finally located her sister. When Eric asked why she hadn’t bothered to go to the police, she told him she’d already tried that route, but there’d been nothing they could do to help. According to the officer she’d talked to back in Smythe, being stupid wasn’t a crime. Perry was a legal adult who was apparently acting of her own free will, and until they had reason to believe otherwise, there was nothing the cops could do.

      Considering that the private road he’d found Chelsea on led to Shadow Peak, and Eric was positive Perry wasn’t in the mountaintop town, there were only a few other possibilities, and none of them were good for a human female on her own. Just as the road split off from the main highway, there was a turnoff to an old dirt path that wound its way over to the opposite side of the mountain, and into the territory owned by the Youngblood pack. Though the pack itself, a relatively small, peaceful group who kept to themselves, lived in a town that had been built on the western edge of their land, there was an even smaller settlement over the border in West Virginia where the Donovan family lived. Known for their corrupt business dealings, the Donovans had been asked to leave the Youngblood Lycan homestead in the late seventies—and yet, they