Alpha On the Run: A BBW Wolf Shifter Paranormal Romance Read online

  “You're hurt, and it's probably infected because you feel feverish.” Anna put a hand to his forehead when he didn't argue again. He was burning up. “Look – do you have a car nearby?” He shook his head, so she continued her offer. “Let me drive you to...” She tried to summon the location of the nearest hospital. “Town,” she finished lamely. “We'll get you to a doctor there.”

  “You'll come with me?” he said. She wondered if the strange light in his eyes was from the fever. “If I go, you'll be with me, and not here?”

  “Yes,” she said with exasperation. “I have to drive you there, don’t I? I'm hardly going to leave you here by yourself.” She didn't understand her own vehemence. He was a total stranger. He had no reason to know what she might do.

  An ER visit might be a poor first date, but maybe later they could... Anna cut her thought off and tried to focus. She needed to get him help. She didn't need to get caught up in implausible daydreams.

  “Should we call your brothers and sister?” she asked. She got the car door opened and helped him ease himself into the back seat. She had to slide in after to help him lie down.

  “No!” he said harshly. “I mean, no, I don't want to worry them. I'll call them from the doctor's office. Then I can tell them everything's fine.”

  “Won't they notice you're gone?” Anna asked.

  She kept blankets in the backseat. She piled up one of them for a pillow and pulled the other over him. He didn't seem to notice. He was breathing hard like the question had scared him. He must have been delirious from the fever.

  “Nah,” he said with another smile at her. It should have been breathtaking, but his gaze had gone hazy . “I always – go off by myself. They won't worry. Don't you worry,” he added.

  “I won't,” she said with what she hope was a reassuring tone. “You'll be just fine as soon as we get you to the doctor, I'm sure.”

  “The doctor?” he asked. He twisted to meet her gaze again. Those odd colored eyes twigged something in her memory, but she couldn't think what.

  “Soon,” Anna said. She climbed out of the backseat. When she looked back, she realized his eyes had closed. She shut the door as quietly as possible.

  She needed to get him medical care. If he was camping with other people, how had they not noticed how sick he was? Could an infection and fever come on so fast? Or were they unrelated? Maybe he'd eaten something poisonous in the woods or something?

  Anna went to retrieve her walking stick and pack. She had dropped them in her hurry to get Joshua to the car. Suddenly a hand clamped onto her arm from behind.

  She stifled a scream and whipped around to see yet another strange man. In fact, there were two more standing in the shadows of the leaves behind him.

  “What do you want?” she asked. Anna fought to keep her voice steady.

  Her first thought was that they must be Joshua's brothers, but she had no idea why. None of them really looked like him. The one in front had pale blond hair hanging almost to his chin, where Joshua's hair was dark and would probably be curly if grown out. One of the two in the back had hair his color, but his face was all curves and boyish softness like an exaggerated picture of youth, and none of them had Joshua's freckles or height.

  It was the intensity, she decided. They all had some kind of energy to them, just looking at them. But Joshua hadn't been frightening. This man radiated menace.

  Maybe because he'd just come up from behind and grabbed her, and he still hadn't answered her. Anna straightened. She called up the mental image of her mother when Anna had crashed the family car at seventeen, and glared. “What the fuck do you want?”

  “Relax, chica,” the man said. He looked over her derisively. “We're just looking for our brother.”

  The pig. “I haven't seen anyone,” she said. She was irrationally certain that whether they were Joshua's brothers or not, they should not find him. Even if they were really family. Sometimes that didn't make people safe. Maybe Joshua had really been panicked just by the thought of calling them.

  “Oh, come on, you're out here all by yourself?”

  “Of course not,” she lied. Telling Joshua she was alone hadn't felt dangerous. These guys? Hell no. “I'm meeting my students back at the cabin in twenty minutes. And I would appreciate you not detaining me and making me late. Now. Do you want something, or may I go?” She wrenched her arm out of his grip. His hand felt like a steel manacle. She wondered if she could have succeeded if he was really trying to hold her.

  “Students? You're a teacher?” His eyebrows lifted.

  “At Ohio State University, yes, I'm a lecturer in the anthropology department,” she snapped.

  “Lot of kids come out here in the summer?” he asked.

  “If they want field experience, of course,” she said. Anna turned and stalked back over to the car. “Now get out of the road so I won't hit you.”

  The man who was still in the shadows lifted his nose to the wind and, she swore to god, sniffed the air. “He's been here, boss, in both...ways, but I don't think he is now. Damn gasoline makes it hard to tell, but we'd better keep looking.”

  As the words hit her ears, Anna's heart began to pound. But her mind had something else to chew on. The reason Joshua's eyes seemed familiar came to her – that not-a-dog she had seen the day before.

  No, she thought. But yes. The wolf had favored its right hind leg, and Joshua's right leg was injured. If the injury was more than a day old, it would explain how bad it was. The wolf knew that people weren't a threat to it. It understood that a woman holding out cheese and speaking softly to it didn't intend harm.

  It was no crazier than a man who sniffed the air and declared someone wasn't here.

  “Yeah, fine,” the man in front said. He tossed a glance at Anna. “Good luck with your class, Professor,” he added mockingly. Then he moved off into the woods in a strange loping gait that looked unnatural on two legs, and was followed shortly by his underlings.

  Anna watched them go. She waited until she was sure they were out of sight to sink to the ground and hug her knees.

  “Oh, my god,” she whispered.

  Joshua was still in the car. She wanted to get in and start the long trip to the doctor, but what if they could smell him? The sealed doors probably kept them from knowing he was right there, only a few feet away. How long should she wait before she opened them? She didn't really know how far... wolves... could smell.

  She forced herself to wait. She prayed she was wrong about this mess and there was some explanation that made any damn sense. Ten excruciating minutes passed.

  They could be half a mile, a mile away by now if they'd kept moving. Surely that was enough that they wouldn't know and come zooming back. They must have been closer than that when Anna and Joshua were talking. After all, they had shown up so soon after.

  Anna finally opened the driver's door and slid inside. She tossed her pack and walking stick into the front passenger seat. (If only she had thought before to jerk around and smack the stick into that jerkass's head – but there were two more of them. Even if she took him with one blow it might not have done her any good.) Then she locked the doors, started the car, and began getting the hell out of dodge.

  She could switch to the furthest sites from this place this week. She had had enough of this to last her the whole summer.

  She would have to pull over to look up the nearest doctor on her phone. She drove fifteen minutes in the direction of the closest town first. Luckily, the closest doctor's office was in that town. It would be a good forty more minutes before she got there. The only things in between besides the trees were a few roadside stops off the highway.

  Anna glanced at the backseat in the rear view mirror. Joshua was still curled up on the seat with the blankets over him. His breathing looked even. She couldn't tell more without stopping the car. Even if there was something wrong, what the hell could she do? She only knew basic first aid. She cursed herself for not actually looking at the injury. There might be
something she could do faster than forty minutes away.

  In a few minutes, she found a place to pull off the road again and crawled into the backseat. She knew she was further away than wolves or humans could get on foot so quickly, but she still didn't want to unlock the car doors.

  She touched Joshua's skin to test the temperature. His forehead was burning hot, but she didn't think it was remarkably hot for a fever. Was there anything she could do for that in the car? Anna knew that really bad fevers could kill, but she didn't have a thermometer to check. She was pretty sure he'd look worse if that was the problem.

  She dug out some Advil from her purse and her water bottle. She was about to try to work out how to make an unconscious person swallow a pill when Joshua opened his eyes.

  “What's going on?” he mumbled.

  “Hey,” she said. “We're in the car on the way to the doctor. Can you take this?”

  “No!”

  “They're just pills,” she said soothingly. “To help with the fever.”

  “No,” he struggled for words, “No doctor.”

  “Yes, doctor, because you passed out with an infected wound in my car. Since the best qualification I have is Red Cross certification from when I was a Girl Scout I thought I'd take you to an actual professional. You know, so you don't get gangrene or something and die?”

  “No doctor,” he said firmly. He sounded out of it, but very, very sure.

  “Why the hell not?” she asked.

  “It wouldn't – they shouldn't see me,” he said. “Not safe.”

  “Does this have something to do with your brothers?” she asked cautiously.

  “Who told you about that?” He tried to jerk upright but wasn't able to sit up.

  “You did,” Anna said carefully. “And then they showed up to mock me for being a woman all by myself in the woods and sniff the air for your scent, which was really kind of creepy, by the way.” She tried not to sound too angry or scared.

  “Shit.” He rubbed his face. “They saw you? I'm sorry, that wasn't supposed to happen.”

  “I'm pretty sure they thought I was just some harmless crazy academic carting a load of grad students around the woods,” she said.

  “I thought you said your school wouldn't pay for that?” he asked, sounding confused. “Am I misremembering that conversation?”

  “Well, I wouldn't be surprised since you passed out right after,” Anna said, “But you're right. I figured admitting I was completely alone in the woods with no one to expect me back until September was probably not a good idea.”

  “Good,” he said with relief. “I'm glad. Shit. How bad's my leg?”

  “I'm not sure,” she said. “I need to check on it still. Will you take the pills?”

  Sitting up enough to drink some of her water with them drained him. He collapsed back onto the car seat listlessly. She thought about trying to get him to a doctor anyway. He was hardly in a state to resist. Did she really know better than him? He was so terrified by the thought.

  “Fine,” she murmured to him. “No doctor. How are you feeling?”

  He sounded even less conscious when he answered. His eyes had closed again completely. “Pain in my right lower leg, feels swollen and hot, and I'm cold and shivery. Exhaustion and muscle pain from running for three days straight, and I have a headache from the smell of gasoline in wolf form.”

  She felt her heart beat faster at the word wolf being said aloud, finally. Was that fear or excitement?

  “Can I take a look at your leg?” she asked. Someone had to clean it if he wouldn't let her take him to a doctor. She could see that the lower part of his jeans were shredded and soaked in blood, enough to tell where he was hurt. But she didn’t know how bad it was.

  “Of course,” he said. His head dropped to the side.

  She had to twist herself awkwardly to get a good angle to look at his legs in the seat. She finally ended up sitting on his thighs with her back to his face. Any embarrassment or excitement she might have felt was dulled by the fact that he wasn't awake to notice.

  She hissed a little when she got a look at his leg up close. His jeans were shredded at the calf, and it looked like some of the fibers had been caught in the wound. The cut itself went five or six inches down his calf. It began with a deep gouge that got gradually shallower. The skin was red and swollen.

  Anna tried to peel the denim back from his calf, but it stuck in his skin, or maybe to the sticky dried blood. Joshua jerked and yelped in pain. Anna flinched in guilt. She finally gave up and pulled out her pocket knife to start cutting the leg of his jeans.

  She couldn't get it all off that way, but she could see the wound better. Not that she really wanted to look at it. Anna bit her lip and went for the extra water bottles on the floor.

  She poured water out carefully and rubbed his leg. She tried to remove the blood, or at least soften it. She couldn't imagine having little bits of things caught in the skin was doing it any good.

  When she started washing it with soap water, the pain woke him back up again. He let out a frightening sounding, honest to God growl.

  “Shit, sorry,” he groaned when she jumped. “So how bad is it?”

  “I don't know for sure,” she said, turning back to look at it. “It's definitely infected. And you have a fever.” She tried to remember those long ago first aid classes. “Can you feel your foot and move it?”

  He wiggled his toes obligingly. “It hurts like hell, but there's sensation everywhere.”

  “Can you feel this?” Anna poked the skin to the side and received another yelp. “Okay, good. Are you serious about no doctors?”

  “They'd find me,” Joshua said tiredly. “And if they did, they'd kill everyone who'd seen me. I'm so sorry I dragged you into this, Anna, I shouldn't have gone to talk to you, I just...”

  “Just what?” she asked. What on earth was he mixed up in? What had she gotten mixed up in?

  “Can we talk about it later?” he asked. “It'll take some explaining, and I'm afraid I'm about to drift out again.”

  “Sure. For what it's worth,” she said slowly, “If the other option was you dying alone in the woods, I'm glad I found you.”

  “You think that now,” he said darkly.

  She wondered just what his brothers were. What Joshua was. It wasn't enough that they were something weird and supernatural, they were criminals, and murderers, too? What could be so worth hiding they'd kill literally anyone who got in the way? Was it that werewolves existed, or something else?

  She couldn't believe anything so terrible of Joshua. She hadn't known him for long. Still, she felt instinctively that he was trustworthy. Maybe he'd done something to anger those men, and they were after him because of it. He could be a hero for all she knew. She couldn't believe any cold-hearted murderer would be so upset to get someone else involved in his mess. Especially when he might have died without her.

  Anna shook her head and went back to the injury. She managed to get the rest of Joshua's jeans off of his leg with a lot of water. The wound was still bleeding, but in a sluggish way that didn't threaten anything but her car seat. She cut the clean leg of the jeans into strips and used them to tie on gauze from her backpack's first aid kit.

  By then, Joshua had drifted back out. She checked his forehead. It was a little cooler, but was that real or just her imagination? Did fevers from infections leave so quickly? Did he even heal like a human? She tried wetting his head and neck to take down his temperature more. Then she wiped her hands off and crawled back into the front seat. It was time to get them both to the closest thing to home.

  Chapter Four

  The first thing Joshua noticed was the electricity.

  The faint humming sound told him he must be inside. He drifted in and out, listening to that hum and reveling in his existence. Somehow he had reached shelter without being found.

  As he woke up, he noticed more: the soft sheets under him and the blanket over him. The breeze coming in from a window over his he
ad. Sounds from further away – a door opening and closing, footsteps back and forth, keys clicking on a laptop.

  He heard a woman's voice, singing to herself, and thought: Anna. He remembered the soft skin of her hands on his forehead, and the way her voice had soothed him in the depths of his fever. She was so brave – and sexy, too. She had soft, amber brown skin over beautifully full curves. Her curly hair cascaded down her back. He wanted to run his fingers through that hair. He wondered what it would look like flowing over her naked back, next to that skin.

  Then he finally snapped the last few inches to consciousness and remembered what had happened.

  If only he had met her at some other time! Any other time. He wanted her, but he could never be so selfish as to put a civilian in danger by involving them. If only he met her before, when he was human and safe. They could have been together. He could have asked her out to dinner instead of passing out in her car.

  He should get out of this bed, thank her for her help, and walk straight back out of her life. She wasn’t involved yet. There was still time. But instead, he lay in the bed and listened to her voice. She sang so sweetly. He could listen for hours.

  Panic hit him when the breeze came in through the curtains again. He pushed it down. If the pack was so close they could smell him through the open window, they were both royally screwed. There was no point in worrying over something so useless.

  The trip to Anna's cabin would have been by car. If it was reasonably long – and cabins were sparse in this area – it would be far enough to make it impossible to track them. Pretty much all cars smelled the same, an overpowering and painful smell of gasoline and metal. The pack would have to run into them completely by accident. Unless they were within a few miles of the trail head it probably wouldn't happen.

  If Joshua was aiming to find a specific cabin in the middle of nowhere, he wouldn't try to comb a few hundred square miles of forest. He would set people to watch the nearest population centers, since the residents would have to get supplies eventually. If he knew one was injured, he'd make sure to watch hospital admissions and private doctors in the area, too. There wouldn't be all that many; he thought there were maybe two real towns in easy driving distance. He'd also put people on the toll booths on the highways out of the area, maybe send them in in fake cop uniforms and claim there was a criminal on the loose.