Room by room they searched. The gnawing in Lincoln’s stomach would eat through his chest before long. After seeing the cruel and evil side of man and wolf for so long, Lincoln had nearly lost hope in everything. Then Dayax came along. With his inquisitive mind, generous smile and trusting eyes, despite all he’d suffered, Dayax had renewed Lincoln’s faith. If he lost the boy now, the last threads of his humanity would snap.
“Se acabó el tiempo!” Damien yelled.
“Almost done,” Lila replied.
Lincoln exited the last room to the left of the stairs and returned to the corridor, shaking his head. He gazed out the large window into the empty alley below.
“Dayax, wherever you are, I will find you!” He sent the question telepathically in English and Somali, hoping the wolfling would receive the message and understand that Lincoln would not give up on him.
“Last one, Linc. Then we gotta scram.” Lila stopped in front of the last door to the right of the stairs.
“All right, kid. Come out, come out, wherever you are,” she said, turning the doorknob. “Hmm. Must be stuck.”
Lincoln’s stomach knotted and a horrible foreboding drove an icy knife into his gut. “Lila, wait!”
Unable to hear Lincoln’s telepathic warning in her human form, she shoved her shoulder against the door. It swung innocently open and she darted into the room.
The breath stalled in Lincoln’s chest continued on its path, though his heart still thundered.
“Vámonos!” Damien shouted, stomping up the stairs two at a time. “Vámonos!”
A flash of light accompanied a resounding boom. The percussive force slammed Lincoln against the window. Deafened from the explosion, he never heard the glass break. But the air swooshed around him and his stomach looped as he plunged downward.
He would be okay; his team would be okay. Dayax would be okay. The beautiful angel inside the thin silver case tucked in the pocket of his protective vest would make sure they were. She always did.
Nine weeks later
“I’m gonna wring his freaking neck!”
Angeline O’Brien glared at the man passed out on her brand-new leather couch, thrashing and yelling in his sleep.
She slammed the apartment door, envisioning her long fingers curling around Tristan Durrance’s throat for giving his subletter the wrong key.
Friends since they were tweens, neighbors for nearly all of their adult lives, and both relationshipphobes, Tristan and Angeline had traded apartment keys with the understanding that they would look out for each other. Angeline had expected the arrangement to continue into their elder years.
Unfortunately for her, last summer Tristan had accidentally claimed a mate and subsequently fallen in love, breaking up their platonic cohesiveness. Angeline didn’t begrudge Tristan’s happiness, but she had felt a little lonely since he’d moved out of his apartment.
But not lonely enough to play nice with a Dogman who had found his way into the wrong apartment. Everyone in the Walker’s Run pack had been anticipating the wolfan paramilitary man’s arrival for weeks. Everyone except Angeline.
Turbulent emotions rose inside her. When her first and only love, Tanner Phillips, had chosen life as a Dogman over a mateship with her, Angeline had never wanted to hear the word Dogman again. Neither did she ever want to come face-to-face with one.
So instead of welcoming this Dogman like a hero, she had a mind to toss his ass outside into the cold and slam the door in his face. Next to the two empty beer bottles on the kitchen counter, she dropped her purse and the carry-out bag from Taylor’s Roadhouse, her uncle’s restaurant where she worked part-time.
“Hey!” she snapped. After being on her feet all night, Angeline wanted a hot shower to wash away the food odors from her body and to relax in the utter quiet and comfort of her home. Alone. The sooner she got the Dogman into the right apartment, the better. “Wake up!”
Curled on his side, face pressed against the duffel bag he used as a pillow, the man gave no indication that he’d heard her. Every muscle in his body remained tightly coiled. A muscle spasmed along his clenched jaw and the deep furrows creased his brow.
Angeline’s irritation level dropped a few notches. “Are you all right?” She touched him. An unexpected electric current caused her fingers to tighten on his bare shoulder when she should’ve let go.
His large hand cuffed her wrist as he sat up. “Who are you?” he snarled. His glaring silvery-green gaze appeared to be clouded and unfocused.
“The person who owns the couch you’re sleeping on.” Angeline yanked her captive arm against his hold. Instead of freeing herself, she became more entangled with him as he rolled off the couch and stood, leaning heavily on her.
“Where’s my team?” A shag of black hair curtained his forehead, dark brows slashed angrily over his eyes and his naturally brown skin lightly glistened with sweat. “Where’s Dayax?”
“Wherever you think you are, you aren’t!” She grappled against his effort to restrain her. “This is my apartment, not Tristan’s, and I want you to leave.”
Angeline’s heart pounded with a healthy dose of adrenaline, but not outright fear. She’d had to contend with two older brothers growing up. Wrestling over one thing or another had been a daily sport and they hadn’t given her any slack just because of her gender.
She wiggled one arm free, sharpened her elbow and jammed it into his solar plexus. An audible gasp filled her ear. His hold loosened. Falling away, he snatched the tails of her sweater.
With a resounding oomph, he hit the carpeted floor, flat on his back with Angeline sprawling on top of him. Immediately, his meaty arms caged her, then rolling her beneath him, he pinned her with his weight.
“I can’t breathe!” At least not all that well.
Hands flat against his muscled chest, damp from sweat, Angeline shoved hard but nothing happened. Pushing over a concrete wall might’ve been easier than getting the wolfan male to budge.
“Who are you?” Though he allowed her some wiggle room, the timbre of his growl gave grave warning.
“The woman who will unman you if you don’t get the hell off me!” Angeline scraped her nails down his taut abdomen to the waistband of his boxers. Odd, considering wolfan males didn’t care to wear men’s underwear. But it was winter and she was grateful that his bare ass hadn’t christened her new couch.
The undergarment, however, didn’t prevent her from gripping his heavy sack in a manner any man would recognize as anything but playful.
A painful snarl parted his lips. Each time she squeezed, his lids shuttered and his gaze became more focused and alert. She knew the moment his brain recognized that he was crouched intimately above a female whose body was perfectly aligned with his.
“Think carefully about your next move, Dogman.”
“Oh, I’m not moving, Angel,” he said calmly. Clearly. Seductively. “Not until you let go of my balls.”
“Good,” she said, ignoring the flutter in her stomach that his deep, quiet Texas drawl had started to stir. “Now that you’re awake, do you know where you are?”
A whisper of a smile curved his mouth. “In heaven.” Eyes drifting closed, he lowered his face to hers and rubbed his check against her jaw, snuffling her hair. “God, you smell divine.”
Despite the awkward circumstance, Angeline didn’t sense any threat in his manner. The reverent way he breathed