Summer’s skin itched. She was in Mexico and the little bit of air conditioning Faith seemed to have in her makeshift trailer they were driving in was doing nothing to cool her down. She wanted out of her fur coat. She groaned and Faith looked up in the rear view mirror. While her face looked full of worry, her eyes were steel and calculating. It was obvious to Summer that Faith cared what happened to her, but she was not a woman to be disregarded.
She had somehow broken in and out of the Institute and stolen a wolf. Faith was obviously not just flighty, which had been Summer’s initial impression.
“I’m so sorry they did this to you. We’ll find someone to help. I promise. I don’t know who, but I promise we’ll find someone who can turn you back. We won’t let you end up like Andrew.”
Andrew? Who the hell was Andrew? Summer sighed. It was infuriating not being able to speak or communicate. Hell, even if she got a hold of a pen, she couldn’t write anything. Unless she held it in her mouth…
Summer was suddenly jolted out of her make-shift seat on the floor of the van. As she flew forward, she tried to protect her damaged paw and landed on her face for all of her efforts. Lifting her head, she realized she had practically landed in Faith’s lap. The other woman held her head, her face contorted in pain. All Summer could deduce from the increasingly bizarre situation was that Faith had somehow hit her head on the steering wheel which meant she hadn’t been wearing her seatbelt. What the hell had happened? Fear stung Summer’s stomach—had Kendrick’s Institute found them?
So far Summer wasn’t overly impressed with the other woman’s common sense. Who didn’t wear their seatbelt these days? Who sat in a trailer with an unrestrained wolf-shifter? How did she know Summer wasn’t going to hurt her?
Hell, there was so much about this situation Summer didn’t understand she shouldn’t be surprised at anything anymore.
“Summer, we’re coming in for you.” A familiar voice filtered in. Tristan? What the hell was the Alpha doing there? How had he found her? “We have the car surrounded. Whoever has you will pay.”
Faith sucked in her breath. She wished she could assure the other woman that they wouldn’t hurt her but beyond the fact she couldn’t speak, she wasn’t convinced Faith wasn’t in danger from her pack. They would probably assume she was an enemy and Summer couldn’t even speak telepathically to tell them she was just some crazy, babbling woman caught up in all of this.
Faith shook her head and stared at Summer. “I won’t let them take you back.”
Summer made a sound in her throat that was something in between a groan and a sigh. This couldn’t get any worse. Now Faith thought she was going to fight the wolves, who she thought were from the Institute, to save her.
Nope, Summer had enough. No one was fighting, no one was rescuing her, and she was getting out of the trailer all by herself. Summer turned, wincing at the pain in her leg, and walked to the door of the trailer. She scratched against it and rolled her eyes. She was scratching against the door like a dog. She hoped beyond hope that Tristan and whoever else was out there—since she couldn’t smell them thanks to Kendrick’s spell—would just open the door.
“No, no, no, friend.” If Summer could have rolled her eyes she would have when she heard Faith’s voice. “They’re bad men. They used magic to make the trailer stop. They’re the ones that hurt you.”
No the men outside were not bad. None of them were as good as Cullen but more and more she thought of them as family. They’d used magic to stop the van? Summer sucked in her breath. The only one out there who could do that kind of magic was Ashlee. That meant Ashlee was out there. Her sister. In her life, she’d never imagined she could be so excited to encounter her sister. Summer supposed Faith was trying to be calming so she couldn’t believe it when the other woman opened up the glove compartment and pulled out a gun.
Nope. She wasn’t going to let Faith, nice as she might be, shoot any member of her pack who had somehow showed up to rescue her. She leapt at Faith who shrieked before she dropped the gun. Summer clamped her teeth around the weapon.
“No you don’t understand, little wolf.”
Little wolf? How big did this woman think a wolf was supposed to be? Summer snorted. She’d been listening to the same discussion on her lack of height her whole life. As a wolf, she felt practically huge.
Summer patted the door again and this time it opened. Gabriel and Michael stood in front of Tristan. Gabriel’s head was bandaged.
“Move.” Tristan commanded.
Michael shook his head. “No, my Alpha. Not until we ascertain the situation is safe.”
Summer limped down the two steps of the trailer towards the crowd. It looked like the entire pack, with the exception of Theo, had turned out to rescue her. She still wasn’t clear on how they had found her and until one of them, probably her sister, found a way to bring back her wolf and her voice, she wasn’t going to be explaining anything.
Behind her, she felt Faith step outside of the trailer. “I won’t let you hurt her.”
The woman had guts. Maybe no sense, but a lot of fearlessness.
Tristan laughed and pushed through Gabriel and Michael’s blockade. “This?” He pointed to Faith. “This is who we rescued her from? This little woman?”
“Hey!” Ashlee’s voice sprung out from the crowd and Summer relaxed a little. “She could be extremely dangerous. “You don’t know anything about her, my liege.” The last words were said with such sarcasm, Summer wished she could laugh. “And women can be quite dangerous. Especially to those who underestimate them.”
To Summer’s shock Tristan nodded. “You’re quite right, little Ashlee.” He motioned his head toward Rex who had moved up to stand to his left. “Take the woman into custody.”
Faith stepped back. “You aren’t from the Institute are you? Look, I just want to help those poor people in there. They took Andrew. He wasn’t well but he never did anything to hurt anybody not in the twenty-eight years that I knew him. But when I found him, he was different, changed, animal-like somehow.” Summer could hear the emotion in Faith’s voice. The woman held herself together by a very thin thread. The others in the pack who still had access to their wolves could probably smell her distress. Tristan stepped backwards giving her space and Ashlee walked forward to his right.
Her sister caressed Tristan’s hand gently, never breaking eye contact with Faith. The others took their cue from their Alpha and shifted the way they stood into less aggressive positions.
Tristan spoke first. Summer noted that he very wisely wore his sunglasses disguising his wolf eyes. Unlike the others, as Alpha, Tristan could never hide his true self from the rest of the world. “You have a friend who has been made into a wolf? A sick wolf?”
“He’s dead. He didn’t live a week after I broke him out of there.”
Azriel stepped forward. “They must be drugging them up, making them addicted to something they give them, something that will cause a deadly withdrawal, my Alpha. This is the kind of thing Ashlee saw the last time we were at IPAG, when we came to find the witch.” Tristan nodded to Az but the Alpha never took his eyes off of Faith.
“I tried to get help, but my job forces me to be alone most of the time. Besides who would believe me if I started spouting off about men turning into wolves and strange experiments? They tossed him like he was so much garbage. When I found him…” Faith inhaled deeply and Summer seized the opportunity to move forward and rub against Ashlee. Maybe her sister would get the idea that she needed help.