The sound of the door smashing in was enough to make Jolie jump, but the pain in her skull was enough that even the danger couldn’t make her get out of bed, especially when she realized who the red wolf could be.

“Goddamn it, Red!” she yelled, then hated herself for making the pain in her skull throb that much harder. She fell back onto the bed, her hands clutching her temples, as if that was going to keep the pain at bay.

It totally didn’t, and then there was nothing but growling and snapping as something else crashed in the motel.

Fuck, was that the TV? She didn’t dare open her eyes, and she sure as hell didn’t want to see how much furniture was getting destroyed as Liam and Red rolled around the room. Somehow, they managed to form an arc around her bed, bumping into it and knocking her around only occasionally, but she ignored it, clutching at her head, fairly sure she was starting to bleed all over again from the intense pulsing happening in her brain.

Jolie rolled onto her side, clenching her teeth while squeezing her eyes shut tighter. If she willed them both to go away enough, would they do it? Would someone answer her wish and make both wolves vanish out of here so she could start recovering in peace?

Something else crashed, sounded like a lamp, and the sharp whine Red let out was nearly enough to make her open her eyes. She didn’t.

“Liam, don’t hurt him too much,” Jolie groaned.

Red’s voice was high-pitched and offended. “How do you know it’s me he’s got?”

She didn’t bother to look back at them. “Obviously it’s not him.”

Liam must have still been in his wolf form, at least if the sound of his chuckle was anything to go by. He definitely sounded as if he was a big animal with some prey between his teeth when he let out that noise.

“Okay! Okay! I’m sorry! Liam!”

Jolie couldn’t stand to hear Red scream like that. She groaned, forcing herself up and to her feet. Every step she took was another nail hammered into the side of her skull, but she made it to the door and slammed it shut, a noise that vibrated through the inside of her cranium like a golf ball bouncing around an enclosed space.

Liam turned back into his human shape. She only knew this because she heard his voice as she stumbled blindly back to bed.

“Jolie! You shouldn’t be walking around.”

“I know,” she moaned, gently crawling back onto the mattress and easing herself down. “Please stop yelling.”

“I’m not yelling.”

It super sounded like he was yelling, unless that was just in her head. Holy shit. Was it in her head? She pulled the pillow over her skull, and even with their voices slightly muffled, she could still make out everything they said. Apparently she was getting sensitive to sound as well as light. The darkness within her new pillow cave seemed to help.

“What happened to her?”

“I took her hunting. It didn’t end well,” Liam growled.

Jolie’s heart swelled just a little when he didn’t explain to Red that she’d slammed her head into a tree.

“Jesus, was it Dempsey?”

“No, there was…an accident.”

Jolie would kill him later. Why the hell did she have to love him so damned much when he was clearly an uncivilized asshat?

“Dempsey isn’t with you?”

“No,” Red said, muttering. “He was. We all basically know you’re here. You’ve been here for days.”

“Hmm,” Liam said.

Jolie cringed beneath her pillow.

Maybe he wasn’t such an asshat after all, considering she was the one who didn’t want to move on just yet.

It had been Jolie’s plan to stay on the highway a little longer. She’d even washed some dishes at the gas station diner for a little extra cash. Liam hadn’t wanted her to do that, and had even claimed she didn’t need to. He’d insisted that if they stayed in their wolf shapes, they could get to their destination within a couple of days.

Jolie hadn’t been convinced she could make a trip like that in just her wolf shape, hunting exclusively for food, and sleeping outdoors.

She supposed she’d proved her point while chasing down what was meant to be her lunch, but she really wished it hadn’t come down to that.

“So you broke in here to fight me for her, was that it?” Liam asked, a small possessive growl to his voice.

Jolie smiled beneath her pillow. She had never liked it when Dempsey had tried getting possessive over her. It had annoyed her more than anything, actually. When Liam got into the whole my woman sort of mood, it was easy to admit to herself that she liked it.

A lot.

“No! I mean…yeah. But I don’t want to!”

“Didn’t learn your lesson from the last time? Your shoulder doesn’t look entirely healed yet.”

Even though she was an omega, and even though she had that pillow over her head, Jolie could almost smell the fear coming from Red. Fear tended to smell like sweat, coupled with tiny droplets of pee. Red was definitely starting to smell like a little of both.

Jolie groaned over the whole thing. “Liam, leave him alone. He’s our friend.”

She had to be careful, even the sound of her own voice seemed to be dead set on sending painful vibrations all up and down the back of her skull

Liam growled a low and dangerous noise that had the small hairs on her arms stand up. “He works for Dempsey and wants to bring you back so you can mate with him.”

“I don’t want that,” Red insisted. “But what the hell am I supposed to do? Renzo is my alpha.”

“And she is my mate,” Liam hissed.

Jolie pulled the pillow off her head just enough so she could see what her knight in shining armor was doing.

Mostly it involved showing his teeth off to poor Red while he pointed a clawed finger at the bed where Jolie was trying to rest and recover.

“My mate,” Liam hissed again. “Not Dempsey’s. I’ll kill him before I let him touch her.”

She smiled again. Yeah, Liam, unlike Dempsey, did the possessive thing right.

“What should we do with him?” Jolie asked, tenderly setting her head onto the pillow this time. She still hissed a little as the throbbing became almost too much to bear.

“Do with me?” Red asked, his voice trembling just a little.

Jolie was getting a bit more used to the light in the room. It was easy to see how terrified he was to take his eyes off Liam.

She snuggled onto the tough pillow, her tail curling around her. “Well, like you said, Renzo is your alpha. You’re loyal to him unless you pledge your allegiance to another alpha. We can’t exactly let you go if you’re going to run back to Renzo.”

Red’s entire body tensed. “B-but I already told you he knows you’re here!”

Liam made that growling noise as he spoke again. “And you’re going to tell us everything you know about what he’s been up to. Is he just watching us or is he plotting something? Does he want revenge? Does he still want Jolie for Dempsey?”

Jolie frowned at something just then. “And why did you break in to our room? That makes no sense.”

If Renzo knew they were here and just wanted her and Liam watched for now, then the last thing Red should have done was bust down the door like he’d done. He might as well have picked up a megaphone and announced to the entire world what Renzo and Dempsey were doing.

And Red wasn’t that stupid.

“Red,” Jolie said again, forcing herself to sit up so she could really look at him. “Why did you come here? Does Renzo know?”

“Yes,” Red said, sound almost as if he was…pouting.

No. Effing. Way.

She and Liam looked at each other. Ever since she’d found him, and they both decided to act on their mating, something had clicked between them where they could just look at each other and know there was an agreement between them.

Liam turned his attention back to Red, though it didn’t appear as if he was going to loosen his grip on the man’s throat any time soon.

“All right, so you wanted my attention, you got it. What do you want?”

Red’s eyes flew wide, and then he glared at Liam. “I never said I wanted your attention!”

Jolie brought her fingers up to massage her temple, grimaced, and pulled her hand back down. Great, she was bleeding again. “So, what? You just broke down the door without thinking through what you were going to do after that? That makes no sense.”

“Are you bleeding again?” Liam asked.

“No.”

It was too late. Jolie heard the outraged shout as Liam threw Red down and rushed to her side. His callused fingers somehow managed to be gentler than she could ever be as he pushed her hair out of her face to have a look at the wound.

“I’m fine,” Jolie insisted.

“I know,” Liam said, but that didn’t stop him from putting the damp cloth back to her wound and dabbing the blood.

“Jesus,” Red said, his brows furrowing as he looked down at her. “You hit your head bad, huh?”

She smiled. Might as well get over the embarrassment of it. “I’m a terrible hunter. I’ll have to leave that to Liam if we’re ever going to make a life together.”

Red was silent at those words. Liam’s hand touched her shoulder. It was warm and comforting, and she couldn’t help but reach up and put her fingers on top of his.

It didn’t even matter that there was someone watching their tender moment. The only thing Jolie cared about was that Liam was here.

And that she might have one of her friends back.

“Red, if you really want to help us, swear allegiance to Liam.”

She felt the tension in Liam’s touch when those words left her mouth. She saw the strain in Red’s body after she spoke.

“I don’t have a pack that could offer him protection if we were to ever go to war with anyone,” Liam said, his voice getting all growly. “I can barely protect you.”

Which was why he wanted her to know how to hunt for herself. She knew that now.

“What if we didn’t have to search out the bear clan?” Jolie asked. “What if you just took back the pack? They might follow you. You’re the son of the original alpha.”

And a pretty badass alpha himself.

Which made her look at Red. “I think when you injured Red, you switched something inside him.”

“No he didn’t,” Red insisted, crossing his arms and wincing only a little, as though the wound in his shoulder was still tender as he pulled it.

She smiled, because she knew he was lying. Jolie was a terrible shifter in general, but she was pretty good at reading people. It was a skill she’d had to work on with the way she was brought up in the pack, moving from couch to couch, keeping her distance from Dempsey…

“I think Red wants to be your beta,” Jolie said. “You impressed him when you overpowered him outside the waterfall.”

“No he didn’t.”

“So he tried to impress you by rushing in here and giving you a good fight.”

“That it not how it was going down.”

But Jolie could definitely tell she’d put him into a corner. Liam stared at the man, a single brow raised up high, and Red was refusing to look at any of them.

His face was turning a shade darker than his hair. It was enough to hide the freckles on his nose. It could have been anger, or embarrassment, but Jolie definitely knew he wasn’t telling the truth.

“I know we’re asking you to do a dangerous thing,” Jolie said. “And maybe you weren’t ready for this right now, but if you wanted to be on our team, and help keep Renzo off our backs until Liam is ready to challenge him, we would really appreciate it.”

“I thought we were going to that bear clan?” Liam asked.

Jolie glanced up at him, smiling softly. She reached for his hand again, threading their fingers together. “Yeah, but I know that’s not really what you want to do.”

It wasn’t. He hated the fact that he’d been exiled from his pack and he’d hated that he didn’t have the ability to fight back.

He was outnumbered, packless, and he had no claim to even demand a fight for the role of alpha.

Rogues who tried to fight for the right to a pack on their own were always turned away. No matter how strong the challenger was, no one would come up against an entire pack if the standing alpha did not want to fight.

Which they never did.

Unless Liam had a pack of his own. Even a small one and he would be considered a legitimate challenger, and Renzo would have to take him seriously.

Liam seemed to be considering her words. His intense gaze flicked between Jolie, Red, and back again. His eyes changed color. A bright golden yellow. He was alert. Thinking.

Red looked guilty, and sorry as he backed up a step.

“I’m getting out of here,” he said. “I shouldn’t have come. They’ll be pissed off when they smell me and know where I’ve been.”

Liam didn’t get up to follow Red to the door, and Red continued to back away slowly, never turning his back, as if he expected Liam to attack if he did.

He reached for the broken door, which couldn’t even close properly. He yanked it open, nearly tearing it off its hinges just before he threw himself outside.

Jolie caught the brief sight of his clothes vanishing and fur appearing as he shifted and made his escape.

It didn’t matter. She already had a much better plan.

To Be Continued........

Jolie is the sort of woman who plans for things :D Thank you so much for reading! I'm late again, -_- This tends to be a habit with me. Though there's really no excuse with this story, I will do better to have these uploaded on time. I really should set them up to be scheduled, but I also like writing out these little author's notes. They feel a little more personal :)

Thank you to everyone who is reading and liking, commenting. You guys are amazing and I luv yas for it! ;)

Hugs and happy reading!