Free Dark Wolf Rising (Bloodrunners) by Rhyannon Byrd

sister?”
    Her eyes went wide. “You’re mad at me, aren’t you?”
    “Mad doesn’t even begin to cover it. Christ, Chelsea. Were you trying to get yourself killed?”
    “I’m sorry,” she whispered. Her lashes glittered with tears, then she blinked, and the salty moisture slipped over her cheeks.
    “You should be,” he grunted, swiping at one of the glistening tears with his thumb. He hated how badly he wanted to comfort her, when what she really needed was to have some sense scared into her. “You should have listened to me last night.”
    She sniffed, swiping at the tears herself. “I know. It was stlupid. ”
    Eric exhaled a ragged breath. This was getting them nowhere, except making him want to kiss that sullen pout off her lips, and that was something they definitely didn’t have time for. They’d already wasted too much damn time as it was. “Come on,” he said, hauling her up into his arms. “We need to get out of here.”
    She clutched at his shoulders and gasped. “Why are you carrying me?”
    With the soft, warm weight of her in his arms, his voice came out rougher than he’d expected. “Because you’ll fall flat on your face if I don’t.”
    “Oh. You’re, um, probably right,” she admitted with a wince, clutching at her forehead like someone with a raging hangover. “But you dlon’t need to scream at me.”
    Despite the grim circumstances, Eric felt his lips curl with a wry grin as he headed toward the door. “I’m not screaming, honey. Your ears just aren’t working right.”
    “No kidding,” she grumbled, still holding her head. He noticed that the drug seemed to be affecting her in waves—one moment her speech would be relatively clear, the next she was slurring her words again—but he didn’t know what it meant. Was she getting better, or worse?
    “Wait!” she suddenly cried out, trying to look over his shoulder. “I need my backpack. They took it out of my bus.”
    Turning around, Eric scanned the room, then spotted the pack on the floor at the right side of the sofa. He headed over and leaned down, letting her scoop it off the floor. “Thanks,” she murmured, clutching the pack between their chests.
    “I need you to stay quiet now,” he warned her, heading back across the room and using the arm under her legs to open the door. He took a deep breath, but couldn’t scent anything or anyone in the hallway. Carrying her out of the room, Eric glanced right then left, trying to decide which direction they should go in. His gut instinct told him to head away from the muted, raucous blast of music coming from the main room of the club, so he turned left. He could only assume that the hidden exits Maggie had mentioned would be located in the building’s smaller outer rooms, like a private bathroom or a storage closet, where they would be less likely to be spotted, and he intended to search each one until he found a way out.
    Walking at a swift pace, Eric hadn’t taken more than a dozen steps when he scented another Lycan up ahead of them. Lowering Chelsea to her feet, he quickly shoved her into a small alcove, leaving her to stumble back against the wall, her backpack clutched in her arms, as he turned to face off against whoever was coming. He could hear her sliding down onto her sweet little ass, and felt bad when she gave a startled yelp of pain as she hit the floor, but there was no time to apologize. The asshole coming was a Lycan, which meant he’d scented them, as well. If he turned out to be one of Curtis’s men who knew Chelsea had been taken prisoner, he was going to be a problem.
    “Come on, you son of a bitch,” Eric muttered, flexing his hands at his sides, his weight balanced on the balls of his feet. The Lycan came around the corner at the far end of the hall with a guttural snarl, knife at the ready, and launched himself forward with a powerful swipe that would have taken Eric’s throat out if he hadn’t swayed back to avoid the blow. He was