Free Bitten by Treachery (Hadley Werewolves) by Shawntelle Madison Page A

away from what she represented: death, lies, and betrayal. But she couldn’t be a witch. He drew her close instead, drawing his nose to the top of her head where he inhaled. A hundred scents wafted toward him: an evergreen forest at midnight, the hunt, her femaleness, sadness. A need to comfort her filled him. She is a wolf. Not a single trace of witch remained—none that he could detect.
    “Charly, why?”
    She shook her head. “I’m so sorry I enchanted you. I should explain everything, but nothing I say will matter.”
    She cast a spell on him?
    He paused. Was this need to protect her just a part of the spell she cast on him? Last night he’d say he was out of it for a period of time, but right now his mind was clear. No more gaps in time. Either way, it was too late. Any other man should leave her behind, yet he’d opened himself to her and now there was no way he’d leave her all alone. “We need to go.”
    The look of disbelief on her face was clear. The parted lips and shuffling steps backward, she hadn’t expected him to take her with him.
    When he spotted Emma, holding a gun and standing in the doorway, they stopped cold. So she heard everything. The chilly glare from the alpha female was cold enough to push his shoulders down a peg or two.
    “There are unaccounted folks we need to find. Drew is with the first team. You two are coming with me. I’m keeping an eye on you. Both of you.” She twisted to leave, and Trenton followed. Based on the way she marched out of the room, he suspected a conversation would take place soon enough on the matter of Charly being a witch. Just not right now.
    Right outside the door, Trenton didn’t expect to see a war zone. The car crash he’d heard earlier was a family van pummeling a smaller sedan. The occupants were long gone, but the blood on the van’s busted out windshield told a different story. Something about the ripped up front seats warned him the problem had escalated beyond Aidan and his wife, Penny. Since Aidan was dead, his wife needed help to do this. A lot more help. So what the fuck had happened overnight?
    Charly trailed after him. He peered over his shoulder to glance at her. How was she involved in all this? She’d said she was a witch and had enchanted him. So was he behind the attack? That couldn’t be true. He didn’t feel any different. He clenched his fists. Had he done something after he made love to her? Had he infected all these people while he’d slept? How could they be infected if he wasn’t? He needed answers. Quickly.
    Emma took the lead as they weaved around street corners toward the first house. The list was short. Most folks got the hell out of Dodge. The Wendells, an elderly mother and her son, lived in a small house off Main Street. Emma slowed once they reached the driveway. The door had been bashed in.
    “Shit. We’re too late,” Emma muttered, breathing hard. As she walked up the steps, she tilted her head and inhaled.
    Trenton could smell it, too. The stench of death exuding from the house’s wrecked door. “Might as well check for survivors.” Or more infected werewolves lurking about .
    He walked in first this time with Charly following and withdrew his gun from his holster, carefully stepping over the threshold. He’d been in the Wendell house a few times in the past. Mrs. Wendell kept a tidy house at her spry age of eighty-two. She kept to herself, but once in a while, her son would call the emergency number if his mother’s blood sugar dipped too low and he couldn’t wake her.
    Trenton took in the scene. The household was a human one, but it looked more like savages had lived there. Death’s stench clung to everything, making it hard for him to determine if any infected werewolves still hid away. The destruction began in the sitting room and extended toward the bedrooms in the back. The photos of grandkids on the walls had been ripped off with clawed hands that gouged the wallpaper while the incessant beeping