Free Wolf on the Road by Lynn Red

three days. “I can’t handle this. I’m sitting here in a cage and I’m shaking and terrified and barely able to keep from throwing up.”
    Jake didn’t say anything. He just kept grinding the chains. Mali just had to keep going. Her guts were a pressure cooker of nerves and she could feel the valve starting to whistle louder and louder. “If someone wanted to drill a hole in my head to let the pressure out, I’d be willing to entertain that possibility.”
    “You’re gonna be okay,” was the first thing Jake said. “I’m not gonna let anything happen to you. I didn’t go all this way and I didn’t do this to you to let you get hurt. Not a chance in hell.”
    His gravelly, gruff voice sent a wave of warmth and comfort surging through Mali’s body that replaced the awful chill from moments before. She held her breath for a moment, and then let it out in a slow, rattling exhalation. “I’m sorry for freaking out,” she said softly. She pushed herself up off the ground, and was almost fully standing when her knees got wobbly again. Mali half walked, and half stumbled backward against the cinderblock wall, which she promptly slid down. The scratchy brick plucked at her shirt and then at her skin, sending a thrill of sensation up her spine.
    “You didn’t freak out,” Jake said in between grunts of effort. “If anything, I’m the one who should be apologizing. But instead of doing that, I’m gonna fix what I made a mess of.”
    As he ground away on the chain, the scent of iron briefly met his nose. And then, a soft snoring sound came across the way. He laughed softly and called Mali’s name. When she didn’t respond, he nodded to himself, and went right back to work.
    “I’m not gonna let you down, Mali,” he whispered. “I promise.”
    He thought he heard a purr from her cage, or maybe it was just a sleep snort. Either way, at that exact moment, Jake Danniken made the decision that he wasn’t going to stop until she was safe. It didn’t matter what it took, it didn’t even matter if it killed him on the way.
    He wasn’t stopping until that woman was safe.
    Jake listened to her sleepy breathing. “Because I think I love you,” he whispered.
    She didn’t hear, at least he didn’t think she did. In the back of his mind, though, he sort of hoped she had.

7
    ––––––––
    “W hat in the hell?” Erik Danniken, Jamesburg alpha, awoke at around ten in the morning that Thursday, to knocks on his door. He hated people knocking on his door. “Izzy? You here?”
    From the other end of the house, his mate clicked on the intercom she’d installed for the baby. “No, I’ve been up since normal people wake up,” she said. “Frederick has a doctor’s appointment in a half hour so I’ll be gone for... god, probably the rest of the day. You know how Jenga is, he never manages to not chat for an hour or three.”
    Jenga, the town witchdoctor, who was assisted by his two hand-crafted helpers: a giant re-animated bear named Atlas, who enjoyed nothing more than chugging lilac water and various colognes, and Sara, Atlas’s mate who was similarly sewn. Due to a lack of more traditional medical practitioners in Jamesburg, he’d gotten an honest-to-god medical degree. Turns out, he was kind of a genius, and blazed through three years of coursework in just over six months. He made a special deal with the head of the medical school to skip his residency, owing to his very peculiar sort of bedside manner.
    Well, and owing to the fact that after a twelve hour shift, the chicken feet and bones in his beard really started to stink, and that Atlas started getting separation anxiety that threatened to destroy entire blocks of Jamesburg at a time. It was a mutual agreement based on Jenga never practicing anywhere except Jamesburg, but that wasn’t an issue. Somehow, the witchdoctor just never felt quite comfortable anywhere but home. As it happened, nowhere else but home was comfortable with him,