Free Escape (Dark Alpha #4) by Alisa Woods

The phone was heavy in Jak’s hand, the witch’s words ringing in his head.
    It’s the girl’s family. They want her back.
    He let the phone fall to his side. A tightness seized his chest. Circe’s voice was squawking from the dangling phone, but his mind was racing ahead. He hung up on the witch and ran a hand across his face.
    Arianna’s family was behind the bounty hunters. They weren’t trying to harm her : they were trying to rescue her. And Jak had foiled their attempt. Jak’s family had always been a cruel freak show, but he couldn’t imagine Arianna’s family was anything like that. She was too sweet and brave and kind to have come from that kind of hot-mess family situation. Besides, they wouldn’t risk working with bounty hunters to rescue her if they didn’t love her.
    They want her back.
    This completely foiled his plans to take Arianna and head for the state line.
    He scoured his memory for anything he knew about her family. They were a small pack from rural Washington. She had a mother and brothers. Mace had captured her while they were visiting the Olympic mountains: packs often ran into each other there, for better and worse. Usually worse. The only reason Mace managed to take her was because her pack was so small. They couldn’t fight the combined Red packs. Even if her family managed to rescue her now, they would have to flee the area... or Mace would hunt them down, reclaim her, and probably kill them all.
    What were they thinking, coming back for her?
    A pounding on the door startled Jak out of his shock. Mason was on the other side, impatient for him to join Gage’s submission ceremony. Jak shoved his phone in his pocket. He couldn’t wait any longer for Arianna’s signal that Mace had shifted and the ceremony had begun. He had to move now. After he had broken her free of Mace’s hold, then they could talk about what to do next. If she wanted to return to her family, Jak would make sure she was still protected, but he wouldn’t stand in her way.
    He had already decided that freeing her was more important than keeping her.
    Jak strode to his bedroom door, wrenched it open, then punched a very surprised Mason in the face. He went down, cursing and sprawling on the carpet. Jak didn’t waste time trying to make sure he stayed down… he just needed Mason out of the way. Jak’s attire—jeans, fall jacket, sneakers—was designed for their escape tonight, and he made almost no noise as he sprinted down the hall.
    He took the steps two at a time, down to the main floor, then raced out the back door of the main house. If Mason was chasing after him, Jak would have heard something. But he didn’t slow down or look back as he raced toward Mace’s house.
    The moonlight had turned everything a whitish gray, stealing the color of the night. Jak’s breath rushed in his ears as he sprinted across the expanse of lawn, past the winding road of the estate, then down the long side of Mace’s suburban-looking home. He stopped when he reached the back corner, peering around to see if Mace’s pack was in the clearing.
    They were. Unfortunately, there was a good hundred feet of empty lawn between the house and the pack, which meant Jak would have no cover whatsoever. No element of surprise.
    And he could see now why Arianna had never texted him.
    Mace and his pack—Beck, Alric, and Thomas—had formed a circle with Arianna in the middle. The men were all naked, having already shifted at least once, but Arianna was in wolf form, already in the submission pose with her tail tucked low, legs stretched forward, and head bent. Her clothes lay in a heap at the edge of a circle. Beck and Alric were tossing something small and silver back and forth between them. It glinted in the moonlight as it arced through the air: Arianna’s phone.
    She had been caught with it.
    Alric caught the phone, then held onto it, examining it. A moment later, Jak’s phone pinged. He shoved his hand in his pocket and turned off