Shadow Runners

  Shadow Runners

  by

  Jaide Fox

  © copyright by Jaide Fox, May 2009

  Cover art by Eliza Black, May 2009

  ISBN 978-1-60394-315-4

  New Concepts Publishing

  Lake Park, GA 31636

  www.newconceptspublishing.com

  This is a work of fiction. All characters, events, and places are of the author’s imagination and not to be confused with fact. Any resemblance to living persons or events is merely coincidence.

  Chapter One

  Heat radiated off the heaving beast between Lady Sonja Raine’s thighs. His labored breaths vied with her own. Lifting her head as they struggled up a slight rise, she listened for sounds of pursuit, calculating the distance between her and the soldiers behind her.

  Not far. They were closing the distance she’d worked hard to put between them.

  Dismissing them for the moment, she scanned the landscape that lay before her as the sun disappeared behind the thick canopy of the towering forest that sprawled from horizon to horizon and dusk settled over the land. Narrowing her eyes and trying to pierce the gray, swirling mist that was slowly rising among the trees and underbrush, she searched for some sign that her plight was observed by the denizens of that land.

  The Shadow Lands. Shadowmere.

  There, all manner of unnaturals lived.

  She had never actually seen one, but she had grown up on the tales about the frightening folk that peopled the Shadow Lands—beast men. Since the war that had been waged between the naturals and the unnaturals, no mortal had crossed that border and returned to tell the tale. Adrenaline surged through her at the thought and her heart hammered a little faster.

  Did she dare?

  Sonja thrust the doubts aside.

  She would not have lived half the number of summers she could claim if she had been prone to entertain doubts and allow fear to freeze her when she needed to act. She had learned to trust her instincts.

  Flecks of lather from the horse’s withers spattered the already soiled and tattered gown she wore as the horse surged forward. Her long, dark hair, battered into a wild tangle by the wind since it had torn free of all restraints, whipped across her face and breasts.

  Impatiently, she lifted one hand from the reins and thrust the wayward locks behind her shoulders. The wind blowing against her heated skin instantly became more pronounced as the action exposed her breasts, all but spilling from the torn neck of her gown, and a shiver clawed its way up her spine.

  By her reckoning she was nearing the dead zone—nearly across the neutral zone that divided King Vladislav’s realm from the Shadow Lands it bordered, and it had been no part of her design to provoke the unnaturals to attack.

  Time to execute her plan.

  Dragging in a sustaining breath, tensing for action, she wrenched the reins abruptly. The horse stumbled, pitching her from the saddle, but she was ready. She kicked her feet free of the stirrups, managing a slight twist as she was hurtled toward the ground and succeeded in catching the brunt of her fall on her shoulder and side. The air was forced from her lungs in an inelegant grunt. She rolled to her belly almost at once, struggling to ignore the pain from the fall and focus on listening.

  Were the border guards advancing on her even now as she lay sprawled helpless, half conscious, she wondered?

  She heard nothing but the sighing of the wind through the trees, but she felt the vibrations of her pursuers.

  Damn it all! She had been certain they wouldn’t be able to resist a helpless female lying insensible only a few scant yards from the border!

  Dismissing her pique, she finally pushed herself upright and looked around, struggling to appear dazed and frightened.

  The fear wasn’t as hard to feign as the confusion. Her heart was hammering fit to burst from her chest with a mixture of exertion, pain, excitement, and fear. It was a dangerous ruse and she knew it. One misstep and she could become the stuff of some of those horror tales handfed to children far and wide to make them mind their elders.

  When she’d gained her feet and looked around, she saw the stupid horse had stopped not three feet from where she’d lain in the dirt.

  Resisting the urge to glare at the brainless beast, she staggered in a confused circle and finally approached the horse, slapping it on the rump hard enough to send it on its way. As soon the startled beast took off, she whirled in the other direction and fled.

  The fall, she quickly discovered, had completed her breasts’ escape from the torn bodice. Running jolted the jiggling mass, adding to her discomfort. She gritted her teeth against the urge to stop and stuff them back into the remnants of her bodice.

  She was fleeing for her life. She couldn’t spare the time.

  She shouldn’t even be aware of her dishabille.

  She developed a stitch in her side. She hadn’t run far. She hadn’t even run particularly fast, but when she paused to try to drag in a decent breath and glanced back, she realized the sounds of pursuit were fading into the distance.

  They’d followed the riderless horse.

  It might take them a while to discover it was without its rider. The gathering gloom would make it harder to tell even if they managed to shorten the distance between themselves and the horse. After all, it wasn’t burdened by her weight anymore.

  That was the least of her concerns at the moment, however.

  * * * *

  Matching his pace to hers, Jarek narrowed his eyes thoughtfully as he studied the woman flirting with disaster just beyond the border he and his pack members guarded. There was something that didn’t quite ring true about the situation he’d been observing unfold for the past thirty minutes or so, although he couldn’t quite put his finger on what it was that disturbed him.

  He was inclined to take it at face value—a damsel in distress driven before hunters and fleeing for her life—but he was well aware that it wasn’t his brain urging him to do so.

  He wasn’t accustomed to females having quite the impact on him that this one had—not of his own kind and certainly not among the naturals. He supposed it was the instinct for self-preservation that might account for his distrust of the situation in general and her in particular, but he was at a loss to pin it down to anything specific.

  Mostly, he thought wryly, because he was having a great deal of difficulty seeing beyond the bountiful treasures bouncing and swaying with every step she took.

  For a moment, he pushed his doubts aside as she wandered nearer the border and allowed himself to merely appreciate the sight.

  A dying ray of sunlight caught in the tangled mass that swirled around her hips, catching fire and making it abundantly clear that there was nothing ‘ordinary’ even about the thick locks of brown hair. Medium of height and build with brown hair, accurately described her in a sense, pegged her as ordinary, but she was far from it. His first glimpse of her face had hit him like a physical blow. The one thought that had pounded through his stricken mind was that she looked like a heavenly being—radiantly beautiful in a way that was at the same time the epitome of innocence and sweetness. Although he couldn’t entirely understand what had give him that impression—whether it was the huge eyes that dominated her face or the look in them, the soft, full lips, or the vulnerability inherit in the curve of them.

  His first clear view of her body had hit him like a physical blow, as well.

  The woman was made for a man, clearly designed by the gods to deprive a man of his wits.

  Was he attributing wickedness to her because he wanted to believe she was wicked and not the sweet innocent that she appeared to be? Or had his beleaguered senses detected something his mind was in no state to assimilate at the moment?

  She teased him�
�her scent, the sway of her hips and the bountiful breasts almost fully exposed by the tear in her bodice—giving rise to a growing sense of desperation to seize her and indulge his senses to the fullest. His palms itched to feel the silkiness of the smooth skin gleaming with exertion of her flight, the softness of her rounded curves. His throat dried with the thirst to taste the sweet cavern of her mouth, the valley between those bountiful breasts, the sweet spot between her thighs. His cock filled to a throbbing ache to slide it into her depths.

  He was so intent on struggling with the urges of his beast that a start went through him when he realized his lieutenants had been drawn, as well, that they were shadowing his movements … stalking the prime doe just beyond their borders just as he was.

  Annoyance moved through him, partly from disgust with himself that he’d allowed her to distract him to such a degree that they’d approached far closer than they should’ve been able to without his notice but mostly from a sense of possessiveness.

  He was alpha.

  He felt particularly close to Rafe, Arman, Byron, and Thorne, his lieutenants, and ordinarily he wouldn’t have thought twice about sharing—once he’d had his fill, of course.

  The sense of possessiveness disturbed him almost more than his inattentiveness because it was instantly followed by a reluctance to share—at all.

  And she wasn’t even his!

  But she would be.

  Wait until she’d worn herself out running, he wondered? Or show himself now so that he might enjoy the sport of the chase?

  * * * *

  Sonja was beginning to wonder if there was any point in continuing her ruse. She was sticky with sweat from running, footsore already, weary beyond belief, thirsty, hungry.... In point of fact, she didn’t recall ever being quite so miserable and that was saying something considering that she wasn’t unfamiliar with hardship. Her few, brief, sojourns in the dungeons of several castles alone should have ranked highest.

  Upon entering a small clearing, she finally stopped altogether, blinking to clear the sweat from her eyes as she shoved stray, clinging locks of hair from her face and looked around absently. She could hear no sound to indicate the riders had turned about—no sounds of any sort of pursuit.

  The day had begun to descend into darkness even before she’d abandoned the horse and already it was dark enough that it was difficult to make out her surroundings.

  Save for the dagger strapped to her inner thigh, she was without means for defense or survival—no water or food, no makings for a camp. Should she focus on finding some sort of shelter, she wondered?

  Finding food and water appealed to her far more. As she scanned the clearing for the makings of a campfire, however, her gaze was snagged by a pair of glowing eyes perhaps three feet from the ground.

  She could just discern the form of a huge wolf.

  Sonja’s heart, which had barely begun to return to its normal rhythm, slammed against her ribcage. Ever so slowly, she grasped a handful of her skirt and began using her fingers to slowly gather the fabric and lift the hem of her dress. The direction of the eyes shifted downward.

  Realizing the wolf was watching the slow unveiling of her bare legs, Sonja paused for a heartbeat.

  Was it a real wolf?

  Or one of the beast men she’d heard of?

  She realized the direction of his gaze really told her nothing more than the fact that he’d noticed the movement. After the brief hesitation, she continued to reel her skirt upward until she could feel air caressing her thigh and slowly moved her hand toward the hilt of the dagger.

  The wolf lifted his gaze to hers.

  Swallowing with an effort, Sonja curled her fingers around the hilt and slowly withdrew the dagger as she took a careful step backward.

  A faint, low warning growl made her flinch and halt in the act of taking a second step back. The wolf didn’t move, however, and, after staring at him for several moments, she took another step back, moving steadily but slowly until she’d moved beyond view of the wolf—she hoped.

  After pausing a moment to listen for any sound that might indicate he had followed her and to regain control of her runaway heart, Sonja crept quietly away. When she thought she’d put at least twenty paces between her and the wolf, she began to move faster and faster until she was running again.

  Almost the moment she began to run, she heard sounds of pursuit, a crashing through the underbrush that drove her faster. She was so unnerved by the wolf’s pursuit minutes passed before it dawned on her that the sounds were coming from all around her. It wasn’t just the sound of a lone wolf in pursuit echoing back to her from the trees. There were several.

  She veered away from the rustling brush, sucking in a sharp gasp of fright as something heavy landed almost within arm’s reach of her on the side she’d thought was open.

  They were herding her, she thought a little vaguely.

  They seemed to be. She couldn’t tell if it was her frightened mind that made it seem so, or if she was right, but they didn’t seem in any hurry to attack. She was running as fast as she could, but she couldn’t delude herself into believing that she was swift enough to outrun the four legged beasts even if she’d had a head start.

  The darkness had grown so thick she had to run with her hands in front of her to keep from crashing into anything when she stumbled abruptly into another clearing, this one rock strewn. Starlight spilled into the opening from the gap between the canopies of the trees, making it seem bright after the darkness beneath the trees. An irregular wall varying from twenty feet to thirty or forty formed almost a crescent along the far perimeter of the clearing, creating a cul-de-sac.

  Unless she could figure out a way to go over it, she was trapped, she quickly discovered as she whipped her head around in search of a direction to flee. There were five wolves, and they had her surrounded.

  She hurried toward the wall, discovering as she moved toward it that it wasn’t a manmade wall at all, but a rocky, natural formation. Even as she spied the black mouth that opened near the center and only a few feet above the ground level, she realized the wolves were closing in.

  The cave was the only shelter there was and it was a death trap if their intentions were foul, but she found she didn’t have a choice. She stumbled ahead of them into the blackness, unable to contain a whimper of fear as it swallowed her. The rough face of the rock scraped her palms as she used her hands to guide her until she reached a point where she could go no further.

  She was gasping for breath when she turned, trying to pierce the thick darkness with eyes not designed to see under such circumstances. Five pairs of glowing eyes formed a semi-circle around her, blocking her path from the only way out that she could see, the only source of even a feeble amount of light.

  She went still, panting for breath, struggling with the lightheadedness that assailed her.

  One possibility for survival occurred to her even as she struggled with it.

  She could play dead. If they truly were animals maybe it would be enough to discourage their interest and if it didn’t ….

  She still had the dagger.

  Allowing her wobbly knees to buckle, she sank in a controlled fall toward the floor of the cave, closing her eyes as she settled and struggling to even out her breath. Her damp skin prickled. She strained to focus all of her senses on the one most likely to aid her—her hearing.

  The scrape of a rock against rock startled her enough her eyes flew open instinctively. She caught a flash of sparks and then a flare of light before she resolutely closed them again. The pungent smell of a burning torch and the crackling of open flame prickled at her nostrils and ears.

  “You can stop feigning now. We know you haven’t fainted.”

  Chapter Two

  Sonja debated with herself for a moment, but the sarcasm eloquent in the deep, gravelly male voice convinced her that continuing her charade was useless. She lifted her eyelids a fraction and peered between her lashes. Five magnificent, completely nude males
stood where the wolves had stood moments before.

  She wasn’t certain what she had expected, but she certainly hadn’t expected anything like this.

  No, she corrected herself. She did know what she’d expected—monsters, fierce and ugly enough to curl her hair.

  They certainly weren’t monsters—not in the physical sense. Beyond the magnificence of their tall, muscular forms, their strong boned faces were handsome, not just not grotesque, not merely acceptable or ordinary, but vastly appealing.

  The tension inside her uncoiled fractionally and completely irrationally.

  Clearly, she’d been right. It was beast men who’d chased her into the cave.

  She rather thought the semi-erections they were sporting was indication enough of what they had in mind and that should have unnerved her more, but the truth was she’d hoped for at least a little interest.

  She pushed herself upright, shoving at her hair to see them better. As she did, their gazes flickered downward to her ripped bodice. She gathered the ragged edges in one hand and pulled the pieces together and they transferred their attention to her face once more.

  “Why have you brought me here?” she asked, pardonably pleased at the hoarseness of her voice, though there was certainly no feigning that, or any need to. Her mouth and throat were parched from her run.

  The man standing in the center threw a glance at the others. A faintly derisive smile curled his lips. “We followed you,” he said dryly, moving forward with the torch he held and lighting several others that Sonja saw jutting from the walls.

  She swallowed her dismay with an effort. Had her ruse seemed just too coincidental to be believable? “I don’t understand,” she managed to say finally. “You think…?”

  Wedging the end of the torch he held into a crack in the rocky side of the cavern, the man returned, crouching in front of her and studying her assessingly. “I think I would like to know what it is that I’ve been watching unfold for the past hour.”