Hunting Season: Werewolf Bodyguard Romance (Guarded by the Shifter Book 1) by Kate Rudolph (new reading TXT) 📗

She went limp, dead weight against the man, refusing to be a participant in her abduction. That wasn't something she'd learned in an ER, but rather something one of her bodyguards had instructed her to do as a child.

Stasia looked around, trying to get a better idea of what was happening, who was witnessing it, and who was trying to abduct her. A blonde woman stood wide-eyed with her phone out, getting video of the whole thing.

Video wouldn't do Stasia much good if she got stuffed into the trunk of a car.

"You," she couldn't point, but she made eye contact with the woman, "Call the police! Now!" That was the last thing she could say before her abductor clamped a hand over her mouth.

Stasia tried to bite down on his palm but she didn't have the leverage. She went limp again and winced as her ankle twisted against the hard concrete, but it forced her captor to stumble.

"Let go of her!" a man in a Knicks jersey yelled, shoving his way forward. Stasia managed another glance around and saw they'd drawn another crowd, something not too hard to do on a busy New York street.

So why was someone snatching her here?

She'd worry about that later.

"Let her go!" A young woman with bright purple hair who was wearing a torn jean jacket joined the fray. It only took a minute for the scene to descend into a mob, and Stasia was yanked away from the man. Three or four people surrounded her would-be captor, but he drove his shoulder into the guy wearing the jersey and scuttled back until he was close to the car. A door opened and he dove in as the car drove away.

"Are you okay?" the woman with purple hair asked. She stooped down and held out Stasia's phone. "This yours?"

Stasia's arms were starting to shake and her teeth chattered. Shock. She knew it, but that did nothing to make it go away when she was right in the thick of it. "I'm fine," she managed to say around trembling lips.

"You don't look fine. What did that guy want with you? I've never seen something like that before." The girl shuddered.

Stasia laughed. She knew it wasn't the right response, just another case of neurons misfiring due to trauma. But laughing was better than crying. "I have." And she knew exactly what that guy wanted with her.

Ransom.

Her father's money.

It always came down to that.

For all the privilege that came with wealth, it wasn't always safe to be the daughter of a billionaire.

She looked down at her phone and was surprised to see the screen wasn't cracked. That was truly a miracle. There were a dozen notifications from her father, demanding to know what was going on. Stasia was tempted to leave him hanging. But someone in the crowd around her was bound to post video of the event to social media and the news would be better coming from her. She pulled up her texting app. She didn't think she could manage a conversation with Armand Selby right now.

Attempted kidnapping. Crowd fought attacker off. Bound to be video on social media. Must speak to police shortly. Will contact you for damage control.

There. That covered it. And her fingers were barely shaking anymore. A moment later her phone pinged with the response.

Sending lawyer to you. Remain quiet until you have counsel.

She didn't send anything back. She didn't need to. Another daughter might have chafed at the fact that her father hadn't checked to see if she was alright. Another woman might have been upset that her father instructed her to wait for a lawyer like she was a child. But she'd learned a long time ago that there was no use in getting angry.

The purple haired woman put a hand on Stasia's shoulder and she flinched away.

"Sorry," said the woman. "I'm Vi. I see a couple of cops coming our way. Do you want me to distract them?"

Stasia took a closer look at Vi. She was young, probably under twenty-five, but there was a hardness to her eyes that only came from being hurt by people you trusted. And here she was trying to help a stranger. She gave off a forbidding enough aura that most of the crowd was keeping back from the two of them. If Stasia was just a bit more jaded, she would think Vi was in on the attack. But her instincts were telling her to trust the girl. "No need. I've got backup incoming." She held up her phone and gave it a little shake.

Two uniformed officers were breaking up the crowd and Stasia braced herself.

"Ma'am," said the first cop. He and his partner looked basically the same and there was no way she was going to remember them. She glanced at the nametags and saw one was named Smith and the other Jones. Lovely. "We had a call come in."

"Someone attempted to kidnap me," she confirmed. Her voice was steadier now and her hands weren't shaking. Good. Cops didn't like crying women. "You're going to want to call your sergeant before the media circus starts."

"Media circus?" Officer Jones was skeptical. "This is New York, ma'am. Now we need to take your statement."

"My name is Stasia Nichols. My father is Armand Selby, the third richest man in New York. And I won't be saying anything else until my lawyer joins us. Now, shall we speak at the station? Or would you like to wait for the news vans to show up?"

Chapter Two

The air felt green. Owen tipped his head back and howled in joy and abandon into the moon-bright night. The ground was soft under his paws, some of the mud squishing up between his toe pads. He loved it, loved the connection to the earth and to his primal self. Running like this was a freedom he'd never imagined before the change.

Now he couldn't imagine a life without it.

A chorus of howls answered his cry and