by Quinn Loftis
“I’m sorry I hurt you, mama,” Fane told her.
“Tsk, tsk. You did what needed to be done, that is what an Alpha does. There will be many decisions you will make as an Alpha others will not understand because of the responsibility you hold. No offense to the humans, but they cannot begin to understand the weight you will carry on your shoulders, nor the weight you carried this night. You did what no one else could have. That, my son, is what the Alpha does. Never doubt that.” When Alina turned back to the room all of the wolves and, to Fane’s astonishment, even the humans, bowed their heads in submission.
“Jacque is in her room, Fane. She isn’t awake yet. She apparently passed out at the challenge and has been out ever since,” Lilly told him.
Fane closed his eyes and squeezed them against the tears that threatened to spill. His mate, his love, broken because of him, but not with Lucas either. She is ours, he heard his wolf say. As our Alpha said we did what we had to. Fane turned from the crowded living room and walked up the stairs to Jacquelyn’s room.
As he opened the door, he used his wolf vision because the room was dark, only a night light shining. He made his way over to her bed and sat down on the edge. She laid there, hands folded across her stomach, so still. Fane leaned down and kissed her forehead. He took a deep breath and let her scent fill his lungs. He kissed both cheeks, he kissed her nose and her chin, and then he kissed her lips. He had tears running down his face and he was trembling. He wanted to hold her but didn’t want to startle her awake. Slowly, he pulled away from her, and as he sat up he realized her eyes were open, really open, like very wide open.
Jacquelyn screamed and threw the covers over her head. “I’ve finally gone crazy. His death pushed me over the edge. Here I’ve been teetering all along, and then BAM, I’m in the middle of crazy ground.” Jacquelyn was mumbling to herself, not totally hysterical but definitely on the verge. Fane thought he’d better catch her quick before she really did lose it.
Chapter 34
“Luna, you’re not crazy, I’m really here. I’m not dead, love, it was fake. I was faking it in order to lure Lucas into a false victory,” Jacque heard the hallucination that was Fane say.
She wasn’t going to fall for that. Fane would've told her that he was going to do something like that. He would have never allowed her to be hurt so deeply.
“Jacquelyn, please. It’s really me. I didn’t -” he paused and took a deep breath. Jacque was caught off guard by this show of emotion from a hallucination, not that she had much experience with hallucinations, thank goodness. She pulled the covers down just enough to be able to see Fane. His head was bowed so he didn’t know she was looking at him. “I didn’t tell you I was going to pretend to die because…” His shoulders shook with sobs. The tears fell and wet his hands.
“Because what?” Jacque couldn’t help but ask.
Fane’s head snapped up and then he cried more. “Luna, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you. Please know that it killed me. I didn’t tell you because I needed your reaction to be real, so that Lucas would believe he had won.”
Jacque sat in stunned silence. She couldn’t believe it, she just could not believe it. It was the second time that night that she was in shock about something she was so sure would never happen. Her emotions were at war. Part of her was like, Who gives a flying flip because he’s alive. He’s here and he can hold you like Dorian had earlier…oops. Damn, I’m always doing that.
Fane caught that thought. Dorian had held his mate, held her close. He started to growl but abruptly stopped when Jacque sat up, leaned forward and kissed him. She wrapped her arms around him and pulled him down.
Fane’s arms wrapped around Jacque’s waist and when he pulled her tighter she let out a sharp yelp.
“What’s wrong? What’s happened?” Fane asked her, frantically running his hands over her.
“It’s nothing, just a little sore from the against-my-will retreat tonight. I got a few bruises from being restrained, that’s all.” Jacque told him, playing it off.
When his hands ran across her stomach she winced, even though she tried so hard not to. Fane growled and slowly raised the hem of her shirt and exposed her stomach. His growl got much, much deeper. “What the hell happened to you, and who the hell did it?” Fane growled out.
“Fane, it’s nothing. It's -” Jacque tried to explain, but was cut off when Fane snarled at her.
“It’s NOT NOTHING! You have a bruise as dark as night and as wide as a 2x4 across your stomach, Jacquelyn.” Fane paused to think about what he had just said and then it hit him. “Whose arm is that, Jacquelyn? Don’t argue with me, Luna. Whose arm is it? You can tell me, or I will discipline each wolf down there instead of just the one.”
Jacque sat back up and to Fane's surprise, pushed him. He was caught off guard and actually fell off the bed onto the floor. Fane looked up at her in shock.
“Listen up. Your pack restrained me so that I would not get killed trying to kick Lucas’ ass. I was trying to kick his ass, in case you forgot, because you didn’t tell me you weren’t really dead. So, you aren’t going to discipline anyone. You are going to accept that I have a bruise across my stomach, my arms, my shoulders, my shins because YOU chose to keep ME in the dark. Are we clear?” Jacque was breathing hard from her outburst.
Fane lowered his head then looked up at his mate. “Crystal,” he told her and grinned.
“Good. Now come back up here and show me how sorry you are,” Jacque told him playfully.
Fane crawled back onto the bed. He pulled the hem of her shirt up once more, exposing her stomach. He suppressed the growl, and then kissed the bruise from one end to the other, taking comfort in the feel of her flesh.
“Okay, stop that. It’s tickling me,” Jacque told him as she laughed.
Fane pulled her shirt back down and gently wrapped his arm around her. He laid his head on her chest and listened to her heartbeat, it was music to him.
“Fane,” he heard Jacquelyn say his name.
“Hmm,” he answered.
“Why is your leg not broken?” Jacque asked, sounding confused.
“My father healed my major injuries. He can use power that he draws from the Pack to heal his wolves. I only have bruises and cuts now,” he explained.
“Oh, that’s nifty.”
Fane chuckled. “Yes, it is most definitely nifty.”
Fane raised his head and looked into her eyes. She was so beautiful. Jacque stared back and shuddered at the thought of losing him. It almost killed her when she thought he had died, she truly had not wanted to go on.
“I’m so sorry, my love, for doing that to you. I don’t deserve you, your forgiveness, or your love,” Fane told her through their bond.
“Oh, shut up. What you did, yes it was horrible for me, but it was necessary for you in order to win. I would go through it again if I knew you would be alive in the end. You deserve more than I can give. I just hope you’ll take what I can give you – just me,” Jacque told him.
“I love you, Jacquelyn Pierce, my mate, my love, meu inimă (my heart). I want you to be all mine, with no way for anyone to challenge me.”
Fane leaned down and kissed her. Jacque moaned which made him growl. Before things could go much further, Jacque remembered the bonding ceremony and blood rites.
“Hey, wait,” she said, pushing at him.
“You do remember you thought I was dead, right? Now I’m not, and now you can have your way with me because, you know, I’m not dead,” Fane told her and began kissing her neck.
Jacque giggled and pushed him away again. “No really, wait. When are we supposed to do the bond thingy and the whole blood sucking?”
“Vampires, not werewolves, suck blood, love. It’s tomorrow, which is not right now, and because I am living in the now and not the tomorrow, I want to reconcile with my mate as wolves do,” Fane told her, leaning down again, and once again was stopped by her hand.
“Oh, we’re reconciled, we’re good
to go, no problemo,” Jacque rambled on.
“Jacquelyn?”
“Yes, Fane?” Jacque said in her most innocent voice.
“You want me to say it, don’t you?” Fane asked her.
“Yep, out loud, not in my head,” she told him
Fane growled but acquiesced. “I don’t mean reconcile as in taking things seriously. I mean through touch.” He laughed when she squeaked at that.
“I will not touch you anywhere you don’t want to be touched.” And then mischievously he said, “However, just name the location and I will comply.” He pulled out of her reach when she tried to thump him for his last comment. When she simmered down, he leaned over again and kissed her.
Jacque turned her head, exposing her neck. Fane rumbled in his chest. Jacquelyn called it purring, and he smiled. He leaned down and kissed her neck, sniffing her skin, imagining the blood rites ceremony, knowing that his mark would be right there.
Jacque picked up on his thoughts. She added creatively to it and giggled wickedly when she heard Fane whisper in her mind.
“Soon.”
References:
* “Love Me Like a Song” Lyrics by Kimmie Rhodes, Performed by: Kimmie Rhodes and Willie Nelson
From the author:
Thank you for purchasing Prince of Wolves. I hope that you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. Blood Rites, the second book in the Grey Wolves Series will be coming out in late fall of 2011, so be on the lookout for it! You can follow the progress and keep up to date on other books I will be publishing in the future at my website:
http://www.quinnloftisbooks.com or my blog, http://quinnloftisbooks.blogspot.com/
Now, please enjoy an excerpt from Significance, a YA paranormal novel by Shelly Crane, available now through Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
I waited for this day, for this one thing to complete me. To wrap up seventeen and three quarter years of my life and to set a pretty bow on it in the form of a graduation cap. I waited for this one sheet of paper to tell me I had done something right.
I sat in my assigned seat, along with my classmates, in alphabetical order in front of the gym. The ones up front were in order by achievements, their faces lit with the relief of scholarships and graduation parties with gifts and family and friends. And getting out of this town.
I was numb. I had waited for this moment but now, I didn’t feel good inside. I didn’t feel complete, didn’t feel achieved. I felt like I’d slid by and barely made it. Which was exactly what I’d done. I despised school. I was in the early release program for students who work after school, so we got out at 1:00 instead of 3:00 like everyone else. I was barely here and when I was I didn’t want to be.
I know I sound bitter. Believe me. I know, but I’m seventeen, graduating a year early and was on the fast track to being valedictorian or whatever else but things happened to me that I just couldn’t handle. And so, here I was, sullen, slightly unhappy and skidding by.
The ‘things’ I speak of, well, number one was that my mom left. She was an upstanding, stay at home mom, PTA loving, frugal grocery shopping-coupon clipping guru of the community. And she just left us. Just like that. She decided out of nowhere that my dad had been holding her back all these years. She didn’t love him and she needed time to start a new life, without me there to pester her. So she did.
She moved to California along with every cent in my dad’s checking account and the one supposed to be for my college fund. I wanted to laugh at the Cali cliché but I guess it didn’t suit her for long. She moved somewhere else but I refused to speak to her anymore when she called. All she ever talked about was how sorry she was, that she just couldn’t do it anymore, that she was happy now, that I didn’t know what it was like to live with my dad. Yeah right. I’d counter that I was the only one still living with him and she’d hang up.
I was sure her newest boyfriend, who was ten years younger than her, could console her.
So here we are, present day, graduation day. I’m waiting patiently for the m’s to roll around so I can grab my diploma and hear the one person that’ll be in the stands clap for me, my dad.
I glanced up in front of me to see Kyle looking back. He smiled.
“You look like you’re in your own little world back there. You ok?”
“Yeah, I’m just ready to be done with this.”
He turned more fully in his chair, putting his arms on the back of it.
“Come on. It’s graduation day. Shouldn’t you be happy?” he reasoned. I just shrugged. “You wanna do something tonight? My parents are throwing this lousy party for me, but I’m looking for an excuse to leave early.”
“I don’t want to be your excuse, Kyle.”
He paled, his brow bunched together.
“Ah, Mags, I didn’t mean it like that.” He sighed. “My party is from five to seven. I’ll have plenty of time to do something with you, I just didn’t want it to seem so much like a date, ya know,” he explained and looked at me bashfully. “In case you said no, again.”
“Oh.” I felt an inch and half tall. “Kyle, I-” I was this close to telling him no, once more. But I thought about it. I have always told him no. I haven’t been on a date in a year. Every since my life fell under my mom’s pointy heels. He was always sweet to me and he was probably leaving soon anyway for college. What could it hurt? “Ok. Yeah. We can do something.”
“Really?” he said shocked.
“Yeah. What time do you want to go?”
“Is your dad throwing you a party or something?”
“No.”
Ha. Yeah right.
“Oh. Uh, how about I text you? I’m sure it’s fine but I gotta ask my dad for the car. Mine’s in the shop.”
“Ok, let me give you my number,” I said and started to pull up my gown to reach my pocket.
“I have it.” I looked at him curiously and he grinned. “I asked Rebecca for it a couple weeks ago. I was gonna call you but I never, uh, got up the nerve.”
He looked a little embarrassed and I couldn’t help but giggle a little at his obvious hand-in-the-cookie-jar expression. He was nice looking. No movie star stud, just a normal, light brown hair, brown eyed nice guy. We’d hung out a lot over the years in our group of friends, but never alone.
“Well, maybe you should have.”
“Would you have talked to me?”
I didn’t want to lie and I didn’t want to give him false hope so I just smiled and shrugged, hoping to pull off a little flirt. It must have worked, he grinned wider.
“Ok, I’ll text you tonight.”
“Great,” my mouth said but my head was already dreading it.
Then I saw the people ahead of him start to stand one by one as their names were called.
“Kyle Jacobson.”
He looked back and grinned at me once more as he made his way on stage. There was still about eight people before me. I watched him make his way to the stage and saw his parents and a large group of others stand and applaud loudly for him, a couple whooping and hooting. He grabbed his diploma and then made a show of muscles. Everyone laughed as he bounded down the stairs. He was a crack up. Everyone liked him and voted him class clown in superlatives. He was popular but never really dated anyone. He was always nice to me, though. I used to hang out with that crowd, before everything happened.
After my mom left, my dad was lost. He went a little ‘nuts’. He quit going to work and got fired from a job he’d had for over fifteen years at the school board and now works at the wood mill for a quarter of what he made before. So, I had to get in the work release program and get a job because we had no extra money for anything other than food that I needed or wanted.
When I told my mom all this, when I explained how I had to get a job to help and how dad was so destroyed by what she’d done, she said it was good for us to experience a little bit of heartache and hard work for a change. That was it. That was the last straw.
That was the day I decided to never speak
to her again.
“Maggie Masters.”
I heard my name and looked up. Everyone was looking and I realized that my name had been called more than once. I blushed and giggled nervously as I made my way up to the stage. I chuckled under my breath as I half expected the announcer to call out Mags or Magster or Maggsie. No one called me by my real name, hardly ever.
I took my diploma and turned to look for dad. He was sitting there. Just sitting there, not taking pictures, not clapping, not smiling, just watching stoically.
I frowned and made my way down to the end of the platform and was lifted into warm arms. Familiar warm arms.
“Congratulations,” he whispered into my hair.
“Chad. Don’t.”
“Mags, come on.” He put me down but didn’t let me go as he looked at me pleadingly. “We graduated. Let’s celebrate. Can’t you let go of the past, just for today?”
I looked up to his black hair. The dark short locks that any girl would love to run her fingers through. His tan skin and brown eyes with his lean Friday night football arms that always held me like I mattered. Oh, how I missed him, but he was the one who left me.
“You certainly know how to let go of things,” I countered.
“Maggie.” He sighed exasperatingly, like I was being unreasonable and it made me fume even more. “Look. That was almost year ago. And you know I wouldn’t have broken up with you if you’d told me what was going on with your mom and all.”
“Oh. That makes me feel so much better,” I said and let the sarcasm drip.
“You know what I mean. We’d had that talk, a lot. I’m leaving, we both knew it when we started seeing each other. I thought we agreed it’d be easier if we calmed down a little and just were friends the last year of school. I didn’t date anyone else, you know that. It wasn’t because I didn’t want you.”
It was true. He hadn’t been on one date this whole school year that I’d known about. Him and his friends even made a pact to go to prom together as a group. There were a lot of angry girls over this pact as it appeared it caught on and almost the whole football team went stag.
