That was a relief, but she still didn’t want anything to do with Anthony as her mate. Her wolf whined in her head, and she put a hand to her head to stop the sharp pain. “I don’t want this.”
“If you don’t mate, then you become a wolf at the bottom of the totem pole. It works that way in every pack. And you don’t want to know what happens to bottom feeders here.”
Fear shot through her. She glanced at Anthony and then back at Lex. She wasn’t sure if she should believe them. “Then I want to talk to Kylian and thank him.” And say goodbye to him. The thought made her want to cry as she imagined her wolf rampaging without his help. His touch.
“Oh, you’ll be able to. Because the moment he steps foot on our grounds, we’re going to slaughter him. I’ll make sure you’re there to watch.” Anthony smirked. “Come on; it’s time to go back home.”
She looked back at the forest; she had a vague idea where she was. It wasn’t the same part of the mountains that Kylian’s pack claimed, but certainly, she could run there as a wolf. At the thought, the black wolf in her head perked its tired head up.
“You run, I’ll hunt you down and tear you apart,” Lex snapped. “You will remain by Anthony’s side until the mating ceremony tonight. Once Kylian is killed by my hand, and I take his pack, then we will grant you some freedom.”
“You’re using me as bait. What makes you think this is going to work?” She shook her head and tightened the robe around her. “I think that you’re putting too much faith in Kylian. In fact, didn’t you tell me that he was a crappy alpha to begin with? And I don’t even belong to his pack, so what good is this going to do you?”
Lex grabbed her wrist and pulled her to him. He leaned his strange face to her and snarled in her ear. “Because I know what you are to him.” He shoved her away, and Anthony caught her.
“Come on, Casey, don’t fight me again.”
She was too shocked to form an answer or a rebuttal. She didn’t know what Lex was talking about, Kylian and her were nothing to each other, their wolves liked each other, but that was about it. And she was convinced that her wolf liked him because he hadn’t been a jackass, like Anthony.
Anthony took her hand, and she let her fingers remain limp in his as he led her through the forest. They came to the road, and he motioned to his truck. “In you go.”
She glanced back at where they had come from. Lex wasn’t near; she didn’t have to worry about his crazy alpha control if she could take care of Anthony first. Her wolf was already back at the surface, ready to run if they could manage it. All they needed was…
Anthony shoved her forward. “In, Casey, I can tell that you’re thinking of doing something stupid.”
She got in, buckled up, and crossed her arms. She just needed to bide her time. That’s it. Then she could make her escape and go back to Kylian and his pack.
6
Ares shifted back for the day and woke up from his early nap. They’d hunted and killed a few deer as a pack, and most of his members were still sleeping off the exhaustion that came from the shift. Now he could focus on Casey. The Muddy Creek pack had a community home up in Black Forest, right on the north edge where new pups could change without too much notice. His guess was that’s where they took Casey. Assuming she hadn’t managed to escape.
He found himself second-guessing making a rescue plan. Did she even need it? What if she’d been planted there by Anthony to draw him out, it was well-known that Lex was after the Red River pack, he’d never made it a secret, but in order to take over the pack, Lex had to kill him. It was one of the reasons Ares had Julia do many of the off-site pack things, not because he could be killed, being a god and all, but because he would be exposed. The lycanthrope virus slowed down the aging of a human’s system, making it seem as if they were immortal, so he never had to explain his lack of aging, but if someone tried to kill him and he just walked away from the battle…that was going to be a bit harder to explain.
“You going to go after her?” Julia asked from her spot on a different couch. “You didn’t even make it to your room last night.”
He snorted. “Even gods need to sleep. And yes, but I think I’m going to change my approach a little bit and go after Anthony first.”
“Why?”
“Because he’ll know where she is and what Lex wants with her. Lex doesn’t care about his wolves infecting humans, not unless he has a plan for that person.” Ares sat up and crossed his arms. His gaze slid over the room of sleeping pack members. He wanted to add Casey to this family and let her know that he could keep her safe and not put her through whatever Lex and Anthony were planning. He rubbed the bridge of his nose. This was one of those moments he wished he’d planted a spy in the other wolf pack. Now he was regretting dismissing the idea. “You weren’t against this last night.”
“I’ve had a change of heart. Have you thought that maybe they are trying to draw you out?”
He nodded. “They don’t realize that they are messing with a god, though, not with a regular alpha.”
“Are you finally going to embrace that?” she asked with a raise of her brow. “Ares, the big bad God of War, finally going to live up to his name.”
He rolled his eyes. “You know exactly why I don’t.”
“Because you’re scared of attracting the attention of other deities. So the question you have to ask yourself is…is she worth it?”
That was a good question, and his instinct had always told him that a woman wasn’t worth it. Nothing was worth risking the attention of other deities that might have been sent to Earth. They’d only try to claim his power and his pack. Everything he’d built for himself. “Mere days ago, I would have told you no.”
“And now you’re hesitating to do so. Go get her. I’ll hold the pack down; we’ll welcome you both back with open arms.” She shrugged. “And if for some reason you choose not to return to the pack. I’ll take it over for you.” Julia winked at him. “Anthony cares nothing for her, so he probably dumped her at the pack housing and will be going out tonight.”
Of course, and since he was a creature of habit, the bar he first met Casey at was probably where the little slime bucket would be. Julia was right; Anthony didn’t care enough to sit with Casey while she recovered from the shift.
He stood and headed towards his room to take a shower and get dressed. He’d find Anthony, make him tell him where Casey was, and go rescue her. Ares tried to convince himself that the only reason he cared this much was because Casey needed a functional pack, but as his wolf paced in his mind, he knew that he’d been kidding himself and that it was much more than that.
He wanted to mate Casey, take that calm that she offered him and wrap himself up in it. Let go of all his anger and hate for just a few minutes, while her innocence and light healed him. Lex had torn the pack apart ten years ago, and they had finally healed from that, but now the other alpha was determined to ruin everything.
Casey cringed every time someone rubbed against her in the club. Anthony wanted to go out, but Lex told him that he had to take her with him. It was Anthony’s responsibility to make sure that Casey stayed in line and didn’t try anything stupid. The way Casey looked at it, was that Anthony had made the stupid move. All she needed was her opening. Her chance to slip away, and the way to do that, was to get Anthony hammered. So the first thing she did when she got to the bar was to order whiskeys.
Anthony laughed. “I knew you were a whiskey girl.”
“Nope.” She downed it. “Just been that long of a week. You want to see a trick I learned?”
“Depends, does it include me getting laid?”
She resisted the urge to grab him by the balls and pull. “You kidnapped me, and you’re forcing me into a marriage. Do you really think I’m going to have sex with you?”
“A guy could hope.” He went to kiss her, and she moved her face out of the way.
She leaned in close to talk to the bartender over the loud music. “Hey, my friend here just got engag
ed and is celebrating his last night single. Can you hook him up?”
The bartender nodded and leaned over to talk to one of the other people at the bar. There were hoots and hollers, and she watched as people clapped him on the shoulder congratulating him and buying him drinks. Some cracked jokes about how getting married was going to ruin him. Even the bartender handed out a couple free ones.
Anthony shook his head. “You sly girl, how did you learn to get free drinks?”
“Just a little trick I learned in college. It works for the men, occasionally women, but we have our ways.” She leaned back and watched him enjoy his night. She slipped away when he went to dance with a drunk woman who pulled him on to the floor, and it was likely that he’d forgotten that he was supposed to be watching her. Lex should have been worried more about Anthony doing something stupid; it didn’t seem that the alpha knew his second very well.
Casey took a deep breath the moment she exited the building, and her wolf took that moment to decide to uncurl in her mind and start to pace. A familiar pain started in her head, and she closed her eyes. “Please don’t. We need to get out of here,” she whispered, but the wolf ran out of the forest.
Casey cried out as the beast inside her tried to break out. She put a hand against the wall as she stumbled. Someone asked her if she was okay, and she gave them a vague wave to say she was. She conjured up an image of Kylian and the way he felt against her. His fingers on her skin, the way he smelled, the way he called a much more intimate heat to her. The wolf hesitated in its attempt to come out. She liked the thought of Kylian.
“Casey.”
She could even hear his voice over the shuffling of feet and rumbling of cars as they went down the road. Her wolf laid back down, content with the illusion.
“Casey.”
A heavy hand pressed up against her arm. Her eyes fluttered open, and she saw the warm eyes of Kylian staring back at her. She hadn’t imagined his voice. He was standing right in front of her. She threw her arms around him and then stepped back. “We have to go, now, before Anthony realizes I’m not sitting at the bar anymore.”
“Where is he?”
“Dancing, drunk as a skunk, with some woman who doesn’t care that he has a fiancé.”
Kylian gave her a questioning look.
“Don’t worry about it. How did you know where to find me?”
He wrapped her hand around his fingers and led her to his black truck. “I was actually planning on beating the information out of Anthony; I didn’t think he was stupid enough to bring you out with him.”
“Yeah, I didn’t either. Apparently, Lex has more trust in Anthony than he deserves.”
She climbed into the truck and buckled up. She waited for him to get in before she spoke again. “You didn’t come after me last night.”
“I couldn’t.” He started the truck. “The old laws say Lex can rightfully claim you as his pack and make you leave, and I had to make sure that my pack was taken care of before I stormed off after you in a mad rage.”
She’d seen that rage surface before, and she knew that it clouded his mind. “So you waited until you could think clearly, and your conclusion was to beat the shit out of Anthony until he gave you answers?”
“Well…I was going to ask him nicely first.”
She shook her head. “It’s amazing your temper hasn’t gotten you killed.”
“What do you know about my temper?” He snorted.
She pressed her lips together. “I saw the bruise on your cheek, the tape on your hands. You fight to keep the madness away.” She hoped she wasn’t too far off.
“You have no idea,” he muttered. “We’re going to head to my house in the city. Lex doesn’t know it’s there. Clearly, he knows where our pack grounds are now. We moved them after the pack split, and it’d been hidden until now.”
And it was probably her connection to the Muddy Creek pack that led him there. Guilt settled in the pit of her stomach. “I’m sorry.”
“Sorry? There’s nothing for you to be sorry about.” He reached over and took her hand, squeezing it. Her wolf snuggled up inside her mind, content with the small touch. “Lex and Anthony, I don’t know what they are playing at, but they are the ones in the wrong here. Not you. You’re just caught up in this stupid war between packs.”
She studied his fingers wrapped around hers. “Lex said something interesting.”
“Which was what?” Kylian asked, keeping his eyes on the road.
“That he knew what I was to you.”
She felt Kylian tense, and then, silent moment by silent moment, he began to relax. “Don’t worry about it; he’s just trying to get inside your head. That’s all.”
She gave a slight nod and leaned her head against the window. “Why Ares?” She asked suddenly.
Ares’ heart skipped a beat as he thought she was addressing him by his given name. He hesitated on answering, debating on asking her how she knew or denying it.
“Why is Ares your chosen god for the pack?” she clarified, and he could breathe again.
There was no way to tell her it was just an ego stroke for him to have all the proof that history hadn’t forgotten him or the other gods and goddesses of his time. She wasn’t ready to know who he was. “Because Ares is the god of war, violence, and bloodshed. I don’t think anything else can describe what it’s like to be a werewolf.”
“How so?”
“Think about how we talked about it the night you came to our pack. It’s a constant war between two minds and souls. A constant struggle to be both wolf and human, to not kill and then shred your enemy.” He twisted his hands on the steering wheel. “There is no greater war than man vs. self.”
She reached over and put her hand on his thigh, the moment she did, his wolf eased back, and the urge to rage shrank. He savored her touch and wanted to mate her right then and there, but it had to wait. He needed to make sure no one had hurt her, and if they had, gods help them, he was going to go on a murder spree.
“Kylian?”
He snapped out of his zone. “Yes?”
“How do we keep Lex from calling me back like that again?”
“Well…” He was about to tell her that if they mated it would stop that, but screeching tires brought his attention back to the road. Horns blew as someone ran right through the stoplight and rammed into the side of his truck.
He heard Casey scream, and he did something he hadn’t done in centuries. He used his powers to take them out of the truck before it flipped. The metal crunched around them as he grabbed her hand and took them to just outside the crash. People were screaming and calling for help, all too busy to notice that they just popped out of the truck.
Ares helped Casey up and looked over her. Not even a scratch. He attributed the fine shaking of her body to shock, but at least she wasn’t bleeding. The accident probably wouldn’t have killed them, but it could have caused a lot of damage. His truck lay on its the cab, wheels up in the air. The side dented in almost half way. He looked at what had hit them. A huge sixteen-passenger van had damage on the right front end, the hood was crunched up against the windshield, the front tires were blown, and something was dripping out from underneath.
The driver opened the door and stumbled out. He took one look at Ares and ran the other direction. Ares started to go after him, but Casey grabbed his arm. “Don’t.”
He looked at her. “Why not?”
“Because that’s one of Lex’s wolves, and he just screwed up big time. He knows where we are, but I don’t think he was expecting it to be you with me.”
“Because I don’t normally leave pack lands. I stay hidden on most occasions.”
“Yes, my guess was they were expecting it to be Julia that was with you, not me.” She flexed her hands and then looked at him. “How did you get us out like that?”
He wrapped an arm around her. “I’ll discuss that once we get this taken care of. I want to make sure there’s a human paper trail on this accident.” Hum
an interaction always complicated things, but this time they could use it to their advantage to make it harder for Lex’s pack to do less legal things when it came to Casey.
She gave him a questioning look, and she opened her mouth to argue. He pressed a finger against her lips. “Promise, but for now, let’s get this accident taken care of so we can get to the house. If he attacked us in public once, he’ll do it again, and probably with more people since he knows I’m with you.”
She nodded and leaned against him. “I’m trusting you that you’ll tell me.”
He wasn’t sure what made him want to tell her, but he knew he couldn’t tell her she'd imagined it. She’d had enough of that with Anthony, and he didn’t want to do that to her. “I promise I will tell you.” He hoped that she believed him and didn’t go running. He looked at her and wondered if the pack could show her what it meant to have family or if she’d want to live a lone wolf life with him. “Casey?”
“Hm?” she asked, her eyes all for the scene in front of her. The firetrucks and police were starting to show up. It’d only be a moment before paramedics came to check them over.
“Do you have family?”
She jerked as if something struck her. “What?”
“You’ve mentioned a job, and that’s it. Does your family not check up on you?” He hadn’t considered it before because normally if it was a concern, the new wolf brought it up. The only thing he’d heard Casey mention was working from the community house.
“They don’t live here. They moved overseas a while ago.” She kicked at a pebble on the ground. “Empty nesters setting out to find their grand adventures.”
He didn’t miss the resentment in her voice. “Siblings?”
She shook her head. “Nope, which is fine. My parents were accidental parents; they weren’t planning on having kids. Things happened and surprise! Here I am.” She held her arms out. “They did the best they could, but no siblings. I had friends in high school, but we all parted ways after that. I’m kind of okay with it. I don’t mind living a quiet life.”
The Fall of War (Gods of Olympus Book 4) Page 6
