Wolf's Accidental Pregnancy: A Fated Mate Romance (Love Spells)

by Ava Williams

  He could deal with all of that, he really could, but the one thing he simply refused to deal with... was the mosquitoes. Worst creatures on the planet. If God was real, he surely put those little fuckers on the planet as a curse.

  Something buzzed next to his ear and, without looking at it, he slapped it. The buzzing stopped. A grin spread across his face. All he could hear now was the sshhhh-sshhhh sound of Minerva shifting in the water behind him and the soft, yet still unpleasant, hiss of rain on the rancid water.

  This was hell. That was the thick and thin of it. He had died and gone straight to hell—a bog.

  He took a deep breath. Professionalism. He could be annoyed later, after they’d gotten the job done and... well. He didn’t want to think about what would happen after this.

  Not yet. He had too much other shit to focus on for now.

  The compound itself was about how he had expected a secret compound in the middle of the swamp to look: dilapidated and ugly. The little shitbox used to be a research center for some endangered salamander, but then the species went extinct and the researchers abandoned the facility.

  It had stood empty for almost forty years and looked like something out of some old sci-fi B-movie. The rust-covered domed metal roof curved down to filmed-over windows. Rotted-looking vines clung to the metal like a goddamn kraken trying to drag the whole thing down into the swamp for good.

  The kraken appeared to be winning—the dome was partially submerged. The structure put up a good fight, but it couldn’t win. When the builders first plopped it down in the middle of this toilet, they tried to keep it above water with a wide base and a system of catwalks that extended to nearby trees. Like many things that had seemed like a good idea in the eighties, it wasn’t working anymore.

  Cade ran his scope across the walls to see if he’d missed anything. The long vines that crawled over the outer walls had cracked a few of the glass pieces. Dark water lapped softly against the sides of the building as a light rain misted down.

  It looked incredibly unstable. If something too big came across one of the catwalks, they’d fall through and the alligators would drag them kicking and screaming underwater.

  But he wasn’t here for the building. It was the people lurking around it who interested him.

  A few red-robed figures wandered around the outside of the dome, most clutching assault rifles, ready to shoot anyone who would be stupid enough to try to attack. Anyone like, say, the two mercenaries hiding in the muck.

  Based on their outfits and matching face tattoos, they were cult members. Fuck. Wildly unpredictable, unstable, and all too willing to die for the cause. He’d had more than a few run-ins with cults during his career, and it always tended to end… messily. There was just no reasoning behind someone who was that brainwashed into the belief system. Half the fuckers wanted to die for their cause anyway. Bunch of idiots. If they wanted to die for some other dumbass wearing red camo with a face tattoo, he could oblige.

  His scope landed on a werewolf in lupine form entering the building from a catwalk. He stood nearly eight feet tall and sported enough shaggy fur to make at least four hideous rugs. The swamp had not been kind to this particular werewolf. The huge, bear-like figure appeared to have the mother of all bad hair days. The humid air had settled on his fur and the matted-looking effect was—well, a little bit movie monster.

  For a cult, they packed some serious power. Most professional crews didn’t have this kind of muscle for their teams. The cult had spent a great deal of money keeping this target protected. Cade did another visual sweep, noting a few well-hidden security cameras embedded in the trees.

  Minerva sloshed around behind him. She’d been impatient since they met up. “Hey, buddy. Champ. Look, I’m all for wasting the entire day scoping out the fort, but when are we going to actually go in?”

  His shoulders dipped and a scowl formed over his face. He turned around slowly, carefully holding his rifle above the water as he glared at his companion— a silver-haired, athletic woman with one hand on her hip as the other pulled something out of her thick mane. Minerva was about a foot shorter than him and the thigh-high water on him nearly came to the bottom of her ass, soaking her tactical pants and making them cling to her shapely legs. If she weren’t such a cocky pain in his ass, he would have appreciated it more.

  He plastered a big, fake smile on his face and gestured to the fortress with his rifle like a magician doing a big reveal. “Go ahead, ma’am.”

  He saw her gaze dart over to the fortress. Her fingers tapped a furious pattern on her thigh, but she stayed still. Her golden eyes were warm and inviting, and on anyone else, he might have even called them beautiful. She might be the only woman alive on the planet who had to say, Hey, my breasts are down there.

  “Why are you so paranoid? It’s not like you can die,” Minerva said. “Just... do your phantom stuff.”

  He stared at her as he reminded himself that he couldn’t go in alone. He needed her. As sickening as it was to say, the only chance of success was if they were working together. If he had to deal with her for a little longer, it was worth it.

  But that didn’t mean he couldn’t give her a taste of her own medicine. “Phantom stuff. Right.” He resettled himself, water sloshing against his legs as he turned to face her. “See, I am doing phantom stuff. I’m planning. Recon. I know, it can be complex to someone...” He trailed off. “… else. I’m going to wait until nightfall.”

  She glared at him. He’d seen that glare before. At least this time, she wouldn’t be shooting at him. “Nightfall? You can’t be serious.”

  He sloshed his way toward one of the fat trees nearby and sat on the tiny patch of—well, not dry ground, but less wet ground—that surrounded it. Normally, he would want to fuck with her.

  Normally.

  Not today. He just... couldn’t. Everything felt weird, knowing that if it went well, this was the last job he’d ever do.

  Cade looked down at his hand. The black mark crawled up his flesh, mostly hidden by his leather glove. It was bigger. He was losing the fight.

  He clenched his jaw and pulled the glove up to hide the pulsing black mark before she could see it. Minerva plopped down on the mossy, squishy earth beside him.

  He spit into the water nearby and glanced over at her. “Please, do not hesitate to go in early and get killed.”

  He took a deep breath. Calm. He had to stay calm. It was getting stronger, but he was still in charge. The only way he’d get into trouble was if he started stressing out about it. That’s when the blackouts came. He gulped and rolled his head back. He stared at a tree branch overhead and tried to enjoy the soothing way that the warmth from the early evening sunlight filtered through the leaves. Droplets of water collected on the ends of each leaf before falling to the ground with a gentle splash. He tried to ignore the tightness in his throat and breathed deeply.

  He’d had a few close calls in Afghanistan. The men who lost hope that they would survive never made it out. He hadn’t had his powers back then. He’d survived from force of will and skills alone. He could do it again.

  He could do this. He had to do this. He looked down at his leather-gloved fingers. He’d washed his hands a million times, but he could still see blood on his hands. Every time he really looked at his hands, all the guilt and the fear of losing it again and becoming a monster came rushing back until it threatened to swallow him.

  He remembered the screams of the jogger and how he couldn’t stop himself. His overwhelming primal urge to rip the man apart—the blood staining his fingers a sticky red that he couldn’t banish from his mind. It was a horrifying reminder that it would happen again.

  He looked away. It would be okay. It had to be. There was no other option.

  They had a couple of hours, maybe, based on the sunlight drifting in through the trees and the increasing sounds of an awakening ecosystem. Nightfall was always when things got interesting, when the bloodthirsty predators came out to play.

 
He’d hunted down a fugitive once in a swamp. The only thing he’d ever been able to locate was the man’s bloodless hand, latched around a tree branch like a vise, watch still attached, as though he’d been trying to pull himself from the water. The swamp wasn’t a place to live. It was a place to vanish and never be found.

  Swamps only got worse at night. At least during the day, he could see them coming. Maybe Minerva could see ’em with her powers at night.

  He glanced over at his companion as she shrugged off her wet jacket to reveal a form-fitting black tank top. Did he really want to sit and stare? Not particularly, but anything was better than thinking about—he banished the image from his mind and rubbed his right hand. Out of sight, out of mind. He was going to be fine.

  He focused on his companion, letting his thoughts settle on her. Fit, attractive, with intricate tattoos snaking down her toned arms, a beautiful pain in his ass. A shoulder holster held two ivory-colored pistols with gold accents along the stock. A fashion statement, maybe, he’d caught plenty of bullets from those flashy fuckers and he could confirm that they were plenty lethal.

  Minerva looked like a human, but there wasn’t anything normal about her. The blood of angels and demons coursed through her veins. It was amazing that she had survived her genetics for as long as she had. The last one like her was back in the eighteenth century, a coal miner who lost control and detonated, taking a dozen workers with him.

  He’d heard what people thought she was—a weirdo or a freak. That was bullshit. She was a god in a humanoid body.

  His hand drifted down to his rifle. Of course, if she did turn on him, there were ways of dealing with beings of immense ability like her. Though she might be able to level a small building, if it came down to it, a good bullet right between those pretty gold eyes would probably do the trick.

  She was playing nice. So far. He’d been betrayed by people whom he thought he could trust before and had the scars to prove it. It was better to have a plan and not need it than to end up on the receiving end of Minerva’s wrath and be completely fucked. The funny thing was that she probably still thought he didn’t know what she was. Once, after one of their fights, he’d seen her wings. Black wings.

  He’d known she wasn’t human even before he saw the wings, but after a little research and breaking few fingers to get some answers, he finally figured out exactly what she was. She was an archangel—half-demon, half-angel. He was surprised to learn that angels and demons could or would fuck, but he wasn’t one to kink shame.

  Regardless of her origin story, she existed, and she’d probably do anything to keep her exact heritage a secret. If the full-blooded angels found out about her, they would execute her within days. Something about keeping the bloodlines pure or some bullshit—just an excuse to fuck their sisters until their species had so many problems they couldn’t even talk straight, Cade assumed.

  She pulled her knees up closer to her chest. “We could do it. Go in and handle it, I mean.”

  “Doubt it.” He pointed at a few of the cameras that he’d spotted in the trees and on the base. “See those? You won’t make it within fifty feet without everything in there raining hell down on you, and darling, you aren’t immortal.” He sat up straight and looked over at her. “But, for the sake of argument, let’s say you somehow made it. Great. You get to those walls, and... what? You knock and ask nicely to get in?”

  She stared longingly at the fort. It was charming, in a way, how she just wanted to blaze in and kill everything that stood in her way. It was stupider in a bigger way, but at the same time, he couldn’t deny that she was bold.

  “I’ll blow the doors down.”

  “Okay.” He paused. “Great. You’ve blown the doors open, you make it three steps and”—he snapped his fingers—“the werewolf drops on you and tears your head off, which, normally, I wouldn’t care, but if you get your head ripped off by our wolfy friend, it’ll make my job harder.”

  And, of course, without her alive, this whole plan was a bust.

  She opened her mouth to fire some shitty remark back at him, but she seemed to decide against it. “Fine.”

  They sat in silence for a while as he picked random vegetation off his guns and she looked as though she might die of boredom.

  He finally pushed himself to his feet, stretched, and did something he’d never tried to do before: be friendly to an adversary. Fuck it. What else was there to do? Normally, with people who had tried to kill him before, he’d do them in, but instead he decided to make small talk. He wasn’t entirely sure which one she would have hated more. “So.”

  She glanced over in his direction and spoke with a guarded tone, shoulders hunched up. “So.”

  “So.”

  “So.”

  He stretched dramatically. “So. How’d you get sucked into this?”

  As if he didn’t know. As if his ass hadn’t written a letter explaining that he knew what she was and if she didn’t meet up with this handsome Cade guy to kill a target, he’d expose her.

  Still, he was curious what she’d say.

  “Does it matter?” Ah, ever the expert communicator. Her tone grew testy.

  If he had to die, pissing off the one and only archangel was probably the way to do it. Maybe it was his childish nature, but he couldn’t resist poking at her. It wasn’t like they had anything else to do.

  “I have to ask. What do you use for conditioner? I mean, we’re out in a swamp, and yet, it looks so silky smooth.” He ran a hand along his own short hair. “I simply must know.”

  She inhaled deeply before turning to him with an angry glint in her golden eyes. “Let’s make this perfectly clear. You’d take me in for a bounty in a second. I’d do the same to you. Stop trying to make small talk.”

  Silence, before he spoke again. “So, is it like Clairol, or—?”

  She let out a low groan. “Are you normally this much of a pain in the ass, or is today a special occasion?”

  “I bet it’s Clairol.”

  On the one hand, antagonizing a person like her was a bad idea. To be fair, he had a history with her, and bad history at that. She more than deserved his ribbing. Awhile back, he’d had a bounty on his head and she’d tried—and failed—to bring him in. She learned why they called him the Phantom—he never stayed dead, no matter how much power she was packing. She’d killed him and time and time again and he popped back up like a whack-a-mole from hell until he set a trap for her and stranded her in a cave system deep in the Amazon. It had taken her months to get out of there and by then, a tragic “accident” had taken out the guy who had put the bounty on Cade in the first place. He’d assumed they were done and would never see each other again. That was the theory, at least, but life liked to be complicated.

  He pulled his glove up again, making sure the onyx mark stayed hidden.

  He kicked back and tried to relax. Later, they’d have to breach a cult compound, but for now, all they had to do was play the waiting game until dark and not kill each other. It might be harder than expected.

  Start reading Covenant of Lust NOW!

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  The pack owns me… but not for long.

  I had a life once, hopes and dreams. Marry a nice guy, get a good job, have a family.

  It’s all gone.

  The wolf pack took that from me when they kidnapped me.

  They forced me to be an exotic dancer at Top Dog Gentlemen’s Club.

  Other girls have tried to escape.

  All have been caught, and that’s a fate worse than death.

  But I can take it no longer.

  There’s a way out, but it could cost me everything.

  There’s only one thing powerful enough to crush a wolf pack.

  A dragon.

  I just never expected it to be… him.

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