One of the male tones cut over the others, and matched the strong scent. It was deep and dark and reminded me of rocks grinding across each other. All the little hairs down my spine shot straight up on end, and ice needles of fear jabbed through my belly.
Alpha Gabel.
Even Amber’s eyes widened and glazed with fear.
The scent of a male wolf’s power is a combination of his physical strength, the force of his will, and his intention to use both. Even in my visions, the ones more nightmare than anything else, there hadn’t been a wolf’s scent like his.
“And here they are, waiting as requested,” the deep-toned rock-voice said as a shape blotted out the spring sunlight.
Gabel’s appearance didn’t match his smoldering, charred-wood scent. He was tall and broad, and while his tanned complexion was flawless, the back of his hands were scabbed and the skin leathery and worn. His wrists were the thickness of my ankle. The muscles under the back of his hands flexed and shifted like iron cables.
His face was handsome, with a square, strong jaw and a sharp nose to match his raw, high cheekbones. His eyes were a churning sea-blue-green so vivid they almost didn’t seem real. His hair was a tawny blond that curled just a little bit, cut quite short. Where most wolves would have shown up in jeans, he wore pants and a button-down in a vibrant shade of plumb that barely contained his biceps. He was also barefoot.
He was glorious, and he could have snapped my legs like twigs with those hands of his.
His scent said he’d do just that if provoked.
That scent curled down my spine like the grasp of two hands. Unmistakable prestige mixed with that peculiar scent of ash.
He was glorious. And as much as my brain did not want him: I wanted him.
The rest of me was only trying to decide if Gabel was more terrible than he was glorious.
Terrible was winning, but only by a narrow fraction.
What made other males cower to him, and other females crumble, made me stupid enough to want him. She-wolves are attracted to power, strength, prestige. It’s how we’re made. That scent stroked my nerves and breasts and slid between my thighs like a calloused caress.
Gabel ignored all the Shadowless and went straight to Amber. She squared up and met his gaze. He grinned in return. She sniffed, disdainful of his obvious glory, but her nipples perked against her tank top.
Gabel took her left hand in his own, and as gallant as a nobleman, brought her wrist to his nose, his eyes never leaving hers. She made a sound of disgust but didn’t fight him, and after a few seconds, he drew back.
This close to him his scent of power and the aura of commanding prestige were suffocating.
Very gently, he took my left hand in his, as he had with Amber. The tender skin of my wrist prickled at the softness of his breath and the warmth of his touch. Responding warmth pooled between my thighs. He flicked his gaze at me, and inhaled again.
It shouldn’t have been like this, without invitation or consent. I bit the inside of my cheek and tried not to squirm around the rogue warmth between my thighs.
Females couldn’t smell the lure-scent, and since a female could have a number of potential mates, males had to court her and convince her he was the one. Werewolves mated for life, and the Bond couldn’t be broken except by death. Smart females were choosy.
Gabel drew back. “An Oracle. You didn’t tell me you had an Oracle, Jermain.”
“I assumed you knew.” Jermain’s voice still had some authority in it, but the strength of his command meant nothing to me.
“Who is this?” Gabel asked Jermain.
“Gianna. She is my First Beta’s daughter.”
He inhaled the scent rising off my wrist once more. This time his lips met my wrist. I jumped and drew in a sharp breath, only to get a nose full of his dizzying power and strength.
Then the very tip of his tongue darted between his lips and grazed my skin.
Mental discipline from years of training as an Oracle shored up my nerves, and built buffers around my reactions. I wasn’t the first female he had tormented this way, I wasn’t special, and this wasn’t remarkable. He wanted it to be those things. I wouldn’t take the bait.
He dropped my wrist and looked around. “I smell more young females. Where are they?”
“There are only these two,” Jermain said.
Gabel looked at him out of the corner of his eye. “No. There are more. I instructed they all be here. Not just your two best offerings.”
“There are only these two.” Jermain’s voice tightened.
Gabel growled at him. “This was not the agreement.”
Behind Gabel the wolves grinned and shifted, and one of them nodded. “Get ready, wolves.”
Jermain ducked his head between his shoulders in submission. Gah! Coward! I glanced at Amber, but she nodded curtly to me to say nothing.
Jermain just rolled up like a bug, and everyone was going to let him.
Gabel’s scent of ash intensified. “Bring them here. Now.”
Jermain withered like summer grass and he started to gesture to my father to do as demanded.
I said, “They’re barely grown. What use do you have for overgrown girls?”
Gabel’s attention swung back to me, and his anger receded like water pulling back from the shore. “I gave an order they be presented, Oracle. That is my use for them.”
“The six of them are barely old enough to be considered adults,” I said quickly, before my courage ran out. “If you had been here a month ago two of them wouldn’t even presented. If you want to smell some girls, then we’ll bring them to you, but surely that’s not what you want?”
The anger receded even further back, but I didn’t trust it for an instant. “So Shadowless does not grow strong she-wolves, does it? You two are exceptions?”
Amber didn’t respond to the trick question. If we asserted Shadowless did grow strong she-wolves, he’d demand to see them. If we didn’t, it’d add some more humiliation to this fiasco. Considering how degrading and humiliating all this was, digging deeper didn’t matter.
“They’re coddled,” I answered, because like hell I cared at this point.
He ignored me. His attention was back on Amber. He smelled her wrist again, smiling as his gaze traveled up and down her body and came to rest on the outline of her nipples.
Gabel released Amber’s wrist and moved back to me. As before he lifted my wrist to his nose and inhaled, then lingered. He released me. He trailed the back of his fingers along my left bicep with a farce of tenderness.
“No,” Amber breathed.
Gabel wouldn’t dare. He might take me with him, he’d inform me I was his Oracle, he might try to play some sick courtship game, but he’d never Mark me. Blasphemy aside, it was stupid. A Bond was permanent. A mate was a big liability for a wolf who accumulated enemies like a corpse accumulated maggots.
His hand turned, and his fingernails raked my skin, gently. Shocks of delight lashed over my skin, into my core, as my mind shrieked. The Moon spun in my awareness, waiting, waiting, waiting, and the world stopped as the future itself hung on Gabel’s next action.
I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t speak.
His fingers elongated and darkened. His fingernails extended into putrid yellow claws. Most males could only partially shift one time: when they Marked their mates. Realization slammed into me. “No! Don’t!”
He raked one claw oh-so-gently over my skin. My flesh stung as if with acid. Was I supposed to beg? Be silent? What did he want? He already had my terror. I’d never give him my consent.
“No?” He traced a pattern on my skin, peeling up the first layer of flesh.
“No. I do not consent,” I snapped.
“Not even for your pack?” He pressed a little harder.
“That’s not what you want, and I’m not what you want. You just want fear. You just want to prove a point. Fine. You’ve proven it.”
“But you smell of moonlight,” he said softly.
“So wha—”
His claw pierced my skin.
My spin arched and I opened my mouth to scream, but every fiber yanked tight. My soul burned and melted and sloughed off my bones and pooled somewhere else.
No!
Moon Goddess, no!
A burst of blue-white strength fractured the ritual’s hold on me. I yanked away and stumbled backward. “No!”
He lunged at me and seized my other arm. I shrieked. His transformed hand snaked out, and he raked his claws down my bicep. Three ribbons of flesh peeled away and flopped to the ground.
The first strike of the Mark is suffocating agony, then pure, ice-like numbness, followed by exquisite pleasure. Under my ruined skin my soul melted and slid off my bones, congealing into a mass that mixed with something else. The pleasure suffused my entire being as my soul blended with his.
The melting sensation eased, and my mind staggered forward. His breathing came faster, his eyes bright and a little glassy, pupils dilated, and there was a quiver in how he held me, like he knew he was holding too tight and needed to let go, and the full magnitude of what he had just done had slammed into his arrogant brain.
Blood dripped down his own bicep.
No.
The ritual created a matching Mark on the male. My lure-scent was gone, his ability to smell lure-scents removed, and our matching Marks a symbol to everyone, no matter our form, that we shared the same life, the same soul, and the same fate.
The neonate Bond, the place where our souls had been grafted together, shifted like a delicate spiderweb, breathing, exchanging emotions and awareness.
“What have you done?”
The Monster Who Eats Fear
It was anathema. Forbidden. A crime, a sin, blasphemy, and a lot of other words for things that just weren’t done. Even Gabel’s own men cringed, and his top lieutenant spat in disgust.
There would be no private moment while my chosen mate lovingly etching a pattern into my arm, inspired by the power of the ritual and the Moon guiding his claw, as the same pattern appeared on his own, burning through his skin with Her white-blue light, creating a pattern just for us.
Instead we each had three crude rake marks slashed into our skin.
The Marking was Pain, for all couples had to endure pain.
The Consummation was Pleasure, where two bodies joined to complete the connection between souls.
The Vows were Affirmation, where the two mates announced to their pack, and the Moon, their love for each other.
But the Mark was like humans getting engaged, setting the date, and hiring the planner all at once. Marking was never done on the first meeting. Many males claimed they knew “the one” when they met her, but because females had to take him at his word, he had to spend a great deal of time courting and convincing her, her family, and maybe even her pack.
Gabel had just swooped in and taken me like a seagull stole a bag of chips.
“You know exactly what I’ve done,” he retorted, slightly hunched and twitching as his own soul reformed and adjusted to the presence of mine.
“You have no idea what you’ve done. You’re insane!”
He smirked, swollen on his own smugness. “I’ve been accused of that before.”
“The Bond works both ways, you idiot. You should have chosen a she-wolf as depraved as you are.”
“It’s too late for suggestions.” He flicked blood off his fingers.
“I said no. What part of ‘no’ did you not understand?”
“The ‘no’ part.”
Amber reached for me and put her arms around me.
Gabel turned to Jermain. “We have no more business. I have what I came for. The tribute of an Oracle and a potential mate will fulfill your obligations to IronMoon for the next twelve moons.”
Potential! He thought this was something he could get out of? I laughed in misery. Idiot. Many thought a first-stage Bond could be broken by saying a few words under the new moon and jumping over a dead fire.
That ritual worked just often enough to keep the belief alive, and only if it was performed in the very earliest days.
Amber squeezed me tight and shuddered with silent sobs.
“Say your goodbyes, Gianna,” Gabel told me. “We aren’t going to linger here.”
He went outside with his men to wait.
“It’ll fester,” Amber whispered to me. “I know it will, and you’ll be free of him. The Moon won’t abandon you. Not you, Gianna.”
Blood dripped onto the tiles from my ripped skin, although I felt nothing through the ritual’s numbing venom.
She squeezed my uninjured arm. Her eyes were bright with tears. “I’ll help you pack. Oh, Gianna. I’m so sorry.”
A pang of guilt flashed over her face. She had thought Gabel would take her, if Gabel took anyone.
I smoothed her hair and touched my forehead to hers. “At least it was one of us, and not one of the others. That’s what we wanted, isn’t it?”
I didn’t have much to take. Just two duffel bags, one of clothes, and one of my precious scrying bowls, orbs, and runestones. An IronMoon male, a tall, swarthy type with a scowl and curled upper lip, stood in the doorway, impatiently waiting for me. He yanked my bags from me and took them to a waiting car.
“It will fester,” Amber whispered again. “We’ll come for you. I promise, we won’t abandon you to him. I promise. Don’t lose hope.”
The second step—consummation—sealed everything, and the third step was little more than a formality. Gabel couldn’t force me to do either, but he might not need to. The Bond wanted to be final and complete. It’d make us do stupid things. It was a living thing, like lungs, and lungs wanted to breathe.
No matter how hard someone might try, they couldn’t force themself to not breathe. Eventually their most basic instincts would kick in, and their body would force them to take a big deep breath.
Even if whatever they breathed in would kill them.
Bonds sometimes died of inexplicable natural causes, just like love between humans died. Sometimes that one ritual would work. In the case of bitter betrayal, one mate could repudiate another, and the Moon would fracture the Bond, although the wound it caused to the soul often resulted in death for both wolves.
Most of the time the Bond lived on no matter how much either partner regretted it.
In the car, Gabel ignored me. Suited me just fine. Crazy sadist with delusions of grandeur now had his claws in my soul.
After two hours of silence, he prodded, “You aren’t going to ask?”
“Ask what?” I didn’t look at him, but being civil seemed prudent for the time being.
“Buttercup, don’t play coy.”
Buttercup? When had I gotten a pet name? I didn’t want a pet name. Especially not that one. “Why did you Mark me? You’ve given me power over you and you don’t even know who I am.”
He smirked. “I realized I needed a fresh challenge. I want to see if I can resist the Bond’s song.”
Confirmed: crazy.
The Bond worked both ways. If I died, he’d probably die. If Gabel enjoyed dalliances with other females that was over. The Bond would punish him, if not render him impotent. He had given me power and authority over his pack. The Bond chained me to him, but it chained him to me. His pleasure would become mine, and vice versa.
Some less stars-in-their-eyes wolves had described the Bond like a parasite that punished the hosts.
“So torturing dozens of packs isn’t a challenge. You wanted to step up to souls,” I said, disgust covering up my growing horror.
“It’s gotten a little too easy. As you can see. I just picked up my phone,” he put his phone to his ear like a toddler playing with a toy telephone, “and called Jermain to say I was on my way.”
I turned away from him.
“Don’t you want to know about you and I, buttercup?”
“No.” I ignored the sensation of a sore tooth deep within me.
He kept talking. “W
e’ll let everyone think you will be my Luna. So you can get comfortable in case the Bond wins.”
“The Bond will win, you fool!” I shouted.
“Yes, the odds are considerably in its favor.” He granted after a thoughtful pause.
“Then why take the chance?”
Another grin. This one turned my blood to ice.
His grin widened at my terror. The Bond passed me the particles of his pleasure. It entered my bloodstream like a tingling, pleasing poison.
His smile was like honey pouring over his perfect lips. “That’s what makes it fun, buttercup. A fight you know you’ll win isn’t interesting. I smelled the lure-scent on you. I’ve smelled it at least a dozen times before, and ignored it. But you’re an Oracle, and now you are my Oracle.”
“You could have just demanded I serve IronMoon.” My voice shook.
“What’s the fun in that? Now I will have a fresh challenge, maybe a Luna, but always an Oracle. You will serve IronMoon as my Oracle, and perhaps my mate.”
“You have no idea what you’ve done!”
He slid towards me. I scrunched myself up against the car door. He seized my chin in his fingers. “Exactly. I don’t have a clue, but so far I’m enjoying it. You enjoyed it too, the scent of pleasure on your wrist when I tasted you, I could smell the heat between your thighs and on your neck. I drowned in the wracking of our two souls.”
“Get away from me,” I rasped, even as my skin tingled from his touch.
“That’s not very nice.” His eyes darkened to a burning green-blue shade and his violent intentions burned through the Bond.
He hesitated, and cocked his head as if he had heard something. Then his attention shifted back to me, and he chuckled low in his throat. “So that is the Bond. Interesting. You feel my malevolence. I feel your terror. Do you think it is the same sort of terror others feel, or is it different?”
Tears poured down my cheeks, and my throat shook, his scent glory, prestige, and edged in burning ash. “What are you?”
“A werewolf, like you.”
“You are nothing like me,” I rasped.
The Alpha's Oracle Page 2
