by Laura Taylor
“I understand and accept them,” Mark replied without hesitation. And while Dee was aware that these were significant consequences to his actions, all she really heard was that Mark was not to be put down. Her relief was profound, making her heart thud in her chest. Until the last part of the punishment hit home.
“Wait… branded? What do you mean, branded?”
Andre held up his hand, displaying the symbol of the Council on his palm. “Branded. The same way I was. With fire.”
Dee looked to Mark in alarm. “No, you can’t! That’s barbaric!”
“It is the way of our people,” Baron informed her flatly. “When is the branding to be done?” he asked Andre.
“Immediately.”
Mark remained unmoved by the announcement, while Dee felt her heart speed up again, this time in panic. “No! You can’t! It’s not right!”
“Dee?” Caroline interrupted, fixing her with a firm glare. “Mark has received a great mercy in not being killed for his treason. All things considered, this is a very light sentence. There are far worse things the Council could have decided, death being only one of them.”
And didn’t that just sum it all up. She looked at Mark pleadingly, asking for a reason, a protest, an explanation, anything that would make this better. But he gave her the opposite of what she wanted – not a protest, but bland acceptance of the punishment. “Caroline’s right. If this is the price of freedom, of life, then I wholeheartedly accept it.”
What could she say to that? He got to live. He got to stay. “All right,” she said weakly. “If that’s the way it has to be, then let’s get it done.”
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
Three days later, Dee lay in bed with Mark, both of them naked. The brand on his face was still raw and red, but he didn’t complain about it, though it must hurt like hell. The brand was in the shape of a lopsided V, an upside down reflection of the brand on Andre’s hand.
She reached up and stroked his face, his uninjured cheek, and he gave her a wry smile.
“It’s fine,” he said, not for the first time. “I deserved it.”
“Don’t say that,” she protested, though she was slowly coming to understand the strict honour code among the wolves, and knew that feelings ran deep about his betrayal of Il Trosa. While there were those who supported him, there were far more people here who felt his actions were a gross breach of trust, and when the time came for him to climb the ranks again, it would be against serious opposition.
Tongues were wagging throughout the Den about Dee’s determination to continue her relationship with Mark, her relatively high rank seen as a serious barrier to a relationship with an omega wolf, but she had simply ignored the gossip. Further to Mark’s demotion, Dee had been forbidden from assisting him in any way in his new role as the lowest ranking wolf, a ban that included everything from bringing him better quality food to letting him sleep in her room. He’d been moved to the bedroom just above the stairs, a small, noisy room that echoed every time another member of the Den walked past, but Mark had taken on each and every restriction with calm acceptance.
So now they were in Mark’s room, his smaller bed making it a bit of a squeeze for both of them to lie comfortably. But that was just an excuse for her to snuggle closer, Dee reasoned, noting the way their legs were entwined, their hips touching, Mark’s arm resting across her waist.
“It was worth it,” Mark insisted, touching the edge of his wound.
“Even though your sister turned against you?”
“Even then.” He leaned over and kissed her. “If I hadn’t gone to the lab in the first place, I’d never have met you.”
Dee couldn’t help smiling. It was a touching and heartfelt sentiment, even though Faeydir protested that it wasn’t entirely true. If Mark hadn’t been there, she had been perfectly capable of killing the scientists herself, she told Dee stubbornly. And even back then, she’d known they had to head north. There was a good chance they would have met up with the Den one way or another, regardless of Mark’s involvement.
Whose side are you on? she asked the wolf in annoyance, and Faeydir replied with a swift image of Mark’s face, a warm, tender jolt of feeling accompanying the image.
“Faeydir’s giving you a hard time?” Mark asked, making Dee realise she’d drifted off for a moment, and she smiled bashfully.
“No. She’s just agreeing with me that you coming to get me was a good thing.” She touched his cheek again. “Despite the price paid.”
Mark smiled, and then the expression deepened, overtones of a more sensual interest colouring his face. “A very good thing,” he agreed, leaning over to kiss her again. “What about you? Do you like living here? I know you didn’t really get much choice in the matter, but do you have any regrets?”
Dee thought about that, taking the question seriously despite the urge to simply dismiss it. “Yes. And no. I miss my family. This isn’t a life I would ever have chosen for myself. But all things considered, I’d say I did pretty well out of it. I have a new family. You. Skip. Tank. I have so much to learn, and I just love knowing that there’s more to life than we usually see. A whole underworld of magic and conspiracy and a private war going on. It’s incredible the shifters and the Noturatii have managed to keep the whole thing a secret for so long.”
“And there’s a certain irony in that,” Mark said. “Il Trosa keeps it a secret for fear that society will condemn us and slaughter us all. The Noturatii keep it a secret for fear that society will embrace us and there’ll be a population boom. If either of us ever figure out which way the tide will go, the war is effectively over. One way or another.”
“But isn’t there a risk that one day someone will get sick of the secrecy and just out you to the public?”
“It’s possible. But that’s one of the reasons we’re so careful about who we recruit. We’ve been doing this for six hundred years, and we’re pretty good at it by now.”
“And detractors are hunted down and killed, right?” Dee’s expression turned quizzical. “All of them? No one has ever escaped? You’re certain there’s no small, secret shifter pack living in some remote place, keeping their heads down, living their own lives?”
“That’s why the Council started training assassins. Since the 1750s, no rogue shifter has ever escaped execution. If there are hidden cells, they would have to have formed before that, and endured in secrecy ever since. Again, it’s possible, but very unlikely.”
“Hm.”
“Why?” Mark asked, as Dee reached out to stroke his arm, then across his chest, then lower. “Are you thinking of cutting and running?”
“What? No. It’s just…” She ran her hand over his hip, noting the way his muscles twitched. “You can’t be the first wolf to have been punished for conflicting loyalties. I was just thinking that other people must have been in situations like yours and looked for a way out.”
Mark took her hand and moved it to the right a little, drawing a pleased smirk from Dee. “I’ve got plenty of reasons to stay,” he said, lifting his hips a little.
“That you do.” Dee’s hand tightened its grip, effectively cutting off the conversation. A moment later, Mark rolled her over, keeping his groin within reach of her hand, and began his own exploration. Starting at her face, her eyelids, her nose, her lips, then down over her throat in a sensual trail that made her skin tingle. He followed the path of his hand with his lips, down over her collar bone, then paused at her breasts, lips and tongue making her sigh in pleasure before his hand slipped down further still, teasing her stomach and thighs, and then setting up a delicious rhythm between her legs. The movement of Dee’s hand faltered, drawing a husky chuckle from Mark.
“I’d walk through hell a thousand times just to have you here with me,” he told her, sliding over to cover her body with his own. “I’d kill a thousand of the Noturatii. I’d destroy a hundred labs. And I’d get my arse kicked by Baron as many times as necessary if he so much as looks sideways at you.”
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nbsp; Dee laughed at that one, the sound husky and distracted as she spread her legs further, wanting, needing to feel his satisfying weight on top of her, and then wanting to feel something more. “Faeydir might object to that,” she said. “She’s quite the ferocious warrior and resents the idea that she’d need protection.
“Damn belligerent she-wolf,” Mark grumbled, teasing Dee’s flesh for a moment longer – most likely just to make her squirm again, Dee thought happily.
And then, as Mark finally filled her body with his own, another image flashed into her mind, one that brought a very different kind of pleasure.
“Faeydir wants puppies,” Dee gasped as Mark set up a slow, lazy rhythm, her hips rolling in time with his thrusts. That made Mark pause, though he didn’t seem put out by the idea.
“Does she now?” He punctuated the statement by kissing her, long and slow, his clever fingers reaching down to urge Dee along. The move was so effective that all rational thought was put on hold for a while, slow kisses and intimate caresses culminating when Dee grabbed onto Mark’s backside and hung on tight as she rode the waves of her climax. Mark let out a groan a moment later, his body thrusting hard into hers until he sighed and went lax above her.
Dee stroked his shoulders, blissfully relaxed and not inclined to move… until Faeydir gave her a nudge, wanting an answer to her impromptu question.
“Can people be converted as children?” she asked softly, not sure if Mark was falling asleep or not. But he lifted his head and slid over to the side, giving her more space. “Or can wolf puppies be converted into shifters? As far as I’ve seen, it always happens the other way around, with a human first, but that’s not to say it couldn’t be possible.” It surprised Dee how much she liked the idea of children – because she was assuming at this point that they would be shifter children, the human side hers to nurture and teach, and the wolf side Faeydir’s. Faeydir had been quite clear in her request. She didn’t want ‘children’; she wanted ‘puppies’. The two were hardly the same thing, from a wolf’s perspective.
“Firstly, yes, it’s possible to convert human children,” Mark said, stroking her arm, “but we tend not to. Becoming a shifter should be a choice, not something to be inflicted on people. Then again,” he said, speculatively, “no child raised by Il Trosa has ever refused to become a shifter when they came of age. Some of them actually ask for it a lot earlier than that. That would be a question to put to the Council, but probably not until I’m past my year’s probation,” he added, reminding Dee that two parents were required to raise children, according to Council regulations. “As for converting wolves? No. It’s been tried – it was once thought to be an easy solution to our declining population, but the new human side experiences… problems. When a wolf is created as a fully functioning adult, they have an innate ability to do certain things. To hunt, to track, to socialise with other wolves. And yes, we’ve often wondered how they come upon such knowledge, with no clear answers, but the simple result is that it works. Creating a new, adult human has a whole pile of other problems, because most of what we need to function in society isn’t based on instinct, or on simple, needs-based skills, like hunting for food. A newly born adult might be able to speak, but which language? They can eat, but don’t have the slightest idea about how to cook food. They lack all but the most basic social niceties, since a lot of our culture is based on customs with lots of tradition but no inherent logic. Training a human adult to function in society is a nightmare, and after a few attempts that went badly, the Council banned the conversion of wolves into shifters.”
“So, if Faeydir wants puppies, we’d have to convince the Council to let us convert children?”
Mark looked over and frowned at the glum expression on her face. “It’s not that far out of the realm of possibility,” he assured her, leaning in to kiss her. “It’s been done before. But what about you? You’re serious about children?”
Despite having just made love, despite having had her entire body kissed and caressed by his, that one question felt suddenly raw, like a part of her she’d never shown anyone before had just been exposed. Because what she was asking for, if her answer was yes, was not a fling, not a boyfriend, not a ‘let’s see where this goes’ relationship, but commitment. And that scared Dee, perhaps even more than it might be scaring Mark. She turned the thought over in her mind, not just the idea of having children, but of having them with Mark – albeit via adoption, since having them naturally wasn’t a possibility.
“Yes,” she said finally, her voice small, very aware of the deep frown on her face. How was he going to react-?
“Awesome.” He kissed her again, deep and passionate, until she was gasping for breath. And when he pulled back, he was grinning. “Like I said, we might not get clearance for adoption for a while. But we can put in an application, at least. Get Baron and Caroline used to the idea.”
Dee was laughing, the sheer joy of the idea making her giddy. “Perfect,” she said, sending the answer to Faeydir, a clear ‘maybe’, with overtones of Council approval and pictures of wolf puppies shifting into human children. Faeydir snorted in disbelief, astonished that humans could have anything of value to teach their young ones, when they had such a poor sense of smell, when their teeth were barely useful for anything. But underneath her disdain was a warm undercurrent of hope, and Dee resolved to do everything in her power to see that Faeydir got her chance at motherhood.
It was a complicated life, all things considered, with plenty of hurdles left to cross and the constant danger, from the Noturatii, the Grey Watch, and her own very unique fate hovering over her. But here, now, with Mark lying beside her, with Tank recovering in the sitting room downstairs, with Baron and Caroline yelling at each other in the foyer, and the ‘thud-thud-thud’ of Silas stomping along the hall… Dee wouldn’t have traded it for the world.
EPILOGUE
Miller sat in the café, a public place in Manchester that was nonetheless quiet and out of the way, waiting for a meeting he wasn’t sure was ever going to happen.
The message had been cryptic, but the Noturatii were more than used to dealing with that, and Jacob maintained the stance that any and all leads should be followed up. Even the weirdos who were so high they didn’t know reality from hallucination might occasionally have a real lead, an avenue for attacking the shifters that other, more grounded folks might have overlooked, and Miller had developed the professional patience to accept that ninety per cent of his ‘assignments’ might end up being a complete waste of time. That was the way of it when fighting a six hundred-year-old clandestine war.
Just then the door opened, admitting a slight girl dressed in a grey robe. She looked around nervously before seeing him. And by the way she tensed, she was certainly not used to these covert sorts of meetings.
The girl didn’t come over straight away, instead going to the counter to order a coffee, waiting while the barista served it to her in a take-away cup. Then she came and sat down at his table, glancing around. Nope, no stealth skills there. Her jittery behaviour all but screamed ‘illegal meeting’, and Miller preferred to keep his operations a little more on the subtle side than this girl was behaving.
“You got my message?”
Obviously, or he wouldn’t have been here. “I did. Thank you for contacting us.”
Silence, as the girl stared out the window, fiddling with the foam on her cappuccino. “How can we help you?” Miller asked finally.
“I need you to do something for me,” the girl said, not looking at him, and Miller had enough experience reading people to realise that she was feeling guilty as hell about something. Interesting. “And in return, I’ll give you some information.” She glanced up at him, fear and anger warring in her eyes. “I need you to… kill someone.” The last two words were said in a whisper, determination replacing fear. “There’s a girl. She’s dangerous.”
“Hold on a second,” Miller interrupted her. He’d seen a lot of crazy in the last few years, but he’d n
ever faced a request quite so blunt as this one. “What makes you think we’d kill someone for you?” Thank God the café was deserted. This was not the location he’d have chosen for this kind of conversation. “We’re not a bunch of thugs for hire. We’re a covert government agency fighting terrorism-”
“I know exactly who you are,” the girl snapped. And Miller instantly shut up. Not because of her tone, but because if she knew who he was, who the Noturatii were, then she damn well knew that the existence of the shifters was a fact. And that made this meeting a whole lot more interesting.
“There’s a girl, who’s not a girl,” the girl said. “You know what I’m saying?”
Meaning a girl who was a wolf. Miller nodded.
The girl slid a folded sheet of paper across the table. “That’s a map. I don’t know her exact location, but I’ve highlighted the most likely areas. She’s in her early thirties, maybe. Brown hair. Five foot three. And I think you’ve met her before. At least, your organisation has, if not you personally.”
Dee Carman. Their convert-turned-escapee. She fit that description perfectly.
“I want her dead.”
“Why?” Despite his years of training, Miller was having a hard time keeping his face neutral. Fuck, this was the lead they’d been waiting for.
“Like I said, she’s dangerous. That’s all you need to know.”
Miller fingered the paper, but resisted the urge to open it. “Consider it done.” It wasn’t likely the Noturatii would actually kill her, of course. Not at first. She held too much information, including the key to their failed science experiments. She was far too valuable to simply be killed. But this slip of a girl didn’t need to know that.
