Blood of the Pack

by Jenny Frame

  Kenrick playfully growled into her neck. “It’ll be amazing.”

  Zaria giggled. “Your mom did tell me your favourite foods, so hopefully I’ll do okay at this domestic thing. Go and get changed out of that suit. I know how much you don’t like it.”

  Kenrick walked away towards their bedroom then turned around and said, “Zari? You’ve made me the happiest wolf in the world. Thank you for trusting me.”

  “I love you,” Zaria replied.

  * * *

  Zaria didn’t think she had ever felt more content in her life, or—thinking about it more deeply—she had never had the security to feel any contentment. But lying here in the hammock on the balcony, in the arms of her new mate, was bliss. After dinner they came out to watch light-up time, which Zaria thought was magical, and then she lay with Kenrick and, wrapped around her, looked up at the stars on a crisp, cold night.

  Zaria sighed as Kenrick stroked her hair. “I hope that was a happy sigh,” Kenrick said.

  “Oh yes. I’ve never experienced this…safety, I suppose. I’ve always had to keep moving, always on the run looking over my shoulder, and this is the first time I can stand still and appreciate life around me.”

  Kenrick kissed her head. “I’ll always keep you safe, Zari. You’re mine now, and I’m yours. No one can ever change that. I’m so happy you like Wulver Forest. I worried it might be a big change for you.”

  Zaria laughed softly. “The weather is. It’s colder and rains a lot, but I don’t think there’s anywhere more beautiful. Making your dens high in the trees makes you feel you’re a part of the living forest.”

  “The forest, the animals we hunt and take care of, it’s in our blood,” Kenrick replied.

  Zaria reached up and caressed Kenrick’s cheek. “As well as the whisky?”

  “That too. We have strong blood,” Kenrick joked.

  “Oh, I know.”

  “How did you get on with Heather and her friends?” Kenrick asked. She wanted to bring up the ceremony, but she had to know if Zaria had settled in with the pack and if she would be ready.

  “They were so nice and welcoming. Even the wolves in the marketplace were nice. They kept calling me Mater, which I found strange at first. I thought they might take a while to warm up to the stray American wolf, but they didn’t,” Zaria said.

  Kenrick squeezed her. “Of course they accepted you. You’re my mate, my Mater, and in any case we all grew up together. They are good wolves.”

  “I haven’t been in a group of submissives since I was sixteen. I’m going to have to learn to open up. I’m so used to hiding,” Zaria said. “What was your mom whispering to you before she left?”

  This was as good a chance as any to bring up the ceremony subject. “Just reminding me that a ceremony comes with mating.”

  Zaria looked up at her. “Did you ask your pater about it?”

  Kenrick was nervous about Zaria’s reaction but it had to be discussed. “Uh…yeah. He left the distillery and went to speak to all the pack elders about it.”

  “What did they say?” Zaria asked.

  “That’s the thing. I don’t want you to feel pressured or anything, and I know it’s taken a lot for you to give up your life in America and come to another country to be with me. It’s so much for you to take in and—”

  Zaria frowned and tried to push herself up in the hammock, making it swing. “They don’t want me as your mate, as your Mater?”

  Kenrick pulled her back down. “No, no, it’s not that. The complete opposite in fact. The elders and the elite wolves think it would be better for the pack if we were mated before my Alpha ceremony.”

  “Do they want you to postpone your ceremony?” Zaria said.

  This was the part that was making her nervous. “No they’d like to do both, our mating ceremony first, before becoming Alpha and Mater officially.”

  “Oh,” Zaria said quietly.

  Kenrick knew this was going to be too much, too soon. “Look, I can speak to them. I understand you think it’s too soon.”

  “No, don’t do that. I want us to be officially mated as soon as we can. I want to feel I have a home at last. I just didn’t think that I’d be part of the Alpha ceremony.”

  “You’re my Mater. We lead together,” Kenrick said.

  Zaria got a faraway look in her eyes and Kenrick could sense hurt. “If my sister could see me now. When Leroux killed her pater, my sister had nothing to do with her coronation, as Leroux called it.”

  “Like I said,” Kenrick replied, “I think she’ll be watching from the Great Eternal Forest, proud that you are going to be able to do all the things she couldn’t or wasn’t allowed to.”

  Zaria nodded but didn’t say anything.

  Kenrick still had a thought from earlier that was nagging her. “Zari, can I ask you something?”

  Zaria threaded her fingers through Kenrick’s. “Anything.”

  “When I was rushing to get dressed this morning and you asked about buying some food, I could feel you were frightened. Did I do something?”

  “You never do anything to frighten me, Highlander. It was just a flashback memory that made me freeze for a minute.”

  Kenrick moved their clasped hands just under Zaria’s T-shirt and stroked her soft stomach, trying to make her feel as safe as possible.

  “It’s amazing how your brain takes in memories you don’t even know you have, then hits you with them one day out of the blue,” Zaria said.

  “Tell me and I’ll chase it away,” Kenrick said. She could feel how tense Zaria was as she relived what was in her mind. “You’re okay, you’re safe.”

  Zaria took a breath and said, “It was the money thing. Leroux didn’t let Marta have access to their bank account, their money, so everything she needed, food, clothes, anything for the den, she had to ask for. It was about Leroux’s control. I remember being a little cub and watching the glee on Leroux’s face as Marta begged her for money. It turned my blood cold, remembering that. Marta would put it off for as long as she could—she was always tense and nervous about Leroux’s reaction. If she caught her at the wrong moment, it would sometimes not be glee, but fury or anger. She always paid for what she got, physically or mentally.”

  Now Kenrick understood everything and she supposed a lot of these traumatic memories would come up often in their life together.

  “Lassie, I think you know in your heart that I would never, ever do that to you. We are and will always be a team, but I also know that fears and memories like that can be irrational and play on your mind no matter how much you try to fight them. Let me tell you something that you don’t know.”

  Zaria shifted in her arms. “What?”

  “Before we left Wolfgang County and I didn’t think you were coming with me, I did something that probably would have made you mad but—”

  Zaria gave her a sly smile. “What did you do, Highlander?”

  Kenrick traced soothing circles on Zaria bare stomach while she spoke. “My wolf knew that you were my chosen mate, even though you didn’t.”

  “I did,” Zaria interrupted. “I was just scared to admit it.”

  “Okay, aye, but every fibre of my wolf being is programmed to take care of my mate. I couldn’t leave you with no means of taking care of yourself. So I opened a back account in town and gave Eden the details to give you after I was gone. I was going to keep it topped up with money so I could take care of you even when I couldn’t do that in person.”

  Zaria looked at her silently at first, and then her eyes started to glow yellow and Kenrick could sense and scent her arousal.

  “You’re right. I would have been pissed off at the time, but not now,” Zaria said in a low voice.

  “I promise you, Zari. My den, my business, my pack, everything I own is yours—”

  Before she could finish her sentence Zaria grasped her dreadlocks roughly and pulled her down into a deep kiss.

  Kenrick’s wolf responded and started to partially shift and her ma
te bite throbbed. She nipped Zaria’s tongue with her teeth while she ripped the T-shit she was wearing to shreds. Now Zaria’s breasts were exposed to the cold air and her arousal made her nipples rock hard.

  Zaria took one of Kenrick’s hands and placed it on her breast while she pushed the other down to the button of her jeans.

  Telepathically, Zaria said, Here. Make me come right here.

  Kenrick softened and slowed their kiss. She wanted to show Zaria how much she loved her and that it didn’t always have to be fast and rough as Were sex could be. She opened the button on Zaria’s jeans and pushed her hand into her underwear. She moaned when she was met by Zaria’s sex saturated with wetness.

  You’re soaking wet, mate.

  That’s because I’m yours. Touch me, Zaria said.

  Kenrick split her fingers around Zaria’s clit but kept them still. Zaria moved her hips, trying to get some relief and growled, Touch me, Ricky.

  Kenrick pulled back from the kiss and said, “Are you mine?”

  “Yours, always yours, Ricky.”

  “Look up at the stars, lassie, and don’t stop looking,” Kenrick said.

  Zaria did with a moan of frustration. It was cold, crisp night, not a cloud in the sky, and when she looked up, it appeared as if she was gazing across the universe. It was beautiful.

  Kenrick started to move her fingers slowly and rhythmically grasped Zaria’s breast and pinched her nipple. Zaria’s body was on fire, a contrast to the cold night. She thrust her hips in time with Kenrick’s strokes.

  As her orgasm built higher, she felt lighter, almost like her body was rising higher and higher to the stars she was gazing at.

  Kenrick whispered in her ear, “I used to lie out here on my own, lonely and hungering to find my mate somewhere in the world. I prayed to the Great Mother to find me someone to love.”

  Zaria groaned as Kenrick quickened the pace and every few strokes thrust her fingers inside Zaria’s opening.

  “And she sent me the wolf of my dreams,” Kenrick said softly.

  “Yes, I’m yours. I need to come, Ricky.”

  “Keep looking at those stars and know that you’ve found your place, found your pack, found your home, and found the mate who will protect you and love you forever.”

  Kenrick gave her deeper strokes inside and Zaria met them with her thrusting hips. Zaria’s orgasm was building from somewhere low and deep, but as deep as it felt, her body flew higher with every one Kenrick’s strokes.

  It appeared as if the stars were surrounding her body, and she was floating somewhere up there in the vastness of space. She moaned low as if she was in pain when the deep orgasm passed the point of no return and she lost control.

  Zaria grabbed Kenrick’s hair as her powerful orgasm rushed from the base of her spine and took over her body. The stars that had been surrounding her now exploded in front on her eyes and turned to pure whiteness as she closed her eyes tightly. Then she felt it—a connection to the trees, the land, the loch. Everything that made Wulver Forest, she now was part of it. Zaria was home. The thing she’d never thought possible.

  “Ricky,” Zaria shouted.

  As the rush of orgasm calmed, she became aware of the crisp, cold air cooling her hot body.

  “I love you, lassie.”

  “I love you.”

  Zaria was home.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  The next couple of days, the pack worked hard to prepare and organize everything they would need to add a mating ceremony to Kenrick’s Alpha ritual. All the shops by the shore side of the loch posted closed notices for the weekend, and the barriers at the entrance to the loch were to be closed to limit the number of humans around.

  Everyone was working tirelessly to make this day one to remember, and Kenrick couldn’t have been prouder of the way her pack had opened its arms to Zaria.

  Tomorrow they would go through purification rituals separately, before the ceremonies the next day, but today were their respective stag and hen parties.

  Kenrick was packing her rucksack with her fishing equipment and a change of clothes. Rhuri had arranged a fishing and camping night, over on the other side of the loch where there was less chance of bumping into humans, and then who knew what Rhuri had planned. Most likely it would involve the finest of Wulver malt whisky.

  She looked over from the bedroom to where Zaria was sitting at the island in the kitchen. Zaria was video-calling Marco with their good news and they’d been talking for nearly an hour. It was wonderful to see her mate building a relationship with the nephew she had sacrificed so much for.

  Zaria turned around and beckoned her over.

  She walked over and placed her hands on Zaria’s shoulders. Kenrick could see Vance behind Marco, smiling and relaxed. Vance and Flash were encouraging Marco to get to know Zaria. It could have been so very different and awkward. “Hi, Marco, how are you?”

  “Great, Ricky. Look, I haven’t taken it off.” Marco lifted his wrist to show the leather wristband she had given him.

  “Cool.”

  From behind him Vance said, “Congratulations, Ricky. Mated at last?”

  Kenrick chuckled. “Well, on Saturday officially.”

  Zaria reached for Kenrick’s hand on her shoulder. “Vance says that Marco can come visit us in the next school holidays. Isn’t that exciting?”

  Kenrick knew how much that meant to Zaria and how much trust Vance and Flash placed in them, to let him come. “That’ll be so much fun. There’s lots of cubs for you to play with, and I’ll take you on some cool runs.”

  “I can’t wait, Ricky,” Marco said excitedly.

  “Well, I better let you go, Marco,” Zaria said. “Good luck with your game on Sunday.”

  “Thanks, Aunt Zari. Send me lots of pictures of your mating ceremony.”

  “We will. Thanks, Vance. Speak soon.”

  They waved goodbye and hung up. Zaria sighed.

  “Was that a good sigh?” Kenrick asked.

  “Yeah, and a relieved one,” Zaria said. “I don’t have to worry about him any more. He’s safe and sound and I can be the aunty I always wanted to be.” Zaria stood up and went into Kenrick’s arms.

  Kenrick said, “You are both safe. Leroux is dead and the pack’s dispersed. You just have to concentrate on making your life and Marco’s life the happiest they can be.”

  Zaria snuggled her cheek into Kenrick’s neck. “I hope our cubs are like Marco. Good, kind wolves.”

  Kenrick grinned from ear to ear. This was the first time Zaria had mentioned cubs, so she must be feeling at home. “How could they not be? Look at their parents,” Kenrick joked.

  Zaria laughed and stepped back from her mate. “So are you ready to go, Highlander?”

  “Just about. I’ve got all my fishing gear and a change of clothes. Rhuri and the others are bringing the camping gear.”

  “Don’t drink too much.” Zaria jabbed her finger into Kenrick’s chest playfully.

  “Don’t worry, lassie. I know my limits. Besides, the purification ritual tomorrow will help with that.”

  Zari narrowed her eyes and folded her arms. “I don’t know if I like that answer. Just make sure you’re in good condition for Saturday.”

  “I will. I hope you’ll have fun with my mum and the other submissives. There’ll be lots more wolves for you to meet at your hen party,” Kenrick said.

  Zaria put the flat of her hand on Kenrick’s chest. “It’ll be great, but I’m going to miss you.”

  After they parted tonight, they wouldn’t see each other until their mating day. That was a long time for two newly mated wolves.

  Kenrick put her nose in the crook of Zaria’s neck and inhaled her scent. “After this we’ll never be apart again.”

  Zaria grasped Kenrick’s dreadlocks, as she liked to do, while her mate rubbed her scent all over her face and neck.

  “So you don’t forget you’re mine,” Kenrick said.

  “I’d never forget.” Zaria slipped her hands dow
n the back of Kenrick’s jeans and dug her nails in her buttocks while she kissed her neck.

  Kenrick growled. Her body was starting to hunger. “Don’t do this when I have to go, lassie.”

  Zaria grinned and lowered herself to her knees.

  “What are you doing?” Kenrick asked.

  Zaria gave her a saucy smile and started to unbuckle her belt. “Giving you something to remember me by.”

  “Zari—”

  Zaria didn’t listen. She pulled down Kenrick’s jeans and jockey shorts. She snuffled her nose into Kenrick’s sex and felt how turned on she was. Her clit was already engorged and protruding. She wasted no time and sucked Kenrick’s clit into her mouth. Kenrick moaned and threaded her fingers through her hair. While sucking Kenrick’s clit, Zaria rolled her tongue all around the base, which seemed to be driving Kenrick wild.

  Never would she have believed that she would be on her knees in front of a dominant, and enjoying giving her pleasure. But she trusted Kenrick, and it gave Zaria pleasure to give this to the love of her life.

  “Fuck, yes, Zari. Just like that,” Kenrick said as her hips undulated. Zaria increased her pace and pulled Kenrick closer by holding her buttocks.

  “Going to come,” Kenrick growled.

  Zaria looked up for a second and saw Kenrick with her head back, eyes closed, enjoying every second that Zaria was giving her. She could tell Kenrick was moments from coming, so her fingers shifted to claws and she dug them into her mate’s buttocks.

  She gently bit Kenrick’s clit and then sucked furiously. Kenrick howled in pleasure while she held Zaria’s head in place.

  “Fuck,” Kenrick said as her breathing calmed. “You’re a bad influence on me, Zari.”

  Zaria gave one last kiss to her sex and got up. She smiled at how relaxed and blissed out Kenrick looked. She gave her mate a kiss and whispered, “Have a good stag party, but remember who you belong to, Ricky.”

  Kenrick took Zaria’s hand and placed it on her chest. “Your paw is imprinted on my heart.”

  * * *

  Zaria had never run with so many wolves before. The current Mater, Elspeth, led the pack of about twenty male and female submissives through the forest. Elspeth and Heather thought it would be good to start the hen night with a run together, because nothing bonded wolves like running.