by Lucy Lyons
His eyes started to glow and his talons lengthened as he hissed his response and flew at me, levitating off the floor and driving his fist straight at my throat. I whirled and caught him, adding to his momentum and putting him through the wall we’d already damaged. He crashed into the crowd that had gathered outside the changing room, where he tried to push off the pile of tangled limbs and come at me again.
“Enough!” Nicholas shouted and grabbed Josiah by the collar, slamming him to the floor. “You,” he growled, pointing at me. “Get out.” I picked up my duffle bag and stormed past him into the hallway outside the workout room and breathed deeply, pulling my power back into me until I felt my fur ruffle and when I glanced down, all I saw was the light brown of my skin.
I closed my eyes, inhaled deeply again, and opened them as I exhaled to see Clay staring at me. “I didn’t do anything wrong,” I began, but he waved me off.
“I know you didn’t. I’m pretty sure even Nick knows you didn’t. He’s just pissed because Josiah got past us and you guys damaged the training room with your stupidity.”
“My stupidity?” I huffed. “I was jus’ getting dressed to leave this shit-show and he sucker punched me.” I motioned at my bare chest. “It was my last shirt, by the way. He’s lucky I could hold back as long as I did. If Goldie and I hadn’t . . . If he’d attacked me when the sickness had taken over, you’d have one dead vampire.”
“And you’d be one dead wolf, Orson. You’re an outsider. There’s no way you would’ve gotten out of here alive. So be grateful that you showed restraint, don’t expect more kindness from the vampires.” I nodded and then shook my head and turned back through the doorway.
“Josiah,” I called out, and Nick glared at me as Fin and a couple other security guys grabbed my attacker and held him back. “I didn’t hurt Goldie, and I don’t believe she’d lie and say I did.”
“You scarred her,” he raged. “She shifted and came back and the mark was still there.”
“Of course it was,” I scoffed. “It’s the mark of binding. It means that Goldie is my soulmate. If not, the mark would’ve faded like any other scratch.” I took a step forward. “Unlike a vampire, I don’t have anything special in my bite to prevent a wound from closing.” He blanched and I continued, ignoring Clay’s hiss of protest and Fin’s wide-eyed look of horror.
“She doesn’t want you,” Josiah said, but there was defeat in his voice.
I nodded and threw my hands out to the sides. “She’s made that abundantly clear, Joe. But this?” I motioned around us at the crowd of people and the damage to the training room. “This?” I pointed at the new window into the changing room we’d created. “This is on you. She’s a goddamned werewolf. The mark isn’t new, it isn’t some secret no one knows. You chose to date someone of another species, Joe. You should’ve already known what it meant. She should’ve known.”
“Orson,” Clay warned, but I was too far into my anger to stop until I’d said my piece.
“What the hell do y’all think you’re doing here? Pretending your kumbaya club means you’re not different? That you won’t have to deal with inconveniences that others of your tribes do?”
Clay gripped my shoulder and I sighed aloud. “C’mon Orson, let’s get you to our camp and we’ll hook you up with clean clothes and help getting you home.” I scoffed and shook my head, brushing the vampires off with a wave.
“That mark,” I called out over my shoulder, “will be there ‘til the day she dies, and there’s nothing that you or your witches can do about it.” I felt icy anger at my back. “She’s mine, and for the rest of your unnatural long life, you won’t ever be permitted to forget it.”
“Ah shit, Orson,” Clay hissed as he swung me through the door ahead of him and grunted as Josiah barreled into him. I strode down the corridor away from the fight, toward elevator doors I saw at the end, my duffle bag over my shoulder. I was done with this experiment of peace, and with being saddled with a soulmate who would choose the undead over the other half of her own soul.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Fin and Clay caught up to me at the bar, where the bartender was pouring me another free shot as I retold her the story of my arrival and departure. “You west coast wolves are a different bunch, that’s for sure.”
She laughed and patted my hand. “We are, but it works, it really does. Can you really fault us for not knowing how things are for you, when we’ve never had to deal with it?” I shrugged and took a pull from the beer. “C’mon. at least you were right about her, right? I mean, I’m sure Clay can help you now that you’ve got your mark.”
“Not that they’ll be helping me anytime soon. But what about his own offspring? Shouldn’t y’all be required to know what you’re bringing into the world before they go crazy and no one is around to explain why, or stop it from happening in the first place?”
“And that’s why I think you should give Clay the chance to help you, son.” She giggled and nodded at the approaching shifters who had caught up with me. “He needs you, and he’s too smart to let the pride of a vampire get in the way of doing right by his own young.” She leaned in and tipped my chin toward her. “Or his own kind.” She kissed me softly on one cheek and patted the other before busying herself with her work, turning her back to us.
“You got a beer back there for me, Freyja?” Clay called out and the pretty brunette turned and slid two more bottles across the bar to him and Steven, the behemoth from security. “Seems like your problems aren’t getting better the way they were supposed to, Orson.”
I scoffed and took another drink. “No, they aren’t.”
“So what are you going to do about it?” I flinched at his response and sighed. The trouble was that I had no idea what to do, or how to even figure it out. “Nothing?” he continued. “Then may I offer a suggestion?”
“You certainly can’t mess things up for me worse than I already did,” I sighed again, sounding pathetic even to me.
Clay laughed and clapped me on the back. “Come back to our camp and stay at the lodge for a day or two while we figure out a way to keep you, you know, sane and non-violent,” he offered, “and when we’ve figured it out, you can head back to Baton Rouge and take care of your brother without having to fear for his safety.”
I drained my beer and nodded. “As long as I don’t have to deal with any vampires attacking me while my head is inside a shirt, I can do that.” I glanced sideways at him. “She’s never going to give me a chance, is she?”
“Could it hurt her not to, for real?” Clay asked and I nodded. “Denying your soulmate, or trying to force the wrong person into the role, create a rift inside you, separating you from your wolf. Eventually, the bloodlust of the wolf grows too strong to fight because you can’t . . . you can’t speak to the beast anymore. Your mind gets weak, paranoid, terrified of everything because you can always feel the monster inside, but it’s not part of you anymore.”
“Oh God. That’s what you’ve been fighting?” Steven interjected, and I nodded.
“The nightmares have been the worst part so far, at least they were until I woke up from one and I was about to tear my kid brother’s throat out. Nothing compares to the shame and self-loathing . . . and paralyzing fear that it might happen again, and you won’t be able to stop yourself.”
Clay motioned for another beer for me and Freyja, my new favorite perky werewolf bartender brought us two each and winked. “I’ve got my opening side work to get to, so I’ll just hook you up for the next few minutes.” Her alpha smiled and saluted her with his fresh bottle and I watched the bouncers and waitresses in the mirror behind the bar.
“How do you all get along, and how do you function with humans knowing what you are?” I finally asked a safe question to distract myself from Goldie.
“We get along because we’ve learned that the world is bigger than any of us ever realized,” Clay replied. “I want to take you to Sanctuary before you go, but it’s not up to me, that place belongs to the
Fae.”
“So it’s true then? There are fairies in Seattle?”
“From what I’ve heard, there are small pockets all over the country, even in your neck of the woods,” Clay assured me. “I want you to meet them, to find out if they can help you. After all, what you are comes from Fae magic.”
I flinched and coughed on my beer. “I don’t know about that.”
“I do, I’ve seen Fairy, and I’ve called the wild hunt. I think that’s what made Goldie an appropriate mate for you, Orson. You said yourself it should only happen to those born to the curse. The wild magic we brought back to the human world changed us, made us more Fae, less human.”
“And what do the Fae thing of the vampires?” Clay paused for a moment and tipped back his bottle and I thought I’d found a weakness in their community.
“Vampires are bred from a former Fae queen and human blood,” he grinned at me. Hence the kumbaya. We’re all kin here.”
I huffed. “Except me. Because there’s no way I’m related to fairies, or vampires. Next, you’ll be telling me demons don’t exist.” He opened his mouth to speak and I raised my hand for him to stop. “They do. I’m not going to talk about it, but they do.”
“OK, but whatever you saw wasn’t a vampire, was it?”
I growled at him and he cleared his throat and went back to his beer, while the club employees behind us finished taking chairs off the tables and checking the lights for the night’s performers and the dance floor.
“I’d like to open a bar back home,” I mused. “Nothing as big as this, just a place to have a beer and listen to some music, play a little pool, employing shifters like y’all do.”
“It’s a good idea. Keeps people making money to survive, builds trust in the community, it’s honest work . . .” Clay pursed his lips and rubbed his chin. “You’d need investors, though.”
“You offering?”
“Nah, I got a pack to feed,” he laughed. “But Nick, well, he’s a financial genius who’s made a lot of good investments over the centuries. I bet he’d be willing to sell off an old property he doesn’t use and help out . . . for a fee, and only if you don’t kill any of his people.”
“I told you, Clay, I didn’t attack Josiah. I was in the middle of getting dressed when he attacked me. And no, I didn’t hurt Golden wolf either. She was as much into it as I was. Hell, I had to tell her to talk to her vampire and sort things out.”
Clay and Steven were staring at me like I’d grown a third eye in the middle of my forehead and I snapped my jaws together abruptly.
“What did you say?” Clay asked softly.
“I said I never hurt Goldie,” I repeated.
“That’s not what you called her, wolf,” Steven growled.
“You mean, Golden wolf? That’s what she is. She’s a golden wolf. It’s part of the reason why I thought she was a royal at first.”
Clay looked pensive, glancing between Steven and I before continuing. “We need to get to the camp, and I need to contact Prince Vash and find out when you can be vetted.” He hopped of the barstool and motioned for me to follow.
“Wait, what does it matter that I called her that? She’s gold, it’s beautiful and rare, but not strange.”
“She’s black, Orson, she’s a black wolf.”
“Not anymore, she isn’t.” Josiah stood at the end of the stage and glowered at me. “Not since he invaded her mind.”
I shrugged and shook my head. “Wolves don’t change color. I don’t know what to tell you.” Clay chewed his lip and jerked his head for Steven and me to leave with him.
“She’ll never be yours, wolf. Get out of town while you can,” the vampire hollered after me, his voice thin and high, reedy, like an old man.
“I guess I won’t be asking his master for an investment,” I sighed, not admitting to Clay that I was mostly relieved that I didn’t have to deal with Nicholas or the other vampires anymore.
“Nah,” Steven chimed in, “Nick’s not like that. He knows what a pain in the ass a jealous guy can be. Just keep it chill and don’t answer him, OK? We don’t need a war in here.”
One of the waitresses looked over and nodded with a serious face and I chuckled and waved, reassuring her that my intentions were peaceful. Josiah continued to splutter and curse at me from the other end of the room, but we ignored him, and his friends kept him from chasing after me, which was better for him than he’d ever know. When we were outside and finally out of earshot, I glanced at the blood trickling from my white-knuckled fists onto the pavement.
I opened my hands and watched as the half-moon cuts in my palm started to heal, and soon there was no evidence that I’d almost pressed my fingernails through my hand with the effort of not beating his blood-sucking face in. Clay took me down past the warehouse and waved at the children rushing out the door to their parents, beaming, red-faced and sweaty from class.
Behind them, a very pregnant woman with skin darker than mine and auburn hair exited and watched us, frowning. “Keep moving, Orson, it’ll be easier if you meet her on sacred land,” Steven chuckled and I glanced back over my shoulder at her, her green eyes glittering and suspicious even from the sidewalk.
“Come back sober, or don’t come back,” she called after us, and Clay laughed aloud.
“The wife?” I asked, and he nodded. “So she knows we’d have to practically drink the city dry to come home not sober, right?” He nodded again.
“She’s just telling us to stay out of trouble,” he grinned. I caught a whiff of wolf on the harbor breeze and sighed.
“Might be easier said than done,” I groaned. I lifted my nose and sniffed again and turned a full circle, looking for whoever was following us. Clay and Steven sniffed too, and Steven immediately relaxed and jerked his head toward a nearby alley.
“Marcos, you scared the new kid,” he teased as he and a tall, lanky wolf embraced. They parted, but Marcos continued to hold Steven’s hand, for comfort or to reassure himself, I wasn’t certain. One thing that was easy to see, is that they were a matched pair, despite Steven being nearly as pale as the vampires, and Marcos almost as dark as the shadows he’d been watching us from.
“You aren’t soulmates, but,” I waved my hand over the energy pouring from them and my breath caught in my throat. “But this is the closest I’ve seen a match mimic the magic of a half-soul mating.”
“Well, you’re going to see a lot more of that at the camp, Orson,” Clay explained. “I told you, things are different here. Your pack is singular for being all born to the curse, mine is unique because wild Fae magic chose, like it used to when shifters were more powerful and hunted across Fairy and the human world alike, feared and respected by all.”
Marcos let go of Steven and held out a hand. “Welcome to Seattle, Baton Rouge.” His low, smooth voice carried a familiar twang and I laughed and gripped his hand tight, shaking it enthusiastically until he laughed.
“Sorry, but you are a sight for sore eyes, Alabama,” I chuckled, releasing him from my death grip. “Nice to hear a familiar voice in a strange town.”
“Strange time too. I heard about your hardship. My nana’s getting the folks together in case you need em to come around.”
“You were born to the curse?” I asked, but he shook his head.
“Nah, I was adopted by a pack after I survived the attack on my family. She always said it was a royal who did it, though, but y’all are so secretive, we knew we’d never find you if you didn’t want it.”
“No. It couldn’t be. I’m sorry, but I know my pack . . .”
Clay snorted. “The same pack of barely controlled violence that’s trying to kill you, so you can’t go back to your brother?”
“It’s not like that. I tore up the chains in the arena. I shouldn’t have been able to do that. I’m sure Thaddeus is just trying to protect his people from the sickness.” I waved them off. “I’m sorry that happened to you, and I know you weren’t accusing me.” I bristled and shook it off. “At least
the bonding worked. Never in my life would I have said that before.”
“If that’s how Goldie affects you, we need to get you guys together,” Steven laughed. “And figure out the formula for everybody else.”
“You and your mate don’t do that for each other?” I asked Clay and his wolves snickered.
“We go about it differently,” he said, clearing his throat and turning away. “Let’s get to the car and take you back to the camp. I’ll text Portia on the way and have her send an emissary.”
I glanced at the two men and Steven grinned at me before trotting to catch up with his alpha. Marcos hung back with me and leaned in as the others disappeared around the corner. “They scream at each other then have hot angry sex, both of which you can hear for miles,” he murmured, his shoulders shaking. “God, they hated each other when they met. But they’re soulmates too, it’s just different out here. No dreams or visions, just the wolves taking charge and demanding the human half listen.”
“But do your alpha and his mate support Goldie choosing the vampire over me?” he shrugged and sighed.
“The part about our clan that ends up being the hardest for most other preternatural creatures to understand, is our free will. They’ll caution her for her health and safety, but in the end, they won’t force her to go with you.”
