Pack Violet Shadow

by C. M. Stunich

  But Nic and Che … their presence was ten, twenty, thirty times stronger.

  Gee. I wonder why?

  I wasn't going to say anything yet, but I was pretty sure that by fucking me, Che had saved his own life. If we hadn't had sex, I don't think I'd have found him, drowning in the dark wet limbs of an icy river.

  The Unseelie Court was supposed to be a glamorous gathering of nightmares, glittering monsters, and alluring fiends. There were spires made of bone and thrones of living flesh, molded and tortured into the appropriate shape. As Majka had once said, it was like a chandelier made of teeth. Pretty from afar, disturbing up close.

  So when the queen took us to a crumbling manor of white stone, picked her way over the rubble that once served as a front door, and showed us to a decaying room around a natural hot spring, I started to get suspicious.

  'What sort of fae queen makes a mistake as costly as that?' I said, referencing our messy entrance into the world of Faerie.

  'Or lives in ruins?' Anubis asked, shifting back to human form and slipping into the steaming pool of water with a sigh. I was already there, sitting on the edge of a stone bench and looking up at the skeletons of stained glass windows above our heads. Here and there I could catch a glittering beam of moonlight on the edge of some colored glass, but for the most part, it was just an elaborate weave of metal holding up an empty sky.

  'Or offers a helping hand to the Alpha-Heir instead of the reigning Alpha?' Montgomery added, studying the warm, clear waters of the pool for several long moments before shrugging out of his clothing to join us.

  “Please tell me I'm not the only one that's freezing my nuts off,” Silas said, the first person to speak aloud in the eerie quiet of the bathing room. I guess he figured the fae queen would be much less interested in hearing him complain than she would be about us speculating as to her true intentions.

  “You still have nuts? You're lucky. I think mine've retreated all the way back up inside my body,” Nic said, cringing a little when I threw him a look with a raised brow.

  “Please don't make me regret the decision to spend the next twelve months trapped with seven dudes,” I whispered and he gave me a weak half-smile. Maybe because my joke was funny. More likely because we both knew it wasn't really my decision to make.

  “A wolf should always be on his best behavior while in the presence of foreign company,” Anubis said, using some of the hot water to smooth down the hair on the left side of his head. It wasn't working. Instead, his pack's signature navy dark hair was spiked up in all directions, like he'd taken a whole palmful of gel to it. “Son of a bitch,” he cursed as he caught sight of his reflection in the water, two sets of red eyes blinking as he studied the mirror image of his face.

  “Son of a bitch?” Che asked with a mean smirk. “Is that part of your best behavior vocabulary?”

  Anubis snapped his gaze up and dropped his hands into his lap with a splash, meeting Che's gaze dead-on. A small dominance war played out between them before they both glanced away simultaneously. It wasn't a draw, not really, more like a let's save this for later sort of a thing.

  “There's not a Numinous out there that isn't raised to think that werewolves are rude, crude, bestial, and base when really, we're a dignified, cultured species with a long history and—”

  “Oh, for fuck's sake,” Che said with a roll of his purple eyes, ducking under the water for a brief moment and slicking his dark hair back from his face. Despite the fact that he'd just nearly lost his life in a river, the water didn't seem to be bothering him. That is, that's what I thought until I saw a slight tremor run over his skin, like the brush of a ghost's icy fingers down his spine. “You sound like a textbook,” he spat out, climbing from the water and standing there casually, arms crossed over his wide chest like he didn't have a care in the world. Now that I was really looking for it, I could see that he was almost desperate to get out and away from the steamy waters of the pool. “Or an Alpha-Mother lecturing a group of kids. Don't tell me you actually believe that crap.”

  “Are you serious?” Anubis asked, rising out of the water, droplets clinging to the tanned surface of his skin, beading on his muscles and sliding down his chest. “Do you really hate yourself that fucking much? Or is it just our people in general you don't like?”

  “Hey, you got me,” Che said with another mean twist of his lips. “You're right—I hate the whole world and everything in it.”

  “Zara,” Nic said softly, the fingers of his left hand curling into a tight fist. He wanted me to put a stop to the argument and really, I should have, considering there was a nearly one hundred percent chance that we were being watched right now. But I couldn't resist the impulse to see a little deeper into the boys' personalities.

  “It didn't seem like you hated Zara yesterday,” Anubis snapped, and then he went completely still, his entire body stiffening. I could see his muscles locking into place beneath his skin as he glanced over at me. “Shit, shit, shit. I have such a huge fucking mouth,” he growled, dropping back into the water and turning to face me. Of course, he didn't dare make eye contact. “I'm sorry Alpha,” he whispered, prostrating himself as best he could in the waist-deep waters of the pool.

  I stared down at Anubis, naked and submissive in front of me. If he'd had a tail at that moment, it'd have been tucked. His head was turned away, eyes downcast, back hunched. If I'd wanted to, I could've ripped him a new one and all the others would've done is sit there and watch. Instead, I smiled.

  Che and I had very nearly escaped being a kelpie's midnight snack; my best friend's mother had died while trying to become a vampire, and my people were being eaten by witches. Now was not the time to pull one of my mother's moves out of the proverbial hat and put Anubis in his place.

  “First you go through my underwear drawer and now this?” I asked, and I swear, the entire room took a collective breath. Anubis lifted his head slightly to look at me, brows drawn together in confusion. I so did not want to be having this conversation right now, with all of us naked and warm and shrouded in steam, but … “Yes, Che and I mated in the forest yesterday,” I said, bringing up the subject everyone but Nic had so carefully stayed away from last night. And god, last night was such a mess. Nic and I had slept—slept only, mind you—in the bed while the others had sprawled out in the study, across the couches and chairs in the living room, and even (in Jax's case) the porch.

  But we didn't need to be spread out and disjointed; we needed to be united.

  “If there's anything you need to say, now's the time,” I said, looking around at the seven men standing naked in the room with me. It was a little distracting, to be surrounded by seven good-looking guys without a single scrap of clothing between them. As a werewolf, nakedness was as natural as breathing, but so was attraction and mating and physical closeness. I was going to have to find a way to balance all of those things.

  A knock at the door put a permanent pause on our conversation.

  “Come in,” I said, sitting up straight and waiting as the half-rotten door swung wide on creaking hinges. The Fae cared as much about nakedness as us wolves did, so the servant waiting on the other side didn't bother asking if it was okay to come in. Instead, a small crooked woman with wrinkly tree bark skin, as tattered and folded as old leather, crept into the room. Her nose was almost as big as her too-wide mouth. It stretched quite literally from one pointed ear to the other, cutting her face in half.

  Without a word, she entered the room and placed a pile of clothing on one of the crumbling stone benches. Behind her, several more small withered faeries entered with more clothing, towels, a wooden tray with brushes and tiny glass bottles with metal wings on their caps.

  “Brownies,” Jax said, sitting on the edge of the pool in human form. His blue eyes watched them carefully as they left the items and disappeared on silent feet. “A type of lesser Fae.”

  “Um, the term lesser Fae isn't really used anymore. It was a derogatory label for any species of Faerie that w
asn't Gentry. It's now considered politically incorrect,” Anubis said, trying once more to unsuccessfully smooth his hair back.

  “What are you, the fucking PC police now?” Che snapped as he dug through the piles of clothing and settled on a pair of purple linen pants with bones sewn into the side seams. And you thought werewolf fashion was weird … “Take a look around—we're not exactly in Kansas anymore, Toto. Do you think those man-eating horse monsters care about politically correct?”

  “I think they'd care if you called them lesser Fae,” Anubis said which only got him a snarl in response. “Maybe that's why you almost got eaten, did you ever think about that?”

  “Boys,” I said, standing up on the bench and rising to my full height. As soon as I did that, all attention was on me. “Let's just focus on getting out of here alive, shall we?”

  “Um, what's a Gentry?” Tidus asked as he pushed himself out of the pool with the strong, rounded curves of his biceps bunching with the motion. The tattoo on his arm caught my attention like a beacon, drawing my eyes to the keyhole and the key lying next to it. I so badly wanted to know what it meant. According to Silas, not all tattoos had to have meaning—not all of his did—but I had a feeling there was a story lying in wait on Tidus' sun-kissed skin.

  “A Gentry is a member of the Faerie nobility,” I explained as I tossed the long wet rope of my hair over one shoulder and squeezed out the excess water. “The ruling class. For centuries, it's been almost entirely dominated by one species—the sidhe.”

  “Gotcha,” Tidus said as he ruffled up his blonde hair with one hand, spattering the stone wall behind him with water. After a moment, he paused. “Wait, what's a 'shee'?”

  “Are you sure you're an Alpha-Heir?” Anubis asked as he picked through the clothing and … grabbed a pair of linen pants in crimson with bones sewn down the side seams. Hmm. Now that I was standing by the piles of clothing, I could see that all the boys had been given the same outfit in different colors. “Who was responsible for your education? The sidhe are the most magically gifted of all the Fae and they hold the thrones of the most powerful Faerie courts.”

  “Maybe he was too busy surfing to attend class?” Silas asked, his tattoos bright and shiny under the droplets of water clinging to his skin. He fished out a pack of cigarettes from his pants and grinned when he discovered they were still dry. “Thank god for small miracles,” he mumbled as he tried to figure out where to store them in the faerie-bone pants. He ended up settling for tucking the pack under the waistband.

  “Shit, is it a crime to want to hit the waves instead of learn about flesh-eating ponies all day? I'm not sorry,” Tidus said with another one of those magnanimous grins. “At least I've got something to talk about that doesn't relate directly back to werewolf politics.”

  “Considering our lives and the lives of our people depend on werewolf politics, I don't think it's such a terrible thing to be knowledgable about,” Montgomery added, putting on a pair of green pants (I was starting to see a theme here—Pack Violet Shadow in purple pants, Pack Crimson Dusk in red ones, Pack Ivory Emerald in green and so on). He tossed his sopping wet trench on over the top, along with his belt and swords. After what I'd seen today, I wasn't feeling inclined to tease him for any of it.

  “Thank you,” Anubis said, throwing out an arm toward Montgomery. “At least somebody here gets me.”

  “Yeah, the guy with the long white braid and the fucking swords,” Che scoffed, leaning his back against the wall and crossing his legs at the ankle. I had to wonder, watching him like that, if he practiced that swaggering bad boy slouch in the mirror. It was textbook. “Congratulations on that.”

  “Do you like potatoes?” I asked Che randomly, pausing naked next to the largest pile of clothing. Apparently the entire gauzy stack was all mine. Lots of fabric, very little coverage, very Fae.

  “Potatoes?” he asked, turning a look on me that was half-amused, half-terrified. He was still reeling from what'd happened at the river and doing his best to cover it up by acting like a douche-y a-hole. I could see through him almost as easily as I could see through the glittering robes the Unseelie Queen had left me. “Um, sure, why?”

  “Because you seem a little down in the dirt right now,” I said, and then waited with a stupid half-smile to see if I'd get any reaction out of him. After a moment, both Tidus and Anubis laughed, so I guess it wasn't that terrible of a joke. I just figured asking a random question about tuberous vegetables would probably go a long way towards stopping the fighting.

  “If Zara's trying for puns then we're in serious trouble,” Nic said with a small smile, yanking on a pair of black pants and fingering the small bones on the side. “Stop being such a spud and try to remember why we're here.”

  “I didn't know Ebon Red was famous for its comedians,” Che said, but at least he was smiling. Sort of. Okay, so maybe it was a bemused smirk I was looking at, but it was better than the cruel twist of lips he'd been wearing earlier.

  I pulled the flimsy silver robes over my shoulders and belted them at the waist with a gray-black belt made of leather and studded with teeth. I wasn't sure what—or more likely who—the teeth had come from, and had a feeling I didn't want to find out.

  “Be careful what you say while we're here,” I said, slicking red hair back from my face. “And if someone asks for your name, just tell them it's Wolf.”

  Silas opened the door for me with a tattooed hand, his chest a kaleidoscope of color that begged to be explored with fingertips and tongues and teeth. Our eyes met as I passed, and I couldn't help wondering what he thought of me and Che. After all, I'd just met the guy. Silas and I, we had a history.

  I swept past him and into the hallway, the robes dragging across the debris strewn ground behind me, bare feet slapping against the old stone. The rough texture actually helped me refocus my mind on the task at hand. Romance and sex … those were luxuries I could only afford if I could keep the boys and me alive long enough to have those sorts of encounters.

  “I can't feel the earth here,” I whispered aloud, glancing over to find Tidus on my right. Nic, of course, always stayed on my left, but the guys seemed to be rotating this position amongst themselves.

  “Me neither,” he said, and for a moment, the expression on his face was actually serious. Since the Alpha-Son of Pack Amber Ash seemed to operate in permanent goofball mode, I knew he must be feeling the strain, too. There might be leaves and grass and trees and dirt here, but the fact was—we were a long way from the place we knew as home. I didn't know what, exactly, the Veil was and how it separated Faerie from our world, but it was clear that we didn't have the same connection to this place as we did our own.

  It also confirmed something else. As the Fae queen had said, all of that delicious earthy magic that we'd been using lately, it really was a part of who we were. We weren't just borrowing it from the world around us. I wondered, though, if we were to stay here … how long would it last? Would it eventually drain from us after a time, without the land to replenish it?

  I had no idea.

  Since I had no clue where I was going, I started back toward the door we'd entered through and hoped somebody would snag us on the way.

  About halfway down the hall, a brownie appeared from an adjacent hallway and crooked one, long, wrinkled finger at us. Even from here, I could see that she had three joints where in a human, there'd be two; it was an eerie sight.

  'It's pretty clear the queen doesn't want anyone to know we're here,' I told the boys as we followed the brownie down the long hallway and around a corner, toward a set of doors carved with the sharp, alien faces of faerie. One was sitting properly in its frame while the other lilted sloppily to the side. 'Hardly any servants, no guards, no other members of the Court. If helping us out really does benefit the fae, then why should it matter that we're here? Why keep it a secret?'

  'Maybe it's not her Court that she's worried about?' Montgomery mused, making me wonder if my instincts were starting to go haywire. Had I
made a mistake by eating that mushroom, bringing my boys here? God, I hoped not. It felt like I'd been making a lot of mistakes lately, and I didn't like it. It made me feel out of control when it was more important than ever that I stay in it.

  Once we reached the doors, we came to a stop and waited while several other brownies joined the first. Together, they used a heavy, knotted rope to drag the one good door open, the old hinges creaking and groaning like the lost souls of long dead faeries.

  Inside, the Unseelie Queen sat inside a circle of bones, gesturing with a pale, glittering hand for us to join her.

  “Protection against witches,” she explained as we moved inside what was probably once a grand throne room. There was a dais on one end, covered with debris and the colorful remains of the shattered glass skylights from above. The floor was stone, and in places, I could see that it had once been polished to a smooth shine. Strange white trees grew from cracks in the floor and walls, twisting and curving like ghosts into the room, their leaves an ebony black that mimicked the color of my eyes. The only light in the room came from the slashes of eerie purple and blue moonlight cutting through the spaces in the dilapidated roof. “Take a seat,” the queen instructed as the boys and I stepped over the bones and into the circle.

  She smiled at us as we took our places, folded our legs beneath us and settled in for … well, goddess only knew what. I had no clue what the faerie had in mind—hopefully, filling us in on everything she knew was part of the plan. Were there werewolves involved in all of this, too? The thought of Selena working to round up her own pack members for the slaughter gave me this awful, empty feeling in my gut. I didn't believe that was true, not at all, but I had to do my due diligence. Rushing into this thing … nothing good would come of it.

  “I thought you might like to dress your men in matching outfits,” the queen said, clearly amused at the circle of werewolves in identical pants. “It's a common practice in Court to dress one's paramours in similar attire—lest anyone else get confused as to whom they belong.”