Caleb

by McCarty, Sarah

  She stepped around Caleb, dodging his grab. His eyes bored into her back as she took four shaky steps to the table. She pulled out a chair beside where Jared stood. He stiffened. Her heart skipped a beat. This close she couldn’t get away if he went all primitive on her. Caleb growled. A glance up showed Jared’s jaw muscles knotted and his gaze skirting his brothers’. Unease filled the room.

  Allie jabbed her elbow in Jared’s side. His brows snapped down along with his chin. She matched him glare for glare. She might not be able to do the slightest vampire thing, but she could handle men, and these five were going to be reasonable if she had to beat it into them.

  “I don’t care what voices are muttering in your head, Jared Johnson. You may be an arrogant ass, but you’re Caleb’s brother. There’s nothing in this world that could make you betray him, so stop glaring at me like you’re some sort of threat.”

  She grabbed the chair seat and tugged it forward. It caught on a floorboard, slipping out of her grip. Before she could tug again, it moved. A glance back showed Jared pushing it in.

  “You sound damn sure.”

  For once, arrogance didn’t lace his tone.

  “I am.” She accepted his help with the chair, sitting down with as much unconcern as she could muster.

  “How?”

  “It’s a gut thing.”

  He blinked. That flicker of emotion that crossed his face could have been relief. She hoped it was. The fact that he took a seat at the other end of the table wasn’t encouraging.

  “Don’t dismiss her gut instincts,” Caleb said, coming up behind her. “They’re what had her saving my ass while I was in wolf form.”

  Derek whistled. “Those are some instincts.”

  “And they tell you we’re not a threat?” Jace asked.

  No, they were telling her to run, but none of the men needed to hear that. “None of you would betray Caleb.”

  Caleb’s hand came down on her shoulder and squeezed. “Thank you.”

  She placed her fingers over his. “You’re welcome.”

  The chair to her left scraped across the floor as Caleb pulled it out. Under the table, she hooked her fingers around his pinky as the other brothers took seats as far away as they could. Derek sat on the right with the brothers. She doubted the symbolism of she and Caleb being on one side, while unintentional, was lost on anyone, least of all Caleb. There was definitely a symbolic “us against them” theme developing here. Completely unacceptable, in her opinion.

  “This can’t continue.”

  “That’s for sure,” Caleb said in a drawl so calm she could have kissed him. “Either you all get over this fascination with my wife or we’ll leave, but this has to end.”

  Again with the wife thing. “I’m not your wife yet.”

  Slade’s head snapped around. Jace shook his head, the ever-present smile missing from the corners of his wide mouth. “I’m thinking that would not be a point you want to be arguing right now.”

  Allie shifted in her seat, unease flitting through her. It wasn’t their stares that bothered her, but that indefinable underlying tension she sensed. The hair on the back of her neck stirred. Caleb’s hand enveloped hers. Tension hummed off him, too, but more lethal. More focused. She sighed. “Maybe not.”

  Caleb squeezed her knee. Comfort, or an order to shut up? “How long has this been going on?” he asked.

  “Near as we can figure, it started the second day after she arrived.”

  Allie did the math. She glanced up at Caleb, who was studying the other men at the table as if he’d never seen them before. “That would make it after we—”

  Another squeeze, harder this time. She shut up.

  “And it’s been building steadily?” he asked.

  Jace ran his hand through his hair. “Pretty much every time you notice she needs more blood, we notice how much more appealing she’s getting.”

  “Sexually.” Caleb didn’t pose it as a question and no one treated it as one.

  Jared’s flat, cold “Definitely” was more scary than a thousand words could ever be. The hair on the nape of her neck danced. Caleb’s hand flipped on her thigh, lying there in an invite she didn’t hesitate to accept. She took an easier breath when his fingers closed around hers. Some things, like being the focus of mass lust, were easier to take with a reminder that he was there if she needed him. “I swear, I haven’t done anything differently.”

  Another of those cold realities that gave her the willies. This time from Slade. “We know.”

  “How bad is it?” None of the deadly emotion she could feel coiling within Caleb colored his drawl.

  The twist of pain deep in her gut made her gasp. Hunger. How could she be hungry again so soon? As if in answer to her question, the tension started again. Along with the hunger came something else. A tickle of sensation, and then an alien whisper of sound so faint she wasn’t even sure it was real and not a hiccup of her imagination.

  Come.

  She blinked slowly, looking around the table. Had anyone else heard the command? Given it? There was nothing to indicate either way. The men were all looking at Caleb. She waited. The whisper didn’t repeat. The sensation didn’t linger. Only the hunger remained, strong and growing stronger by the second. She pushed it aside as it began its claim. She couldn’t deal with it right now. Especially knowing that others were privy to the struggle she thought was private. Another look around the table revealed every man present was looking at her with an expression of urgency and determination. “Good grief, I might as well be wearing a neon sign.”

  “It’s true.” Jared waved his hand at their interlaced fingers. “She gets an urge to put on the feed bag and we want to feed her. She has other . . . needs, and we want to fulfill them, too.”

  Other needs. She stood so fast her chair teetered and then balanced with a staccato rattle. He could not be talking about what she thought he was talking about.

  “Sexual needs,” Caleb reiterated, pulling her down onto his lap.

  “Exactly.”

  Allie shot Slade a glare. “You don’t have to sound so excited about it. One of you is more than enough for me.”

  She was rather proud of the way she kept her voice steady, because in reality, the thought of every man in her vicinity wanting to stake a claim was terrifying. Heat seared her face at the images that might be going through their minds at that very minute. She cut off the imaginings and gritted her teeth against the tremendous, totally understandable urge to flee. She wasn’t talking bookworms and geeks after all. Every man she’d seen for the last three weeks was a walking ad for muscular, testosterone-laden perfection. Which had been intimidating enough when she’d thought they saw her as part of the woodwork or as a duty to get through. Knowing they now saw her as some sort of sexual toy up for grabs sent chills chasing the hunger prowling through her being.

  Slade shook his head and flicked a crumb from the edge of the table. “I’m excited about the clues being put together. I’m not excited about wanting my brother’s woman.”

  She believed him. There couldn’t be a worse hell for the brothers than an urge to turn on each other. Because of her. She didn’t know what to say except, “I’m sorry.”

  Caleb pulled her back against the solid muscle of his abdomen. His hands cupped her shoulders, the fingers spreading down over her collarbone, moving back and forth with soothing regularity. “It’s not your fault, Allie.”

  “You keep telling me that.” She traced an old nick in the maple tabletop. The warmth of his touch did not reach the cold hollow deep inside. Who knew her talent for disaster would follow her into immortality? “But every time I turn around, I’m causing some upheaval in your existence.”

  “A little shaking up is good for us.”

  A little maybe, but this was ruining his life. She glanced up. Derek and Jace’s gazes were locked on Caleb’s fingers, their faces etched with an unsettling heat. She glanced down. The third button on her shirt had come unbuttoned, exposing the
beginning of cleavage. She reached for it, watching their faces as she did so, noting the way their throats worked as they swallowed, watched as Derek’s tongue dampened his lips and felt his lust as clearly as she felt Caleb’s. Above her, Caleb’s “Son of a bitch” grated through the heavy silence.

  She fastened the button with fingers that shook, her mind racing a hundred miles an hour. This wasn’t good. Couldn’t be good. Couldn’t end well. She scooted from under Caleb’s grasp, getting to her feet, shaking her head when he would have pulled her to him, unable to ignore any longer the threat surrounding her, wanting nothing more than to go back one hour in time to when she’d had the bliss of ignorance.

  “Allie.”

  She shook her head. “Not now, Caleb.”

  “No one’s going to hurt you.”

  “I know.” At least logically she did, but there was another part of her, one primitively feminine, that told her to get away, to hide. “I just need some privacy.”

  Jace’s “For what?” ended in a grunt as Derek’s elbow connected with his rib cage. The small violence chafed her restraint. Her senses, so much more acute than they used to be, fed that kernel of panic with the increased scent of male interest, the accelerated heartbeats, the deeper rasp of breaths drawn too fast. It caught them all and amplified them, a warning attached to every sensory trickle. Run!

  She didn’t run, but she did walk very steadily out of the room. When she hit the stairs, she let go, burning off the edge of adrenaline with a rapid ascent, forcing herself to slow when she reached the top, to avoid the board that squeaked in front of the first bedroom door, to sedately progress to the door where her and Caleb’s bedroom was located. The Johnson brothers were not a threat and she wasn’t going to let her crazy imagination make them into one.

  “SHE’S not safe with us, Caleb.”

  “So it would appear.” He just didn’t believe it. The scent of Allie’s panic lingered in the wake of her flight. Upstairs a door closed too slowly. As if the person closing it was making a point. Caleb wondered who was supposed to absorb it, Allie or himself. He looked over at Slade. “What I want to know is, what’s changed?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “That wasn’t the answer I was looking for.”

  Slade shrugged. “It’s the only one I’ve got.”

  “You find anything out from that damn Internet?”

  “Beyond the fact there are more myths surrounding vampires than fact? No.”

  “Dig deeper.”

  “There’s only so deep I can go without rousing interest from parties like the D’Nallys.”

  “Shit.”

  “We could ask that bunch of loco weeds over on the other side of the mountain.”

  “About all they’d do is try to convert her to their religion.” And he did not need Allie experimenting with that group’s sort of altered reality.

  “Heck, they’re not even talking to us after Jared tossed that too-pretty wannabe out on his ass when he approached him for a special time.”

  “Still, they have a lot more contact with other vampires.”

  “Anyone ever see them with a converted female?” Caleb asked.

  He hadn’t seen any and wasn’t surprised when his brothers shook their heads. He glanced at Derek. The were shrugged. “It’s hard to say for sure because they get trigger happy when anyone gets near, but no were in these parts has ever seen a vampire female. Or if they have, have never mentioned it.”

  And they would have mentioned it. Of that Caleb was sure. He took a breath, scanning for Allie. She was in their room. Upset, hungry, and trying not to show either. “Then they have no more experience than we do. That being the case, there’s no sense alerting them to Allie’s presence.”

  Jared nodded. “I agree. Even if they are more prone to spit philosophy than bullets, we don’t need to take chances. Especially if her effect is the same on all males.”

  Derek’s chair creaked as he turned it and straddled it. “There’s another possibility that might explain what’s happening.”

  “What?”

  He draped his arms across the back. “When a packmate gets . . . in the family way, instinct drives the mother to separate herself.”

  “Why?” Jace asked.

  “A fertile female is a very valuable commodity. Worth any cost to steal.”

  “Again, why? If you can make as many weres as you want, why is pregnancy so special?”

  “We can’t.”

  “Can’t what?”

  “Make as many weres as we want. It’s a rare human that can be converted, but most just die, poisoned by the bite rather than converted.”

  “Shit.” Caleb hadn’t known that. “But some can be converted?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And to think we thought all we had to worry about was rabies.”

  Caleb cut Jace a glare before turning his attention back to Derek. “How do you know if a human can be converted?”

  Derek shrugged. “Pretty much, it’s just instinct.”

  “Anyone ever guessed wrong?” Jace asked.

  The twist of Derek’s mouth told the story. “Enough that anyone trying to convert a human these days faces execution.”

  “Which doesn’t explain why pregnant females go into isolation,” Slade pointed out.

  “Weres mate for life and only mated pairs have a prayer of bearing offspring.”

  “Not following your point.”

  “Mating with a fertile female means pack position and power. Anyone wanting that power has to kill the original male and all his offspring to insure the propagation of his own line,” Derek explained, the expression on his face not exactly reflecting happiness with the way things were.

  “Son of a bitch!”

  Caleb glanced at his younger brother. “Jace?”

  Jace didn’t seem to hear, his attention focused inward, his lips pressed into a flat line, his eyes swirling with angry lights. Caleb repeated his name. “Jace? You all right?”

  Jace ran his hand through his hair. “I’m fine.” He turned to Derek. “How long will a female stay in hiding?”

  “As long as she has to.”

  “Hell!”

  “Anything you want to share, Jace?” Damn, Caleb hoped Jace hadn’t been messing with were women again. With everything else going on, they did not need an escalation of the war.

  Jace met his gaze dead-on. “No.”

  Derek glanced over at Caleb, one eyebrow quirking upward. “Could Allie be pregnant?”

  The question hit him like a fist in the gut, driving his breath out in a harsh grunt. Could she be pregnant? Did vampires even get pregnant? “I don’t know.”

  “Don’t know if she’s pregnant or if she could get pregnant?”

  “Either.” He’d never even considered the possibility. He turned to Slade. “Can a male vampire get a female vampire pregnant?”

  “How the hell should I know? Procreation hasn’t been a subject that’s ever come up before.”

  “You’ve been the one looking up all the lore.”

  “You know what I know. According to lore, which isn’t exactly science, vampires are sterile.”

  Shit! Caleb ran his hand through his hair, resting his hand on the back of his neck, squeezing hard as what Slade said sank in. He’d been making love for centuries under the assumption—the assumption—that he couldn’t get a woman pregnant. Goddamn it all to hell. Could Allie be pregnant?

  “It would explain a lot of things,” Jared said.

  “For what it’s worth, I’ve never heard of a vampire mating resulting in offspring,” Derek offered.

  Caleb ran his hand through his hair again, ripping through a snarl, frustration, elation, hope, and panic all combining in his gut. Maybe it wasn’t possible for a female vampire to get pregnant, but he’d taken Allie as a human, part changed, granted, but part human still. Maybe human enough to conceive.

  “A vampire baby?” He took a breath, struggling to contain the elation that soared. A c
hild. He might have a child. He settled his hat back on his head, reaching for steady when all he wanted to do was shout with joy. Damn, a baby. Maybe even a little Allie. Wouldn’t that be something? He hadn’t been around a baby since Jace was born. They were tiny little things. Delicate. Helpless. Would a vampire baby be bigger? Grow faster? Sure enough it would still need its parents. It took everything he had to keep his drawl neutral. “What the hell would that even look like?”

  “Like us.”

  The hoarse, angry whisper snapped into the room. Caleb turned. Allie stood in the doorway, feathers bobbing on her head, her fingers gripping the jamb until the knuckles showed white, and all the pain in the world glaring at him from her big blue eyes.

  Shit.

  13

  “HOW long were you standing there?” Caleb asked.

  Allie pushed away from the wall. Her hands clenching into fists at her side. “Long enough to know that beneath the vampire, men are still men.”

  He took a step toward her. “Allie girl . . .”

  “Don’t.”

  The wave of her hand was supposed to warn him off, but if she thought that was enough to keep him from her when she was hurting, she had another thing coming. As soon as he got within striking distance, she lashed out. He caught her wrist in his hand. Spinning her around was easy considering she’d put everything she had into that blow. He grabbed her other hand and crossed her arms over her torso, pulling her back against him, wincing when her heel connected with his shin.

  “Let me go.”

  “No. You’re hurting.”

  “You called our baby a freak.”

  Her head snapped back into his face, striking squarely on his chin. Stars exploded between his eyes. “Son of a bitch!”