Soul of the Wolves

by Lizzie Lynn Lee

  Her face colored. Geez. Does he have to say it so crudely? “Your room.”

  “And we were already husband and wife by then,” he mused. “Tell me, did we fuck again that morning?”

  Apparently, this man liked the word “fuck.” “I… I had the worst hangover ever.”

  “Hmm.”

  “You left when I was busy, you know, worshipping the porcelain throne. You were just…gone. I thought you had a change of heart. I didn’t hear from you again until your cousin contacted me, telling me that you were in a plane accident. Then, here I am.” Sookie forced herself to meet his eyes, schooling her most innocent face ever. But she felt as if the word “liar” had been stamped on her forehead. Did he know I was lying? Was my story too far-fetched?

  Ethan seemed to be concerned with something else. “Are you sure we fucked? I can’t smell my scent on you.” He leaned closer, sniffing her again. “Wolves like us would’ve remembered any female we’ve been with.”

  Huh? Damn Cain, that motherfucker. How come he didn’t tell me something as important as this? “I-I don’t know what you mean. It’s been two weeks since Vegas. I’ve showered and bathed countless times like normal people do.”

  A ghostly smile hovered at his lips.

  “Plus, you have amnesia… don’t you?”

  His eyes pierced hers as if he knew some juicy, delicious secret that she didn’t.

  Her heart felt as if it stopped a minute. Was that a trap? Cain had warned her that Ethan was incredibly cunning and shrewd.

  Ethan pushed forward, invading her personal space. It took her all of her preservation not to jump up from the sofa. His gaze raked over her body from top to bottom. “I think we must have shared a special bond if I decided to marry you on the spot. Tell me, do you love me?”

  What? She didn’t expect that kind of question. Is this a trick? He’d know if she lied. He wasn’t stupid. “I… I don’t know. We basically just met. People do a lot of crazy things in Vegas.”

  “Do you want to annul this marriage?”

  Yes. Yeeees!

  She scrambled her brain. Cain didn’t say she had to stay married to this guy. He just ordered her to pretend to be Ethan’s wife. Nevertheless, she chose her words carefully. “If you think that best for us.”

  “But you already know our secret. If you want out that means I have to kill you.”

  Crap. “I won’t tell anyone. I’m good at keeping secrets.”

  “Are you?”

  “Yes.”

  Unexpectedly, he laughed hard. His deep, rich voice rang to the ceilings. “Relax. I’m not such a heartless bastard that I would cast a woman aside like a used napkin. I intend to honor my marriage vow.” He touched her face and curled his finger on strands of her hair. “I still can’t remember anything about you, so it’s high time for us to get reacquainted.”

  “Re-reacquainted?”

  “Intimately.”

  Ack. Too freaking soon.

  “Why don’t you make yourself comfortable while I tell my guests that I’ll be retired for the evening? Wait for me in the bed. Naked.”

  “I…”

  He gave her a look that said it wasn’t a request. It was an order.

  Her face burned. Suddenly, a flicker of anger exploded inside her. “I don’t think I care for your tone. Who died and made you the boss of me?”

  “Well, who indeed? You married an alpha of a direwolf pack; I’m the boss.” He gave her an indulgent smile as he rose, all six-foot five-inches of him, towering above her. “Clearly, my dear, you need to learn more about pack rules and dynamics. I will overlook this for now since you’re a human, but I expect you’ll adjust to our situation. Fast. After all, I’m your husband, your alpha, and this is your life from now on.”

  He sounded so haughty Sookie forgot her fear momentarily. She very much wanted to smack him with her four-inch stiletto pump and wipe that arrogant smirk off his face.

  He seemed to notice the defiance in her face and relished it. “I’ll be back in ten minutes.”

  “Don’t bother,” Sookie barked indignantly. “I have a headache. I’m not in the mood. Good night.”

  “I like that fire in you. Save some of that for in the bed,” he totally ignored her.

  She watched him leave with her teeth gritted. When the door was closed, she sobered immediately. She couldn’t do this. She wasn’t ready. She wasn’t the type of woman who could put on a fake face and please a man like a who—

  But Jesse…

  Her anger died out as fast as it came. Heavy knots squeezed her chest. Jesse needed her. She wouldn’t get the antidote by being stubborn.

  Sookie forced herself up and ambled to the mini bar. She needed some kind of courage. Something to dull her spirit. She grabbed a new glass and poured some vodka. She paused midway and decided to gobble the liquor straight from the bottle. Oh, yeah, she’d bed him, all right. He didn’t say she couldn’t do it shitfaced.

  The vodka burned her throat.

  She coughed badly as liquor made its way to her belly. She got heartburn instantly. No, not enough, I’m still angry. Fuck Cain. Fuck Ethan. Fuck all werewolves. I hope you all get mange and rabies! She drank some more until she noticed the ceiling started to spin. Staggering, she put the bottle back, not bothering to replace the cap, toward the bed. She kicked her shoes off and proceeded to yank down her gown. The beautiful silk dress Cain had chosen for her to wear didn’t even reach her ankles when she tumbled down to the mattress, passing out.

  Chapter Two

  As Ethan made his way to his guests in the ballroom, he kept thinking about her, couldn't get over his fascination to his new wife. She was amusing. Terrible liar, too. He could see the way she was terrified of him but she stood her ground like a good little soldier. That brave little kitten.

  Where did Cain find a woman like her?

  He didn’t quite understand why his cousin would choose Sookie as his accomplice. Ethan wasn’t stranger to professional grifters with beauty, silver tongues and knock-out bodies. He brushed up with all kinds of characters in the underworld. Cain could have hired some pro but he didn’t. Did Cain choose her because she looked innocent? Or because she was his type?

  Or maybe because Sookie was his mate?

  The thought made him pause.

  Nah, he dismissed it quickly. Cain couldn’t possibly know that fact. And there was no reason to announce that yet. No. He’d better keep that discovery to himself.

  Was this whole thing nothing but pure coincidence? And why was his mate a human? A wolf always found his mate with another wolf, it had always been so since the beginning.

  Over the centuries, intermarriage between packs had caused the numbers of purebloods to dwindle. To keep their unbroken line pure from the First—their progenitor ancestors—House Hunter practiced some degree of consanguinity. Humans might call them immoral but then again werewolves were not humans, though they were bound by the laws of humans. A pureblood Hunter often forsook the call of his true mate in favor of preserving the bloodline.

  Ethan had heard some endless tales of loveless unions in his family, often ending in doom. Like his parents’ marriage. His mother couldn’t even stand his own father. She drank herself to death before Ethan reached the age of ten. Being a Hunter wasn’t always an easy, happy life. His father, the previous alpha, was a cold-hearted wolf who was unable to show his love to anybody. For him, duties to the pack came first. He drilled that creed into his son’s head religiously. Ethan had never been troubled with the mate problem before. To him, all females were the same. Nothing but sexual partners. Never form an attachment. Definitely not love.

  Until he met Sookie.

  The wolf within him wanted to howl and shed his skin. An overwhelming urge to claim her, mark her and make her his forever roiled inside him, threatening to destroy his level-headedness.

  So, this is what it feels like to be head over heels toward a mate, he thought. Love is a scary thing. It hits you when you least expected a
nd pulled you into a current of madness because logic and the voice of reason no longer mattered.

  Even though she was planted by his cousin to deceive him, the thought of not being able to be with her made him irritated. She’s crazy if she thinks I’d let her go. What would Cain do after this? Would he lay low? Or would he prepare to rebel?

  Ethan stopped before the double doors of the ballroom, hands paused on the handle. Shit, why did everything have to come at the same time? He had a lot to deal with already. Finding his mate was a distraction he didn't need. Nor one he could ignore.

  With an inward sigh, he pulled the doors open and strode in. He made small conversation with a few guests before he announced that he'd be retiring for the night. He thanked everyone for coming to the party. His beta, Graystone, asked for his attention just when he was about to return to his chamber.

  The investigator waited in his office. Jensen Weber was an invisible pack member, a spymaster who had served since the previous alpha. He was an old wolf with no remarkable features. His face and figure were so ordinary, he could blend into the wall and nobody would have noticed him. But Weber himself was intelligent, ruthless and dangerous. During his father's reign, Weber had disposed of countless enemies in the name of House Hunter and the pack. His service was invaluable.

  The spymaster rose from the chair and inclined his head when Ethan entered the room. Graystone closed the door and remained standing while Ethan and Weber took their seats. Weber quickly launched his report. He opened a brown folder and extricated a stack of eight-by-eleven photographs.

  Ethan examined them in silence.

  Picture after picture of mangled, decapitated bodies. Some humans. Some werewolves. Then he saw the dead new breed. Ethan paused, examining them carefully. The new breed faintly resembled common werewolves. While the common werewolves shared ninety percent of their traits of Canis lupus, only three times bigger, stronger, faster and deadlier, the new breed was a bipedal beast with the body of a man and head of the wolf, coarse hair that covered its entire body, misshapen skull, and grotesque in appearance. The stuff of a madman's nightmare.

  "These new breeds, are they formerly humans?" Ethan asked.

  "I didn’t perform a necropsy on this particular incident. My best guess is our kind.”

  “Does Alpha Strain affect humans the same way it does wolves?”

  The spymaster’s expression turned grave. “Humans who had been infected with the alpha strain couldn’t be controlled once the transformation took place, unlike common-born werewolves. There was no sign of their intelligence nor humanity left. Their life span is also short unless the infected take continuous doses of the alpha strain. An infected human wants nothing, but kills the next creature and feeds. With werewolves, the infected retains some degree of cognitive functions and intelligence. They can be somewhat controlled until the effect is wearing off."

  “And how long is that?”

  “Infected humans will last ten days unless they are given a continuous dose. With werewolves, one moon cycle or so.”

  Interesting, Ethan pondered heavily on that information. As a purebred direwolf, his very blood was toxic to others. A drop of his blood in an open wound could make a common werewolf or human suffer sporadic transformations before they succumbed into madness. The only way to obtain a pureblood power was through breeding. A halfling usually retained fifty percent of its sire’s power. Less if the dame was the purebred direwolf. And now, somebody had found a way to stabilize the alpha strain. If they succeeded, any werewolf could be made to be as strong as a direwolf.

  This would only spell disaster.

  Wolves were pack animals with a strong alpha who maintained the law and the pack dynamic. If everybody was an alpha, there would be fights for dominance and territory. Chaos would soon follow and it would attract unwanted attentions from humans. Werewolves had been successfully running under the radar within the general population because the alphas of each clan kept everybody’s paws on the line.

  “What's the incubation period for the virus to manifest from infection to full transformation?" asked Ethan.

  "With the latest strain?” Weber made a face as if he just tasted something distasteful. “Minutes, for both humans and wolves. I’ve witnessed it myself before I cut the poor suckers down.”

  Ethan was taken aback. He hadn’t expected whoever hired these goons had made such advanced progress with the strain. This isn’t good. If they perfect the formula, all hell breaks loose, he thought grimly.

  Rumor had it that his grandfather was the one who started to create manmade werewolves when he was the alpha. Fearing that pureblood direwolves would one day be extinct, his grandfather had his scientists extract the essence of what made a direwolf the king of all wolves. The substance was later named the Alpha Strain. His grandfather had slaughtered many old purebloods for his research. His action caused dissent within packs that ended with a coup d’etat. Ethan’s father assassinated his grandfather and took control as the alpha, preventing a civil war within the pack. He shut down the research and silenced the scientists that made them.

  During his father’s reign, the Alpha Strain was a taboo subject to even whisper between the walls of Lunar Mansion. Ethan thought that was the end of House Hunter’s dark chapter. Then, two years ago, some beasts were reported killing pack members in a most gruesome way, and once again, the cursed Alpha Strain resurfaced.

  Someone had revived the project. Ethan was convinced that the mastermind behind it didn’t only seek to preserve the pureblood line, he also wanted a global domination. Get rid of humans from the planet and populate the earth with only cryptids.

  Contrary to popular belief, a man didn’t turn into a werewolf because he was bitten by one. A wolfman was born, the genetic anomalies were passed from parents to child. A common wolfman usually transformed into a regular wolf: fur, tail and quadrupedal, albeit stronger, larger, and more agile than their animal counterpart. A direwolf retained human characteristics when transformed. They walked on two feet, with fully functioning sharp and deadly five-digit claws instead of paws. Their heads morphed into the heads of a wolf, longer snout, razor-sharp teeth, a sharper sense of hearing, sight and smell. A direwolf was far larger than a common wolfman, hence the enhanced strength.

  The spymaster’s information made Ethan uneasy. He tapped his fingers on the armrest. “Did you find any direct link that Cain’s the one responsible for these monstrosities?”

  “That’s the problem. I haven't been able to find any connection to Cain. I suspect Cain financed this project and we’re still chasing the leads. An associate of mine is a former FBI forensic accountant. He had been working on this since last spring. We went through everything with a fine-tooth comb. We're sure we'll find some evidence sooner or later. Nothing can stay hidden in this day and age."

  "What about the facility where these new breeds are manufactured?"

  "We're still trying to locate it. I have a feeling it's an underground lab with the capability to generate its own electricity to avoid detection. We monitor any place that uses large energy consumption. With this level of sophistication in genetic engineering, I highly doubt they run a rinky-dink operation."

  Ethan furrowed his brows. “Without concrete evidence that Cain’s the mind behind this project, all we have are rumors. I can’t mete out punishment based on rumors. It is not done.”

  Weber looked chastised. “Forgive me. I haven’t been able to find the person behind your plane accident. If I may speak freely, Alpha. . .”

  “Speak.”

  “Why continue to pretend that you have amnesia? The one who came up with your marrying a mysterious woman was Cain. That alone is enough to bring him to tribunal trial.”

  Ethan leaned back on the backrest. “I can. To be honest, I’m curious.”

  Weber gave him a questioning look.

  “I’m curious how far my cousin will carry on with this charade. Cain always played it safe before. One might wonder why he took such a
risk now. Don’t you find this most intriguing, Jensen?”

  Judging from his expression, the spymaster didn’t share the same opinion. He only inclined his head in silence.

  Ethan decided it was time to see his waiting bride. His cock stirred just thinking about her. Would she hiss and bare her claws? She might look meek but she had a fiery temper in her. He smoothened his trousers as he rose. “Let me know when you find anything else.”

  The spymaster got up and bowed.

  Graystone opened the door for Ethan and shadowed him through the corridor like a wraith in haunting on his tail. His beta was a large wolfman but his steps were as silent as a ghost. “Keep a clear head, Alpha,” he said. “You might as well avoid liquor tonight. I didn’t like the look of your cousin earlier.”

  “Oh? You never liked Cain’s face before.”

  “This time is different.”

  “Something I need to worry about?”

  “Just a hunch for now.”

  Graystone possessed sharp instincts. His hunch was usually dead on. Ethan clasped his hand on Graystone’s shoulder. He heard his beta’s warning loud and clear. “I wasn’t planning on drinking anyway.”

  Sookie woke up with a pounding headache and parched throat. Her mouth tasted as if she’d been munching on a sandpit. A dull, reverberating pain thumped behind her eyeballs. Jesus Fucking Christ. Where am I? For a second she didn’t recognize where she was. She was in a stranger’s bed. She pushed herself to sit up, grimacing. Her bones felt like molasses. She just wanted to crawl under the covers and never see daylight ever again. Gah. This is why I hate drinking. Stupid hangover.

  “Ah, you woke up. Good.” The grand alpha’s voice loomed out of nowhere. “We have to go. Be ready in five minutes.”

  Hazy memories came back to her. Right. They were supposed to be getting to know each other intimately, but instead, I chugged down some vodka so I didn’t have to deal with it. Sookie winced. “Go? Go where?”

  “Are you okay?” Ethan pressed his hand on her forehead. “You were out cold when I returned. You’re really a light drinker.”