by M. L. Briers
“You think I would beat my mate?”There wasn’t so much as a growl to his voice as his voice was one big growl.
A full body shiver ran through the length of her. She wasn’t sure if it was the fact that right then he looked like he could beat her, or just reach out and snap her neck, which was probably the kindest option. Or the fact that her body was responding to the feral growl as his body practically melding with hers, even through the layers of clothes that separated them. But this wasn’t a time to analyze anything more than the death glare she was receiving.
“I’m kind of hoping that means no.”Her voice didn’t sound like her own, it was higher for one thing, and she’d tried to impart some sarcasm in there, but he was probably too far gone to appreciate it. Not that Lycans were known for their sense of humour…
Half of him wanted to wring her neck and the other half wanted to kiss her into submission. He went for the latter, bringing his lips down on hers in a punishing kiss that gave her no option to think it through, no reason with which to deny his advances, and no clue as to what hit her senses as they slammed into overdrive, like someone had flipped the nitrous oxide on her tank and her body just hit warp speed. But boy was it an enjoyable ride.
By the time he released her, she was floundering in a sea of uncertainty, and the uncertainty was if she wanted him to stop at all. Her body was primed for more. Her mind had given up the ghost of holding back the mating pull as long as possible, because she knew it just wasn’t possible any longer. Whether she liked it or not, and right now she liked it a lot, she was well and truly buckled into this rollercoaster ride with no way off.
“You- kissed-me.”Panting for breath she couldn’t help but state the obvious.
“Nothing gets past you does it?”Gone was the scowling dark brow. Gone was the look of a man that wanted to kill her, replaced by a smug smile and a playfulness that left her all mushy inside. He looked toe curlingly sexy, and if she wasn’t still pinned against the wall she might just have crawled up his body and wrapped herself around him.
“Smartarse.” She couldn’t help the small twinge of irritation that his smugness caused her. He was so self assured at that moment that she would like to have wounded his ego, but her soft mushy centre just couldn’t find the incentive to do it. Being a jerk just didn’t seem enough to cut it.
“Then I guess we’re well suited.”He grinned back at her. Two rows of perfect white teeth with just the slightest protrusion of his fangs gleamed back at her, and she found that even sexier. Goddess, but she was losing her mind…
“I’d say bite me…”Jill saw the flash of his eyes as his mind took him to that imagine in a heartbeat. She felt his hardness twitch against her stomach and his fingers tighten slightly around her wrists. When she heard the small growl of desire and longing that rolled through his chest, she mentally grinned to herself. “But I wouldn’t want to catch anything untoward.” Yea, the bitch is back. Long live the bitch and down with this mushy stuff… for now.
“I’ve had my shots.”Brad wasn’t totally stupid. She was fishing for something to annoy him with, and likening him to a rabid dog didn’t faze him one bit. Sticks and stones… He could feel her desire for him burning as brightly within her as it was within him, and that was all he gave a damn about right now. If she wanted to keep fighting it, she could give it her best shot, because he knew that it was just a waste of her energy, and sooner rather than later, she would tire and succumb to the pull.
“Get a room…”Wesley’s voice boomed out down the hallway, startling the both of them from the reality that they weren’t the only two people left on the planet. “There are plenty upstairs, just pick one that doesn’t scent of vampire, and is not at very end of the hallway, that’s mine and I’d rather not witness the floorshow if you don’t mind.”Wesley carried on walking right past them without even bothering to look at them. If he hadn’t of been speaking to them he could have been mistaken for not noticing they were there.
“Sounds like a good idea…”Brad wriggled his eyebrows suggestively at her as she went to open her mouth, but she never got that far as he dropped her wrists and swept her up against him. One large hand against her backside as he hoisted her up his body, and the other against her back, as he stalked off down the hallway in the opposite direction to the vampire, and giving her no option that to wrap herself around him or swing about helplessly against him.
“What do you think you’re doing?”Jill hissed at him. She felt his speed increasing and clung on tighter like a damn spider monkey.
“Taking you somewhere we can be alone.”
“I don’t want to be alone with you.”She protested, and her mind and body protested her protestations.
“Yes. You do.”He was adamant. He knew exactly what she was thinking and feeling and he wouldn’t let her wriggle off that particular hook.
“I have a friend to look after, a friend your pack wants to eat.”It was a low blow, but she was kind of panicking inside.
“The blood feud has been lifted, nobody is going to hurt Petra.”He felt her whole body tense against him and stopped in his tracks, slowly lowering her down against his body. She noted the little dance his eyebrows were doing on his forehead and it kind of endeared him to her even more. Damn it!
Brad reached out and cupped her cheek with the palm of one large hand. He could feel the newfound tension within her that had nothing to do with trying to fight the mating pull. This was concern for her friend, and that was something he could do something about.
“Two vampires and two Lycans protecting Petra. What are the odds that anything is going to happen to her?” She went to rush to judgement on that and he could see the fire in her eyes, an instant spark of irrationality, and he set about quashing it. “Remembering that one of them is her mate, who is also the pack Alpha.”He added and saw her think that one over, like a little light bulb had gone on over her head, before her shoulders rolled with a half hearted shrug.
“Yeah, but still…”These were Lycans, and they had long memories, like damn elephants, they just weren’t scared of little mice and would probably gobble them up, fur and all… She shivered at the very thought, oh how she felt a little like that poor mouse right about now.
The lopsided grin he gave her made her heart thump in her chest and her stomach flip-flop. Damn it to hell! She’d never been in love, but it was supposed to feel something like this. But how could she be falling in love with a guy that she’d only physically known for under a day? And most of that had been spent in a comatose, drink induced sleep of the dead. But he is cute, and sexy, and built like a brick outhouse, and mine… oh that was sooo not a good word to think, to use, to describe, and most definitely to say out loud! She mentally clamped her lips shut to that word, to that thought.
“You still worried?”Brad took her sudden loss of words and slightly pensive look for more of the same where her friend was concerned. He didn’t want his mate to worry, didn’t like to see her like this, feel her emotions on the edge. She was his mate and he would protect her with his life, as he would Petra.
“Nooo…”Not about that so much as the fact that I’ve become a clingy, jealous, mate-centred, possessive lunatic…and it isn’t even dinner time yet!
“Relax sweetheart, everything is going to be fine. I promise.”
Says the guy who a moment ago wanted to kill me and now wants to protect me from life, the universe, and everything. This wasn’t a Douglas Adams book. There was no Hitchhikers guide to the galaxy here, mores the pity. It was a shame the author hadn’t written a book entitled, Lycans, the mating pull, and everything. At least then she might have had a road map to go by. Oh what she wouldn’t give for a Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster cocktail right now, that would take the damn edge off. All she could manage was another shrug off her shoulders and a non committal grunt.
Dale yanked on his jeans one leg at a time and with purpose. He might have run his beasts damn legs off, but he was still pumped with the knowledge that his mate h
ad rejected him, and so damn forcibly. He knew why, she was in shock and hurting, and he wanted nothing more than to comfort her, but right now that might only hurt her more. He could only hope that when she worked through this whole thing in her mind, she might just hold out a glimmer of hope for their pairing on the other side of that.
“You took her to the vampire?”Rafferty strolled into the kitchen and eyed his Alpha looking for clues as to what had transpired. He didn’t much like what he saw. There was a haunted look within his alpha’s eyes and that tugged at his heart more than reliving that night eighteen years ago within his mind as he waited for news had done, although those events still caused him great sadness.
“I did.”Dale growled out. He knew Rafferty could offer him words of wisdom, and was probably ready to do that, but right now he just wanted some more alone time.
“He told her what happened?”Rafferty could gage a lot from his alpha’s temperament, from the way he stood with every muscle in his body tensed, and yet he wanted the man to open up to him.
“He did.”Dale was a man of few words when he was like this. Keeping his emotions bottled inside was the Alpha way. It didn’t bode well to share everything with anyone. The less you looked vulnerable to a pack, the less likely it was to obtain a challenge for the leadership, and yet he didn’t believe there was anyone within his pack that would issue that challenge, but still, old habits die hard.
“He tell you that her mother wasn’t a part of those events…?”Rafferty watched his alpha’s dark eyes rise and lock onto his own, and he felt them burning into his very soul. There was a long silence between them, silence that neither man felt necessary to burden with words. But one of them had to blink first and Dale knew it wouldn’t be the elder, he was too damn stubborn.
“What do you know old man?”Dale demanded.
“More than I wished I did, believe me.”Rafferty blinked in a way that Dale couldn’t have imagined. The elders shoulders sagged slightly, as if under the strain of a great knowledge, and that didn’t bode well. When he started for the kitchen table and slowly lowered himself into one of the straight back chairs, he did it with an aged posture that Dale had never seen him carry before.
“I’ll get the scotch, you tell the facts.”Dale stalked across the room. He grabbed two glasses and a bottle from the side and strolled back to the table. By the time he’d poured two glasses of Dutch courage, Rafferty looked even more in need of a drink. His hand shook slightly as he reached out and snatched up the glass, tipping it against his lips and taking a long drink, he looked like a man haunted.
“There was a bloodlust that night. The alpha had given the order for the coven to be stopped and most of the pack was in favour of it.”Rafferty kept his eyes on his glass as Dale slipped into the neighbouring seat and cupped his own glass against his palm. “By the time we got there the witches weren’t in their circle doing devious things as we’d expected, they were arguing among themselves.” Rafferty frowned. The deep weathered lines took on a new meaning for Dale as he watched the elder struggle with his memories of that night.
“I’d heard the young Blackwell girl say she’d have no part in what they were doing, but in that moment the pack attacked. There was no time to stop it, I’d tried to get to her but she was gone before I reached her. Fast and furious, she didn’t suffer…”Rafferty lifted his glass to his lips and tipped the rest of his drink straight down the back of his throat. The liquid hardly touched his tongue as he savoured the fire of the spirit burning a path through his chest. His hand gripped the glass as he dropped it back to the table, as if that signified the very futility of what he had tried to achieve that night.
“But you never told the pack of what the Blackwell’s tried to do?”Dale was accusing in his tone, but he saw the flicker the anger within the elder and clamped his lips shut.
“I told the alpha. He told me to keep quiet, didn’t want the pack to feel badly about the witches death.”
Dale whirled up from the chair and stalked away from the table. Anger and resentment flowed through him in a full body rush that warmed his blood and made him want to put his fist into the wall. She didn’t have to leave. Petra could have stayed, could have known her family history…
“He let the girl go, didn’t try to track her, just let the vampire spirit her away. It was easier than facing her I guess. Plus, if the girl wasn’t here then she wouldn’t be able to enact a vengeance against the pack years later…”Rafferty shrugged his shoulders, but the alpha didn’t notice. His eyes fell on the woods, usually such a comforting sight to him, but right now just a reminder that his beast prowled inside him, as agitated as he was.
“She could have known her history…”Dale growled to himself.
“History is sometimes doomed to repeat itself.”Rafferty offered back. There was no coven, no circle, but there was a Corbin witch back in the area. What was worse was she was the alpha’s mate and Rafferty knew that the man and beast inside him wouldn’t easily give the order to kill her, should that history come full circle.
“She won’t attack the pack.”Dale turned on his heels and narrowed his eyes on his friend and elder. There was one thing he was certain of, Petra was no Corbin witch. She was a Blackwell, in looks and attitude. He wouldn’t believe anything else of her, he couldn’t, the alternative was too soul destroying to even consider.
“You need to tell the pack what’s going on. There are some older members who would see her and recognise her instantly, and some of those lost kin that night.”Rafferty warned and watched his alpha consider it for a long moment before he nodded his agreement.
“Call a meeting. I’ll give the order that she isn’t to be touched and you can explain the events of that night.”
“It might not go down well with some…”Rafferty warned again. There was one or two he could think of that wouldn’t take a Corbin witch being alive and well and residing in their community well. They’d need to be watched, just in case their anger got the better of their basic instinct to follow the alpha’s word of law.
“She’s my mate. It would be a death sentence to anyone in the pack to harm her. I’ll make sure that message is delivered loud and clear.”Dale would take on any and all challengers. He would guard his mate with his own life, and he hoped that the vampire had enough sense to keep her at his mansion. But wherever she laid her head, he would be there to protect her.
“I know you’re there.”Petra offered over her shoulder. She could feel him with her magic. She knew exactly where he was standing and could have reached out and slapped him with her energy if she felt like it. Trouble was she didn’t much feel like anything just then.
“So much for stealthy.”Jerome teased back at her. Stepping out of the shadows of the woods and taking a slow walk towards her.
“Stealthy isn’t interchangeable with creepy.”Petra turned on her heels and started back towards the house. It was obvious that he was nervous about her being this close to the woods. But she felt drawn to them, even if she didn’t know why. But if she was to guess it was probably something to do with her damn wolf mate.
“I’m creepy.”
“There you go. The first step to correcting it is to acknowledge it.”Petra did find most vampires creepy, but in truth she didn’t really feel that way about him. Maybe it was because he was the link to her mother. Maybe because somewhere deep within her she held the memories of him from when she was a child. He just felt different.
“Thanks for that.”He gained ground on her and was walking by her side as they headed back towards the house. He’d felt her tension ease slightly, but only slightly, and he wanted her to feel safe with him. Hell, he’d spent the better part of her life protecting her, even if he had used his cousin to do it.
“I need a ride home…”
“Oh, I think we both know that’s not going to happen.”Jerome caught the slight rise of her chin as she stiffened slightly. That famous Blackwell backbone of defiance snapped into place. She was more like her mother
than he’d first realised.
“Do tell.”Petra shot back. She kept her eyes on the way ahead of them. Not much interested in meeting his gaze for fear he might just try some of his vampire persuasion on her.
“You’re safe here. There are twelve or so bedrooms that you can have your pick from, and I’m not letting you out of my sight unless you’re in the protective custody of your mate.”He took a long moment to pause and think that through. “And maybe not even then.”He added and this time she did eyeball him.
“So you don’t trust the alpha?”Petra was more than interested in that. The mating pull gave her mind a natural instinct to trust Dale, even if she didn’t want too. It was good to get someone else’s perspective on him.
“I trust him, insofar as he won’t kill you. But he has a rather large pack that I can’t vouch for.” He trusted Brad, otherwise the wolf wouldn’t be under his roof. But the others, especially some of the older wolves that were under orders from the old alpha that night to kill the coven, well he would trust them when he was sure he could. This was no time to have blind faith in pack mentality, not when it was Petra’s life on the line.
“So you have a natural distrust of people?”Petra found the will to tease him. She might be walking under a black cloud, but she so desperately wanted to find her way out of it. Finding out about her mother had been one thing, finding out how she died had been another entirely, but she needed to compartmentalise those things in order to get through them, and hopefully out from that damn cloud.
