by Zoe Winters
It wasn’t as if this pack would sit down with vampires for drinks to learn this sort of thing.
Noah was betting she’d never been able to do this before his blood—another fact he wasn’t going to point out to spoil her fun. If this got her more accepted by the pack, as long as she didn’t get hurt, he wasn’t saying a thing.
Then she downed them. One right after the other. By the last one she smacked her hand on the bar about ten times just to cope with it. The werewolves around her all howled as if she’d just led them into successful battle.
“Told you!” Sydney shouted.
Noah cleared his throat and the group turned serious and moved out of his way. “Having fun?” he asked. And to think, he’d worried about her alone with them. Fate hadn’t made a mistake when it had put them together.
She winked at him. “A blast. You?”
“It’s not terrible,” he admitted. But now that he knew she was okay, he needed space away from everyone. Quiet.
It was crazy. He could never tell anyone this, but he wished he was back in his cell because it was quiet and predictable and cozy in a completely fucked-up way. He wanted to be free. He wanted to be with Sydney and see his family and go back home and have a pack. He wanted all of the things that seemed to have been just laid at his feet overnight. But the noise, the unpredictability, the constant socialization was getting to him. And he wasn’t sure how much longer he could wear the mask tonight.
He recalled loving these things as a pup, but now… he felt broken. It hadn’t been so clearly apparent what was wrong with him, but something inside him had died in that place. Every day as he’d said his name to himself and every afternoon when he’d dreamed of the past, he’d thought he was holding onto everything, but it had all slipped through his fingers one granule at a time until he was left with this shell that needed to get away before he crawled out of his skin.
He pulled Sydney away from the group, far enough to be out of earshot. “Are you drunk?”
“A little,” she admitted.
“Then I want you to come upstairs to the room with me. I know you’re stronger now, and I think I have their loyalty, but it’s too soon to know for sure. I don’t want to leave you with them like this.”
He half expected her to become belligerent. Her inhibitions were way down, and he still didn’t completely trust the pack would respect him enough to not take advantage of that. But she didn’t fight to stay behind with the others.
“Are you okay?” she asked, coming back to herself.
“Fine. I just need some space.”
She was skeptical but didn’t question him again in the bar.
“We’re going upstairs,” Noah said. “Don’t disturb us unless there is an emergency. We’ll see you tomorrow in the lobby at sunset. And start packing. As soon as the moon begins to wane, we have to get on the road and head home.”
One of the wolves at the bar spoke up. “Are we going to join your family’s pack?”
Noah shook his head. “No. We’ll stay separate. There will be no integrating of the packs. We should be able to share general space, but it would be better if we remained our own group.”
The wolf looked relieved. Noah didn’t blame him. As much as he missed his family and their pack, and as much as he feared he couldn’t handle the alpha thing, his instincts screamed differently. He didn’t want to be in constant battle with his dad. They’d find a makeshift den separate from the hive.
He led Sydney from the group. As they left, the wolves got rowdy again, letting out howls because of course they assumed he and Sydney were going to their private den—or suite—for mating purposes.
It was a possibility, but more important to him was to escape before he combusted from too much social interaction.
***
Sydney followed Noah upstairs to what she’d been privately thinking of as the alpha suite. She still couldn’t believe the wolves seemed so willing to leave their home. If this place weren’t so far from her family and Noah’s, and if it wasn’t so close to the city, she’d want to stay. They had a cool set-up.
The irony of wanting to live close to her parents wasn’t lost on her, but it wasn’t as if she’d wanted to get away from them. She’d just wanted her own autonomy, and not to be treated like an over-sheltered teenager for the next several centuries. Hardly an unreasonable desire.
Tension rolled off her mate. From his perspective it might have been foolish of her to be in the bar, surrounded by werewolves and getting drunk. Though she was much stronger now, she wasn’t silly enough to think she could take on the entire pack in a fight. She didn’t even think Noah could do that if they collectively turned on him. Though he’d leave enough bodies on the ground to make the rest think twice before attempting that suicide mission.
Sydney had no idea what had come over her when that wolf openly defied her, insisting he wouldn’t accept a vampire alpha. It was a rage that had risen from the depths of her being to flow out through her muscles as she shoved the wolf as far and as fast as she could. Her heart had pounded in her chest. She’d never escalated any interaction with anyone to violence because she knew she couldn’t back it up.
She wanted to blame it on Noah’s blood, something in werewolves that influenced her. That might be partly true, but it was also an impotent rage that had simmered in her for as long as she could remember. It had taken hold the night she’d woken to find she wasn’t allowed to play with Noah anymore. It had grown stronger when she’d heard he’d disappeared. And it kept piling on with each restriction her father added to her life in the name of protecting her.
She knew he loved her and worried and wanted to keep her safe, but once she’d reached adulthood, shouldn’t her fate have been in her own hands? The anger had grown so strong and so much a part of her that it had blended into the background, simmering underneath the facade of Sweet Sydney—the person they all thought she was.
Noah’s blood wasn’t new rage. It was permission. Agency. The ability to DO something. So when that wolf had implied as so many others around her had before, that she was less-than, it had been the final straw. She hadn’t thought how it might negatively affect Noah. She hadn’t considered it might incite fighting or put the two of them in danger. All she’d cared about was that she’d spent far too long being mild and meek and trying to push the rage down underneath the inability to express it.
She’d been shocked when the wolves had looked at her with new respect after that. It was only then that she remembered things she’d seen her father do to maintain his power and the bits of pack behavior she’d observed when she was a kid still playing with Noah. There was so much politics under the surface of any powerful person, so much artifice—a carefully controlled act and sleight of hand, dancing like a puppet to keep the others gaping up at you in wonder so they didn’t turn on you.
After that moment, she’d realized they saw her as part of the new alpha pair—not some abnormally weak freak vampire that Noah had for some reason taken under his protection. She’d proven herself, and as long as she didn’t back down from them or act nervous around them, they’d continue to see her this way. The shots at the bar had been pure politics. Part of her was grateful Noah had dragged her away, because she really was a bit drunk, and it might not enhance her new bad ass image to be stumbling all over the place.
Noah pulled her into their room and locked and barricaded the door.
“Are you upset with me?”
In response, he shoved her against the wall, his lips pressed against hers. His mouth trailed to her throat to place kisses there as well. “Why would I be upset with you?” he rumbled. “The pack loves you. They like you more than they like me.”
“Does that bother you?”
His mood changed like a switch had been flipped. She’d thought they were about to do exactly what the wolves downstairs thought he’d dragged her away for, but now he seemed different, his own mask slipping. He sat on the edge of the bed and put his head in his ha
nds.
Sydney stood there for a minute, not sure if he wanted comfort or space or what to do for him. She’d obviously said something wrong. Maybe he was angry or jealous. The pack had already bonded with him somewhat, but they still weren’t at the drinking buddy stage, something she’d managed in about fifteen minutes when they’d returned from the hunt.
He looked up, and everything fell away. The image he’d erected to protect her and get them safely back home was gone, and in its place, he was just that little boy again. Fiercely protective of her, but just some guy. Not the technological savant who’d orchestrated their escape. Not the superhero who’d slaughtered humans and werewolves to keep her safe. Not the alpha. Just the man.
He sighed. “No, Sydney. It doesn’t bother me. I’m relieved they like you, and that you’re sociable enough to keep the pressure off me. I don’t know how to be around people. They’re going to figure me out.”
She sat beside him on the bed, leaning her cheek against his shoulder. “They don’t know your history. And even if they did, if you are strong enough to lead them, what does it matter? You escaped a near-impossible-to-escape place that was well-guarded.”
Noah shrugged. “They had holes in their security. Big holes. That was luck. If it hadn’t been for that, I never could have gotten us out, even with the unnatural strength I had on my side last night.”
“It wasn’t luck. Everything came together for us. It was all meant to be.”
“You sound like the seers.”
The cities had a lot of those. Cary Town, not so much anymore.
Then Noah broke down for real. All that he’d held in—possibly for years—all that he’d been through the past few nights came flowing out of him. Sydney held him and let him get it out. She hadn’t been in that place for very long, thanks to Noah.
She tried not to think about what would have happened if he hadn’t been there. She would have had no hope. She never would have been strong. She would have spent the rest of her days in that sterile cube and out in the exercise yard trying to fade into the background so some random therian or vampire didn’t kill her simply for existing as something weaker than them.
Even if she managed to survive that, deep down she’d known they hadn’t intended to keep her long. She was a curiosity. Perhaps they wanted to use her blood in experiments to determine how it might benefit them, but in the long run there was little she could offer that couldn’t be gotten from any other vampire, and her blood didn’t infuse magic with extra power like therian blood did. There would have been no reason to keep her alive.
The experiments with the UV light lasers had confirmed it. If she’d died in all that? Well, who cared? They were merely curious, and curiosities didn’t last long in this world.
Sydney closed her eyes, trying to stop seeing Jacob’s lifeless face. Yes, he’d betrayed her. He’d deserved to die at her fangs, but not under those conditions. It had felt all wrong. But her few days of fear and captivity only put a finer point on Noah’s.
What had he gone through? Not just seeing her like that in there, but what had they done to him for all those years? Even if they’d only ever kept him captive and drawn blood every day for use in their magic, it was still beyond cruel to keep a wolf in a small enclosure like that, to prevent him from being socialized properly and from having a pack.
“Noah?”
“Yeah?”
She wasn’t sure if him crying in front of her was because macho hadn’t been properly socialized into him, or if it was because she was his mate, and he trusted her that much. She had to believe it was the latter because of the mask he’d worn while captive and again now with the pack to keep things under control. He wasn’t stupid. He’d known how he had to be in order to stay alive both on the inside and on the outside of those walls.
“I might be able to help with some of this stuff you’re dealing with. Maybe I could soften the edges,” she said.
“How?”
Sydney hesitated. She’d never manipulated emotions before. It wasn’t a skill she’d had. But now, with Noah’s blood and all the changes that had taken place, if she was truly a real vampire now, as his mate, she could help him. Her lack of hypnotic abilities had been connected to all the other weaknesses she’d inherited from the accident of her unnatural birth. It was as if she were a battery that just hadn’t had enough juice to get and stay going. But now she did, and every door that had previously been closed to her stood wide open.
“It’s this mental connection thing. Vampires can do it with humans when they feed normally to some extent, but it’s especially strong with mates. The emotion part, anyway. Vampires can’t get into their mates’ thoughts, but we can help with emotion. I can’t make any of it not have happened, but I can help you get through it.”
In reality, while she she couldn’t read his thoughts, as his mate she could implant new, happier memories. But she knew he wouldn’t want that—to never know what was real or fake inside his head. Taking the worst of the sting from his history would have to be enough.
“Okay.” Noah held out his arm.
She didn’t ask why he didn’t offer his throat. There were limits to everything, and maybe that was too much intimacy for what she was about to do. Maybe he wanted to keep that as something associated with other things.
Sydney bit into the offered arm and tasted all the anguish he’d tried to keep locked away from her. All the self-doubt and insecurity. Those stupid fucking bastards. She wanted to go back in and kill every single one of them that Noah hadn’t gotten to. She wanted to rip down their shiny city and leave it in ruins, like they’d left vampire and therian societies in ruins, like they’d left lives in ruins—including Noah’s.
She thought about his parents mourning him, about her parents mourning her. She thought about everything Noah had lost even in spite of all he’d recently gained and would have returned to him. She thought about all of these things, and as she drank she let those thoughts go and focused only on sending him peace and warmth and security—all the things he probably couldn’t even remember having.
She melted against him as his free hand ran through her hair, and she started to cry as if his pain was transferring into her. And maybe it was. Only it was more distant and detached because it hadn’t actually happened to her. Still, the emotion swamped her.
“Stop, Sydney. This is hurting you.”
Big stupid wolf. Of course it hurt her. But it would hurt her no matter what. If she had no power to help him, it would just be the same powerless uselessness she’d lived with for nearly three decades already. It would be a slow-burning pain as she watched him unravel from the pressure of trying to be all the things to everyone that he’d never been properly taught to be.
When she’d taken the worst of what was on the surface and replaced it with something better, she pulled away from him. “I’m not letting my mate suffer in silence pointlessly. What have you got to prove? After all the years you were in there and everything you risked to get us out? You told them all that I was their alpha, too. If that’s true, let me take on part of this.”
After a long time, he nodded. “I just don’t want to cause you pain.”
“You gave me strength. Let me give you some peace.”
“When you put it like that, it sounds completely reasonable,” he said.
They held each other for a long time just breathing each other in, and then somehow their matching breaths turned into caressing and kissing, and then they were two entwined naked bodies making love.
“I can’t believe this is only your second time doing this,” she said.
Noah growled. “Hey!” But he wasn’t mad.
They spent the next couple of hours alternately exploring each other’s bodies and snuggling together in the bed.
He nipped over his mark as his hand slid down between her legs for what felt like the thousandth time that night. “We’re going to have to move the bedding back into the bathroom before the sun comes up.”
Sydney groaned and stretched. “That’s still so many hours away. And I can’t move. I think you broke me.”
He laughed. A real laugh. “Somehow I doubt that.” A beat passed, then he went very still.
“Noah?”
He raised a hand to silence her, then he got up and prowled to the door. He poked his head into the hallway, then came back inside. “Sydney, I need your help.”
She jumped up, thinking there was danger. But when she reached him, she saw the problem. It wasn’t danger. Outside in the hallway were freshly killed rabbits, wine that looked to be several decades old—probably from before the wars—and clothes for Noah. Most likely cobbled together from other pack members.
“I need to learn how to ride a motorcycle,” he said.
“Okay. I have no idea what that has to do with the pack paying tribute but…”
Sydney gathered up the clothes and wine, while Noah brought the rabbits inside.
“I was just thinking that I feel better, and I think I can handle it tonight. I wanted to know if you wanted to go with me.”
“Definitely.”
Noah shifted into his wolf form and demolished the rabbits in short order. Then he pounced on her and licked the side of her face like he had when they were kids and all she’d known was the wolf.
“Ewww, gross, Noah! Get off me. You have rabbit breath!”
He licked her one more time, then shifted back to his human form. “I’m going to grab a shower before we go. Come with me.”
“My legs don’t hold me up anymore.”
“I’ll hold you up.”
Chapter Nine
Sydney blushed when she and Noah reached the bar, and the wolves started howling at them. She didn’t think his original intent for taking her upstairs had been sex, but it had been the pack’s assumption. And she knew they smelled like it. Werewolf noses didn’t lie.
