by Casey Lane
“What are you doing?” she whispered, sounding breathless and a bit bewildered.
“I don’t know. Do you want me to stop?” he asked, pressing his words against the delicate skin at her wrist.
Several beats passed before she said, “No.”
“Thank God,” Wren murmured, surging up on his forearms and capturing her mouth, kissing her long and slow and deep, the way he’d been wanting since the moment she’d opened her front door.
Chapter Thirteen
Isa
Kissing Wren was like having all the air sucked from the room, making her lightheaded and woozy in the best possible way. The storm brewing outside was nothing compared to the war raging between her brain and her body. She heard herself responding, flushed at the breathy little sounds escaping…but she couldn’t stop. He kissed her like she was water and he was dying of thirst, like there was nowhere in the world he’d rather be than there with her, and it was overwhelming in the best possible way.
He rose onto his knees, and Isa mourned the loss of his body pressed against hers, but the scent of him was stronger like this. He smelled like Irish Spring soap and Isa’s jasmine shampoo. Just the idea of Wren sharing her scent had her canting her hips towards him, whining when he moved away. Why was his body suddenly so far from hers? She ran her hands along his shoulders, along his biceps, squeezing until he moved closer, his forearms bracketing her head, his fingers playing with her hair spread across the pillows.
He feasted on her lips like he had all the time in the world, his tongue slipping inside, teasing against hers with practiced ease. She did her best to keep up, to respond. Her experience was limited to a couple of fumbling kisses her sophomore year of high school. The last time she'd just been Isa McGowan, not mom to four orphans.
Wren had probably kissed hundreds of girls. He'd probably had sex with just as many. Something about that irked her wolf, causing her to growl, pulling her back to the surface of rational thought.
Wren pressed his forehead to hers, panting. “You have nothing to be jealous of,” he whispered. “You aren’t my first, but I have every intention of making you my last.”
She snorted, but her wolf preened anyway. “Stop reading my scent. That’s cheating.”
Wren pressed his nose against her throat, inhaling deeply before he groaned. “Are you kidding? I couldn’t ignore your scent if I tried. It’s been hardwired into my brain by the universe. I can smell your jealousy. I can smell your confusion. I can smell how much you want me, and it’s killing me.” Isa flushed to the tips of her ears as Wren ran his mouth along her collarbone. “You can read my scent too, you know. You can smell the truth in my words; you can feel how much I need you. You just don’t want to because you aren’t ready to face the truth.”
What was the truth? Why did it have to mean anything? Why did it have to mean everything? Wasn’t she allowed just to have a fling? Alex said Wren was bad news, that he was going to bring nothing but horrible things into her life. If she couldn’t have forever, why couldn't she just have this? “I don’t want to smell how you feel; I just want to feel it. I want to feel you.” She wrapped her legs around his, trying to tug him closer.
Wren sucked in a breath. “Oh, that’s so not a good idea. My control is at a two right now, Isa. I’m not sure what would happen if I let myself go.”
Isa went rigid beneath him, his words like ice water. She wasn’t some fragile, delicate flower he needed to protect. She shoved him hard. He relented immediately, sitting back, looking faintly amused. “Listen, if you don’t want me, that’s one thing, but if you’re trying to protect me, that’s not your job. I’m an adult—I’m the alpha—and I make my own decisions. If you can’t respect that then maybe you should just go.” Wren raised a brow, clearly surprised by the venom in her words.
His gaze softened. “Is that what you really want?”
What Isa wanted was not to want him at all. She didn’t know him. She shouldn’t need him this bad…but she did. She didn’t want him to go; she just didn’t want him to think she was weak. With weakness came vulnerability. She couldn’t afford that, not with him, not with anybody. “I want you to stop treating me like I’m going to break.”
Wren’s laugh was raw as he gripped her hips, pulling her against him with purpose, letting her feel how much he wanted her. Isa’s cheeks flushed, a whimper escaping before she could stop herself. He settled himself between her legs, moving against her in a way that had her vision going fuzzy at the edges. That shouldn't feel so good. He buried his face against her neck, his breathing ragged against her skin. “Is that what you think? You think I’m doing this to protect you?” His hips surged against hers again, and she moaned, biting her lip. “Do you know how close we are to the full moon? Do you know how long it’s been since I’ve been with anybody? I’m fighting every instinct I have not to claim you right here. Are you ready for that? We’ve known each other forty-eight hours, and you still don’t even know why I’m here.”
He caught her lips in another searing kiss before dragging himself away, looking at her with an intensity that made her want to run. “What do you want from me?” she whispered.
“Everything. Marriage, pack, family. All of it,” he said, fiercely.
She stared up at him for a full thirty seconds, her mouth slack and eyes wide, listening for the lie in his words. There wasn’t one. He was crazy. “You can’t know that. Do you know how insane you sound right now?”
He entwined his fingers with hers. “Of course, I do. I didn’t come here for this.”
She moved restlessly beneath him, suddenly aware of how heavy he was now that they weren't...preoccupied. “You didn’t come here to enforce the betrothal?”
Wren closed his eyes. “I can’t think rationally when you’re underneath me.” He moved off her and Isa tamped down her disappointment. He settled beside her, his body touching hers at various points of contact along her side. After a moment, he said. “I didn’t come here to enforce anything. I came here expecting to find a huge pack and an alpha who could see the benefit in honoring a betrothal between two powerful packs.”
Isa wracked her brain trying to imagine why Wren would need or want to honor a ceremonial engagement with a pack that might be bigger than his. Especially if his goal wasn’t to be alpha. “You’re the heir to one of the largest packs in the South. Why would you care about honoring our betrothal?”
Wren gave her a sideways glance before going back to staring at the ceiling. She could feel his unease. “What do you know about my family?” he asked suddenly.
She blinked, his out-of-nowhere thought catching her off guard. She thought back to what Alex said about the Davies, debating how to answer. She could smell his disappointment as he said, “By your silence, I can tell that you know something about their reputation.”
He said their, not our. Isa found that comforting somehow. “I don’t believe everything I hear.”
Wren’s distress was making Isa’s wolf crazy. She found his hand, entwining their fingers and squeezing. Wren let out a breath before saying, “Well, in this case, you should. My father, Cain, isn’t a good man. He’s selfish and hard. He’s never cared about anybody but himself." He paused, before saying, "When we were younger, my brother and I vowed that we’d grow up to be nothing like him.”
His brother. Dylan. Alex implied Wren had killed his brother to become alpha. Isa just couldn’t imagine that to be true. “You lost your brother recently.”
Wren’s jaw tightened. “He died a few weeks ago, but I lost my brother long before that. Dylan couldn’t fight Cain’s influence. He was the eldest, the heir and Cain was determined to mold Dylan in his own image. And he did. Cain won. He always does.”
“You and your brother didn’t get along then?”
Wren's expression was as stormy as the sky outside, anger and grief and sorrow rolling off of him in equal measure. “When we were younger, I thought Dylan was a god. He was much older, cooler, everything I wanted to be.” He
laughed bitterly. “But as he got older, he changed. He was cocky, cold, controlling. Girls followed him everywhere, and he took full advantage of it. He used them for whatever they’d give him and then moved on as if they never existed. Cain fully encouraged it. Told him an alpha takes what he wants regardless of who it hurts. Clearly, Cain never expected it to backfire on him.”
Isa hesitated before asking, “What do you mean?”
Wren clenched her hand, swallowing hard. “Telling you about my family is probably the surest way to get you to send me packing.”
All she’d wanted was for Wren to go, to leave and never come back. But, still, she rolled to her side, turning his face to look at her. “Then you don’t know me very well. You are not your family. I’d never send you away because of that.”
Wren seemed unsure, but he started to talk anyway. “When I was seven years old, my father moved a woman into the house next door. Her name was Magna, and Cain said she was our new pack witch. It wasn’t that uncommon back then, but my mother was visibly upset by her arrival. I knew something about what my father was doing wasn’t right, but I didn’t understand why until I was much older.”
Isa frowned, recalling Alex’s story. He’d said Wren’s father had moved his mistress in next door. That had to be Magna. “What happened?” she prompted.
“Magna had a daughter, Jaelle. She was six years older than me and two years younger than my brother. Jaelle was sickly, bedridden...but she was a very gifted witch, especially for someone so young. Magna said it was because Jaelle had inherited her magic from Magna’s sister, Freyja, upon her death, coming into her powers much younger than most witches.”
Isa wasn’t sure if this was pertinent to the story or if Wren was just reminiscing, his scent changing from anger to fondness and a bit of sorrow. He’d clearly been fond of the girl, and Isa was sure this story didn’t have a happy ending…so she didn’t push.
“Jaelle wasn’t traditionally beautiful. My brother often commented to me how she was too pale, her brown hair to dull, her brown eyes too plain. He said she could do with some makeup and better clothes. He used to wonder out loud all the time about why a witch as powerful as her didn’t just put a glamour spell on herself.”
“He sounds like a real prince,” Isa muttered, lip curling in disgust.
Wren grimaced. “Three years later, they were part of the pack. My father consulted Magna on everything and even included her and Jaelle in family dinners. Dylan still didn’t think much of Jaelle, but ten-year-old me thought she was perfect. She would tell me stories about the Vikings and the Norse gods and goddesses, stories her mother had told her. I would spend hours in her room after school. Looking back, I guess she was kind of my first crush. But Jaelle had a crush too…on my brother.”
His scent changed, his sadness tinged with something sharp enough to make her flinch. Rage. Isa kissed his shoulder and Wren gave her a sad smile. “When my brother realized that Jaelle was in love with him, he exploited it to the fullest, flattering her and flirting, using her for spells, hexes, anything he could get from her. Anything to get ahead. Anything to impress my father.”
Wren said the word father with revulsion like he could think of nothing worse. Maybe that’s why he seemed to prefer calling the man by his first name. Isa had loved her father, and it made her ache for Wren to know he’d never had that kind of relationship. “I tried to warn her, I tried to explain that Dylan wasn’t a good person…but she was too far gone, she was mesmerized by him, so in love, she couldn’t see the truth. She told me I was too little to understand what they had. She was right, in a way, I didn’t get it. When Magna caught wind of what was going on, she told Cain. He was furious with my brother.”
Maybe Wren’s father wasn’t a total bastard, after all. As if Wren sensed her thought he said, “I thought just once Cain had a heart, but that wasn’t it. My father had been having an affair with Magna for years—claimed he loved her—and he didn’t want Dylan causing problems between them.” He scoffed, jaw tightening. “He said it would cause my mother more distress. Cain wasn’t even keeping his affair with Magna a secret. My sisters and I were apparently just the last to know. Cain told Dylan to grow up and stop toying with Jaelle…he said to think of her as a sister.”
Isa’s stomach sloshed nervously, remembering something else Alex said. “Wait, was Jaelle…”
Wren looked sharply at Isa. “Our sister? No, thank God, because it turns out that my brother had already seduced Jaelle, they’d been sleeping together for months. When Dylan tried to break it off, that’s when she told him she was pregnant.”
“What happened?” Isa whispered.
Wren didn’t answer at first, closing his eyes as if composing himself. Isa didn’t know how to comfort him. How did you protect somebody from the ghosts of their past?
“Cain told my brother that he needed to make the problem go away. He doesn’t believe in mixing bloodlines. At least not legitimately anyway. He didn’t care how many bastards Dylan fathered by witches as long as it wasn’t the daughter of his witch.”
It wasn’t Isa’s first time hearing about wolves who believed in marrying only other wolves. Many older wolves thought that marrying into other wolf packs was the only way to ensure the survival of the species. They didn’t want their bloodlines diluted. Marrying non-wolves increased the possibility of having human children. Human children had to wait until they were eighteen to decide if they wanted to chance dying by taking the bite or remain an outcast within their packs. Even if a human did survive the bite and became a shifter, there was often a stigma surrounding wolves that were bitten, not born. Isa couldn’t imagine doing that to her children. How could anybody care if their kids were anything but healthy? “Your brother told her to have an abortion?”
“My brother demanded she have an abortion. He told her he would never marry somebody like her. That he didn’t love her, that he’d only been using her. He said he was the future alpha and he had to marry somebody who was worthy of him, not some sickly witch who could barely leave her house. He’d told her to be realistic, said the pregnancy alone would probably kill her.”
“Wow,” Isa said before she could stop herself. She could see why he hated his brother.
He nodded woodenly. “When I found her that night she was hysterical. She’d always looked weak…frail…but that night; she looked worse than I’d ever seen her. I told her that I’d marry her if I could. I tried to console her, but I was barely eleven. I didn’t know what to say or do, so I did what most wolves going through puberty do, I swore I’d kill him. She begged me not to go, said Dylan would hurt me. She said she didn’t want to be alone. But I was a kid. When I said I had to go, she kissed my cheek and told me that I was the only real friend she’d ever had and that she’d never forget that.”
Wren’s grief was like a shock of adrenaline through her system, a taste like metal flooding her mouth. The tears leaking from her eyes came from his pain, not hers. “I didn’t get that she was saying goodbye.”
Tears tracked down Isa's cheeks, but she could do nothing but hang on to his hand. When he spoke again, his voice was thick, his words heavy. “I found my brother that night and challenged him…he kicked my ass, probably would have put me in the hospital if my mother hadn’t found us. When I woke the next morning, my mother was waiting for me in the kitchen…she’d been crying. She told me that Jaelle slit her wrists in the bathtub. Magna had found her that morning.”
Isa had no words. What was somebody supposed to say to that? She hated Wren’s brother, and she’d never even set eyes on him. Part of her was happy he was dead.
Wren looked at her then, noticing her tears, eyes softening as he swiped his thumb under her eyes. “Hey, no crying. It was a long time ago. A few months later, Magna was pregnant with my father’s child, and I decided, then and there, that as soon as I was old enough, I was leaving. I was never going to be like them.”
“Is that why you enlisted?”
Wren smirked at her, n
arrowing his eyes. “This informant of yours has clearly done their homework. Yes, I enlisted to get away from my father and, a little bit, because I knew it would infuriate him.” He turned on his side. “Where have you been getting your information. What else did this informant tell you about me?”
She could have lied. She could have been vague, but that seemed wrong after he’d bared his soul to her. “Some of what you told me. Cain’s affair with your pack witch, that they had a child together.” She left out the part about that child being burned at the stake…that was Wren’s sister and it was his decision to share that with her or not. But she couldn’t ignore Alex’s allegation against Wren. “That you killed your brother so that you could be alpha.”
Wren’s brows made a run for his hairline, and he barked out a surprised laugh. “What? Do people really think that?”
She nodded, not sure whether the grin on his face was adorable or a sign that he was some kind of deranged lunatic. “They said it was suspicious that your brother died the same day you returned from overseas.”
His smile slipped away on a sigh, his hand picking up a strand of her hair and playing with it. “Yeah, I guess that’s sort of suspect,” he conceded. “As far as I know, my brother’s death and my return are just a coincidence. But he was murdered, and I believe it has something to do with Neoma.”
Isa's heartbeat skipped. “Why would you say that?”
Wren's gaze met hers, his eyes as blue as a summer sky. “Because my father imposed a rather bizarre last-minute caveat to my taking over as alpha.”
Isa stiffened, moving away, heart heavy as a feeling of betrayal settled somewhere deep inside. “I thought you said you didn’t want to be the alpha.”
