Her Forbidden Harem

by Savannah Skye

  “But you need me here,” I begged – three humans against so many wolves? They would be torn apart.

  “You think we can’t take them?” Colt spread his hands wide. “Bitch, please.”

  “We’ll be fine,” Clarke backed up his friend.

  “You have to do this,” said Jackson.

  “But…” the words stumbled off my trembling lips, “but I love you.”

  It was an odd moment to say it, with death lurking in the floors below us, but the genuine smiles on the faces of the guys made it worthwhile.

  “We love you, too,” replied Jackson. “We’ll be here afterwards.”

  I wasn’t sure if he believed it, or was just saying what it took to get me out. Either way, this time I had to do what he said. So many lives were hanging on it.

  “Okay.”

  Jackson nodded. “Colt. Let’s go.”

  The pair headed for the staircase again, ready to create another chaotic diversion as I climbed out the window. Clarke helped me out.

  “There’s a drainpipe there, you shouldn’t have any trouble shinning down.”

  “I won’t,” I nodded. “Clarke?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Please don’t die. None of you.”

  Clarke scoffed. “Of course we won’t. We’re not the type.”

  I forced a smile, but I wished there had been something else he could have said to make me believe it; some secret plan, a stash of silver bullets, anything. But I had to trust their skill, their strength, their speed, and their tremendous will to survive. Those were some pretty strong assets to bet on, but they were not enough to silence the fear that thumped with every beat of my heart as I climbed down the drainpipe.

  Reaching the ground, I ran to Colt’s car, jumped in, and took off at speed. I drove like a maniac down the driveway – if I was caught by The Brotherhood now, then it would all be for nothing and I was not letting that happen. The night seemed to blur in front of me as I drove. At first, I thought it was the speed and then realized that I was crying. I wiped away the tears angrily from my eyes. The only reason to cry was if I thought I was never going to see them again, if I thought they were going to die, and that was not a possibility I was willing to admit. They were the strongest men I had ever known, they would not die.

  I had never driven so fast in my life as I tore towards the city. I kept my mind focused only on the road ahead, literally and figuratively, as I thought about how to proceed when I got home. I would not allow myself to dwell on what was behind me, and when the thoughts crept in I forced them down. Worrying didn’t do any good.

  Fast though I drove, it was still an hour of hard driving before I entered the outskirts of the city. I continued in the same pedal to the metal driving style here as I had on the lonelier roads outside, plowing through red lights and stop signs, as horns blared at me and other drivers gave me the finger.

  Outside the Hokkai Pack Lodge, I screeched to a halt, leaping out amidst the smell of burning rubber and overheated engine. I ran up the steps and let myself in.

  The first thing I did when I found my father was to tell him to send help to Dun Shiftin as fast as possible – I didn’t know if it would be in time, but I had to try, and Dad soon had his best men heading out there at speed. Then came the hard bit.

  “Sit down, Dad.”

  He frowned. “What’s wrong?”

  “We need to talk about Uncle Farley.”

  How in the hell did I break the news to him? How in the hell could I? They had been friends for so long – Farley was practically an honorary Hokkai, so close was he to the pack leadership. He had given good advice over the years but I supposed that giving that advice had always been in his best interest, and when an opportunity had come up that meant him making a bunch of money by becoming traitor, he had not even flinched from it. I remembered the quiet devastation on my father’s face when he had found out that there was a traitor in the pack. I had seen that powerful man deteriorate before my eyes into someone I barely recognized, someone elderly and infirm. I now had no choice but to deliver an even more painful blow against him.

  I told him the story as best I could, fearful at every second that I might see him break there and then, that this might be the blow from which the mighty Hokkai Jack could never recover. His expression remained blank throughout, unreadable, and I feared the worst. As I finished, he said nothing, his expression remaining unchanged.

  “Dad?” I ventured.

  My father slowly turned to look at me and I saw a pure, full-blooded fury start to bleed into his face, contorting his features into an expression of anger familiar to any who crossed him.

  “That bastard!”

  “Dad…”

  “I’ll kill him!”

  “Dad…”

  “I’ll do it myself with my own two hands. Not even in wolf shape. I’ll open his stomach with my teeth and pull out his intestines by the yard. Then, I’ll feed them back in through his mouth, out through the hole in his stomach, back into mouth and so on until I’ve run out of intestine. Then, I’ll have his corpse lacquered, wired for electricity, fit a few light bulbs and I’ll string him up in the Great Hall in place of a chandelier.”

  Distasteful though the image was, it was oddly wonderful for me to hear my father reacting with his usual venom rather than the despondency that I had feared. Far from breaking what was left of his spirit, the news of Farley’s betrayal seemed to have brought him back to normal. However much it must have been a shock, Hokkai Jack liked to have an enemy. The news that there was a traitor amongst his most trusted inner circle had broken him, partly because there had been no one on whom to focus the emotions that boiled inside him. Now, Farley Castleford had become a lightning rod to conduct those raging emotions.

  “Where is he? Where’s… GUARD!” He yelled at the door and a guard hurried in. “Find Farley Castleford. Now!” The man rushed out again. “I shall take his head and use it as a…”

  “Dad.” He finally seemed to remember that I was there.

  “Yes, darling?”

  “You need to stop the war.”

  An expression of realization passed over my father’s face. “Oh yes, right. Must get on that.”

  Werewolf ‘wars’ are not like human ones. There are no armies, few weapons, and nothing that you could really call a battle. What there are is a series of skirmishes as wolves on both sides are encouraged to grab territory from the other side, killing as many as possible. This meant that as soon as war was declared, people started making attacks and incursions on their immediate neighbors, as much because their neighbors had a bigger garden than them as because of any larger reason for war. It was only in the final reckoning between the two Pack Courts that anything akin to a battle occurred.

  Within minutes of me speaking to Dad, a howl was set up – the quickest way to get word out to werewolves on the ground. You couldn’t get a lot of information across in a howl, but it was good for a single, simple, declarative statement, like; war’s off. As the howl spread and Hokkai wolves stood down, casting lingering jealous looks back at the nice gardens across the street, Dad made a call to MacKenzie Sean. It took a little time to get him to the phone as the MacKenzie had little patience for modern technology, but eventually Dad was able to speak to the Pack Leader.

  “Listen, Sean, I’m undeclaring war… It is too a word…. Well, here’s the story.” He related a brief version of the relationship between Castleford and The Brotherhood and how he himself had been manipulated by a devious human advisor, with me correcting some of the details as he spoke. “So, that’s what’s been happening. Very sorry, of course, but no harm, no foul... Well, I don’t see there’s any cause to take that attitude, I said I was sorry… We all make mistakes, Sean… Well, if you’re going to be like that then I can easy enough redeclare war… It is a word…”

  The conversation descended into bickering and I left them to it. The war had been prevented and the Pack Leaders could remain in the uneasy peace that existe
d between them. They might not like each other, but they weren’t going to kill each other.

  As I was wandering off, a guard hurried in and looked around.

  “He’s on the phone,” I said, indicating my father.

  “Right…” The guard didn’t want to interrupt but clearly had news.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “We can’t find Mr. Castleford.”

  “You’ve been to his house?”

  “Looks like he left in a hurry.”

  Well, that wasn’t a complete surprise, but I was happy enough to leave it to my dad.

  “Also,” the guard went on, “our people have arrived at Dun Shiftin.”

  My heart leapt into my mouth. Through all of this, I had been making a conscious effort to force to the back of my mind all thoughts of what might be happening to the guys. Not because I didn’t care, but because there was nothing I could do and worrying about it didn’t help. I needed to believe that it would all be okay, that they would be fine, and I had clung to that belief, that their strength and skill and determination would see them through. Perhaps I even hoped that I myself had given them something to live for. Now, I would have to face facts, whatever those facts proved to be.

  “Tell me.”

  “The Brotherhood wolves are all dead and we have re-taken the estate.”

  “And the Wolf Takers?”

  “They’re alive,” the guard said, but the tone of his voice told me that there was more to be said. “But one of them has been badly hurt.”

  “How badly?” I asked.

  “They just said badly,” the guard replied. “But… it didn’t sound…”

  But I didn’t wait to hear the end of the sentence, I was already heading for the door.

  “Bailey!” I heard my dad running after me. He caught hold of my arm.

  “I have to go,” I blurted through gathering tears. “The Wolf Takers…” I looked up into my father’s concerned eyes. “Daddy, I think I love them.”

  My father rolled his eyes. “Well, obviously you do. Have you only just worked that out?”

  “You don’t…”

  Hokkai Jack held up his hands. “All I want, Bailey, is for you to be happy and safe. They seem more than capable of making you both. I may not always have been the best father, but your mother would never forgive me if I didn’t let you have your own way on this one. Now, take my car – it’s faster. Go to them.”

  Chapter 20

  However fast I had driven from Dun Shiftin to the Hokkai Pack Lodge, I managed to do it faster on the way back. I didn’t even know which of my men was hurt. In a way, it didn’t matter, they were all equally precious to me and the thought of losing any one of them was more than I could stand. They were my men. They were my mates.

  The violent hurt that tore at my insides now made that point abundantly clear; they were my mates. It didn’t matter if the whole damn world was arrayed against us, it didn’t matter how much their people disapproved of me or how many traditional werewolves tried to kill me, we would find a way because we had to. Because love always finds a way and to walk away from it is like cutting off an arm. Any reservations I might have had about being in a long-term relationship with them had evaporated so quickly that just to think back on how I had thought a mere day ago seemed ludicrous to me.

  How could I have ever thought that I could not trust these men who were willing to give up their lives for me?

  How had I ever thought that they might treat me as anything other than an equal? How had I ever imagined that I might have the strength to walk away from men I loved so deeply?

  I could never have left them, but was one of them about to leave me.

  An ambulance was already outside Dun Shiftin when I skidded to a halt in a spray of gravel and jumped out.

  Jackson was at the door, his face drained of color. The front of his shirt had been shredded by claws and was soaked with blood, there was a long gash in his forearm that a paramedic was actively stitching up, and numerous other cuts, scratches and bruises littered his body. And yet, I sensed that none of these wounds were responsible for his pallor, or the look on his face.

  He looked up as I ran over. “Jackson…?”

  I didn’t need to finish the sentence for him to answer back. “Upstairs. It’s Colt.”

  There was a deadness in his voice that made my stomach contract.

  I started to go inside then turned back. “I’m glad you’re…”

  “I know. Go.”

  I raced inside and up the stairs. The place was absolute chaos. Not a stick of furniture seemed to have survived, bannisters were broken and blood spattered the walls. I saw Clarke, who had already received medical attention and was now sunk in a squat with his back against the wall and his eyes trained on the floor. Three livid cuts marred his cheek, still wet with blood though they had been stitched up – they would leave scars. His right pant leg had been cut off to give the paramedics access and I could see where they treated a colossal wolf bite in his thigh. Like Jackson, his body seemed a welter of smaller injuries. I touched him on the shoulder as I passed and our eyes met, making no words necessary. He squeezed my hand and pointed to a room from which paramedics were constantly coming and going.

  I summoned up what courage I had left after a long night, and went in.

  The paramedics surrounded the bed on which Colt lay. The frantic activity that followed traumatic injury seemed to have passed and they were now just trying to keep him stable, get enough blood back into him and keep him alive. I crept closer, listening to the horrid mixture of beeps and whirrings and half-heard sentences.

  “…bleeding out somewhere…”

  “… internal…”

  “…fading fast…”

  “…blood type…”

  “…too late…”

  I don’t think they even noticed me as I reached the head of the bed and looked down at the figure that barely seemed to be the Colt I knew. He looked drained of blood, his body beaten, raw and broken, his eyes glazed and sightless, as if he no longer had the strength to animate anything but his heart, that barely flickering organ keeping him on tick-over.

  “Colt…” I murmured.

  I wouldn’t have thought it was loud enough for him to hear, but as I spoke, his eyes moved and focused on me. An almost smile managed to turn up the corners of his mouth, a vague echo of the bright smile that I knew and loved.

  “We won,” he managed, before he seemed to slip back into that holding state that his body had adopted.

  Now, the paramedics looked at me. Perhaps they might have been angry at me disturbing their patient, but they saw the tears in my eyes.

  “That’s the best sign yet,” one said. “Can you stay with him?”

  Could I? Let them try to tear me away.

  I sat by Colt’s bedside, listening to the machine beep that indicated his heart still beat. As long as his did, then mine could continue.

  Jackson came in to join me, standing by my side, a hand on my shoulder.

  “A bunch of them had the drop on Clarke and I when we were trying to secure the landing. He was safe. He didn’t have to help. But he took them all on. Saved our lives.” His strong voice was almost at breaking point. “You know he’ll never let us forget this. Every argument from here on in he’ll win by reminding us that he saved our lives. You hear that, Colt? You can hold this over us forever.” He paused a moment, breathing steadily to keep control. “You wouldn’t want to miss that.”

  Jackson and Clarke came and went as the day wore through and turned into another night, while I sat by Colt, unwilling to leave his side.

  “You know,” Clarke stood by the window, staring out, “all that woodland – you could build a nice house in the grounds here. Something a bit cozier than this old pile.”

  “Just don’t let Colt do the electrics, right?” I tried to smile.

  Clarke nodded. “Damn right. Your father would never forgive us if we burned his estate down.” He looked out th
e window again. “I don’t think I’d want to live here. But a nice weekend home. That would be something. A place big enough for four.” He glanced back toward the bed. “You got that, Colt? Four.”

  On the second night, I drifted off to sleep, exhaustion simply becoming too much for me. When I awoke, dawn was starting to break, dispelling the darkness from the room, and by that early morning light I saw Colt move.

  “Colt!” I gasped. I ran to the door and called for the doctors before rushing back to my man’s side.

  Colt looked up at me. “I ache all over.”

  “Good,” I said, and kissed him.

  He looked up at me. “I’ll be honest with you, Bailey, I think a kiss is all I can manage for now. But give me an hour or so and I will rock your world.”

  I laughed.

  It took longer than an hour for Colt to recover, but once he had, he kept his promise.

  Things had continued to move while my own world seemed frozen between a chance of heaven and total devastation. The body of Farley Castleford was discovered in Kenai territory and, after some cursory investigation, the police ruled it as an accidental death. There were those who pointed out it did not look all that accidental, but the police pointed out that his death was the result of a chain of unpredictable events, which is as close to the definition of an accident as you could get.

  All four of the city’s Pack Leaders had embarked on a campaign against The Brotherhood, rooting out sympathizers and putting them on trial. This was not a very ‘werewolf’ thing to do but it was clever. Under public questioning, the flaws and prejudices in The Brotherhood’s philosophy were exposed to the harsh light of the legal system. Their followers began to fall away, and the sudden loss of their main financial backer was the final nail in their unpleasant coffin. Good riddance to them.

  I had to admit that it was a relief to find them gone, even though I had given up the lifestyle that had so infuriated them; no more partying and hooking up with random human males for this werewolf chick. That said, the new life on which I had embarked would probably have angered them even more, and even with The Brotherhood gone, there were rumblings of dissatisfaction when the daughter of a Pack Leader announced that she was mated to three humans and was settling down with them. But those rumblings were unlikely to be heard over the growling of my father, who made his feelings on the matter very clear; he was proud of his little girl.