by Lynn Red
“What’d he do to you?” I asked, trying to figure out where exactly the hole was, and then stick my finger in it as deep as I could manage. “He must’ve done something personal for you to care this much.”
Jeannie made a little squeaking noise. Almost immediately, he forgot all about her and let go of her neck. She collapsed to the ground, taking a bunch of long, slow, deep breaths, like she was checking to make sure she still could.
“My brother could never do anything to me,” he said. “He’s as weak as you, as hopelessly sentimental and useless.” The snarl in his voice told me there was a lot more to it.
Hoping maybe I’d lucked into that wound without even trying, I prodded harder. “What was it? Daddy like him more? That why he got the company and you got... what, exactly?”
“The hell would you know about it?” he hissed, waving a hand. “You humans are all the same. You get one hint of our world and suddenly you’re experts. Get one taste of my brother, and you think you’ve got a handle on the entire hidden world, hum?”
He snorted a derisive laugh.
If I’d found the wound, I missed the mark. Either that, or he really did care as little as he acted. Maybe this guy was just a wild sociopath who would do anything at all to hurt his brother, no matter what. He grabbed me by the neck, but didn’t lift me like he had Jeannie. Instead he just turned my head side to side, like he was inspecting me. “You’ll do,” he finally said, after a long, thoughtful sniff of my neck.
His eyes bored straight through me, capturing my soul with their danger. He continued after a moment’s pause. “I was worried I’d have to find my own mate, you know. To beat my brother to the punch. That’s the challenge – you’re sure he didn’t mention it?”
I just stared straight ahead. Even if I was just a pawn in a game, this guy was a class-one whackjob. And I wasn’t going to give him anything more than he already had.
“I guess I should explain before I take you,” he whispered into my ear. His voice was low, almost so soft that I felt it more than heard the words. I felt myself shaking despite trying to steel my courage.
The thoughts running through my mind ranged from the ridiculous to the practical, but at that second, the only thing I wanted was to get away. I wanted Jake to burst through the door in a dramatic rescue that ended with a kiss... and an explanation. That’s not real life though, and as much as I couldn’t believe it, I was living in reality. A reality with werewolves, pack politics, and with me right in the middle of it.
“We made a bet, my brother and I,” Dane hissed, next to my ear. He kissed my neck, then my earlobe in a way that at once made my skin crawl and made me imagine things that made me angry for imagining. “It’s a tradition. Whenever two rival alphas have a problem with each other, a mating challenge is issued. It sounds very thrilling and all, but it’s really very simple.”
He narrowed his eyes, and ran his tongue along my jaw to my chin. “So wonderfully simple. Whatever the stakes, the first one to claim a mate takes it all.”
I felt a wave of heat creeping down my belly. It was like he had some sort of power, or ability, to manipulate my nerves. In my mind and my heart, he gave me nothing but rage, but my body felt like it was rebelling against all of that. I tried to force myself to look away, but he grabbed my jaw in his massive hand and forced me to stare at him. I closed my eyes to give myself one last refuge from this crazed, ferocious, monstrous werewolf.
I heard Jeannie scream.
“Leave her alone,” I warned him. “She’s got nothing to do with this except being my best friend and being in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
He chuckled in that menacing, horrifying way he had. “Then open your eyes, mate,” Dane growled. “You want to save your friend? Then give in. Give me what I want. Be mine, and destroy my brother. Give me the pack, and give me the company. I’ll have everything I need to put things right.”
Dane was starting to get really riled up. Every word he said, his eyes seemed to flare brighter, his voice grew higher and louder. The things he was saying hardly made any sense. I tried to ask him what the hell he was talking about, but whenever I eked out a word he gave me another warning squeeze.
“The only words I want to hear coming out of your mouth are ‘yes’ and ‘sir’, do you understand? Nod.”
I was able to turn my head enough to see that Jeannie had pushed herself into a corner. In one of those bizarre moments of trauma where the mind wonders somewhere else, I remembered Barney’s pitiful moaning. I nodded. Weakly at first, but the longer it went on, the stronger my resolve grew.
Dane narrowed his eyes and studied my face. “If I let you go, and you try anything stupid, you’re going to watch your friend’s neck snap. Get it?”
I nodded harder and more insistently. I hadn’t even realized I was trying to shout until he let go of my throat, and I shouted “yes!”
“There’s no way this is going to be this easy,” he said.
“You have to let Barney go, too,” I said quickly. Time was running out, and I was tempting the damn devil with every word I said that wasn’t exactly what he wanted to hear. But, he shrugged.
“Fine,” he said. “Say the words,” his voice was low and hot against my skin. “Say them now, Delilah. I don’t have much patience, if you haven’t guessed already.”
It was like I was outside of myself. Just like before with the epoxy, I was a spirit in the corner of the room watching the whole mess play out. There were so many heroic, defiant things I could have said, but I couldn’t sacrifice Jeannie just to try and save myself. I couldn’t let this psychopath kill Barney – who had protected me for no reason other than he thought it was the right thing to do.
So, I did the only thing I could think to do.
I felt my lips framing the words, heard a voice that didn’t sound much like my own speaking them. There were teeth on my neck. Sharp, jagged, dangerous teeth. I wanted out, I wanted to run, I wanted to fight... hell, right then I would have accepted dying over the way he made me feel.
“Say the words,” Dane whispered.
His teeth brushed against my neck. “Make a choice, change the world. Save your friends.”
I swallowed, hard. “Yes, sir,” I said, my voice cracking halfway through.
“Say it again,” Dane said with a devil’s grin. “Louder.”
Go fuck yourself, I wanted to say. Go to hell, Jake is coming, I wished I could say. I wished I could believe it. But it was just us. Jeannie in the corner, Barney groaning in the next room over, and Dane with his thumbs on either side of my neck and his teeth brushing my throat.
The last thing I wanted to say is what I actually did.
“Yes, sir,” I repeated, louder and clearer than before. My head swirled, my thoughts a mess of confusion, pain, anger and terror. “Yes, sir!” I shouted, like I was owning the phrase and making it mine.
I heard him laugh. “You humans really are all the same,” he said.
And then I felt those teeth prick my skin, and I was sure that I’d be dead before morning.
-13-
“It sounds like a hell of a cliché, but I mean it. Murder really IS too quick.”
-Jake
He couldn’t stand it anymore. Three days and not a single word from Delilah, and worse than that, Jake had no idea what he’d done to upset her. George told him that maybe things had just gone too fast, and that made sense. After all they went from zero to almost hitched in record time.
Jake rolled onto a side and looked out the window of the nondescript, almost empty apartment he’d rented out years back. The window in his bedroom overlooked the fringe of the woods where he liked to go when he needed time to himself, and the apartment was – as far as he knew – completely unknown to anyone in the pack, which meant that no one bothered him.
And on top of all that? It was about as far from the grand mansion living he dealt with on a daily basis. He wished his father had given that awful place up and just moved out to the country
with Ma, but that wasn’t going to happen. The house was ancient, it had been in the family for hundreds of years, and had been constantly renovated because that’s how his dad dealt with not knowing what the hell to do with Dane – fiddling around with house projects.
He stood up and crossed the room, cheap, industrial-grade carpet scrunching under his bare feet. Pushing the vertically hanging blinds apart, he caught a glimpse of the waxing crescent moon and let the light bathe him in silver for a moment.
Deep in his chest, thoughts of Delilah’s lips, the way she tasted when he kissed her, the way her scent down there intoxicated him. He remember how she arched against him, how her hips felt when he lay his hands on them and squeezed her against his mouth. A shudder crept through the huge wolf, which he soon realized was the twinge of longing.
He needed her. Desperately.
Without her, he’d lose his whole pack and the business, but as he watched the moon and listened to a nightingale sing in the distance, he realized that wasn’t what mattered. It probably had never been what mattered.
When he closed his eyes he could still see her body, her shape, outlined by the moon with a halo of shimmering silver around her curves. He pulled one of his lips between his teeth and chewed. The whiskers rasped between his teeth, the rough, dragging sensation giving him a moment’s worth of respite. That was all though – he was worried, and worried to the point of sickness. Since she’d vanished, he had no appetite, which was very, very bad for someone who normally eats eight thousand calories a day.
His skin was starting to get sallow and his cheeks sunken. He looked like he was tired, and felt the exhaustion in his bones. Sleeping was all he wanted to do, but he knew that couldn’t last. He worried that he’d somehow made Delilah panic, or that something had made her run. Fate, he knew, had drawn them together, but all it would take was something very human – insecurity or worry or fear – to rip them apart.
Or it could be something very non-human.
Either way, Jake thought, three days with no word isn’t a good sign. It’s especially bad with Dane doing whatever he can to stop us from getting him out of the pack for good. I need to find her, but I need to clear my head.
Jake was already naked, his body glowing with the moon’s pale, gentle light. A naked trot through the woods wasn’t going to give him the clarity he needed, though. He needed speed and release. Looking down below his second story window, he made sure there were no people to see when he shifted.
With a deep breath, Jake Somerset crouched down, and felt the fur slide out of his skin. Goosebumps followed the coarse, thick hairs that sprouted along his shoulders first, and then down his spine. His neck thickened and his arms quickly took their new place.
He took one last quick look out the window and smelled the air, his lupine nose a thousand times more sensitive than his human one.
It’s clear, he thought.
And then, he jumped.
*
Footfall after footfall crunched in the leaves underneath his huge, lanky, powerful body. Every cord and muscle running through him was tight with power, ready to explode. Over and over, Jake let the energy blast through him as he dashed through the dense, bramble-filled woods.
He was a silver blur, like moonlight shooting through the darkness. In his wake he left dust and leaves and earth kicked up, disturbed, but only for a moment before all of it settled neatly back down to the forest floor.
It’s been a long time since I did this. Too long.
Around a thickly-rooted live oak he dashed, ducking underneath the overhanging branches. He didn’t notice a bramble that cut into his skin, but the pain was just more awakening, just more warmth that coursed through his veins. Out here there wasn’t a single thing that could hurt him, or distract him, or cause any pain. Nothing that is, except what was already in his head – worry about Delilah and rage at what his brother had done.
I should’ve killed him when I had the chance. Should have ordered a hit like they told me to do. But no, Jake chided himself as he leapt over a mound with some ribs protruding. His stomach growled. But no, I had to leave him alone. I had to pretend that I thought he’d either stay gone, or that he’d come around and stop acting like a lunatic. I had to see the best in him and not the reality. I had to see the brother I’d grown up with... not the one he became.
A howl in the distance pricked Jake’s ears. There were normal wolves in these woods too, but the call he heard was different from those. It was louder, more powerful, lower-toned.
And past that, he recognized the voice.
Dane.
The name slid through his chest like cold venom, paralyzing the blood in his heart. He didn’t hate his brother, as much as he wanted to, he couldn’t hate him. He knew him too well, knew his life too well.
Another voice joined his brother’s – this one he didn’t know. Jake shook his head and kept running, kept filling his lungs with cold night air, kept letting his thoughts wander.
The wolf voices were distant. Miles away, probably, and their calling at night was nothing surprising or strange. It’s what wolves did; it’s what nature demanded of them, even if in so many other ways, they had long ago abandoned their wild, fierce selves.
I should go to him, Jake thought. If I do, I can threaten him, beat him, make him relent. He might be crazy, but I know how to fight.
The thought of crunching a fist into his brother’s nose, or swiping a paw across his chest gave Jake a warm, comfortable feeling – and that worried him. He was becoming what he feared, what he hated most about his brother. He couldn’t give in to those animal urges, not if he wanted to keep the pack from chaos, and not if he wanted to keep Delilah from descending straight into madness with him.
I can’t fall into that, not again. I’ve been there once. It took a long time to claw my way back out. I can’t, not again, not with her in it this time. Before it was just wolf business, just pack bullshit. With my mate on the line, I won’t do it again. I have to be a leader. I have to keep myself in check.
Something rushed past him in the darkness, whipping Jake’s fur with the tailwind it created. Shortly, two other unseen things rushed past. He caught a scent, but it couldn’t be – not with his brother howling in the distance.
The next rush wasn’t of something going past, it was of something ramming straight into his ribs.
White hot pain shot through Jake’s body as he collapsed to the side. He skidded a few feet through the leaves before he managed to catch the leaves beneath himself with his claws and flip back to his feet. He shook his head to clear the cobwebs.
Six eyes, four of them pale yellow and one of them dark, stormy blue, glared back at him.
Dane was taller than Jake by a few inches, and broader across the chest. They shared the same silvery-gray fur, but the look in Dane’s eyes was wild as he looked back and forth in the darkness. His two goons were dirty looking, their eyes squinty and close together.
“I won,” Dane hissed. His voice was rough and sand papery. The sound stung Jake’s ears an instant before Dane’s heft slammed into his side again. “I can’t believe throwing my voice fooled you.”
Jake, dazed and with a swimming head, fell to his back, his shoulders pinned hard to the soft, spongy ground below. Something dug into his side, which he realized was the mouth of one of Dane’s idiotic looking goons.
“Takes three of you to hold me down,” Jake hissed. “I guess you can call that winning.”
“I call whatever gets me to come out on top ‘winning’, brother. Maybe you should start to think the same way.”
Jake shook his body, trying to free himself from the weight of the wolves on top of him. “No!” he shouted. “That’s not what this is about, Dane. This is about the pack, it’s about what’s right!”
Dane snorted right into Jake’s face. “What’s right is what the strongest decides is right. How have you stayed alive this long in this world and not figured that out? How is it that the pack is willing to trust
someone as limp and weak and pitiful as you with their safety?”
Jake snapped his jaws at his brother’s face when he drew nearer, but Dane was just out of reach.
“See?” Dane said, in a drawling, taunting tone. “Even you, even the stoic, peaceful Jake resorts to violence when he thinks it’ll work. I’m just wasting my time. It doesn’t matter anyway. I have her, Jake. I have your precious little Delilah. And she’s mine.”
Rage coursed through Jake’s body. He went tight with a spasm, and shook so violently he managed to shrug off Dane’s two goons, and get out from under his brother. “What do you mean?” he hissed, though all Dane had done was confirm his fears, he still couldn’t believe what he was hearing.
“You heard me,” Dane answered, growling. “And it’s too late for you. I already claimed her. She accepted.”
Jake snapped again, but Dane pulled away, a grin curling his lupine lips as he danced away. “That’s what you do, brother, you lose. It’s your nature. Losers, you know, they always lose.”
-14-
“Not quite the way I imagined meeting the family.”
-Delilah
“What have you done?”
There was an old woman talking to Dane, who I didn’t recognize. And really, she wasn’t that old, I just have a tilted perspective. Actually, all of my perspectives were tilted then. I could hardly keep my feet under myself for more than a few minutes. Every so often my equilibrium would go all squiggly and I would have to brace myself against something. Eating was difficult, and riding in a car wasn’t very fun.
When thoughts did come, they were confused and weird and usually about Jake. I missed him so badly I can’t even explain it. I’ve missed plenty of people – my grandma when I was a kid and left her house after staying the weekend or my parents when I went off to college – but this was different. This was intensely physical, like it wasn’t just my heart and my mind that missed him, but my entire body ached for him.
