by A. J. Downey
“It might be a good idea if we learned a little more about each other too,” she heaved a substantial sigh, “I mean, you look twenty-five but by your own admission, you’re in your seventies and I know almost nothing about you to be this crazy in love with you.”
Her admission made me smile, “You know the important parts,” I told her and slid over until we were touching. I pulled her around so she was straddling my lap and gave her a gentle kiss. “The rest is just window dressing, but we’ll figure it out as we go.”
“Alright,” she sighed and leaned her head against my shoulder. There was silence for a moment before she spoke again in a small sounding voice. “What about kids?” she asked and I fought the urge to heave out a huge sigh. I really didn’t know how she would take that and I didn’t really know how it would have been intended myself, to be honest. When I’d been human, I’d wanted children. As a wolf-kind, I’d let that dream go a long time ago…
“I’m not exactly ready for children at this point,” I said uneasily. “With the Pack such a mess, there’s a lot of work that I need to focus on to get us back on track. I’m not sure if I could handle worrying about children at the same time.”
She nodded against my neck. “I’m really worried our kids would be like your brother… Like Rom.”
I did sigh that time. “I can’t say they wouldn’t be. Blood Born are more aggressive. That’s not always a bad thing, but there does seem to be a higher chance of them being like Rom. Remus is a different case. He seems to have better control of himself overall at least.” I shrugged and frowned to myself. “I don’t know what to tell you, Sugar. I can’t make any promises. All we could do is try to show any kids we might have, the love and attention they’d need and teach them to be good people. Dad never did show the twins much affection that I saw. Maybe that had something to do with Rom being so horrible. Or he might have just been broken from the start. It’s hard to say, really.”
She sagged into me, molding herself against my body and I simply held her for a long time as we each lost ourselves in our own thoughts. She’d wanted kids, her asking about it this much proved that to me. I wish I could say her fears were unfounded, that Rom was one in a million just like human kids, but he wasn’t. Blood Born just tended to be more animal, more wolf than human… whether they came from two Moon Forged parents or not. Sociopathic tendencies manifested more with the Blood Born than with human children, it was my people’s real curse. Our true tragedy.
After several minutes, Chloe stirred a bit. “What about you?” she asked and I frowned.
“What do you mean?”
“Well, I know you like art. I know you’re good with your hands and you make sculptures. I know you like to read. And you really like the color red. I know you are freaking phenomenal in bed,” I laughed, and her voice gentled, grew more serious, “What else do I need to know about you William Reese?”
“Hmm…” I thought for a minute, really considering the question before I spoke. “Well, I’ve come to appreciate the smell of peaches a lot more since I met you,” I said. I could still faintly detect the scent of peaches around her. Even through the strong odor veil of minerals given off by the geothermic water we lounged in.
“I like movies, and music. I love this park, camping, hiking, all that. I’m an outdoorsy kind of guy, I guess you could say.”
“Nothing wrong with that. You don’t like cities?”
I shrugged and she whimpered slightly in protest as I rocked her in my arms. I smiled that she was so comfortable and answered her question, “Not that I dislike cities. They’re just so… loud, and they stink. There’s so many people crammed into such a small space and all those tall buildings and concrete, and asphalt… It’s like there’s no air. It’s claustrophobic and there isn’t enough green. Not enough good dirt beneath my paws, too much steel and glass.” I shuddered slightly and shrugged again but I made sure to only use the shoulder her head wasn’t resting against. “I just prefer woods, and mountains, and open spaces.”
“Is that the wolf in you, or were you like that before you were bitten?” There was a touch of concern in her voice.
“You’re not going to suddenly have huge personality shifts, Chloe. It doesn’t exactly work like that. Yeah, even as a kid I didn’t much care for living in the city.” I hadn’t thought about my life before being wolf-kind so much in the last several years, as I had in the past few days. I held her tightly for a moment. “You know we’re stalling, right?” I said in a quiet murmur.
She shook her head.
“Not yet,” she said, shifting her weight against me, grinding herself against my dick, which obligingly responded to the attention. The water only came up to my chest where I sat on the submerged bench and I slunk down to put more of us under the water. She was starting to shiver slightly as the cold air touched the now damp skin of her upper body and she gave a contented sigh as we sank beneath the warm water. She turned in my lap so she was sitting with her back to my chest, my length nestling into the crack of her beautiful ass again and she leaned back, resting her head on my shoulder as my arms came around her.
“What about your dad?” I asked, finally. It was still a difficult subject, but it was probably going to be simpler than the other issue we had hanging over our heads that we needed to hash out.
She groaned and pressed her face against my neck. “What about him?” she said her voice muffled.
“You know he’s not going to be happy about this. Not even a little.”
She frowned and let out a disgusted snort.
“And?” she asked. “What the hell do I give a fuck what he thinks about it? If he can’t get his head out of his ass that’s not my problem.” Her anger masked her deep hurt and I considered how best to continue; this needed to be talked about. Likely Mathias Young was already looking for his wayward daughter and that could pose a problem for our Pack.
“But if he doesn’t pull his head out of his ass then he is going to continue to kill our people… You’re his only daughter, Sugar. Mathias Young has burned down the world of wolf-kind for far less in the past. We may be forced to kill him,” I pointed out and she nodded, just slightly.
“I know,” she sighed, quiet, broken, her beautiful lilting voice heavy with sorrow, the tang of salt mixing with the minerals of the spring. She wiped at her face and I pulled her back cuddling her closer.
“As much as you might hate him, he’s still your father,” I pointed out gently and she tensed in my arms.
“I don’t want him to be. That man on the phone… I just don’t want him to be.”
“No choice in that, Sugar.” I pressed a kiss to the back of her neck and she sighed again.
“We’ll figure it out later. For right now, can you promise you’re not going to send out a hit team to kill him or something?” she asked. “At least not until we have more information?”
I chuckled, though there was no real humor in it. “It doesn’t exactly work like that but yes, I won’t be going out of my way to hunt the hunter of Hunters. Not without a very compelling reason.” Of course keeping Chloe safe and by my side was a very compelling reason… Her nodding again distracted me from the thought.
“Alright, what about Sharon and Remus? What do we do with them?”
I didn’t really know what to say at first. Well, that’s not exactly true. I knew what to say. I knew what the law said. I just wasn’t sure I liked it or wanted to do it.
“Pack law is very clear, Remus assisted in the murder of the pack’s Alpha. And worse, he actually revealed the Pack’s location to one of the most effective hunters we have ever seen. Whatever else he may be, your father is very good at what he does, and he now knows that we occupy this territory, all because of my brothers’ selfish political machinations.” I brooded on that for a while, but Chloe, ever inquisitive, didn’t let me brood for very long.
“So what does Pack Law require? I can’t imagine it’s anything good.”
“According to Pack Law,
Remus should be executed on the next full moon. There’s a ceremonial weapon, meant for exactly that purpose. As Alpha at the meeting tomorrow night, I would be expected to pass sentence on him and on the next full moon, kill him in front of the local Pack with a silver edged weapon.”
“Local?” she paused and held up a hand for a moment to stop me. “Never mind, we’ll get back to that later. They would really expect you to kill him? Your own brother?”
“He’s no brother to me except that we lived together under the same roof. He and Romulus were both older than me and they did teach me a lot, they did help me when I first came to the family, but that was only at Father’s behest. Chloe, Sugar, he helped kill his own father and he betrayed the entire Pack. Patricide is the mother of all sins to our people, not only did he do that, he committed treason to do it. All of those are capital crimes… and I am the Alpha. If I can’t carry out a sentence as it’s decreed by Pack Law, who’s to say I won’t bend or bow on other issues? The Pack could lose respect for me and I could be deposed pretty quickly if that happens. You’ve seen the fights of succession…” I didn’t want to be fending off challenges every full moon. That was a pretty damned good way to get dead in a hurry and I had everything to live for right here in my arms.
Chloe was silent again but she was fidgeting, shifting her weight slightly and kicking her leg in a most distracting manner as it caused her ass to shift side to side just slightly in my lap. I moved my hands to her hips and held her tightly, keeping her still.
“If you keep doing that we’re not going to finish this discussion before I bend you over the side of this pool and fuck you,” I whispered in her ear and she turned to look at me out of the corner of her eye with a mischievous smirk.
“You say that as if it’s a bad thing,” she said but she obligingly stopped kicking her leg. “Would… would it be impossible to show any leniency to Remus?”
“He hasn’t shown much to indicate that he deserves it. He helped kill Father. He helped keep you captive.” I paused and thought about that. “Though he did bring you to see me. And did he help you with the change?”
“We discussed it while I was eating. We stopped and got food right after we left the house the other day,” she said and I felt a profound sense of relief wash over me.
“He also kept me alive before that. When I wouldn’t eat he went out of his way to give me these protein shakes,” she said and my relief twisted sharply into an even greater feeling of despair. Pack Law was very clear. Even if I felt a sense of gratitude toward Remus for helping my mate, I couldn’t just suspend his sentence and let him stay free.
“Couldn’t you make him leave?” she asked and the proverbial light bulb went off over my head even as a sense of dread filled me out from my center.
“Theoretically…” I muttered, considering the idea.
“Why theoretically? You either can or you can’t, right?” her fingers wound around mine as she idly played with my hands beneath the water.
“True, though it isn’t entirely that simple. You don’t understand it yet, but you’ll learn. To a wolf, at least to wolf-kind, the Pack is everything. It’s supposed to be at least. The Pack is your family, your life, your support. Without a Pack a wolf is in trouble. I could order Remus to leave. I could banish him from the Pack. But he might not agree, he might ask for the executioner’s blade instead.”
“What?” she sounded confused. “Isn’t the Alpha’s word as good as Law? If you order him to leave how could he refuse? How could he ask to die instead?”
“He could request death in place of losing his Pack. Omega, that’s a wolf without a Pack, is the worst punishment that we can hand down. Sure he gets to live, but Omega is no kind of life for us, Love.”
She was silent for a moment after that statement, the finality in my tone giving her a brief pause. “Is it really that horrible?”
I nodded. “It can be. To Blood Born even more so as they’ve never known anything other than the Pack. As Moon Forged, we were human first. We spent time without a Pack. We could return to that, if we really needed to, although the wolf inside us wouldn’t be thrilled by it. But Remus? He might not be able to handle something like that. It’s really difficult to say. But it may just be the best option given his crimes. I’ll think about it,” I promised. I knew she didn’t understand, that she wouldn’t or couldn’t understand but I was pretty sure that she was right. Omega was a fate worse than death and for what Remus had done, I wanted him to suffer.
“What about Sharon?” she asked, interrupting my thoughts on my brother. I hummed quietly as I considered that, letting my hands slide up her sides from her hips until I was gently cupping her breasts. She made a deeply contented sound and relaxed further against me.
“You have to make that decision,” I said. “As the Alpha Female it’s your job to police and pass judgement on these things.”
“What judgement am I passing, exactly?” she asked, a touch breathlessly as I kneaded the soft flesh of her breasts in my hands. She moaned quietly and arched her back for a moment as I pinched her already hardened nipples. “I mean, what did she do, really? What was so awful?”
“When you attacked Lucinda, were you challenging her for the role of Alpha? Was that your intent?”
She let out another quiet moan, dragging out the word, “Noo-o-o. No, I wasn’t thinking about the fact that she was the Alpha Female. She just pissed me off the way she was trying to hang off you like that. I mean, she’d been doing the same to Romulus just before the fight and his body wasn’t even cold yet and there she was, trying to rub herself against my mate.” She stressed the word ‘my’ with a fierce anger that made me practically beam with pride and a feeling of all-encompassing love for her swelled in my chest. I nipped her shoulder near the mating mark I’d left and Chloe gave a throaty gasp.
“That’s what Sharon did. It wasn’t a challenge, and for her to say that, in front of the entire Pack, forcing the issue? That was not within her right to say. But the whole Pack heard it, and there was nothing else to be done by that point. She forced the issue, was trying to get you killed. She figured it was your first full moon. She figured you wouldn’t be used to it or be able to control it and she was counting on Lucinda killing you.” I growled, angry at the very thought of what could have happened.
“She put my mate in danger for her own petty vindictive bullshit and I will not stand for that type of behavior in my Pack.” Without realizing it I had changed my tone dramatically, using a forcefulness that was typically reserved for dealing with hard headed individuals in need of leadership and guidance and without thinking, or possibly, even being aware of it, Chloe responded to it.
“Yes, Alpha,” she said, the wolf in her reacting instinctively to the voice and word of her Alpha, her body going limp in submission against my own.
I took a deep, steadying breath. My hands had grown still on her body and I forced myself to resume my gentle massage of her flesh.
“Sorry,” I muttered, contrite. “I didn’t mean to get so intense.”
“It’s okay. I kind of like it,” she murmured, sheepish and I caught a glimpse of that sexy as hell flush painting the tops of her breasts from over her shoulder.
I chuckled quietly against her hair. “So you have a few options, but only a few really. Pack Law dictates no interference when it comes to a Challenge, it doesn’t really have anything to say about creating one from nothing. Really, if she hadn’t opened her mouth, by Pack Law you would have had your ass whooped by Lucinda, and would have had to show deference as her Beta before the crowd and it would have been done.”
She arched her back slightly again, opening a space between us and reached behind her to grasp my dick with one small hand, stroking me slowly. “Deference, such as?” she asked.
“It’s very difficult to think when you do that,” I groaned and it was her turn to laugh at me.
“Says the man who has been playing with my tits for the last five minutes.”
�
��I happen to enjoy your tits,” I said.
“And I happen to enjoy this.” She gave my dick a tug and my eyes slipped closed of their own accord. Damn she was good at changing the subject.
“You would have had to grovel for forgiveness.” I gasped as she tightened her grip and groaned. “As for Sharon, your choices are to have her marked and demoted. Remove her as Beta, but we’ll have to choose a new Beta quickly to fill in her usual role. Preferably someone close to us and supportive of us as both a couple and as Alphas of the Pack.”
“Okay,” she sighed and continued stroking me, her hand gliding lightly across my skin. She put almost no pressure on the shaft, her fingers just loosely circling me but on the up stroke her thumb ran across the head and sent a jolt of pleasure through my entire body that only a bonded mate could do.
“And my second option?”
“Have her leave the Pack entirely, make her Omega.”
She paused, her hand becoming still for a moment before she resumed moving. “And that would be an extreme reaction which would be seen by the Pack as personal and not in keeping with the role of a leader. I would probably lose what little respect I’ve gained so far and I’ll have an uphill battle getting that back. Right?”
I nodded and let one hand slide down her body until my fingers rested on her pussy, gently parting her lips. “You’ve got a pretty good understanding of things already, my love,” I told her.
She gasped and pushed at the floor of the pool with her feet, lifting her ass so she could position me at her entrance. “Alright that’s enough politics for tonight, now stop talking and get inside me.”
I can be many things. Contrary. Stubborn. Difficult. Even a bit stupid on occasion. One thing I very rarely was? A complete and total idiot. She didn’t have to tell me twice and I slowly thrust up into her as she slid down the length of my cock. When her ass settled against my stomach again I was buried all the way inside her and I couldn’t help but groan at the sensation of her body wrapped around me. She didn’t push herself up. She simply shifted her hips, grinding her body against mine, keeping me buried to the hilt in her grasping cunt the entire time. She braced her hands on my legs, her head back against my shoulder, mouth gaping in a silent cry.
