Dire Needs

by Stephanie Tyler

  “So this dreamwalking… that’s what you were doing with me the first night we met,” she said, and he nodded in confirmation. “And at the celebration—”

  “Part dream. I was trying to make you think all of this was a dream, just in case…”

  “In case?”

  “I didn’t know you were a wolf. But I was hoping you wouldn’t… that maybe the doctors were wrong and you’d stick around.”

  “Would you have let me, if I wasn’t a wolf?”

  “But you are. If you weren’t, I wouldn’t have been pulled to you,” he told her. “The dreamwalking bonded us more quickly.”

  “You don’t just walk in dreams—you can influence them too.”

  “Yes. It’s how I got the weretrappers to release me from my chains. I walked through a sleeping guard’s dreams and convinced him to open the door and take the silver away. And then I killed him and everyone else I could find before I grabbed Rogue and escaped.” He paused. “I’m violent, Gwen. It’s in my nature.”

  What could she say to that? She’d seen it. And she had it inside of her too, along with her Sister Wolf. “It’s necessary.”

  “You don’t understand; I have that viciousness inside of me and I like it—don’t mind being violent and dark. Destruction comes naturally to me. It’s a part of who I am.”

  “What are you telling me?”

  “I’m not built to be kind and considerate to humans.”

  She blinked. Was he pushing her away because of her lineage? “You’ve already been that way to me.”

  Rifter shook his head as if refusing to believe her. She touched her palms to his bare back, trying to calm both man and beast. “You’re dark, yes. But you’re not bad.”

  “Gwen—”

  “I won’t believe it. Not after everything you’ve done for me,” she said finally, her Sister Wolf urging her on. “I’ll do anything and everything to prove it to you.”

  He stared at her, his eyes slightly lupine. “You have already. It’s just all so new. Talking about it… the capture. My family. I mourned for them even though I hated them for what they’d done.”

  “They taught you the ways of the pack.”

  “More than that. My family’s responsible for my gift… and the beginning of the weretrappers. My father killed a shaman’s family in cold blood, for the pure thrill of it. And that shaman cursed me, and his descendants vowed to rid the world of wolves.” He stared at her. “My pack—my kind—is responsible for the scourge that’s visiting us today.”

  Although she hadn’t felt threatened by him, even when he followed her into the woods, the wolf in her knew Rifter was more than part beast. Feral, dangerous—and she knew instinctively that calming him, soothing him, was what she was meant to do.

  “My kind too,” she reminded him.

  “Yeah, your kind.” He stroked a strong hand through her hair—rough and so gentle. He was holding back from her, and if her scent was driving him half as crazy as his was her, he had near herculean strength. “The Elders’ punishment makes a lot of sense now that you know this, right?”

  “Yes… and no. It sounds like it’s in a wolf’s nature. How can you stop being what you are inside?”

  “I don’t think that’s who the Dires were. Not at first, anyway. The packs got too much power. In a way, they’re not all that different from today’s weretrappers. There’s a thin line between what motivates all our kinds.”

  She had to agree with that.

  Her kind too. Rifter found himself praying that her wolf side was strong enough to override her human frailties.

  “So the gifts… curses, you all have—they let you help humans and fight the weretrappers?” Gwen asked.

  “It’s our charge to keep the weretrappers at bay so we can save the other humans from them and any wolves they might produce for the sole purpose of hurting the human race as a whole,” he agreed.

  “So you’re taking care of the human race,” she breathed, and Rifter nodded. “Saving us from ourselves.”

  “Trying to.”

  “Like wolf superheroes,” she added and meant it.

  It certainly was no small charge—humans were impossible, wanted more and more power but had no idea what to do or how to deal with it once they got it.

  The weretrappers were extreme examples, but they were certainly power hungry, terrorists in the strictest sense, ready to overthrow the government and run it their way. But it helped for all their sakes that it was in the trappers best interest to deny any werewolf existence.

  “Why can’t you get into Seb’s dreams?”

  “He wants me to stay out as badly as I want to stay out, for the most part. Sometimes, I can absorb traits and qualities of the person I dreamwalk with. Black arts is something I stay far away from.” Still, someone—no doubt Seb—was determined to pull him inside of the dark magic, no matter how hard he resisted. “Obviously, I’m okay with my brother Dires. Even you… but Seb, the black arts would become a part of me. I could gain powers I don’t want and might be unable to control.”

  His brothers had been unwilling to let him attempt to break into Seb’s dreams—and until now, it hadn’t seemed a necessity. The witch was a formidable enemy. Trained… talented… Although the Dires couldn’t be spelled, Seb knew too much about their foibles and ways to get around that. At one time, Seb had considered himself a brother to the wolves. But when his coven had been threatened, Seb turned his back easily on the Dires.

  “They are my kind,” Seb told him after he’d explained he was returning to his coven.

  “Funny how for the past few hundred years, we were your kind,” Rifter said, knowing he’d have to spend the next however many years hunting Seb as ferociously as he had the weretrappers. “Where was your family when the noose was around your neck? I remember you all alone and not nearly as powerful as you are now.”

  “You saved him from the Salem witch trials?” she asked with awe.

  Rifter had jumped in, snapped the rope in two with the powerful jaws of Brother Wolf. Seb rode out of the stunned crowd on Brother’s back, clutching the fur for dear life until they’d gotten to relative safety.

  He’d exposed himself to the crowd. “You can still find the myth if you search online. They claim that all the people involved were experiencing a mutual hallucination.”

  “Why did you save him?”

  “He was all alone,” he said simply, and she understood. This particular band of deadly brothers had a soft spot for lost boys like themselves.

  Of course, they’d never admit that, as evidenced by Rifter’s next statement. “We figured he’d be useful to us as well.”

  “Sounds like he was.”

  “For a long time, we helped each other.”

  “And now that his sister was killed by Liam, because of me…” She trailed off, then asked, “Why did he leave his coven in the first place?”

  “He refused to practice black arts,” Rifter said. “And now he’s conjuring demons. Ironic, isn’t it?”

  “He was your best friend.”

  “That ended six years ago.” The betrayal still stung, and he suspected it always would.

  “Why?”

  “His coven was threatened. Ultimately, for him, blood was thicker than water.”

  “But they’re evil still?”

  He nodded. “That’s why the weretrappers wanted him. Seb’s the strongest witch the coven’s ever seen. They need him. Worked his guilt.”

  But there were other ways for Seb to have solidified the coven’s safety—Rifter was sure of that. Selling out the wolves who’d loved him like family over the years couldn’t have been the only solution.

  Would he have done the same for Gwen? For his brothers? He’d like to think not at Seb’s expense.

  “Maybe there was really no other way around it.”

  “There’s always another way.” Seb had simply let his family spin their webs and keep him close. “You never betray your own. Never. Not even under the threat
of death.”

  He knew—because he and Rogue had been there and neither man had broken… no secrets had been given away.

  Chapter 34

  Rifter hadn’t meant to fall asleep—one minute, he and Gwen had been talking; the next, the nightmare came on hard. He shot up out of bed, clawing at the invisible Dire army around him. Marching toward him, surrounding him until he couldn’t breathe, couldn’t speak, couldn’t think.

  They wanted him dead. He put his hands on them, touching air, trying to kill them. And he was bleeding. He touched his neck and felt the sticky warm blood.

  It would always be on his hands, no matter how hard he rubbed them, and he wasn’t aware that he’d woken up until he heard Gwen calling his name.

  “Stay back,” he whispered hoarsely, but she wasn’t listening, was covering him with a sheet.

  He hadn’t been aware that he was shivering. His skin had the familiar tight feeling; if he’d shifted in his sleep, he could hurt her.

  He looked down at his hands—they were clawed. Brother Wolf was so close to the surface, ready to protect and defend.

  “Rifter, please—talk to me.”

  “Seb’s doing something really bad,” he said finally. “I’m connected to it.”

  It was the same dream—the massacre, the Dire army rising, but then there was something more. At the end, he’d been back in that cell in the weretrapper’s compound. That had been totally different from the other dreams, and made this one the worst of all. “I walked through my capture again—I was trapped. It was like no matter how hard I struggled, I couldn’t escape. And it was too goddamned real.”

  Being captured had been torture—there was no other way to describe it, and Rifter went out of his way not to.

  Chains held his ankles to the floor when the shift came. They cut into Brother Wolf’s flesh. With the aid of the drugs, Brother Wolf was constantly unsure and confused—Rifter spent most of his time trying to calm the wolf down, forcing him to sleep it off.

  The weretrappers kept both his and Rogue’s Brother Wolves down because they knew the wolves could—and would—rip their throats out. Rifter and Rogue went in and out too. The experiments were brutal.

  “They tried to mate Rogue,” he continued. “A female Were—she was as freaked as Rogue.”

  “You… watched?”

  “Didn’t have much of a choice. We were chained together during that particular experiment.”

  “Did they try with you?”

  Rifter shut his eyes. “Yes.”

  “Rifter… baby…” She held him, comforted him, and he let her. “I’ll never let them take you again. Because your mine.”

  Her alpha female instincts were really kicking into overdrive, and despite the horror of the dream, it turned him the hell on. Her too, obvious from the way she’d begun to move against him.

  She knew they couldn’t risk a third mating—not tonight. But her scent mingled with his, and in minutes, they would be too far gone to care.

  “Gwen, you need to stop,” he warned, his voice hoarse, but she didn’t. Her hand wandered down his belly, stroked his cock, and he held himself back so he wouldn’t throw her down and take her.

  She bent her head and licked the head of his cock, then took as much as she could in her mouth and sucked. His balls tightened and his hands fisted the sheets. Her free hand stroked his balls, exploring him with tongue and hands, her eyes looking up at him as she did so.

  She was pushing him to the brink of orgasm—and he let it happen, let her take over his body, and poured out all the anguish he’d felt earlier and replaced it with an orgasm that brought him off the bed.

  He howled—heard it echo and bounce off the four walls and, no doubt, beyond.

  He didn’t wait to recover before he was up and putting her on her back. He wanted her—needed her—and he would have her. But instead of driving his cock inside of her, he kissed his way down her body and she offered no resistance. Opened her body to his kisses, his hands, and he buried his face in between her legs, her sex wet for him, the scent of her marking him… and him marking her.

  He knew the exact moment she shattered, felt the clench on his tongue and left it there, feeling her body convulse around it as his mouth filled with the even sweeter taste of her orgasm.

  She moved so fluidly, sensually… he could picture her running alongside him, for pleasure, the way they had in her dreams. And in the aftermath, she remained pressed against him, listening to the blessed quiet from outside.

  No more rain. Whatever had happened between them tonight had been that powerful, and no doubt connected to his mating intentions, but he didn’t kid himself that it was over.

  He wondered if Gwen’s blood would make her more powerful than any of them, despite her half-human status, as he ran his hand over her back. She shivered a little under that touch. “It’s more sensitive, right?”

  She nodded. “I still can’t believe this. I mean, how could my life change so completely in forty-eight hours?”

  “I’ve asked myself that before a couple of times,” he said. “I wish you didn’t have to fear your shift. I want you to be able to revel in it.”

  He wanted to prepare her for the shift, but he didn’t want to freak her out. He couldn’t put it off forever, and it was probably better if he took control of it with her.

  He remembered his own shift—after he’d been told about the curse, he’d wondered if his initial shift was made worse because of it. He’d been twenty-one, and the shadow of his wolf had begun to take shape on his already broad back over the course of two weeks following his birthday. At night, he’d stare at it in the mirror, craning his neck, waiting until he could see the wolf’s eyes.

  The first time he did, he realized that at that moment, his own eyes had turned lupine as well. The rustling sound in his ears became much clearer and he realized he was hearing a voice.

  Brother Wolf’s voice.

  “This is going to hurt,” Rifter had murmured, and Brother Wolf hadn’t disagreed. Later, Rifter had gotten the shakes and woke, shivering and sweating simultaneously. His mouth was dry, his eyes burned and his cock was strangely hard.

  “It feels like you’re turning inside out,” Rifter explained finally. “It seemed to happen really fast. But later, I discovered I’d been out for about three hours.”

  “Will it… hurt?”

  “It’s more like a relief. But the wolf will ride you hard. At first, it feels like it’s taking more from you than you can give, but it never asks for more than you can handle,” Rifter explained. “Giving in completely makes it easier.”

  Accepting her lot and the equal parts pain and pleasure that came with it was Gwen’s job. The key to surviving the shift.

  Her only hope in coming back for him.

  Chapter 35

  The banging on the door made Gwen start and Rifter jump out of bed with the grace of the wolf he was, his muscles rippling as he went to the source, unarmed and unafraid.

  Would that be her one day? Would she be as much of a weapon as he was?

  It was Jinx and Cyd, and both looked concerned. She wrapped the sheet around her as she listened.

  “Cain’s been arrested,” Cyd said angrily. “He went out to recon the mausoleum. I went after him when I didn’t hear anything, followed his scent to the police station. He’s being interrogated by the FBI in conjunction with the murder of several humans in the woods by the hospital.”

  “I’ll go bail him out,” Jinx said.

  “Won’t he need a lawyer?” she asked, and all three men glanced at her.

  “I’ll do,” Jinx said. “I’ve got the falsified paperwork to prove I’m an attorney.”

  “I’m going with you,” Cyd said, and then looked to Rifter for the okay. Rifter nodded.

  “You’ll wait in the car,” Jinx said.

  “I’ll go too. I’ll recon around the station while you play lawyer and see what intel I can get,” Rifter said. “None of this is a goddamned coincidence.�
�

  She had to agree.

  When he shut the door, he didn’t dress right away. Instead, he went to the window and stared silently at the moon like it could spill the secrets of the universe.

  Gwen wished with all her heart that was true.

  “You’ll be okay with Vice and Liam,” he said.

  “I’ll be fine—go get Cain.”

  He nodded, went to shower and came out wearing all black. Her senses flared at the sight of him, the smell of him, and he grinned in spite of himself. She blushed at the fact that her hormones were as out of control as an eighth-grade boy’s.

  “Behave yourself,” he told her before he left.

  “Be careful,” she murmured at the closed door, not sure if she was speaking more to Rifter or to herself.

  Jinx drove them to the police station—Rifter sat in the passenger’s seat and Cyd was trying his best not to drive them crazy. But twins were spookily close, as Rifter knew from Jinx and Rogue, so he cut the kid some slack.

  “What was Cain doing out by himself?” he asked Cyd finally.

  “He thought it best if he went alone,” Cyd admitted sheepishly.

  “Obviously, best if he stayed the fuck in the house,” Jinx growled as they pulled up to the small police station.

  The lot was teeming with cop cars and people in handcuffs, and they sat there and watched the scene outside in amazement.

  “World’s going fucking nuts,” Rifter murmured.

  This was like a supernatural zoo, and the humans didn’t even realize it. His skin prickled as Weres and witches nodded to him—in deference and in challenge—and although none of them would dare start anything in the middle of the precinct, it was still a bad sign.

  This had been a bad moon—and the lunar cycle wasn’t over. The blue moon only complicated things, making it the perfect month for some kind of wolf-witch-ghost-army apocalypse.

  For a second, Rifter almost felt sorry for the humans, who went about their business without a goddamned clue. They were worried about terrorists abroad—or the cells inside the United States—when they had a far worse problem right at their doorsteps.