“Aeron's—”
“The daughter of one of your mother's colleagues, I know,” Faith said, waving her hand at me and spinning back around to stand on my right, between me and Anubis. “And then there's the weirdo with the parasol and the sunglasses, fine. What I mean is, why did you bring your other six boyfriends to school with you? Don't they have, like, jobs or schooling of their own to get to?”
“They're all the heirs to their own family businesses,” I said quickly, which sounded stupid as hell but was infinitely better than saying they're all werewolf princes. “For the next year, they're sort of occupied with …”
“Team building exercises that take place in eight person beds?” Faith inserted for me with a small sigh. “You're not going to tell me shit about these guys, are you?”
“I like surfing,” Tidus inserted, squinching his face up in a smile. “Oh, and thunderstorms. Curling up in the hot sun with a good book. Sushi. I love sushi.”
“Thank you for all of that,” Faith said, and at the very least I could see her fighting back a genuine smile as she glanced over her shoulder. “Good to know. When's your birthday and I'll take you out to my favorite sushi place? Still doesn't tell me crap about what you guys really do. Family businesses, huh? What kind of family businesses? Are y'all involved with the mob?”
“Nothing so sinister as that,” I said, giving my best friend a look that I hoped conveyed how much I cared about her. I didn't want to lie, and I needed her to see that in my eyes. If I could tell her, I would. But the only thing that would serve to do is put more stress on her, introduce her to a situation that she couldn't do a damn thing about.
Faith Cassidy was human and I liked that about her; I needed someone in my life that could temper my beast.
“Just a hint, a clue,” she begged, looking over at Anubis. “You really like those red contact lenses, huh?”
“They suit my features, don't you think?” he asked with a grin of his own. “And let's just say, we're in the business of keeping people safe, not fucking them up. If anything, we're the good guys.” Faith looked from to me and back again. 'Was that too much, Alpha?' he asked, but I shook my head slightly.
'Nah, knowing Faith, she'll probably come up with some elaborate story in her mind. By the end of the week, she'll be convinced that our parents own secret security firms that provide bodyguards for famous people,' I said, trying not to laugh aloud. It was true. Faith had quite the imagination sometimes.
'That's only if she doesn't get too carried away with her fantasies,' Nic added, but he was smiling slightly, too.
“The good guys, huh?” Faith asked, staring at Anubis with narrowed brown eyes. She was good at that, staring people down until they gave in. It never worked on me, but it always worked on her boyfriends. Apparently not on mine though. “Whatever. As long as you all show up for the double date, I'll let it go.” She held up one, long finger with a lavender painted nail. “For now.”
“That's awfully kind of you,” I said with a grin, pausing as Jax darted in front of me, using an excessive amount of speed for a public place. The way he moved, he definitely was not human. He put a hand flat on my belly, crouching low like he was ready for a fight.
I smelled it a split second after he did—blood.
Ebon Red blood.
“What the fuck?!” Faith asked, giving Jax a wide-eyed look. She'd been staring at Anubis when the Azure Frost Alpha Son first moved, so I hoped her expression of confusion was dedicated to the fact that he was crouching like a ninja and not because he'd moved at the speed of fucking light.
'It's all wolf blood,' I told the boys, projecting wide and letting Montgomery, Che, and Silas in on what was happening. 'The stink of wolf blood, it's everywhere—and it wasn't just a second ago.'
'Look for a truck or a van or something,' Montgomery said, and I swear, I could feel the three of them moving toward me like they were on a radar in my head. Monty's blip in our pack connection was brighter, bigger than the other two and I knew, just fucking knew it had something to do with that mark on his wrist. 'They might've dumped someone and taken off.'
Someone, he said.
More likely than not though, it was a corpse we were looking for; I could smell the fresh stench of early death from here.
“I think your new beau's bugging out a bit,” Faith said as Jax relaxed slightly and flicked a sharp glance over his shoulder.
“Sorry about that,” he said, giving Faith a wry smile, “the family business has made me a little jumpy. Better safe than sorry, right?”
“What did you think you saw?” Faith asked as I caught sight of the other boys—along with Aeron and Harlem—making their way out of the math building. “You looked like you were getting ready to karate chop a mugger in the throat or something.”
“Just a backfiring car,” Jax explained with a lame shrug.
Faith was in no way buying any of our shit.
'Wait right there and let me get her inside,' I told the other boys, grabbing my friend's arm and trying to redirect her attention. The smell of Ebon Red blood—still like honeysuckle and pine but tainted with iron—burned my nostrils and I wanted nothing more than to shift into wolf form and find out where it was coming from.
First, though, I'd get my friend to class, safe and sound and completely oblivious to the fact that there was a dead werewolf in the University of Oregon student parking lot.
“Let's get you to class before you're late again,” I said, nodding my chin in Nic's direction.
“I didn't hear a backfiring car,”she grumbled as I grabbed her arm and steered her inside. Julian was nowhere to be found as we led Faith to her classroom door. Nic paused to check the handle of our wildflowers classroom, peeping inside the dark window with cupped hands.
“Jax is an odd duck,” I said with a loose shrug as another girl jogged down the opposite end of the hallway and disappeared inside Faith's classroom. I could hear someone talking—clearly the professor was already in the process of explaining today's lab. “Now get in there and try not to get yourself into too much trouble, okay?”
“Fine,” she said with another sigh, putting her hands on her hips and giving me a curious sort of look. “But I'm onto you, Zara Vodja Castille.”
“Just get your butt to class,” I said, yanking the door to her classroom open and swatting her in the arm as she slipped inside.
As soon as that door closed, I let out a long sigh and turned back to my Ebon Red bodyguard.
“This isn't good, is it?” I asked as Nic reached out and took my hand, leading me back outside.
'I found … them,' Jax said, his wolfspeak voice low and husky with emotion. 'Edge of the parking lot near the woods.'
Nic and I jogged our way past the rows of cars, gleaming in the afternoon sunshine. Most of them were still wet, as was the pavement, and the trees beyond it. I sensed another storm coming. This sunshine … it was a brief reprieve.
Unfortunately, my storm had already rolled in, thick and gray and reeking of blood and death.
I skidded to a stop next to the body, lying twisted and broken on the pavement.
This was so much worse than the non-answer I was hoping to get from Julian, a true call for war.
Montgomery knelt down by the body, his black trench fluttering out behind him as he touched a hand to the wolf's fuzzy ear. It was just about the only part of our former pack mate that was intact.
“Do you know who this is?” he whispered as the eight of us stood in a circle around the deceased Ebon Red wolf, its body mutilated almost beyond recognition. It was so bad, even the stark white of its exposed bones were covered in scrapes and bite marks. This 'were' … he or she had been eaten before being dropped off here.
“I don't recognize their smell,” I said, choking back a wash of white-hot fury, my heart thundering so loud I couldn't hear anything but my pulse inside my skull. “But it's hard to say over the other scents.”
Jax was sitting in wolf form near the body while Aeron
and Harlem kept a respectful distance, giving us a moment with the body.
'I can get a read on her identity, but I don't know who she is,' he told me, gazing up with eyes that mimicked the color of the sky above our heads. 'I can smell vamp all over her, too.' I nodded, moving toward the edge of the woods. Even in human form, I could smell the faintest hint of mint and apples on the back of my tongue, a clear sign of who this particular delivery was from.
Stripping my clothes off in the shadows of the trees, I shifted into wolf form, my human body melting and reforming in a dance as natural as the waltz between moon and sun. It was something my body'd been able to do before I'd even left the womb and usually—like with food or sex—the natural act of changing forms was something that brought me joy.
Right then, I didn't feel much of anything except a simmering fury beneath my rib cage, like a volcano long overdue for an explosion.
Anubis appeared in the shadows and picked up my clothes for me, bowing his head in deference and stepping aside for me. He followed me back out to the parking lot and over to the macabre mass of bone and fur. There wasn't much flesh left to speak of.
Putting a stop on my emotions, I sniffed the body, sifting through the smell of blood and the beginning stages of decomposition and trying to put a name to the lost wolf. She was female, that much I could tell; Jax was right. But as for her identity? I had no idea. There was only one thing I was sure of, a taste and smell burned into my memory that I would never forget.
'This is the wolf whose flesh the Crone fed me,' I told the boys, trying not to be sick. I had an iron stomach under most circumstances, but this? I almost threw up, turning my head away sharply and padding over to a puddle of water to drink. 'But I don't smell even a hint of witch.'
'We did see that the Bloods were doing at least some of the butchering at the warehouse,' Anubis added as I closed my eyes and reveled in the fresh taste of rainwater. Even sitting in a pothole on the pavement, it tasted clean and fresh compared to the smell of the body. 'So it looks like there's at least one more cache of wolves with Kingdom Ironbound.'
The insult, the threat, the declaration of war that the Bloods had sent our way … actually provided a fairly useful clue. Bloods and witches had a tendency to think of themselves as the queens and kings of Numinous society, the most gifted, the most talented.
They always underestimated our ability to scent our way to the truth, so much so that they hadn't even bothered to cover the body in witch hazel. No, they'd wanted us to smell blood and death. But where they couldn't scent themselves on the body, it was no trouble at all for us.
'Gather her up,' I said, shaking out my winter thick pelt and moving back over to the body. 'We'll return her flesh to Ebon Red land.'
Her spirit might be gone, but at least we could give what was left of her body some dignity.
Nikolina was waiting for us at the Pairing House when the Yukon pulled up.
I'd called her on our way back and let her know what was going on—including the fact that I had both Harlem and Aeron with me. Still no word from Whitney. I could tell Aeron was starting to get nervous which was making me nervous. I didn't much care for witches at this point, but it didn't feel right to abandon a woman who'd given up literally everything to help us.
“Don't talk to my mother unless she speaks directly to you,” I told the girls as I shifted back to human form, sitting next to Jax and the dead wolf. We'd wrapped it in the space blanket from the emergency kit that was kept in the back of the SUV. It might've bothered some people to sit next to it, but I was werewolf, a part of nature rather than apart from it. Death was part of the equation and a body didn't scare me—even if the death she'd died was an unnatural horror. Killing something quickly and then eating it to survive was one thing … but torturing something slowly over time and feasting with the sole purpose of gobbling up power like a glutton, not acceptable.
I hopped out onto the grass, completely naked and not caring. There wasn't even an ounce of me that was thinking about sex in that moment. Cuddling, maybe. Yeah, after this, I'd need a hot fire and all my boys to push the horrid sight of the dead wolf from my mind. It might not have scared me, that body, but it was going to take a lot of puppy piles to make me forget that I'd swallowed a piece of it. True, I'd spit it back out but it was a nightmare I wouldn't soon forget.
The Alpha Female of Pack Ebon Red stood a few feet away, arms crossed over her chest, dressed in a white blouse and slacks—prepped and ready for company. She definitely didn't like the idea of having a witch and a Blood on our property; I could see the tightness in her face and jaw as I dipped my chin.
“Zara Wolf,” she said, nostrils flaring as the smell of the body drifted over to her. I noticed Majka sitting in one of the rocking chairs on my porch, watching us. But there was nobody else around. I did, however, smell my mother's betas nearby, patrolling the perimeter of the Pairing House. “They'll keep any unwanted guests away,” she said, reading my expression. She still didn't know who the traitor was, and I didn't plan on telling her, not today.
I couldn't risk putting the whole of Pack Obsidian Gold under her scrutiny and I definitely wasn't risking Silas. She might take him from me if she found out about his father. Hell, she might kill him herself, and he was my fucking mate now. I wouldn't let him go. The connection we'd felt between us in high school had only intensified and I wasn't going to lose him, especially when I knew for a fact that he wasn't a part of Allister's bullshit.
“They dropped her off at the university,” I said, my voice even. I was proud of myself for that, keeping it together in front of Nikolina. She'd expect nothing less, after all. “Kingdom Ironbound.”
“And you have a Crown Aurora vampire princess in your vehicle?” she growls, tilting her head to the side, bloodred hair sliding over one shoulder. “Alpha Heir, your methods are certainly entertaining.” She paused and crossed her arms under her breasts, tapping her long fingernails against one sleeve of her blouse. “Particularly without context.”
“Different methods yield different results,” I said, taking a deep breath of the cool forest air. I could still smell the body, but it was mush less pungent with the smells of spring all around me. “I didn't want to tread the same path as the Convocation.”
“I see,” she told me, her voice as beautiful as the big purple blossoms on the lavender bushes next to the Pairing House steps … but infinitely more deadly. No, more like nightshade. Pretty to look at, poisonous to consume. For a human, that is. “Well, it looks like you're making substantially more progress than we are.”
“I imagine the thorn in the Convocation's side is causing your results to bleed,” I said as Silas and Che removed the body from the Yukon and brought it over to my mother's feet, pulling the shiny silver space blanket off.
Nikolina barely twitched a brow, kneeling down and breathing deep. After a moment, she closed her eyes, like she was searching the ranks of our packs for the deceased's identity. As the Alpha, she had a connection to every member, whether she'd met them in person or not. If anyone could figure out who this girl was, it was Nikolina.
At the end of the Pairing Year, it would be me who had that ability. I didn't know how it happened or why, but I did know that the transfer of power was a slow and gradual thing. I'd just gone through the official Pairing Ceremony, so Nikolina would still have almost complete control of the pack. But that would change, slowly but surely.
“I know who this is,” she told me after a moment, and it was impressive as hell that she could sniff out the girl's identity without having to shift. It was just more proof of how powerful an alpha really was. The boys and I weren't even close to her level, not yet. “Kit Cole. Her family runs the dairy,” she continued, narrowing her eyes slightly.
“Don't tell a damn soul,” Majka snarled, ambling her way over to us, her silver crown tilting to one side as she sniffed the air and then scowled. Nikolina put her fingers up to her own piece of jewelry, drawing tiny red droplets of blood to the su
rface of her skin. She always managed to pick her blouses just right, so that the blood on her chest didn't stain them. I had no idea how she did it. She certainly didn't bleed as much as I did when I wore my silver. I figured it either had to do with practice or power. Either way, I would get there eventually. “We don't need to reveal the names of the dead until this storm has passed.”
“Yes, Alpha-Majka,” I said, but she didn't need to tell me that. Informing Kit's family that she'd been brutally eaten wouldn't help the situation. Afterward, when the threat had passed and we'd recovered the rest of the missing wolves—or at least their bodies—then we'd tell the families. Right now, it would only create panic, draw tiny cracks in the surface of the pack's strength.
“Now, you tell me why you brought vila filth onto my land?” Majka continued, flicking her dark eyes toward the SUV and its tinted windows. “And some Blood that reeks of wolf. Explain that to me, Alpha-Ki.”
I took a deep breath.
I couldn't keep all my secrets, not after the showdown on Saturday night. And if I wanted to keep Allister and his betrayal to myself for now, I had to offer up other juicy morsels to my mother and grandmother. They were voracious wolves, to be sure, and they had to be fed to keep them sated.
“The Crown Aurora Blood Queen is half wolf,” I said and gestured back at the SUV and the vampire girl in it. No doubt Nikolina and Majka were wondering what a vampire was doing walking around in the sunlight if she wasn't a part of the whole daywalking mess. “And even with a quarter of our blood running through her veins, Harlem Blood can walk in the sunlight.”
Neither Nikolina nor Majka looked surprised which I found interesting. Either they were playing their poker faces of they already knew. I thought about what the queen had told me, about not having had an official visitor from Pack Ebon Red for over a century. That timing paired with the map my grandmother had given me, it was too much to be coincidental. But I also knew that asking Majka about it would do no good; she didn't hand information out like that. If I wanted to know, I'd have to earn it somehow, make connections on my own first.
Pack Obsidian Gold_A Reverse Harem Werewolf Romance Page 8
