by Anne Marsh
The wolves roar and howl, but no one stops me. They’re too busy watching Jace kill our Alpha and step into his place. He has the pack—now all he needs is me, and not because I’m his golden ticket to running the pack anymore. He’s top dog now—or will be in minutes—and he doesn’t need me. I’m going to be the moral of the what-happens-to-wolves-who-piss-on-their-opponents story.
I’ll pay a high price for my shot at freedom. I know that. Jace won’t show me any mercy. It won’t matter that he’s had his mouth between my legs, or that he’s touched me with surprising gentleness. I rejected his claim and I sort of pulled a gun on him. Frankly, I don’t know why I’m not dead now, but I’ll take the chance and run.
An old wolf told me once that the first werewolf packs ranged over medieval Europe, treating the continent like their own personal playground. Eventually some of the wolves crossed the ocean, tired of the brutality of that life and looking for a new start. I can’t begin to imagine what their former lives must have been like, because these guys definitely put the brute in brutal.
Jace is sending a message of his own right now and there’s absolutely nothing civilized about it. Two hundred pounds of wolf pin my dad to the ground. Whatever Big Red’s plans were, he underestimated Jace, because Big Red doesn’t even get the chance to shift. Snarls fill the air, blood splattering on the floor as the wolf tears Big Red’s throat wide open. I’ve seen TV shows, and I’ve witnessed violence plenty of times more personal and close up. But in all of those assaults, the weapons were usually less personal—guns, chains, nunchakus, and a truly creative variety of improvised homemade explosives. Fists were sometimes used in the commission of a crime, and gouging, hitting, and mixed martial arts were all possibilities, but those moves had nothing on the scene unfolding in front of me.
I’m not a veterinarian or a surgeon, but it seems clear who’s winning—and who’s losing. Jace is about to kill my dad.
The faces of the men ringing the combatants tells a different story. They’re fighters and perfectly okay with the battle playing out in front of them. Their world. Their rules. My dad tried to get that through my head, and I know Jace agrees with him on this one point. Looking at the shifters filling the clearing, I also know my decision to break free from the pack is the right one. These hard men are sun-bronzed bayou bad boys on the outside, pretty to look at in the way the lethal predators at the zoo are. All that man-killing grace prowling around, looking back at you through the glass, makes you glad for the moats, bars, and inches of plexiglas between you and them. Without those safety precautions, you’re prey and the only thing to do is run.
Since the first step is always the hardest, or so the cliché goes, I settle for ducking along the edge of the bayou. Twenty yards to the trees. Forty or fifty steps more, and then I’ll be on my way to freedom.
“Chere, you don’ listen too well.” There’s no mistaking the rough amusement in Eli Jones’s voice—or the stop sign that is his large, muscled body. Forward momentum sends me slamming into him, my brain yammering its cease and desist order too late to my feet. His hands steady me even as he yanks me up against his body.
“Sue me,” I mutter. I know better than to argue—hello, wasted breath—when Eli places a hand on my head and shoves me to the ground. I guess the move counts as protective and I should be appreciative, but now I have an almost pornographic close up of his blue jeans and steel-toed boots. He’s a good-looking man, but the wolf I’m interested in is his brother, Jace.
Who is undoubtedly coming after me to teach me a lesson.
“I’m out of here,” I explain just in case he’s mistaken my departure for something else.
“I don’ think so.” He pins me in place, the move casual-like despite the lack of give in his arm. “You stay here until I can take you home. First I’ve got to lead those girls down to the boat.”
“What?” A beer bottle shatters on the ground nearby, showering me with sticky splinters of glass and drenching me in the unpleasant aroma of stale beer.
“Jace asked me to get those girls out of here. Said you wanted them safe, and he did too.” Eli stares down at me, obviously aware that there’s no good reason for me to be lurking on the edges of a werewolf challenge when I’ve just rejected one of the main players. He clearly believes my loyalties are a big-ass question mark.
He’s not wrong.
Jace had really intended to do something for the girls? I look backward. Across the clearing, both combatants are now naked, bloody, human. They’ve shifted back from wolf form. Jace’s cold, hard gaze meets mine as he snaps my dad’s neck in a casual show of domination. Power radiates off him—and he’s pissed. Holy gods, but he’s mad. It shouldn’t also be sexy as hell, but apparently I have a thing for bad boys and my new mate is the best of the worst. He gets my panties wet and my body going whenever I’m around him, and he knows it.
“Trust is a good thing,” Eli drawls, following my gaze. “You might want to work on it.”
I’m not going to get the chance.
Jace drops my dad’s body. Somebody tosses him a pair of jeans and he pulls them on, watching me the whole time. He doesn’t try to pretend to be anyone or anything other than what he is: our new Alpha with the body of the dead Alpha at his feet and surrounded by his pack wolves. I love that strength, but after tonight he’ll be as done with me as he is with the dead wolf on the ground.
“Jace is gonna paddle your butt. Stay put.” Eli doesn’t stick around for my answer. A roar goes up from the center of the clearing as the wolves surge toward Jace. Slapping a hand on the bike, Eli vaults lightly over the seat and closes in on the cage. The Jones brothers don’t back down from a fight and tonight is no exception. He fights hard and he fights mean, laying into any wolves standing between him and the women remaining in the cage. Guess they’ve found their hero after all, which leaves me with only one smart thing to do…
Run.
JACE
Keelie Sue pushes through the crowd of wolves witnessing my challenge, making for the bayou. I know Eli is keeping an eye on her, which is the only thing keeping me fucking sane at the moment. She looks like crap, her eyes big and wide as she registers the shit storm she’s kicked off. I’ve just taken out her dad in a challenge, and that makes me the Breed’s new Alpha.
Her Alpha.
Eli starts hauling women out of the cage Keelie Sue unlocked. He’ll make sure they get somewhere safe too. Won’t stop them from running their mouths about what happened here or what they’ve seen—Big Red’s wolves haven’t been shy about changing since they saw the girls as fresh meat—but I’ll deal with that later.
I have bigger problems. Cruz appears seemingly out of nowhere and blocks my path. Guess Eli enlisted him as werewolf-bride rescue back up.
“You need to get the hell out of here,” I snap. “My pack, my business.”
Cruz curses, taking in for the first time the dead body I’ve left behind me. I tore Big Red’s throat out, and that kind of kill is messy. I have blood on my hands, my chest, my legs.
“Big Red’s dead. The pack’s mine.” Too late for regrets.
“Which is a good thing, truth be told,” Cruz says. “Big Red was a crazy bastard, and he needed to be stopped. You can let Keelie Sue go with the rest of the girls.”
“I’m going after my mate,” I say pointedly. “I’m gonna teach her a lesson.”
“You don’t wan’ to hurt her.” Cruz lays a hand on my arm and I shake it off.
“Hurting her is never part of the equation.”
Cruz slams his own hand against the palm of a nearby tree. “Some advice? Take five and wash the blood off. You killed her old man, and you don’ want to rub her face in it.”
“Fuck you,” I say easily, the words belying the urgency tearing through me. He isn’t my Alpha anymore—I’m his fucking equal in the pack hierarchy, and every inch of me, man and wolf, screams that I should chase down my errant mate and teach her exactly who is the boss.
Fucking sucks t
hat Cruz has a point about the blood.
I shift back into my wolf and head toward the bayou, his laughter ringing in my ears.
KEELIE SUE
One minute I’m alone, reaching for the boat and calculating the odds that I might actually make it out of the bayou. Hope isn’t a strategy, I remind myself—but a boat is. The next minute a freight train of pissed off, aggressive werewolf slams into me.
So much for hope. The world tilts as the air vacates my lungs and I head for the ground. Jace shifts back to human as he takes me down, pinning my arms to my side, one leg thrown over mine. This time he doesn’t try to take the hit for me. I land hard, my purse flying away as my back drives into the ground, my head bouncing off something that feels like a rock. Or a root. Don’t know, doesn’t matter.
If Jace wants tears or begging, he’s out of luck, because all I can do right now is fight to breathe and not black out. It’s over and I’ve lost. I did what I could to break free of the pack, and it still isn’t enough. Game over.
I let my head fall back onto the ground. The stars swirl overhead like I’m riding a tilt-a-whirl. Jace has all the advantage now, and I have nothing.
“Why do you want to run from me?” He rolls, coming up on top and straddling me as he asks his question. His legs press against my hips hard, holding me in place. Not like I have anywhere to go now. With Big Red dead, I’m orphaned and unemployed in one stroke. And Jace wants to talk about our mating?
I concentrate on not puking, willing the world to stop swinging around me. Somehow my reasons for rejecting Jace don’t seem so convincing anymore.
“You better talk to me,” he growls, when the silence stretches on. Around us, the bayou gets back to business, and the cicadas resume their nighttime rhythm to the counterpart of the bullfrogs’ bass.
I scan his face not sure what I hope to read there. Not sure why the menace written there kind of turns me on either, but he’s strong, and I’m wolf at heart. His strength calls to me.
He doesn’t want to hear that I maybe still find him attractive—or that I’m more than a little turned on by his chasing and catching me. “What can I say?”
“Start with the truth,” he orders. “Why not take me as your mate?”
The world tilts again, so I close my eyes. It’s easier that way, not having to look at Jace’s face. I betrayed him. He thought mate when I thought run away, and if I still don’t want to be any wolf’s mate, well, Jace at least hasn’t waved a gun in my face.
“I never wanted to kill you,” I admit.
He doesn’t so much as flinch. “All evidence to the contrary.”
This is the wolf, the predator, the hunter. He isn’t the man who held me and kissed me, who let my kittens scrabble up his leg and who teased me. That man is gone, and I’ve effectively killed him even if I haven’t plugged the wolf with my bullet.
“I’d have given you everything,” he tells me, and I have no idea what he means. Guess it doesn’t matter, because he draws my hands up over my head, pinning them there with one hand. “You really think he’d have let his own daughter walk away from the pack?”
Maybe. Okay. Probably not. But I took the chance. Now I’m out of chances and done running. What happens next is up to Jace, and it actually feels good to cede control to him.
He lowers himself onto me, his hands still tangled with mine, stretching me out like some kind of virgin sacrifice to the gods. Except I’m no virgin—and there’s nothing godlike about Jace. He’s all devil.
He bites my lower lip, recalling me to the present. “You want to make me happy, sweetheart.”
“Or?” I guess I’m finally done rolling over. My wolf whimpers, but she knows it too. We let Big Red take control, and it didn’t work out. Jace probably won’t be any better. He presses down harder and the move grinds his penis into me, the discomfort followed by an unexpected burst of pleasure. Something is definitely broken in my head if I’m thinking about sex now.
“Or things get ugly,” he growls, but I don’t mind the way his tongue laves the place where he bit me, easing the small sting. Pain. Pleasure. “Tell me where you got the gun from.”
“Fang,” I admit, and for a moment, it gets kind of hard to breathe. Jace’s free hand, the one not pinning mine over my head, circles my throat, his thumb pressing against the pulse beating hard at the base of my throat. He scares me—and he turns me on. I don’t know what to do with those feelings anymore so I keep right on talking.
“I met Fang and he gave me a gun,” I continue. “He said it was a present, to keep me safe at the mating ball.”
“You let him touch you?” Above me, Jace goes cold, menace radiating off his body. Guess he doesn’t like Fang any more than I do. His hand on my throat tightens.
“No.” I try to shake my head, but he holds me too tightly for that. “Fang’s kind of a sick bastard. His girlfriends don’t last long.”
“Neither did your first mate.” Jace’s hand eases up, and I suck in a gulp of air. “I want to know if you fucked him.”
“They had stuff in common,” I admit. “But I’m not interested in Fang. He’s no Mr. Wonderful.”
“Good thing.” Jace’s eyes meet mine, full of hot possession. “I don’t share my toys, sweetheart. You ask my brothers and they’ll tell you. What’s mine stays mine.”
“You can’t own a person,” I feel compelled to point that out, although in all fairness, my dad owned the hell out of me. I just hadn’t liked it.
“I own you,” he says implacably. “Finish your story.”
“I came out here tonight. I was supposed to accept your mating claim, but I didn’t.”
He makes a rough noise. “You couldn’t reject me without witnesses?”
Have I done more than hurt his standing in the pack? I didn’t think he really had any kind of feelings for me—other than the lustful kind—but he makes another rough sound, his thumb stroking over my pulse. I’m not sure if he wants to touch me—or hurt me. My body is getting all kinds of funny, mixed-up signals from my wolf. Then he lowers his mouth over mine. I’m not sure you could call it a kiss.
His mouth devours mine—the hot, hard contact my only anchor to reality. Spots swim in front of my eyes. It’s easier to close my eyes and shut out everything but the rough press of his mouth as he thrusts his tongue against mine. He’s savage in his kiss, his hand fisting my ponytail and yanking my head back so he can kiss me even deeper. Harder. And I love it. Sick and twisted as it is, he sets me on fire and makes me feel. The pleasure gets all mixed up with my body’s panic at the lack of air, and I feel myself easing beneath him as the need to escape, to run, melts away and a sweet lassitude sets in.
A voice floats out of the darkness from somewhere behind Jace, and the hand on my throat falls away.
“You probably shouldn’t kill her,” Eli drawls.
“Probably not.” Jace doesn’t sound convinced though, and terror shoots through me again.
“Could stand up and let her go,” Eli suggests. I hadn’t realized he liked me—or maybe he just doesn’t want to welcome me to the family. Maybe he realizes that letting me run would be the best thing for everyone. I’d be out of their lives, and Jace could get on with running the pack and finding himself a real mate.
Jace shoves to his feet. Sick as it is, I kind of miss the feel of his body on mine. I’m cold and tired. Getting up seems harder than scaling Everest, but the distant part of my head, the part that hasn’t been chased, threatened, and half-kissed, half killed reminds me that I still need to put some distance between me and my wolf. I try too. I roll onto my side, hugging my knees to my chest, and I try. Guess I’m all out of tries, though, because I only manage to half get to my feet.
“She’s mine,” Jace says to Eli, and that’s that.
Heat tears through me as he scoops me up from the ground. Would be nice if he consulted me about our plans, but I have to admit that I’ve pushed him too far. Nice Jace is gone, and instead I get the wolf. I let my head fall against his
chest as he carries me to a boat. Eli must have brought it, because it isn’t the pirogue I tried to use earlier. He sets me down on a seat.
“Stay there,” he growls, tossing my purse onto the bench next to me. I’m kind of glad to see it, although worrying about my Visa card and my driver’s license probably shouldn’t even cross my mind. I have bigger problems.
I rest my head on the railing and stare out into the dark. The surface of the water breaks into a V-shaped ripple. Probably a gator there, and that brings back more memories. I guess I could handle being Jace’s. It’s certainly preferable to being dead. Or gator bait.
JACE
I was nice. I tried dating. I fed her fucking kittens, and I listened while she talked. Keelie Sue needs to get a few things straight, and I’m just the wolf to teach her.
She doesn’t challenge me in front of our pack. If she has a problem with me, she takes it to me. We’ll work it out. Fuck, we can fight all day and all night too, if that’s what she needs, but she doesn’t challenge me, threaten me, or undermine my ass. That shows some serious lack of respect. And if one of my brothers had been close by when she whipped out that little handgun, she’d be dead. They have my back, and if she even appears to be gunning for me, she’s a threat and they’ll take her down.
Funny how I still hate the idea of her getting hurt.
Shit, I even stopped to pick up her purse because she’d probably want the bag or its contents. As I steer the boat out into the bayou, I can’t stop watching or worrying about her either. Not sure when or how it happened, but at some point between Big Red offering her up to me like steak on a stick and her whipping a gun out and waving it around the mating ball, I’ve fallen for her.
Last thing I need are fucking emotions.
“Not too late to turn around,” Eli mutters beside me. He’s insisted on coming along, probably because he thinks I might kill Keelie Sue and later regret it. Or maybe he’s afraid I won’t. That’s kind of a possibility too. As Baton Rouge’s newest pack Alpha, I should be back at the mating ball cleaning house. At the very least, I should make a public example out of Keelie Sue.
