Ruled by the Pack: Wicked Wolf Shifters 5

by Anna Craig

  Letting a grin unfurl across his face, Jackson shook his head at her. "I am in charge here, Tamsin. This goes as I choose."

  Before she could even draw breath again, he plunged back into her all the way, slamming so hard against her his heavy sac smacked against her luscious ass. Again, again, and again. He let the ancient movements take full control of his body, driving into her with a nearly mindless chant going through his head as he did so.

  Tamsin. My Tamsin. Mine. Tamsin.

  "Mine," he growled out loud, the word nearly unintelligible. "You," he thrust again, to the music of her delighted gasp, "Are," he pulled out only to quickly thrust back in, "Mine."

  Like thunder, the skyrocketing explosion came over him so suddenly realized he was about to burst. The long, hard spasms caught him as Tamsin's own inner muscles convulsed around him. His hoarse yells rang throughout the grotto as he held onto her bucking hips with his hands, looking into her wide-open eyes with his as they cried and shook and spiraled together into a beautiful, stunning abyss of pure sensation and togetherness from which he never, ever wanted to leave.

  As if she could read his mind, Tamsin raggedly murmured, “Like this. Always like this. Please stay with me,” she ended in a whisper, reaching her hand behind her to press against his hip.

  “Yes,” he whispered back, still deep inside her. “I'm not going anywhere.”

  Chapter Six

  A light knock at her office store took Tamsin's already distracted attention away from her tablet. "Yes?" She called, forcing the secretive smile that had been playing on her face all morning to turn into her usually composed expression.

  One of the human servants, a young woman named Bree, who as it turned out had been a childhood friend of Cassie's and thus was someone Tamsin had carefully been attempting to create a better relationship with herself, tentatively poked her head around the large oak door. At her trepidation-filled expression, Tamsin immediately stiffened. "What is it, Bree?"

  Audibly swallowing, the girl said, "Ah, there's a situation by the front door. Your presence has been requested immediately."

  A soon as she spoke, she made as if to disappear and scurry down the hallway. But Tamsin stood up and immediately strode to the door, catching Bree's glance before the girl could flee.

  "Wait. What's going on?"

  Bree's terrified face cast itself toward the ground as she shook her head.

  Taking a quick breath and tempering her voice, Tamsin said more gently, "Bree. I sounded sharp. I'm sorry. Walk with me as you tell me what's going on." She left her office and headed down the hall without looking back to see that the girl would follow. Much as Tamsin actually liked the estate's human servants, and had slowly started to look at the pack's relationship with humans after Cassie had spent some time trying to open her eyes about it, Tamsin couldn't quite shake her years of training and habits. Besides, they got paid excellent wages and had very good benefits as well. For that, she did expect someone to at least tell her what was going on in her own household.

  Even so, the young woman stayed silent as she followed Tamsin. Tamsin looked over her shoulder while quickening her steps. It must be serious.

  After another brief moment during which they turned down another one of these seemingly endless hallways of the estate, Bree said simply, "There's a human at the door. Well, she's inside now. And…"

  She paused again.

  Impatient, Tamsin prompted, "And?"

  "And," she continued with obvious reluctance, "she's asking for the pack beta. Actually, she's asking for Jackson. By name. She—knows him." The last sentence was a whisper, but naturally Tamsin could hear it. She also heard the even deeper reluctance beneath Bree' words.

  Feeling a groundless yet sharp dread poke at her, Tamsin sped up so much she knew Bree had to pick up a small jog in order to keep up. She beelined straight for the great front entrance to the estate and whatever event that all her instincts suddenly screamed was a direct threat—to her.

  ~~~

  Jackson couldn't keep his smug grin to himself as he and Mac strolled down the hallway to head outside for a run. Mac, who'd been going on and on about his latest paramour and her inevitable reluctance to let their dalliance end, finally gave up and said, “Oh, out with it already. You're not listening to me anyway. Who was it? One of your long-ago flings? One of the previous surrenders? Some lovestruck groupie whose shattered heart you left lying on the white sands of the private island you got to muck around on for a few weeks?”

  Laughing, Jackson pictured Tamsin's beautiful face shimmering in ecstasy as she looked up at him from her bed. As she'd looked, covered in glistening water droplets and utterly, gorgeously vulnerable, when he'd taken her sweet, delicious body behind the waterfall. As her eyes had darkened and her face opened when he slipped his fingers inside her, meeting him stroke for stroke and cry for cry.

  Staying with him in a charged yet delicate little bubble of intimacy and safety, things he'd never before felt with any woman, anywhere.

  A woman he so fiercely wanted to protect, it about took his breath away with the intensity of his possessiveness.

  Lightly, though, he deflected Mac's probing. “I'm just having a good day. That's all.”

  Mac guffawed out a laugh and clapped Jackson on his back, nearly making him trip as they rounded the corner into the formal greeting room by the front door. “Sure, you are, my man,” he said between his snorts of disbelieving laughter. “Sure you are.”

  Then they both drew up short, staring at a crowded little scene in front of them.

  Easily close to one hundred werewolves and humans milled around the front entrance room. Everyone's attention seemed focused on a small knot of figures, around which there was an obvious and sizable distance from everyone else in the room. Tamsin stood at the center of it, her beautiful figure and deliriously overpowering scent immediately causing Jackson to rumble with his recent refrain of Mine, mine, mine. Sensing that Mac's raised eyebrows were not only at the scene before them but because he was picking up on the sudden wave of possessiveness emanating from Jackson, Jackson reluctantly tamped down his emotions—and the wild way his heart took flight when he saw her.

  Finn, a few bodyguards, and several of the council members stood in a loose semicircle behind Tamsin. She was facing a human woman, a stranger. Excited that alone was enough to draw Jackson up short. Partially because of the glamour over Wicked Mountain Town and partially because of the estate's deliberate placement well outside the nearest city primarily occupied by humans, seeing humans here who weren't part of the estate's staff or invited guests was so exceedingly uncommon as to be, in a word, impossible. Due to his status in the pack, Jackson would know if there were any human guests here at the moment.

  They were not.

  He didn't understand the depth of trouble about to surround him, though, until Tamsin slowly swiveled her head to look directly at him.

  Oh. Her face was beyond still. Beyond composed. It was a frozen mask. Without thought, he headed directly toward her. As he did, the strange human woman standing there as well, who really was probably closer to a girl she looked like she was barely into her 20s, if that, caught sight of him. He could immediately tell by her self-possessed demeanor that she lived in an area where werewolves mingled far more commonly and far less aggressively with humans then the Wicked Mountain Pack. Once modern times had begun, and human populations exploded, it was impossible for werewolves and other shifter types to keep up with the ancient levels of control, and, as Jackson now knew, had often been downright cruelty, of human beings.

  He, of course, had soon learned how much damn fun he could have with that, as over the decades breathless hordes of human shifter groupies who didn't fear literally being eaten alive by werewolves discovered the sexual prowess of their gorgeous bodies, long lives, and oftentimes centuries of experience in the arts of pleasure and other forms of entertainment.

  Not that Jackson give a rat's ass about any of that anymore. Not now that he
recognized that Tamsin was the sole woman to ever gain a foothold in his heart. One he actually wanted to be there. The only one.

  As soon she caught sight of him, the confident young human woman raised her arm and waved at him as a big, self-satisfied smile spread across her face. Taken aback and perplexed, Jackson slowed his steps, glancing from her to Tamsin.

  "Jackson! Jackson, I was beginning to think I wouldn't find you. Well, this place is absolutely gorgeous. I mean, I've seen the pictures online and all that, but it's a lot more grand in person."

  Every single eye swiveled back and forth from the young woman to Jackson to Tamsin and back again. Except Tamsin. She stared at Jackson with that mask that was beginning to raises his hackles in purely possessive fear. She might be able to hide it from everyone else in here, but he could sense that beneath the mask of her face, both fear and fury were looming.

  The young human woman, still smiling with something that seemed like triumph, started to move toward Jackson. Tamsin snapped her head around with a quick glance at one of the Reginald bodyguards. At her nod, the hulking wolf step forward and gently but firmly stopped the young woman's progress by planting his body direct in her path.

  "Um, excuse me." Clearly still having no sense of the fact that the mood in the room had instantly tipped from shocked confusion into a dangerous wariness, the girl gave him a little smile as she tried to step around him, still in her trajectory toward Jackson. "There he is. I told you I was here to see him."

  The large werewolf shook his head. She tried to step around him, and he shot out his hand to grasp her arm just above the elbow. Outraged annoyance flashed across her face, even as some of the estate humans widened their eyes at her reaction and seemed to melt back into the crowd, out of the way. "What do you think you're doing? Let go of me. Jackson! Call off your dog, would you?"

  Now shocked gasps from all the other humans in the room rang out, quickly stifled by glares from most of the werewolves. Sensing the situation was about to get ugly, and still completely in the dark about why what was going on and why Tamsin wasn't taking better control of it, Jackson put out a conciliatory hand. "The question is, who are you? I'm sorry, I don't believe we've met." He kept his voice polite, curious, and cool.

  In that same split-second, he suddenly had a horrified thought that she must be some sort of groupie from his vacation. Oh, shit. No wonder Tamsin look like she wanted to freeze out the world with her face. Perfect timing. Well, at least there was an easy answer for this.

  "Or, perhaps I met you at the party on the island last month? Release her," he commanded the guard.

  The guard didn't release her arm. Instead, he looked at Tamsin, clearly awaiting her command instead. Jackson shoved down his growl. Everyone in the room knew he outranked Tamsin, but never once had he challenged her on it due to his deference to her role as sister to the alpha. And now, there was no way in hell he was going to step on her toes. Not after everything had changed. Not now that she knew she was his—

  Whoa. Wait a minute. Before he could continue that line of thinking, however, Tamsin spoke. Her tone was so stilted that Jackson's uneasiness burst into him so full-fledged he could feel his wolf prickling just beneath his skin.

  "Oh, it is our understanding that you do indeed know her, Jackson." Tamsin's voice was just as cool as her expression, although the slightest singsong to it alerted Jackson to sudden true danger.

  "Please," Tamsin said, turning her gaze to the young woman, whose expression was quickly faltering as she obviously suddenly became aware of the tense atmosphere in the room, "do refresh Jackson's memory. I'm afraid, you see, Jackson has a reputation not only in the pack but the rest of the world, as you surely know. He's the bad boy. The playboy. He tends to not remember the choices he has made. Any of them."

  Tamsin leveled a look at him now, pulling along the gaze of everyone else in the room. The weight of their fascination and sudden animosity focused on him. Every instinct Jackson had went on alert. Even Mac took a step away from him, clearly separating himself from the one wolf in the room who was obviously in the incredibly bad graces of the alpha's sister.

  “But—you're my husband,” the young woman said, her voice trembling now as she stared at Jackson. “We got married on the island. Here,” she added, bringing up her free hand to rattle white sheets at him. “Here are the papers. It's legit.”

  Dead silence greeted her claims. Jackson felt so light-headed he thought he was about to pass out.

  “Impossible—” he managed to get out before Tamsin cut him off.

  Lip pulled back in a snarl as the frozen mask melted into anger, she snapped, "Enough. We examined the papers, and I had someone call the island's town hall to ascertain their genuine status. It is true. This woman is your legal wife."

  Briefly, she swung her gaze to the human girl, who now clearly understood the incredible danger surrounding her in this room, as evidenced by her bone white, suddenly slack-jawed face. "Escort her to a chamber befitting a guest,” Tamsin went on, in full acting pack leader mode. “Place a guard outside her door. Her physical needs are to be met, but she's not to be allowed any access to the outside world until further notice."

  The girl's eyes widened and she opened her mouth, clearly to protest despite her obvious fear, but the guard holding her simply shook his head and began pulling her out of the room, which was a fairly easy thing to do. Even though she was a large, generously curvy girl like the alpha's mate, Cassandra, she was no match against a full grown male werewolf.

  Every eye in the room snapped back to Tamsin as she turned back to look at Jackson. The expression she awarded him was clearly so dismissive, so arrogant, he couldn't help flinching. His training urged him to meet her look with a haughty one as well. But something inside him, something crumbling and breaking despite himself, let his walls fail him. "Tamsin, this can't be right. There's no way I would've married a human—"

  Tamsin flicked her hand at someone behind Jackson. He turned to see who it was, but steel-like hands gripped either arm, holding him in place. Shocked, he merely stared at Tamsin, trying desperately to find in her expression the beautifully open, trusting, vulnerable woman he thought he had seen just the night before.

  That woman wasn't there. Right now, he was only looking at Tamsin Reginald, sister of the pack alpha, and current leader of the pack until her brother returned. When she spoke, her voice didn't waver even a fraction. "Jackson Rule is to be placed into a containment cell immediately, where he shall remain until such time as the Council decides his punishment."

  Still in shock, Jackson managed to respond, "Punishment? For what?"

  Voice colder than winter, she said, "You know as well as I do, as does any wolf here, that marriage to a human is forbidden. Not only that, you were required to receive your alpha's blessing forever making any such choice."

  Her violet-blue eyes glittered at him from across the room, with no trace of any emotion in them. The only thing he felt emanating from her were the tightly controlled decisions she had to make as who she was: a wolf forever and only ruled by the pack.

  "Take him away," she ordered in that frozen voice before she turned her back on him.

  Head spinning, Jackson didn't even protest as he was dragged away from the beautiful, untouchable werewolf he only now realized was much more than the sister to his alpha and a woman he found fascinating.

  Tamsin was his mate, and he'd just betrayed her beyond repair.

  ...stay tuned for the next installment of Wicked Wolf Shifters...

  What happens next for Tamsin and Jackson and the rest of the Wicked Mountain pack? Find out in Hunted by the Pack: Wicked Wolf Shifters 6

  Thank you so much for reading Ruled by the Pack. I hope you enjoyed it! To find out about new releases, please sign up for the newsletter. You can also visit the website for more information.

  About Anna Craig

  Anna Craig enjoys thrill-a-minute movies, luscious dark chocolate paired with luscious red wine, and sexy read
s that blow her away. Deep down, though, she is a hopeless romantic who sobs at sappy moments in books, movies, and even commercials. Her best animal buddies keep her grounded by always reminding her of their daily needs, despite the fact she usually has her head in the clouds, dreaming up her next story.

  Newsletter | Website | Facebook

  Anna Craig Books

  Surrendered to the Pack: Wicked Wolf Shifters 1

  “I loved Cassandra's character: she's audacious, intelligent and honest; this human lady has an ALPHA personality … The story behind the sexy smut is impressive, and demands the reader's attention … Fantastic new series.” -Sherill, reviewer

  “The story seems to be going in the usual direction but then takes a change of pace. It ends on quite the cliffhanger.” -L. Levine, reviewer

  “Wow, this story really blew me away. Even though it was a cliff hanger, it ended in a really good place. I can't wait to read the next installment.” -Lisa B., reviewer

  “This is an addictive read. ... This story builds the intensity steadily with great character revelations and descriptions and unexpected plot twists.” -Louise N., reviewer

  “This book is hot—steaming to be precise. The characters in this novella are well written and sexy as hell! Trevor is as hot as he is moody!” -Linzi, reviewer

  Claimed by the Pack: Wicked Wolf Shifters 2

  “I am blown away with just how rich & deep this storyline has become, with all of the barbaric laws & ways the Wolf Pack still follows, the actions of bitter wolves, this unique story that is so beautifully written and with just how much I am loving it all!!” -Cherri-Anne, reviewer