by Alisa Woods
“Mia!” he said, loud enough to be heard over her wolf’s protest against the indignity, but his voice was strangely calm. “Mia, it’s all right.”
“What do you care?” Her words were half-growls, and she could feel her wolf growing more angry, taking more control. Her claws were shredding his shirt. “It’s not you that might be carrying a wolf baby!”
At that, his grip became even stronger, more insistent, almost painful, except she could tell he was holding back, holding her, drawing her closer into his chest. His words quieted, and she had to strain to hear them, which had the strange effect of quieting her wolf as well.
“It’s okay, Mia, listen to me.”
“Lucas.” This time it was more like a sob. She gave up fighting him and just tucked into the safe harbor of his arms.
He held her completely then, the tatters of his shirt brushing her face. “You’re not pregnant. You’re not going to be pregnant. You’re not fertile right now. When I thought you were human, I assumed you were on some kind of medication that controlled fertility. Once I realized you were a shifter, I just assumed you knew.”
“Know? How could I know?”
“Female wolves… know these things,” he said softly. “You would have been taught how if you’d been raised in a pack.”
The panic had subsided, and she didn’t want to move away from his arms, but she needed to see his face. To tell if he was teasing or making some kind of awful joke.
She twisted up to look at him. “How do you know?” She could feel the slight chuckle rumbling in his chest.
“That’s something young male wolves learn to detect early on. The scent of a female in heat is… hard to miss. Also sometimes hard to resist.”
She flushed at that—did she really go into heat? She had the normal hormone swings of any girl… at least she thought they were normal. At the same time, it was comforting that he understood all of this, even if she didn’t.
Still, she wrinkled up her nose. “But what about disease? I mean… I assume I’m not your first conquest.” This didn’t seem like the right time to tell him he was her first. Or at least, the first that really mattered. The first time she had actually felt like she had been with a lover, not just a bumbling boy who was scared off by her wolf.
The humor fled from his face. “You’re not a conquest, Mia.”
“You know what I mean.”
He held her slightly away from his body, so he could look down into her eyes. “Have you ever been sick a day in your life?”
She frowned. She hadn’t, of course, but she figured it was just a part of the quick-healing aspect of being a wolf.
“Wolves don’t get the same diseases as humans, even in human form,” he said patiently. A hint of the smile was back. “I couldn’t have caught anything from you, or you from me. If you had been human, that is.”
“And as a wolf?” She bit her lip. “Is that why you were so angry when you found out I was a shifter? Because I might have some wolf disease?”
His face darkened again. “Wolves don’t have those kinds of diseases. Even in a pack, there’s rarely any diseases that can be passed from wolf to wolf. We really don’t get sick at all.” He didn’t move away, but his expression had cooled ten degrees. He dropped his arms from their hold around her.
She missed them immediately.
Her mind was still a haze from the panic and everything else, but she tried to line up the pieces. “So the Red pack wants LoopSource, and they’re trying to use me as leverage against you to get it.”
“Yes.”
“Because they think you care for me.” Then she hastily added, “Enough to stop them from kidnapping me.”
“I couldn’t let them hurt you in that alley, Mia.” His eyes bored into hers. “And I didn’t even know you then. I’m certainly not going to let them hurt you now.”
A warm flush ran through her. She didn’t know where that rated on the scale of caring, but she was pretty damn sure no one else besides her mother had cared that much about her. Ever. Certainly not her father, some loser shifter who knocked up her mom and left before she was born. Or any of her so-called boyfriends, who had likewise taken off as soon as her wolf became apparent. That feeling of belonging came rushing back: she belonged with Lucas, even if he couldn’t see it. Some part of him must know it, too. She just had to find that part and bring it out.
“You’re going to protect me, right?” she asked, looking up into his dark, serious eyes.
“Yes.” There was no hesitation. In fact, he seemed to loom larger as he said it, like this mattered to him. A lot. Like it wouldn’t just be bad for SparkTech if the Red pack got hold of her… like protecting her was a point of personal pride to him.
“So, if I’m going to stay out of those creeps hands, then I need to know more about what I’m dealing with here, Lucas.”
Thankfully, he nodded solemnly. “I take it your mother isn’t a shifter. So that leaves your father.”
“Who was a loser who booked out of town once my mother was pregnant.”
Lucas wrinkled his nose in disgust. “So you’re half shifter by patronage. Can you fully shift?” He glanced at her hands and smirked. “Or is it just the claws?”
She shrugged. “I can fully shift, I’ve just been hiding it so long, I’ve never had much practice. And apparently I really don’t know jack about being a wolf.” She frowned. “Tell me more about this Red pack. You said they didn’t shift when they attacked me in the garage because they couldn’t fight you in wolf form. What exactly does that mean?”
Lucas took a breath and seemed to relax, leaning against the couch. Then he shocked her by taking her hand. He turned it over to inspect it, as if he thought he would find claws there instead of fingers. His touch was warm and gentle, and she couldn’t help feeling that electric attraction she had whenever she was near him. At least during the times he wasn’t yelling at her.
“Your wolf form is very different from your human form.” He held up her hand, like he wanted her to look at it. She did, but it was just her hand. “Do you feel her inside you? Wanting to come out?”
She nodded, entranced by the way he was looking at her. Like she was under his care, and that was just the way he liked it.
“Well, when you let her out, she’ll control your every thought, feeling, or impulse.”
“I’ve felt that,” she said quickly. “I become much more… instinctual.”
He smiled. “Exactly.” He released her hand, and she had the same sensation of missing his touch. She reluctantly brought it back to cross her arms over her chest. “There are several instincts that are very strong with your wolf, but the strongest is probably submission.”
Submit. She remembered the Red pack wolves with their arched backs and tucked tails.
“You made them submit to you,” she said, her eyes widening slightly. Her heart rate ticked up a notch. Her wolf had understood it immediately, and it had both frightened and excited her. The idea of being under Lucas’s command like that… she swallowed.
He was watching her carefully. “Yes, they submitted. Partly because I’m an alpha. Partly because I was going to rip out their friend’s throat if they didn’t.”
“So, once they do that… does that mean you control them?” The idea was still running hot and cold shivers up her back.
“Not exactly.” His jaw was tight. “If I commanded them to do something, they would have a hard time resisting. It’s like a compulsion. A desire to do the will of the alpha. But most of the time, submission isn’t about giving orders—it’s about being part of the pack. It’s a swearing of fidelity to the alpha, who likewise is bound to protect those who have submitted to him. Or at the minimum, not to hurt them. Once the Reds submitted to me, they couldn’t fight me… but I also couldn’t fight them.”
“Like a truce.”
“In a way.”
“So… does it last forever?” Something about that nagged at the edges of her mind—it seemed impossible that
any bond, no matter how strong, could last so long.
“No, only until the next moon,” he said. “Then you have to pledge again. It’s a ceremony every pack does at full moon. But in the meantime, at least while they were in wolf form, they couldn’t attack me. Or I them.”
“Which is why you all stayed in human form.”
“Because I wanted very much to beat the living crap out of them.”
The laugh snuck up on Mia, and she flew her hand up to cover it. But Lucas had a half-smile, too, so she dropped her hand and bit the edge of her lip instead. There was a whole world of packs and ceremonies and… submission and commands… she very much wanted to learn more about.
With him.
The humor dropped off his face as the tension built between them again. It was always there, like static electricity charging the air, just waiting for the right moment to spark.
“What do we do now?” Mia asked softly.
He dropped his gaze, and the tension evaporated, leaving her cold again. “It’s late. You’ll have to stay here tonight. We’ll find you another place in the morning.” He lifted his gaze, challenging her. “You can’t go back to your dorm tonight.”
She nodded readily.
He seemed slightly relieved, but then a new tension bunched his shoulders as he straightened up from his lean against the couch. He gestured to a hallway poking between the kitchen and living room. It disappeared into blackness toward the back of his apartment. “You can stay in my room. I’ll sleep on the couch. I need to call my father and brothers to let them know the situation anyway.”
Disappointment was a barb stuck in her chest. But what did she really expect? That he would join her in the bedroom? He’d already made it clear that being a shifter made her someone he did not want to mate with… whatever that meant exactly. But she was in his apartment, at least for the night. And he had pledged to protect her, a promise she had no doubt he would keep. That gave her time to figure out the rest of Lucas’s worries… and put them to rest.
“Okay,” she said brightly. “But I have to warn you that my wolf might snore loud enough to wake the dead. Even on the couch.”
He smirked and shook his head.
But she was pretty sure he watched her all the way to the bedroom.
Lucas bends over the girl, on her hands and knees in front of him. His cock is rock hard and ready for her, and he skims his hands forward over the smooth skin of her back. He takes his time, but he can feel her panting, smell her intense arousal. She wants him to finish the claiming, but this is special, and he won’t be rushed. He threads his fingers through her long black hair, like a sheet of night cascading along her back, over her shoulders, and hanging down to caress her plump breasts. He can barely see them below her body, but his cock pulses at the sight. He makes contact with her entrance, but stops short of penetrating… not yet. She whimpers, and her hips buck against him, urging him on. He slides one hand back to her hip to hold her still, gripping hard enough to give warning, but he keeps his claws and his wolf at bay. He doesn’t want to mark her creamy white flesh… his other hand reaches into her hair, fists it, and pulls her head back, exposing her neck and turning her face toward him.
It’s Mia.
A small shock runs through him, a tiny surprise, but he knew it would be her. She belongs to him. His wolf roars in agreement, and he whispers the word to her. Mine. His grip on her hair is so strong she can barely manage a small nod of agreement, but her full, rosy lips are parted, and she’s panting. He can feel her urgency, her need, as strong as his own.
He thrusts inside her, and her sweet, tight wetness swallows him whole. She cries out in pleasure, and his wolf howls in triumph. Saliva pools in his mouth. Each thrust sloshes the growing liquid around his tongue a little more. He bends over her, still thrusting, still pleasuring her, but his canines are growing, and he won’t be able to hold off much longer before he delivers the brief pain of the claiming. He runs the tip of his tongue along her shoulder, warning her, holding her ready, still pleasuring her as much as he can. But when he finally gives in to his inner wolf and claims her… she screams.
It’s a horrific sound, a death screech. He jerks back but there’s suddenly blood everywhere: his hands, her shoulder, running down her sides. The girl falls to the ground, rolling on her back… and it’s no longer Mia. It’s Tila. His mate. His wife. The dark wet hole in her chest drips thin lines of blood down the perfect, white globes of her breasts—
Lucas awoke with a start, gasping for air and drowning in horror.
His claws were buried in the couch, holding him anchored there, or he might have bolted straight up to standing. The living room was sharp with shadows and the fall of moonlight through the windows, but everything was still. Quiet.
Mia is safe, he tells himself. She’s safe.
Safely in his bedroom, a constant torment from behind the closed door. He was an idiot. He should have moved her someplace else, somewhere less tempting. He had already spent the first hour on the couch tossing and turning, trying not to think of her in his bed just on the other side of the wall. Trying to ignore his raging hard-on. He should have known his dreams would only be worse.
He sheathed his claws and shoved away the thin blanket tangled in his legs. He’d only worn flannel pants, no shirt, but he was drenched in the fear-sweat of the dream, and his chest was still heaving from it. He understood now, only too clearly, why he had been drawn to Mia before—somehow his wolf had known she was a shifter, even while Lucas was convinced she was human. As a female shifter, his wolf would have instinctively been drawn to protecting her. Once he had sensed her in danger, everything was primal after that.
Protect. Defend. Claim.
His wolf still wanted a mate, and he would pull out all the instinctual stops to drive Lucas into claiming one. But the man in him knew how dangerous that was… and how he couldn’t ever allow himself to take a mate again.
He should have stashed Mia in a hotel far from him. He should have put her out of sight and out of mind. But instead, his wolf had him taking her hard against the door of his apartment and then keeping her in his bedroom. In his bed, for god’s sake. And claiming her in his dreams.
Damn him.
Mia’s female wolf presence was awakening things long buried. Bad things. Things that needed to stay buried, or he would have to go full-wolf again and retreat from the world entirely. Lucas swung his feet off the couch, placing them on the cool carpet, and ran both hands through his hair.
A quiet sound came from the kitchen.
Like a chair being moved across the floor.
Lucas was on his feet, flying silently across the soft strands of the flooring before he could even think. A dark figure lurked in the shadows of the kitchen hidden from the moonlight by the dangling pots, utensils, and the island in the middle. Lucas held in his growl in order to catch the intruder by surprise, but just as he reached the short figure, a glint of moonlight bounced off a sheath of long, black hair.
Mia.
His realization was too slow to stop his hands from grabbing her shoulders, but he managed to gentle his touch.
She still screamed.
His whole body shook with it, drenched with the echoes of the death-screams in his dream. But he didn’t let go. “Mia!” he said hoarsely. “It’s just me!”
She stopped her struggle against his hold and sank into him. He didn’t know which was worse—his reflexive need to protect her, brought about by the look of terror on her face, or the fact that she was in his arms again, soft and close. Both brought his cock back to attention. He angled his body slightly away from her, hoping the shadows would cover it. The air was still rich with their lovemaking from before, so his erection shouldn’t be too obvious by smell alone. Then again, having the smell of sex in the air didn’t help with his constant state of arousal either.
“God, Lucas, stop scaring the crap out of me!” Her words were angry, but her body was still trembling.
“Stop sneak
ing around the kitchen.” He loosened his grip, but instead of letting go like he should, he tugged her into the moonlight and rubbed her arms, up and down, trying to calm her.
“I was hungry,” she said, voice smaller. The anger had dissipated. She was warming to his touch, he could tell.
And so was he. Not good. He dropped his hands and stepped back. The island behind him blocked his retreat, and he was suddenly trapped between her warmth and the coldness of the granite countertop. The moon bathed her in white, making her oversized t-shirt glow. His wolf growled possessively as he recognized his shirt draped on her thin frame. It barely covered her bottom, and he knew her underwear was still in shreds on the floor.
“I guess we forgot about dinner,” he said, stalling, looking for a way out of the kitchen. He needed to get out of arm’s reach of her, wearing nothing under his shirt. “Would you like something to eat?”
She stared up into his eyes and licked her lips. If his cock weren’t already paying attention, that would have done it. And there was no mistaking her intention to do more with that far-too-tempting mouth when she leaned closer. He sidestepped her advance, much to his wolf’s dismay, and shuffled across the kitchen to the refrigerator.
“I’m sure I’ve got something here you’ll like,” he said quickly. He yanked open the stainless steel door, blasting the room with a ghostly fluorescent light, and thankfully, sending a waft of cool air across the heated skin of his chest. Of course, the refrigerator’s bulb also lit up his erection, tenting out his flannel pants like a beacon in the night.
He grabbed some milk and shut the door.
She watched him, not saying anything. In the shadows, he went to the right cabinet by memory, pulled down a glass, and poured it full of milk. It glowed slightly blue in the moonlight.
“Do you want me to warm it up?” he asked with his back turned to her, mostly to fill the tense silence.
“No, thank you.” Her voice had a silky undertone. Was she sounding like a sex kitten on purpose? Or had his mind gone completely demented?
