Rogue Huntress: a new adult urban fantasy novel (Rogue Huntress Chronicles Book 1)

by Thea Atkinson

  "You can't do it," I squeaked out. "Thanks to the bond you forced on me. We're stuck together." I felt the rumble of laughter shake my torso. I had him. He had no idea just how strong that bond was that he'd made with me. He'd wanted it so badly, he didn't imagine it came with its own consequences.

  He pressed in close, laying his body against mine in an almost intimate way. I felt the beast within me stir. She wanted to submit, she wanted those fingers gripping her throat to move down to her breast, caress here there. Hear his lips tell he she was his and no one else's. He had only to tell the beast to be still and it would lie down.

  A flutter moved through my belly as his lips touched down against my ear.

  "You could have had everything," he said. "I wanted to give you everything."

  "I already had everything," I said. "All you gave me was death."

  It was true. My beast knew it as well as the woman in me. My father and my trainer, my step mother, my brothers. I'd had a pack I belonged to. I twisted in his grip so I could force his face to meet mine, drilling into his eyes with my own. I wanted to see the blackness of his soul beneath that beautiful facade. He stared back and in those depths my beast saw the truth of his nature too. She might have been tied by the bond, but she deferred to the woman who knew better. I could almost envision them linking arms together, melding back into one being, harmonious and at peace with her nature again.

  My voice when it left my throat was hoarse with emotion. "It's time I returned the favor."

  Both of my hands were beneath his one, and with the distraction of his own fury, he had loosened his grip. It took barely a tug to free my hands from his.

  The tiny click of the pin pulling free might have gone unnoticed except Caleb's face was so close to mine, the grenade held so intimately near both of us that there was no way for him to not hear it. The look on his face told me he had expected me to relinquish the weapon in the face of the bond that we shared, certain couldn't use it against him. But he was wrong. I hadn't planned to kill him at all.

  I knew if the room blew to pieces, Jeb would understand the threat was gone. Perhaps he and his sister would live a nice life somewhere. Perhaps the rogue female pack would reassemble and live their lives in their commune free from interference. My brother could return to his home and take over his place after he grew, if the pack wanted him. Regardless of whether he became alpha, he would be safe. All I had to do was take my own life.

  It was so simple. I couldn't understand why I hadn't thought of it before.

  I gripped the grenade close to my hip and in those one or two seconds, Caleb's face went from anger and betrayal to fear. He pushed himself off me in a frenzy, releasing my throat. I grabbed for his arm.

  "We're bonded, remember?" I said to him. "A mated pair just like you wanted. Till death do us part."

  Over his shoulder, I could see the Loyalists and the henchman battling each other. The old grizzled heads bobbed in and weaved about with the young ones. One might think that a young wolf was far superior to an old one. Not in my pack. My father had elected to his counsel not just wise men, but battle-hardened wolves. While some of them had fallen beneath the attack, many of them had taken up the weapons and had backed their opponents against the walls. Windows reflected back to me the hardened faces of those old men. They were determined. They would win. I felt a tinge of regret at my choice because it hadn't left them with any.

  "Get out," I shouted at them. I lifted the grenade into the air so that they could see what the threat was and save themselves if they could. A collective look of horror swept the room and I watched one of the men jump over the table and grab for a chair and swing it at the bank of windows. Several others did the same. The sound of breaking glass became a crescendo that gradually overtook the embattled pandemonium.

  I swung my gaze to Caleb. "How much time left?" I said to him. "Seconds? A heartbeat?" My fingers tightened around his wrist and he tugged.

  I had him. He knew I did. The fear transformed into desperation and he wrenched himself free.

  I leapt for him. I couldn't lunge for him and hold onto the grenade at the same time, and I heard it thunk as it met the floor. In desperation, I threw myself at Caleb's legs and brought him to crashing to the carpet with me. I clambered over top of him, using his jeans and belt to crawl onto his back. I felt giddy. A balloon had somehow inhaled inside of my chest and was cutting off the air, taking up all the space for my heart to beat. The effect made my scalp prickle.

  Then two things happened that popped the balloon. The first was that Caleb transformed into the white-haired beast inside of him and I lost grip on his clothes as they tore free from his form. The second was the sight of the door slamming open and revealing a bloody and sweating Jeb standing frozen in its mouth with a look of shock on his face. It might have taken a millisecond for him to realize what was happening as he took in the dozen men and wolves throwing themselves through the broken windows everywhere around me. Then his gaze landed on the grenade.

  I blinked, unable to process it all. My mind was solely on Caleb and keeping him from reaching the window, but I was too late to stop him as he leapt for it, as a wolf, his tail disappeared even as I screamed in fury.

  I was vaguely aware of Jeb leaping through the room, his entire body flat and outstretched, straining forward. Superman, I thought. I could almost imagine a cape. It was one second later that I realized what he was doing as he landed on the carpet and the grenade disappeared beneath his belly.

  "Run," he yelled. The sound of his command freed my feet. The human woman inside me gave him a mournful look before the beast howled and took her form. I was still weeping inside when I felt the pads of my feet biting into glass shards as I streaked for the window. Close. So close. A light breeze caught my fur as I sailed through.

  I landed with a whimper, expecting an explosion to rend the air behind me. Nothing but silence met my ears until my feet, all four of them, met the ground with a thump. I stumbled once, almost breaking my back leg as I landed, and then I saw Caleb several feet away. He was still in his wolf form, clawing his way forward. The jump had broken both of his back legs. He was already rolling over to meet me when I leapt for him.

  I landed on him as a wolf. The blade and its sheath clunked against my ribcage when my feet met his bare skin. From his chest I stared down at him. Green eyes went wide open in terror; the face that had been so cocky before, now pinched up with pain.

  "The bond," he gasped. "It's still there. You can't kill me."

  I transformed and found myself sitting across his torso, my hands on his chest. I pulled the knife from its sheath and held it over his throat.

  "Put it down, Shana," he said. "You don't want to do it."

  "No," I said. "But you've left me no choice."

  I know he heard the regret in my voice. It was clear even to me. The boy he had been, ragged and beaten as he found himself on a powerful alpha's territory. He should have expected to be run off; instead, my father had invited him in, let him become family. I'd played with him in the woods and I'd hunted with him at the full moon. We had trained together beneath Galen's tutelage and become strong together. It wasn't just the beast who was drawn to him; it was the woman too. Both halves understood mercy.

  A miasma of emotions swam though my viscera, making my heart thud against my chest. I trembled with it. He smiled up at me in victory even as my grip on the blade went slack. Even so, I couldn't pull it away from his throat. It just hung there from the butt of my palm, the tip lying against the soft spot in his throat.

  At first, his expression relaxed in relief, but then his eyes flicked off my face for one second, and that was when I knew. I felt the inhalation of his lungs beneath my bottom as he fueled his muscles. I felt the burn of a blade enter my ribcage as he sunk it in.

  "Bastard," I said and rammed the tip of the blade home. I collapsed on top of Caleb, my breath hissing in my own ears. He gurgled beneath me, a bubble of his hot blood seeping into my ear.

/>   I might have expected my last thought to be of Lynden or Jeb. Instead, all I could think was how much I hated the taste of silver.

  Rogue Huntress

  I dreamed I was fully healed and making love to a human man. With each movement together, I felt such a strain toward him that even the hair on my skin ached. I moaned out loud in pleasure then in pain as something lanced my side and brought me gasping awake. The stink of silver reminded me Caleb was dead. Jeb too. Two halves of a raging desire gone. I felt the wet heat of tears as they pooled in my hair. A cool hand on my forehead bade me blink my eyes open. Nothing but a blur of colour met my vision. The smell of licorice wafted over me and then the fruity tang of an apple. I heard someone crunch into its flesh. I blinked again.

  I winced as I moved, trying to push myself up from the prone position I found myself in.

  "Don't bother to stand yet," a female voice said. I blinked again. Dara's silver hair came into focus. Her black-eyed gaze travelled my form with interest. "You've been out for a couple of hours," she said. "Do you think you're strong enough to shift? It will help with the healing."

  I nodded. Something in the back of my mind reminded me how I got this pain in my side. "Will I live?" I murmured.

  "You'd better," came a husky voice from beyond her. A scuffle of feet brought it closer, but I didn't need to see him to know who it was. Jeb. My throat ached just hearing his voice. He looked down at me with those crystalline eyes of his, making my whole body flush.

  I worked to speak through the relief that drenched my throat, flooding out the words that bobbed to the surface. I was ecstatic to see him. Even my toes curled with the desire to launch myself from the bed and entangle myself in those arms, bury my face into the hot licorice smell of his shoulder. The words were there. I knew they were. A gal should be able to say the words that leapt to her lips at sight of the grey and grizzled stubble that meant she could breathe again. I wasn't a mere beast, I was a woman with language. I could say it. I knew I could.

  "You're alive," is what came out.

  "Thanks to my shitty workmanship," Jeb said and his brows knit together as he looked at me. Then he sat on the edge of the bed, tentative, questioningly, as though he wasn't sure I wanted him there. "Only about a dozen in one hundred work. Guess I was lucky this time." I felt his fingers crab across the comforter. I met his gaze and held it and from somewhere came the courage to reach out for it. Our fingers tangled together. He squeezed them but I barely felt it. I couldn't stop looking at him, dragging my gaze over every line and crevice and grizzly whisker.

  My tongue had abandoned me, but my eyes watered. I swiped at the corners angrily.

  "It's just the drugs," Dara said with a smile as she took in my annoyed my annoyance at the tears. "They have a tendency to make a girl overemotional."

  "Is that all," Jeb asked, his crystalline eyes meeting mine, trying to read past my careful gaze. "I'm alive and it's the drugs that make you cry?"

  I laughed at that. Then hiccuped in pain as my ribs shook.

  "See?" she said. "From one emotion to the next. Worse than PMS."

  "It's more," I said. "You know it is."

  "Is it?" he asked and his face went implacably impassive. Careful, this man.

  "Where are we?" I asked him.

  "Well your mansion was pretty wrecked," Jeb said. "I didn't want you waking up there."

  "So where?"

  He shrugged. "Dara's."

  I pushed up onto my elbows. I felt better with each moment. But I knew that if I transformed, the pain in my side would be gone.

  Jeb lay a cool hand on my throat. "How do you feel?"

  "You mean how is the the bond?" I said, closing my eyes and trying to remember what it was like to be flushed with need and at the same time wanting so badly not to feel it. "It's gone." I couldn't say I felt fine because I felt anything but.

  I turned to Dara. I had things to say to this man, and best it was done privately.

  "Where's Lynden?" I tried to look around the room to assess where I was.

  She smiled. "He's with your elders. I'll go tell him you're awake."

  I watched her all the way to the door, thinking she looked older than before. I wondered if her home had been invaded again--if a new she-wolf had arrived. It wasn't right she should keep shouldering a burden other packs had lain on them for lack of discipline or respect for their members. When she'd closed the door, I pushed myself up so I could face Jeb on the same level, not as an invalid, but as an equal.

  He put the backs of his fingers against my forehead as he saw me sway a bit. "You still feel a little flushed to me," he said. "Are you sure you aren't still bonded?"

  I looked into his face. I was flushed. The feel of his fingers on my skin did that to me. I didn't think I'd ever get over it.

  "You said some things to me out in the woods," I said quietly, feeling afraid I'd dreamed it all. "Do you remember them?"

  His blue eyes met mine without hesitation. "I meant every word."

  I squeezed his hand. "I didn't have a chance to say them back."

  He went still. "And now?" he said softly.

  "I love you, Jeb," I said.

  I let him pull me to my feet. His steady hand on the small of my back was a reassurance and an invitation. I realized with a start that I was still naked, but I didn't care. I wanted to feel my skin against his. I worked my palms beneath his khaki t-shirt, trying to peel it off him. Of all the things that I felt in that moment, desire was the least complicated. It was a simple thing, yet strong enough to block out any guilt that wormed its way through my thoughts.

  "Maybe you should shift first," he said, his fingers tickling the small of my back as they sought to travel to my buttocks. He cupped both cheeks with his hands. "Heal that wound of yours. I know how rough you can get."

  I was already burrowing into his pants, my hands skirting along his muscled belly when his mouth found mine. His fingers seemed to find every scar on my torso and thighs, and he traced them in such delicious ways that I moaned into his mouth and tasted his along with the licorice flavor that always followed him.

  "So many scars," he murmured against my lips.

  "I've been fighting a long time," I said with a sigh. "Too long."

  "Beauty marks," he said. "For a soldier like me, you couldn't be more beautiful."

  I couldn't get enough, not when his mouth left mine to find the pulse in my throat, not when he pulled me against him so close that I felt his member harden against my belly, not when I tried to wrap my leg around him and ended up sending a jolt of pain to my side that rode its way all the way up to my collarbone.

  I heard a cough at the door and we broke away. Dara stood there with one of my father's oldest council members, the man I had tossed the first pistol to. I reached for the robe next to the bed and pulled it over my arms, cinching it tight around my belly.

  "Gerald," I said, cradling my side with my hand as I realized how sore I was now that I stood without Jeb to help support my weight. "I should thank you."

  "No worries," he said. "Any shifter worth his salt would do the same."

  He entered, trailed by Lynden. When my brother saw me, he launched himself across the room in three steps. My arms spread without thought of how much his body might hurt when it collided into mine. For a ten-year-old, he was slight made even smaller by Caleb's treatment of him. He buried his face in my bosom and I buried mine in his neck. I inhaled deeply. Besides a faint smell of rosemary, he smelled healthy and hale. Dara had done well for him.

  "I never thought I'd see you again," I said before my throat choked up.

  He peered up at me, those black eyes piercing right through me. I couldn't stop looking at him, couldn't stop smiling insanely.

  "They want to make you alpha," he said.

  I felt my arms drop to my sides as I took a step backward. "What did you say?"

  Gerald moved into view. "He said we want to make you alpha."

  "Me?" I said. "That's not possible."
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br />   "Why not?" he said. "You acquitted yourself very well. Your father and Galen would've been proud. I can see no better leader for our pack for the next century or so then a woman who is ready to lay down her life for her pack."

  I squirmed at the praise. I caught Dara's eye over Jeb's shoulder. She looked pleased. But there was something else in her posture. Disappointment? Jeb looked proud, but I could see him squirming in his shirt.

  Gerald cleared his throat. "I know it's unusual for a female to be alpha--"

  "What's unusual is that some packs allow their she-wolves to be abused and mistreated," I said with a note of command. I had already made my decision and didn't plan to give them a chance to retract the offer. Lead without hesitation my father always said. Take the first step of the journey from the most important direction. Jeb's back went rigid.

  "No pack would do that," Gerald said. "We protect our own."

  I caught Dara's eye as he said that, and I knew it was a dirty secret most packs kept to themselves. We told ourselves we were better than humans. That our code was one where the strong protected the weak, not ruled them. I found myself taking a step forward and reaching out for Dara's hand. The old shifter took it without hesitation.

  "Our pack would not," I said to Gerald, but with my eye on Dara's face. "But others are different."

  "What are you saying?"

  "I'm saying it's time Beo pack did something besides keeping the human community ignorant of our existence. If you want me, then you need to accept my mandate."

  "Done," he said.

  "You don't want to know what it is?"

  Gerald shook his grisled head and sent me a sly smile. "I don't need to. You have more of your father's ways than you know. You have that same sense of righteous anger in your face that he had when he set up the council. Do what you think is right and we'll back you in it."

  I squeezed Dara's hand. "Join us," I said to her. "My pack will keep you safe and protect those who come to you."

  Dara offered a short bow. "I would be honored to pledge to you as my alpha," she said with all official affectation in her tone, and then she pulled me into a decidedly unaffected embrace that felt very much like a mother's hug should. I returned it with a buoyant heart and for the first time since my father had been murdered, felt like things would be alright. I had my pack's safety, I had my brother's life. I hoped I had a mate by my side who could help me rule with dignity and respect, and when help and succor was needed for an abused member of another pack, that he'd be by my side then as well, willing to provide succor and support as they learned to trust again. I eased my hand from Dara's and considered the weight of what I wanted to ask next of the human who I thought was equal to any wolf and who had reminded me that my own two halves were meant to be in harmony, a man I could be both beast and woman with and feel happy to do either. A man more my match than any wolf I'd known in my centuries. He said he had meant every word he'd said to me in the woods. But saying words and pledging a life are different things. He was human. Our ways might not be what he wanted.