Lilith Mercury, Werewolf Hunter Series (Boxed Set, Books 1-3)

by Tracey H. Kitts

  “So, she was your mate?” More anger than I had intended crept into my voice.

  “Not any more. We were a true mated pair once. Though we were no longer a couple, she still served as alpha female to the pack.”

  Blowing smoke in his direction, I said, “Well, if you call that an alpha female, no wonder your pack’s in trouble.”

  “Do not mock me,” he growled.

  I rose slowly, staring him down as much as possible with our height difference. “It is not you that I mock, but your poor choice in women.”

  Truthfully, I should have been afraid. I may be tough, but I wasn’t a match for an alpha male, not in a fair fight. Marco could have torn me apart if he’d wanted to, but my anger clouded my good judgment. Just the thought of another woman touching Marco made me see red. He wasn’t mine, but I didn’t like the thought of him belonging to anyone else.

  “You’re jealous,” he said, still looking fierce, but the anger had gone from his voice.

  “No, Marco, I’m just a bitch and I’ll be damned if I let myself be threatened by someone like her.”

  “Which brings me to the point of this conversation, please sit down,” he said, taking a step back and a sip of his drink. “That is exactly the reason I cannot allow you to be killed.”

  “What, because they couldn’t take me?”

  “No. Because they need you.”

  “What?”

  “At a time like this, when so much is at stake, they need a strong alpha female to help lead them.”

  “Marco, I’m not a true werewolf ... I’m something else.”

  “That may be true, but you’re more dominant than they are. They will listen to you.”

  “And I’m supposed to listen to you, is that it?”

  “You would help to enforce my will, yes.”

  “What makes you think that I would even consider such an offer?”

  Marco placed his cigar beside his drink on the railing as he came close to me once more. His leather pants creaked slightly as he knelt before me, placing his hands between my knees. He spread my legs and slid me toward him. Eye contact was now unavoidable, and I put down my drink and cigar, as well.

  “I hunt werewolves, Marco. It’s what I do. I could never be what you need, even if the hearing goes in your favor and you’re treated as humans again. I’m sure my role as a Hunter would change, but I’d still be a werewolf hunter. The discussion has come up before and if such were to be the case, we would still hunt rogue werewolves.”

  “That’s what you do now. I could use such an enforcer to my advantage.”

  “Yes, but that’s not what other Hunters have been doing. It’s a crime punishable by death to even be a werewolf. I’ve been sent to carry out that sentence, Marco. I am death to you.”

  “But you’ve only been killing those who threaten the safety of others. I know about the woman you left alive because she defended herself.”

  “Just because I wouldn’t kill a defenseless woman doesn’t mean that I wouldn’t kill you if I had to.” I tried to make the threat believable but found that I couldn’t say it with as much conviction as I’d hoped.

  “I’m not asking you to marry me,” he said.

  “Then what exactly are you asking?”

  “I’m asking that you be my alpha female, my rufus kulin, my red queen.”

  Shock was not a sufficient word for what I felt.

  “Are all alpha females given this title?”

  “No. Most have to fight for the right to be mated to the alpha male, and even then, their title would be kulin. But, you’re special.” He smiled.

  “How do the other females in the pack feel about this?”

  “They’re not happy,” he said simply, but not like he cared. “Some are demanding their right to fight for the position.”

  “Sounds like you’re very popular.” The anger was creeping into my voice again.

  “And you don’t like that.” This seemed to please him, but I’d had enough of the conversation.

  “Let me go, Marco. I’m not going to be your bitch.”

  His evil smile widened as he replied, “Then, I’ll be yours, just don’t tell anybody.” He winked.

  “Marco,” I said, trying to push him away, but he didn’t move.

  “Say you will at least consider my offer.”

  I opened my mouth, but no sound came. I didn’t want to lie to him. Sure, I wanted Marco, but to become his alpha female would be out of the question. It was something that I simply couldn’t do.

  “I can’t.”

  “But you will,” he said gently.

  He was right, but I wasn’t going to tell him so.

  “You’d still be left with the matter of Bade. What will you do, kill him?”

  He stood up again and walked back to the railing before answering. “Not if I don’t have to. I keep hoping he’ll realize that he’s wrong. I believe he’s already given up on the idea of being able to replicate your DNA, but he still thinks that he can lead the pack better than I can.”

  He sighed deeply and took another sip of his drink. “The longer I let him go, the more he undermines my authority.”

  I had honestly never thought much before about the complexities of the wolf pack, but apparently it was more political in structure than I had suspected. The fact that he would even divulge such information to me spoke volumes about how serious Marco’s offer was and how much he trusted me.

  I stepped closer, wanting to comfort him somehow, but not entirely sure it was appropriate for me to do so. I didn’t love Marco, but I couldn’t deny my attraction to him. Placing my hand on his back, I said, “I’m not going to lie to you. I don’t know the answer.”

  He turned to me and placed my hand over his heart. The feel of his bare skin against my palm felt more intimate than it should.

  “What you feel for me is not just lust,” he said softly. “It’s the attraction that one alpha feels for another. You are drawn to me. I can feel it.”

  “How?”

  “Because I feel the same way when I’m near you. No one else has ever had this effect on me. This is how it’s supposed to be. How you manage to resist it is beyond me.”

  “Me, too.”

  Chapter Eleven

  After a long pause Marco said at last, “When you get tired of fighting it, let me know.”

  Once again, I didn’t know how to respond, but if what he said about alphas being attracted to one another was true, then that explained why I couldn’t get him out of my head. I felt better knowing that I wasn’t losing my mind. However, it wasn’t exactly a comfort to know I could be affected by him that way.

  We finished our drinks in silence. Finally, I moved beside him and watched as we both blew smoke rings into the dark alley below.

  “Don’t think too hard, Red.” His sexy rough voice so close to my ear made me shiver.

  “Why’s that? You wanted me to think didn’t you?”

  “If you think too much, you’ll talk yourself out of whatever it is that you want to do.”

  “It’s not possible for you to know me this well. Until a few months ago, we’d only spoken once.”

  “That’s true, but it doesn’t mean I didn’t pay attention,” he said, leaning in enough that his chest brushed against my shoulder. “I was still in training when you came along, the commanders wounded daughter, the one no one was supposed to know had been ... changed, but I knew. I paid attention. I watched as you changed daily, saw your skills improve, and I saw the way the men looked at you.”

  He tucked a stray hair behind my ear as he continued. “I saw the effect that you had, but I wasn’t aware of its source until after I was changed. Once in a great while, someone is born with your kind of power.”

  He had my attention now. “What do you mean?”

  “The sex that radiates from you is no accident, but few can put it into their voice the way that you do.” He paused. “Actually, no one can do it the way that you do.”

  Marco mu
st have been able to tell from my expression that I didn’t understand, so he went on. “Extremely powerful werewolves sometimes have special powers, like that of wizards, an area of expertise. Particularly, those who are descended from wizards themselves.”

  “But I’m not—”

  “How old was your great grandmother when she died?”

  “But, what has that got to do with—”

  “I’ll tell you, because I was there when your father received the call telling him that she had been killed. She was five hundred years old. Now that’s a stretch, even for the purest of Terran blood, wouldn’t you say?”

  “How the hell—?”

  “Do I know all of this?” he finished for me. “I believe in knowing your enemy, and you and I have been enemies, have we not?”

  I nodded.

  “So, I made it my business to know how it was you seemed to have powers that were unexplainable from what I knew of you at the time. You see, your great grandmother’s father ... that would be your great, great, grandfather, was a wizard. The last to die of natural causes while in office at the ripe old age of one thousand, two hundred years. Quite the over achiever if you ask me.”

  My knees suddenly felt weak. I leaned into Marco slightly, unable to stop myself.

  “You mean that—”

  “Mathias Alexander was your great, great, grandfather.”

  “But, Joshua Mercury—”

  “Was cheated on,” Marco said simply.

  Mathias Alexander had been known as The Seducer. It was the power that he had. He could manipulate the senses in ways others could only dream about. Of course, a wizard has other basic talents, but his power was in his voice, and it was his strongest ability. His death and consequently vacated council seat had been the cause of the last wizard war forty years ago.

  Marco helped me back down into the chair as he patted my shoulder. “Don’t feel too badly. No one could blame your great, great, grandmother. He was The Seducer, after all.”

  It was simply too much to take in. Finally, I asked, “How?”

  Marco knelt before me again, resting on the balls of his feet as he answered. “The old man kept a journal, and I, being the lover of history that I am ... happened upon it.”

  “You happened upon it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Bullshit.”

  He laughed and the sudden noise startled me. “You don’t trust easily, do you?”

  “You stalked my family tree,” I accused.

  “I got to know my enemy,” he corrected. “However, the part about your wizard ancestry only became clear to me about a year ago. That’s when I happened upon Mathias’ journal.”

  I raised my eyebrows and Marco elaborated further. “I found it in an old bookstore in London. The shopkeeper had no idea what he had. He thought it was some sort of unpublished work of fiction.”

  Sliding forward in my seat, I motioned for Marco to come closer. “I want to know something,” I said.

  “And you can read emotions the way he could, as well?” He made it a question.

  “Yes.” But, if the emotion was strong enough, I could get images from the feeling.

  He placed his knees firmly in front of the chair and opened his shirt wide. It was hard to believe that he would willingly subject himself to this sort of personal invasion, but I didn’t question it. I wanted to know if Marco was telling the truth. I wanted to see what he’d seen, to know what it was that he knew. I felt my own thoughts being shut away, like slipping behind a wall in my mind. Yes, I wanted to know, but not at the cost of revealing my own secrets. My palms hovered inches above him and I could already feel the fever that radiated from his flesh. Such a display of trust was unexpected after my reaction to his offer. I decided to accept it as a gift.

  His skin was like fire beneath my touch. I opened the part of my mind that senses the feelings of others. It felt as if something tugged at my heart, pulling me down into Marco’s emotions. “Not everything,” I told myself, “Only what I need to know.”

  Then I saw it, the old leather bound journal lying on a dusty shelf in a bookstore. I watched through Marco’s eyes as he turned the pages, stopping at last on an unmistakable diagram of an elaborate family tree, hidden in the back of the book. His fingers traced down the page until they stopped at my name. He was telling the truth.

  There was no need to look further, but before I could move my hands, another image appeared before my eyes. It was me, walking down the hall from my father’s office. It was the first time I’d ever worn my black leather cat-suit and my hair was longer than it was now. He stopped, I spoke, and I felt him harden with desire. His pulse quickened, and for a moment, he was frightened ... but he liked it. He needed to touch me. It was a desire beyond my description. My hair, he made a comment about my hair and ruffled it gently with his hand.

  Then we were in a bar gazing intently at the barely exposed flesh of a woman’s back. It was my back, the first time I’d seen Marco at club Red. How long had he watched me? I remembered feeling his eyes on me. Through his memory, I felt such a pull toward me that it was almost a force of nature. To say that he was drawn to me was an understatement.

  We danced and it was relief to touch me, a compulsion indulged, a desire fulfilled. To touch my skin was a need, the same as food and water. He had never felt this for her—Julie was her name. The anger that surged through me at having a name to put with the face that I now despised gave me the strength I needed to let him go.

  At last, I was able to break the contact and Marco collapsed forward, resting his face against my thigh.

  “You see,” he panted. “I was telling the truth.”

  I stroked his hair as one would comfort a dog, and wondered vaguely if it was taboo to pet a werewolf. Of course, that’s not how I thought of Marco. The gesture was involuntary.

  “May I see it?” I asked, referring to the journal.

  “You can borrow it if you like.” His face was still pressed against my thigh.

  “Why would you help me?”

  “Make no mistake, Red, I’m helping myself, too. I wouldn’t want you to get the impression that The Big Bad Wolf is noble.”

  It felt good to laugh as I continued to toy with his hair. He seemed at ease with his head in my lap, as if it were perfectly natural. After he had allowed me to see inside his memories so intimately, I felt that I owed him some amount of honesty.

  “Marco?”

  “Yes?” He nuzzled against my thigh like a contented cat.

  “I’m not exactly single.”

  His laugh was a deep and sensual rumble. “You say that like it matters.” He looked up at me then and his eyes had bled to amber. “You will not find an ordinary man who can satisfy you.”

  Alfred was hardly ordinary, but I didn’t think that was any of Marco’s business.

  “That may be so, but he deserves a chance.”

  “And I don’t?”

  My fingers roamed down to clasp the hair at the nape of his neck as I purred, “You’re on my list, Marco. You’re just not at the top.”

  He smiled and I tightened my grip on his hair. “Things change,” he said. “It may take some time, but you’ll see that I’m right.”

  “You’re just jealous that you’re not on top,” I teased.

  Releasing his hair was difficult, but I managed.

  “Come on, I’ll show you the journal.” He got to his feet and extended his hand to me.

  After stepping back into his office, I watched as Marco removed a very old, very thick leather book from his shelf. The book was faded red and bound by leather straps. Marco held the book out to me, and I was almost afraid to touch it.

  “I still can’t believe that you would—,” I began, but he cut me off.

  “What, a monster is not allowed some measure of civility?” His tone was only slightly bitter.

  “No, it’s just that, well, I was always told you were crazy.”

  “What a coincidence,” he said, his voice drippi
ng with irony.

  I took the book then, but when I went to untie the leather cords, he stopped me.

  “Wait,” he said, placing his hand over mine. “You’ll want some privacy for what’s between those pages.”

  That only made me want to open it more, but I nodded my agreement.

  “I assume you took a cab here?”

  “I drove.” My voice sounded distant, even to me.

  “Are you all right to drive?” The compassion in his voice surprised me. Marco was the last person I expected sympathy from.

  There I was, holding within my hands a piece of history that might explain to me a great deal about myself. No, I wasn’t all right to drive. I was in shock.

  “I’ll take you back to your hotel,” he said.

  My knees felt wobbly, so I decided not to argue. It should have felt strange, handing Kat’s keys over to Marco, but it didn’t. It somehow seemed perfectly natural to let him take care of me. That in itself was cause enough for concern, but I was too caught up in my own thoughts to pay much attention.

  After the shock had worn off a bit, I would later wonder how it was that I put not only my life, but my friend’s life in his hands. Marco was right. We had been enemies for so many years that they all seemed to run together, and though we’d spoken only once until recently, I felt that I knew him. By reputation at least, I did. In our own way, we were a comfort to each other in that our battle had always been constant. Most people need something constant in their lives, and however strange it may be, Marco was that constant for me, that one thing that I could always count on. If nothing more, he was dependable to always be the devil’s advocate. It had never mattered before, whether or not I liked him. He was the enemy, and that was that. The problem was, as I got to know Marco, I did like him.

  We made our way back to Kat’s table where she and Luther were still cracking jokes. When she saw me, the laughter drained from her face.

  “What did you do to her?” She turned accusingly to Marco.

  I answered for him. “Kat, it’s all right. He didn’t do anything.”

  “I shared some news with her that a was a little—”

  “Shocking,” I finished.